Page 38 of Backpacking through Bedlam

After Kevin was born, Laura had stayed for two weeks, giving me time to adjust and recover, while Thomas learned what was going to be expected of him and the baby figured out how to nurse. Despite not having—or wanting—children of her own, Laura seemed to have a natural gift with infants. I’d been expecting the same two weeks this time, before Laura left me with Mary and the babies and went back to the carnival to resume her own life. But it had been six months, and she hadn’t left me yet.

Jane spent most of her time shrieking, but she stopped crying the second she was in Laura’s arms, hiccupping and looking around with huge blue eyes, or simply sliding into sleep. Either way, giving Laura the baby was sometimes the only way to make the screaming stop. Part of me wanted to be ecstatic about that, to see it as a sign Laura was going to stay forever, that I’d get to have my best friend with me while I raised my babies. She could have one of the downstairs bedrooms, and Thomas would be thrilled when he got home.

Another, larger part of me, saw her ongoing presence as a silent criticism. Better than anyone—even better than Mary—Laura knew how close I was to falling apart. I’d gone almost three days without eating, and over a week without bathing, before she’d shown up to check on me and the progress of my pregnancy. Jane had been born the day after Laura’s arrival. The fear that I’d slide back into depression had to be enormous, and if I did that, the babies could die. Cynthia and Mary would do their best, but they both had other things to worry about.

Which was why, six months almost to the day since a rip in the world swallowed my husband whole, I was in his office, going through the papers on his desk, looking for any financial paperwork or banking information that could help to keep us from losing the house.

Instead, I found was a small stack of letters. One was addressed to Nicholas Cunningham at Penton Hall, in England. Others went to Australia, Hawaii, Japan—places I’d only heard of, never been, but which I knew Thomas had visited before he came to Buckley.

And the last was addressed to me.

I sat on the floor of his office, staring at the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. He’d been expecting me to find this; he’d been expecting me to read it, and he was sparing me the agony of deciding whether or not to rip open something he’d sealed. I’m not normally precious about envelopes, but the idea of destroying something he’d touched . . . right now, it was too much.

Gingerly, as if I was afraid it might bite me, I eased the envelope open and pulled out the letter he’d folded neatly inside.

His handwriting was elegant and precise, the result of years of careful tutelage under the watchful eye of the Covenant matrons, of whom he rarely spoke, and never without an uneasy expression. Just seeing it made my eyes blur with tears. I wiped them dry, and started to read.

My dearest Alice—

I know your aversion to entering my office, even if I’ve never encouraged it. If you’re reading this, I’m gone. I hope it will help you, at least a little, to know that I’ve held out far longer than I thought would be possible; this is the eighth such iteration of this letter I’ve composed. You can find the others in my bottom drawer, if you desire to read them. Perhaps it will be too much like salting an unhealed wound, or perhaps it will be the salve needed to help you heal. There’s never been a time for us when a lack of letters would have made the situation better, after all.

I laughed, choking back tears, and kept on reading.

We knew when we began our time together that it was limited. I was a man with a terminal illness, and you were the angel of mercy who chose to love me anyway. Our marriage has been one of the truest joys of my life, and I am honored every day that you chose me for your husband, and not any one of the men who could have given you a better, more stable life. I love you, Alice Price. Please, no matter how far away you are from me, don’t allow yourself to forget that. I will always love you, for however long I live.

If our marriage was a blessing, then our children are a miracle. The Price line lives on in them, and they will have access to our family accounts in England once they grow old enough to make financial requests. Instructions are written in the black book in the top drawer of my dresser, along with the number for my banker and the current key. It must be held in the hand, near enough to taste blood, when any withdrawals are authorized. It’s barbaric, I know, but without it, the Covenant would have emptied the accounts the day they sent me here, and even the small comforts I have been able to afford our family would have been denied. The blood charms protecting the family fortune were spun by my great-great-great-grandfather, Bancroft Price, whom I suspect of having been a sorcerer in his own right. They will hold, and more, they will render Kevin untraceable. So long as he holds the key, the Covenant will be unable to follow any funds to his location. The same will hold true for Jane, should they decide between themselves that she would be better suited to balancing the family accounts.

It was never my intention that any of you should struggle, nor want for anything, simply because I cannot be there to provide. And before you let your pride win out and tell me where to stuff my concern for money, please remember that I would be taking care of you if I were there with you. I swore to care for you until the end of our days. Even if my days are over, allow me that privilege. I beg.

You may, if you prefer, open my other letters and read their contents before sending them, but I would prefer they be sent, and in my own handwriting, if at all possible. Most are to old friends and allies, to tell them I am no longer available to respond to their correspondence. They’ve been expecting this for some time now. They won’t be surprised, although some may send you condolences over the next few months.

The one which has, I’m sure, confused you most dearly is addressed to Nicholas Cunningham, of Penton Hall. He is second-in-command of the Covenant, and the highest-ranking likely to subject himself to a communication from a disgraced exile. He is a reasonable man, as much as a man who has dedicated his life to fighting monsters who wish only to be left alone can be considered to be. He was among the group which decided I should be sent to Michigan to watch you and your family rather than put to death for my crimes against the Covenant. I believe he will listen.

I am not telling him of my disappearance, or of your vulnerability in my absence. I am not saying anything that could encourage the Covenant to come to our home or endanger our family. I am simply making him aware of a threat to humanity which has been thus far overlooked, and needs to be addressed.

The Cuckoos, Alice. Loath as I am to share any information with them, the Covenant must know more about the Cuckoos than your grandfather was able to share with them. That we have managed to overlook them for this long only underlines how dangerous they truly are. Humanity cannot be left defenceless against them. And who knows? Perhaps, if we provide the Covenant with an enemy worthy of fighting, they will learn to leave the rest of the world alone.

It is a small hope. It is the only hope we have remaining. They no longer count my name among their number: perhaps, with this, they will no longer list us as dangerous enough to watch. Perhaps this is how I can finally protect you.

I love you, Alice. I have loved you since before I knew you, and I think I was always going to love you, whether I came to Buckley or not. You are my heart and my home, and I am so sorry to leave you.

With all my love,

Thomas

I could barely see through my tears by the time I reached the end of the letter, but I still managed to fold it and tuck it back into the envelope. I put it aside, proud of the fact that my hands weren’t shaking, and flipped through the others one more time, taking quiet note of the precision with which he’d written their addresses. All had a return address, except for the one to Penton Hall.

The Covenant had purchased this house for him, back before he tendered his resignation, of course. He had probably assumed they knew where he lived.

Moving slowly, like I was afraid anything faster would break me into a million pieces, I levered myself off the floor and went back to the living room, to take Jane for a feeding and tell Laura I hadn’t found the account books but had found something that might be even more important, at least in the short term.

The plan, sketchy as it was, was that she would stay in the house with the children for the next few months, while I went to the routewitches and petitioned them for aid. We’d already determined that umbramancy wasn’t going to be the answer. I needed access to the living dimensions surrounding our own, the ones Naga had told me stories about, not to the lands of the dead. And unless I wanted to experience a katabasis, Orpheus-style, going to the lands of the dead wasn’t going to do me any good, anyway.

The crossroads had ripped a hole in space to take my husband. There was no way they wouldn’t have left a body to torture me if they’d killed him. So he wasn’t in the lands of the dead, and that meant going to some pretty dark places, looking for some pretty shady solutions. It wasn’t a quest for children. Thankfully, Laura was willing to take care of them until I came back.

I’d heard her the night before, talking to Mary in the kitchen when they both thought I was asleep, exhausted from the combined stresses of grief and trying to keep two small children, one too young to do much more than hold her head up for short periods of time, alive. “You know this might be forever,” Mary had said. “She might not come back for a very long time. She might not come back at all. Are you prepared for that?”

“Alice always comes back to me.” Laura had managed to make a statement of absolute faith sound perfectly reasonable, like she was remarking on the weather. “If she’s alive, she’ll come back. She just has to find Thomas before she can stay.”