Page 49 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Forty-Two

A Bird Awake

There’s a new sensation.

Like scraping a knee and suddenly being aware of the air moving across it, raw and painful and startling.

That sensation—that sense—has always been there; Birdie’s just never noticed it.

And now she can’t notice anything else. But she doesn’t have any control of it or even the capacity to understand what she’s feeling.

At last her body tugs her mind back to well-understood senses. Birdie’s listening to a heartbeat.

She opens her eyes. Forest is asleep upright, leaned against the wall, cradling her. There’s a shimmer of light all around his head, dancing and pulsing, and she nearly gets lost staring at it. She blinks, trying to clear her vision.

Forest’s not asleep, though. As soon as she shifts, he shifts, too, searching her face with desperate hope.

Birdie doesn’t know what happened to her.

But she feels with absolute certainty that she was nearly gone.

And she also feels with absolute certainty that it was Forest who brought her back.

Holding her here, just like he’s still holding her.

Forest, and a hand in the darkness, helping her through those first, hardest steps when she couldn’t have made it alone.

“Thank you,” she says.

He closes his eyes and lets out a breath of pure relief, resting his forehead against hers.

“Will you tell me what you said?”

His lips twitch into a smile, and he shakes his head.

Fair enough. He can keep the secret of how he stole Birdie back from death with only his words.

She’s alive, and that’s enough for her. Birdie stretches, every part of her as sore as if she’s worked the hardest day of her life, over and over, for a week, without resting.

The light through her window is filtered through opaque white fog.

Her head doesn’t hurt, but it’s…wrong. Like she aggressively scoured every inch inside her brain and accidentally took off the patina that was protecting it.

Maybe that’s why her eyes are still doing strange things when she looks at Forest. “Is everyone else all right?”

Forest nods, then squinches his face and shrugs.

“Worried about me?”

He nods.

“We should go down, then.” Birdie doesn’t want to scare them. Forest has to help her—he practically carries her down the stairs, she puts so much weight on him—but they make it to the main floor. A burst of pure happiness fills Birdie.

“Birdie!” Dawn yells. “Everyone, Birdie’s down. She’s feeling better!” Dawn skips across the hall to her, throwing her arms around Birdie. Birdie hugs her back, pressing a kiss to the top of the girl’s shiny, shiny head.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” she says.

“Of course you are.” Dawn laughs. “You can’t be anything but happy right now.” She tugs on Birdie’s hand. “Come on, River’s baking. We’re all in there, avoiding the terrible tutor. He’s still sleeping, lazybones.”

In the kitchen, Birdie’s greeted as though returning from a long illness.

Arrow folds her in a hug so tight Birdie notes never to get into a physical fight with the other girl; River kisses both her cheeks several times, laughing; Nimbus doesn’t look at her but is definitely cheerful; and Lake tilts her head, squints her eyes, and murmurs “Not dead!” in a genuinely surprised tone, which is practically the same thing as a hug from her.

Everyone is so bright and shimmering, they almost hurt to look at.

Birdie sits and closes her eyes, hoping they reset.

One of the maids in the minister’s house suffered from terrible headaches, always preceded by dancing lights only she could see.

If all Birdie has to deal with after whatever happened is migraines, she thinks she got off easy.

Dawn happily chatters in her direction. Forest holds her hand.

She sits and listens to her friends, the relief in the room turning the atmosphere celebratory.

Birdie risks opening her eyes. Maybe they’re adjusting.

Arrow looks normal, at least, leaning over the counter and trying to mess up the cake River’s icing.

River slaps her hand away. Arrow laughs, licking her finger. Forest strokes his thumb along Birdie’s. She feels so much happiness it can’t possibly be all from Dawn.

Just as River sets the cake triumphantly in the center of the table, Hawthorn steps into the kitchen. His eyes go wide and as round as his glasses. Then he coughs violently, steps back, and says, “I’m preparing things in the study and need to be left alone.”

River glares at his back. “As if any of us want anything more than to leave him alone.”

“In the middle of the bog,” Dawn adds.

Arrow pats Dawn’s head affectionately. “That’s our girl.”

“What did I miss?” Birdie whispers to Arrow. Arrow holds up a finger to indicate Birdie should wait, glancing meaningfully around the crowded kitchen.

After the cake is mercilessly devoured, not a crumb saved for Cook, the House Wife, or Hawthorn, Arrow claps her hands together.

“I have to get to work, since Birdie is still tired and needs torest.”

“I can take over bathroom-scrubbing duty,” Dawn earnestly volunteers. “Nimbus and Lake will help, too.”

Nimbus and Lake won’t help, but they’ll be out of the way and safe, which is tremendously helpful.

“Cleaning is a snake eating itself in an eternal circle,” Lake grumbles, but she dutifully follows Dawn and Nimbus out.

With the young ones safely occupied, Arrow leads the others to the greenhouse.

The cake helped perk her up some, but Birdie still aches, muscles protesting every movement.

Forest walks slowly, a hand around her waist. She keeps her eyes on Arrow, because Arrow’s still the easiest to look at.

Except Arrow’s already pacing and it makes Birdie feel dizzy.

She leans her head against Forest’s shoulder as they sit on their bench.

“What do you remember? Do you have any wounds?” Arrow doesn’t wait for Birdie’s answer, instead running her hands all over Birdie’s head, through her hair, down to the base of her skull.

Birdie swats her away. “No. Everything hurts, but not in thatway.”

“Do you know what happened?” River prods.

Birdie tries to describe it. “I was asleep. And then it was like—it was like I’d been dropped off a cliff.

I was drowning. But not in water. In sound, and light, and sensation.

It was blasting me away, scattering me. I almost—” She stops, not wanting to go on.

Half remembering it is bad, but she doesn’t want to fully remember it.

River stares at her as though she’s seeing a ghost. “That’s how it felt. The day I woke up like this.” She turns to Forest, and he slowly nods.

“Oh no.” River leans over, holding her stomach.

“It is contagious. You caught it from us. You’re too old.

You could have died. Birdie, I’m so sorry.

” Then her face goes pale. “Arrow, you have to leave.” She steps away from Arrow, hands flying to her mouth.

“You should leave now . Get away from us. Before it happens to you, too.”

Arrow doesn’t look scared. She looks thoughtful. “What happened leading up to your change, River? Tell us everything.”

River wrings her hands nervously, not stepping closer to Arrow.

“I was thirteen. I’d been feverish for days.

My parents brought in a doctor. He got the fever to break at last, but then the next morning I had what I could only describe as the worst headache of my existence.

It felt like what Birdie’s describing. After that, I became a notorious dream bandit, stealing hearts and secrets.

” She grins rakishly, but her cheeks tremble with the effort and her smile drops off quickly.

“You were there last night,” Birdie says.

River blinks back tears. “You remember?”

“You held my hand and helped me walk.”

River nods, beaming. “I did. I didn’t know if it made a difference, but—”

Birdie nods. “It made a difference. I think everything made a difference. Nimbus screamed, Arrow got help, Dawn kept things managed down here, you found me, and Forest—” She turns and puts her hand on Forest’s cheek. “Forest did whatever he did.”

He presses his lips together, a worried expression on his face.

Birdie moves on so he won’t dwell on the consequences of whatever he said. “So you were sick. Forest was sick before, too. And a doctor visited him, as well.”

Forest nods.

Arrow isn’t pacing anymore. She’s stock-still, round eyes so wide Birdie can see the whites all around them. “I’ll be right back,” she says, then sprints out of the greenhouse.

They wait in silent puzzlement for a few minutes. Birdie’s grateful for the quiet. She closes her eyes and tries to feel present in her body. Tries to pinpoint what’s different.

“Dawn said the same as River and Forest,” Arrow says, returning breathless and excited.

“She was sick right before she changed, too. A fever, which only broke—with a tremendous headache— after she was visited by a doctor. Lake and Nimbus were no help, but I don’t think it’s too wild an assumption to say they probably had the same experience. ”

“So it was getting sick that changed us? Have you been feeling ill, Birdie?” River asks.

“That’s not what Arrow’s getting at.” Birdie can almost understand. It’s like reaching for a word, circling around it, knowing it’s on the tip of her tongue.

“Tell them what you told me, River. About what you saw in Hawthorn’s dream,” Arrow prods.

“It wasn’t anything special,” River says. “Just rooms with the most gaudy, terrible furniture. He has dreadful taste.”

“Not that,” Arrow says, bouncing impatiently on her toes.