Page 58 of Shadows of Perl

“Don’t you want to be there?”

“I watched you have your debs buried alive.” The truth slips out and I can’t force it back in. “No. I don’t have the slightest desire to go. Or to read the books you’ve sent to my room, if we’re being completely honest.”

“You act like his mother wasn’t right there. As if my Draguns weren’t all over that forest. We would never let any harm come to anyone. I watched Georgie take his first steps. I love that boy.” She pokes me in the chest, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Beaulah truly upset. “You won’t imply that I don’t.”

“It’s cruel.”

She puts the bin of rocks back on the top shelf and returns the straps to manacles. When she faces me again, her expression is kind.

“Do you know how many people live their entire lives trying to find the courage to face their fear? There’s nothing Georgie will hesitate at now.” She pets the ends of my hair. “After all the time you spent at your grandmother’s, you cannot tell me you don’t wish you could have stood up for yourself sooner.”

I can’t meet her eyes. There’s some truth to that I can’t deny.

She opens my palm. I know what she wants. I fill it with shadows—swirling, dark, angry shadows. “All this power, Quell, is useless if fear controls you. And if you want honesty, you’re desperate for your mother because you’re scared of the girl in the mirror.”

My heart hammers. “I love my mother and miss her.”

“Even now, fear erects walls around your conscience.”

I don’t believe my ears. “You want me to agree that burying débutants alive is a proper way to teach them bravery.”

“I want you to trust your magical instincts, Miss Marionne. Which are telling you that Georgie is more prepared to survive this Order today than he was yesterday. He will not be among the threatened, he will be the threat. And that is a good place to be in a world like ours. In your gut, you know that’s true.”

For minutes, we don’t speak. Then Beaulah sets a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“A good Mother trains the children she loves for their later benefit.”

“My mother loves me.”

“And yet your grandmother and your mother both left you so unprepared.” She dusts off my clothes and I let her. “You’ll be running forever until you look at that girl in the mirror and, without anyone’s approval, unleash her.” She walks toward the door.

“I am not a Darkbearer,” I mutter.

She marches back toward me. “What is a Darkbearer but a person who knows what they are capable of? A person who is not controlled by fear, or by an institution, but exists on their own terms? Tell me, Quell, if you made the rules, would other little girls like you have lived their entire childhood running for their lives?”

I can almost feel the ratty blanket Mom and I slept on in our first apartment before we had any furniture.

“Scavenging what you can?”

I can still feel the ache of my stomach and the often bare fridge.

“Moving around like some vagrant?”

I see the looks people gave, that time we had to ask strangers for change.

“Of course not.”

“Darkbearers of the ancient days are dead. And so are their crimes. Call yourself what you want, Quell.” She purses her lips in thought before continuing. “But the Order needs someone like you. Everyone has a role to play.” She gestures at the shelf. “Take advantage of all my years of research. Get acquainted, get comfortable. If you cannot be yourself around people, then are they your people?” She waits for a response.

I think of Abby and pull at a thread on my clothes, unsure what to say.

“You are not worthless; you are a gift.”

Beaulah’s words are a warm blanket in a blustery world that confuses me more the longer I encounter it. My toushana is who I am, but if I let myself give in to it fully, who am I then? Where does that lead me? The history books say one thing. Beaulah says another. Trust myself, she’d say.

She watches me go, and her words replay in my mind like a song. And I’m not sure if it’s stuck in my head or if I’ve put it on repeat. I’ve never heard anyone talk about me or my toushana that way. Embracing it at my grandmother’s was the epitome of defiance. And I worry every day whether my mother will even look at me the same way.

I don’t speak the entire walk back to my room, my mind whirring. Georgie did seem alright after he calmed down. But his fear wasn’t the only thing left in that grave. A piece of his humanity stayed buried. But if it makes him safer, allows him to have a life that’s his own, how can it be entirely wrong? I can’t pretend that part of me doesn’t wonder what it would have been like to grow up proud of my magic…instead of scared that its existence would get me killed.

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