I reached up to touch Madding’s face, reading his expression with my fingers. This helped me catch what I had missed. “You’re still angry about it.”
His brow furrowed. “Of course I am. I loved her! But”—he sighed heavily, leaning down to press his forehead against mine—“I loved him, too, once.”
I cupped his face in my hands, wishing I knew how to comfort him. This was family business, though, between father and son. It was Shiny’s problem to solve, if we ever found him.
There was one thing I could do, though.
“I’ll stay,” I said.
He started, pulling back to stare at me. Of course he knew what I meant. After a long moment, he said, “Are you sure?”
I almost laughed. I was shaky inside, not just from leftover panic. “No. But I don’t think I ever will be. I just… I know what’s most important to me.” I did laugh then, as I realized that Shiny had helped me decide, with that horrid kiss and the challenge in his words. I did, too, love Madding. And I wanted to be with him, even though it meant the end of the life I’d worked so hard to build and the end of my independence. Love meant compromise, after all—something I suspected Shiny did not understand.
Madding’s face was solemn as he nodded, accepting my decision. I liked that he did not smile. I think he knew what the decision cost me.
Instead, after a moment, he sighed and glanced at Kitr, who had carefully paid more attention to the street than to us for the past few minutes.
“I’m calling everyone in,” he said. “I don’t like this. No mere scrivener should be able to hide from us.” He glanced back, in the direction of the splashes of blood. “And I can’t sense Father anywhere. I especially don’t like that.”
“Nor can I,” said Kitr. “There are some of us with the power to hide him, but why would they? Unless…” She glanced at me, assessing and dismissing in a single sweep of her eyes. “You think this has something to do with Role? Your mortal there did find the body, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“Wait. There’s something…” This came from the other side of the street. I followed the voice and saw the sigil-etched outline of Madding’s scrivener. She stood looking up at the buildings nearby, holding a sheet of paper in her hands. A series of individual sigils had been drawn at the corners, with three rows of godwords in the middle. As I watched, one of the godwords and a sigil in the upper right corner began to glow more brightly. The scrivener, who apparently knew what this meant, gasped and took several steps back. I could not see her face, for she had no godwords written there, but terror filled her voice. “Oh, gods, I knew it! Look out! All of you, look—”
And suddenly hells filled the street.
No, not hells. Holes.
With a sound like tearing paper, they opened all around us, perfect circles of darkness. Some lay along the ground, some on the walls; some must’ve hung unsupported in midair. One of them opened right beneath the scrivener’s feet, practically the instant the last word left her lips. She didn’t have time to cry out before she fell into it and vanished. Another caught Kitr, who had turned to run to Madding’s side. It opened before her between one step and another, and she was gone. The racing dog cursed in Mekatish and darted around the first hole that opened at his feet, but then another opened above him. I saw his short fur stand on end, pulled upward, and then with a yelp he was sucked in as well.
Before I could react, Madding suddenly shoved me away from him, into the doorway of the house. Stumbling over the doorway’s raised step, I turned back, opening my mouth to speak—then saw the hole opening at his back. I felt the pull, its force powerful enough to jerk me forward a step even after I stopped.
No! I caught the door’s elaborate handle in one hand to brace myself and used that leverage to raise my walking stick, hoping Madding would be able to grab it. Madding, his eyes wide and teeth bared, strained toward me. The sound of jangling chimes was barely audible, sucked away by the hole.
He mouthed something I couldn’t hear. He ground his teeth, and I heard him in my head this time, in the manner of gods. GET INSIDE!
Then he flew backward, as if a great invisible hand had grabbed him around the waist and yanked. The hole vanished. He was gone.
I fumbled with the door handle, my breath wild and loud in my ears, my palms so sweaty that the stick slipped loose to clatter on the ground. I could hear no one else on the street; I was alone. Except for the remaining holes, which hovered all around me, darker than the black of my sight.
Then I got the door open and ran into the house, away from the holes, toward the clean, empty darkness where I was blind but where at least I knew what dangers I faced.
I got three steps into the house before the air tore behind me, and I flew backward off my feet, and a sound like trembling metal filled the world as I tumbled away.
7
“Girl in Darkness”
(watercolor)
My dreams have been more vivid lately. They told me that might happen, but still… I remembered something.
In the dream, I paint a picture. But as I lose myself in the colors of the sky and the mountains and the mushrooms that dwarf the mountains—this is a living world, full of strange flora and fungi; I can almost smell the fumes of its alien air—the door to my room opens and my mother comes in.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
And though I am still half lost in mountains and mushrooms, I have no choice but to pull myself back into this world, where I am just a sheltered blind girl whose mother wants what’s best for me, even if she and I do not agree on what that is.
“Painting,” I say, though this is obvious. My belly has clenched in defensive tension; I fear a lecture is coming.
She only sighs and comes closer, putting her hand on mine to let me know where she is. She is silent for a long while. Is she looking at the painting? I nibble my bottom lip, not quite daring to hope that she is, perhaps, trying to understand why I do what I do. She has never told me to stop, but I can taste her disapproval, as sour and heavy on my tongue as old, molding grapes. She has hinted at it verbally as well, in the past. Paint something useful, something pretty. Something that does not entrance viewers for hours on end. Something that would not attract the sharp, gleaming interest of the priests if they saw it. Something safe.
She says nothing this time, only stroking my braided hair, and at last I realize she is not thinking about me or my paintings at all. “What is it, Mama?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, very softly, and I realize that for the first time in my life, she has just lied to me.
My heart fills with dread. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is the whiff of fear that wafts from her, or the sorrow that underlies it, or simply the fact that my garrulous, cheerful mother is suddenly so quiet, so still.
So I lean against her and put my arms around her waist. She is trembling, unable to give me the comfort that I crave. I take what I can, and perhaps give a little of my own in return.
My father died a few weeks later.
I floated in numbing emptiness, screaming, unable to hear myself. When I clasped my hands together, I felt nothing, even when I dug in my nails. Opening my mouth, I sucked in another breath to scream again but felt no sensation of air moving over my tongue or filling my lungs. I knew that I did it. I willed my muscles to move and believed that they responded. But I could feel nothing.