Page 60 of Skysong

But her voice trailed off, her face falling as she and Girard looked at each other.

Afewyearsfromnow.

Andala had spoken without thinking. The words presupposed the existence of a future: for Amie, for them all. But if the darkness outside persisted … there would be no such thing as the future. Nothing beyond the black and the cold, and a slow, starving death.

‘What are we going to do?’ Girard murmured.

Andala was touched by his use of the wordwe, but this was not215his problem to solve. ‘You’re not going to do anything. You and Amie are going to stay here and stay safe.’

He frowned. ‘And your mother? Isn’t there some way she can help you?’

Andala swallowed. ‘I don’t know yet. That’s what I came here to find out.’

Girard rose. ‘Then let’s go and talk to her. There’s no more time to waste.’ He reached a hand towards her. ‘Are you ready?’

She hesitated. She wasn’t ready at all. And a gnawing part of her feared that nothing her mother knew would change anything anyway.

But she had to try.

Girard’s hand was still extended. Andala took it and rose from her seat, then drew him to her in a brief embrace. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

He smiled as they broke apart. ‘Thank me when we work out how to get the sun to rise.’

216

Chapter 29

Time.

To think Oriane had considered the concept so little, before. But evenbeforehad its grounding in time itself, and was therefore suddenly incomprehensible. What was before?Whenwas it? All she knew anymore wasnow.

Now was the rush of the hours as they flew past, the drag of them as they held her in place. Now was the pain that had been sharp, and then grew dull, and finally disappeared, leaving an emptiness in its place that was somehow worse. Now was the slippage of her mind, her memories, escaping through the bars of her cage and leaving her a shadow of herself.

The king’s words still echoed in her mind:‘I wish you’d never brought me the skylark, girl …’

But was it solely Andala’s fault, when Oriane herself had come looking for exactly what she’d found? No. She was to blame, too. She always had been.

In one rare, shining moment, a flash of hope had briefly lit up the void. What was it Tomas had said about the nightingale? But soon that, too, was extinguished. There was no nightingale. No one else like her. The world was dark, her father was dead, and Oriane was alone.217

After a while, she stopped thinking of her father. Of Andala. Kitt, the king, the palace she’d begun to treat like home, the pile of ash and scorched wood that had been the home she should never have left. The hidden sun, and the hidden song inside her. It all began to bleed away.

The voices that murmured around her, the hands that reached for her, the discomfort that sometimes threatened to turn into pain – even those faded into a distant sphere from which she soon became quite separate. It was not her they were touching and testing and threatening. It was her ghost.

How long did she sit there, statue-still in her gilded prison? How many hours passed? How many days? It did not matter anymore. Her world had shrunk to the patch of darkness between these golden bars. For all she knew, there was not a soul beyond it. Soon she doubted that there was even a soul within it. She was empty, immaterial, invisible.

Oriane was so far gone that she barely noticed when someone came to steal her away.

218

Chapter 30

Andala let Girard lead her into the hallway.Safe, she told herself, still feeling panicky, light-headed.You’resafehere.There’snothingtofear.

But as they stepped into the kitchen, it was fear that gripped her still, though it was of a different kind now – a sharp, specific fear, one she thought she’d left behind five long years ago.

‘Daddy!’ Amie cried as Girard entered. ‘Grandma made me some cocoa to have with my porridge.’

‘Coo-coo, did you say?’ Girard bent down before the chair Amie was seated on, blocking her from Andala’s view. Leilyn watched them fondly from beside the stove. ‘What in all the worlds iscoo-coo?’

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