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“Hello, pet,” he calls in a drowsy voice.
“Hello, Father.” I sit by his bedside. He reaches out a hand and I take it.
“Dr. Hamilton was here earlier,” he says.
“Yes, I know.”
“Yes.” He closes his eyes for a moment, then startles awake. “I think…I think I see that tiger. The old fellow’s back.”
“No,” I say quietly, wiping my cheeks. “There’s no tiger, Papa.”
He points to the far wall. “Don’t you see his shadow there?” There’s nothing but the murky outline of my father’s raised arm. “I shot him, you know.”
“No, Papa,” I say. He’s shivering. I pull the linens to his neck, but he pushes them down again in his delirium.
“He was out there, you see? I could not live…with the threat of it. I thought I killed him, but he’s come back. He’s found me.”
I blot his brow with a damp rag. “Shhh.”
His eyes find mine. “I’m dying.”
“No. You only need to rest.” Hot tears burn my cheeks. Why are we compelled to lie? Why is the truth too bright for our souls to bear?
“Rest,” he murmurs, settling into another drugged sleep. “The tiger is coming….”
If I were braver, if I thought the truth would not blind us forever, I would ask him what I have longed to ask since Mother died: Why was his grief more powerful than his love? Why couldn’t he find it within himself to fight back?
Why am I not enough to live for?
“Sleep, Papa,” I say. “Let the tiger go for tonight.”
Alone in my room, I beg Wilhelmina Wyatt to show herself once again.
“Circe has the dagger. I need your help,” I say. “Please.”
But she will not come when called, and so I fall asleep and dream.
Under the shade of a tree, little Mina Wyatt sits drawing the East Wing of Spence. She shades in the side of a gargoyle’s mouth. Sarah Rees-Toome blocks the sun, and Mina frowns. Sarah crouches beside her.
“What do you see when you look into the darkness, Mina?”
Shyly, Mina shows her the pictures she has secreted in her book. Trackers. The dead. The pale things that live in the rocks. And last, the Tree of All Souls.
Sarah traces her fingers lovingly over it. “It’s powerful, isn’t it? That’s why they don’t want us to know about it.”
Mina flicks a glance toward Eugenia Spence and Mrs. Nightwing playing croquet on the lawn. She nods.
“Can you show me the way?” Sarah asks.
Wilhelmina shakes her head.
“Why not?”
It will take you, she scribbles.
Suddenly, I’m in the forest in the Winterlands where the damned hang from barren trees. The vines hold them fast at their necks; their feet dangle. One struggles, and the sharp branches press into her flesh to keep her.
“Help me,” she says in a strangled whisper.
