Chapter Eight

The soft glow of candles blinked up the cliff side like a handful of glitter caught in the wind. I shielded my flame and made my way across the dark and dewy lawn, the air catching the ruffles on my dress.

With each step, my heart wanted to crack, wanted to skitter, wanted to snap. Tonight, we’d burn his body, burn our messages, and his soul would climb the smoke to the stars.

The paper in my pocket was supposed to be my final goodbye, supposed to be the words to send him off.

The paper in my pocket, the last thing I’d ever say.

It was blank.

Katrina had known exactly what to write. She’d dried her eyes and scribbled three shaky lines of text. A memory. A message. A goodbye. Three things, that’s all it took.

And I should be able to write something, I should. But every time I tried, a lump formed in the back of my throat and my heart clenched like a fist, so I shut it out, shut it down, and pretended that Hans was cleaning the dovecote or on the bluffs, not in the chapel, nuns sponging his gray arms. Not in the chapel, the funeral shroud being stitched around his body.

Wax pilled along my candle shaft, pattered into the catch with slow, slick beats. The lights ahead continued to blink up the hillside.

A memory. Red water swirling around a bloated hand.

A message. You shouldn’t have died.

A goodbye—

A goodbye—

A goodbye—

And maybe I was jealous of Katrina because it had been so easy for her. Katrina, who flitted from person to person in the after-hours of that morning, who fell that night into a dark and dreamless sleep. Katrina, who still smiled, still laughed, still stole a handful of candies from the kitchen like everything was normal, like our world hadn’t just burst.

She fell into step beside me, looping her arm through mine. “Did you write it?”

I swallowed and kept my eyes fixed on the line of flames peppering the dusky dark. “Yes.” A single word meant to end the conversation.

“Here,” she unhooked her arm and reached into her pocket, “I can tear mine. I wrote extra, anyway. That’s better than sending—”

Nothing. That’s what she was going to say. Tearing her goodbye would be better than sending nothing.

My fingers tightened around the candlestick. Beads of wax slipped down the white column and pattered against the catch.

“Isy, he’d want—”

“I wrote something.” I quickened my pace, the wind threatening to snuff out my candle. Waves cracked. Seabirds huddled in scoops of rock.

Katrina jogged a few steps, shielding her flame. “Fine. What did you write?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

“Liar. That paper is sitting in your pocket, blank. You didn’t write anything. You don’t believe—”

I made a point of not glancing in her direction and climbed onward, hoping that would be the end of it.

“He’ll look for your message,” she called. “He’ll look for yours before he looks for mine or anyone else’s. And you’re sending him to the stars with…with nothing.”

I ignored her, wrapped that numbness around my mottled heart and let it squeeze.

“He’ll think you didn’t care.”

A few in the procession slowed. A laundress stopped and tilted her head in our direction, waiting.

I continued, each step heavier than the last, muscles burning from the climb, skirt too heavy, sky too heavy, mouth too heavy. Climbing up and out, out of a world that seemed to close in.

“He loved you.”

Blue grass shuttered. A bird arced across the moon.

“Hans was in love with you, and you won’t even say goodbye. He came here for you . He left home for you, and you won’t even—”

I bit my bottom lip so hard it throbbed. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I knew he loved me, knew he cared, and I hated it—hated his love, the way he looked at me. Because if I wasn’t good enough for my father—my lying, cheating father—then how on earth was I supposed to be good enough for Hans?

I pushed on and up, on and up, beads of sweat rolling down my shoulders. The crash of the ocean grew louder.

Katrina dropped to the back of the procession while I pulled to the front. The distance might have only been a few hundred paces, but it felt infinite.

The path opened into a meadow far above the tar-black sea. Without the shield of the hill, droplets of mist fell, coating our lashes, blinking silver against the pyre. I lingered at the periphery, unable to tear my eyes away from the linen-wrapped body resting atop it. Someone placed a bouquet of blue wildflowers by his ear. Another, a handful of currants on his chest. The flowers and berries to remind him of the land he came from.

The royal postmaster gestured at the fat clouds hanging overhead. “We’ll have to be quick,” he said, the words gruff. “The pyre might not light if the rain picks up.” He kept his chin tucked to his chest, but he couldn’t hide the way the amber light reflected off his cheeks. I’d heard the royal postmaster say that, of all the apprentices he’d had, Hans was the most like a son.

And perhaps to Hans, the royal postmaster was something of a father.

The royal postmaster’s throat bobbed. “Hans was a good boy,” he said. “Always on time, never complained. Good head on his shoulders. We’ll miss him.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, which he dipped into the candle’s shining flame. “That you find your way home.”

An old blessing from a time before we belonged to Larland or Gormark or…anyone.

The edge of the paper blistered, turning orange and black before folding in on itself. With the flick of his wrist, he tossed it on the pyre.

Elin went next. She lit her goodbye and set it on Hans’s chest, among the berries. “That you find your way home.”

One by one, members of the procession stepped forward, lit their messages, and gave their goodbyes. The words, the wishes formed the steps that carried his spirit to the stars, and those words— that you find your way home —said over and over again.

Katrina tore her message in half and said the blessing twice, damp hair hanging loose around her face, black dress clinging to her skin. She didn’t bother to look at me as she tossed her goodbye into the flames.

By the time I burned my letter, the yellow fire roared so bright and hot a column of dense smoke chugged toward the rain-streaked sky.

“I’m sorry,” I said as the edges of my paper blackened and shriveled. Whether for the fact he was gone or for the empty paper, I wasn’t sure. In truth, I could have written a thousand pages, and they would never be enough.

With the flick of my wrist, I tossed the paper on the pyre and watched it burn.