“Do you remember the flower beds, Mother? The dirt beneath your fingernails, the sun at your back?”
She does not speak at first. A quiver on her lips. Her mouth opens. A small hole at first. And then it grows. Wider and wider while the inky rot swallows her face. I wheel back, and Bram’s hand is there to catch me.
“We must leave, Addie. The veil won’t stay open for long.”
I turn to the ragged red rip undulating before us, golden mist swirling around its edges. Beyond, wheat and rye fields, Farmer Whitley’s orchards, the scent of harvest. Home. Not the vicarage. Never the vicarage. But Rixton. Where Bram belongs. Where I belong. Not here. Not trapped in a world cursed between death and life.
I turn back to Mother. To Ransom. A film covers his eyes, but he looks to the door, so much longing in him that it breaks me. Once more, he is the broken boy in the garden. Not the murderer my mother made him.
“Addie.” It is Clara’s voice now, tense.
The girl who followed me through the trees into Death, just to make sure I was all right. I breathe slowly until my muscles loosen. Brush a finger across Ransom’s lips. He chokes on his own breath.
“Don’t let this be your end.”
I turn and take a hold of Bram’s hand, Clara’s in my other. A wind brushes through the opening—wet dirt, river water, leaves falling in the rowan wood. There are monsters there, but I am not one of them. There is nothing wrong with me. Nothing broken. In everything, I am whole. I have always been so.
Bram steps toward the rip, with Rascal at our heels. I watch Clara pass through, the weave of her plum skirt slipping through all the gold. Bram turns to me, his face soft.
“Are you coming?”
The question strikes me as odd, a sort of split happening inside. My name is still scrawled on lines. Lines that, if I leave this place, will still be owed. But Father is dead, is he not? The Vicar Thorn was never a true man.
One more glance to my mother, the sight of her breaking my bones. She leans against Ransom, the last bit of life leaking from between the stitched seams. Erybrus can decide what becomes of them.
I open my palm. A root wriggles from my skin, white petals blooming. I pluck it and let it fall to the ground.
“A remembrance of life,” I say and follow Bram home.
epilogue
There is a sense of peace when the world turns to spring. Daisies crop up along the banks of the river, their sunny faces a promise. Life returning. Ice melts, trees bud, and the air fills with the scent of thawing earth and brightening blooms. All around me, the stalks of last autumn’s rye crop sway like a gentle, gold ocean.
I pluck a shaft, slicing away the remaining seed, and watch while they are caught up in the wind, carried toward the dip of the hill below. Avery Manor winks into existence through the branches of oaks and willows. Rascal runs a few paces ahead, nose to the ground, ears perked. He has taken a liking to hunting game, and I enjoy watching him run. Wild and untethered and free.
And he is not alone.
Since returning from the rowan wood, the slipping of my heart has not stopped. The pain still brushes the back of my neck some days. A remembrance of all I am, the power I could wield if I wanted.
Even the souls still come to me. Ghosts caught between living and dead. They cry out some nights, their voices whispers on the wind. Sometimes, I wonder if they are the voices of my mother or Ransom. So, I did the only thing I could think of to close the door to the rowan wood behind me.
The brass key rests against the tepid skin of my chest, tucked beneath the woolen bodice of my dress. I lift a tentative finger to trace its outline.
The bell was easy to melt down, forge into something new, to keep the door locked shut behind me. The magic sings through the metal, not the shape, and with this key I hold the power to come and go as I please. I have the power to leave Death and all it is in my past. But the key’s weight around my neck is still a reminder of the things it could unleash. I close my fist around it.
No more devils. No more deals. The dead can make their own way.
I do not belong to either Ithrandril or Erybrus.
There are enough Reapers in this world. Let them carry the burden the gods gave them. If ever I need to pass back between the rowan trees, the key will see me through. But for now, for this moment of freedom, the dead can find other Reapers. Other doors.
A shout comes from below the hill, and Rascal’s head perks up between the rye. Laughter lilts on my tongue when he bounds through the field, ears flopping like wet mops. At the crest, I spot a figure. It grows as it comes up the hill.
Bram. Holding something in his left hand. He swings it high over his head when our eyes meet, a grin on his face.
My guts twist. This man. My unmoving piece. Something to lean against. Something to hold and be held by in the storms. When he nears, I smell his ink-stained fingers, old coffee a film on his lips. He wraps an arm around my waist, pulls me flush against him.
“And how are you this fine morning, Ms. Thorn?”
