Page 62 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

“What are you talking about—Ralph!”

He slipped the loose nightgown sleeve from her shoulder. “You have a tattoo,” he said, his eyes sweeping over her upper arm.

“I don’t have a tattoo. Don’t be ridiculous.”

But Ralph didn’t seem to hear her. “What is it?”

“Oh for goodness sake. I don’t—” But her words died in her throat. As she inspected her arm, a dark smudge against her skin caught her eye. Tenderly touching her finger to the raised skin, she sucked in her breath. The light was poor, but Ralph brought the solitary lamp close and she twisted her shoulder to get a better look. Itwasa tattoo, fresh and still a little pink around the edges.

Even with its crude lines and uneven application of ink, it was obviously some sort of flower, with five petals unfurling to reveal a swirling center spangled with dots.

Ivy stared at it until her neck cramped and her eyes began to cross. What could be important enough that she would have defaced her skin, and in such a crude manner? And that was assuming that she had been the one to do it. What if someone else had done it? Held her down and forcibly tattooed her for some reason?

“It’s new,” Ralph said, confirming her suspicion. His fingers traced around the edges, featherlight. “It looks medieval, like a rosette on a church pew. Except...” He tilted his head to get a better look at it. “Except there are stars inside of it.”

At his words, a floodgate opened, and it all came back. Weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds of her life, that had been spent in isolation. Holding a sharpened pen nib to her flesh, etching in the key to the manuscript, so that it would not be lost, no matter what.

“It was the flower,” she said, shivering from his touch as much as from the cold air on her exposed skin. “The key was in the flowers, the stars. But I needed an astronomy book to put the cipher into action. We have to go,” she said, stumbling to her feet.

A wave of dizziness overcame her, and Ralph jumped up to steady her. “You haven’t slept in days, and who knows the last time you ate. Sit down, rest. The manuscript can wait.”

“I can’t—I’ll forget...” But even as her words turned into a yawn, she knew that she was in no state to walk, let alone spend hours hunched over and concentrating on a code.

“Here.” Ralph took her by the waist and gently brought her to the cold floor. “Sleep. I won’t let you forget when you wake up.”

“What about you?” Ivy asked. Her eyelids were heavy as her head fell against his shoulder.

The only answer she got was Ralph murmuring something into her hair, and soon she was drifting off to sleep.

A rustle, and a shimmer of light on the wall.

Ivy sat up. She was still in the cell, yet it wasn’t the cell. She stood stock-still and watched, breath held, as the light rippled across the stone walls. It was the same light born of the embers in the library that had guided her before. Not the monk, but a benevolent anomaly in a sea of dark powers.

“You,” she said on a breath. “Who are you?”

The light didn’t answer; Ivy hadn’t expected that it would. But it did float toward the desk, growing brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in white light.

When the flash had subsided and Ivy had uncovered her eyes, she found the dark stones had fallen away, bright, white-washed walls in their place. A window looked out over the courtyard garden, sun spilling in and catching the light of a gleaming wood crucifix hanging over the desk. Birdsong drifted in on a gentle breeze, the smell of lavender and other herbs hanging in the air.

And in this strange waking dream or hallucination—whatever it was—Ivy was not alone. A woman dressed in a dark robe of coarse linen and a white scarf gathered over her head and around her neck sat at the desk, gaze trained faraway through the window. She didn’t look scared or surprised like Ivy, rather, her face was a mask of serenity, the smallest furrow between her straight brows as if in deep thought. Dipping a brush into a small dish of ink, she began writing, her hand moving slowly but surely across a piece of stretched vellum.

“Who are you?” Ivy asked again.

The woman didn’t answer, and Ivy would have thought that she had not heard her if she had not inclined her head the smallest bit toward the page, inviting Ivy to look.

With shaking legs, Ivy got up and approached the desk. The woman had no smell, no heat, just a gentle, residual glow of light about her. Leaning the slightest bit over her shoulder, Ivy watched the brush leave a stream of script in its wake.

Ivy had seen that handwriting before. It was neat and flowing, soft juxtaposed against the scratchy scrawl of the other hand. This was the author, the person who had penned the manuscript. The woman dipped a brush into a pot of vermillion and began painting graceful arcs, a flower slowly taking shape in the margins.

Drawing back, Ivy continued to watch, fear subsiding into intense curiosity. There was nothing dark or untoward in the woman’s countenance; could she have truly produced something so powerful, so evil as the manuscript? She seemed to be a wise woman who had chosen isolation in which to complete her work.

Turning in her seat, the woman leveled a serene smile on Ivy, as if sensing her thoughts.

“I have waited these six hundred years for a woman to inherit the abbey,” she said. Her voice was inside Ivy’s head, musical and sweet, and Ivy stood transfixed, never wanting it to end. “There is that which is not meant for the eyes of men. These words, this knowledge...” Her face broke into a beatific smile, and she spread her hands. “They are seeds that have been germinating these past centuries, waiting for the right gardener to help them bloom.”

She didn’t know what made her the right person, or what sort of fruit the nun’s knowledge would bear, but a drowsy sort of peacefulness came over Ivy. She had a purpose, she was an important piece of a larger puzzle. This was the pull she had felt to the abbey, the inexplicable tug that told her she was meant to be here. But then the nun was fading away, taking the sunlight and birdsong with her.

“Wait!” Ivy threw herself at the chair, but her hands only clasped empty air. She sat with the revelation of the nun who had lived centuries ago and written a compendium of sacred and mystical knowledge. What good did knowing any of this do her now? She would awaken, forgetful of the nun, the manuscript, and why she was here. Ralph had sworn he would help her remember, but even he could not know the essence of her dreams. And so it would go until her weary body could no longer support a mind made of dust.

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