Page 60 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Fifty-Two

Two Birds Freed

“Arrow!” Birdie shouts. Before she can jump in, Hawthorn goes limp.

Arrow shoves him off with an annoyed grunt. Hawthorn isn’t moving, but the only thing wrong Birdie can see is a single red line on the back of his neck.

“Never give a scalpel to a rebellion surgeon’s daughter,” Arrow says. She flinches in pain, trying to stand without using her broken arm. Birdie moves to aid her, but Arrow shakes her head. “I’m fine. You need to figure this out. There’s got to be a way to help Magpie.”

Magpie’s cries are getting louder. It’s the most wrenching thing Birdie’s ever heard. She knows Magpie wants to hold her hand. She also knows Magpie would kill her without meaning to. Because this isn’t Magpie anymore.

The halo around Magpie’s head is so much darker and sharper than the House Wife’s, with edges clean enough to slice like Arrow’s scalpel.

What can Birdie do? Magpie isn’t in there.

Birdie can’t talk her sister out of what she’s been turned into.

She doubts even Forest could. If they could use Dr.Bramble’s device, they could try to reverse it somehow.

But the doctor isn’t around to tell them if it’s possible because of what Birdie did to him.

But…if she can open channels, doesn’t it stand to reason that she can close them, too?

Maybe it will work. There are no maybes.

The world isn’t kind , her mother hisses in her memory.

But Birdie’s mother is wrong. Arrow, a girl who grew up crushed by an occupying force, a girl who lost everything, a girl who came here specifically to kill Birdie, still believes there’s a kinder way. Maybe they can find that way together.

And maybe Birdie can bring Magpie with them.

Maybe doesn’t feel like a foolish word anymore. It feels like a hopeful one.

Birdie stands behind Magpie’s head and studies the swirls of darkness there. It’s not a channel like the others. It’s a void.

“Magpie in the tree, are you looking for me?” Birdie sings.

She can’t be sure, but she thinks Magpie stills.

Just for a second. It’s a risk to touch her, but Birdie’s willing to try now that she suspects Magpie heard her.

She leans closer, places her fingers ever so softly on Magpie’s temples, and searches.

She looks for Magpie with all the determination and love she has in her.

And, amid so much chaos and pain and damage, she finds what she didn’t dare hope for.

Magpie’s still in there.

Better yet, Birdie finds the edges of the hole they blew in her sister’s mind.

Slowly, carefully, with the patience only an older sister could have, Birdie tugs it shut.

She takes all the edges and presses them together, smoothing them over.

No more an abyss for noise to build in and torment her. Just a scar.

Magpie’s not screaming anymore. She’s not even whimpering. Her breathing is even and regular. Beneath her closed eyelids, her eyes move like she’s dreaming. She looks exactly how Birdie imagined she would, down to the scar in her eyebrow.

“I found you,” Birdie whispers, tears streaming down her face.

Birdie doesn’t know how much of her sister is left. Maybe a lot. Maybe barely anything. But it doesn’t matter, because Birdie kept her promise. They’re back together, and she’ll make sure nothing ever hurts Magpie—or anyone like her—again.

Arrow wraps a one-armed hug around Birdie from behind. “You did it.”

“ We did it.”

“We did it.” Arrow laughs, crying along with Birdie.

“But now how do we get her and ourselves out? Maybe this is how you die. You can’t get me up the stairs with my ankle, and neither of us can carry Magpie, so we all starve to death down here.

Lake will be pleased that she was finally right about something. ”

Footsteps echo toward them.

“I’ll take the driver,” Arrow says, voice low and urgent. “You take Cook. But if it’s Iron, just run.” She holds up her scalpel as though wielding a sword. Birdie braces herself, fists clenched.

Arrow’s scalpel drops to the floor with a metallic clatter as River bursts through the archway with Forest close behind.

Birdie can’t take her eyes off Forest. He’s not dead. She didn’t abandon her friends to find her sister, and they didn’t abandon her, either. None of them did this alone. They never could have.

“You’re bleeding!” River gasps, rushing to Arrow and taking in all her wounds.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Arrow tries to hold her arms out to hug River, then gasps in pain. “Actually, it might be as bad as itlooks.”

“I’m so sorry it took me this long.” River uses her sleeve to wipe blood from Arrow’s face.

“I had to wake Forest up, and then I also had to wake up. Fortunately, Dawn has a light touch with the ether. I would have come right after you to begin with, but Lake and Nimbus told me I needed to make sure Forest woke up the right way, and—”

Arrow presses her lips against River’s. River kisses her back fiercely, then puts Arrow’s good arm around her shoulder to take the other girl’s weight. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Forest looks at Magpie, then at Birdie. Birdie nods, tears in her eyes. “It’s Magpie.”

Forest cuts the restraints, then picks up Magpie, carrying her like the precious thing she is.

Birdie walks by his side, and they slowly make their way back up, then back down into the main house.

It wouldn’t do to trip and break their necks in the servant staircase after everything else they survived.

In the foyer, River eases Arrow into one of the chairs and starts fussing over her injuries.

Forest frowns and looks back where they came from.

He lays Magpie on the rug, then goes back into the House Wife’s room.

Birdie doesn’t want to be apart from him, but she knows they’ll always come back to each other.

She stays next to Magpie, stroking her hair.

“Where’s Iron?” Arrow eyes the hallway warily.

“Oh, she died.” River’s tone is airy and conversational, as if declaring Iron is taking a holiday on the coast.

Birdie chooses not to question how or when Iron died. It’s a relief she’s not lurking out there somewhere, waiting to ambush them. Arrow must share her relief, because she doesn’t ask follow-up questions, either.

“And the others?” Birdie asks. “Is everyone safe?”

“Here!” Dawn appears from the direction of the kitchen with Nimbus in tow. “Lake went upstairs to get something. Nimbus said you were ready for us.”

“ Nimbus said something?” Birdie looks at him, hands over her heart.

He peers shyly around Dawn. His eyes still jump to unexpected places, but it’s clear from his expression that he’s back.

“Oh, Nimbus!” Birdie knows he doesn’t care for hugs, so she beams at him and sends him her love that way. He smiles back, dimples she’d forgotten he had popping into place.

Lake skips down the hallway, dropping the two scarves into Birdie’s lap, along with the stack of drawings. “You wanted these,” she said. “You were sad you forgot them.”

“I do, and I would have been. Thank you.” She carefully wraps the green scarf around Magpie, warming her with the love of the people they were separated from but never left behind.

Forest reappears, carrying the portable lamp that was down in the secret room. He turns it up so the flame burns as high as possible. Then he goes to each lamp in the hallway, pinches the wicks off, and turns the gas up.

“He’s making sure if anyone comes looking, all they’ll find is the site of a terrible accident. They’ll assume we escaped into the bog and died there,” Nimbus explains. His face falls. “And…he put that dead girl’s body on the table downstairs. So it looks like Magpie died, too.”

Arrow nods, face bereft. “I’m sorry we can’t bury her, but it’s the smart choice.”

“You can read minds?” Birdie asks Nimbus.

Lake snaps her fingers at Birdie. “I want you to. Please.”

Birdie blinks, confused until she realizes Lake is accepting an offer Birdie hasn’t even had time to consider yet.

But of course it’s an offer she’ll make.

Hawthorn was right. All these children suffering, and at last she has a way to help them that isn’t changing or quieting them—just making it easier for them to live in their own brains.

“Do you want me to take it away?” Birdie holds Lake’s gaze to make sure that the younger girl knows what she’s agreeing to.

“I already told you!” Lake rolls her eyes in exasperation.

Birdie puts her hands on Lake’s forehead.

It’s much easier than it was with Magpie.

A simple task to find the channel, then pinch it from a torrent to a trickle.

Lake blinks rapidly, then walks unsteadily out the front door, arms held cautiously in front of her, like she still doesn’t trust the world she’s seeing.

“I can take them all.” Birdie looks from Forest, to Dawn, to Nimbus, to River. “If you want, I’ll close the places in your mind that were pried open.”

“Perhaps we should talk about this not in the house well on its way to exploding?” River suggests.

“My girl is so smart,” Arrow says, and gasps.

Birdie hadn’t realized how much pain Arrow is in, but she’s barely holding it together. River helps Arrow outside, and Forest picks up Magpie. They reconvene at the coach after Forest loads Birdie’s sleeping sister inside. It’s a safe distance from the house, so they have time to talk.

“Well?” Birdie asks.

Dawn frowns, but shakes her head. “Maybe someday. Not yet. I can still be helpful.”

River shakes her head, too, one arm around Arrow’s waist. “I didn’t ask for this, but it was never going to cost me my life. Not like it did so many others. I think if I stay this way, I can help make things fairer.”

Nimbus tilts his head as though listening, then nods. “We’re going to use what we have to help you. Both of you.” He looks at Arrow, too. “We’re going to use our abilities to help everyone , because Arrow can’t do it alone.”

Birdie turns toward Arrow. Arrow nods. “I don’t want to just free the north. Everything needs to change, otherwise nothing will. And who better to clean up this mess than a couple of rebel maids?”

Birdie laughs. “Who better indeed.”

“Don’t leave the rest of us out.” River pulls the leather folio from the red-window room out of her bodice.

Birdie didn’t even think to take it. “This is a log of every minister, minister’s wife, and wealthy person who took advantage of what the House of Quiet offered, as well as everyone involved in stealing and transporting northern children. I say we start there.”

“My girl is so smart,” Arrow murmurs again, swaying on herfeet.

“A little help?” River asks, glancing at Forest. “Her girl may be smart, but she’s not that strong.”

“I need to sit up front,” Arrow says. “None of the rest of you can find the way out of a peat bog.”

Forest obliges, lifting Arrow right up onto the driver’s seat.

“I’ll look after our sleeping Magpie,” River says. “If I fall asleep, too, maybe I can help guide her back.”

Birdie nods gratefully at her, and River climbs into the back followed by Lake, Dawn, and Nimbus.

Forest steps toward Birdie, closing the distance between them.

“You didn’t answer,” she says, looking up into his eyes, still startling even now. She thinks she could look at those eyes every day for the rest of her life and never get tired of them. “Do you want me to take your ability away?”

He takes her hand and presses his lips to her palm, then shakes his head. He understands they have work to do. He lifts her up to the driver’s seat to sit beside Arrow, then climbs into the coach with everyone else.

“Well,” Birdie says as she and Arrow look at the House of Quiet. There’s a strange popping sensation, and then the windows explode outward. The red circle goes last of all, raining down like blood. Smoke begins pouring out. It won’t be long before the whole place is gone.

“One house down, the world to go,” Arrow says.

Birdie laughs as the coach jolts forward, moving them toward an unknown future. This time, Birdie isn’t afraid. Because together, Birdie and Arrow are ready, and no one can make them bequiet.