Page 47 of The Wallflower Manifesto
Well, not nothing, she supposed.
The shock of it all had stuck in her mind like a wedge, preventing rest and reason from following their natural paths.But somewhere in that discomfort, somewhere beyond the sharp splinters of horror and fear, something else stirred.
Absurdly, she wanted her mama in this moment. She wanted to be a child again who thought her parents were titans and could fix anything.
She almost laughed. Lacey Yardley would be so aghast by this situation that she imagined they would just sit in silence until her mother collapsed to her doom.
Still, the instinct was there. And, oddly, it reminded her of something her mother had told her many years ago, as though predicting that one day she could take comfort from it.
Lacey Yardley had grown up in the piney wilderness of Whinlatter Forest. In her childhood, there had been a disastrous fire that had ravaged a path through the pines, driving the surrounding villages from their homes for over a week in its fury. She told stories of her family’s flight from this fire and the sadness they’d felt upon returning to their homes, finding the horizon stripped of its beautiful giants and the wind unaccompanied by chipmunks, birds, and deer.
The blaze had been worse than any fairy-tale monster. It had taken everything and left a blackened expanse, all beauty razed to nothing by the fury of one little flame that had grown out of control.
She had cried when she told this story, silent tears betraying the steadiness of her voice. She said that it was the day her childhood had ended and she had learned the pain of loss.
But then, something miraculous had happened.
As autumn descended on the forest, rain and chill blew away the ashes, revealing that the green of a forest is not so easily defeated.
Plants no one had ever seen before had begun to push up through the ash and bone of the forest floor. These curly ferns and prickly bushes and alien flowers had slept for centuries, nestled in petrified husks.
They might have slept forever. But the might of a raging fire had roused them from their long sleep, the heat cracking open their tombs and the flames clearing the brush to give them room to emerge. Their tender shoots had been nourished and nurtured by the remains of the common trees and roots that had fallen to the blaze. Those noble plants had been reborn as something very old and yet, completely new.
The Yardley women visited the forest when Millie was sixteen. They had walked the path that had once been nothing but ash, and her mother had pointed out strange and beautiful growth that now lived and flourished in this place and beckoned back the birds and chipmunks and so on to a new and glorious future.
She could see Claire so clearly in her mind’s eye, stroking the petals of a yellow flower that had grown around a young tree’s roots while her mother pointed to a family of starlings up above.
It was silly, but somewhere in the choked air and sizzling pain of her panic, Millie wondered if underneath it all, there was a garden awaiting its chance to blossom. She wondered if she could brave this blaze if there was a promise of new life at the end.
She had written that letter in the hopes of helping one or two girls out there in an unforgiving world that seemed far more rigid than it had to be.
They would read it. Their mothers might snatch it from their hands and send them to bed without supper, but by then, it would be too late. Those girls would read it, and if it was forbidden, they would doubtless find a way to read it again. Their mothers, in secret, might read it too.
And maybe one day, if Millie managed to escape censure and disgrace, daughters who had not yet been born would be brought up knowing their own power and potential. If the letter survived, then the knowledge survived, which was all she had wanted from the beginning.
It was a heady imagining of the future, one that soothed the sharp edges of the wedge in her heart, but it would not be possible if someone else took control of the letter’s intention. It would not empower if it became perceived as satire. It would not embolden if it were mistaken for criticism. And it would never survive if it were claimed by an imposter.
Was it worth a war?
Millie did not know. She had certainly never considered herself a warrior or a strategist, or even particularly bold. She did not know if she could withstand the disapproval of Society or the consequences of becoming a pariah.
But she did know that she couldn’t leave her creation at the mercy of the powers that be. She knew better than anyone how wild things could grow when left unattended. Ignoring a weed only allowed it to spread.
If Millie was a weed, then so, too, was anything penned by her hand.
For once, she thought, cultivation would be necessary.
CHAPTER 19
It was all Abe could do not to march across the green and snatch Millie into an alleyway the instant she appeared on Dot Cain’s doorstep.
Instead, he contented himself with simply gripping a lamp post like a tether and bouncing on his heels until she drew near enough to be signaled.
“Abe?” she said, wide-eyed with shock. She hurried over to him, gripping her reticule against her chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” he rasped, prising his white-knuckled grip off the lamp post. “Woman, I have been searching for you all morning. Have youseen…” He trailed off, silenced by the look on her face.
“Of course I have,” she hissed, taking his arm and steering him into the walking path. “Everyone has. Keep your voice down.”
