Iris pulled it out into the firelight, relieved to find it after the radio’s unexpected departure.
She sat on the floor and opened her tapestry bag, where the beginnings of her essay now sat crinkled and damp from the rain. Find something good to write about, and I might consider publishing it in the column next week, Zeb had said. Sighing, Iris fed a new page to Nan’s typewriter, fingers poised over the keys. But then she glanced at the ink-streaked monster again, and she found herself writing something entirely different from her essay.
She hadn’t written to Forest in days. And yet she wrote to her brother now. The words spilled out of her. She didn’t bother with the date or a Dear Forest, as she had with all the other letters she had typed to him. She didn’t want to write his name, to see it on the page. Her heart felt bruised as she cut to the chase that night:
Every morning, when I wade through Mum’s sea of green bottles, I think of you. Every morning, when I slip into the trench coat you left behind for me, I wonder if you thought of me for even a moment. If you imagined what your departure would do to me. To Mum.
I wonder if fighting for Enva is everything you thought it would be. I wonder if a bullet or a bayonet has torn through you. If a monster has wounded you. I wonder if you’re lying in an unmarked grave, covered in blood-soaked earth that I will never be able to kneel at, no matter how desperate my soul is to find you.
I hate you for leaving me like this.
I hate you, and yet I love you even more, because you are brave and full of a light that I don’t think I will ever find or understand. The call to fight for something so fervently that death holds no sting over you.
Sometimes I can’t draw a full breath. Between my worry and my fear … my lungs are small because I don’t know where you are. It’s been five months since I hugged you goodbye at the depot. Five months, and I can only assume you are missing at the front or are too busy to write me. Because I don’t think I could rise in the morning—I don’t think I could get out of bed—if news came to me that you were dead.
I wish you would be a coward for me, for Mum. I wish you would set down your gun and rend your allegiance to the goddess who has claimed you. I wish you would stop time and return to us.
Iris yanked the paper from the typewriter, folded it twice, and rose to approach her wardrobe.
Long ago, Nan had hidden notes for Iris to find in her room, sometimes slipping them under the bedroom door or beneath her pillow, or tucking them into a skirt pocket for her to find later at school. Small words of encouragement or a line from a poem that Iris always delighted to discover. It was a tradition of theirs, and Iris had grown up learning how to read and write by sending her grandmother notes.
It felt natural to her, then, to slide her letters to Forest under the wardrobe door. Her brother didn’t have a room in their flat; he slept on the couch so Aster and Iris could have the two private bedrooms. But he and Iris had been sharing this closet for years.
The wardrobe was a small recess in the stone wall, with an arched door that had left a permanent scratch on the floor. Forest’s garments hung to the right, Iris’s to the left. He didn’t have many clothes—a few button-down shirts, trousers, leather braces, and a pair of scuffed shoes. But Iris didn’t have many outfits either. They made the most of what they had, patching holes and mending frayed edges and wearing their raiment until it was threadbare.
Iris had left his clothes in the closet, despite his teasing her that she could have the whole wardrobe space while he was gone. She had been patient the first two months he had been away at war, waiting for him to write to her as he had promised. But then her mother had started drinking, so profusely that she had been fired from the Revel Diner. The bills could no longer be paid; there was no food in the cupboard. Iris had no choice but to drop out of school and find work, all the while waiting for Forest to write to her.
He never had.
And Iris could no longer bear the silence. She had no address; she had no information as to where her brother was stationed. She had nothing but a beloved tradition and she did as her nan would have done—Iris gave the folded paper to the closet.
To her amazement, the letter had been gone the next day, as if the shadows had eaten it.
Unsettled, Iris had typed another message to Forest and slid it under her closet door. It too had vanished, and she had studied the small wardrobe closely, disbelieving. She had noticed the old stones in the wall, as if someone centuries ago had decided to close off an ancient passageway. She wondered if perhaps magic in the conquered god’s bones, laid to rest deep beneath this city, had risen to answer her distress. If magic had somehow taken her letter and carried it on the western wind, delivering it to wherever her brother was fighting in the war.
How she had hated enchanted buildings until that moment.
She knelt now and slid her letter beneath the wardrobe door.
It was a relief to let the words go. The pressure in her chest eased.
Iris returned to her typewriter. As she lifted it, her fingers touched a ridge of cold metal, bolted on the inside of the frame. The plate was the length of her smallest finger and easy to overlook, but she vividly remembered the day she had discovered it. The first time she had read the engraving in the silver. THE THIRD ALOUETTE / MADE ESPECIALLY FOR D.E.W.
Daisy Elizabeth Winnow.
Her nan’s name.
Iris had often studied those words, wondering what they meant. Who had made this typewriter for her nan? She wished she had noticed the engraving before her grandmother had passed away. Now Iris had no other choice but to be content in the mystery.
She shifted the typewriter back to its hiding place and crawled into bed. She drew the blankets to her chin but left the candle burning, even though she knew better. I should blow it out, save it for tomorrow night, she thought, because there was no telling when she would be able to pay the electricity bill. But for now, she wanted to rest in the light, not in the darkness.
Her eyes closed, heavy from a long day. She could still smell the rain and cigarette smoke in her hair. She still had ink on her fingertips, marmalade in the grooves of her teeth.
She was almost asleep when she heard it. The sound of paper rustling.
Iris frowned, sitting forward.
She looked at her wardrobe. There, on the floor, was a piece of paper.
She gaped, thinking it had to be the letter she had just sent. A draft must have pushed it back into her room. But when she rose from the bed, she could tell it wasn’t her letter. This piece of paper was folded differently.
She hesitated, then rose and reached down to take it into her hand.
The paper trembled, and as the firelight seeped into it, Iris could discern typed words on the inside. Very few words, but distinctly dark.
She unfolded and read the letter. She felt her breath catch.
This isn’t Forest.
{3}
Missing Myths
This isn’t Forest.
The words echoed through Iris as she walked down Broad Street the next morning. She was in the heart of the city, the buildings rising high around her, trapping cold air and the last of dawn’s shadows and the distant ring of the trams. She was almost to work, following her normal routine as if nothing strange had happened the night before.
This isn’t Forest.
“Then who are you?” she whispered, hands fisted deep in her pockets. She slowly came to a halt in the street.