50. Hawthorn Goes Home

High winds had piled the snow against some walls and roofs and scoured it off others. The cold, bright calm of the palace lowlands was a thing of the past. Restless air whipped snow around Hawthorn as she walked to the center of Grey; the still sky above was white and heavy with more of the stuff. A constant unsteady thrum shook the flagstones, like the stirrings of a restless hand clasped within her own. Though the only sound was shifting snow, she found herself covering her ears as if against some great roar; though there was nothing about except birds, she found herself running and darting from shelter to shelter as if pursued.

Grey Tower, looking small, old, and hunched after the glistening might of Black, peered at her above the rooftops. Its crown of turrets was free of snow and crowded with quiet birds. Its dark windows were like hawk's eyes. She avoided meeting their gaze. The tower, in whose shadow she lived and to whose protection she was sworn, now seemed wary of her.

The Beast, whom we have looked in on now and again, was by this point very near the surface. As it came closer, its form shifted and settled. No longer a terrifying mass of unknown qualities, it had taken on attributes we might recognize: an eyeishness, a skinlikeness, a clawishness, an unfurling of membranes, a pulse like a heartbeat, if the blood performed galliards. One might sense a suggestion of flames, a rustle of great wings, a sort of taffeta sheen, a confectioner's decorative sense evidenced in the placement of long delicate spines; the Beast might pass equally as a subtlety at the banquet tables of the apocalypse, or as a costume at a masque where every player represents three simultaneous crimes. Now enters Madame Murder, all blood and bone, who is also Sir Larceny, all grasping hands and covetous eyes, who is also Treachery, all knives and masks.

Just beneath the skin of earth, the Beast's foremost parts were boiling upward. It sensed the nearness of its birth. The closer it came to air, light, life, potatoes, scissors, the less it remembered of itself. I am here to feed, it said to itself. Its thoughts were slowed syrup-like by the cold until they were something comprehensible.

Again and again I am banished. Again and again I am brought back. I would like to awaken and not hunger. I would like to uncoil in the sunlight and not die. Again and again and again and again. They will pay. This time they will pay.

It had thought the same things before, and never made good on them.

This same sense of injustice curdled Hawthorn's thoughts as she finally entered the great courtyard at the foot of the tower. The mother had kept many things from her, and the mother before had kept many things from Old Hawthorn. M. Yarrow holds the key. Every Yarrow was the same. They would pay, too. Though in Hawthorn's case, making them pay involved more "deliberately coughing during important rites" and less "ravaging the palace."

So close to Grey Tower, the ground was shuddering. It made a faint rumble just on the edge of hearing. The vibration turned Hawthorn's bones loose and warm.

Going along the eastern side of the house—through the open kitchen door came the sound of dishes rattling on their shelves—she reached the low archway leading to the Court of the Guardians. Inside the court the little door of Old Hawthorn's room was still shut tight, just as she had left it months ago. Snow lined three of the walls, but the door was mostly free of it, and she unlocked it and went in.

It still smelled of the women's cleaning, their herbs and lemons. It also smelled of mildew, for the floors and walls were damp. But beneath all that was the musty bookish smell of Old Hawthorn herself. Hawthorn climbed onto the old woman's bed and drew her knees up to her chest.

For a moment she let her mind drift on seas of grief. Her limbs felt again the paralyzing despair that had kept her sitting outside while the women went about their rituals. Who will do it? Old Yarrow and Arnica had asked each other, and the same question had been on everyone's mind. Who will deliver us from the Beast? That pale, weedy apprentice? Under their scrutiny and the weight of her own loss, she'd been able to do nothing more than sit. Well, now there was a new Hawthorn—and she did not feel up to it any more than her old self had.

If only Frin were there. His unwavering support had meant so much. But no: he would have been in grave danger. I left him for a reason, she reminded herself.

It was time to prepare. Hawthorn knew the rules of engagement: the Beast shall issue forth from the mouth of the tower and all that. It would be compelled down the West Passage—whether the compulsion came from its own nature or from some ancient virtue of the Passage, nobody knew—and there it must be vanquished. If you issued a challenge, it would turn to face you. There is a yellow spot upon its hide where its armor is weakest. Not always on the hide. Once a wisp of yellow cloud (by which the first Guardian defeated it), once a yellow hair (by which a Bellflower Guardian defeated it), once a yellow eye (by which the penultimate Lady of Grey defeated it). That much Hawthorn had read.

But Old Hawthorn had learned more. And, paper being scarce in Grey, had written it in The Downfall of the Thistles . If she had found a way to defeat the Beast forever, Hawthorn could use it, end the eternal threat, fulfill her duty in the most thorough way possible: protector of Grey Tower, vanquisher of the eternal foe.

This rush of heroism lasted about five minutes into Downfall . Old Hawthorn's notes, compiled over forty or fifty years, were chaotic, overwritten, crossed out and scrawled back in, and mixed in with complaints about the women in grey. Then one sentence jumped out at her apprentice.

Rook is not what they seem

So Old Hawthorn had not trusted the Librarian. She had been wise, of course.

Six Sisters—rhyme

bones of towers—Bk/Bl/Rd/Yw all too large to be built

Song

This last was circled. Hawthorn knew the Six Sisters—just a silly clapping game for children. But what song?

Five above, one below.

Name in painted room: EPITAPH

Ref. doctors' library in the Archives. Ladies and their origin.

She flipped to the endpapers, which the original scribe had left blank, but which Old Hawthorn had filled over the years with tiny, dense writing.

Palace: founded by five sisters the five Rose sisters Grey eldest, Black Blue Red Yellow

Variant story (suppressed): a six sister, no name

Where is she then?

Black builds her tower after the first recorded encounter with Beast. Grey Lady sings

Blue builds her tower after second encounter. Grey Lady sings

ROSE ERA ENDS

Guardians taught means of dispatching Beast. Two more encounters: no Ladies involved

Grey Lady teaches her women the song. a miracle. ASK YARROW

One more: Red Rose builds her tower. song

Another: Yellow Rose builds her tower. song

Guardians are given steel. STEEL IS MEANINGLESS.

Grey Lady is killed.

No new towers since

Why Grey the smallest tower? BUILT BY HANDS

Records/Rook mention wish. Hold Beast at bay and demand a boon.

This is how the palace is built. Time after time the Beast returns. Ladies and women and Hawthorns force it into submission. It grants a wish. It is killed. Repeat. Repeat. This is the palace. The many deaths of the sixth sister.

miracles fade. not all miracles?

ASK YARROW

Yarrow wont tell. Arnica unhelpful. Nobody else knows song. The Beast won't grant wish unless soothed. Wish won't be fulfilled until Beast is dead. ASK Y AGAIN

The rest was blank.

There by Old Hawthorn's bed was the poem that had come from Blue on the day she was taken ill. Five sisters. And—a sixth, green, entangled with the whole page. Exactly so had some ancient illuminator drawn it, someone in the first days of the palace. Someone who knew the truth.

And there was a package from Yellow. A book from the library there. It had arrived since Old Hawthorn's death—she must have requested it. A History of the Yellow Sister . There again, as in the book Frin had given him, was a picture of Citrine pulling people from the ground. But this was a woodcut, not an illumination, and she wondered at the artist's choices, for instead of directly from the earth, Citrine was removing people from great split-open fruits, plucked from a withering tree.

And from her mouth came a scroll, and on the scroll was written in an ancient script, Return what you have taken . The text said only that it was a copy of an original, once kept in Yellow Tower, now lost.

Lost. Everything was lost. Wave after wave of generations had eroded the truth down to its hardest stubs, and even those threatened to vanish entirely. Ask Yarrow. Yes, she would.