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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FEEL, BUT CANNOT SEE

I did not leave my bed for days.

I couldn’t move without pain. And my mind was dark. Violent. I imagined Diviners, lying still like they once did on Aisling’s chancel, only now their cheeks were wan with death. Omens loomed over them, fingers curling greedily over gossamer. When I slept, I dreamed of bodies, broken apart. Of wet, horrible sounds. Of blood and flesh and bone. Then I’d wake, hoping, in the brief sliver between sleep and consciousness, that I was back in the Diviner’s cottage, in bed next to One.

But she was gone. They all were.

Awake or asleep, I felt sick.

On the fourth day in bed, I became too overcome to cry, to eat. The gargoyle sat in my room and hummed to himself. “Would you like me to tell you a story? The one with the tragic beginning and the desolate, interminable middle?”

“I have no use for stories.” My eyes grew unfocused behind my shroud. “Tragedy and desolation are right here with me.”

“Yes.” He went back to humming to himself. “But I am here, too, Bartholomew.”

At midday, there was a gentle knock on my door. I heard Maude’s voice on the other side. “ What , Benji?”

The king’s tone was fraught. “It’s not our place to intrude upon her grief.”

“She needs to eat.”

“If you treat her like she’s fragile,” Benji said pointedly, “she’ll start to think that of herself. Let her remain as she is, strong and fearsome—”

Rory didn’t say anything. He just opened the door and came in. When he saw me lying motionless on the bed, his entire body went taut.

I rolled onto my other side. “Go away.”

“No.”

“Bartholomew is in the throes of despair.” The gargoyle kept on humming. “A rather undervalued state of being, if you ask me.”

No one issued any questions. They scattered themselves around the room, like it was natural that they be there. The gargoyle asked the king for a sip of wine, then coughed into his cup while Rory paced in front of the window and fidgeted with his coin, turning every minute or so to look at me.

Maude sat on the bed. She rubbed my back, soothing my shoulders, running a hand over my hair, like I imagined a mother would do to a sick child. “Anger is a fine weapon, Diviner,” she said, quiet enough so the others wouldn’t hear. “So long as you don’t point it at yourself. Now have some soup.”

Eventually, I did. Neither grief nor fury let go of me, but being tended by Maude and Rory and the gargoyle—even Benji—not simply because I was useful to them, but because they cared for me, tempered some of my sickness. I ate. Slept.

On the sixth day, I rose from my bed, putting all the transportive stories I’d told the Diviners of things we’d do in the wild world of Traum away. The only story I told myself now was a hard-hearted tale of vengeance. Of destruction.

I’d find the Faithful Forester’s lost chime. Go to the Cliffs of Bellidine, kill the Heartsore Weaver. Then I’d return to where it all began. The tor, the cathedral upon it—

And face the abbess.

Mother, I’d once thought her, back when I’d spent all my strength trying to please her. But she was not a mother. She was an insect, weaving false stories, feeding upon my pain—working Aisling’s machine for her own glory, her own power, her own timelessness. No. She was not a mother. She was the sixth Omen. The moth . And for what she’d done to me, to the other Diviners, to Traum itself—

I’d take the tools she’d given me. Then, with hammer, with chisel…

I’d annihilate her.

Petula Hall had been in Maude’s family for centuries, the Bauer name prominent in the Chiming Wood. Indeed, Maude herself was the jewel of the Wood, and I came to realize as we traversed into the hamlet and the village within that it wasn’t always me or the gargoyle folk would stare upon, but her. Maude, whom they would offer their hands, calloused from wielding axes, in greeting.

The air smelled different in the Chiming Wood than it had in the Fervent Peaks or the Seacht or Coulson Faire. Here, within the embrace of birch trees—where the houses were all made of pale wood and every man, woman, and child wore charcoal around their eyes and an axe on their belts—the air smelled sharp, hinting of idleweed.

Folk spoke under the banners depicting chimes, the words of the Wood scrawled beneath, Only the wind can say what is to come . Whenever the gargoyle and I passed, some were even bold enough to speak to us of portents—of the Omens.

“I heard a terrible noise on the wind this morning. Was it a sign of bad things to come?”

“A fine gale blew, and I felled a great tree, but its insides were rotten. Is the Faithful Forester trying to tell me something?”

“What do you see behind your shroud when you look upon the Wood?”

My only answer was silence. There was nothing to say. I’d become molten iron, hit so many times by everything that had happened since the king had come to Aisling Cathedral that I no longer recognized myself. The Ardent Oarsman’s bite had taken my faith, my obedience, clean out of me, and for the first time in my life, I felt rage to be revered. Venomous vitriol that the story of the Omens, of Aisling—of me —was a lie.

Nothing felt holy anymore, except maybe the dead.

“The Wood is so vast,” I said, tripping over bramble as I walked with the others into the village. “Where do we even begin to search for the Forester’s chime?”

“There is a glen,” Maude said. “It’s sacred, because some nitwit from the Eichel family claimed he saw the Faithful Forester there some decades ago, and the elders have used it as a place of meditation ever since.”

Rory spun his coin between deft fingers. “That’s where they have their ceremonies when a new king comes.”

“Which means as soon as the knighthood gets here, we’ll be permitted inside.” Benji kicked rocks. “Your king will be a useless spectacle for the Wood’s nobles, leaving the rest of you to search the glen for the Faithful Forester’s stone chime.”

“I wouldn’t call you a useless spectacle,” Rory said, throwing his arm over Benji’s shoulder. “Just a happy little distraction.” He mussed the king’s hair. “You’re getting good at it. Looking all doe-eyed, practically weeping reverence to the Omens, Mr. Ever But a Visitor .”

“The kingdom’s finest actor,” Maude offered.

“Or her best liar,” the gargoyle said pleasantly.

Benji’s blue eyes shot to my face, as if to say, They don’t know what it’s like to have to perform. But you and I do .

I was still angry at him for the secrets he’d kept about lost Diviners. But I could see in his blue eyes how eager he was to find the stone objects. To take up the mantle and succeed where his grandfather had not. To prove his worth. I’d been like that not so long ago. Of all the faces I’d seen since I’d left the tor, I feared I saw my own in Benedict Castor’s the most.

It took effort, but I smiled at him. “You bear it well.”

On the seventh day in the Chiming Wood, we received a falcon that the knights were near. On the eighth day, we came to the village to receive them. I sulked beneath a birch tree, picking yellow leaves off a branch, waiting.

Across the square from me, leaned up against a tree next to Benji and Maude, Rory spoke to a pair of woodsmen. He was listening to them, but unnoticed by anyone else, his left hand had dipped into the nearest man’s cloak. When he took it out, he was holding a pipe. He stuffed it into his own pocket, looked up, and winked at Maude, who eyed him with exasperation.

Thief.

“You’re making a face at the knave,” the gargoyle said, startling me. He was playing with the fuzzy seeds of a dandelion, peering around me at Rory. “Why are you giving him the cold mouth?”

“It’s ‘the cold shoulder,’ gargoyle.”

He blinked. “What would he want with your shoulder?”

“What would he want with my mouth?”

Amazing how, even with a face entirely of stone, the gargoyle could admonish me with a single look. He’d been giving me that look for days now. Maude and Benji, too—though they’d taken to running like dogs who’d heard a high-pitched whistle every time Rory and I were in the same room. A frequency no one could hear, but we all felt.

It had begun the night I’d told Rory my name. Maybe earlier, if I was being honest with myself. But I’d noticed it distinctly when he’d changed the bandage on my neck.

He’d peeled old linen away with such poignant effort, you’d think he was removing my skin. One hand on my chin, the other on my shoulder, Rory had turned my head, tendering the teeth marks in my neck a pointed look.

“Well?”

“Getting better.” I’d smelled something sharp, then the sweet, aromatic scent of beeswax. Rory spread wax over the punctures the Oarsman had left.

I’d shivered when his thumb had grazed the hollow of my throat. “Just a chime and a loom stone left,” I’d said, “and your king will have successfully taken up the mantle.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he’d murmured, eyes on his work. But then they’d lifted, darting over my mouth. His cheeks had gone red, and my heart had cantered, and I’d felt his do the same in the pulse of his thumb… two beats, arguing for dominance.

Rory had dropped the linen. Cursed. “I’ll get more.”

Left the room in a rush.

And that was how it went. He’d change my bandages, applying balms and ointments and honey, and I’d hold so still I imagined myself carved of stone. But no matter Rory’s precision or my stillness, we were always flushed and breathless by the end.

I thought it would stop once I’d healed. But telling him my name—grieving in front of him—had changed something between us.

It felt like a fever, looking at him. I was dizzy and thoughtless for it.

The gargoyle tutted. “You two have been posturing long enough.” He shouted at Rory. “I say, Bartholomew! Won’t you come over here a moment?”

“What are you doing?” I seethed.

Rory’s dark eyes swung my way. His throat hitched, and then he was coming over, looking bored but for the telltale red in his cheeks. “Help you with something?”

“For the sake of my sanity—” A dandelion seed flew up the gargoyle’s nose. He leaned back. Cried out. Sneezed in Rory’s face.

I barked a laugh, and Rory shut his eyes. “That’s why you called me over? To sneeze on me?”

“A thousand apologies. What was I saying? Ah, yes.” The gargoyle put a stone hand on my shoulder. “For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”

Rory eyes jerked open, brows locking in a scowl. Behind him, Benji and Maude, who were doing a poor job masking the fact that they were eavesdropping, let out a collective exhale that came out a wheeze.

“In love with…” Oh, he was red now. Rory’s hands lowered to his sides, gauntlets tinging as he fidgeted, his eyes narrowing over the gargoyle, then me.

I choked on my own tongue and leveled a finger in the gargoyle’s face. “You can’t just say things like that. It’s horrifying .”

He tapped his stone chin. “Have I gotten it wrong?”

“Decidedly.”

“Oh dear.” His chest puffed. “Then it’s you who’s in love with him , is that it?”

There was no knightly virtue vital enough to keep Maude from hiding her glee. She was quivering with it. Benji, slightly less so. His eyes were shifting between Rory to me in quick turns.

“Pith— no .” Sweat pooled in my palms. “Must you always make nothing into something?”

Again, he tapped his chin. “Was it nothing, that knock in the Fervent Peaks, Bartholomew?” He nodded at Rory. “He came to our door, and you disappeared for many hours. When you returned you were wet and took off your tunic and threw blankets over yourself. I tried to sleep, but you were terribly annoying, breathing loudly, sighing and making little sounds and stirring in your bed—”

I slapped a hand over his mouth.

Maude gripped the king. “I told you they were sneaking around. I knew from that first night at Aisling when he came back and smoked an entire branch of idleweed that he was fucked, one way or another.”

“So I’ve gotten it right?” The gargoyle clapped. “How marvelous. Oh—look! The knighthood has arrived.”

He sauntered off, humming, as if he hadn’t just massacred my pride in the village square.

Voices echoed. The Chiming Wood was a palette of green and white and yellow, grass and birch trees. But through it, down the brambly road, I could see flashes of purple, of silver. The king’s banners—and the knights beneath them.

I followed Maude and Benji on their way to greet them, knocking into Rory’s shoulder. “An entire branch of idleweed?” I quipped.

“Little sounds?” came his slow, mirthful reply.

Back at Petula Hall, gray clouds swaddled the sun, lending the sky outside my window the same pallid quality as birch bark. “Looks like rain for the ceremony.”

There was a bang, followed by an affronted shriek. “Careful of my toes, Bartholomew!”

Feet shuffled in the corridor, and Maude grunted. “Your toes are made of stone, you great lummox.”

The gargoyle shrieked again. I heard him storm off, and then Maude was in my doorway, winded, carrying an iron object.

A breastplate.

“Is that—”

“Yours. You’ll be needing it for the ceremony in an hour. And since your squire has just stomped away”—she grinned ear to ear—“I get to put it on you.”

The maiden voyage of my breastplate onto my body did not take long. The straps were tightened, and the clasps set. It felt strange to be held closely by something so heavy. I didn’t know if my breathlessness was from bearing it, or from loving it. “It’s beautiful.”

“The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.” Maude rapped a knuckle on my breastplate. “But sometimes, I think the spectacle means something. I felt like I was a hundred feet tall the first time I put on armor—like I could do anything. When I was older, I ordered Rory and Benji their first sets. Watched them grow into them. And that meant something, too.”

My voice was small. “I still can’t pay for it, Maude.”

“Oh, the pride on you.” Her green eyes shone. “Would you still wear it if I told you it was a gift?”

I looked down at myself. Maude had told me on the road to the Fervent Peaks that she didn’t know anything about being maternal. And it heartened me that someone as honorable and purposeful as Maude Bauer could still get some things wrong. She was the most nurturing woman I’d ever known. “Yes.”

“Good.” She disappeared back down the corridor. When she returned, she held a wooden palette with wet charcoal upon it. “Now let’s get ourselves painted.”

She smeared the charcoal around her eyes the way I’d seen her wear it a hundred times. Only this time she did not stop at her eyes—drawing dark hollows over her cheeks, a dark triangle over her nose—lines over her lips.

I watched, transfixed, like a painter’s understudy. “Why do folk of the Wood wear it? Charcoal, I mean.”

“Tradition—an old safety precaution. Because of the birke.”

“What’s the birke?”

“A name we have here. Birke—birch tree.”

I could tell she wasn’t keen to talk about it. “And…?”

Maude sighed, making a face at her own reflection. “They’re called birke because they look like the trees—only they aren’t. They’re sprites who prowl the Wood. Once, they fed on idleweed, but folk here keep it stored up for ceremonial or medicinal practices. Now, the birke feed on flesh. And what flesh they like best—” She tapped her brow. “Eyes. That’s why we paint charcoal on our faces. The illusion of hollowed skulls. I know. It’s garish—painting your eyes so they don’t get eaten. But name me a tradition that isn’t garish.”

I thought of the trees I’d seen my first night in the Chiming Wood, and was suddenly cold all over. “When I dreamed of the Faithful Forester’s stone chime, it was always in a circle of reaching birch trees, only those trees moved. And their knots…” I shuddered. “Their knots were made of terrible blinking eyes. Are those…”

“Indeed. Birke.”

An hour later, when the sun had bid the clouds goodbye and surrendered to the moon, the knights arrived at Petula Hall.

They waited outside, just as they’d waited outside of the Diviner cottage to escort us to Coulson Faire. Only now they weren’t wearing full armor, just breastplates and the garb of the Wood. Leathers, cloaks.

Their faces were painted like skulls.

We were just finishing up painting the gargoyle’s face. Maude had said it wasn’t necessary—that birke had no interest in eyes made of stone—but the gargoyle had been offended to be so excluded, and so we painted him.

When we were done, Maude applied a final dab of charcoal to my mouth and turned me toward the hallway looking glass.

The effect of the charcoal was not so startling with my eyes hidden behind my shroud. But my brow, my cheeks, my jaw bore all the contours of a head without flesh. A skull, emptied out by shadow.

“I look like I’m dead,” I murmured. And because everything did, that made me think of the Diviners.

Maude smiled at my reflection. “You’re perfect.”

We stepped outside into the courtyard. Benji was at the front of the line, talking to Hamelin and two other knights I recognized. Dedrick Lange, who hailed from the Seacht, and Tory Bassett from the Cliffs of Bellidine.

Rory stood slightly apart from the others, arms crossed over his chest, taking in the sight of me in my new breastplate. I thought, having so often seen him with charcoal around his eyes, that the effect of the paint would not be so striking.

I was wrong. Rory, black hair awry, rings in his ear, face painted like a skull—he looked as far from a knight as I dreamed a man could. He, like me, looked like death itself.

“Well, Six.” Benji’s arm was there. “You’re about to see me prostrate before man and god alike. Again. ”

I sighed. Took his arm. “If I could draw the short straw and do it in your place, I probably would.”

The smell hit me before we reached the sacred glen. Sharp. Pungent.

Idleweed.

It wafted through the trees—a mist that smelled so severe it put tears in my eyes and made the gargoyle cough.

At the mouth of the glen, five hooded figures waited. Their cloaks were yellow, like birch leaves, their faces painted in the same skeletal design as the rest of ours. Like the esteemed families who waited at the Fervent Peaks, the nobles of the Chiming Wood fixed their gazes upon Benji.

“I am Helena Eichel,” one of the hooded figures said, nodding at Maude. “My family, like the Bauers, have lived in the Chiming Wood for hundreds of years.” She was old—stooped, with a deep, croaking voice. “You, new king, are another Benedict Castor .” She paused a long while. Her painted eyes were hidden beneath the hood of her cloak. Still, I knew the moment they turned to me. “But I can see you are nothing like your unbelieving grandfather. It is an honor beyond all reckoning that you have brought a daughter of Aisling to our Wood.”

“A good portent,” one of the other nobles said. “I can feel it.”

“A sign of great things to come from the Faithful Forester,” another added.

Night fell, and it began to rain. We filed into the glen, where the rain did not touch us. The trees were too dense, some of the birches growing in such immediate proximity that animals had gotten caught and died between them. There were antlers, skulls—the grotesque remains of creatures long dead.

Chimes hung from their bones.

Above, leaves wove together, forming a yellow roof that did not let the rain through. It lent a dampness to the air. An oppressive closeness. We walked through trees—through smoke and gloom—and then I saw it.

A dais, standing in the center of the glen. At its edges, pyres of idleweed smoldered.

The noble elders gathered upon the dais. Held out their hands to Benji. When he joined them, standing before us like an actor upon a stage, they removed his breastplate. Pushed his shoulders down until he was kneeling before them. “It takes more than a strong arm and a sure axe to be a forester,” one of the nobles called. “You must consort with your senses, understanding your tree from its roots to the tips of its leaves before you fell it. You must know its place in the Chiming Wood, and intuit what its absence will bring. By touch or sound or smell, you must know what the bark is like before you cut into it. You must learn to feel.”

The nobles ran their hands over nearby chimes—a discordant knell. “Only the wind will tell us what is to come,” they murmured.

“We cannot see good portents, nor bad,” another proclaimed. “That is for the Omens, and their harbingers. But we can feel them—just as, with the sacred smoke of yellow idleweed, we feel the holy presence of the Faithful Forester among us. She is the song of the wind, near and far, hither and yon. Felt, but never seen.”

“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.

“For it is the Omens who rule Traum,” all five nobles said at once. “ Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” They looked out over the knighthood. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”

“Ever but visitors,” Benji said.

“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.

I said nothing.

A flint sparked and more idleweed was lit. Orange light perforated the trees, painting the entire glen a hungry orange hue.

Helena Eichel came onto the dais. In her hands was a velvet cushion with a gray object upon it. When she lifted it, my body seized.

It was a chime. Not like the others in the glen, fashioned of wood or metal—this chime was stone. Old, and strange. I’d seen it thousands of times before.

But only ever in my dreams.

“Take it in,” Helena Eichel said, scouring the crowd. “Listen to the wind. To the voice of the Faithful Forester, sounding between the trees.” She lifted her hand. Struck the chime. “And feel.”