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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MOTH

D awn was blushing across the sky when I marched through gravel in my Divining robe. The other Diviners were abed. We’d returned two hours ago from Coulson Faire, feet sore and dirty from dancing, but I hadn’t slept.

I was due in the cathedral.

Last night’s levity was gone. The only song that moved in me now was the sound of my own footsteps.

“I’ve yet to comprehend why you’ve roused me so early, Bartholomew,” said the batlike gargoyle at my side. “You know I treasure my sleep. If I am rude the day through for exhaustion, I will not answer for it.”

I’d snuck into his dwelling, put a hand on his shoulder, and shaken him awake. He’d screamed so loudly the shutters had trembled, the other gargoyles grunting and thrashing as I pulled him out the door.

“I need your help,” I said. “With a Divination.”

Aisling Cathedral’s doors were closed—the dark, gaping mouth shut. When I opened them, their scream was longer, and louder, than the gargoyle’s had been.

We passed over the woolen rugs in the darkened narthex. There, we waited for Rory.

“I wonder,” the gargoyle said, “where is the abbess? Isn’t she always looming during a Divination?”

I wrung my hands in my robe. “The means by which this Divination came to be were not entirely orthodox. I don’t wish the abbess to know.”

I expected him to lecture me. Maybe even turn up his nose and saunter away. But the gargoyle merely made a hmpf sound and threw himself down into one of the hearty hickory chairs. “Just as well. Sometimes, Bartholomew, I think her quite the bitch.”

“Gargoyle!”

“I am simply saying what is on my heart. Who would fault me for that?”

“She, for one.” But I nearly smiled, and that seemed to gladden his mood.

He watched me pace the narthex. “Would you like me to tell you a story?”

I stalled. “What?”

“When Diviners are ill or anxious before a Divination, you tell one another stories of the things you will do when you leave Aisling Cathedral.”

“I didn’t know gargoyles paid attention to that.”

“I pay attention to many things, Bartholomew. I am the most observant creature I know.”

“A bit of a moot point—you, telling me a story of life outside of Aisling.”

“Why?”

“Because you have never lived beyond this place. And you never will.”

His face twisted, as if he had not considered that. “Neither will you.”

“But I am leaving, gargoyle. We all are. Our tenure will end, and the abbess will bring new foundlings to Divine in our stead. You know that.”

“I see.” Oh—he was upset. His bottom lip was trembling, and so were the tips of his wings. He balled his hands to fists and pressed them to his eyes. I wondered if he was like this every ten years when the old Diviners left and the new arrived, poor soul. A torrential fit of tears at the changing of the guard.

“There, there.” I lowered myself into the chair next to him. “Tell me a story, then.”

He didn’t, stubborn thing. “To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it? And I know only one story besides.” His voice quieted. “The one with the tragic beginning, and the desolate, interminable middle.”

He stopped sobbing, and we sat in plaintive silence. Outside, the sky brightened, birds announcing the day. “I told Myndacious to meet me here at dawn.” I seethed, picking dirt from beneath my thumbnail. “I imagined he’d want to get his penance out of the way and be free of this place.”

“What kind of penance?”

“I tossed him on the ground, and now he must endure a Divination.”

“Sounds like a beggar’s barge-in.”

I wrinkled my nose. “It’s ‘beggar’s bargain,’ gargoyle.”

He ignored the correction. “Was he heavy?”

“As a horse, the knave.”

“You’ve never lifted a horse, Bartholomew.”

“No. But I’ve lifted plenty of stones. I lifted you out of that gopher mound by the west wall, didn’t I?” He’d been complaining about vermin, got his foot caught in a hole in the earth, and started crying. I’d grunted and groaned and strained to lift him out, and when I finally did he was all the more offended for it.

“I have no recollection of that.” The gargoyle dropped from the chair to his feet. “Well, if he is to be tardy, I am going into the cathedral to begin my chores. Not that overseeing you hasn’t proven one.”

He turned, walked down the nave, but stalled at the end of the carpet. His craggy voice became small—like a child’s. “I will tell you the story I know someday, Bartholomew. Would that we were living one of your tales instead. Would that things were different for you and me.”

He slipped away, leaving me like he so often did—wondering what he meant.

Daylight crept through the open cathedral door. I stared at my bare feet and folded my fingers in my lap until the fine silk wrinkled. When I couldn’t sit still, I stood, shaking my feet, then my hands, trying to wring anticipation out of myself like sudsy water from a rag.

“You seem nervous, Diviner,” said a voice behind me. “Should I worry for my boots?”

Hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I kept my gaze forward. “Surprised you honored your word and came at all.”

“Happy to disappoint.”

“If it’s all the same to you, Myndacious, I’d rather we didn’t talk. I’m tired.”

I felt the heat of his stare on my back. “I’d be tired, too,” he said. “If I had to shoulder this place.”

I turned. Armor clad, Rory stood behind me, legs set broadly and hands clasped behind his back, like a good soldier. The charcoal around his eyes was smeared, like he’d been rubbing at it, but his gaze was unwavering. By the furrow of his brow—the deep, unhappy lines—I could tell he was as miserable to be here as I was.

“Why are you a knight, bound to honor the Omens,” I asked, “if you don’t even believe in them?”

“I believe in the Omens as much as you do.” The muscles in his jaw bunched. “But I have no faith in them.”

The gargoyle called from the chancel. “If you wish to Divine before the bitch—excuse me—before the abbess arrives, best get cracking.”

I marched down the aisle. The gargoyle stood in the abbess’s usual place upon the chancel, chest puffing, looking rather self-important. He gripped my hand, handing me into the spring.

The water was cold, its putrid sweetness oppressive. Rory stood opposite the gargoyle, no longer posturing like a soldier, but slouching, eyes tipping dangerously close to an eye roll.

“What is it you wish to learn from this Diviner’s dream?” I asked him, doing my best to imitate the abbess’s firm tone.

He snorted. “Nothing to learn here.”

Prat. “Have it your way. Just—” My stomach dropped. “Pith. I forgot a knife.”

The gargoyle tutted. “A bad portent unto itself.”

Rory’s gaze darted between us. “Problem?”

“I need your blood, you dunce.”

“Surely that’s just performative.”

“If it means something to me, then it’s not a performance.”

Rory paused. Slowly, he brought his hand to his mouth—and bit the pad of his thumb.

Red bloomed over his skin. Rory glanced down at his bloodied thumb, then at my mouth. “This good enough?”

“Adequate.” The gargoyle flicked his wrist. “Carry on.”

Rory didn’t. He was waiting. When it dawned on me why, the spring was not so cold.

Permission. He was waiting for me to grant it.

I nodded at his bloodied thumb. “Go on.”

A line drew between Rory’s brows. He held out his hand and I took it—his skin rough and warm—bringing it to my mouth. “What name, with blood, would you give the Omens?” I whispered.

“My name is Rodrick Myndacious.” With shocking gentleness, Rory pressed his bloodied thumb to my lips. The sound of his exhale thrummed through the cathedral. “What’s yours?”

The grooves of his thumb scraped over my bottom teeth. I tasted salt and copper, but there was so little blood that I did not suffer to swallow it. Rory’s skin grazed the tip of my tongue, stirring the answer that waited there. Sybil , I almost said, the word an ancient stone at the bottom of a deep, dark well. Once, my name was Sybil Delling.

But I didn’t say it. I lowered myself into the water instead. Looked up at the stained-glass windows above. “I’m ready, gargoyle.”

He smiled. Waited. “Ready for what, my dear?”

“For you to drown me.”

His smile disappeared. “That is only for the abbess to do.”

“And why I’ve asked you here in her stead.”

“No. I cannot. Perhaps the knave would—”

Rory’s voice was a whip, cracking through the cathedral. “No.”

“Gargoyle,” I snapped. “You’ve watched it done a thousand times over. For once in your life, be obedient.”

He began to quiver, but he did as he was told. Slowly, the gargoyle put his stone hand on my clavicle. If he were the abbess, he might have said the right words. May you be a witness to the wonders of the Omens. A pupil of their portents. Ever but a visitor to their greatness.

But all he said, mournful, was, “Would that things were different.”

He pressed me into the spring. When I looked up through murky water, Rory’s visage was an undulating blur. His mouth was a taut line, his dark eyes filled with something that looked strangely like concern.

I choked on water. Thrashed in the spring. Agony swallowed me, and then I swallowed it, until there was nothing, nothing—

But a dream.

I was naked, waiting in that pale, liminal space that looked like Aisling but wasn’t. I looked down at my hands and feet and breasts and stomach and wondered as I often did how all that pain fit inside me.

I waited.

Waited.

“I’m here,” I called.

The only answer was my echo, small and childlike in the din.

I tried again. “I’ve come to Divine for Rodrick Myndacious.”

Nothing.

I took a tentative step. The air—the stones beneath my feet—were the same temperature as my skin, as if I were exploring a vast, pallid womb.

I moved on tender feet. Toward what, I did not know. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should be concerned that I was not falling. Not seeing the stone objects the Omens showed themselves through. But a strange sort of calmness had taken over me, and I kept walking, undisturbed, though hazy white light.

Voices sounded from somewhere high above. The gargoyle, Rory—but they were too garbled to make out. “I cannot hear you,” I said, my echo coming back at me, discordant. I cannot hear you , it taunted. I cannot hear you.

A shadow fluttered in the corner of my vision. I turned—

There was nothing there.

I walked on, and the floor beneath my feet grew cooler. Grayer. Ahead, the light did not shine so brightly. The farther I trod, the darker the space around me became, light leaching away until I no longer stood in a bright space, but a blackened one.

The air was cold now. Cold enough that when I exhaled, breath steamed out of me. I was about to call out once more when something flickered in the corner of my vision. I turned.

And froze.

It came from the darkness, fluttering on delicate wings. It made no sound—not even the faintest whisper of a sound—parceling the dark in swooping circles, drawing closer to me.

A moth, pale and delicate.

It flew closer, hovering over me. Then, without sound, it landed on the bridge of my nose, climbing until it stood over my shroud.

I shut my eyes. Trembled.

The moth’s legs stuck to fabric as it roved over my shroud. It was so small, so without muscle, but it was patient. The moth worked back and forth over my eyes, picking, tugging, until—

I felt my shroud fall away. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer looking through gossamer, but the thin, veined wings of the moth.

The darkness around me shifted. The world behind the moth’s wings was so full of color it stole my breath. I saw parts of Traum I had never seen before, like I was a bird soaring above its five distinct hamlets. There were the mountainous Fervent Peaks, the bustling streets of the Seacht, the yellow birch trees of the Chiming Wood, the floral pink Cliffs of Bellidine. How bright Traum seemed, without blemish, like its beauty was infinite. Like it could never die. Then—

Aisling.

Lone and gray, looming behind its wall on the tor, the cathedral watched me with eyes of stained glass. Only now, the five statues in the courtyard were not made of stone.

They were human, each holding a distinct stone object.

A coin.

An inkwell.

An oar.

A chime.

A loom stone.

A sixth figure stood at the mouth of the cathedral, hooded like the others. It bore no stone object—its hands were empty, arms held wide, as if it were beckoning me into the cathedral. As if the cathedral itself was the figure’s personal stone object.

The vision behind the moth’s wings rippled. Disappeared. I was confronted now with Aisling’s innards. Its nave and pews and windows.

Its dark, fetid spring.

The moth beat its wings, and I began to see faces in the water.

I saw the shrouded abbess and her gargoyles. Men in armor and crowns that must be kings of old. Hordes of Traum’s folk, lined up outside the tor for a Divination.

I saw Diviners. Young girls, draped in gossamer. Then the moth beat its wings once more, and the Diviners’ faces, their arms and legs and torsos, grew distorted. Fractured, bent in terrible grotesque shapes. They cried out in agony, but their voices were like the wind—long and mournful and without reprieve.

I put a hand to my mouth. “Please, stop.”

Then they were gone, and so was the visage of the spring. I was alone in darkness once more. The moth flapped its wings over my eyes, fanning my face.

And then a pain like I had never felt ripped into me. It was like drowning, but so much worse. An inescapable kind of pain. Omnipresent. Complete.

“Swords and armor,” came a voice, “are nothing to stone.”

I lurched up, gasping.

I was laid out on a pew, the light in the rose window high above me still young. Rory was gone. Only the gargoyle was there, watching me. “Very curious, Bartholomew,” he mused. “Very curious indeed.”

“What happened? Did—” I put a hand to my shroud, wet but secured over my eyes. “What did you hear?”

“Nary a thing.”

“I didn’t say anything in the dream?”

He blinked. “Perhaps the Omens no longer favor you.”

“Where’s Myndacious?”

“The king and his knights came to collect him. And I must say, I am relieved.” He shuddered. “There is something about knights, their unbreachable zest for virtue, that I find truly sickening—”

I didn’t hear the rest. I was stumbling out of the cathedral, sick on the way. My feet churned over carpet, over gravel, then grass. I reached the apple orchard, then the wall.

The Diviners were there, perched high, white beacons against a blue sky. They turned, sensing my approach, and One and Four handed me up.

I didn’t ask why they weren’t abed. I knew they’d come to watch.

The king’s knights were halfway down the hill. I searched the glinting armor, looking, looking.

There. Near the front, riding between King Castor and Maude. Dark hair. Broad lines of his back.

Rory.

He turned, frown deeply set, and looked back at Aisling Cathedral. His gaze found the wall, and the Diviners upon it. When it landed on me, it froze, frown deepening. I might have called him back. Asked him what he could possibly know of the sixth Omen—the moth—and why it had visited my dream. But he was turning away, spurring his horse, riding until the road turned and the greenery of the holloway swallowed him whole.

“What a charming pair of days they’ve lent us,” Four said, black hair in the wind.

“Almost worth the sleepless nights,” Three muttered through a yawn. “Almost.”

“What of your knight?” One put her hand on my shoulder. “Was his dream interesting?”

The moth. The vision of the statues in the courtyard come to life. Of the Diviners, twisted and wailing. “I—” The dream lodged in my throat. “I don’t know. I couldn’t read the signs.”

One’s brows rose. I tried to laugh it off. “A waste of time.”

I prayed it was. That the dream of the moth meant nothing—that life would go back to normal as it always did after a Divination. I would take up my hammer, my chisel, mind the wall, and dream with the others until our service was at an end. We would bid Aisling farewell and I would forget about Rodrick Myndacious, his irreverence, his idleweed, his sneer. It would all come to nothing but a bad story.

Nothing but a terrible dream.

Only life did not go back to normal. I knew the second I woke the next morning that something wasn’t right. The Diviners’ cottage felt colder, quieter. And Four, vibrant, determined Four—

Was gone.