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As she approaches the door to the staircase, Ernestine whistles the song that the gulls outside her window were singing when she woke. It’s not much of an offering; but most of the shadows in the Stair Tenebrous are simple creatures, easily distracted by any fresh news or sufficiently clear remembrance.
The air was bright this morning, warming quickly as Ernestine opened the shutters, unlocked the doors of the House, and set the maids and menservants about their work. It was fitting weather; the last of the blossoms from the three-flowered yew had fallen the night before, and so it was officially summer on the isle at last.
The blossoms had been white again this year.
Ernestine shakes her head to clear it as she begins to descend the stair, her gleanings from the traps in the kitchen bundled up in her skirts. As she reaches the half-landing, Donkerling’s voice comes sighing out from the planks under her feet.
“For me... for me!” it croons, making the old wood creak in time to its voice.
Ernestine sinks down slowly to her knees, and lets the small gathered bodies spill out of her lap and onto the ground. One of the mice is still alive; it lets out a short squeak at finding itself freed, and begins to pick its way over the corpses of its fellows towards a crack in the floorboards. When the tendril of darkness snakes out of the gap and wraps itself around the mouse’s body, it doesn’t squeak again - it doesn’t have time. Within minutes all the mice have been consumed, with only some little heaps of dust to show where they had lain. Donkerling is singing quietly to itself. Some of it sounds like Greek, but most of the syllables are strange to Ernestine’s ears. She thinks she can make out the words for ‘sweet’, and ‘ocean’, and ‘devour’. She turns around and settles herself, sitting on the topmost stair of the landing.
“Now, Donkerling,” she says, “tell me again about the ship you saw wrecked off the west coast. Was it dashed on the sharp rocks by Kynance? Or stranded in those shallows by Ragsworth Bay, maybe?”
Donkerling ceases its song; after a moment’s pause, it begins to speak of the shipwreck in its wistful, sighing voice. Ernestine draws her notebook and pencil from a pocket and begins, with satisfaction, to make notes. A white-blossom year may be a bad year for births; but it is, at least, a most auspicious year for recovering the gifts of the dead.
~
Natan has finished his harvesting, but he allows himself a few minutes simply to stand, and breathe in the perfumed air of the physic garden. The sweetness of lavender and the earthiness of rosemary mingle with the faint tang of salt from the sea breeze. He draws his cloak more tightly around himself, holding it close over his chest; the wind has a bite to it today, as autumn begins to set in in earnest.
He says a short prayer of thanks, for the bounties of the earth and for the shelter afforded to him and his family. One of the brothers who is tending to some of the growing beds watches him curiously, but without the air of suspicion Natan might have expected in years past. He has proved his worth now, as a healer if nothing else, and the monks seem content to let him go about his business without either interfering unduly or badgering him to death about the practice of his faith. (It’s true that Natan overheard two of them arguing last week over whether Judaism fell more properly under the auspices of the Vagabond or the Sun-in-Rags, and came away with a pounding headache and his tongue sore from how thoroughly he had bitten it; but he’s endured much worse over the years.) Natan nods to his silent observer, who flushes a little at having been caught staring but manages to nod back, and then gathers up his basket and his medicinal bag. He has an appointment in the Earl’s meadow.
The crow is waiting for him in the branches of the yew tree, as usual. Natan seats himself on the ground and calls a greeting to it, and it flutters down to perch on his right knee. He’s pleased to see that it seems to move without pain now, and its flight is only a trifle uneven. Carefully, he stretches out the wing to examine it.
The physical wound is healed as well as any apothecary could wish, the break mended so thoroughly it’s as though it was never there. Only a few of the feathers still show signs of contamination; as they catch the sunlight they suddenly flash with colours that do not exist, and Natan has to close his eyes and count slowly backwards as the world momentarily becomes hazy, the edges of his vision filling with a fog that hides many wondrous shapes. When he thinks it’s safe again, he blinks a few times, and finds the crow watching him, its head tilted to one side.
“No need to concern yourself, friend,” he says, and hunts around in his bag for the tincture he prepared in the morning. He anoints the crow’s wing slowly and thoroughly, singing a prayer against corruption as he does.
When he has finished, the bird hops down onto the ground, strutting forward until it finds a patch of bare earth that hasn’t yet been covered with drying leaves. It cocks its head to the side again and squawks, then begins to scratch something into the soil. Natan feels his breath catch in his throat as, slowly but unmistakably, the long, delicate characters of Ramsund become legible.
In the Second History the Thunderskin was named Zagreus, and was a God-from-Blood twice over; first when he was born, and second when the Titans ripped him apart so that he might be born again. In the Fifth History the Thunderskin was named Marsyas, and was a God-from-Flesh, made so at the exact instant of his ending. In the Third History the Thunderskin never had another name; it was merely a god that had always been dead....
Eagerly, Natan brings out bread, fresh-baked that morning, and the blackberries he picked an hour before; he breaks them up into small, easily digestible pieces, and lays them on the grass. It’s an old, old piece of wisdom - whenever a crow brings you something you like, reward it. It will learn to bring you more of the same in the future.
~
In a Brancrug winter there always come days that are startlingly clear. The sky is unclouded at such times, and turns a chilly cobalt that matches almost exactly the colour of the sea below. Dy’lugarn, they are sometimes called in Kernewek Henavek, Lantern-days, because the light they bring is as bright and the cold as unmerciful as the gaze of the Watchman himself.
Ehsan feels the cold much more keenly than he used to. On the bare flats of Crowcross Sands, exposed to the weather from all directions and with his boots sunk half an inch into the waterlogged ground, the problem is especially acute. It is one thing to know as a healer knows that human skin is fragile, and lacks the protections afforded to many other creatures; it is quite another to have the wind whip through your overcoat and feel its iciness pierce you all the way down to the marrow. He takes a few minutes to rub his hands together, trying to restore some feeling to his fingers, before he hauls his nets in.
The slim bodies of pilchards glisten silver in the morning light. Some of them are still thrashing, scattering drops of water up into the air in wide arcs. Ehsan is glad to see them; he has enough here for a fine stargazy pie, and he’s determined that by the time spring comes he will have perfected his recipe.
Some of the fish are wrapped in Eva’s Locks.
Ehsan sighs to himself as he disentangles his catch and packs it away, smoothing out the long, green-white strands of the seaweed, careful not to break any. (One advantage of his new form - human fingers are better suited to such delicate pursuits than the pounding, burrowing fists of a skaptodon.) He will bundle them up and tie them his belt; the drip of seawater down his trousers will be unwelcome, but by now his legs can scarcely get any colder. Later he will hang the Locks from the boughs of the great yew to dry out. They will accumulate more power there than anywhere else, and such a useful ingredient should not go to waste.
The sea gives, and the sea takes away; and everything that is given to it returns, eventually, in one form or another. The tide inevitably comes in, and washes out what was on the shore before, and decorates it with new offerings, fresh wonders. There is no sense in regret.
But as Ehsan climbs the path up the cliffside towards the House he is remembering the pale of Eva’s hair, the cock of her head, the small, secret quirk of her smile, and there is a sorrow in his chest that he thinks will never die.
~
Coseley is in his study, feeling his mind slow and still and crystalise as he takes in all the possibilities of the Wolf-Word. He is taking a final wound from a minion of a Lantern-puppet in a garrett in London in 1928, and he is kneeling to make his vows with the taste of the water of Lethe already fleeing from his mouth, and he is arguing with Hersault in a tavern in a Paris slum in 1765, and he is making furious revisions to his masterwork as the final years of the nineteenth century close in around him like shadows, and he is ending, beautifully, at his appointed time.
For the most part, though, he is making his way through the twisting paths of the Labyrinth Season to the gates of Hush House. It’s the end of 1937, as much as it is any time at all; Numa is a law unto itself when it comes to most of the forces that govern the world.
The one-who-might-be-the-Herald welcomes him in with all due ceremony. They discuss Coseley’s needs for a few minutes; the Librarian nods and makes a few notes, and wisely declines even to attempt to understand the matter he needs to research. Coseley has probably read every volume in the collection; but he has not read each of them in every History, and even re-reading may sometimes have its virtues. He is graciously granted permission to explore the grounds of the House while he waits for his book. There is only one place that he wishes to go, of course.
The Nume-Brume lies heavily across Earl Brian’s Field, veiling the earth and a good three inches above it. Pleasingly, it muffles Coseley’s steps to absolute silence as he walks; the air tastes of silver secrets, and the opening of ways. He crouches down by the tree, and brushes the mists to one side, exhaling long and slow across the patch of ground he has come to inspect.
Husher’s footprints are not visible, but when he breathes in again, Coseley summons the memory of them up to study. They are exactly the same as they were the last time he examined them; but they are newly made this year. Coseley smiles wryly, and permits himself a few words.
“Solomon, Solomon,” he murmurs. “You were always cannier than I gave you credit for; but have you been quite quiet enough? I wonder.”
A footprint is a trace. A trace, with enough skill, can always be followed. Husher may be nowhere, but he is not Nowhere, not yet; and Coseley has promised himself one last debate before the two of them are finally silent.
~
The days have been growing longer for some time, and the frost broke last week as the soil began to warm. But today is the first day that the wind has brought her a blossom from Earl Brian’s yew, so for Terrence, it is the birthday of the new year. She snatches the flower from the air with her beak, and retreats with it inside her coop so that no stray breeze can steal it away again. She ruffles up her feathers contentedly as she examines her prize.
The petals are black as the Velvet’s fur. A year for the revealing of secrets, and the creation of new ones.
She makes her way to the ground with an ungainly flutter, and tucks her wings back behind her as she struts across the yard to her grapevine, to see if the fruit has ripened enough to be worth eating yet. Strictly speaking she doesn’t need to eat; but it has never lost its pleasures for her. As she pecks experimentally at a grape, she wonders whether the latest custodian will find her soon. She hopes they may; the garden is getting dreadfully overgrown.
The Librarian should be astonished to find her alive, so far within the depths of the House; but of course they won’t be. They will buy her a companion, take her eggs with gratitude, add her care to their daily round of chores, and in a week they will forget that they didn’t acquire both chickens together. In nearly two thousand years, no-one has ever wondered why they knew Terrence's name at first sight, nor thought to ask whether it might be the formidable matrons of Brancrug who are named after her, rather than the other way around.
It may be a year for the revelation of secrets; but Terrence is fairly sure that hers is still safe.