The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,109

Bad crunched contentedly on the small bones of prairie rats.

Samuel shrugged. “Perhaps. It would depend.”

“On what?”

He didn’t answer immediately but looked at me in a steady-eyed, serious way that made my ribs tighten. “Could you be happy here?” I shrugged back, eyes sliding away. After a short silence I moved to sit with Yaa Murray, the gray-eyed girl, and cajoled her into braiding my hair. I fell quiet beneath the hypnotic twist and tug of her fingers.

Could I truly be happy never knowing my father’s fate? Never seeing the seas of the Written or the archives of the City of Nin? Leaving the Society to their obscure machinations, their malevolent Door-closing?

But then—what else could I do, really? I was a misfit and a runaway, like everyone else here. I was young and soft and untried. Girls like me do not fling themselves against the crushing weight of fate; they don’t hunt villains or have adventures; they hunker down and survive and find happiness where they can.

The sound of running steps thudded down the street and Yaa’s fingers froze in my hair. The comfortable babble of the Arcadians ceased.

A boy came hurtling into the square, chest heaving and eyes wild. Molly Neptune stood up. “Something wrong, Aaron?” Her voice was a mild rumble, but her shoulders were squared with tension.

The boy bent in half, panting, his eyes white-ringed. “It’s—there’s a old lady down by the tree, real upset, saying a man chased her through the door. No sign of him now.” Fear clotted my throat like cold cotton. They found us.

But the boy was still trying to speak, looking up into Molly’s eyes and moving his lips soundlessly.

“What else, boy?”

He swallowed. “It’s Sol, miss. His throat’s been cut clean open. He’s dead.”

If Mr. Locke had successfully taught me anything, it was how to be quiet when I wanted to howl or shriek or claw the wallpaper to ribbons. My limbs stiffened like stuffed appendages tacked onto some poorly taxidermied subject, and a ringing silence filled my skull. I tried hard not to think anything at all.

While Molly shouted orders and Jane and Samuel sprang to their feet to help—I didn’t think: Oh God, Solomon. I didn’t think about his jaunty golden feather, his scarecrow clothing, his genial winks.

When a crowd of people departed and left the courtyard mostly empty except for children and their mothers, I didn’t feel the fear slinking snakelike through my belly, didn’t think: Will I be next? Are they already here?

And when they returned, when Molly Neptune herself lay the scrawny, white-draped form on the table, her eyes like open graves, I didn’t think: My fault. All my fault. Bad leaned his warm weight against my leg and I felt a tremor run through me, a shiver of grief.

Samuel entered the courtyard in a hunched shuffle, guiding a frail-looking woman in long gray skirts. She clutched pathetically at his arm, blinking watery eyes over the twisted root of her nose. He seated her carefully, adjusting her shawl with such tenderness that I wondered if he was thinking of his own grandmother—a cackling crow of a woman I’d seen perched on the Zappias’ porch, muttering Italian curses at Mr. Locke’s Buick as it rolled by. I wondered if Samuel would ever see her again. My fault.

The old woman’s eyes flicked from face to face until they landed on me. Her mouth gaped, moist and unpleasant, and I flinched. It was a familiar sensation—I’d been stared at by rude old white women for seventeen years as they speculated whether I was from Siam or Singapore—but it jarred me. I’d already gotten used to the luxury of invisibility among the Arcadians.

Jane was speaking in low, urgent tones with Molly and the other hunters, discussing rotating patrols and all-night watches. A flock of women had encircled the old lady, cooing with pity. She answered their questions in a tremulous, timid voice—yes, she’d been rowing along the coast, but she’d gotten lost; yes, a man in a dark coat had chased her; no, she didn’t know where he’d gone. Her eyes skittered over mine too often as she spoke. I looked away but could still feel the clingy, cobwebbed sensation of her eyes on my skin.

I found myself resenting her. How had she even found the lighthouse? Why had she invaded this tiny, fragile paradise, bringing death on her heels?

Samuel came to collect me eventually, like a shepherd gathering a wayward sheep. “There is nothing else we can do tonight, except sleep.”