House of Salt and Sorrows(3)

Hanna held out a long black ribbon with a look of expectation. Sighing, I let her encircle my wrist with the thin strip, as she had many times before. When death visited a household, you wore a black ribbon to keep from following after your loved one. Our luck seemed so bad, the servants even took to tying the maudlin bits around the necks of our cats, horses, and chickens.

She finished off the ribbon with a bow that would have been pretty in any other color. My entire wardrobe was nothing more than mourning garb now, each dress a darker shade than the last. I hadn’t worn anything lighter than charcoal in the six years since Mama passed away.

Hanna had chosen a satin bauble, not the itchy bombazine from Elizabeth’s funeral. It left welts on our wrists that stung for days.

I adjusted my sleeve’s cuff. “I’d rather stay up here with you, truth be told. I never know what I ought to say at these things.”

Hanna patted my cheek. “The sooner you get there, the sooner it’ll all be over with.” She smiled up at me with warm brown eyes. “I’ll be sure to have a pot of cinnamon tea waiting for you before bed?”

“Thank you, Hanna,” I said, squeezing her shoulder before going out the door.

As I entered the Blue Room, Morella made a beeline for me. “Sit with me? I don’t really know anyone here,” she admitted, pulling me toward a sofa near the tall, thickly paned windows. Though speckled with a confetti of raindrops, they offered a spectacular view of the cliffs. It seemed wrong to hold the wake in this room, showcasing the very spot where Eulalie fell.

I wanted to be with my sisters, but Morella’s eyes were so large and pleading. At moments like this, it was difficult to forget she was much closer to my age than to Papa’s.

No one was surprised when he took a new bride. Mama had been gone for so long, and we all knew he hoped to have a son eventually. He met Morella while in Suseally, on the mainland. Papa returned from the voyage with her on his arm, utterly smitten.

Honor, Mercy, and Verity—the Graces, as we called them collectively, all so young when Mama passed—were delighted to have this new maternal figure in their lives. She’d been a governess and took to the little girls immediately. The triplets—Rosalie, Ligeia, and Lenore—and I were happy for Papa, but Camille stiffened whenever someone assumed Morella was one of the Thaumas Dozen.

I stared across the room at the large painting dominating one wall. It depicted a ship being dragged into the blue abyss by a kraken, giant eyes enlarged in fury. The Blue Room held many treasures from the sea: a family of spiny urchins on one shelf, a barnacle-encrusted anchor on a plinth in the corner, and specimens from the Graces’ shell collection on any surface tall enough for them to reach.

“Are the services always like that?” Morella asked, spreading her skirts across the navy velvet cushions. “So serious and dour?”

I couldn’t help my bemused look. “Well, it was a funeral.”

She tucked a wisp of pale blond hair behind her ear, smiling nervously. “Of course, I only meant…why the water? I don’t understand why you don’t just bury her, like they do on the mainland?”

I caught sight of Papa. He’d want me to be nice, to explain our ways. I tried to allow a trickle of pity into my heart for her.

“The High Mariner says Pontus created our islands and the people on them. He scooped salt from the ocean tides for strength. Into that was mixed the cunning of a bull shark and the beauty of the moon jellyfish. He added the seahorse’s fidelity and the curiosity of a porpoise. When his creation was molded just so—two arms, two legs, a head, and a heart—Pontus breathed some of his own life into it, making the first People of the Salt. So when we die, we can’t be buried in the ground. We slip back into the water and are home.”

The explanation seemed to please her. “See, something like that at the funeral would have been lovely. There was just such an emphasis on…the death.”

I offered her a smile. “Well…this was your first one. You get used to them.”

Morella reached out, placing her hand on mine, her small face earnest. “I hate that you’ve gone through so many of these. You’re far too young to have felt so much pain and grief.”

The rain came down harder, shrouding Highmoor in muddled grays. Great boulders at the bottom of the cliffs were tossed about by the raging sea like marbles in a little boy’s pocket, their crashes blasting up the steep rocks and rivaling the thunder.

“What happens now?”

I blinked, drawing my attention back to her. “What do you mean?”

She bit into her lip, stumbling over the unfamiliar words. “Now that she’s…back in the Salt…what are we supposed to do?”

“That was it. We’ve said our goodbyes. After this wake, it’s all over.”

Her fingers tinkered with restless frustration. “But it’s not. Not truly. Your father said we have to wear black for the next few weeks?”

“Months, actually. We wear black for six, then darker grays for another six after that.”

“A year?” she gasped. “Am I really meant to wear these dour clothes for a whole year?” People near the sofa turned their heads toward us, having overheard her outburst. She had the decency to blush with chagrin. “What I mean is…Ortun just bought my bridal trousseau. Nothing in it is black.” She’d borrowed one of Camille’s dresses for today, but it didn’t fit her well. She smoothed down the edge of the bodice. “It’s not only about the clothes. What about you and Camille? Both of you should be out in society, meeting young men, falling in love.”