Page 11 of The Verdant Cage
If she does, I won’t be able to slip over to the Seingalts’ cottage to find out what Jonas saw. “It’s a child’s errand.” I’m gambling on her ego. “Beneath a full Guardian, certainly.”
Her nostrils flare as she studies me, and I do my best to appear innocent, grateful my reputation precedes me.
Years of walking the line pay off. “Fine,” she says. “If you’re quick. It’s no good for anybody if you linger too long at your old home. You’ll want to get used to us as soon as possible.”
“Thank you.” I have to fight the urge to curtsy, like we do in chapel.
Or worse, to lash out and kick her.
The thought startles me, sharp and unfamiliar, a leftover echo of the fury that broke loose yesterday at Eden’s Gate. I need to get control of my grief, fast, before I do something I can’t walk back from.
Misia glides to the front door, done with me. “You’ll have the midday meal ready for us. We must return to patrol immediately after.”
“You’re working double shifts?”
Other than a few trades that deal with emergencies—Animal Farmers, Crop Farmers before a frost, the Apothecaries and Dentists—no citizen is meant to labor more than ten hours in a twenty-four-hour period without special dispensation.
She’s strapping on her sword belt. It’s constructed of the same leather as her trousers. “Of course we are,” she says. Her gaze lands on me, her expression unsettling. “We’re being hunted, Rose. You of all people should respect that, given what happened to your father.”
I’m unequipped for the reminder. I’ve lost too much in one day to keep my dad’s death contained in the mental compartment where it’s meant to reside. For the first time in years, the memory crashes through my defenses.
6
I was five years old.
Gran was out training Jonas on a birth at the Crier cottage, Aunt Florence and Uncle Richard were dispensing inoculations, and Dad had gone out before dawn to deliver a body to the Elders for a funeral. We’d unexpectedly lost the Guardian in our care in the middle of the night. Only Mom and I were home, preparing a batch of painkilling tincture from white willow bark and wild lettuce, its pungent scent crimping the air.
Mom was in an odd mood that day, and I was somber, too, both of us affected by the loss of a patient. Her thick black hair was piled atop her head as she brewed up medicines and sang sad Valley songs. She barely startled when the door flew open.
“Hurry!” Eero of the Carpenter House screamed. He was a good friend to Jonas, but in that moment, he was nearly unrecognizable.
“What is it?” Mom asked, banking the fire and pulling on her cloak. I’d already strapped on my crossbody medical kit. By that time, I’d been assisting on field calls for months.
“It’s Kirby,” Eero choked out.
Dad?
The world turned inside out, sky becoming ground and air burning like water in my lungs. My father was the center of everything good, the shoulder I rested on when I was sad and the smile I ran to when I was proud. He couldn’t be hurt. I’d seen him only hours before. He was bothered by the death of the Guardian, of course, but in peak physical health. I glanced to Mom in a panic, but she was already following Eero out the door. I tried not to think of the boy’s bluish lips and fingernails or the pronounced white around his pupils. He was showing classic signs of shock. What did that mean for my dad?
Eero led us to a clearing at the edge of the woods. Bluebells, fresh and vivid—my mother’s favorite—lined the path. We were closer to the Wall than I had ever been. Disrespectfully close, even. But that worry vanished as my brain caught up with the carnage before me.
At first, I thought I was staring at a heap of bloody clothes, that’s how twisted Dad’s body was. Mom gasped, then slapped her hands over her mouth. It was the only time I’d ever seen her freeze in a crisis, before or since. I dashed forward, my mind detaching from my soul so I could treat him. I told myself I wasn’t looking at the man who taught me to dance standing on his feet and tied my hair into two low buns for school each morning. Who told me that I was going to be the best Apothecary the village had ever seen because I noticed things that other people missed.
He was only a patient who needed my help.
Yet I started trembling when I reached him.
What was left of him.
His face was so ravaged that I wouldn’t have recognized him if not for the wooden turtle pendant he never removed, a gift from Jonas. His shirt front was sliced in several places, his intestines spilling onto the earth. The smell of human waste and congealed blood told me we were too late.
Still, I searched for a pulse before stumbling away.
“He’s gone,” I whispered.
“This is my fault,” my mother wailed, startling me. She fell to her knees in front of my father’s body, keening, burying her hands in the blood-soaked soil. She began sobbing, repeating a version of the same strange words.
I’m so sorry.It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have stood out.
