The young man looked her up and down with an appreciative lift of his eyebrows. “I thought we could go together.”
Lynet studied him more closely, noticing that despite his confidence and his height, he looked only thirteen or fourteen. “Thank you for the offer,” she said, her voice softening, “but I’m not looking for a guide. Do you really know where he lives?”
The boy shrugged, his posture easing a little now that his attempt at flirtation had failed. “Sometimes he asks me to deliver things for him. When I do, I always leave them on the steps of the abandoned church behind the university.”
“Thank you,” Lynet said. “You’ve been very helpful.” She pulled out a couple of coins from her purse and held them out to the boy, but he shook his head and backed away.
“No need,” he said. “Just seeing your pretty face was payment enough.”
Lynet hid a smile as he strolled past her and she set off to continue her search alone, but she soon began to wish she hadn’t dismissed the boy’s help so easily. Lynet traced the university walls around to the back of the grounds, and as promised, she found an old, abandoned churchyard down a short, dusty path, hidden behind some oak trees. But when Lynet marched up to the door, she found it locked.
Hands on her hips, she looked up at the church, thinking of a way to make it give up its secrets. The stone facade was water stained and overgrown with moss, and some of the higher windows were broken. A bird’s nest peeked over the edge of the shabby tiled roof. Lynet had seen people come and go from a newer church with a high bell tower on the other side of the university, and she supposed Mina had funded it, considering the disrepair of the old church. But why, then, would Gregory ask that boy to deliver anything to him here?
Lynet gave the door another angry tug, but by now, the sky was growing dark, and the church was taking on a sinister appearance in the shadows, the water stains making the stones look like they were weeping. She was the only one on this hidden stretch of road, and she grew aware of how alone she was, not just in the churchyard, but in the whole city. There was no one here to help her, nowhere to go except for her room at the inn. Her heart lurched, and she felt like she was hanging out the tower window again, suddenly aware of how far she might fall. There was no one to pull her back inside this time.
I wish Nadia were here, she thought. She’d tried not to let herself think about Nadia before, but now the longing for her friend was fully formed and relentless, forcing her to acknowledge the shadows at the edges of her thoughts, the doubts she tried to drown out with the bustle of the city. Somewhere inside her mind was a dark void that had started to form the night she left Whitespring, and she worried that if she wandered too near it, she would fall in and never escape.
She headed back to the inn, looking for comfort in the light and movement of the city, but not even the city lights seemed as bright as Nadia’s smile.
* * *
Her head was resting on something hard. She opened her eyes, and she saw only stone above her. I’m in the crypt. As soon as the thought struck her, she knew it was true. I must be dead if I’m in the crypt.
She sat upright on her stone bier, and all around her, the spirits of the dead sat up in their coffins. To Lynet’s right was her mother, sad-eyed and insubstantial, like she was made of smoke. The dead queen waved shyly to Lynet.
“I don’t remember how I died,” Lynet said, but the words came out of Emilia’s mouth instead. “I don’t remember who I was.”
She tried to speak again: “Where’s Mina?”
“Mina is asleep. You forgot to wake her.”
Lynet knew that voice. She turned to see Nadia on her left, sitting beside her on the bier. Her hair was loose, falling all around her shoulders. Mesmerized, Lynet reached out to touch it, but Nadia shook her head with a sad smile. “The dead can’t touch the living. You left me behind.”
“I didn’t mean to leave you,” Lynet said. Her own hair was growing, getting longer and longer until it was coiling around her feet like a tangle of snakes. She stared down at the snakes. They were hissing. “How did I die?”
Lynet was lying on her back again, though she couldn’t remember doing so, and Nadia was kneeling over her, strands of her dark hair tickling Lynet’s neck. “You weren’t supposed to die,” Nadia said. She bent even closer, her lips brushing the base of Lynet’s throat. “You never told me what you wanted,” she whispered against Lynet’s skin.
Lynet’s eyes fluttered closed. Just then she wanted so much. Even her heart was beating out the words. She started to say them out loud. “I want—”
“It’s too late,” Nadia said sharply, her head snapping up. Her face contorted, and Lynet couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad. “Don’t you see? Everything died with you.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lynet tried to say, but she was dead, and the dead couldn’t speak. She tried to get up, but the dead couldn’t move.
“I’m going to cut off your hands now,” Nadia murmured into Lynet’s writhing hair. “But I’ll keep them in case you want them again.”
The pointed edges of Nadia’s saw pressed against her wrist—
Lynet woke, her hair damp with sweat, and she immediately made sure her hands were still attached to her wrists. The dream came back to her in pieces—a mixture of pleasure and fear, but most of all a heavy feeling of regret—and she shoved it to the back of her mind.
It was that church, she decided later when she was walking through the city square. The old church was putting eerie thoughts into her head, but she couldn’t let it scare her away.
But there were musicians playing in the square today, a few children dancing along, and the sky was bluer than she’d ever seen. Before she even knew she’d made any decision, she was sitting on the edge of the fountain that was built into a wall and watching people as they passed through the square.
She watched freely, openly, reassured by the fact that not a single person here knew who she was. And Lynet was thrilled not to know them, either, so accustomed was she to seeing the same faces at Whitespring. She only fully realized how small her world had been when she saw two young women strolling hand in hand, fingers entwined. One of them stopped to buy a flower from a vendor, and she placed the flower in the other girl’s hair with such tenderness that Lynet knew they had to be sweethearts. Lynet tried not to stare too visibly, but her eyes couldn’t help darting back to them repeatedly as they made their unhurried way through the square. Here was something she had never seen in Whitespring before. Her limited experience had only ever told her that men and women married each other and had children—she had never known there was any other option.
And why are you so interested in this knowledge? a voice whispered in her head. What did it have to do with her?
A loud burst of laughter from the children tore her away from her confusing tangle of thoughts, and she allowed the distraction, watching the children dance and play.
Her feet tapped the ground in rhythm to the music. She’d never danced like that when she was a child, eyes closed, spinning until dizzy. Her father always worried that she’d fall or tire herself, so he would scoop her up and tell her that she could dance all she wanted when she was a little older. But the measured dances of adulthood could never make up for the whirling abandon of childhood that she had missed. And finally she allowed herself to admit that part of her was glad the church had been locked yesterday. She did truly want to help Mina, but the sooner she found Gregory, the sooner she’d have to lose her anonymity and slip back into her old skin. Her mother’s skin.