Why had the owners left? Where were they now? And why had Yarrow stayed behind? There was a peaceful kind of sadness to the row of abandoned cottages, but no answers.
After the cottage with the artwork, she found one that seemed like it could be livable, with a more reasonable amount of work: a bluecottage, its walls painted a pale noonday blue and its door and shutters a deep twilight blue. Cobwebs clung to the rafters, but she saw no inhabitants other than spiders. It had a hammock-like bed strung from the ceiling, though she wasn’t sure she’d trust it—she didn’t know how long it had been there—but she could pull in a proper cot from one of the other cottages. In fact, she could take her favorite pieces from each of them and assemble them here.
It could be nice.
Lovely, even. She imagined it clean and neat and full of flowers. She hoped Yarrow would let her pick blossoms to fill her cottage.My cottage.That had a nice sound to it, didn’t it?
Well, didn’t it?
I’m not a child anymore. I can handle living on my own.She’d had her own space in the library, and she’d been fine. She’d hated it, but she’d managed. Sort of. For a while. Until she’d been statue-ified.
Okay, she hadn’t been fine.
“You can make this work,” Terlu told herself out loud.
She could try to convince Emeral to stay with her, so she wouldn’t have to bear the silence and solitude. His purr was capable of curing any kind of sadness.
Crossing her arms, she tried to look at the cottage objectively. It wasn’t as nice and cute and sweet as Yarrow’s cottage. And the amount of work to make it as lovely… It was daunting enough that she wanted to pivot and race back to the comfort of his home. She’d have to clean the chimney and, well, everything. Plus there were a few holes here and there that could do with patching so the wind wouldn’t whip through on stormy days. She wondered if the roof leaked. She supposed she’d discover that the next time it rained. Craning her neck, she examined the ceiling—she didn’t see much water damage on the roof above the rafters, though there were stains on the wall beneath the windows.
Terlu tested the pump at the sink, and after a few hearty pumps, brown water spurted out. She kept pumping until it ran clean.That’s a plus,she thought.
Seeing the fresh, clean water, her heart felt lighter. She could see a little bit of a glimpse of a future here, if she worked at it, at least an immediate future if not a long-term, life-full-of-purpose kind of plan. She wasn’t afraid of work, which was a good thing since there was a lot to do before the cottage would be livable.
But what to do first?
Heat, definitely. She had to clean the chimney. She’d need… She wasn’t quite certain what she’d need. A brush? With a long handle and stiff bristles. And a broom to sweep all the soot out once she’d knocked it down. Perhaps a ladder so she could climb up onto the roof.
Oh dear.She’d never climbed up onto a roof in her life. She wondered how slippery it would be with all the snow and ice. She wondered if Yarrow expected her to fix any broken bones herself with the tools from the shed behind his cottage. And what if she couldn’t make it livable enough before nightfall? Would he let her return to his cottage? She wouldn’t take his bed again, of course, but she could curl up like Emeral by the hearth. Surely, he’d lend her a blanket. At least by his fire, she wouldn’t freeze to death.
Making to-do lists in her head, Terlu left the blue cottage. For thoroughness, she continued down the road, though she thought the blue cottage was likely the best she was going to find. She also loved that it was blue, which she knew was superficial of her, but it made her think of the sky on a summer day on Eano when the waves played at your feet and the dolphins swam just offshore. It felt like a good-luck color. Maybe shecouldmake a home here, at least for as long as she was allowed to stay. Or for as long as she wanted to stay, whichever came first.
Terlu followed the road to where it ended, on the western edge of—what had Yarrow called this place? The island of Belde. Stopping, she wrapped her coat tighter and looked out at the sea. On Alyssium, you rarely had an uninterrupted view of water—there were other islands and tons of ships, both sailing and cargo ships,going to and fro. On her home island of Eano, you’d see fisherfolk out in their canoes, sometimes a dolphin or two frolicking in the waves. But here, there was only the blue sea. There was no sandy beach, only rocks, and the waves crashed against them, white froth billowing up with each crash. In the distance, she saw the shadows of what could be other islands, smudges of a grayer blue, but they could also have been clouds.
A dock led out into the water, but no boats were tied to it. Just a dock with an empty flagpole at the end, with a box beside it, secured to the deck. She thought of Yarrow’s offer to summon a ship to take her away.I could do it right now.Walk out to the end of the dock, raise a flag, and summon a stranger to come and take her wherever she wanted to go, but where would that be?
Home? In disgrace? She couldn’t do that to her family. It wasn’t just that they’d be disappointed in her or that she’d be embarrassed to admit she’d failed to thrive, though that was all true—it was the fact that reaching out to them could endanger them. She was still a convicted criminal. Her parents, her sister… She wished she could tell them she was alive, but without knowing whether or not she’d been pardoned, how could she risk it?
She still had no clear idea why she was here. Why had someone sentherhere in response to Yarrow’s request for a sorcerer? The plaque on her pedestal had been very clear she’d been a librarian. Sending her had to have been a mistake. And if so, the second that soon-to-be-in-trouble official discovered the truth, she’d be shipped back to the Great Library and reinstalled in the North Reading Room. No, she couldn’t ask her family to harbor a convicted criminal.
It was better if no one knew she was here, and it was smarter to stay until she knew who had made this mistake and why—and what she wanted to do about it.
She’d never had any real vision for what she wanted to do with her life. Becoming a librarian had been a suggestion of one of her professors, and it fit her skills, but it had never been her passion, theway sailing was for her cousin Mer or carving for her aunt Siva or fixing things for her sister Cerri. She’d wanted, when she left her family and her home, to find some kind of life goal. That’s what she’d be missing on Eano: a passion and a purpose. That’s why she’d felt she had to leave. She knew she had no future there, and she was tired of being the one in the family who hadn’t yet found her path.
She just wasn’t sure where shedidhave a future or what her destiny was supposed to be.
Staying here for a bit might be good for me.Terlu could think about what she wanted and what her life should be, now that she had a second chance.
Yes, that’s what this is: a second chance. And maybe the solitude will be nice for figuring all of it out. It could even be essential.
Or she’d miss the sound of voices so much that she’d start talking to the trees.
She turned back from the sea and noticed one more building that she hadn’t explored. Set back from the shoreline, it was more of a squat tower than a cottage. Made of stone, it was two stories tall with a conical roof that was blanketed in snow. A lighthouse? Except it didn’t have a light on top. A grain silo? She trudged across the snow toward the tower.
A key was dangling from a hook beside the door. She plucked it off and tried it in the lock. It opened easily, and she poked her head inside. “Hello?”
She was getting a bit tired of saying that, especially given how infrequently her greeting was returned, but still, she wasn’t going to barge into a previously locked whatever-this-was.
Whatwasthis place?
