Page 63 of As Many Souls as Stars
Cawing in anger, she dove down towards the sea, where the grimoire was bobbing gently on the water. As she neared the water, she felt a pressure growing, as if the air was thickening and would soon become impassable. It was the salt; the burning began immediately, and she twisted in the air, writhing, shrieking, vision half blinded by pain. Desperate, clumsy, she took the thing in both talons—hissing as salt touched her skin—and she rose once more, heaving the book away from the coast.
Miriam considered what to do. If she laid the grimoire to rest in the place of its creation, perhaps it would stop haunting her. Cybil had once dug it a grave, after all, and the book ought to obey the family it served. Flying north, her route took her over both forest and field, England shrouded in darkness. She passed over a small village, a squat stone church’s spire poking out between hills as an arrowhead through flesh. It remained so familiar, so unchanged. She could see it still, as if it were yesterday: the dogs and the horses, Henry Martingale baying for blood. On the horizon, there were still the mounds where the villagers had danced, and there was the forest where she had first met Cybil, that wild-faced girl with mud on her cheeks and fury in her eyes.
She flew towards Harding Hall—or, at least, what remained of it: a centuries-old foundation still black with char, overgrown with grass. Miriam wondered why they’d never rebuilt. Perhaps people still considered the site cursed, associated it with witchcraft. It was a monument to Cybil’s power. She’d wounded this place, and the scar she’d left would outlive them all.
In the woods, Miriam alighted and shifted to her human form. Memory brought her to the correct place. A wizened oak, Gordian-knot roots. Miriam knelt and began to dig. The soil was soft anddamp, pleasantly alive in the manner of just-rained-on earth. Worms wriggled against her hands, and seedlings trailed green stalks across her fingers. Eventually, her nails struck something coarse and dry.
She pulled the sack out of its grave.
Inside, the other books were pristine. The gold tooled into their leather covers still shone, pages still pale and flat, and the careful calligraphy within had hardly faded. A linen bag had been all that separated them from the elements for two centuries, and yet they looked the same as when she and Cybil had buried them. Cybil’s determination to save them had imbued itself into their pages, and now these books were as immortal as the grimoire was.
She put the grimoire in the sack, and returned the sack to the hole. She kicked dirt and leaves over it until it was impossible to tell the site had been disturbed.
Miriam called the darkness and took to the skies. To the east, the skeleton of Harding Hall mouldered on its hill, and the sun—barely born—began to hook its fingers over the horizon.
Esther didn’t know if Miriam was coming to the ball. She hadn’t seen her for days, since the night she had taken her to bed—and that stung, as ridiculous as it was.You shouldn’t deal with the devil at all, Esther told herself,let alone ask her to dance. But she’d spent every morning, every night, waiting for her crow to return.
She did not return. The day of the ball, Thomas remained locked in his rooms; Esther was hardly inclined to try to convince him to go. Instead, she spent the afternoon in the elaborate ritual of preparation a woman was expected to undertake for a Society event. A bath, first of all: two of them, one steaming hot, to draw the blood, and one cold as ice, to polish the skin. Afterwards, she shone like a pearl, and the bruises Miriam had left on her looked darker, as if reasserting their claim.
Esther’s perfume was lily of the valley, her silk shoes embroidered with the same flowers, white on white. Her hair was curled into minuscule ringlets, as fine as wisteria blossoms. A few of these curls were left dangling to frame her face, but most were piled in a Grecian knot on her head, set with pins glimmering with misshapen opals.
The maid—who was talented; Thomas kept good staff—took out the gown for Esther to inspect, her usual mask of indifference marred by a moue of distaste. The scarlet lace edging the cream silk was gauche, Esther knew. But there was something almost lovely about it, now that she looked at it again. It was like fresh blood on snow.
‘Lace it tightly,’ she told the maid. She felt the boning wrap closer around her, ribbons pulling through eyelets with a snakelike hiss. For a moment, she recalled the feeling of suffocation that had come when she’d transformed the dress with magic: the curious feeling of ashes in her throat, her lungs. The pain in her neck—the phantom presence of some curious violence she had not experienced, and yet which felt familiar.
Esther closed her eyes, breathing deeply against the iron grip of her stays.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was relieved to see her own face looking back.
Esther and Isaac travelled to Carroway House in one of Thomas’s carriages. They did not bother to ask for permission. Esther doubted he’d even noticed their leaving.
‘Patience and courage,’ she told Isaac in the carriage, and he sighed. ‘Atalltimes, Isaac. Edward Carroway could find you a good position at his company, if you comport yourself well.’
‘I’ll comport myself how I bloody like,’ he replied; then he wilted a little at the acidity of Esther’s expression. ‘Sorry. It’s just—I don’t particularly want to be an accountant.’
‘Whatdoyou want to be, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then you ought to be an accountant until you figure it out,’ Esther said. ‘I won’t always be here, you know. You can’t rely on Thomas’s charity forever.’
Isaac frowned. ‘Don’t speak like that.’
‘Speak like what?’
‘As if you’re about to die. It is—unsettling.’ Isaac sighed again, and rubbed at his face with his hand. The movement sent a lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He had been attempting to growsideburns for years now, but they never quite took; there was an aspirational peach fuzz of growth dusting either side of his cheekbones.
He was a child, still. Only a child. How much of his growing had Esther ignored, in her quest for freedom? How many moments unseen, how many more doomed to be so?
Esther imagined reaching out, taking his hand. She did not. She turned to look out the window. The carriage was trundling up the driveway now, and lanterns dotted the path guiding them to Carroway House: a titanic confection of Doric columns, white brick, and marble floors. There were musicians outside, too, greeting the guests with lighthearted music that belied the sheer, raucous intensity of the crowd. Many were already drunk, hooting like animals as they stumbled inside.
When Esther and Isaac exited the carriage, they were accosted by the gazes of those lingering outside the entrance. No one bothered pretending they weren’t staring at them. Esther felt the accusation in those eyes, the hostility, and she felt a flush rising on her neck. They were only invited, really, because they were in Thomas’s care; and now Thomas hadn’t even come with them.
‘Come,’ she muttered to Isaac. He glared at the other guests as she hauled him through the doorway.
The ballroom was a crush of people, guests spilling out into corridors, the air sweltering from the press of bodies and the hundreds of candles lighting the room. The ceiling was already darkening with soot. The cacophonous murmur of the crowd was deafening. Esther raised her fan and covered half her face so that her eyes could peer across the top. As she and Isaac walked across the room, Esther could feel heads turning to follow them. Her fan fluttered nervously in her grip. She ought to have worn a normal dress; she ought to have demanded Thomas join them; she ought not to have come at all—but she hadn’t done any of those things, and it was too late to do so now. Esther’s only option was to pretend the attention didn’t chafe.
A quartet started a rousing dance. In response, a man in the crowd shouted something in consternation, and elsewhere there was the sound of a glass smashing.
