To Best the Boys(36)
“How you feeling?”
She nods and pulls me into a weak hug, and I refuse to look at the blood spot still on her pillow. Her hair and skin smell of lilac and illness and home, and it’s all I can do not to squeeze too tightly because the dread and grief are surging with the reminder of last night’s revelation that this is all going much quicker than it should, and I have just borrowed clothes from dead people, even as everything in me is screaming that death isn’t too far from our own door.
I can feel her ribs and spine through her thick nightdress.
I look down at her, and a sudden sense of shame at my Labyrinth scheme fills my throat. What am I thinking? This is where I should be. I’m needed here, with her, in what might be her last few days or weeks. And yet—I’d also give anything not to be here.
I force a smile. “I’ll skip the festival and just stay here with you, Mum. Seleni can go, and—”
“Come now, we’ll have none of that,” Da says from behind me. “You and Seleni will get ready and go enjoy yourselves. Your mum and I’ll be just fine here without you. Happier even without all the noise.” He winks. “We’ll both be here when you get back.”
Ignoring him, I pull Mum tighter and rest my cheek against her warm one. “What do you want, Mum?”
“I want you to be brave,” she whispers.
“Of course. That’s not—”
Her fingers find my arm and hold me in place, while her other hand lifts to pat my hat covering my head. Her cheek moves against mine into a weak smile, and she pats my head again and murmurs, “In the Labyrinth, I mean.”
Every nerve ending goes numb.
“I heard you and Seleni upstairs,” she says in my ear, in a voice too low for Da to hear. “And if you’re going in, then you do it bravely and show this world who you are. And when you’re done, you come back to me.”
The next thing I know, she’s released me and shut her eyes and moved her head to the pillow. When I look up at Da, he gives a small, clueless nod. “Enjoy the party for the three of us, sweetie.”
“But Mum—”
She gives my hand a quick squeeze as if to say she may be weak but she’s still the person who birthed me, so I’d better obey.
My tread is slow as I count the steps to the door, but I wait until I’ve left the room to let my throat choke and eyes well up. I wipe my cheeks with my wrist, straighten my shoulders, and turn to climb to the loft where Seleni will be.
“Everything all right?” she asks from her spot plopped across my bed.
I shrug and put on dry socks and booties, because if I do anything else, like actually speak, I will do something daft like cry. Once they’re on, I pull out a second pair of shoes that Seleni will need and shove them into a woven bag along with the dead boys’ shirts and trousers and caps we will take with us for the Labyrinth. Next, I find the case of pins in my drawer that Mum used to do my hair with and help flatten Seleni’s long, brown curls against her head in a way that looks purposeful but can also double as a boy’s cut beneath a hat. When I’m finished, I stand back and eye us both.
Seleni tips her head and studies us in the mirror, then strides over to the oil wick on my lantern and trims off a part of it. She drops it in the bag. “For our faces,” she says at my questioning expression.
Good thinking.
Careful to stay quiet so as not to disturb my parents, I retrieve the Labyrinth Letter from the cellar, where I notice Da has removed Lady’s carcass from the cage. I turn away and try not to think on it, then shove the paper into my pocket, in case it’s needed as proof of—of what? My right to enter? To be there? I don’t actually know how Holm decides who is allowed and who isn’t. An attack of nerves roils my stomach, and I have to brace for a minute to calm my breathing. The worst they’ll do is kick you out, and people will laugh or scorn, Rhen. Both are things you know how to live with.
With a deep inhale I return upstairs where Seleni is waiting by the door. I peek over at my parents’ room. Should I say something? But I don’t know what it would be, so instead I step out the front door with Seleni and walk across the four stone markers that connect our house to the cobbled street. Just as the rooster gives another strangled crow.
12
Holm Castle sits on the tallest hill in Pinsbury Port, on an estate gracing the far side of the Upper end that stretches all the way down to touch the sea a full mile from the wharf. From Seleni’s and my view on the road, the tops of the century-old stone and shingled roofs catch the late-afternoon sun and gleam like pinpoint pearls, shimmering above the vast green hills and hedges that tumble away from the mostly hidden home.
Legend has it, King Francis’s great-grandfather, King Edmundton, deeded it to Holm’s great-grandfather for his use of magic that turned the tide of the great Oceanic War. And while the subsequent Holm and royal descendants’ relational arrangement is unknown, in times of national crisis a carriage bearing King Francis’s crest has been rumored to show up in the dead of night at Holm Manor.
I inhale the smell of damp earth and leaves and wonder what King Francis thinks of the Labyrinth contest—or whether any of his family has ever privately attended.
Seleni and I start up the walk as a breeze rustles from the wharf and floats over us on its way up the river. It’s pushing back the thick blankets of rain and fog, like a dragon rolling back its breath, until they recede into the tiniest nooks of the Rhine. The rush of salt spray latches like perfume onto our hair and skin, carrying with it the sound of excited voices—shouts that rise a little louder, and laughter that uncoils a little looser. And when I glance around, even some of the faces from the pub last night look a little lighter.