Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

That’s when I heard it. The call of his ruby.

And instantly, simply and sweetly, it was all that I could hear. My fingers searched out its echo on the keyboard; it became less and less an echo until the ruby and I were completely in concert. We shone as one.

I don’t recall much of it. I sank into the rapture of the song and did not emerge until my hands hurt, until my hair had loosened from its pins and my breathing was ragged.

One moment I was playing and the next I looked up and found myself back before all those people. My ears rang with the silence.

Then they rang with the applause.

The duke was still standing. So was his son behind him. They were quickly matched by everyone else, though, because the rest of the guests began to push free of their chairs, still applauding. Even Chloe and her ugly underlings joined in, although they didn’t look pleased about it.

For some reason, I focused on Reginald and Armand more clearly than on anyone else, one in front of the other, an older wreck of a man and his younger reflection. They looked more alike in that moment than I’d believed they could: both of them white as snow, both of them aghast.

...

That finished it with His Grace. He wouldn’t even look at me as I curtsied my goodbye. He reared back when I approached as if he might actually flee, but since we were already departing he managed to glue his feet in place and stare desperately at Mrs. Westcliffe beside me instead.

He was afraid of me. I knew it in my heart, even without the fiend telling me so.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like me or that I had failed in my obligation to be the most grateful street urchin ever.

He was afraid.

I’d say the same of Lord Armand, but he’d vanished right after my turn at the piano. No one even offered his excuses.

“That went very well,” Mrs. Westcliffe announced, climbing ahead of me into the backseat of our auto. “Your playing was excellent. Your manners were acceptable. His Grace seemed impressed.” She settled in against the squabs, smiling; her new pet had performed its best tricks for the master. “Most impressed.”

“Poseur,” whispered Chloe, walking swiftly past.

Second letter from Rue, dated January 30, 1809

Darling girl,

Your missive arrived at last. How thrilled I am to have received it. And how your questions have stirred my memories. It has been many, many decades since I worried about my own first Turn.

I’m afraid I cannot tell you precisely when your Gifts will manifest. I can only assure you that they will. And that, in the end, the pain will fade, and you will be magnificent.

I wish that you might have the example of your mother to lead you into your powers, but she was not graced with the Gift of the Turn. Your father, of course, is naught but human. I do not know why the peculiarity in our blood produces, every few generations, a child of your potential. For too many years, it seemed our kind was doomed to extinction no matter how we tried to stave it off.

Then I was born, a girlchild like you: half human, half not. My children were all blessed with my abilities, and theirs less so, and theirs less, and less.

Until you. You, the true heir to my power.

You must continue to be strong in the days ahead. You must think of me, and be strong. Listen to the gemstones; celebrate their music. Imagine how it will feel to stretch your wings for the first time. To taste the clouds. To hunt the moon.

I must rest now, my magical child. I shall write again soon.

All my love,

–Rue

That night, no matter how I tried, I could not fall asleep.

It seemed to me a far-off thunderstorm roiled the sky, but when I paced to my window to find it, all I saw were stars. The tide had come in, the surf dancing silver along the shore in its own deliberate rhythm, but that wasn’t the storm.

I returned to my bed. I got up again. My skin felt too tight; my muscles burned to move. Even my joints burned. I felt as if I could sprint for miles, nimble as a hart.

Instead, I stood at the window and watched heaven turn on its unhurried axis, finally deciding I needed to get outside to the green and then to the woods.

It was an unexpected thought, something I’d never even considered doing before. Curfew was ten o’clock every evening, and breaking it would mean a great deal of trouble should I be caught. Yet once the idea burrowed into me, I couldn’t shake it. If Jesse could slink about at night without anyone spotting him, surely I could, too.

Almeda always performed the final check of the evening, usually around eleven. Sometimes she knocked, sometimes she didn’t; tonight she’d already been by, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Certainly the forest would be less confining than my little tower. Despite my nagging feeling that there was a thunderstorm—yes, there is—there wasn’t. The night was clear. I ached to run.

At the very least I’d see more stars.

The tower stairwell ended at my door, so there was no way to slip out but down along the main corridors. I crept along the stony halls of Iverson in my bare feet, boots in hand, grateful once more that Blisshaven had outfitted me in the dullest of colors.

When I got to the hall that led to the wing of the other girls, I stopped to listen. It was very late or very early, depending, but if any of them were up, I wanted to know.

All I heard was muted breathing. A few of them snored.

The suites of the younger students were interspersed with those of the older ones, so a pair of lamps at the end of the hall were kept burning through the night, the better to ward off evil dreams.

As I stole by, they sat cold and dark.

Curious–but not enough to make me turn back.

Eventually I reached the main doors. I fancied they’d be locked, but I’d try them anyway before searching for another way out. If nothing else, the windows of the front parlor had looked promising… .

Yet my hand closed on the wrought-iron latch and it gave at once. It seemed a fairly shocking lack of security, but I reminded myself that this wasn’t the city or anything remotely resembling the dodgy streets of St. Giles. Who would bother to venture all the way out here for thieving? We were an island of leftover pin money and probably miserly teacher salaries.

If anyone wanted to steal anything, they’d have better luck simply walking straight into the shambles of Tranquility, where they’d have their pick of priceless, neglected things.

I opened the doors a crack and squeezed through.

My hair swished back over my shoulders. My face lifted and I breathed deep, as deep as I could until it hurt, and then let it all out in a rush. I raised my arms above my head and stretched hard, wind whistling through my spread fingers.

Freedom smelled of wild waters; it glimmered in a path of stars above my head. Freedom tasted like sea salt on my tongue.

It was another amethyst night, like the one when I’d first arrived. There was that long streak of Milky Way, bright in its cloudy curve, but the very heart of the sky was a purple so intense it was closer to jet.

The castle and the woods and I—the whole of the earth—lay bathed in its fey, colored beauty. We were soaked in purple night.

I bent to shove my feet into my boots, hitched up my skirt, and ran.

The green had been shaped by human hands, so it was easy to cross. Wide and smooth, it had been designed to showcase lovely young ladies moving sedately into their well-polished futures. Only when I reached the first shaggy trees of the forest did I have to slow, and even then not by much.

The woods felt instantly better, safer, than Iverson’s lawn. Secrets could live in here, tucked between tree trunks, hidden in the boughs, and no one would ever see. Secret things, secret hearts, could open up wings and thrive.

Shadows swallowed me in slippery black. The air took on a richer, loamy note. The ground crunched with leaves, and ferns slapped at my shins and knees, painless. I splashed through brooks and left footprints in peat. Crickets called in time to my stride, a steady chee, chee that never broke.

I was running swifter than a hart, swifter than even the advancing night, because that was outside the forest and everything surrounding me here was enchanted, as I was. I didn’t know where I was going, but it didn’t matter. Sooner or later I’d run out of land, and then I would turn back.

But I began to slow before that happened. Not because I was tired, but because I realized I was coming close to something, and although I was sure I’d never been here before—I hadn’t, not to this part of the isle—I knew I was getting near to where I needed to be.

Where I’d come out tonight to be.

By the time I reached the cottage, I was walking. I was following a path that seemed like a whisper, a bare impression in the earth, the slightest break in wild grasses bounded by huge, gnarled birches and beeches and mossy logs and flowers that I could smell but not see.

There was a single candle lit in the front window. The door was open and the way stood empty, exactly as it always was in my dreams.

I slowed to a stop, a little winded still, engulfed in the perfume of wildflowers and the fragrance of the candle, paraffin and smoke.