Approximately 13-minute read time.

34

“Tildy?”

Her sigh of relief extended all the way to her toes. She opened the door to reveal Marklin, the only person who might offer comfort at this moment. Of course, she meant besides the witch, didn’t she? She let him into the room and closed the door.

“I was looking for your mother,” he said as he casually looked around. “Adoptive mother,” he amended.

“I need to find her, too.” She had wanted to share her fears about Lady Amaranth, but her pounding heart beat out a new warning that gave her pause. She shook away this foreboding, wanting only to discuss her conversation in the poison garden with someone. Without giving him a chance to explain what he wanted, she started immediately. “Do you remember what the Sarsenith asked me at Wel Mallyne?”

“You weren’t sure the creature said it, but you heard ‘Are you her?’”

“I’m certain now,” she replied, though she wasn’t sure how. “And I just heard Lady Amaranth say something similar.”

“What?” He looked incredulous but nodded his encouragement to hear more.

“I’ve heard it elsewhere in the castle, too.” Tildy recounted everything she could recall about the words. Hazy shapes of ideas solidified into memory as she spoke, her voice strengthening as she became more confident in her recollection. When she remembered the visit to the secret room, she shared that, too. “I’m not sure what the whole picture is here,” she finished. “It’s like I’m discovering puzzle pieces in the dark. The light grows with each connection, but my understanding is still so dim.”

Marklin chewed his lip. “I can’t see a connection, but it’s such an unusual question, these things must be related.”

“I think so,” she agreed. A silence hung between them. “Lots has happened since the lake, huh?”

“And much before that,” he replied. He turned his attention to her hooded cloak hanging from a peg. He walked over and tentatively touched the sleeve.

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“When I first saw you in the woods, outside Grey’therton, you moved so quietly. It was like you weren’t touching the ground at all.” He turned and stared intently at her. “Blending in with your dark green and brown, I thought you were a forest spirit or other magical creature.”

“You did? Have you ever seen one in those woods?” She loved any chance to learn new folklore.

“No,” he admitted. “But you didn’t move like any mortal girl I’d ever seen.”

Tildy blushed but shook her head. “Sorry, I’m a girl like any other.”

“If our travels together have taught me a thing, it’s that you really aren’t,” he replied. She snorted and threw a pillow at him, but it fell short and landed at his feet. She thought he might laugh in his typical fashion, but a sadness lay upon his face, reminding her of other times on their journey where he’d sunk into melancholy. He picked up the pillow and returned it to her before walking out to the balcony.

She followed, noting that night would soon wrap the world in its embrace. The entwining silver argentia on the railing glowed amethyst in the sunset. He gazed at the Hearkenfell Mountains and said, “I don’t mean your wings. Other stuff. How you don’t mind getting your clothes dirty. Or skinning your knees. How you face danger and use that sling of yours. I’ve never seen anyone like you!” He blushed.

Tildy felt a flush of her own. “Well, I suppose I’m different in those ways. You thought I was a spirit?” She sat on a bench near the railing, and he sat beside her.

“I was hoping.” There was something unusual in his face, but it might have been shadow. He looked away and focused on something in the distance.

“What?” she asked, leaning forward to catch his eye. “What is it?”

Without turning, he said in a thick voice, “I’d hoped you were coming to take me away from there. From everything. Maybe across the Atrament Bridge into the fog of the beyond, like a deathsprite.”

Tildy gasped and put her hands over her mouth. “What? Why?”

“A week had gone by since the attack on Grey’therton, but I’d already lived in the woods many weeks afore that. I ran away, Tildy,” he finished in a quiet voice. He clenched his fists and raised them before continuing. “My father’s the miller. I didn’t want to be a miller, but that didn’t matter. My entire life was planned, and Ma, she yelled at me for any reason, and I thought she might hit me if I weren’t her son. We argued all the time. Pa took her side, so I’d fight with him.

“Many people spend their lives knowing they are in a place they aren’t meant to be. Yet they die there just the same.” He sighed. “I wanted something else, Tildy. Something more.” The way he stressed the last word, she knew he was conveying years of emotion and frustration into it.

“I finally said things I couldn’t take back. Awful things. I won’t forget the look of shock and sadness in their eyes. Especially his. I hated them for that weakness, but as I’ve considered it since, I hated it because it made me realize how wrong I was.” He shook his head and passed a hand over his eyes. “I ran into the woods because I couldn’t face that, although I told myself I was teaching them a lesson. I’d wait until they came searching for me, begging me to return.” He sagged, his hands falling limply to his side. “They did come. I mean, she came once. Pa returned every day. So’d some others. I stayed hidden, living off spite and anger. But that’s not enough, is it?”

Tildy didn’t know how to respond, so she shook her head, stopping as she realized he couldn’t see the gesture. “I suppose not.”

“I was well-hidden, but close enough that I could see the village. That’s how I was able to see the smoke, lit from below by the kind of fire that only burning buildings make.” He looked at her, face haggard and eyes streaming. It broke her heart. She didn’t want to hear more of the awful revelation but stayed because he needed her. “I raced home, but it was already too late. I watched my home burn to the ground. I didn’t see them inside, but I knew. The next day, Pa didn’t check on me, and—” Marklin choked back a sob and Tildy put an arm around him.

“You don’t need to say anything else,” she said with a voice barely ahead of her own emotion. Tears slid down her cheeks, impossible to contain.

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Marklin quietly cried into her shoulder for several minutes before he found his words again. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want pity. I wanted to be strong for you.” Tildy thought the story had already broken her heart, but with these words she felt it shatter.

Resting in her arms, he said, “I returned to the forest. As I consider it, I knew my fate, though I didn’t put it into words. Deep down I knew I’d never leave those trees again.” He sighed, appearing to gain strength from it. “I now realize it was Slithers that came soon after. That night was horrible. People running in all directions. Screaming. More fires broke out. I heard it all, but I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t help. I covered my ears, but it did no good.

“Two days later, I finally had the courage to return. Half the town lay in ruin. Everyone was gone.” He shivered. “Place gave me the ghost-jeebies, so I didn’t go back to scrounge for food. I had no hunting experience, though it don’t take much skill to catch fat jub-bugs.”

Tildy recalled that the witch had suspected he’d been in the woods longer than he claimed. She always knew things people didn’t say aloud.

“I was scared and starving. My family was gone, and I hadn’t seen my uncle in a year. Everyone else I knew might be dead. I was in the woods with no food and no shelter. I knew my life was over and I didn’t want to wait. I hoped you were going to take me away from the hopeless days I was living. I wanted it to be over, Tildy.”

She choked and sobbed openly for her friend. She hadn’t heard a person talk so casually about his own death before. It terrified her.

Marklin raised his head in surprise and broke the embrace.

Seeing tears on her face that matched his own, he placed a hand on her cheek and wiped it with his thumb. He stared into her eyes, voice growing in confidence as he said, “Then I saw how you lived. Your singing drew me to you, but the dancing entranced me. With a sly grin, he added, “Your wings come out when you dance, you know.”

Tildy sat upright, aghast. “I thought you didn’t see them until the Sarsenith!” He shrugged, which told her he was better at keeping secrets than she thought.

He put his hands in his lap and stared at them. “I mean to say, you always faced whatever stood before you. It didn’t matter if it was a shadow in the night or a walking rock in the day.” He looked up, eyes bright. “I learned from you. You gave me both strength and courage.”

“I think you’ve always had those things,” she replied, her words barely a whisper. She took his hand, and after a moment, his responded.

“Maybe.” He took his hand away and turned from her again. “You’ve not heard the evil words that ran through my head during the darkest days in the woods. What’s to say they won’t be repeated the next time the light fades from the world?”

“I don’t know. But it does remind me of something my mother often says. When I feared monsters under my bed or imagined Dreddendows in the forest, she reminded me that the shapeless fears always have a true form. And when you understand that form, you begin to understand the thing itself. It’s harder to be afraid of the unknown once you can define it.”

She gently pulled at his arm until he faced her again. “Marklin, I think you’ve defined your fears, and you will not be afraid of them again.” Without thinking, she leaned forward to wrap her free arm around him. His body went rigid but relaxed as he allowed himself to be comforted again. He squeezed her hand, and they shared a reassuring warmth for a few minutes.

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She knew it couldn’t last, and he must have had a similar thought because they pulled apart at the same time. His eyes glistened but bore no shame in his vulnerability.

Marklin said, “I can’t say if you’re right, but the witch usually is, isn’t she?” Tildy nodded. “Or maybe I should say, your ‘mother’ since you just called her that.”

“I did,” she said slowly. “It usually doesn’t come out like that.”

“It does when you mean it, which happens more than you realize,” he replied. He wiped his face clean and composed himself. He gave a little chuckle. “She was right again. She said I’d tell you the full story and that I’d find you a better listener than I’d expect.” He waited as she rubbed away her own tears. “She also said this had changed me.”

“She’s usually right about those kinds of things, too.”

He stood, tapping his chest. “I’ll never abandon the people I love again.”

By the fearsome look in his eye, she believed him. There’s that boy who stood up to Harchen all those months ago. She’d seen him more than once on their travels together. “Oh,” she said, remembering one of the first things she’d said to him, “what a fool I was back in Grey’therton, wanting to bring you hope. I thought your parents had been taken.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said with kind smile. “I appreciated it, even if you didn’t know the truth. I think your mother suspected, though.”

Relieved, Tildy shook her head and rolled her eyes. “She probably did.” They shared one last laugh, though it was the uncertain kind that follows a serious conversation.

With a deep sigh, a last exhalation of his troubles, he looked into the night that had finally arrived. “Lun will be up soon.” He turned as she joined him by the railing, and by the look they shared, she knew something had changed between them. They had a new understanding that had brought them closer together. He said, “I didn’t get to say goodbye to them, Tildy. Let’s promise we’ll never do that to each other.”

She vehemently shook her head but found her throat too dry to speak. It seemed enough. Marklin smiled in response and said good night.

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She leaned against the balcony railing, his story running through her head. The moon was but a promised glow on the horizon, though her eyes were on the stars. They reminded her of her mother.

Tildeneth, my love walks beside you in the garden and follows you across the stars. The familiar phrase was a memory unbidden, but it came to her like the words of a dream that woke her in the night. Tildy’s heart began to race and the hairs on her arm stood at attention. As though emerging from a dream, her comfortable life in the Last Shard dissolved, the lingering bittersweet fragrance of bewilderway fading even as she recognized its scent.

Pleasant memories soured into discovered lies, and falsehoods unraveled until the deceptions beneath lay bare. And like a bursting dam, months of memories flooded back to her. Lost days. Forgotten conversations. Tildy stumbled to her knees, disoriented by the overwhelming sensations. However, her mind moved clearly enough to understand that her newfound fears in the poison garden had been confirmed: at the center of all stood Lady Amaranth, her hand filled with some dark purpose.

An impulse urged her to flee, and her thoughts tumbled upon one another. But how would they sneak past the Slither-wither army, even if they managed to escape the valley? Would the baroness’s interest in her end with their escape? She had done so many evils already, Tildy didn’t think she would be thwarted so easily. The woman’s fascination with her suggested she was the key to something. But what?

Tildy realized she’s been an unreliable narrator to her own story. Now it’s time to regain control. Click to read The Obsequiant’s Key!

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