Page 34 of The Mirror of Beasts

She hummed again, this time with a warning edge.

“There’s a legend in this village that goes back hundreds of years and is still used to frighten children,” she said. “On nights when the sky is free of clouds and the moon is high and bright, they say that the dead who perished at sea can find their way to shore again. They can seek a favorite drink they cannot taste, wander the streets with unfamiliar names, and visit the homes that now belong to someone else.”

For a moment, just one, I could have sworn I saw a shadow of her true age cross her face. “It’s a tale of caution—the very caution I would give you now. We can visit the past, but nothing good can ever come of lingering there.”

“I know that,” I said sharply.

“Do you?” the Bonecutter asked. “Sometimes we are asked to leave behind not just others, but our dreams of the self we thought we might be, and the life we thought we might have.”

“Was that your riddle-me-this way of saying that I should abandon my brother?” I demanded. “That we shouldn’t go after Lord Death? I can’t do that. Not after everything.”

“No,” she said. “I mean the life you thought you might have. When you find yourself in the darkness, you cannot stop or turn back, not without losing sense of which direction was once ahead. You must never stop moving forward.”

I bit my lip, saying nothing.

“Grieve it, little Lark,” the Bonecutter said. “Grieve what’s been lost and keep your gaze fixed on what might yet be. But in the meantime, I must kindly ask that you get the hell out of my workshop.”

The second floor of the pub was an empty apartment with a few broken antique chairs, begging the question of where the Bonecutter actually lived.

The bathroom, at least, had running water, allowing us to wash both ourselves and our clothes before changing into the spare sets we’d brought. After Olwen took a long soak in the claw-foot tub, her cheeks regained some of their color and she seemed more like herself.

I emerged from a quick shower to find that someone had lit a fire and gone down to get food. Caitriona and Neve sat in front of the hearth, a basket of assorted pub snacks between them. There were dinner rolls, the remains of the day’s fish and chips, and cakes, along with pitchers of water on the table. At my questioning look, Neve popped a cake into her mouth and jutted her chin toward the window.

Emrys lay on the floor beneath it, his back to us. He was wrapped in his blanket, his head resting on the crook of his arm. His face was reflected in the window’s glass, strange and ghostly. He could have been feigning sleep, the way he seemed determined to fake everything else, but his eyes were shut and his breathing slow and even.

I was tempted to shake him awake and send him to sleep downstairs, or preferably outside in the bitter cold, but there was some truth to that old saying about keeping your enemies close. At least here, we’d have an eye on him.

Eventually, my hunger overcame my pride and I helped myself to one of the rolls.

“Does he seem …,” I began, my voice low, “different to you?”

“Different how?” Neve asked. “He seems his usual backstabby, annoying self.” Her gaze slid sideways to me. “We are still mad at him, right?”

“Right,” I said quickly. “I don’t know what I meant.” I really didn’t. My head was a mess. “Just … forget it.”

“Can and will,” Neve said, brushing the crumbs from her lap as she rose. “I’m going to see where Olwen got off to.”

Caitriona tracked Neve’s movement down the stairs, her silvery hair glowing in the firelight. Griflet idly toyed with the small bit of string that had pulled from the hem of her shirt. She said nothing, but I could tell by the crease between her brows that some thought was haunting her.

We hadn’t really spoken about the argument in the apartment; it had been shoved aside by the sorceresses taking us, Emrys’s appearance, and our journey here to find the Bonecutter. But now that we’d found a moment of calm, it didn’t feel fully settled among the four of us.

What would happen if the vessel couldn’t be repaired and we were faced with that same question of what to do next? The sorceresses might not want our help, but Neve wouldn’t give up on trying to work with them—all of us knew that. Olwen would try to keep the peace, I wouldn’t give up on saving Cabell, and Caitriona would never retreat from her promise to kill Lord Death. A seed of discord had been planted between us, and if we didn’t uproot it now, its poisonous vines might push us apart.

Growing up, I’d only ever fought and made up with one person; I knew how to do this with my brother, but the thought of saying something wrong, of messing up my friendship with any of them, left me terrified.

Caitriona rubbed absently at the hollow where her neck met her shoulder, massaging the muscle there. Guilt burned in me all over again; she’d been bitten by Cabell’s hound form while trying to protect me, leaving a grievous injury that it had taken the best of Olwen’s magic and knowledge to heal. Sometimes, she pushed her physical pain down so deep inside herself, it was hard to see how badly she was truly suffering.

“Does it still hurt you?” I asked. “The wound?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s only sore now and then. The skin’s knitted back together so well that there’s barely a scar.”

I nodded, processing that.

“I’m not particularly great at this,” I began again quietly. “But are we … all right?”

Caitriona turned to me, her face softening with surprise. “Of course. Why would you think otherwise?”

“It’s just, things got a little heated … when we were talking about what to do?” Why did I feel like such a kid right now? Trying to get the words out felt like the game I used to play with Cabell, where we tried not to step on any cracks on the street.

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