on the eve of her death. It contained not only her wisest advice but also the very sound of her voice, forever echoing in a song-spell of protection around it. For a long time I’d listened to that letter every day. And here was that same voice, singing to me now.
Without a second thought, I crossed the threshold and plunged into the darkness. Blind now, I had a moment of panic. But then I heard the song again, a little louder this time. Groping with both hands outstretched, I followed it deep into the shivering blackness of that room, stumbling over warped boards, and even once falling to my knees.
Eventually my fingertips touched stone. Beneath a heavy lip, there was a hollow and the bitter scent of smoke. A fireplace, cold as death—and the singing came from inside it.
I ducked down and followed the song to the very back of the hearth. Ashes crumbled against my fingertips, and the smell of soot choked me. But as I ran my hands up over the iron fireback, I felt a familiar curve, the circle of snakes. When I brushed my fingers against their heads, the golden music swelled and the upper part of the fireback swung loose.
There was a hole here, smelling of magic. Inside it, my fingers touched stiff vellum—the cover of a book.
I snatched it up and retreated to the outer room—a place that had seemed barely lit before but that now appeared as bright as day after the darkness. Stopping to peek through a broken slat in the shutter, I was reassured to see that the waters hadn’t risen noticeably higher. I had a little time, then—and now I could see my prize plainly: a dove-gray book streaked with soot, about as wide as my hand and somewhat taller. The song wafted up from its pages, sweet and fresh, as if my mother had just sung the tune.
The book might be smeared with ashes, but I couldn’t help hugging it. I had so little of my mother left to me. Bad enough that she should have died when I was eight—but even worse, she’d sung a song that had taken away most of my memories of her. She’d done it to protect me, to keep me safe from Scargrave, but even now, all these years later, I still felt a colossal sense of loss.
Had I known this book was hidden here, I would have come to Audelin House long ago. And perhaps I should have suspected something of hers might be here. Lady Helaine had been my mother’s guardian, after all. But like everyone else, I’d heard that there was nothing left in Audelin House, that Scargrave had taken it all.
And all this time, this book had been waiting for me to pull it out of the fire.
Still rejoicing in my mother’s music, I rubbed my grubby fingers clean on my petticoat and turned to the first page. In the letter, my mother’s writing had been so faded as to be illegible, but this book was blank—or nearly so. Only if I turned it in exactly the right way could I see something shimmering there.
This was a stronger spell than the one she’d used for my letter. Still, I expected it worked more or less the same way.
I closed my eyes and let myself sink into the music. I knew I had to be careful, because this meant opening myself up a bit more to all music, including the river’s strange songs. Could I keep them apart in my mind?
It seemed I could. There were no holes in the windows here; the river’s music was muffled. Cautiously, I picked out the notes of my mother’s song. As I sang it back to the book, faint writing appeared, then darkened, page after page of it, until at last I knew what I held in my hands.
My mother’s diary.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IN HER OWN WORDS
Some diaries are merely ledgers of daily activities. Some record only the weather. But not this one. Judging from the scattered dates, my mother had kept it when she’d been about my own age—and she had poured her heart into the writing. As I flipped quickly through the pages, the emotions leaped out at me.
She’d been frustrated with Lady Helaine’s rigid teachings:
I shall go mad if that woman makes me practice another scale.
She treats me like an imbecile. Again, she says. Again. Again.
She’d been overjoyed to discover Wild Magic:
Everyone is wrong about the stones. I was so weary of