“Books,” Wren told him unhelpfully.He struggled to give voice to foggy childhood memories which only seemed to grow dimmer the more frantically he grasped for them.“My mother’s books, I mean.Some will have calf-skin spines.Or did,” he muttered darkly, “if he’s not had them rebound.There’sPride and Prejudice,” he added, louder again.It seemed useless to list off titles in the dark, but then again Shrike’s eyes were far keener than his own; perhaps he could read the minuscule stamped letters by the mere light of his will-o’-th’-wisp.“AndSense and Sensibilityand?—”
“Here.”
Wren turned, astonished at his beloved’s swift victory, but did not find Shrike at the shelves.Instead Shrike stood a stride aback from them with one palm upraised and the fingers of the other hand pinched over it.Belatedly, Wren realized he was holding a pendulum.The thread of Shrike’s silver hair faintly glimmered in the dim will-o’-th’-wisp glow.
But rather than spinning down into his palm, the acorn at the thread’s end pointed upwards at an acute angle in defiance of gravity.
The queer sight sent Wren’s heart fluttering into his throat.He tried to swallow it down and settle his nerves.His eye traced the pendulum’s path towards the shelves…
To three familiar volumes with calfskin spines.
“What did you ask…?”Wren wondered aloud, though he supposed it hardly mattered.
Shrike answered him anyway.“I asked it to show me that which had belonged to your mother.I began,” he added, “by asking where to find that which had been beloved by her, but…” A wistful smile graced his handsome lips.“It just pointed to you.”
Wren’s eyes burned.He blinked them with rapidity lest something unbidden fall.“Yes.Well.That’s… that’s certainly…” He trailed off, not knowing what it was.
Shrike’s smile faded.
Wren drew in a tremulous breath, rolled his shoulders back, and turned to the shelves.He couldn’t read the titles by fairy-light, but he knew them at once nonetheless, their calfskin spines and marbled boards familiar beneath his fingertips as he plucked them down.Pride & Prejudice, in three volumes, re-bound by his father as a gift to his mother before his birth.The handwritten inscription on the title page remained as one of the few proofs Wren had of any love between them.
The moment he laid the books aside on the library-table, the acorn pendulum’s serpentine thread recoiled in mid-air—an eerie sight even after Wren had braced for it—and struck out again.Like a hound it pointed to three spines in bone-white paper.Wren obeyed its summons and drew downSense & Sensibility.No sooner had he done so than the pendulum pointed to the three volumes ofEmma, leather-bound, and the same followed for the four-volume set ofNorthanger AbbeyandPersuasiontogether.
Wren’s breath abated as he looked to the pendulum for guidance once more.
But it simply spun down into Shrike’s palm and remained there.
Wren tried to disguise his disappointment, though he couldn’t halt his tongue before he remarked, “It seems only Austen escaped the library purge.”
A sentence which must prove almost meaningless to Shrike’s ears.
Shrike looked sympathetic regardless.
The re-binding of the volumes forced Wren to a singular if difficult conclusion.His father had loved his mother, once upon a time.And from the present state of the house, it seemed his father had never remarried.The notion led Wren’s mind down disquieting avenues.Did his father love her still?Was it to remove a painful reminder of his loss that he’d sold off her Audubons?If his father was capable of love—if his fatherunderstoodlove—why then could he not understand his son?
The familiar click-click-click of dog claws on the floor-boards echoed down the corridor outside.
Wren froze.He knew not whether it was better to escape with haste or stay still and silent and hope the hound didn’t notice the intrusion.
Then there came the warm glow of candlelight growing stronger and stronger in the gap between door and threshold.
Panic threw Wren’s heart into his throat.He fumbled with his satchel, haste and fear making him even clumsier than usual as he tried to stow the books inside swiftly without damaging them.If he’d only thought to bring a proper sack… but then again he’d never intended to raid the library, just thought he’d tuck his teeth and hair into his pocket and have done with it.Sentiment had indeed proved all-too-powerful.
Shrike, meanwhile, slipped in front of him, with one hand on his arming-sword’s hilt and the other arm sweeping his cloak out behind him to shield Wren.
Just as the library door swung inward.
And there on the threshold stood Wren’s father.
Clad in his night-shirt and wrapping gown.Armed with a candle in one hand and a fireplace poker in the other.Accompanied by a faithful hound of the fox-hunting variety.He didn’t seem terribly surprised to find Wren; and that alone, the return of the prodigal son, would prove shocking enough, Wren thought, even without Shrike looming before him, with his medieval garb and pointed ears and frankly imposing frame.Then again the old man never did let anything show in his face.A trait Wren had oft wished to inherit.Alas it had never come to pass.
Wren didn’t recognize the hound.It would’ve had to be an elderly creature indeed to remember him from when he’d last graced these halls more than a decade hence.
Yet despite the impossibility of familiarity, no sooner had the hound laid eyes on the intruders than its ears pricked up and its tail began to wag.Its gaze fixed not upon Wren, but rather Shrike.The same natural charm that had won over the gelding Rainscald evidently worked upon dogs as well.Wren could only hope his father didn’t notice Shrike’s eye-shine in the candle-light.
By Wren’s calculations his father must have been two-and-sixty by now.He’d just turned fifty when Wren saw him last.There didn’t seem so great a difference between fifty and sixty, at least not to Wren’s eye, though perhaps his mother’s death had aged his father prematurely.
Wren stepped in front of Shrike, just barely, and faced his father, though he knew not what to say.
