The Surface Breaks(36)

“There you go,” he says as I stand before him, swallowing down the excruciating pain that my feet are subjecting me to. He points at a mountain ahead, steep, a daunting prospect at the best of times, let alone with serrated knives for bones. “Ready for a climb?”

He insists that I walk ahead of him. “Just keep to the path,” he says, and I do, each step feeling as if a steel trap is opening and closing upon my toes, the metal teeth tearing through and chewing on my bones. But I keep walking, the boughs of the trees grazing my shoulders and the top of my head. I reach down to pick one of the flowers blooming from the ground, pressing it to my nose and inhaling its scent, the strength of which I could never have imagined beneath the sea.

“Christ,” he says when we reach the top, wisps of clouds drifting below us, obscuring our view of Oliver’s kingdom. I sit down on a rock as quickly as I can, fighting the urge to throw my head to the sky and scream for oblivion, for a mercy of any kind. “I have never seen anyone move like that. Were you a dancer where you come from? You have such grace—” He snaps his fingers. “That’s it. That’s what we shall call you. Grace. It is a fitting name for one so beautiful.” He sits beside me, taking my hand in his, sweat beading his brow. “Is that okay? Do you like it?”

I will like any name you choose for me.

“Grace,” he says again. My hand is still in his, and I hope he never lets go. “The beautiful Grace.”


Later that night when Daisy pulls the riding boots off, she sees the blood spilling from the soles of my feet, and there is so much of it, this human blood, smearing on the carpet and on the sheets and all over Daisy’s hands until her fingernails are encrusted with my pain. I stare at it, fascinated, and yet I do not feel afraid.

“What is this?” Daisy asks, her eyes huge. “What have you done to yourself, miss? We have to call the doctor, miss, we have to.”

I place my finger to my lip.

“But—”

I take her stained hands in mine, urging her to keep my secret.

“Okay, miss,” she says, and she’s confused, as if unsure as to why she is agreeing to my demands. “I won’t tell nobody.” And somehow, despite how chatty I have found Daisy to be, I sense that I can trust her.

And I smile. Oliver will be mine. It is worth it. All of this will be worth it.





CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning, Daisy brings me a draught; a “special drink”, she calls it.

“It’ll help with the pain,” she says, as she places a bronze goblet on the dresser. She nods at my feet she so carefully bandaged the night before, already soaked through with blood. “I should tell the mistress, we should get the doctor; Mrs Carlisle said I was supposed to watch for anything odd—”

I sit up straight, clutching at Daisy. I have learned since my arrival that doctors means scientists and scientists means experiments and tests and medical studies, like my grandmother warned my sisters before they travelled to the surface. Don’t get too close, she told them. Is that what happened my mother? If they allowed her to live, did they use her for scientific research, her body torn apart to help with their “enquiries”? I don’t know, of course, that’s the problem.

“Okay, okay,” Daisy says, rubbing her arm. “I get it. No doctors.” She picks up the goblet again and hands it to me. “Hopefully this will help.” She wavers, as if deliberating whether to continue or not, her skin flushing. Daisy’s feelings are so easy to decipher, mapping themselves scarlet on to her skin. “And I haven’t told Mrs Carlisle anything either. Don’t worry about that.”

There is no smell off the clear liquid and only the slightest aftertaste of something too sweet. “Aniseed,” Daisy says, when I grimace. After ten minutes, she urges me to try standing and I do so, feathers rushing up through my throat and into my eyes, turning my vision hazy. But the throbbing in my legs has stopped. I cannot feel my feet. I cannot feel anything.

“Better?” Daisy asks as I stare at her in wonder.

Are you a witch too?


We begin to establish a routine, Daisy and I. She wakes me in the morning, unwrapping the bandages from my feet, shuddering as she mops up the crusted blood that has gathered there since bedtime.

“Oh, Grace,” she says every time, unpicking clumps of peeling flesh between my toes with a small brush. “What are we going to do with you?” She draws a bath, handing me the magic potion to drink while I soak in the water, oh, and the holy relief of both. Once I have been dressed, my hair wound into braids and red powder dabbed on my cheeks (It’ll make you look a little less lethargic, Daisy explains, and I speculate as to what my father would say if he could see me with paint on), I take breakfast with Oliver and his mother.

A bite of porridge or toast and that is all; I refuse offers of any more food.

“What a tiny appetite you have,” Oliver says every day, and I ignore the sound of my stomach rumbling. “Like a little bird.”

“Yes,” his mother agrees, buttering a bread roll and stuffing it into her mouth, as if she is taunting me. “Don’t you ever get hungry, Grace? It is most unusual for a girl your age.”

Then a variation on this: “Oliver,” Eleanor will say, turning away, bored with whatever game she has decided to play with me. “I was hoping to speak to you about—”