She nodded and tried for the hairbrush again. A sigh of frustration escaped her. “It doesn’t feel right. I fear that something will happen to you.”
“Happen to me?”
“Stop parroting everything I say. I’d explain it better if I could.”
On her third attempt, the brush clattered to the floor. I hadn’t seen her hand move toward it. It simply zipped through the air, seemingly of its own accord, and for the briefest moment, I pitied Camille and anyone else who’d ever had to witness the result of Hanna’s movements without seeing the cause behind them. It would be terrifying.
“It will only be for a few weeks—a month at the most.”
She shook her head. “It could be for far longer than you think.”
“Meaning what?” I snapped. Having everyone around me speak in careful half-truths and vague admonishments was exhausting.
Hanna turned to face me. “Don’t go, Verity, please. Another opportunity will present itself. Just don’t go to that house. To Chauntilalie.”
“Why?” I pressed. “What’s wrong with it?”
Her pale eyebrows drew together. “I don’t know.”
“Is it the people within it?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
I pushed down a growl of irritation. “Then tell me something you do!”
“I don’t…” Her voice cracked, breaking as her throat thickened with tears. “I don’t want you to go there.”
Her words echoed in the air, ringing like the clang of a bell, and I straightened as I heard what she’d really meant.
“It’s not that you don’t want me to go there,” I said slowly, spelling it out for her and for me. “You don’t want me to go. Anywhere. At all.” I stalked away from the chaise, disgusted. “You’re just like Camille.”
She glanced past me, her eyes growing unfocused. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try.”
I knew my words were hurtful, my tone too strong. I was taking all of the frustrations that had been festering with Camille and lashing out at Hanna. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But I was powerless to stop it.
I didn’t know how to end the conversation, how to stop this fight. I seemed doomed to repeat it with everyone I encountered here. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find Artie tapping at my door tomorrow morning, begging me to stay, suffocating and smothering me with a sense of duty and his persistent, unflagging love.
I turned to my window, overlooking the darkened gardens. The topiaries were cut like jellyfish this year, a ridiculous choice—something so free and fluid had no business being stiltedly trimmed into stagnant poses—but Marina and Elodie had pleaded. The low moon limned over their rigid surfaces, casting long shadows across the lawn.
I knew every inch of that garden. Its curving pathways, its fountains and benches. They were all as familiar to me as family. I could walk through it blindfolded and not catch my sleeve on a single barbed bush.
Everywhere I turned on this island was known. Known and drawn over and over so many times I felt as though I was going mad, repeating the same lines again. How many sketchbooks could I fill with the cliffs at slightly different times of day, capturing the same angles, just moving the shadows about?
I needed something strange and new.
I let out a long bone-weary sigh. “I think I’d like to go to bed now.”
Behind me, I felt Hanna’s appraisal, pausing to study me before turning down my bedsheets. I walked on wooden legs to the side of the bed, allowing her to tuck me in and press a good-night kiss to my forehead.
I pictured the same movements, the same gestures being played out every night for the rest of my life. I would grow older, my dark hair turning silver, my face filled with more and more deep lines, but Hanna would still be there, exactly as she was now, pulling up my sheets, offering a quick burst of affection.
“I hope you sleep well, Miss Verity,” she wished from the middle of the doorframe—Where did ghosts go to sleep? Did they sleep?—before lowering the gas lamps. “Everything will look better in the morning.”
A crushing wall of fear threatened to crumble before me, burying me with its tons of bricks. I nodded, my throat too thick to answer, and she slipped into the hallway, carefully shutting the door behind her.
I lay in bed, listening to Highmoor’s familiar creaks and groans, counting to one hundred to make sure she’d really gone and left me alone. Then I threw off my quilt and went to find the large leather valise kept in my wardrobe.
I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to grow old and die here, letting my life wither away on the vine.
I would go to Bloem. I would get to the mainland.
Tonight.
I didn’t care if I had to row myself all the way to the coast. I couldn’t spend another moment in this house, held back not only by my sister but also by the past itself.
I was getting out.
Now.
The carriage rumbled down the winding road, rambling through a line of steady trees.
Everywhere I looked, trees.
Tall, spindly bullies, with jagged branches elbowing for more than their share of sunlight. Plush firs, squat ferns. Ivy and brambles. It was a verdant haze of botanical splendor and I felt somewhat sick encountering its depths. Did mainlanders experience this when first encountering Salann?
The light was different here too. The sun shone brightly on our islands, reflecting off the endless waves with an unchecked brashness. Here, the world seemed washed in lilac and mauve, periwinkle and jade. The air shimmered soft like a dream, like a perpetual twilight. How had Mercy described it?
I took out her letter, pulling it free from the little sketchbook I’d kept at my side since docking on the mainland. I’d reread it so often on my journey that it was nearly in tatters now.
Wistful, she’d written.
Yes. That described this new world perfectly.
“We’ll be approaching the Menagerie soon now,” the coachman called out to me, rapping his knuckles on the roof of the carriage. “Just around the bend.”
I pressed my cheek to the window, wanting to see the exact moment the forest gave way to civilization. I’d heard so many stories of this fabled province, had spent the past week daydreaming of its splendors.
The first glimpse did not disappoint.
The statues formed a wall that encircled the city like a wedding band. Cool gray quartz and white marble were carved into enormous fantastical creatures, all tangled together in an impenetrable ring of protection. Peacocks the size of dragons lit the wall’s summit, showering their bejeweled plumage down to the emerald grass. Swans and nightingales vied for space between chiseled roses and stony peonies. Dahlias burst into full blooms taller than me. Intricate snowbells climbed and entwined around heavily antlered deer and winged horses alike. A unicorn bowed its horned head low, forming the massive archway we now passed under.
My fingers itched to draw it all but I’d spent my last charcoal pencil that morning, wearing it down to a tiny, useless stub.
I pushed open the half pane of glass, leaning as far out the window as I dared, wanting to drink in every detail.
“Is this your first time in Bloem, miss?” the driver asked, his voice colored with amusement.