Page 28
“The mask hides the part of my face I think would frighten you,” he signs. “The grille over my mouth does more than hide. It holds my voice back. It keeps my jaw from opening all the way.”
I stop where I am, halfway between the table and the hearth.
“There’s a tunnel,” he continues. “It comes out in a wooded ravine past the wall of Nivallia. No one in town knows of it. You can leave through it, and they’ll never see you go.”
My eyes widen, and I look at the front door. There’s a way out, and it doesn’t involve the platform and coming up in the center of the city.
“If you want your hearing back, I’ll give it to you,” he signs. “I need you to understand that I’m afraid of what will happen, though. I’m afraid that once you can hear me, you’ll stop wanting to leave, and neither of us will know if that’s you or the song. I’m not saying you should decide now.”
He lowers his hands. He’s told me everything, and I don’t know which fear to trust, his or mine.
“I need to think,” I say.
He nods.
“I need air.”
He nods again.
“I can’t look at you right now.”
I don’t wait to see his reaction to my harsh words. I cross the room, open the front door, and step out.
The lamps are lit along the retaining wall, and the pale flowers glow between the stones. I walk down the path, away from the house, toward the dock and the black water beyond. He doesn’t come after me. I keep walking until the path ends at the water, and I stand there with the house at my back and the dark in front of me.
Chapter Fifteen
Mordred
For two days after I tell her the truth, Aveline doesn’t speak to me. She doesn’t look at me either. That night, she came back from her stroll in the garden without a word, crossed the living room without turning her head, and shut herself in her room. She hasn’t said a word to me since.
I hear the lift the next morning and go out to it alone. The platform brings down a warm loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a covered dish, drawings from the children, and two folded letters. I take all of it into the boat and pull the hauling line to send the empty platform up. I row home, set the dish and the bread on a tray, place the plate on the floor outside Aveline’s door, then retreat to the workshop so I won’t be there when she opens it. I don’t want to impose my presence on her.
When I come back, the tray is empty and the door is shut again. That’s how it goes the next day as well. The lift comes down, I row out, I bring her food, leave it at her door, make myself scarce, and later find the plate clean. She eats in her room. I don’t eat at all.
I don’t do anything, really. I’m a ghost.
I hear everything that happens in the house. It doesn’t matter what room I’m in. I hear her feet on the floor when she gets up, the water splashing in the bathing chamber, and the wardrobe door when she chooses a dress. I hear her cross the living room and open the front door. Each time she does that, I go into my bedroom, stand at the window over my desk, and watch her walk down between the pale flowers to the water. She holds her arms folded against the chill, stands on the dock, and looks out into the endless dark. She turns and walks back up the path with her head down. She doesn’t even look at the house. She comes inside, crosses the main room, and shuts her door again.
Aveline asked for time and space to think, so I give that to her. I don’t knock on her door, don’t leave her notes, and don’t sit in my chair by the hearth anymore. Instead, I mostly go to the workshop and take apart things that are working just fine, clean each piece and put them back together. Then I take them apart again, because I need something to do with my hands. Sometimes, I sit in the library with a journal open and write nothing. Or I sit at the piano in the music room with my hands on the keys and force myself to play something, anything. Wherever I am, I’m listening for her door, her movements, her light footsteps on the floor.
On the third day, I sit down at the piano and play. The house is too quiet. I need to fill it with sound. I play whatever comes to me, and I’m halfway through the piece when I hear Aveline’s steps down the corridor. I keep playing, because if I stop, she’ll know I heard her coming, and she might turn around.
She comes into the music room in a pale gown with thin sleeves that move when she walks, one of the airy ones she’s never worn before. She’s a vision, even if she looks tired, with dark shadows under her eyes. Her mouth is pressed tightly, into a hard line, her pale hair is brushed, and her back is straight. When she looks at me, she seems determined.
She crosses to the piano and lays her hand on the side of it, above the keys, where the notes come through the wood. She stands there with her palm on the case and her eyes on my hands as I play for her. Then she comes around the end of the bench and sits down beside me, close enough that her sleeve touches my robe. She leans over and rests her head against my shoulder.
I stop playing, my whole body going rigid. My hands hover over the keys. I don’t know what to do with them.
Her hair brushes the edge of the mask at my jaw. She’s leaning her weight on my arm. I’ve imagined this, spending long evenings in the chair by the hearth, with a dress draped over the other chair, no living, breathing person to fill it. I taught myself not to trust anything I imagined. I know better than to trust this. I sit still and let her lean on me, but I don’t let myself hope.
Aveline lifts her head and looks at my profile.
“I’ve thought about what you told me,” she says. “About my deafness. About what your voice does to the people who hear it.”
“Yes,” I sign.
“I understand why you are afraid to heal me. I don’t want my hearing back if it means what you said. I don’t want your song to take away my freedom to choose. I… I don’t want to be like the people of Nivallia.”
