There are monsters in the wood. Maybe not the things I have seen. But Erybrus harbors many a monster, hellhounds, Reapers.
I trail a finger along the cool metal.
Perhaps, this bell is the making of another.
Before I can think, I gather it into my fist, grab my coat from its hook, and set my hand against the door.
I will not live in this in-between place. This wishing and hoping for a life that was never meant to be mine, stolen from me while Mother took her last, ragged breath. Closing my eyes, I rest my head on the rough-hewnwood. I am more than this endless ache of something I will never have again. Whatever I am.
Father may wish to send me away. But if I go, if I let the healers in Idlewild attend me, will he love me again as he once did?
Perhaps that is the wish of a child.
I throw the door open and rush down the stairs. The kitchen is empty and cold. No fire in the hearth, no kettle on the stove. There is no warmth in this house. It is merely a cage of old bones.
My palm falls open, revealing the bell, and I watch the delicate brass catch the thin light.
“I’m so sorry, Mother,” I whisper, voice wet. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. But now I’ve—I’ve—” My throat clogs, and it takes every bit of strength I have to stay on my feet, spine straight. “I have to save myself.”
Without another look back to the kitchen, I wrench open the small door and spill out into the frosty morning, the taste of copper and lemons on my tongue.
The wind is a cold bite at my back, a shriveled palm pulling at the folds of my cloak. A shiver runs through me while my feet tramp down the long expanse of frosted grass, the lilt of snow on the air. Down in the valley, the river runs like a mad beast, spitting up between chunks of hardened ice, red leaves gathered and stuck in the crevices between solid and liquid. My stomach swills, boots squelching in the curdled muck, when I step down to the riverbank and pull the bell from my pocket, then hold it up against the dim sun.
A Reaper’s bell.Bram’s voice niggles at the back of my mind.
I almost laugh at the thought. A halting, messy sort of noise spilling from the back of my throat like sandpaper. I swallow, mouth the words over and over.
A Reaper. Death.
The very things hounding all the girls of Rixton. It sinks into my bonesand flesh, that word, and sees me for all I am. Mother used to speak of death and the fear she carried finally catching her. I often wondered if she would ever find a way to keep herself from dying. She would stroke my hair by firelight, whispering things in my ear.
Chase Death, Addie, my darling. That way, he will never catch you.
Fine.Come and find me. Show your face.Tell me if it’s mine.
But it’s a fool’s errand to tell Death how and when to act. And I am no fool. I am merely a broken-pieces woman who feels her own doom approaching with the grinding wheels of a rickety coach. And though they are one and the same, the Reapers and Death, why would they own something as trivial as shards of brass washed up on the banks of the River Thine?
And I am not Death, am no minion of Ithrandril or his greedy brother.
I am just a woman.
My knuckles shift white when I tighten my grasp on the bell, every thought now bent on destroying it. Saying goodbye. If I am to be sent away to Idlewild, there is one thing I know for sure. The healers there can poke and prod me all they like, but they will not heal me like my father expects.
I must heal myself.
“Adelaide?”
I drop my hand and spin on my heel. Mud sprays my hem. Clara stands behind me, brown hair wisping about her face, a basket hung from the crook of her elbow. Her skin is pale, cheeks bitten with the cold, and her eyes look as though she hasn’t slept in days.
I swallow, my body hot with nerves, and nestle the bell deep into my pocket, hoping Clara didn’t see it. Won’t be able to tell a story about how she found the vicar’s daughter down on the banks of the River Thine, with a crazed look on her face and a Reaper’s bell clenched in her hand.
Clara smiles. A reanimated thing pulled from some distant form of life. I do not smile back.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks. “We aren’t safe anymore.”
Her eyes catch on the thin wool of my dress, the tangle of my white hair, the violet stains clutching high on my cheekbones, and I flinch. I find I cannot look at her while I answer, so instead, I throw my gaze to the village at her back.
“I could be saying the same to you. What business is it of yours what I do with my time?”
