Her father frowned and looked out the window. Her grandmother kept mumbling, “Little babes in the wood.”
“Has anyone tried to claim the reward?” Elswyth asked. She kept her voice steady, still avoiding her father’s eyes.
Her father shook his head. “Nothing. Perhaps that is for the best.”
Elswyth bristled at the look of resignation on her father’s face. She gripped her skirt so tightly that her fingernails bit through the fabric and into her palm. When she spoke, she struggled to keep the ire from her voice. “Would you not gladly pay that money to see her returned?”
“If I thought there was any chance of her returning.”
“Because you believe she is dead,” Elswyth said. The worddeadcame out like a curse.
“A labyrinth of bones,” her grandmother said. “An amber eye.”
Elswyth released her gown and took her grandmother’s hand again. She tried to find some softness for the old woman, even through the frustration she felt with her father. “Hush now, Grandmama.”
Her father looked at the old woman, visibly irritated, and then lowered his spectacles over his nose. “Because she has beendeclareddead, yes.”
Elswyth folded her hands in her lap and tried not to fidget. They had had this conversation before, of course, and it had always ended in tears or shouting. It was true that the Metropolitan Police had closed the investigation into her sister’s disappearance and declared her dead. But only two months had passed since Persephone had vanished, and declaring her dead seemed conspicuously premature. Elswyth sent daily letters asking why they hadclosed the investigation, but she received nothing but the standard responses for grieving widows in return. Sometimes they even forgot to replace the wordhusbandwithsister. “With what evidence? There is no body. She could have run away. She could have been kidnapped, or gotten lost, or—”
“For Eden’s sake, Elswyth! I am not having this conversation today. We are going to her funeral. We are laying her to rest.”
“A prince of leaves,” her grandmother whispered. “A mask of serpents.”
Her father rounded on the old woman and shouted, his face blooming red. “Damn it will you be quiet!”
Elswyth placed a hand defensively over her grandmother’s. “Do not scream at her,” she said. “She is ill.”
“Mad, is what she is, like all the women in this family,” her father said. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back on the seat.
Elswyth said nothing. Instead, she watched the veins under her father’s eyes, the papery skin there stained with violet. She listened to his ragged breathing and watched his eyes flicker beneath their lids like a man falling into dreams, and her rage subsided for just a moment, replaced by pity, and sadness, and fear—everything she had been hiding from herself since the day Persephone vanished.
Her father blinked his eyes open, and Elswyth thought she could see tears beginning to form. But then he took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and sighed. “I am sorry, Elswyth. I suppose we are both not in our right minds. But I do not care to hear any more of your conspiracies. For just today, let me mourn my daughter in peace.”
The carriage stopped. A small stone chapel stood on the hillside nearby. Townsfolk trickled through the doors, coming to pay theirrespects. Up above, the church bells tolled, signaling the start of the proceedings.
The door of the carriage opened. Her father exited, helping her grandmother down, and then Elswyth was alone.
After the vicar said his piece and the mourners had cleared into the church courtyard, Elswyth stood atop the hill with her father, watching as the empty coffin was lowered into the ground. She’d pushed her grandmother’s wheelchair to the cemetery, where the grave sat beneath an ancient elderwood tree. Elderwood trees were often planted in cemeteries. Or rather, cemeteries often sprung up around elderwood trees. The leaves of the elderwood made a distinct whispering sound when moved by the wind, which the ancients had believed were the voices of the dead. The trees themselves were completely without color, bone-white from the deepest root to the tip of the highest leaf, and at night they glowed faintly, casting eerie white light over their graveyards. She supposed it had never been an auspicious namesake for their house.
And now the last remaining members of the House Elderwood stood before an empty coffin and an empty grave and prepared to pay respects to a person who was not there. Who might not—Elswyth dared to think—even be dead.
Her mother’s grave sat next to Persephone’s, its headstone already beginning to fade. The wind from the sea bore down relentlessly upon the stones. Her ancestors’ graves were little more than nubs, their headstones worn down by the centuries, their names lost to time.
They stood in a circle of black-clad mourners. There stood the vicar, saying his final verse:The grass withers, the flower fades, butthe Gates of Eden stand forever.A few lords had come to pay their respects, but not many; the House of Elderwood—once kings in their own right—had long since faded into obscurity. A crowd of townsfolk waited behind the nobility. They wore their best clothes, little more than cotton tunics and breeches or a sheath of dyed wool for a gown. Fungus had blighted last year’s crop, and the common folk had suffered for it; Elswyth could see the bones in a small boy’s wrists, jutting out beneath his finest cotton shirt.
The wind stung the skin of her cheeks and tore at her veil, but she bore it, persisting even through the cold and the endless dirge of the bagpipes. Persephone would have hated it—there were not enough flowers, nor any eligible bachelors. If Persephone could have planned her own funeral, Elswyth thought, it might have actually been enjoyable.
But Persephone was not there. She would never plan another party. She would never don another gaudy dress, or steal another bottle of wine, or tease Elswyth for being boring and bookish. She would never love, or cry, or dance, or gossip. Would never wed some silly man and bear spoiled children as she always meant to.
No, Elswyth thought, setting her jaw. There was no body. The police might have stopped looking, but that did not mean Persephone was dead. London was a city of millions, endless miles of twisting streets and darkened alleys. Somewhere in that faraway city, Persephone might still be alive. Her father and the police might be willing to give up on her sister, but Elswyth would not—shecouldnot.
A line formed to pay respects. Elswyth was second. She watched her father kneel in the snow, whispering. He summoned a clutch of funeral lilies to his hand and dropped them onto the casket. When he stood, he kept his head low, so that the others didnot see his tears. Elswyth bristled at this, that he would weep for Persephone even as he turned his back on her.
Elswyth stepped toward the grave, staring at the casket of polished oak. She closed her eyes, summoning a bouquet of asphodel from the veins at her wrist. Then she dropped it onto the coffin.My regrets follow you to the grave, dear sister.
When Elswyth had finished she walked away quickly. She did not want to see the pitying looks of the other mourners. Did not want them to wonder why she shed no tears, why her face was a mask of rage rather than grief. But when she returned to her grandmother’s chair, she found it empty. Elswyth spotted the old woman across the graveyard, standing beneath the elderwood tree.
She hurried to her. It was considered bad luck to touch an elderwood, but her grandmother seemed not to mind. She rested her old hands on the wide trunk and mumbled to herself.
