My hands start sinking into the pages.
My hands are sinking into the pages.
I struggle weakly, still feeling the pull of sleep, but Mother holds me firm. I watch in horror as the skin on my hands seems to melt off my bones and onto the page, pale and liquid as milk. The thin blue threads of my veins unspool, tangling themselves into the shape of letters and words. I feel no pain, but my heart seems to have tripled in size, throbbing in my chest, throat, and stomach, and filling my ears with thunder. I feel my Hair struggling weakly against the spell, moving sluggishly at the very ends. I feel its desperation, but it cannot help me.
“Mother,” I manage to say.
Mother watches, nothing but professional curiosity on her face, as my hands sink deeper into the book. My fingers are skeletal, now, smooth and waxy as tapered candles. There is still no pain, but far from this being a comfort, it makes me even more frightened.
“Mother!” My voice comes out in a hoarse scream this time. Am I imagining it, or does something like uncertainty flicker across her impassive face? We stare at each other, and I will her to remember that I am her daughter, her baby. She can’t do this to me, surely! But the uncertainty is gone in an instant.
A crash from downstairs and the sound of splintering wood. Mother’s attention falters briefly, and my hands stop their terrible downward slide, leaving me with my wrists buried in the book as if I wear shackles of paper and hide.
“They’re early,” she says as if to herself. She leaves me there, trapped and weakly struggling, and disappears down the stairs. Voices: Mother’s and one, maybe two men’s. They are coming up the ladder. There are indeed two of them, and Mother seems neither concerned nor surprised that they are here.
“Is it ready?” says one. “We were told …”
“Yes, yes,” she snaps. “Give me a moment. I have one more task to complete before you take the book. And I’ll be coming with you. I’m the only one who can wield it. You have my payment?”
“It will be paid to you upon delivery,” rumbles one of the men.
“And you have taken care of all … loose ends?”
“Anyone else who knew the nature of your work has been dealt with.”
“You’re giving it to the Temple?” I whisper. “You hate the Temple.”
“Sellingit,” she corrects me. Her lips curl a little. “They need me, and I need them—or, at least, their access to the catacombs—for this to work.”
My whisper has seemingly made the men notice me for the first time, and they exchange glances, clearly as confused as I am by what is happening here. Mother strides across the room. She grasps my elbows and tries to push my arms farther into the book.
I fight against the malaise that threatens to overwhelm me altogether, but unwittingly it helps me—my knees buckle, and I fall to the floor, taking the book with me and knocking Mother down. I put my feet against the pages andpush, trying to shove the book away and free my hands.
Mother crawls across the floor to grab me again, and we tussle like two children fighting over a toy, wrestling for control of the book, using the most shameless, unjust tactics—kicking, punching, sticking our fingers in one another’s eyes, pulling one another’s hair. The men watch us struggle. Mother’s mouth is twisted in a grimace, her teeth gritted, and she takes loud, hissing breaths between them, ugly with determination and rage. I don’t know what my face looks like, but I’m sure I am just as monstrous as she in that moment, fighting spiteful and dirty for my own survival.
I make one last, immense effort to push through that terrible urge to sleep and manage to wrest my hands from the book, freeing them. Mother grabs for the book, and to her horror and mine, when she tried to grasp it, her hands go right into the pages as mine had before.
“Netta!” she cries.
My heart gives a painful twist. This isMotherI am fighting! All at once I am a child again, desperate for her love, fearful of her punishments. We stare at each other, wide-eyed, and I fancy for a moment that she, too, is seeing me as the little girl I once was … But then her face twists into a snarl as the book swallows her.
I grab for her, but all I catch is the very end of her hair, pulling a few strands free. It makes a sound like mud suckingat your boots when you walk in the rain, and she is gone. I stumble backwards.
She is gone. She is gone.
The book seems larger and more solid—its binding now pale as skin and somehow bloated.
The men had been standing there in shock, watching this, but now they seem to wake up and remember what they have come for. They lunge forward almost simultaneously and grab for the book. The taller man gets it first, tucking it under his arm. The second one grabs me. That terrible fatigue comes over me again, and this time I am unable to resist its pull.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Spread Wings
‘A lacelike effect created with a wing needle that pushes the weave of the fabric to either side as it pierces, leaving a hole.’
—An Exhaustive Compendium of Stitches
Both Holy and Base, 4th Edition
