Page 14 of The Iron Dagger
“Gideon,” she said. “I would like to bring you somewhere special to me. A sacred place.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I need you to see something. Best bundle up and bring your cane. It’s a bit of a walk.”
Warmed from the stew, they set out from the cottage with Seraphine on their heels, moving slowly as Gideon navigated the forest floor with his walking stick.
“I feel that I won’t have to use this much longer,” he said. “It’s only a bit sore now. Not like before.”
Hara said nothing. It was rare that she brought anyone to her sacred spaces. In fact, she could not remember the last time she had invited someone willingly, aside from Seraphine. A small part of her wondered if it was cruel of her to do this, but another part of her didn’t care.
Moonlight gilded their path in silver, reassuring Hara and warming her like sunlight. Hara’s heart beat faster as they approached the fallen log that formed a natural altar, and she found that she was nervous about bringing him here. What if he scoffed at her memories, or did not believe what he saw? It would be akin to him kicking Seraphine.
With this worry on her mind, she brought him to a nearby rock and bade him to sit, then went to the felled tree and placed her hands on its soft, mossy surface in greeting. She laid her brow to the trunk, feeling it acknowledge her, the millions of lichens and mosses and insects recognizing her touch and vibrating with life. She could feel what she wanted hoveringthere, like a shiver she had not yet let steal through her body. She had never attempted this before, but she felt sure.
“Gideon,” she whispered. “Come to me.”
“What are you going to do?” he said with trepidation.
Impatience licked at her, and she held out her hand wordlessly.
She heard slow footsteps, and then felt him lower himself to his knees next to her. Reaching out, she grasped his hand and placed it on the tree, laying her fingers over his.
“Kneel down, like me.”
A brief pause, and then he knelt, his brow touching the fallen tree.
“I want to show you what happened to my mother. You need to see it.”
Keeping her skin on his, she closed her eyes and let the past steal through her, entering her mind as though it were water overtaking a ship’s deck. It was more than memory, it was the past itself. The woods around them fell silent, the soft dripping and wind and straggling birds fading to nothing. Only their breaths filled the muffled silence, and then . . .
Gideon gasped next to her. The past bloomed behind her eyes, sharp and dark, and Hara felt Gideon’s influence entwined with hers, watching. In her mind, she saw the images just as she knew Gideon was seeing them.
She was a child of ten years old again, and her knobby knees were cramped and folded underneath the floorboards of the abandoned cottage they had been using for days. Her mother warned her that bad men might come, but that she must listen to her without question when the time came. Go south, into Norwen. Go south until she found Aunt Merowyn.
By the time they found the cottage, they had been on the run for months. They’d left the capital in the night, listening to the crashes and screams in the dawn as the palacewas overtaken. Her mother knew they would come for them. Guards had locked down the border between Montag and Norwen, stopping anyone who might have ties to the Ilmarinen family.
And so they waited. It was only a matter of time before the guards would decrease and the hunters would give up searching for them. Eventually, they could cross into Norwen undetected.
They never stayed longer than a week at any one place, but when they found the cottage, it had started growing cold in the mountains. It was abandoned, and there was good food to be gathered all around in the woods.
As the weeks passed, the tense silences were broken by her mother’s familiar teasing, and her smiles returned. She began to speak of life down south, and at night, she would tell Hara stories of when she was a girl in Norwen. Bracken and berries dried on the windowsill, and there was a fire to warm them at night. The abandoned cottage began to feel like home. It felt safe.
But her mother had a funny feeling, as she often did in those days. Some would call it paranoia, but Hara knew it was more than that. Her mother wouldn’t use her Sight to look into the future anymore, but it was not easily suppressed. Every so often, her eyes would dart and her hands would shake. She would begin to toss their stored food into the fire, scrubbing all evidence of their presence from the cottage. They would pack their few belongings and go into the forest, spending freezing nights on the mountain without a fire.
Days would go by without a soul crossing their path, and then her mother’s strange feeling would pass and they would make their way back to the shelter of the cottage.
When Hara asked her why they must do this and why she did not just use her Sight to see if they were in danger,her mother would grip her hair and begin to weep. So Hara learned it was best to say nothing. Whatever her mother’s reasons for avoiding her Sight, it was clear she did not wish to share them.
One night she woke Hara, much as she had the night they escaped from the palace, and she told her to hide underneath the floor. There was a small area only big enough for Hara to lay flat on her back amongst the dust and rats.
A boom pounded against the door moments later. The floorboards trembled, and Hara heard wood splinter. Men burst through the door, and she felt their boots thrum mere inches above her body, stronger than her pounding heart.
“Here she is. We found the Seer!” a man’s voice shouted. “Just as you said.”
She heard her mother’s low voice. “Please, I am not with them. I would never—”
“Lies,” came another man’s cool, emotionless voice. “In the name of Bartram Corvus, you are arrested for providing treasonous intel to the Ilmarinen family and for harboring state secrets. You will be questioned and imprisoned according to your rank.”
