Page 9 of The House of Quiet
“Why is Birdie back? She went down and never came up again. She died ,” Lake says, eyes tearing up.
“Didn’t she? She dies, and you scream, and my ears, oh, they hurt and they bleed and I run to the kitchen for a knife to jam into them to make it stop.
” Lake puts her hands over her ears, turning toward an older boy beside her, the one with the missing place setting.
He’s a full head higher than the girl even sitting and has the most remarkable eyes Birdie’s ever seen, a brilliant cornflower blue.
They’re trained on her like he’s seen a ghost.
Birdie waits, but no one responds to the girl’s decidedly upsetting pronouncements. The House Wife continues as though she hasn’t heard a word of it. “And in the bedrooms we have Dawn and Nimbus.”
Lake looks down at her untouched plate and scowls. “The apples are mushy. I didn’t like them.” She picks up a fork and begins eating.
River smiles brightly, tossing her thick glossy curls over her shoulder so they don’t get in her way while she eats. “Don’t listen to Lake. None of us do.”
Lake sighs. “You didn’t, until it was too late.”
“Why are we being introduced to the help ?” the last teen boy says.
He keeps his eyes on the table, shoulders moving up and down with barely repressed fury.
River reaches out toward him. He pushes away as though burned, chair clattering backward onto the floor.
“Don’t touch me!” he screams, voice breaking. “Don’t anyone touch me!”
He storms out of the kitchen, carefully twisting so he doesn’t brush the House Wife.
“Sky is always that charming,” River says lightly, but she looked troubled, watching him leave. “Though we’ve been together only a short while, we’ve all learned to treasure our daily sessions of being shouted at for existing in his vicinity.”
Lake shrugs. “He’s the first to leave.”
River pats her hand. “Yes, dear. We can all see that.”
“They’re going to take the House Wife away,” Lake says.
The Cook startles, narrowing her eyes. “What do you mean?”
Lake leans as though listening to someone whisper and nods along to whatever she’s hearing.
The remaining boy hasn’t stopped staring at Birdie.
She resists the urge to fidget under the intensity of those blue eyes.
He’s the only one unaccounted for so far.
One more name left that she hasn’t heard.
Maybe he’s not rich. Maybe his name is Heron, or Turtle, and that means that Magpie could still be here, and—
“You didn’t introduce Forest,” River says to the House Wife.
The House Wife tilts her head, blinking.
River at last seems irritated. “He can’t introduce himself; we need to do it for him.
Your name is Forest, right? That’s what Lake said.
Though he only arrived yesterday and hasn’t spoken at all, so how she knows is a mystery. ”
“Forest,” Lake says, voice trembling with fear. Then she blinks and sees Minnow. A scowl replaces her look of terror. “You! You’re no help at all with that knife.”
Minnow startles. “Do you—do you need help cutting your food?”
Birdie wants to scream. Lake, River, Sky, Forest, Dawn, Nimbus. None of them are from the lower classes. None of them are poor, so none of them have had the procedure. Where are the kids who have?
She needs to find records. Documents. Histories. But even if she finds where Magpie is now, how will she leave this place and get to her? Her whole life has been waiting, and whenever she thinks the waiting is at last over, it gets even worse.
Rabbit rushes into the kitchen, nearly knocking over the House Wife.
“Strangest thing,” she says, hurrying over to Birdie.
Rabbit seems to have only one mode of speaking, and it’s loud .
But her eyes are bright and she’s flushed with emotion.
“As soon as I opened Dawn’s door, I was as sad as I’ve ever been in my life.
Started crying and everything. Look!” She points at her tearstained face.
“Maybe I’m more of an empath than we thought! ”
Birdie knows all about the different abilities that the procedure can trigger.
She collected information like shiny pebbles, daydreaming and wondering which Magpie would get.
There were a number of stranger, more unusual abilities, but the one she wanted most for her sister was relatively common: the ability to send her own emotions outward.
Rabbit didn’t get better at feeling someone else’s emotions overnight. She was forced to experience someone else’s. Dawn’s.
And if Dawn has an ability, that means she’s had the procedure.
Sky’s tantrum suddenly makes sense. Birdie knew a girl whose cousin could tap into other people’s feelings and thoughts through touch.
She has no idea what River, Forest, Nimbus, or Lake’s abilities are, but she’s suddenly positive they each haveone.
Birdie’s never heard of someone from a wealthy family having the procedure.
It’s unfathomable. Did it somehow become a fashionable trend?
Was it not enough to have their children perform musical pieces or paint portraits—now they added abilities as parlor tricks, taking spots from families who’d waited for years for an opportunity to put a child through the procedure?
“Who’s been moving my knives around?” Cook mutters, then bustles past them and into the pantry.
Birdie seizes her chance and follows. Rabbit and Minnow are right behind her. “I know that boy, Nimbus. His family has more money than everyone in the low quarter of Sootcity combined. Why would he have the procedure? Why would any of them?”
Cook pulls down a sack of flour and stares at it as though it’s personally offended her. “That’s just it. None of them have had it. Not a single one.”