The Girl Who Drank the Moon(28)

“Oh, no,” she said airily. “Curiosity is the curse of the Clever. Or perhaps cleverness is the curse of the Curious. In any case, I am never lacking for either, I’m afraid, which does keep me rather busy. But I do find that tending my herb garden gives me some amount of comfort—” She held up her hand. “Mind you don’t touch any leaves. Or flowers. And maybe not the dirt, either. Not without gloves. Many of these herbs are deadly poisonous. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Quite,” Antain said. But he wasn’t thinking much about the herbs.

“And what brings you here?” Sister Ignatia said, narrowing her eyes as Antain’s gaze drifted back up to the window where the madwoman lived.

Antain sighed. He looked back at Sister Ignatia. Garden dirt caked her work gloves. Sweat and sunshine slicked her face. She had a sated look about her, as if she had just eaten the most wonderful meal in the world and was now quite full. But she couldn’t have. She had been working outside. Antain cleared his throat.

“I wanted to tell you in person that I would not be able to build you the desk you requested for another six months, or perhaps a year,” Antain said. This was a lie. The design was fairly simple, and the wood required was easily obtainable from the managed forest on the western side of the Protectorate.

“Nonsense,” Sister Ignatia said. “Surely you can make some rearrangements. The Sisters are practically family.”

Antain shook his head, let his eyes drift back to the window. He had not really seen the madwoman—not up close anyway—since the bird attack. But he saw her every night in his dreams. Sometimes she was in the rafters. Sometimes she was in her cell. Sometimes she was riding the backs of a flock of paper birds and vanishing into the night.

He gave Sister Ignatia half a smile. “Family?” he said. “Madam, I believe you have met my family.”

Sister Ignatia pretended to wave the comment away, but she pressed her lips together, suppressing a grin.

Antain glanced back at the window. The madwoman stood at the narrow window. Her body was little more than a shadow. He saw her hand reach through the bars, and a bird flutter near, nestling in her palm. The bird was made of paper. He could hear the dry rustle of its wings from where he stood.

Antain shivered.

“What are you looking at?” Sister Ignatia said.

“Nothing,” Antain lied. “I see nothing.”

“My dear boy. Is there something the matter?”

He looked at the ground. “Good luck with the garden.”

“Before you go, Antain. Why don’t you do us a favor, since we cannot entice you to apply your clever hands to the making of beautiful things, no matter how many times we ask?”

“Madam, I—”

“You there!” Sister Ignatia called. Her voice instantly took on a much harsher tone. “Have you finished packing, girl?”

“Yes, Sister,” came a voice inside the garden shed—a clear, bright voice, like a bell. Antain felt his heart ring. That voice, he thought. I remember that voice. He hadn’t heard it since they were in school, all those years ago.

“Excellent.” She turned to Antain, her words honeyed once again. “We have a novice who has opted not to apply herself to an elevated life of study and contemplation, and has decided to reenter the larger world. Foolish thing.”

Antain was shocked. “But,” he faltered. “That never happens!”

“Indeed. It never does. And it will not ever again. I must have been deluded when she first came to us, wanting to enter our Order. I shall be more discerning next time.”

A young woman emerged from the garden shed. She wore a plain shift dress that likely fit her when she first entered the Tower, shortly after her thirteenth birthday, but she had grown taller, and it barely covered her knees. She wore a pair of men’s boots, patched and worn and lopsided, that she must have borrowed from one of the groundskeepers. She smiled, and even her freckles seemed to shine.

“Hello, Antain,” Ethyne said gently. “It has been a long time.”

Antain felt the world tilt under his feet.

Ethyne turned to Sister Ignatia. “We knew one another at school.”

“She never talked to me,” Antain said in a hoarse whisper, tilting his face to the ground. His scars burned. “No girls did.”

Her eyes glittered and her mouth unfurled into a smile. “Is that so? I remember differently.” She looked at him. At his scars. She looked right at him. And she didn’t look away. And she didn’t flinch. Even his mother flinched. His own mother.

“Well,” he said. “To be fair. I didn’t talk to any girls. I still don’t, really. You should hear my mother go on about it.”

Ethyne laughed. Antain thought he might faint.

“Will you please help our little disappointment carry her things? Her brothers have gotten themselves ill and her parents are dead. I would like all evidence of this fiasco removed as quickly as possible.”

If any of this bothered Ethyne, she did not show it. “Thank you, Sister, for everything,” she said, her voice as smooth and sweet as cream. “I am ever so much more than I was when I walked in through that door.”

“And ever so much less than you could have been,” Sister Ignatia snapped. “The youth!” She threw up her hands. “If we cannot bear them, how can they possibly bear themselves?” She turned to Antain. “You will help, won’t you? The girl doesn’t have the decency to show even the tiniest modicum of sorrow for her actions.” The Head Sister’s eyes went black for a moment, as though she was terribly hungry. She squinted and frowned, and the blackness vanished. Perhaps Antain had imagined it. “I cannot tolerate another second in her company.”