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“I’ll stay,” I said.
Surprise flashed across his features. “This is a big decision. Don’t let us pressure you.”
“You’re not,” I said firmly. “I want to stay. I’m choosing to stay.”
He stepped forward slowly. “You need to say it. You need to say that you accept.” Something flickered in his eyes—worry, doubt, maybe even fear—but I took a deep breath and said the words.
“I accept,” I said. With the words came a feeling of pressure in the air, as if something vast had turned its attention toward me.
“You agree to become Mistress of Harrow, with all that it entails?”
“I do.” The feeling of pressure grew, and with it the sense of movement, and I had a strange thought, an image—Harrow, overgrown with dark tendrils like vines, growing up through the floorboards, behind the walls, twisting and grasping. Growing around me.
“You will belong to Harrow, be bound to it, and serve those that dwell here,” he said.
“I will,” I said, the words hard to force out through the thickness of the air. I felt transparent, as if there were no barrier anymore between the air and my body. It was all Harrow.
“Then it is done,” Caleb said, and he slumped with relief. “It’s done.”
“Good,” my grandfather said, as if he stood just behind me.“Now the work can begin.”
Deep in the heart of the house, a bell began to ring.
6
I ENDED UPin the Willows room after all. Celia would be pleased.
The walls of the Willows were covered in a dark green wallpaper textured with trailing leaves and vines that stretched vertically, from ceiling to floor. The room was at least twice as big as my bedroom at home, with plenty of room for the king-sized bed, a writing desk under the window, an armchair, and a wardrobe large enough to hold every piece of clothing I owned in triplicate.
The walls in this place were thick. I couldn’t hear anyone moving around or hear the murmur of voices, the noises I was accustomed to at home. Our house was too small to ever truly feel alone. Here, the silence was oppressive, and I found myself pacing in a tight circle, my toes scrunching in the thick rug.
Finally, I grabbed my backpack and slung myself into the chair in front of the writing table. When I got this twitchy, there was only one thing that could settle me.
I dug through the backpack until I found a leather case with a bone toggle. I set the stiff, shoebox-sized container on the desktop and opened it, checking briefly to make sure that everything was in place and intact: wire clippers, pliers, spools of wire, tinyplastic cases of beads and fasteners, embroidery floss, a carefully packed hollowed-out robin’s egg... the list went on.
I took out the piece I’d been working on. The scapula had come from a fawn and was the size of my palm. Into its surface I had already carved twisting lines, curlicues that defied any kind of order or sense but gave the impression of endless movement. I had begun the work of twisting silver wire around the scapula, decorated with beads and other collected objects.
I never knew what a piece was going to be until it took shape under my hands. The scapula was an easy one—it was already most of the way to what it wanted to be, and so there was only the quiet centered focus of twisting a wire, threading a bead, securing a bit of feather or bone—a flow of decisions I was hardly conscious of making. Life and movement turned to the stillness of death, made to sing again of running.
The fox skull was harder. In the days since Grandpa Leopold died, I kept thinking that I had the glimmer of an idea, and I’d get out a length of wire or a paintbrush or a chisel, and then sit there staring, the shape of the piece gone from my mind like so much wind-scattered smoke.
I twisted the last bit of wire into place around the scapula, hiding its sharp edge, and sat back. The roil of nervous energy within me had settled, and cold, clear purpose remained.
Find the heart of Harrow.
A tentative knock sounded on the door. Mom entered without waiting for me to reply. “Hey,” she said. She took a seat at the end of the bed and leaned her head against the post.
I folded my hands in my lap and looked down at the carpet, digging my stockinged toes in and leaving dimples in the pile. “I should have talked to you before I said yes.”
“You shouldn’t have said yes at all.” She looked too drained and exhausted to be angry.
“I know it’s not fair to you.” I hadn’t been thinking about Mom at all, and now guilt settled in my chest like a stone in river mud. I wanted to tell her about what I’d seen, but how could I begin? We’d lived a careful life, speaking of certain things and not of others.
“All I want is to protect you,” Mom said, her face crumpling.
“You don’t have to,” I told her.
“Of course I do. I’m your mom,” she said. She picked at a stray thread on the bedspread, twisting it back and forth. “There’s so much about this place you don’t know.”
