How could she revise her comprehension of—she couldn’t hold on to the words—of someone she’d trusted, always. Someone she loved.
After a while, she made herself stop crying. She thought she could hear her parents’ angry voices above her, still arguing on the roof. Listen, she told herself, but then she became afraid of what would happen if she learned more things. She didn’t want to know any more things.
She heard her mother’s voice more clearly, then the creak of the trapdoor. Springing to her feet, groping her way down the stairs, Lovisa fled to the room with the broken window lock and climbed out, lowering herself onto the trellis, then the tree. Her hands were numb and sore, clumsy. The snow had turned icy and sharp, stinging her cheeks.
She forced herself to run back to campus, pushing her legs through fatigue. There was no curfew on the night of the prime minister’s party, so she didn’t need a pass.
In her dorm room, she kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed. Then she waited for sleep to take all of it away.
PART THREE
The Keeper
The silbercows brought a gift to the creature.
It was the corpse of a boy, to add to her treasures. The boy was wrapped in a blanket from which a beautiful golden-green scarf had escaped, billowing around his head like the filaments of a forest fish. He had heavy metal chains around his ankles.
Thank you, said the creature, startled and touched by the gift, but also worried, because the silbercows looked worried. She positioned the boy on the deck of her Storyworld, admiring him. He had deep, gray-brown skin and a thatch of dark hair, but she knew that in time, his skull would turn white and wonderfully ghoulish.
Then she waited while the silbercows rested. They’d approached from a great distance, balancing the boy on their noses and their backs. The body had kept slipping off because of the weight of the metal around his ankles. She’d watched them struggling, their injured bodies bobbing unevenly toward her, her big, beating heart surging with happiness. Whenever they were gone for a long time, she’d start to feel anxious about whether they were safe.
Time stretched out, and still they didn’t speak.
Thank you for this treasure, she finally said.
You’re welcome, they told her. How is your missing tentacle?
It hurts less than the last time I saw you, she said, which was true, but it still hurt a lot.
The silbercows continued to float there, looking pensive.
How are your injuries? she asked.
The silbercows told her that their injuries were fine today.
Are they? she said. Because I’m getting the impression that something’s wrong.
They told her that it was just their usual worries, then nudged their noses toward her new treasure. We couldn’t save him, they said.
Oh dear! she said. Do you mean you had to watch him die?
They explained that no, he was already dead when they found him. Some humans had dropped his body out of an airship.
Oh! she said. I saw some humans drop out of an airship that time, and steal that other human from the sea.
Yes. The silbercows said they remembered. And of course they did; the massacre of their friends had happened that night. The creature was sorry for reminding them. The metal eggs full of fire also drop into the sea from airships, the silbercows reminded her, for they’d told her this before. People threw the metal eggs out of airships into the sea, then there was a moment of quiet, then there was an explosion. If the silbercows didn’t get away fast enough, terrible things happened.
The creature went quiet, because she found herself formulating a brilliant idea. She puffed herself up a little, making her tentacles long and eye-stems alert, because she was proud of herself.
I have an idea, she announced.
The silbercows all wanted to know her idea immediately.
Airships are bad, she said.
The silbercows were not as staggered by her idea as she’d expected them to be. They looked at one another with knowing expressions, then told her that sometimes airships could be good, with people in them who cared about silbercows and wanted to hear their stories. Some humans in airships told them stories too, stories about humans. Sometimes, the silbercows and the humans could put their stories together and make sense of what was happening on land and in the sea. They asked her, Do you remember the stories we’ve told you?
Yes. You don’t need to tell me again, said the creature hastily, then hummed a little, to discourage them. Since the day she’d lost her tentacle, they’d told her many of the stories behind her own treasures, and stories of other things too, happening in other parts of the ocean she hadn’t seen. Some were stories about accidents, like a storm breaking a ship apart. Others were stories about humans hurting each other. She reached her limit very fast.
The silbercows told her that there was something they wanted to ask her, related to stories.
What is it? she said, suddenly nervous, for they were looking at one another in a particular way, with that shine they got in their big, dark eyes whenever they talked about the Keeper.
We spoke with some new humans, they said. We learned something about one of your treasures.
So? said the creature, not knowing where this was going, but definitely not liking it.
Do you remember that time you were a hero? they asked.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lovisa hardly slept on the night she discovered the Queen of Monsea in the attic.
Her muscles ached every time she moved; her head throbbed. The key, still hanging on its string around her neck, felt like it was imprinting itself into her chest.
Before light touched her window, she scrabbled upright and found her shoes, then the door. She was still wearing her party dress. Outside, that northern boy, Nori Orfa, was in the corridor, leaving Nev’s room. He twisted his mouth at Lovisa when he saw her, cocky, interrogative.
“Morning,” he said, in a manner she recognized. He was flirting with her, in the act of leaving another girl’s room.
She summoned some strategy from somewhere. “If you’re lying to Nev,” she said to him, “you’re going to regret it.”
His eyebrows shot up with humor. “Oh? What are you going to do?” he said, with barely a northern lilt. Pretending to be Ledran.
“Write a letter to your girlfriend back home, for starters.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend back home,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Oh, Sibra Liona isn’t your girlfriend?” said Lovisa. Then, as his face turned nasty, she pulled her door shut again, because she didn’t have the energy for this right now. She didn’t know who Sibra Liona was. It was only a name she’d heard, sobbed by a girl Lovisa knew who’d been involved with Nori. Some girlfriend back home Nori had lied about. But Lovisa would write to her, if Nori pushed her. What a letter that would be. “Hi. I’m not sure who you are and you’ve never heard of me, but if you’re Nori’s girlfriend, did you know he lies about you and has sex with everything that moves? You can trust me, because I know his type.” Because I am his type, she thought to herself, understanding, with a sudden avalanche of shame, that it was true. I use people for sex too. I destroy lives.