Free Heaven's Bones by Samantha Henderson Page B

him to a gnarled oak, and a black dog would be waiting for him, and a silent girl would be standing with a stained bowl full of berries.
    He’d think of Nicholae’s words, and the secret he know lay inside them, loosely concealed, as if the gypsy had wanted him to figure out the secret. Of what? Of the Children of Jaelle, whoever they might be? If he could puzzle out the secret, even now, buried between the tangled threads of childhood memory, if he could tease it out and hold it to the light, would Nicholae, and the woman, the girl, the dog—would they emerge from the woods and take him with them that elusive place he still, to this day, longed for, however hidden, however unseen?
    But then the golden moment would dissipate, like smoke, like ashes in the water, and he saw himself walking away, back to his life of chaos, and the choices he made, one by one, and the desires he fed, all to fill up
that empty space
, isn’t that what she called it?
The hole where the pit once was
.

S ERIAH
    They are beginning to come to me.
    For a moment I thought it was one of my sisters, creeping down the wide steps to find me, to take me home. But this was my home now, the forgotten chambers and corridors under London, and I could imagine no other.
    Her worn shoes clanged against the iron stairs. She paused and peered around a pillar, blinking in the bad light and the smoke from my fire in its salvaged steel pan.
    I sat with my back to the rough sandstone wall, so she couldn’t see my twisted wings. Her shawl was draped decorously over her hair; she had the air of a temple suppliant about her, come to ask the Oracle her fate.
    I wondered if she would ask me that ancient question:
What do you want?
    And I wondered if I’d answer, like the Sybil:
I want to die
.
    But when she opened her mouth the illusion was lost; her accent was pure and uncouth and told of the East End I once knew so well.
    â€œYour pardon, I’m sure, miss,” she said, twisting her fingers in her skirt. “But they say, up there—”
    She glanced at the roof of my chamber, where a crude grate showed a wavering light where people walked on the platform far overhead, and the faint sound of the trains leaked through. Shemust have been very brave, or desperate, to come this far down. I wondered if she had any comprehension that this room had once been a plague pit, and that the bubo-swollen bodies of men, women, and children had lolled where she stood now. If I closed my eyes I could hear the dull thump and crack of their bodies being tossed, one by one, from above, so I kept them open.
    She swallowed and continued, quicker now. “They say that you know things, miss, and sometimes will tell. And I want to know …”
    â€œAbout the baby.” I interrupted because I was tired and hadn’t the patience for her story. I’d seen it, so why make her explain? Still, her lips twisted in dissatisfaction. She had practiced the telling all the way here.
    The baby lay, still and unresponsive, its colorless eyes glazed open. Occasionally it moved and a thin string of saliva trailed from the corner of its mouth. It was wrapped in a swaddle made clean as possible and lay in a basket on the floor. A girl of about eleven kneeled beside it, anxiously keeping watch. Her skirts were much-mended and too short for her, and her knees were scuffed. She held a rag soaked in watered milk at the corner of the baby’s mouth letting one drop at a time trickle in
.
    â€œWill’e get better, miss? Is there aught we can do? I can’t afford no doctor, but if I must …”
    Her hands twisted harder.
    Another bone on the beach. In my mind’s eye, I picked it up and looked at its polished surface. I saw another time, a month ago, the girl with the too-short skirt left to look after the baby while her mother worked. It was teething, and cried, and cried, and would not be consoled for all she could do. She rocked, she