Page 51 of The Quiet
“Yes?”
“You’d mentioned the other day how you’d broken the curse on Jackson and woken him up. I’m sure you managed to catch a glimpse of Lambspeak. You can talk to him, you know, if you let your mind drift from the present. I’d encourage it. You should test Jackson’s skepticism yourself if you get the chance. Lambspeak is the reason Jackson wasn’t fully swallowed into Peter’s curse, unlike the other remaining Strike who may very well be trapped inside it forever.”
Ella waited there in the hall, finding it strange how Paris’s and Jackson’s recommendations differed so strongly. Ella decided not to mention that Lambspeak had already spoken with her.
“It may be unclear at first,” Paris added, “but the more time passes and the more you interact with him, the easier and clearer it will be. Eventually, it will feel completely real.” At that, she closed the door.
Paris’s and Jackson’s words continued arguing in Ella’s own head as she walked back to her room, half expecting Jackson to pop out and scare her.
Crawling back under the covers, she was tempted to close her eyes and seek out Lambspeak, hopefully to clear out any uncertainty around her opinion about him. As she stared at the ceiling, she decided against it, knowing it would all be clearer tomorrow and the day after that. Lambspeak would be here in several months. She just needed to give the dust time to settle to understand how to best prepare for something like that.
For now, perhaps because Ella hungered for optimism, Paris’s remarks sunk deeper than Jackson’s. Ella wasn’t sure if she was just tired of being on edge, or too exhausted to be afraid, but she curled up in the covers, and wrapped herself in the reality Paris had painted for her. By every indication, it seemed that Paris was right and that anyone here long enough would realize that the war was a thing of the past. Jackson was still fresh from the battlefield, fresh from a curse that had stranded him in a much more hostile place than her own.
This was a wonderful place.
Ella kept repeating it to herself, thirsty for comforting truths.
One day, Kay, Jade, Samual and her other friends and comrades would join her here too.
The war was over, and Ella was confident that once she remembered what happened to Peter, she could confirm that truth for everyone.
He must be dead.
After all, what reason would someone so powerful ever have to hide?
CHAPTER 14
KING OF DRAGONS
THOUGH BAKER SURVIVED her meeting on the upper floors, no one seemed willing to believe it. Few had done it before.
The slaves looked at her as if they’d seen a ghost once she descended through the yellow gates. Without a word, she walked through the dining hall, into the slave living quarters and returned to her room where Marnie sat curled in blankets.
Baker nestled up to Marnie with the strangest sensation in her stomach as she relived her conversation with Peter. It had been a true conversation at last, strange and intrusive in that he spoke to the very thoughts in her mind, but for the first time in her memory she’d had a full conversation with words.
Lying where Marnie was sleeping, Baker stared at the ceiling and then at last turned her head and stared at Jolie’s empty bed. Baker had been afraid of that empty bed, but as she stared, she realized it no longer scared her. She’d met Death now, and his words turned over and over in her brain as she looked back up at the ceiling.
She waited for morning, consoling Marnie as she turned in the bed, beckoning on occasion for something to drink which Baker fetched for her in the dead of night. She’d once crept timidly into the dining hall by candlelight, but walked now easily as she filled a glass, lifted it to Marnie’s lips and laid down again. When the earliest hours of morning came, she pulled herself out from the covers, kissed Marnie on the forehead, and left.
The entire city was sleeping, Baker wearing her brown cloth shoes and slaves garb as she moved between the quaint houses and left the city gates. A path led her into the woods and up several steep hills, Baker turning once or twice to catch the sunrise as it rose over the opposite mountains. The world seemed immersed in silence.
At last she reached the top of the hill where a rocky outcropping of stones lined the ridge. Standing on the path, she turned back again, not a single bird’s chirp in the trees.
“How was the walk?” she heard, and turned to see Peter crouched up on a rock several feet above as he overlooked the city below. As if his presence were a room, she felt a welcome back like she’d returned to the location of their first meeting.
The morning light streamed through the trees, and Baker was reminded in his presence of how beautiful the woods could be. He was like a fixture among them, sliding down from the rocks in a long coat before coaxing her forward on the path. Without a word, she followed.
Walking behind him, Baker wondered at him like she wondered at the woods. She kept a measured distance until he stopped and looked back at her, causing her to stop short.
“You didn’t walk behind me then, don’t start now,” he said, “come on.”
Baker moved uneasy beside him, and as they walked again she glanced up, wondering where they were going as he waved a hand at a nearby carriage, the driver stopping. He tossed up a coin and they climbed into the back.
The driver started offagain.
“To a place I like to go when the days are nice like this,” he said, and Baker looked out at the woods, wondering why she didn’t feel more terrified in the presence that so many seemed to hate so much.
She had a hard time looking Peter in the face, offering sideward glances to see him looking up at the trees with those green eyes that were much like the forest themselves. He didn’t seem like a Strike, much less like one that had lived for hundreds of years, and what was he planning to do with her?
