Page 6 of The Quiet
Valentine recoiled into himself on the cot at her stubbornness. His weathered face grew heavy with shadows that extended beyond the touch of the night.
They sat in silence, and it seemed her simple disobedience had won her the battle until, for the first time, she saw a tear trail down his cheek.
That single tear flooded the heat inside her. He let the tear balance on his cheekbone. Another followed. He didn’t speakuntil they’d slipped into his beard, the trails they’d painted drying on his face.
He disarmed her with a vulnerability he seldom exposed. His expression unfurled like a welcome to a casket he was already lying in, and for the first time, she didn’t see a hero, only mysteries he wore like stitched lips. The warrior in him had been buried, and now she’d have no room to exist either because she’d learned very early on that somehow it took courage to see her.
“Go to bed,” he said with a hammer in his voice, “now.”
Baker swept past him like a ghost. He’d dealt a killing blow and delivered her into the dark of the cottage. She moved past the rows of huddled masses, haunting them before she reached her cot and curled up under her blanket near the other women.
She felt like she was sinking into the cot, and she clutched her pillow as if it kept her afloat. Every day for years, the village felt like it was getting just a little bit smaller. Death was closing in, Baker praying every night to whatever would listen that it wouldn’t notice her. Her heart revolted against the feelings. Every passing moment bolstered some violent tide inside her until it rolled her out of bed.
No.The word rang through her head like the fall of a gavel. No to it all. Everything.
Hands shaking, she clawed under her bed, scooping up the tools and wooden toys from under her cot and piling them onto the blanket.
She stuffed her things into it and tied it up like a bag, scanning the surrounding spaces to make sure she hadn’t woken theothers. She crept back through the cots until she found Valentine again, eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach. She slipped his old knife from out of his boot on the floor and tucked it through the belt on her waist. She kissed the long, sunken scar on his forehead.
I’ll bring you something back,she thought like a conviction, as if the quest she imagined was for his very soul—and her own. There had to be some piece of life out there that could resurrect his spirit. There had to be more left of the world than this.
Heart racing, she left the cottage, barefoot with her blanket slung over her back.
She looked at the surrounding houses, the candlelit windows like glass bars through which she’d watched strangers live their lives for years.
The moon was like a window of its own. Wanting to leap through it, she picked up her pace. The houses passed her by, and then she was in the fields, galloping over thick grasses that tickled her legs. Her breath was heavy with fresh air, the night gorged with the thrill of the unknown, the stars brilliant with the wild pulse of freedom.
The world was a wonderful place.
CHAPTER 3
WHITE TABLE
ELLA RODE AN Academy horse through several hours of farmland to an ancient graveyard. It was swamped by monsoons during the rainy seasons, and the sunken stones were one of the few markers along an overgrown, rocky path to a well-hidden cottage.
Ella recalled spending young summers catching frogs and lizards and building homes for them around potholes in the road. This territory had been vetted for mutations and auctioned off at a low price years ago, far from the dangerous frontiers where Ella and her team had frequently camped. Still, some mutations could happen spontaneously, and most people didn’t risk such a reclusive lifestyle. It would only take an edible plant mutated to be poisonous or perhaps a mutated farm animal to kill someone.
She tied her horse up on a tree branch, clenching and unclenching her hands as she ducked under the willows to reach the steps of the cottage.
She balanced over the stones meant to stave off the encroaching marshes, knocking on the door as she scanned the forest of mossy trees and the fields beyond, which bloomed with wildflowers. Loose chickens pecked along a nearby creek, and a pet pig snorted behind the house.
“You’re late,” Samual announced, the welcome of any true Listener. They could be a difficult bunch, and it wasn’t unusualfor those not vetted by the capital to be con artists and magicians, but Samual was as real as she’d seen.
He’d been an instructor in the Academy in Ella’s early days, freshly retired, perhaps in preparation for adopting her when neither of them knew he’d find her begging on the streets of the capital.
Ella opened the door, dodging a string of herbs and mushrooms freshly picked from the morning. She navigated past misplaced books and furniture, noticing a garden snake as it scurried under a nearby bookcase.
She followed the sounds of chopping to Samual’s snug kitchen before inching onto a familiar stool near the kitchen entrance.
Ella resisted the urge to fidget as he chopped with his back to her, hunched in a fluffy brown robe and knit cap. He was old when she first met him, and he seemed just as old now, remarkably incapable of change.
“You’ve got desperation pouring out,” Samual said between slow chops. The sky itself could fall, and he’d still take his time. He slid what appeared to be peppers into a wooden bowl to his right. “Yes, I know what happened.”
Ella stifled her hurt at the firmness of his tone as if he were scolding her. He washed his hands in a bowl and dried them using a cloth that hung in front of the kitchen window. The foggy green panes of glass were open to the yard outside, where livestock roamed freely.
“You always put too much trust in Crow.”
“I didn’t come here for a speech,” Ella bit, but when Samual turned, there was a tenderness in his eyes that made her feel like a little girl again. She’d sat on this stool hundreds of times in the same obstinate way.
