Page 2 of Acedia

What was the world outside this house like? What were people outside my family and Clara like? Nana liked having the TV on most of the day, and I had list upon list in my head of all the things I’d heard about from her films and shows that I’d like to try for myself.

Cheesecake. Champagne. Sand between my toes. Swimming. I wanted to go on an airplane and sit on the back of a motorbike. Failing all of that, I’d settle for going for a walk on a concrete sidewalk instead of the dirt paths that wound through the forest around our house. I wanted to experiencesomething. Anything.

She grunted a sound of assent. “Finish your dinner, and as a treat, we’ll stay up and watch a Christmas movie. How about that?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you, Nana.”

“And then you can play meSilent Nightbefore we go to bed.”

I perked up immediately at the thought of playing my harp. It was always such a centering activity for me. I had a lot to be grateful for. Life in the attic was all I’d ever known, and while the idea of doing it without Nana was a scary one, it wasn’t one I needed to think about now. The future was a distant, nebulous thing. We had the present—Christmas dinner and a cozy movie and some music before bed, and Tilly on my feet to keep me warm until the heating kicked on again.

Grateful. There was a lot to be grateful for.

I huddled down in my blankets, trying to ward off the chill in the air. The heating must have gone out again—it was freezing today. Usually, Tilly woke me up each morning with her demands to be let outside, but today it was the noise from below that had me stirring. The hustle and bustle downstairs was loud, and the sound drifted up through the vents into my room so that I heard almost every word with perfect clarity.

“We need to be on the road already,” Moriah was saying. “Isn’t Lucas Thompson a cousin of yours? A relative somehow? He’s the one who found her—this could be a real advantage for us, Giles. I don’t want to squander it.”

Giles grumbled in response. “Fourth cousin or something, I don’t know. How certain are we that the woman is even who he says she is? What did you say her name was?”

“Verity de Jager. The pictures we have of her are years out of date and she’s looking a little worse for wear having appeared unconscious in a canyon, but I think he’s right. This is our chance to make an example of one of the traitors. To really restore the family reputation.”

Giles groaned as Tilly wriggled and huffed by my feet. Apparently, it was early enough that even she wasn’t in a rush to get up yet.

“The entire Council is going. Why do we have to?” Giles complained. He’d never been particularly fond of leaving the house. Or of change. Or people. Nana said that was why her daughter had married him. Moriah had needed the balance of being public enough to maintain her career in the Council, while being private enough to hide me. Giles had given her both.

He and Nana had never particularly gotten along, but someone had to take care of me, so Nana lived here in his grand house too. Well, in the attic with me. It was harder for Nana here than it was for me—once upon a time, she’d lived her own life. She’d been a valued member of the Hunters, and her husband had served on the Council like Moriah did now. But as Nana liked to remind me, age came for us all.

“Imagine how it would look if we didn’t?” Moriah objected. “My reputation is already in tatters—”

“Who’s fault is that?”

She let out a sound of frustration. “Perhaps if you were a more supportive husband—”

“I’ve done nothingbutsupport you,” Giles interjected, raising his voice. I pulled the covers up a little higher, wrapping myself tightly in the familiar, threadbare fabric. “Every decision made under this roof revolves around you—yourcareer,yourdreams,yourreputation. And for what? It’s all gone so fucking disastrously lately, I’m questioning what the point of it all was.”

“Giles,” she gasped while I winced under the blankets. From what I’d overheard, things hadn’t been going well for Moriah at the Council recently, but Giles had never been anything other than supportive. “Yes, things have been difficult lately, and perhaps we were too ambitious in some of our plans, buthereis the opportunity to fix that! Half dead in a canyon, ready forus to take control of the narrative. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Giles.”

I kicked off the blankets and crept out of bed, not wanting to hear anymore. I hated when Moriah and Giles fought—neither of them ever remembered to be kind. Nana said that they didn’t have to because they were busy and important, but it seemed as though life would have been a lot more enjoyable for them both if they did.

Or perhaps their lives would be more enjoyable if they weren’t quite so involved in the Council? From the conversations I overheard, it sounded very stressful. And everything they talked about was so negative and frightening—it was enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

Once I was up, Tilly leaped off the bed with a loud yawn and followed me into the shared living space, making for the outside door with the stairs that led down to the yard. I let her out, leaving the door open before heading for Nana’s room. It was unlike her not to be up already—she wasn’t a very good sleeper—and sometimes, she needed a cup of tea to help her get up and moving, especially if her joints were bothering her.

“Nana?” I called, making my way through the living room that I knew like the back of my hand to knock gently on her bedroom door. “Nana, do you want a cup of tea?”

There was silence on the other side of the door, which was very unusual. I knocked again and waited, a strange foreboding feeling settling somewhere between my shoulder blades.

I hadn’t ventured into Nana’s room in years—not since I’d outgrown the nightmares I’d gotten as a child—but that heavy feeling of dread nudged me forward, insisting that I go inside—that I verify what I was pretty sure I already knew.

I wasn’t sure how or why I knew it was true. Only that I was deeply, deeply certain of it.

I fumbled around, knocking something over as I searched for the cast iron bed frame.

“Sorry,” I whispered into the silence, acutely aware that Nana would have told me off immediately for my carelessness if she could.

My fingers traced the intricate stitching of her quilt as I made my way up the side of the bed, feeling around until I touched her arm above the blanket.

“Nana?” I asked again, startling at how cold her hands were. “Wake up, Nana. It’s morning time. You need to wake up now,” I rasped, suddenly feeling very small again. Like the little girl she’d carried around the house for so long to stop me from bumping into things that I hadn’t learned to walk until I was nearly three.

---