by Jane M. R.
The handbag I took to Durain’s funeral is still sitting on my vanity. As if the black bombazine had also covered my eyes these past four weeks, with the black dress now shed from my body that had become second skin, I just now notice it, remembering with it that thing Durian’s Will had given me. Despite its oddity, I had forgotten.
Going to the gas lamp by the door, I turn the valve and strike a match to it. Reseated back at the vanity, I pull the white rectangle metal thing out of my purse and hold it in both hands with the flowering script embossed at the top. I slid my thumb over the mild ridges.
It is simply odd. I’ve known Durain my whole life and for something like this to be in his possession is simply… odd.
I lift it closer to my eyes, looking for anything I might have missed that would reveal the obviousness of it. Durain’s words the executor had read said white container, but I can’t figure out how it opens. All edges are sealed tightly.
I hold it away at arm’s length. It’s not heavy but it does have noticeable weight. I shake it; something inside bumps back and forth. It is a container. Excited, I inspect it all over again.
I let it roll in my hand, looking carefully at all six sides, the orange glow from the gas lamp sliding across the surface like oil. On one of the long sides I see markings, only they are so faded I only found it because I was looking for something. There is a long scratch, fairly straight and parallel to the edge of the cube. To the right of the scratch is a circle. Not a perfect circle, but too obvious to not have been deliberate.
The scratch turns ninety degrees downward and ends with an X – the markings still so faint I tilt the cube at different angles to see them all clearly. But my heart is racing now. Small triangle shapes spot either side of the scratch and around the X and there is no doubt that this is a crude map of the path of travel from my house to the fire pit where Durain left his rucksack. Anyone else would not be able to make sense of it but I’ve traveled that path over a hundred times while growing up with Durain.
I rush to my wardrobe, searching among my dresses for my only pair of pants. Then I remember whose daughter I am. I stomp my foot. Of course my mother took it. She probably took it the night Durain died, likely the same instant she got the news. “My nephew just died, you say? I’ll be right back. I have to get something out of my daughter’s wardrobe.”
Maybe my mother poisoned him?
My nightgown will have to do. I turn off the gas lamp and yank on my boots. Opening the window, I look out onto the front lawn. The last glows of the sun are blue, shedding little light. I go back to the wardrobe and pull a ribbon out, hauling my white nightgown up to my thighs and tie it off with the ribbon. I lean out the window again.
I’ve never had the honorable occasion to climb out of my window after Lock Hour. Valemorren’s tightly enforced curfew discourages anyone from leaving the house even through the front door after dark. But then, no one else has had a map left to them by a dead boy, either. And with Durain now dead, I no longer have an excuse to not act like a lady and wear the horrible tiable dresses every day. Score one for Janella.
I stick my pale bare leg out of the window, positive someone was watching only because I’m scandalously exposed and hanging on the side of the house. Fear of falling tingles the back of my neck, but it shouldn’t be any different than climbing trees with Durain.
Except that it is. There is very little to hold onto for the trip down and never mind the trip back up. I pull my leg back inside and reassessed my escape plan.
Had I never grown up with a boy who taught me all the scandalous things a lady should never know (or even use), I wouldn’t have ever thought to tie my sheets together to create a rope to bear my weight as I climb down – slipped a little, banged my knee against the stone – the side of the house.
But I had grown up with a boy. This boy told me fantastic stories about princesses locked in towers who gained their escape by doing just that thing. Stories about dragons and the wizard Merlin and the Fae.
It is thoroughly dark by the time my boots touch the grass. I nurse an angry knee cap with a frantic rub of my palm and step back to look at my white sheet-rope hanging out of my window like an umbilical cord; I have just detached myself from the mother.
Would the parish constable ride by, see it, and report it to my parents? Because what really is the only reason for having sheets tied together and hanging out a second story window after curfew except to betray the escape of a princess locked in a tower?
The fear of getting caught clinches in my chest and I reach for my sheet-rope to climb back up, but I pause. Durain left me a map. And my father had passed the reins of my freedom horse to my mother. During daylight hours I would be tied into my dresses and made to excel the feminine arts of music, painting, and whatever else my mother could make up to occupy my time until I marry. And then a man will make sure my time is occupied for the rest of my life.
I walk away from the sheet-rope, taking refuge in the shadows of the trees west of the house. I concede that if I come back and it’s been discovered, my back up plan will be to run away and join the gypsies who don’t have to be tied into their dresses. Well, they don’t have to pay for items taken from a store, either, but I can over look that, just like I’m overlooking how I will be postage-stamped a whore for the very reason I left my room without being tied into a dress.
If anyone finds out.
I usually navigate the way to me and Durain’s fire pit through the forest which is quicker, but the darkness forces me to walk along the road but as close to the trees as I can.
I walk into the clearing with the fire pit thirty minutes later. Since the map on the white rectangle cub thing had indicated this spot with an X, I look at the area with new appreciation. I sit on the log next to Durain’s bag and pull the cube out of the bunched and tied folds I made with the skirt of my nightgown. The map on the cube reveals nothing further from what I can see in the thin light of the half moon, so I put it away with the understanding that Durain knew I could figure the rest out on my own.
I know this spot of forest by heart. Without knowing why I might be there, I start investigating Durain’s bag, feeling like I’m intruding upon his privacy though it clearly doesn’t matter anymore.
I take everything out, looking over each item carefully before putting it to the side: his matchbox, bone handled knife, a bite of string, handkerchief, silver hip flask with some water still sloshing around inside – items I’ve already seen him use. I inspect the bag itself; the stitching, buttons, shoulder straps, both inside and out until I’m satisfied it is just a bag. The log next.
With the dim light and a few of Durain’s matches, I crawl along the entire length of it, rolling it over to view the underside and the ground. Nothing. For some strange reason I thought I was emboldened with super strength and try to lift the boulder at the edge of the clearing, but it doesn’t move. Obviously. I return to the log. The fire pit, then.
I drop to my knees in the grass and pick up each rock bordering it, inspecting them thoroughly. The fourth rock displays a charcoal drawn X on the underside, smeared from dew and dirt.
Heart hammering at the discovery, I wonder if he had meant the rock itself? I inspect it. Nope. Maybe the ground under the rock? If so, what was so important for him to have to hide it like this? From the look of it, if he wanted me to dig, he had hidden it a while ago due to how the grass has grown back. Obviously he had hidden it before he died, had drawn the map on the cube before… My heart stutters. Did he know…?
More empowered over his unnatural demise than ever before, I scrape at the spot of dirt with the rock. The ground isn’t as hard packed as I had suspected. About half a hand length down the dirt, the rock scrapes across something. Dizzy with anxiousness, I scrape more frantically to widen the hole, revealing a tube of sorts made of wood. I dig down enough to reach in with my fingers and pull it out.
I brush the mud away. It is plain in design. About five inches in length, two inches in diamet
er. One of the ends is sealed but the other has a lid pressed on tightly. On the lid is another charcoal drawn X. Of course it is obvious already, but it is just like Durain to not leave way to chance.
I’m about to pop the lid in my eagerness when I realize I have virtually no light. I shake the tube. Sounds like paper inside. I’m not about to light a match and risk burning it.
I repack Durain’s bag along with the tube and the cube. Shouldering the pack, I head back toward the road, walking as if timed in my reading of this mysterious paper in the wooden tube.
A Nightingale swoops through the forest with a rapid warble, feathers settling on the branches to watch me as I pass. The night used to scare me until Durain showed there was nothing to be afraid of. “The difference between night and day,” he had said, “is just a new type of predator.”
“There aren’t any predators during the day,” a young Brine had retorted defiantly.
“Yes there are.”
“Oh, ya? What kind?”
“People,” he had said.
The Nightingale springs from its branch as if the tree was suddenly on fire, beating its wings in sync with a whistling cry as it shoots through the dark.
I stop. “However,” Durain had said on that long ago day, “if, at night, you see the animals change direction suddenly without apparent provocation… follow them because they are running from something. They see things you don’t.”
I hear it. An odd, sort of tinkling noise… like glass beads knocking together. Durain’s warning to follow the animal screams at me to move but I don’t, rooted to the spot by curiosity. The tinkling becomes louder – closer?
Something thrashes the tree tops above me and I startle enough that I drop to my knees on instinct, showered beneath a fall of leaves and sticks. I look up. Exposed very briefly in the gap between two tree heads is what looks like an orange colored hairless dog.
It is flying.
Durain had done a good job desensitizing me to the mythical fears at night because I still don’t frighten until I hear frantic hoof beats and the sound of shouting men.
The predators of the day have infiltrated the night. After curfew. The parish constables are convinced that no good lady or gentlemen ever did anything righteous after dark. Maybe they’re right.
The predators will see I am not wearing a tied dress. Despite my own complaints about the “needing to be tied into your dress to maintain your virginity” that society regulates with more scrutiny than what the parish constables do with inmates, fear lodges in my throat at being seen outside of such a dress. I scramble up the closest pine tree, tucking my naked legs into the screen of pine needles just as three horsemen surge around the tree.
I climb higher into the tree, every branch scrapping against Durain’s rucksack. Hands sticky with sap and hoping the scraps on my bare skin will not be noticed at my next bath, I reach the top and look over the dark expanse of night.
The flying dog stands out well enough in the half moon light. Its wings look weird but I can’t tell why. Then the odd creature bucks and screams – flounders – and falls into the forest.
Did the horsemen just kill it? With a crossbow?
I begin a hasty decent down the tree to investigate. But upon my boots touching the forest floor, all the reasons why I should get back home as swiftly as possible push through my immense curiosity. It goes something like: “No good lady or gentlemen ever does anything righteous after dark.” “If you do actually find this creature thing they just shot out of the air with a crossbow artifact from the Middle Ages, then what? Who you going to tell?” “What if those men find you creeping up on them and they… (insert imagination here).”
My Reasoning wins – unfortunately – but I keep looking over my shoulder all the way home. I’ll look at my father’s books to see if they can offer an explanation to the animal I saw. Certainly it was just an animal the men were hunting. Maybe they got permission from the parish constable to do a night hunt?
On the edge of my massive front lawn, I hide in the forest to make sure no one is about. My white trail of sheets is still hanging out of my window, which either means no one knows of my nightly escapade or the parish constable – worse, my mother (expecting both) – is waiting in my room for me to deliver myself into captivity.
Suppose I better find out.
I dash toward the house, struggling in my defiance against gravity to scale the two stories up to my window by means of the sheet-rope. It takes me five noisy, clumsy minutes – I bang my knee again. Same one – before finally hooking my elbows onto my window sill like an upside down bat.
My room is vacant. Unless they are waiting in my wardrobe to spring upon me as soon as I close the window.
I clamber onto my rug, quickly pulling the sheet inside as if it had only been exposed to the rest of the world for a moment and not an hour. I notice a tear in the sheet when I flatten them back on my bed. If Varseena asks, I will blame her since she is tasked with washing them.
I re-light the gas lamp and pull the wooden tube out of the bag. Popping the lid, I dump a roll of paper into my hand. I flatten it on my vanity.
26 March 1842
I’m going to start riting words down because it is dangerous being the only one left alive with the secret and this is to important to treat carelessly.
What! I look away from the page, trying to forcibly absorb what I just read. It is definitely Durain’s handwriting. He’s kept secrets? We’ve been best friends since I was two and he kept a secret from me? I’m offended to the point that I want to march to Durain’s grave right now and shout at him. But I don’t want to bang my knee against the side of the house again so I continue reading.
I’ve ben feeling shadowed as of late and I can’t help but feel that it has found me. I’ve been looking for them, but if the worst happens to me, I wrote down their locations so who I choose to follow in my footsteps might complete this task I’ve been entrusted… I have the first of three. I think it was shortly after this that I picked up the shadow now following me. There are many who would rather keep this secret dead. I hid the first where The Boulder caught her slip.
I lean back in my chair. What in the bloody hell does, “I have the first of four” mean? What does any of this mean?
I try to be angry because now I’m confused and irritated, but I know that anger is only disguising the chilling knowledge that I know what he means by, “where The Boulder caught her slip.” Durain had written this specifically for me and in such a way that only I would understand. In case other hands found this paper? If anyone else looked closely at the faint map on the white cube, there is a chance they could have figured out the map and found this paper, but already they would have been stumped at this first clue in the note.
Because only Durain and I know of my slipping and banging my elbow while playing on a giant boulder tucked into the skirt of the mountain range three miles in front of my house. Durain cleaned the cut with the water from his silver hip flask and blessed me cured. We didn’t tell anyone because we weren’t supposed to be playing so far from home. Especially not on a boulder hovering above the valley which provides a remarkable view.
My heart races at the seriousness I’m getting into by understanding the contents of this note. I now know for certain that Durain was murdered over this “secret” and it doesn’t even bother me that I have knowingly accepted the same risk.
The second can be found with not her uncle. It is always kept on him. This I know. The third is vaulted for they believe it too much of a risk for it not to be. The Fae are real. When you have the three pieces, follow the pull, and hold on.
The letter ends.
I read it again, looking closely at every word for anything else Durain might have snuck in there to hide from other eyes but there is nothing more. A disturbing sense crawls up my spine. This is much too deep and too serious to come from Durain. Speaking of secrets worth killing over, saying Fae are real?
A rain shower breaks outside and
lashes against the window pane with a gust of wind. The temperature drops. With cold fingers I stuff the paper back into the wooden tube and turn off the valve on the gas lamp. The dark polished top of my vanity reflects daggered slices of lightening. Thunder rumbles in the distance.
I sit on my bed and bring my knees into my chest. Durain… what is going on? What is this you were looking for that cost you your life? It’s obvious that is why he died. Even his writing eludes to a “shadow” following him. I’m tempted to show this to the Chief Constable but the paper does not indicate Durain’s name in anyway and would only ruin the secret he was keeping… whatever that secret is. He was only seventeen. Durain’s father had also died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-seven. And their grandmother at…
A steady realization tickles the back of my brain, though I can’t decide what exactly I’m trying to make it out to be.
CHAPTER FOUR
BRINELLA
Varseena’s smile in the morning looks out of place, like the day after four weeks of mourning is too soon for anyone to start smiling again. But Varseena coaxes me out of bed with the threat of a cold bath and then goes to the wardrobe. She flings open the double doors as if dressing herself again at the age of sixteen and rosy at the excitement that she is now old enough to be courted.
But Varseena already knows what dress I will be wearing because she immediately hones in on its location as if she is a bee and my dress is a flower. She extracts a gaudy mess of lace and beads my mother must have put there because under no circumstances would I ever wear something that scandalous in its loud cry for attention. Much too lacy. Much too girly. Much too bright after four weeks of black.