Page 45 of The Garnet Daughter
“I will send word on the dock location. Be prepared before dawn. If you are hurt, Ferren will never forgive me.”
“I know, which is why I am asking you to wait to tell her where I have gone until after I leave. She will intervene.”
He reluctantly nods.
“And August,” I say firmer.
He nods slower that time, like he just now realizes how his friend will react.
August would travel with me to the birthlands, toward danger if I asked him. But I won’t. I won’t put him at risk when I am betting on myself to make this work. His place is here, helping the Viathans with their defenses, not fixing another problem I have made.
It’s hard avoiding August the rest of the day. I lock myself in my room on his ship, making sure to leave my third empty injection tube on the mess hall table so he knows I’ve used it and gone to sleep early.
I wait all the next morning to hear from 99 about where I should go for departure with the crew of two, until a message chimes directly to my room, directing me to go to the closest landing dock. August has had clearance to land in it prior, when the stones were returned to the Estate, so the location is familiar.Now, smaller Viathan ships occupy it, and so does the ship that will take me to the birthlands.
I open my door and peek out into the cold cockpit and notice an intentionally placed piece of paper lying in front of my room. I unfold the parchment and find a handwritten note in quick, scratchy letters.
“Fixing the perimeter to make sure we don’t die. Don’t fold to another world while I’m gone. -August”
My heart hurts in a way I cannot explain, the dull ache of it pounding in a steady rhythm but stuttering just slightly when I think of not saying goodbye to him. It takes so much effort to convince myself this is for the best, but it is. It would be selfish to tell him. He would not be able to stop himself from helping anyway he could.
I carefully crease the note again and place it in the small bag of belongings I will take with me. I take a deep, resolving breath and push down the emotions threatening to outpour from within. I have to do this, as hard as it may be. The ship is waiting for me. But before I follow 99’s careful instructions, I have to retrieve the spell book.
I fold into the temple aisle in the same spot I did during the attack. In some areas, the ceiling is cracked and missing, allowing the purple daylight of the conjunction to enter. It paints the temple in an eerie light, the pews once in a wooden heap by the doors, now placed back into their places even though some are too damaged to use.
There are candles lit on the altar, the illumination dancing across the two stones left there. Someone cares for this room, ensuring the remaining stones are safe, even though the temple is sealed.
My feet crunch on the dust and rubble beneath them as I walk up the jagged aisle. I clench my hands into fists, not able tostop the tremble that spreads across them when I see the large black hole next to the altar.
We stood just there, the three of us, the ground stable when I began. I step to the edge, as close as I have been since folding Ferren and me away from it. The echo of Thea’s yelp lingers in my ears while I gaze into the void. The spell book is here. I sense it. Right before I launched myself into Ferren, I dropped it, and when I looked back, the floor had already opened up and consumed it.
I lean over the hole as far as I dare. Only the edges are lit up, showing thick stone cracked open like eggs. I take one of the tall candlesticks from the stones’ altar and peer down the opening farther, rocks jutting into my knees painfully as I scoot around the lip of the chasm, hoping to glimpse the spell book.
There is another floor below, the hole running straight down the Estate and going deeper than I care to picture. I tighten the strap on my small bag I packed full of rolled up clothing and hang myself over the side, hoping for a better look at the ledge.
Below is a dark room, the next level down, likely as boarded up as this one to prevent any curious eyes.
I fold into it.
It’s cold and darker than the temple. The hole now in the ceiling above me is orange with the glow of the temple’s candles. I’m afraid to look around, but I peer over my shoulder at my surroundings then bend to my knees again, holding the candle into the void.
Small pieces of the sides fall, skittering down into the darkness and echoing into nothing. My candle catches a strange shape, and when I move closer, I notice the outline of a bare foot, the imprint newer than the surrounding dust.
I suddenly realize I had the same grey dust and rubble on my feet when I woke on Frith, thinking I had folded the distance. I place my foot next to the print. Even in my boot, I can tell it’sthe same size. I wipe it away, the strange evidence of something I cannot explain.
I refocus myself and scoot along the other side of the gap, keeping my candle down to the even darker floor below, scanning along the stone until another texture catches my eyes.
The spell book is within reach, wedged between a crack in the stone floor opening of this layer and the next. I lie flat on my stomach, reaching for it with one hand and holding the candle out with the other.
But it’s too far.
I shimmy forward until my hip bones anchor me to the lip of the opening. Finally, my fingernails bite into the leather binding, turning the book enough to grasp, and I internally thank First Mother.
“Calliape,” a deep, ghostly voice calls from the darkness. I gasp, frozen when it whispers again, the same sensation washing over me as it did when I first heard it in the dark forest.
I drop the candle in favor of clutching the book with both hands, but as I bend upward, I can feel the floor shift.
And then the ones holding me up crumble. I fall with them, closing my eyes and tucking my body together to protect the book.
