Page 25 of The Quiet
He just tried to save your life, she thought, curbing the strength of her sudden and irrational distaste,a stranger he doesn’t even know.
His black eyes searched the ground, noticing his boots as if he’d forgotten he’d taken them off in the first place. He seemed hypnotized by the field they were in, eyes inspecting her in the same way that he’d observed the daisies, and she thought for a moment that he might reach out and touch her too.
She became aware of the dress, translucent with sweat and clinging against skin flushed by the heat. She might as well have worn nothing at all. She coiled up in the flowers as he offered a hand, his face unreadable as she took it and he hoisted her up.
Ella’s breath seized in her chest as he cupped her face and kissed her forehead in a soft but ritualistic way. He embraced her with suffering in his arms, Ella’s soft body pinched between his strength and the knives and gear that armed him.
One hand strapped around her lower back. The other coiled the fabric of the dress in the small of her back as he buried his head in the nape of her neck and breathed her in. Ella’s heart throbbed in her throat, hands frozen as he then exhaled with a strained whisper, “Thank you.”
It felt like she was shoved backward from her very core, her body propelled down into the ground that crashed like water and swallowed her. Suddenly, she was in the pool again, the mask of the ROSE at her face, but this time the figure seized, arms freezing as he released her neck. Ella sunk lower into the pool as if another force was drawing her down.
She was free and the ROSE was no longer fighting. Somehow, she knew she’d put his mind at rest, rescued him from a curse that had held him captive for a century or more. Relief flooded her body as she sank toward The Quiet, her eyes fixated on the patterns in the ROSE’s mask as he floated farther away. She knew he would drown. She knew he had to.
For that second, everything seemed strangely perfect, as if two fates had intersected for a planned moment and gone their separate ways again.
She couldn’t shake the sense that she’d just put a long-suffering soul to rest, and yet a moment later, she knew it wasn’t enough. That same sense that had driven her to confront the chief Listeners, ride to Tunedyl, to jump into this pool, came back in a singular way.
Without thinking, she reached her entire body forward, fingertips grazing the mask as the world she’d just left opened up again. Like reaching through a tunnel, the water stayed in her peripheral as her hand extended out toward the light of the flower fields. The ROSE had his back to her, looking out at the field with his arms down at his side. His dark silhouette was like a crack against a brilliant scene of color and serenity, a gravestone embellished with flowers.
She grabbed his hand.
The ROSE turned in surprise before she yanked him backward. This time, the entire world they were in shattered into blue waves and swallowed everything.
Those waves chased them out of the memory and back into the water.
CHAPTER 8
THE BLEEDING GRIN
THE ALTAR WAS a strange thing. Many brought offerings and wishes, laying them at the feet of statues that were different representations of the Strike. Marnie brought Baker by it every time they went through the town to run errands, and this time they’d stopped on their way back, a basket full of fresh bread for the kitchen looped over Marnie’s arm.
“Do you remember them?” she asked. Marnie had told Baker since arriving here that she needed to learn the Strike and understand their temperaments. Baker was surprised to discover that people had created these statues and the lore that accompanied them. Great legends and tales followed each and every one, the Strike associated with powerful natural symbols. Likenesses of them covered the city and were carved into the great city walls and gates that rose high and mighty around the horizon.
“Strike Kamanda is the Strike of earth and wealth.” Marnie explained, Baker eyeing the depiction of the powerful woman holding great stone buckets in each arm, each one filled to the brim with gold coins. A thin cloth covered her muscled body, her hair wrapped into elaborate braids on her head. Marnie walked Baker through several others from youngest to oldest, always finishing with Amiel, one of the largest among them.
“Amiel is the Strike of beasts, representing not just animals in the world, but the animal natures in all of us too. Purple eyes. The black animal you always avoid but should never run from.Amiel is the only one other than Peter that came from the North. It is said that they are centuries old, maybe older.”
Baker looked at the largest statue that represented Peter. Despite its great height and presence among the others, Marnie often skipped it.
“I suppose there isn’t much to be said of Peter,” Marnie said, adjusting the basket on her arm.
Peter was never at the Bleeding Grin. Only a couple of servants claimed to have seen him and yet their descriptions of his appearance were contradictory and created doubts. Baker was relieved by that. Having Amiel skulk around the Grin, as rare as that was, was enough. In comparison to Amiel’s statue of a regal, long-nosed dog holding a moon, Peter’s was a ferocious, toothy creature with multiple arms, claws like knives and a crown that burned like the sun behind him.
If Amiel was instinct, hunger, and animal nature, Peter was said to represent the opposite as godhood, judgment, a higher nature of divinity.
Baker wasn’t convinced a divine and higher nature existed. She liked to think that no one saw Peter because he had been made up by the servants. They gossiped often about the Strike, and it had been the people in the city who carved these statues anyway. The slaves had their strange quirks, but the civilians, as polite and civil as they all were, seemed even stranger, feverishly creating new things and ways of worshiping the Strike, from statuettes and paintings, to new legends and rumors.
Some of the Strike liked interacting with people, and many of them enjoyed feeding on the emotions of the slaves. They’dextract and drink them. Some did this rather harmlessly, and some slaves enjoyed the experience, even sought Strike out to offer them fear, resentment, anger, and bitterness they no longer wanted to feel. Marnie explained that it wasn’t an encouraged practice but did not elaborate as to why.
They walked back to the Grin as Marnie rehearsed other rules to remember, returning to their room before she reminded Baker again of the most important ones.
“Don’t make eye contact with them. That’s like saying something to them. And one final rule,” Marnie said, as she lowered her voice and eased down on Jolie’s bed across from her. “Never, ever, ever, mention the Riders of Saint East.”
Baker nodded slowly. She would be fine not mentioning them. Right now, she could hardly think about them. It had been several weeks since Baker’s arrival, but Marnie still reviewed the lessons. Since Baker could not speak and refused to write, Marnie seemed insistent that the only way to ensure her safety was through re-teaching, despite how much Baker nodded and suggested she knew the answers.
Jolie walked in and Marnie hopped off her bed and apologized, sitting next to Baker. Marnie was always apologizing to Jolie for one thing or another. Jolie always seemed brooding and sarcastic. Baker didn’t understand why Marnie treated her so carefully. It never seemed to make a difference with Jolie’s mood.
Jolie rolled into the bed and stared up at the ceiling as Marnie unwrapped her long red hair, and combed through it, applying homemade makeup from oil and ash.
