Holly pressed her lips into a fine line. “And so you think that’s where he is? That Father is at this house on a hill or whatever it was you saw?”
“I honestly can’t say for sure, but… I think so.”
Holly glowered at Hemlock. “And you let her do this?”
Hemlock met her gaze with a steady one of his own. “Would you rather she do such things alone, without anyone there to look out for her?”
“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Hazel snapped. “My mind is my own, Holly. You know that. You have a problem with what I did, you talk to me about it, not Hemlock.”
Holly shifted her glower to Hazel. “And what if it had been me? What if you found out I snuck out in the night to do necromancy? What would you do? How do you expect me to react?”
Hazel took a breath. “I’m sorry for putting you in this position. I never wanted that. It’s… why I left without telling you.”
Holly opened her mouth, and Hazel interrupted her by adding, “Which I know I shouldn’t have done.”
Holly snapped her mouth shut and frowned some more as she glanced between Hazel and Hemlock, then let out a heavy breath and closed her eyes. “Well, now what?”
“I suppose we try to find the hill I saw, though I really don’t know where to start. It looked like it might be outside of town, but I can’t be sure.”
“Do you know, Hawthorn?” Holly asked.
Hawthorn, cleaning his fingernails, stopped when he noticed everyone looking at him. “What’s that?”
“The house and hill Hazel saw from drinking the potion. Do you know where it is?”
He waved a hand. “There are a lot of houses and hills around here. I don’t know how I’m supposed to figure out which one from a second-hand account of a hallucinatory dream.”
Holly glowered at him and firmly said, “Try.”
Hawthorn sighed and squinted up at the ceiling.
Holly narrowed her eyes and looked the ceiling too. “What’re you looking at?”
“I’m thinking.”
“The ceiling help you with that?”
Hawthorn ignored her. To Hazel, he said, “Were there trees on the hill? Landmarks?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
He gave her a flat look.
“I don’t remember. There might have been a tree or two. But that’s all, I think. It was the building that caught my attention.”
“That may be a house or a mill, according to your account.”
“Yes.”
Frowning, Hawthorn rubbed his chin. Then he brightened and began smoothing out his clothes.
“Well?” Hazel said.
“I have no idea.”
“Helpful.”
“It’s quite out of my hands. I am not a man of miracles, as shocking as that realization may be.”
“Yes,” Hemlock said. “We’re all dumbstruck by the news.”
“So that’s it then?” Holly said. “We just give up? After everything?”
“Nobody’s giving up,” Hazel said. To Hawthorn she asked, “So who would know something like this? There’s bound to be some elderly person who’s been around as long as dust that would know every facet and detail about this town.”
“You could always try the city archives,” he said.
“The archives?”
“Yes, archives. You know, old papers, books, people. They’ll probably have something there that can help.”
Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
Hawthorn shrugged and resumed cleaning his nails. “You didn’t ask.”
They spent what remained of the night in Hazel and Holly’s cramped little room. Hawthorn wedged himself between the sisters on the bed and promptly fell asleep. Holly followed shortly after. Hazel, finding herself in closer proximity to Hawthorn than she ever would have liked, relocated to the floor. Hemlock sat next to her, and so she spent the night resting her head against his shoulder as she drifted in and out of fitful slumber.
* * *
The next day, it was nearly afternoon when they left the inn, got in the carriage, and headed towards the archives.
The sky was overcast and drizzled a fine mist of rain. The carriage wound along the streets, coming at length to a great stone building surrounded by an almost equally great stone wall.
“This is it,” Hawthorn said as he hopped out of the carriage.
The others followed. Hazel craned her neck as she stared at the building. The thing was monstrous, made with massive blocks of stone occasionally interrupted by a window. It looked more like a fortress than a public building of information.
“Well, that looks formidable,” Hazel said.
“Knowledge is power,” Hawthorn said. “It must be protected from uppity rabble-rousers looking to drag us all into an age of ignorance.”
“What must be protected? The knowledge or the power?”
He shrugged. “There cannot be one without the other.”
“We do just fine in the Grove without an archive.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Yes, but we have our libraries, some of which are restricted depending on the magic one practices. It is the same idea.”
Hazel frowned. She didn’t like it when Hawthorn was right.
They crossed an expansive stone courtyard before coming to stairs that led to a wooden pair of great double doors. Pulling one of the heavy doors open, they walked into a darkened entry hall. A feeble stream of light filtered through a window high up on the wall, illuminating a patch of the woven, basket-like design of the parquet floor. Most of the light came from lamps that hung on the walls. The lampshades were made of frosted glass. They pulsed with a gentle red-orange light, waxing and waning like slow, steady breath. It made the room feel alive. It made Hazel uncomfortable.
Hawthorn led them into a vast room filled with desks and tables, each one illuminated with what looked like an oil lamp exuding the same unsettling living light as those in the entry hall. A row of shelves took up one part of the room, bearing massive tomes that looked nearly identical. A man perused the shelves while a few others sat scattered among the tables, leafing through papers and books.
Nearby, a man sat perched on a stool at a podium, peering over half-moon spectacles that rested upon his hawk-like nose. A lamp on the podium illuminated his face irregularly, shifting from shadows to light to shadows again as the warm light pulsed and faded.
Hawthorn strode up to him. “We need access to the city planning documents.”
The man shifted his gaze between them before finally picking up a pen and poising it over a ledger. “Name?”
“Warlocks Hawthorn and Hemlock, and witches Hazel and Holly. From the Grove, but we’re currently staying at the Backwards Buck.”
The man scribbled the information down. “Follow me.” He hopped off the stool and headed across the room to a door near the shelves. He led them down a narrow hallway, then into a smaller room with only a couple of tables and more shelves along the walls. He pulled a monstrous book from one of the shelves and set it on the table with a resounding thud.
“This is the directory,” he said. “It will list the different documents and where you can find them on the shelves.” He narrowed his eyes as he looked Hazel and Holly up and down. “And no silliness. I’ve documented your use here, so if anything is amiss when you leave, we’ll know. You don’t want to have a run-in with one of our collectors.” He turned on a heel and strode out of the room.
“Charming man,” Hazel muttered.
“Why’d he think we’re the silly ones?” Holly said. “Is there something on my face?” She prodded her cheeks.
“I think he’s used to seeing withered old men here most of the time,” Hawthorn said. “Young ladies undoubtedly ruffle his limited world view.”
“Maybe we should come here more often then,” Holly said.
“Or not,” Hazel said.
Hemlock riffled through the directory. He ran a finger
along the lines as he scanned the pages.
“Well?” Hazel said. “Any mills or houses built on hills?”
Hemlock shook his head. “I don’t know. These listings aren’t terribly clear. They’re arranged by year, then by district, then owner, then by types of buildings constructed. Land specifics aren’t mentioned here, so I expect we’ll have to consult the individual planning documents to see whether or not a structure was built on a hill. Since we don’t know what district we are looking for or when it was built, I don’t know how we’ll find it without pulling each document for a house or mill listed in this directory.”
“That’ll take ages,” Hazel said.
“Exactly.”
Hazel rubbed her eyes. There had to be a better way. “What about buildings outside of town?”
“Outside?”
“I’m not certain that what I saw was inside of town. Perhaps it would be easier to search outside as I’m certain there will be fewer buildings to account for.”
Hemlock blinked at her a few times and then down at the ledger. He flipped towards the end of the book and scanned the pages. “I think this directory only lists buildings inside of town.”
Holly sighed and flopped onto a chair. Hawthorn began perusing the shelves. Hazel went to the shelf that had housed the directory and examined the other books and ledgers. Most were labeled with enigmatic numbers and letters, probably in accordance to whatever was listed in the directory. She walked as she scanned the spines of books and labels of bundled-up papers for something that stood out. It wasn’t until she reached the corner of the room that, down on the bottom shelf next to the wall, was an old vellum-bound book. It looked much older than any of the other tomes in the room. When she pulled it from the shelf, numerous emblems in wax and tin dangled on strips of leather protruding from the bottom of the book.
She took it to a table and opened it. The pages were handwritten in fading ink, the style overly elaborate and difficult to read. A reddish-brown wax emblem was affixed to the bottom of the first page with a leather tab.
Holly, who had been playing with Chester, leaned towards Hazel as she eyed the book. “What’s it say?”
Hazel squinted and brought her nose closer to the page. “‘Wicke and warren byway af…’” She tilted her head. “‘…Randal’s rue betwixt baine and barrough…’”
“What gibberish is that?” Holly asked.
“The Old Tongue,” Hawthorn said. “An earlier dialect of our current language.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Language, like all things, changes over time.”
“‘…Shall evermoore be hearthshippe, hearthwoorne, and hearthhallowed te ye fyne familyshippe af Austenwalde fromme this daye the Twelfthe af Desending Windren in the Twain-Hundredth and Eighty-Eighth Sycle.’” Hazel fell silent as she stared at the page. “I think it’s a land deed. And almost seven hundred years old by the looks of it.”
“Fascinating,” Hawthorn said, “but I don’t see how it helps us.”
Hazel carefully turned the pages, looking for something that might be helpful, though she honestly didn’t know what. Combing through a seven-hundred-year-old deed book was probably fruitless at best, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. The feel of the leathery, yellowed pages, the enigmatic, scrawling handwriting. It was like a piece of time sliced from the world and pressed into a book, existing only in this place of dust and forgotten documents.
She came to a page that had a twig attached to it instead of an emblem. The first part of the document had been faded from time, but the rest of it was fairly legible. “‘…do here and bye avowe to relinquish the Northrend lands in to perpetuity, and that the Southron shall ne’er interfere, neither in governshippe, knowledgeshippe, nor in kinshippe, and that the Northrend lands of Forest and Grove shall here and by after be in accordance, and ne’er interfere with Southron governshippe, knowledgeshippe, nor kinshippe of the Flatlands, or the new and budding townshippe of Sarnum…’” Hazel trailed off as she continued to study the page. “It looks like some kind of concord between Sarnum and the surrounding lands and… the Grove.” She looked up at Hemlock. “Have you ever heard of this?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Have you, Hawthorn?”
Hawthorn fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve and shuffled his feet. “I may have heard something about it.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Hemlock folded his arms. “Yes, brother. Please do elaborate.”
Hawthorn glowered at them, then exhaled and looked resigned. “Very well, but not here. We skipped breakfast, and one shouldn’t tell long, complicated stories on empty stomachs.”
They traveled across town to a cramped little district where the buildings were built too closely together, all bending with the weight of years pressing upon them. Hawthorn hopped out of the carriage, and the others followed him into a rickety-looking establishment that had a sagging roof and wooden walls blackened by pitch that gave off a slightly burned and pungent smell.
Inside, the burned smell was replaced with pleasing aromas of cooked meat, onions, and herbs. The walls were spared the pitch treatment from the outside, and the naked wooden walls were adorned only with pots of herbs and trailing vines that supplied a rather homely feel.
The room had a few tables scattered about, all of them filled with patrons holding on to steaming mugs or slurping soup from chipped clay bowls. Behind a counter stood a little old woman who was barely tall enough to peer over the top of it. Great copper kettles surrounded her, all containing simmering soup that fogged the windows behind her with their steam.
She squinted at them from behind a pair of thick glasses as they approached. Then her face split into a luminous smile. “Hawthorn, my boy! What brings you here?”
“Hello, Ada.”
Ada came around the counter and put out her hands, and Hawthorn took hold of them.
“Little Hawthorn,” she said, blinking up at him several times. “Unchanged from the last time I saw you. You still fooling around with those silly glamours?”
Hawthorn grinned. “You know me. I always like to look my best.”
Ada tsked. “You always were a handsome boy. Probably more handsome now as a man. You shouldn’t hide that.” She blinked as she took in the others. “You must be Hemlock. You’ve the look of your father, make no mistake.”
Hemlock shifted his feet. “You and Hawthorn know each other?”
“Oh, aye. Little whelp’s been coming here with Lupinus for years.” She turned back to Hawthorn and squinted at him. “When was the last time you were here? It’s been a while.”
“Before Father died.”
Ada spit on the floor then smeared it with her foot. “Sad business, that. But the inevitable end for us all, I suppose. But enough of my rambling. I’m guessing you came here to eat and not reminisce with an old woman.”
Hawthorn flashed her a bright smile. “You were always too clever for your own good.”
Ada scoffed and slapped his arm. “And you were always too charming for your own good. That charm get you in trouble yet?”
Hawthorn grinned. “Not yet.”
“Then you’re luckier than a hog in a midden heap. I’ll take you to the back.” She turned and headed through a door that led them down a narrow hallway before herding them into a cramped but cozy room with a single round table. An oversized window nearly took up an entire wall, washing the snug room with light and turning it pleasantly warm.
They situated themselves around the table, and after a few minutes, Ada returned, carrying a great round tray filled with various bowls and mugs. She set them out on the table.
“I’ve brought you a bit of everything. You all look like you could use a good warm lunch. If you need anything else, I’ll be out front, so you just let me know.” She turned and left.
Holly was the first to grab a bowl. She sniffed it, then passed it to Hazel before grabbing another. She passed on two more before finding one
of the mugs to her satisfaction. She sipped from it as she glanced at the others.
Everyone remained silent. Hemlock ignored the soup Holly had set in front of him as he glowered at Hawthorn.
“Care to tell me what’s going on, brother?” Hemlock said. “You’ve been here before. Why lie about that? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Hawthorn sighed. “To avoid this very conversation. Father brought me here from time to time when I was younger. I never asked him to, but he did. So there it is.”
“He was trying to spare your feelings,” Holly said.
Hemlock glowered at her. “You knew? Does everyone know except me? Have you all had a good laugh playing me for a fool?”
“No, I—”
“Not everything is about you, Hemlock,” Hawthorn said. “You’ve always been so sensitive about Father and me. Can you blame me for wanting to avoid all this nonsense?”
“Nonsense?” Hemlock said. “Is it nonsense to want to be included? To feel like I belong in a family? Because I never have, Hawthorn. I expected this sort of thing from Father, but it’s worse that you’re still doing it even though he’s long been in the ground. You truly are his heir, in every conceivable way.” He got up and left.
Silence fell around the table. Hawthorn stretched his neck and straightened the cuffs of his shirt. He fixed his gaze on Hazel. “Shall we get on with it then?”
Hazel thrust a finger at him. “You wait there.” She got up and walked out to the main room, but Hemlock wasn’t there. She went outside and found him sitting on a squat barrel underneath the drooping eave of a particularly ramshackle building further down the way. His head was lowered as he rested his weight against his knees, so he didn’t see her as she approached.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He looked up at her and then away again. He stared out towards the street a long while before saying, “Somehow it always manages to take me off guard how much of an ass Hawthorn can be. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Does it matter so much that he lied about coming here?”
Hemlock shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s everything. It’s lifelong years of being overlooked and of having to brace the brunt of Hawthorn’s smug indifference. And I’m… tired. I don’t know why I’ve continued to care. I’ve tried not to, but…”
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