Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

“Uh … I beg your pardon, ma’am. I assure you, I was as amazed as you when he spoke of it today.”

“Had you bothered to tell me you’d volunteered as a nurse for the summer, you might have saved many of us a good deal of trouble. It is not an uncomplicated task to arrange a future, Eleanore. A good many people went to some effort on your behalf to secure your place at the Callander orphanage.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am.”

“Indeed. Had I any inkling of your interest in nursing, I might have arranged to send you to one of the many worthy hospitals already in existence.”

“It—it was a very sudden interest, ma’am.”

“Plainly. Is that champagne I smell on your breath?”

“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t dream of—”

“Good day to you, Miss Jones.”

“Good day. Ma’am.”

The next day was Saturday. Technically, only Sundays were marked as Visitors’ Day at Iverson, but since the school year had officially ended, it seemed that rule was done as well. The castle was filled with sounds of girls laughing and crying their goodbyes, of doors slamming and the heavy, plodding footsteps of the menservants carrying trunk after trunk down the main stairs to be loaded up in the line of automobiles along the drive.

Mrs. Westcliffe had arranged for tea service in the front parlor, and that’s where most of the parents lingered, quenching their thirst and girding their loins for the coming months. Girls out of uniform—at last, out of uniform!—darted every which way, eager not to miss a single departure of a classmate they’d probably despised only yesterday.

I, too, walked the halls out of uniform. Which meant that instead of wearing black or white, I was in brown: plain brown blouse, brown twill skirt, scuffed brown boots. Every single child at Blisshaven had worn this color. I wondered sometimes if it was to make us even more invisible than we already were.

The ends of my sleeves cut short just above the bones of my wrist. Only three months ago, they’d been the right length. My boots pinched smaller, too, and the top buttons of my skirt strained to pop free. The only thing that fit well at all any longer was the cuff of golden flowers I wore.

The cuff that Jesse had made for me out of real, living flowers transformed into gold.

I might have sold it, instead of the pinecone. But I was as likely do that as to chop off my arm.

I was approaching the open doorway of the parlor, trying to ignore the inviting aromas of spice cake and tea and cucumber sandwiches wafting through, when voices reached me. A cluster of people, stationed near the door.

“Mamá, I told you—she’s a very little nobody from nowhere. She has no money, no family, and no friends.”

Aha. Lady Chloe, sounding petulant.

“Excuse me,” countered a new someone. “But I am her friend.”

Sophia! My feet slowed.

“Very charitable of you, my pet, very charitable.” A man this time. Lord Pemington, perhaps? “I have always admired your generous nature.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

“Yes, yes.” A woman now, impatient. “But how did this scholarship girl manage to wrangle an invitation to Tranquility for the entire summer?”

“Armand is in love with her,” said Sophia.

“He certainly is not,” hissed Chloe. “She’s connived her way in, that’s all. She’s a scheming little chit! Anyone can see that!”

“Anyone but Lord Armand, it would appear,” said the woman. “And no wonder, what with this unfortunate business about his father! The poor boy, his head must be muddled. This won’t do. This won’t do in the least.”

I whipped past the open doorway, but no one was looking at me, anyway.

Invisible, remember?

The castle kept any number of secrets locked within its stony heart. Among my favorites—and the most useful—were the hidden passageways that tunneled behind the walls, connecting different floors and chambers from the rooftop all the way down past the dungeons. Some of them had been sealed up or filled in with rubble; those that were left intact seemed to have been forgotten, lost to generations of memories gone to dust.

Certainly Westcliffe didn’t know about the tunnels, nor did the other students or staff. But Jesse had. And now I did.

I stood alone on the cold, flat slab that was the floor of another fine secret: Iverson’s grotto. It was a cavern, really, a natural bubble in the bedrock of the island that had been reinforced with man-made pillars and this smooth embankment of limestone. Seawater lapped at the edges of the embankment, making the softest, softest of sounds. It entered and exited through another significant hole in the rock at the far end of the cavern. The only way in or out of this place was through that hole—or else the secret tunnel that had led me here.

The grotto had been designed as a refuge for the medieval castle folk. As a place of escape should invaders come and Iverson fall. The tide came in, and rowboats could steal away out the hole. The tide went out, and all other boats would be stranded, unable to pursue.

It was a place of refuge for me, too. It was here that Jesse had first explained to me about who I was. What my Gifts would mean.

Where we had broken bread together and kissed, and wrapped ourselves in blankets and laughed at fate.

I crossed my arms over my chest, warding off the chill; it was always much cooler here than anywhere else. I gazed down at the seawater, a strange silvery radiance at my feet, dancing its subtle silvery dance.

His hair had been blond. His eyes had been green. If I closed my own I could still see them, the summer storms behind them when he looked at me, and I wondered how much longer they’d remain so clear in my memory. It was already getting harder to summon the exact pitch of his voice.

I squatted down and touched my fingertips to the water, then brought them to my lips. The salt water tasted like tears.

“I miss you,” I said. The grotto took my words and bounced them back at me: you-you-you …

No one else answered.

“I have to go soon,” I said.

 … soon-soon-soon … 

“And I don’t know if I’ll be back. I—I’ll try, though. I’ll try.”

 … try-try-try … 

“Damn you,” I whispered. “I hate you for leaving me behind.”

 … hind-hind-hind … 

“Lora.”

I stood and flicked the water from my hand, composed myself, then turned and faced the concealed door in the cavern wall behind me.

Armand, of course. Iverson Castle had been his home once upon a time. He knew about the tunnels, too.

“I thought I might find you here.”

“Looks like you were right. Why aren’t you upstairs bidding adieu to all the schoolgirls in love with you?”

“All those heaving bosoms and soggy pledges of eternal devotion,” he said, reaching my side. “Who can bear it?”

The walls of the cavern were studded with minute crystals. They blinked in time with the shifting sea, framing him in sparkles.

I returned to regarding the seawater at my feet. This close to the end of the embankment, my boots were getting wet. “I was going to tell you that I’m being sent to Scotland. But it seems you’re rather more crafty than the rest of us.”

“One of my finer attributes, if I do say so myself.”

I thought of the packet of never-to-be-redeemed train tickets upstairs on my dresser, and my threadbare Blisshaven clothing still tucked in its drawers. I thought of Mrs. Westcliffe’s face in the audience after Armand’s announcement, how she had looked as if she’d swallowed a toad.

“I wasn’t actually going to go,” I said.

Armand bent his head, lower, lower, until he invaded my line of vision and I had no choice but to meet his eyes. “You’re welcome, waif.”

“Thank you.”

He straightened into a stretch, both arms out. “How about that? You uttered the words and lightning didn’t strike you dead.”

“Is it true, though? Are you really going to make Tranquility into a hospital?”

“Convalescent hospital, and yes, it’s true. I’ve already been in contact with the minister of defense, who’s assigned all the correct people to the project and assures me I’m a damned fine lad who’s doing a damned fine thing.”

A hint of something in his voice. Not irony, but something veiled and biting like it.

“Not just for me, then,” I said.

“No.”

“Aubrey,” I realized.

He looked full at me again. “I can’t join up. You know that. After Aubrey left for the Royal Flying Corps my father pulled every string possible to keep me out the fight and stuck in England, so sod him. I’ll stay here—at least for now—but on my terms. Putting those wounded men in Tranquility will be the best thing that’s ever happened to it. Perhaps it’ll even give the place a soul.”

“I’m glad,” I said simply.

“Good.”

 … ood-ood-ood … 

“Listen,” he said. “You should learn how to swim.”

“Why?”

“We’ll have to cross the Channel on the way to East Prussia. It’s not an insignificant distance. We don’t know what might happen.”

I raised my brows and cocked my head. “ ‘We’?”

“Yes, we,” he replied, irritated. “Of course we. And I’d appreciate it if you refrained from looking at me like that all the time.”

“Like what?” I snapped.

“Like I’m an irksome fly orbiting about your oh-so-marvelous self. Whether you like it or not, Miss Jones, this is a team endeavor, and you and I together make up the team. We can count Jesse in, too, if you like. If that makes it all so much better for you. Oh, and the mad duke as well, of course! Couldn’t do any of this bloody nonsense without him.”