001

The house burns, its firelight reflected in the hoofprints that surround your father’s body.  

 

He had done everything he could to stop them from stealing Ryland away...while you, meanwhile, hid in the goat pen - clutching your fingers over your mouth and holding back screams as the red-armored Captain ran her spear through Father’s belly and into the mud.

 

Now, the knights have gone, packing your young sister in a wagon with some twenty others.  Some you knew. The miles-away neighbors, other farmers - sons, daughters, wives - all as poor as your own family. Eyes hopeless, terrified.  And as the wagon disappeared down the Langdon road, you could see Ryland among them, searching the hills for you, for the sister she thought would protect her.

 

But It is you who brought this down upon them. You know it.  If you had not found that golden mask, none of this would have happened.  Why didn’t you leave it buried?  Why bring it home? Father said such things were magic, ill omens.  But all you could see in its shimmering surface was the spark of adventure you had craved for so long.

 

You kneel at Father’s side, tears burning at the corners of your eyes, and watch the embers of your own childhood ride a column of black smoke into the darkening sky.  

​

​

---

 

002

WINNING PROMPTS (TIE)
Rob “Xemu” Fermier @xemu
I use the golden mask to re-animate my father’s lifeless corpse and grimly follow the wagon down the road.

jtr7 Jason T. Reimche (RHYME-key) @ehcmier
After I give in to spasms of grief...Goat-pen. Feed/water?  Nannies I can milk, slaughter, sell? Tear off a swatch of my fathers bloody shirt where he was pierced, move him nearish our doorway, cover him with planks from the pen.  Gott go find survivors, supplies.

​

The bite of the wind, sudden and cold, brings you back to the moment. Your skin is wet, your skirts muddy. It must have rained. Yes, now you remember. The stars winked out as a curtain of clouds drew over them. It rained, and you did nothing about it as all feeling seemed to bleed out from your heart.

You have no idea how long you have been sitting, numb, at the cliffside. Hours, at least,  judging from the gray slash of dawn over the sea.  Morning comes late this time of year - Father would have already been in town, pinning up the canvases of his market stall. You would have been in bed, pretending not to hear Ryland banging on your door, begging you to fix her breakfast.  

 

All of this is behind you now.  The house, your life; drowned husks. You try to think of what to do, where to go - find others left behind?  Gather food for the road?  But it all seems pointless.  Even the fury that drove you here to the cliff is gone, evaporated, with nothing to take its place. 

 

Last night you howled.  You beat your temples. Denying the fact of Father’s death, even as you covered his body.  You told yourself you had to do something, something, or animals might get at him.  But you knew you couldn’t dig a grave in this mud.  So you had pulled planks from the wreckage of the old goat pen - the one he kept promising to fix - and  covered him up.

 

When it was done, however, your anger only grew.  You knew part of your mind simply wanted him to be hidden from you.  But burying him only made it worse.

 

The shame of it broke something inside you, and, screaming with rage, you drove your hands into the hot, sodden ash of the house, and pulled that wretched golden face free.  Then you ran here, to the cliff, fully intending  to fling it into the sea. 

 

But the rain put out the last of that fire as well.

 

Now the mask lays next to you.  The bowl of its inverted features is filled with cold water.  Meaningless, inert.  Another ruin.

Then, a glint of sunlight.  

 

You look to the horizon, but there is no clear sky; only a bright fog from one end of the world to the other, nothing beyond.

 

You pick up the mask and look closer. Rain drains from its eyes. 

 

Then something like a memory wakes within you.

 

Voices.

 

- Old magic.

- Magic is always old. 

- This is even older.  Did you brush Parsley?

- I was going to, after supper.

- Hmm.  Why don’t I believe you?

 

There, in the metal. Reflections, but of a different light.  Vibrations, speaking through the bones of your fingers.

 

- Maybe you could sell it?

- Nobody buys bad memories. You get those for free. No, I'll bring it to the college in Langdon.

- Can I come?

- We’ll see.

- That means no.

- That means go brush Parsley.

 

He looks back at you, the image shifting under the hammered surface.  Father, smiling, shaking his head.

 

Around him: the kitchen, the cutting board, boxes of unsold turnips.  The milky windows looking out onto a sunny field beyond.  The sound of the kettle, of Ryland humming tunelessly.  The smell of bread and dirt and potato peelings and thyme.

 

Unconsciously, you bring the mask closer, the world within it growing even more clear, enveloping you.  You shiver as feeling returns to your hands, to your heart.  So much more real than your dead self at the edge of the cliff, as if you are rising up through the surface dark waves, gasping for air.  Warmth fills you, love rushes up within and all around. 

 

You are being pulled - saved - from the emptiness. The mask covers your face completely, but you can barely feel it.  Instead, in this moment, life is returned to you.  You are fully awake now, fully -  

 

Alive.
 

Then, suddenly, it's gone.  The mask falls, slipping from your hands, clanging off a rock and sliding toward the edge.  

 

You jump forward - almost going over yourself - and catch it. 

 

Pulling yourself back from the edge, you clutch it tightly to your chest and fall to your side.  It’s then that you realize your eyes are burning, running with tears.  This brings even more feeling, and you find yourself sobbing - in pain and thankfulness, in sorrow and relief - here at the edge of the slate-colored sea.

 

For the first time since last night, you look back toward what is left of the house, toward Father. 

 

Now you know what to do.

 

With the mask in hand, you run back home.

 

---

 

You find Parsley in the back of his stall, shivering, still terrified from the smell of smoke, but too old to run. 

 

He and the barn were spared: a heap of kindling had been piled against the door, but the wood was young and stubborn, and the fire gave out.  But as he sees Father approach, slowly, he becomes himself once again.

​

Now...

​

---

​

003

WINNING PROMPTS (TIE)

Jtr7 Jason T. Reimche (RHYME-key) @echmeir 

The mask brought ruin. Will I carry ruin with me? The Red Bitch didn’t seek the mask, nor command thoroughness. An example? Goading? Is she watching for reaction? I’ve read too many Grady books.

Ryland. I’ll never forgive myself.

I need help from Sage Rosemary to make this right.
 

Gareth Hinds @garethhinds
When I push at the door of the barn, I feel the strength of father’s arms wrench it aside. When I speak, I hear his deep baritone come from my mouth. I untie Parsley's lead rope, take up father’s staff, and set off down the road - just another market day, a man and an old goat

You want to scream.  The rage tears away within you, but you must keep pretending, keep up the performance.  You are no longer Father’s child.  You are Father.  Remember.  Remember at least that much, you idiot.

 

You will never forgive yourself.  You thought you had time. Burning hours at Father’s grave like a fool, while your sister was carried away across the sea.  Dawdling. As you always do. 

 

Now here you stand, in the market that lines the bustling quay in Herringstooth, eyes lost to the sunset, blinded to any last glimpses of fleeing sail, while old Jeremy Beeson yatters on with casual, vengeful promises.

 

“Well, if that red bitch comes back,” says the scrawny butcher as he absently wraps a cut of lamb in cloth and passes it to a customer, “I’ll ‘ave a sharp knife waiting for her, won’t I, Mary?” He jabs and swings at the air with his flat blade before wicking it on his pant leg.  His wife, apron bloody, mutters something about his knife ain’t been sharp since their wedding night, and you force a laugh.  She is Jeremy’s third wife, you remember, and third Mary.  The memory stumbles in, reasonless. Wait...how do you know this?  

 

No. Stop.  You swat the thought away.   You want to slap this old face. Wake up.  Always trying to distract yourself, from pain, from responsibility. Now focus.  

 

The sea.

 

You assumed the captain was taking her men back to Langdon.  The cobbled roads are quick, but men afoot can only move so fast.  Even with Parsley's slow gate, you would gain on them eventually.

 

But Langdon wasn’t their goal. It was a military ship bearing the young Queen’s coat of arms: a barque called the HMS Woodcross.  Too large a vessel for the small docks, she anchored off shore, and the prisoners were rowed over in bunches, under sword.

 

“And none of these bastards did a thing,” the butcher had groused, vaguely indicating his competitors across the street, oblivious to your face growing ashen.  “Women! I said. Children! I said. If I didn’t have me hands full with the new stock, you would’ve seen some of the old Beeson violence out of us today, I swear’s ye. Which reminds me, y’think you might run me twelve head o’ kids in a fortnight?  I know it’s early, but a businessman's got to plan for the future, or what business will he have?  Bill?  You with us, old salt?”

 

Ryland is lost.

 

You find yourself walking, Jeremy’s voice fading into the crowd, your head empty of anything but this simple fact.  It is all your fault. 

 

You only think of yourself.  You dawdle, forever making others wait as if all the days in the season had your name.  But all your blythe apologies, and all your disarming jokes won’t bring that time back.  

 

Father, when you would sleep late after having stayed up all night with the latest Ladyborne mystery, or re-reading Grady’s The Gaoler’s Last Hanging and filling your head with plots and conspiracies, would look you in your bleary eyes over the breakfast you should have cooked, then wink at Ryland and say “see, little one, it’s never too late for Hope.” And it never was.

 

Until now.  You close your eyes, stumbling forward, Parsley now leading you.

 

Another day, early and cold, in the wooded hills above the field, above the charcoal smear of the house. The ground here was drier, less flecked with stones.  Better for burial.

 

You had risen early in the barn, shared apples with Parsley, then set to work.  The old horse was nervous, and you could feel his thoughts, little flicks in his muscles, through the lead rope, as he dragged the pallet upon which Father’s body was hidden under a blanket.  

 

Parsley would stop, sniff the air, look around.  Nothing had been right since the fire, the animal knew that.    Where was the little girl?  Where was the young woman who gave him sugarcubes and brushed him - sometimes, that is, whenever she remembered.  But you would pat his side, and he would forget again, walking on.
 

Then, you dug.  

 

Hours later, you were almost done. 

 

What would Father have thought if he were to see this?  

 

Your hands - his hands -  tight on the shovel as it  bit into the dirt. Your back - his - complaining at the cumulative pains of heap after heap of earth being piled upon his own body like years?

 

You paused, looking at the small, bloodied wreck of him beneath you, all but covered. You had always imagined him as a big man with a strong frame.  But the grave you made was too tall by a foot.
 

You waited for the tears to come, but they didn't.  As if to tease them free, you touched the wrinkled skin below the age-worn socket of your eye, ran your finger over the tender bulb of your nose - swollen by years of wine, drank late when the children were asleep, when you - no, he - remembered Caroline...

 

You pulled your hand away from the alien features, breathing deep.  Parsley clicked his teeth, harrumphed.  Wondering, you think, if you were insane.  But it is real.  The magic is real.

Of course you doubted it when you pressed the mask to Father’s face and nothing happened. You had hoped the life you felt from it would seep back into him.  And instead, stillness. Your heart began to break all over again, until you realized it - the life is not the mask’s.  

 

It is your own. Unearthed.  

 

So you put it on once again, only this time you allowed it to complete what it had begun. The mask became the memory.  A mask of Father’s face. Of him.

 

Wearing his ghost.

 

His eyes were now yours.  His hair, his broken teeth.  The bald place where an axe-blade had struck him, deflected from an obstinate stump. The missing nail of his left thumb.  His swollen ankle that he had told you was healed.

 

This was the body in the pit, and now also yours. You looked at the dirt on your liver-spotted hands, flexed the plump knuckles, and felt these old bones make new arrangements with one another.  Then back to the same hands in the pit, so quiet.  What would he think of this?

 

- Ha! A farmer plants himself.  I wonder what grows of that, eh, my little Hope?

 

You laughed suddenly. A deep, rough sound that took you by surprise. Parsley jingled his reins, trying to shake off his confusion. 

 

Then the tears, but only a few.  A few more shovelfuls, and Father’s eyes were gone.

After, you turned without a word, though there are many you wanted to say, and unlooped Parsely’s lead from a branch.  “It’s alright, old man,” you said, like he would have, with his old man’s voice.  “Let’s go for a walk.”  

 

A farmer and his horse, headed to town.

 

Now the sun is gone, the market far behind.  Parsley picks unhappily at the hard-bladed beachgrass.  Bells call from the water, and the faint sound of nightly revelry floats in from Herringtooth’s center, a corridor of bars and flophouses.  Above it all, the wind keening over the fences and empty bait shacks along the shore’s weedline - the last resort of homeless or drunken fishermen, and the home of crazy old Rosemary, telling sailor’s fortunes in exchange for rum.  

 

There, again - where did this come from?  Father never talked about any Rosemary.  You touch your head, trying to recall, but it slips away. Oh would that he were here.  He would know what it meant, know what to do.

But he is.  So...​

---

​

004

WINNING PROMPT

Eric Newdom @ericNewdom

Tying Parsley off at a sturdy fence post, you murmur "I'll be back, girl," and head toward the house. Halfway to the weathered door, which sits slightly askew in its frame, an image flashes through your mind. An old woman with a crooked smile, and scarves. Scarves everywhere.

 

You told Parsley you would be back, that It would be all right, whispering into his twitching ear over and over, like a song, as you fed him the last apple from your pack. He knew the tone, if not the words. It wasn’t something Father would say. And Father would have fed him left-handed.  But still the horse clumsily pressed his head against your neck.  “It’ll be all right, old man,” you said one last time, tethering him to the fencepost loosely, in case it wasn’t going to be.

 

And now, having already made your way far down this ragged,  windy shore, stumbling in the darkness among broken traps and shredded nets, with windborne sand biting at your face and fingers, you realize too late that you brought no rum.

 

But you look to the dead bulk of the shack, and you know, somehow, that she has seen you. A sharp movement from somewhere within.  A silhouette shifting in a shattered window.  And  part of you knows that to turn back now would only be worse.

 

• Don’t be scared.  You were never the one to believe in ghosts, little Hope.

 

You half-speak the words, just to hear his voice. Yeah.  Look who I’m talking to.

 

Waves thunder into the twisted spine of wood and stone that extends into the dark bay from the base of the old building, thick pilings driving up from the water in all directions, rooster tails of spray exploding into the night, landing on the shingled roof as you approach, and leaving shreds of brittle gray foam to heap against the doorway with knuckled black ropes of seaweed.  

 

The smell, the rot, hits in gusts from every crashing wave, and you feel the sand damp beneath  your boots. The tide is coming in.  Your stomach tightens.  You force yourself forward - what am I doing what am I doing what -

 

You are reaching for the door when you hear her voice, scraping and merry:

 

A lad from ‘out the islands

As pious as a priest

Thought to save his virtue

‘Till his wedding day’s feast

 

But on a schooner to the mainland

He met a gal from Deale

And at  the captain’s table

They had an early meal

 

Sail with ye devils, or

Sail with ye kin,

Sooner or later, 

Ye all fall in

 

Iron-throated laughter - followed by deep coughing and cursing, a loud gathering of phlegm, and a convulsive spit. 

 

Your fingers are frozen on the door’s brass handle, when suddenly it swings wide, shrieking and cracking at its hinges.  It’s all you can do to hold your ground, nerves braced for anything: a crab-bodied monster, the ghoulish form of a long-dead harpooner with an anchor for an arm.  But instead...

 

She is so small.  A child in widow’s clothing.  

 

In one hand, she holds a thin, curved blade flecked with rust.  In the other, the stonelike shell of an oyster.  “Ah, Billy.  It’s been a league of years, hasn’t it?”  

 

You don’t know what to say.  She looks at you, something happening to her face. Is she...smiling? “Billy?”

 

• Rose.

 

“Rose,” you repeat. “...I’m...sorry...I forgot the rum.” You hold your  breath, still waiting for the knife.

 

Her dark eyes look you over. Judgment is passed, then forgotten. “Well yer a bastard, but never a surprise.” She waves you inside with her twig-like arm.  “We’ll have to make do with port. But it’s Eirish, so watch yer pours or I’ll be pullin’ ye out of the surf come mornin’.”  

 

You hesitate, trying to clear you head, but she pulls at your sleeve.  “Come come, in wi’ ye, and out wi’ your troubles.”  

 

You step inside.  The room is large and warm.  The walls are wreathed in ancient nets, some so softened by time they might be mistaken for knit scarves.  Gentle orange light from a pigbellied stove spills over countless small towers of damp-fattened books.  One large volume, illuminated with spiraling loops of marginalia, is open on a short table.  Beside it, a seeping bucket filled with seawater and unsuspecting oysters.  All around: Pens and inkpots, folios bound in twine.  Maps, tools.

 

Little machines.

 

I don’t understand, you think.  Then it comes to you, unfolding in  your mind:

 

You know this place. You are a little boy. You are afraid of this woman.  She is old even then, when your father takes you here.  He has questions for her.  Questions about the harvest, about rootdust, about the moon and the rain.  She answers him, gives him books and pouches of seed.  She tries to give you sweets, but you only pretend to eat them in case they are poisoned.  You are certain only witches can know this much.  Nothing happens, but you are paralyzed with fear all the ride home, and have nightmares for weeks about this strange house with the crooked frame.  Yet your father and mother laugh over it when you tell them.  You suspect that you have been raised by devils.

 

“Sit sit sit,” Rosemary says, and you do.  Thoughts are racing in your mind, and she sees it on your face.  You look at her flinty, small eyes, and for the first time, you see the kindness there, the worry.  You find yourself shaking, filled with questions.  She takes a bottle from beside the bench, and fills a glass for you.  “Now it’s nice to see you, love.  But I know when someone has a story they need to tell.  So drink up and tell it.”

​

---

​

005

WINNING PROMPTS

(TIE)
Wes Carroll, @thatwesguy

Your gaze lingers on the child-woman's face for a moment before falling to the cup in your hand. On the black surface of the rum, you see the reflection of your eye and brow... but it isn't, is it? It's father's. Or is it grandfather, or his father before him?

From the ripples, motes of light snap into focus around his face. Motes... of magic?
 

Gareth Hinds @garethhinds
“I need your help. I’m looking for my s— my daughters. And a lady in red armor. They’ve been taken, they’ve sailed away.” Her eyes pierce me. “Please! Help me! Tell me what to do!” I beg. She drains her glass. “Poor thing. You must find your power. You must go first to...”

 

Words spill from your throat in Father’s voice, trying to assemble the tale of the last few days, as if your choices could be explained rationally, as if you weren’t only running from the panic in your heart.  Every step of the journey invites new, disconnected thoughts - his thoughts - trying to assert themselves, as if clawing his way up from the earth of your mind.  

 

But once you start talking, you can’t stop.

 

As you describe Father’s burial, the image is invaded by other memories of the land: the farm, you, Caroline, and times before you were born.  The crowds along the quay mix with faces you’ve never seen, things you’ve never done. Stories he never told you.  

 

It’s clear you never knew him, not really. To you, he was only ever Father.  But here, within, he is a multitude of selves.Twice your life lived, bursting the seams of your own experience, threatening to flood your skull. 

Falling from a carriage when he was six, followed by months of healing boredom as a summer drifted away.  His brother taken by war. The ache in his wrists as he wrestled with his own ill-weighted sword a year later, lost in a fog of screams, his regiment dying around him.  Roaming the streets of a murdered city, a bone-thin dog stalking him in the rain.  The greasy slip of newly-minted coins paid by the queen’s man.  The first breath of the sea.  A simple egg breakfast on a veranda with Caroline...

 

Caroline.  Your mother.  Young, beautiful.  You see yourself sitting on her lap, knotting her curls around a twig.  You squint as the memory grows brighter,  the sun about to break through the morning haze as she smiles. Your two hearts, Father’s and your own, fill, and break again.

 

Your memories and his. Both holding tiny Ryland in your arms as she suckles on your shirtsleeve in the candlelight.  

 

Then half-grown, she is pulled from your grasp.

 

“I’ve lost her, I’ve lost her,” you find yourself saying, blubbering, your rough hands shaking in Rose’s gentle grip.  But as the old woman looks at you, eyes red with understanding - the words, slowly, finally, stop.  

 

Your throat is raw, your jaw held so tight it is shaking. You begin to say something else, but instead burst out with “tell me what to do. I don't’ know what to do.”

 

Rose raises one hand to your face, then the other, framing your jaw, then moves a thumb over each cheek. You were afraid of her, worried she was dangerously out of her mind.  But now you realize it is you who is mad.  You try to cover it: “my daughters, I mean...I’ve lost them. A woman in red armor...”

The old woman says nothing.  She seems to see behind the mask. Then her fingers find the seam of it at the edges of your face.  Fear rises within you.  “Shh, my sweet. Shush now.”  Then she pulls, gently.

 

Your hands quickly move to stop her - did you do this? Did he? “No, no please!”  You flinch back, pressing your palms to your cheeks.

 

Rosemary lowers her hands, and looks at you with pity.  “Let him go.”

You realize you are shaking your head as Rosemary’s eyes, insistent, burn into you.  You look away, down to the cup on the table before you. No.  No.  His voice. 

 

Then, on the red-black surface of the port wine, your own reflection.  You.  Smooth skin, bright young eyes. 

 

You.

Suddenly, you tear the mask from your face, heart pounding.  The golden thing flies from your hand, ringing loudly off the stove and spinning to a stop in a heap of netting. You try to stand, to run, but Rosemary grips your arm, holds you to your seat.  “There you are,” she says through a cracked smile. “There you are, my darling.”

 

“No, let me -” you try to pull free, but the strength in her small-boned fingers is terrifying.

“It’s all right, love. It’s alright,” she soothes.  “I saw you a’fore, and I didn’t gut you then.  There’s no worries now.”  

 

Her fingers relax their grip.  The thoughts are gone, the words gone.  Only the hissing of the sea washing over the sand and the delicate, ceramic clink of coals.  Warm, thick air.  Your breathing slows. 

Rosemary stands, takes a moment, and looks into your eyes, nodding slightly.  “You’ve found what our young Queen could not.”  

 

Her eyes shift to the mask. “And now you know she’s right to fear it, as well.”  She walks deep into the shadows of the room, kneels, and begins to pick through the volumes that litter the rough planks beneath, taking her time, letting you ease back into the world.

 

You look back at the mask, and for a moment, you see only him, Father, almost lost in the red shadows of the room.  He lowers his head, and then he is gone.

 

You grit your teeth, turn back to Rose.  “Help me.”  You try to say it without pleading, but your heart isn’t ready for the words, and you bite your cheek to push the feelings down.

 

For a minute you fear she won’t answer you, but then she lumbers back to the table, lanky arms clasped around a stack of books. “You’ve a power, m’lass, and I’m no help to that.  But these will be.”  

 

She drops them on the table before you, and the floor shakes with the weight.  “Your dear father said you were a reader.  The gal’s no farmer, he said, that’s the hills’ truth.  But there’s more to it all than rocks and weeds, ain’t it so?”

 

You shake your head. “I just read stories. Mystery stories.”

 

Another stack thunders down. Rosemary laughs. “Well, you’ve got the mother of all mysteries before you, so it looks like you're the right fish ‘a swim this river, little Hope.  Not one in a thousand can hear the voices of the old magic.  And most of them are as illit’rate stumpheads as you find anywhere.”

You run your fingers over the spines.  They are buckled, the leather raw and flaked.  Titles all but illegible, only hollows with flecks of gold within:  An Atlas of What Was. Gear and Post.  The Mechanisms of Lord Berlund.  The Gaoler’s Last Hanging.  Your eyes widen in recognition at the last title, and you pull it into your lap.  Its broad, wrinkled pages crack open with a puff of dust.  Sprawling illustrations face each dense block of text.  You can feel the indent of the sorts in the thick paper.  The familiarity of it is almost disorienting.

 

Another thump at your side - but not books.  A burlap sack of wrinkled, turning apples.

 

“Now before you settle in,” Rose says, waving a finger toward the windowpanes, cloudy with salt. “I think I see an unhappy horse down the strand.  Perhaps you might bring him those.”

With a gasp, you remember Parsley.  You bolt out the door, running across the wet sand with the apples banging at your knees.  He trots to meet you.  You hug him.  He stomps and grunts as if to ask what are you doing here?  And for just a moment, you feel whole again.

​

---

​

006

WINNING PROMPT

Jtr7 Jason T. Reimche (RHYME-key) @echmeir 

 

I re-hitch Parsley more securely, head back to Rose. The salt air smells different without Father’s shadow memory over mine. I find Rose placing the mask in a lined wood box with gold inlay, affixing a machine to the mask’s third eye. Satisfied, she closes the lid; inlay shifts.

 

The sun brings a new world with it. Not one of happiness, but at least of possibility. Purpose. Breathe too deep, and you can still feel the cage of grief around your chest.  But here, buried in these books, there are answers - if only you can dig them free.

 

You sit on the rough gray planks of the widow’s walk atop Rose’s house.  The sun is bright on the pages of the atlas, and a darting breeze nips at its leaves as you trace the illustrated coasts within.

 

The maps aren’t bound in any particular order, though, and you were quickly lost. You know the shape of Wisteria from the Queen’s banners, from the Red Woman’s bloody shield, but you have no idea how these puzzle pieces fit.  

 

Could there really be so much land as this?  A hundred roads, a thousand bays, shores like the edge of a broken plate.  You’ve spent the morning examining dozens of these coastlines, but nothing matched what you thought you knew of the land.  You soon realized all you truly have is Father’s vague stories, and a handful of names from his travels. 

 

You would have asked Rose to explain, but she had locked herself away in her junk room before you woke, rooting through boxes and books, and her only response to your knocks were muffled, impatient curses.

 

You could put the mask back on.

 

No.  You almost lost yourself.  Never again. 

 

Instead, you bear down.  Think, Hope.  Think.  

 

Mask or no, it’s still his voice. Smarts don’t wait, Hope. They work.  Think.

 

Are these streets or boundary lines?  Broken walls or foothills?  Field or swamp?  All these things mixed together, scales becoming a tangle, edges unknown, block-edged lettering confusing itself with its own flourishes.  Meaningless.  Meaningless until - wait. There. 

 

A dot. A dab of ink symbolizing a town - and beside it, marked in the old letters: Saint Harron’s Truth.  Harron’s Truth. Harronstruth...

 

Herringstooth?

 

Yes.  You look up, matching the lines to the curve and jag of the land around you. The half-moon of a sandbar is twinned north of the docks.  A navigational note on the page warning of rocks just below the surface - and yes - out there - a static, white churn in the green of the water. 

Excited, you look out to the flat horizon, then back  to the map, pushing the tip of your finger further out into the open white space of the sea, where Ryland must have been taken. 

 

And just within the ink border, you see it: a curve of islands, like cast seed.  That’s it. She is there. You feel it in your heart.

 

---

 

You hammer on the door with the heel of your palm.  “Rose! Rosemary!”  No answer. “The islands.  The islands to the east...Rose!”
 

Digging your fingers at the edges, you pry the door partly open. You are about to yell once more, but your voice catches in your throat.

 

Inside, Rosemary is kneeling before the golden mask as it rests on a canvas mat.  She holds a jeweler's glass to her eye with one hand, as she holds a fine, long, brass needle in the other, edging the tip into the seam around the gemstone in the mask’s brow. “Easy gal, easy,” she says with a patient whisper.

 

“What...what are you doing to...it?” Him, you almost say, pleading.

 

“Shhh. Just...one..flick and..ha!”  It pops free, sparkling, and she catches it, dropping the needle with a clink.  She lifts her closed hand to you, shaking it with pride. “Old knuckles still nimble, eh?,” she mutters as she walks back to a low workbench.  “Now let's give you a more appropriate home.”  She puts the stone down on a stained swatch of velvet.  All around, fine tools and gears glitter in the light from the nearby window.

 

Your eyes land on a small, strange machine in the middle of the table. The shape of an apple, its curved shell is fine filigree that disguises a sturdier frame. Beneath it, sharp little golden feet.  

 

A clock?  But it has no face. Or rather it’s as if it’s face has been removed to reveal the intricate parts within.  Yet nothing moves, and you don’t see any springs; only a thin metal girdle, as in a ring, within which a diamond might be set.

The stone glows dully, waiting.

 

“The islands ye say? Ah yes, y’have it, lass. Yer as smart as ye dear father would’vea had me believe.  But you won’t like the name.”  Rose picks the mask up from the floor and looks it over. Even in the sunlight, it seems to have lost some of its shine.  “This old nag and yerself are of the same mind, yes we are.” Then, to the mask: “Now, fer you, ye tricky little bastard, let’s put you somewhere’s a touch more safe fer all of us.”

 

Rose lowers it into a polished mahogany box stuffed with more rags of velvet, and closes the lid.  A series of hollow clicks come from within.  She runs her hands gently over the top, and you catch a glimpse of shining metal numbers, spinning and changing beneath the old woman’s fingers.  

 

Then, without ceremony, she kicks it under a table in a puff of dust, and turns to you.  “Those islands, gal, are the Hangmen.”  She picks a leather-wrapped cylinder from a windowsill, and walks to you, pulling at one end until brass cuffs extend themselves to a point.  A spyglass.  She hands it to you.

 

“Go an’ see fer yerself.”

 

--- 

 

The black rocks are both slippery with seaweed yet sharp with barnacles, and they test your thin leather soles as you climb. Waves slap at stones and drool between the crevices.  Salt is biting at your throat with every breath.  Finally, at the top, you raise the lens to your eye, just as Father did, when surveying for his landlord, Mr. Sallow.  

 

The image is difficult to make sense of at first, flipping itself and wobbling into darkness every time your balance falters. But after a moment, the sea and sky come clear, dividing into brilliant, heaping orange clouds atop a sharp emerald line, interrupted only by white pips of distant sail. When you turn, the view whips by, jerking with every shuddering breath.

 

Then suddenly you see them, for a moment thinking they were shadows of the clouds themselves: tall grey shapes, looming, hunched. Burdened.  The Hangmen.  

 

You lower the spyglass, shivering.  Just like the etchings in The Gaoler’s Last Hanging. 

 

You’ve known them since you were a child.  

 

Every barrow, every cove, every rook’s nest of those islands, is burned into your memory, mapped out as they are in the daring adventures of Emily Spoon as she searched for the murderous judge Ravencloak.  

You know it by heart.  Father read you every word.

But you never dreamed they were real.

​

---

​

007

WINNING PROMPT

Gareth Hinds @garethhinds 

 

I return to the books -- but each day I walk or ride Parsley along the beach, looking for someone who will teach me how to sail.

​

Rosemary checks Parsley’s hooves, his teeth, and mixes crushed meadowsweet with his oats.  She gives you some coin to take him into town and be cared for by Lowry, the farrier.  

The man is nearly blind, but he knows the horse and treats him kindly.  “Where’s your pappa?” He asks, and you almost answer - but he’s not talking to you.  Parsley grunts  and tosses his head, and the farrier pats him in return.  You pay the man and he says nothing as you leave.

​

You have walked Parsley every day, taking him down to the shore, and sometimes up the snaking road to the woods, which he likes, because there is an abandoned apple farm there. 

​

He is different now. He plays and sometimes he trots, holding his head a little higher.  You sit and read, and occasionally watch him.  He is happy, he is healing. You hadn't thought, but this was his loss as well.  But now he is here, and the weather has been forgiving. Soon he will remember nothing else. 

​

You, however, dig into the past:

​

“The Hangmen are a series of steep, rocky islands off the western coast of the Grensward lathe, with a combined viable area of less than 15 acres.  They have been held, in aggregate, under the authority of the Northern Brigades since the Stone and Parcel Act of 1423, but there are no records of  [illegible].  As the topsoil is quite salty and the land is often untillably steep, the Royal Botanist Lord Caffrail of Umsly recommends its continued use as a prison, as the pea-sized potatoes produced in the yard are all its occupants deserve.” 

​

- An Accounting of Useful Lands, Rolph Twain, esq., in service of her Majesty.

​

“April 9:
I look out the window all night and all day.  There are my boys hanged, twixt the towers of these blasted islands.  I can barely see their faces for the crows.  Lord Bristol won’t kill me though.  No, he wants me to rot here under their damning gaze, and has given me this expensive quill that I may choose confession or suicide by its sharp metal nib.  Both are the same to me, so I may as well commit these heresies to the page, and free my lads from sin.”

​

 - Incarceration, Hostage Taking, and Penal Servitude: Selected Appreciations,

Whipsman Corbet Wroth, et al.

​

‘The rocks, the nets, the sharks, the sea

The boys in gray, or towers three

All wait to take your wretched soul

And sell your bones for devil’s coal”

​

- ‘The Hangmen,’ sailing traditional

 

“Oh! What a horrible place!” said Emily. “I hope we get there soon!”

-The Gaoler’s Last Hanging, Georgianna Grady

 

You nod off, and dream of Ryland.

 

She is dressed as Emily Spoon; a blue bow in her red hair, jars of ink clinking in her pockets. It makes sense; Ryland has always been the adventurous one.  “You only read adventures,” she says proudly, teasing you to chase her.  “I live them.”

​

Everyone in the dream calls her Emily, except the grownups who call her Miss Spoon and she spits at it behind their backs.  You struggle to follow as she scampers among dark rocks, looking for clues, squinting through one half of a pair of opera glasses that she found in a Langdon gutter.

​

But she grows faster, slipping from you at every turn, even as she hoots “come on, come on!” and dashes ahead to a distant ghostly light, or a lantern in a graveyard, or a dark house on a hill.  She leaps away from a Langdon bobby’s grasp as he yells “Stop, you damn fool child!” before she dives into an alley too thin for him to follow.  

​

Over and over again she escapes, beckoning you on, even as the setting changes and sways under your feet. 

​

But soon she’s too far ahead.  Lost in the mists, voice fading, still calling to you.  Before you know it, she is gone, and then there is nothing.  Nothing but stars, dim and far.  A thousand lanterns. A thousand graves.

​

Parsley shoves your head with his, and you wake.  You walk with him back to the beach, heart sinking.  It’s getting dark by the time you arrive at Rosemary’s, and when he sees her poke her head through the tilted window, he canters to meet her, excited to show off his new shoes, you expect.  She comes down the creaking stairs to take his lead.  He is home. 

​

But you are not.

​

----

​

You can’t sleep.  You sneak out and sit on the sand.  Sadness has begun to harden around you again.  Muscles heavy. Immobile. The weight, the familiarity of it, feels safe.  The guilt and pain are no longer even actively tearing at you, but rather they’ve quietly combined into a leaden anchor, falling slowly and deep, searching for the lowest point, pulling you down in slience. A sleep of another kind.  

​

You saw nothing but death in Father’s eyes for a long time after mother was gone. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t anger.  It was no expression at all. You feel this now, this featurelessness.  A mask of life.

​

----

​

No. No more masks.  No more waiting.  You cannot stop here.  No one will do this for you. And if you don’t, she truly is gone. You know this.

​

I can’t.  I’m no one, you think.  I’m too afraid.  The farm burned. I did nothing. I said nothing. I hid.

​

You lived. 

​

You want to be back in that sunlit field.  You want everything back the way it was.  Ryland, Father.  Your life, dreaming and reading and sleeping too late.​

​

The anchor, pulling you down again.  You crush your teeth together. Tears of rage boiling at the corners of your eyes.

​

You almost think  you feel his arm, gentle, on your shoulder.  And for a moment, the fear is gone.

My little Hope.

​

A bell sounds far out in the darkness across the water.  You look to the dark horizon, and catch the briefest glimpse of a light. Then it winks out. A ship.  Probably a ship.

It is enough. 

​

The tears break free, and it is a relief. You lift your head to the sky, fill your lungs with chill air, and stand.

​

---

​

You burst through the door, and Rose jumps with a yip.  “Lords, gal! Did old Lowry give you new shoes as well?”

​

“I’m sailing.  I have to sail.”  You falter only for a moment, realizing you haven’t thought this far ahead, possibly ever.  “...How do you sail?”

​

---

​

008

​

WINNING PROMPT

Jtr7 Jason T. Reimche (RHYME-key) @echmeir

 

Rose sighs wistfully. “Going to war?” Tells me I could work at the docks, pay attention to everything and everyone, learn the culture, language, be hands-on, and…learn to keep hands off me, defend myself. She is silent for a time, then gets another book. Clockwork submersibles.

​

 

Rain falls on the planks above, wending its way through the half-rotted wood, mixing with oil and fishblood and mold and flecks of tar, and finally dripping from the heads of the thousand nails that hold the dock together. The sea beneath it is so confused by its halls of thick wood that the even the boldest wave is diced to a foamy, tea-colored soup, heaving up and down, endlessly glazing the oyster-armored pilings, each of which are a foot wider than the spindly black posts that once supported the wreck that now extends from Rose’s house.  

 

 

And conversation seeps down here, too, echoing all about.  So you have found places, hidden places, from which to listen. 

 

Nestled in the crook of a beam, deep in the shadows, you see the bellies of working ships come and go from the first gray pulse of dawn to the blazing end of day.  You watch the men work them, care for them, sometimes alone, sometimes together, organized in song.  Hoisting, heaving, tying, lifting.  They trade stories and news, wishes and lies. One describes an escape, barely catching the wind as Pictish giants threw boulders that cracked his deck.  Another says he saw a gleaming metal whale beneath the whitecaps at Bear’s Paw, with glowing windows inset, like the door of a Langdon oven. The tale grows even as he tells it, and before the sun sets, he’s wondering of a city beneath the sea.

 

You watch as skiffs are lowered, rowed out to other ships waiting beyond the bay. You see sailcloth wrapped and repaired.  You gather words like reefing and windward, tack and luff, and hear them in all manner of dialects. You are sure you can do none of it, not yet.  But knowing these things gives you a sense of groundedness that makes your plan seem more real, and Ryland that much closer. 

 

“Patience reveals all,” Rose had said. “The world is a clock, lass.  Keep an eye on the gears, you’ll ne’er be surprised by the striking of the bell.”

 

So you watch.  Soon you see that, if coming from the south, boats arrive empty and leave full of cured meat and sacks of ground millet. This must mean they are sales in coin.  Those that come from the north are more rare, yet when they come they are heavy with coal and leave with livestock; this is direct trade.  Father would have said it describes the needs of each partner; the thing they would kill for if there was no agreement.  This knowledge merges with images the Atlas; the routes, the history. 

 

Hundreds of ships swarming the coast, knitting the world together.

 

---

“Going to war, are ye?” Rose had asked when you burst in with sudden defiance.  She made a wistful grin, which you knew meant you had something to learn, but you were no less annoyed by it.  In fact, she was barely paying attention; still picking at the golden apple on her workbench with a razor-tipped tool, cooing to it like it was a kitten and she was cleaning its ears.  “Well by all means, go down n’ ask them lads on the quay.  Who’s ever heard of wharfside louts making trouble for a curious young lass like yerself?  Ha! I’m sure they’ll be abrim with ideas on how to learn you the ways of sailing. Haven’t ye heard me shanties, gal?” she asked, chuckling to herself.

 

“I’m not stupid,” you stamped. “But I need to know.  Histories of sailing won’t teach me to sail.”

 

Rose stopped, sighed. “And lines on a map aren’t hill and sward. I understand ye,” she said, gentling her voice and standing. She took a moment to put the tool in its cradle, tuck the apple-like machine in a pocket,  and then she walked to you.  Her deliberateness - and the quiet length of time these small actions demanded - left the space between the both of you painfully empty.  You became aware of the desperate energy of your body. Your fingers were shaking, your breath short. 

 

You hadn’t realized, but anxiety was like a pressure all around you, an electric ether, threatening to spark.  And when Rose finally took your hands and looked into your eyes, you felt for a moment as if you might shake apart.  

 

“You love ‘er,I know,” she said. You imagine the terrors she must be feelin’.  You worry at how alone she must be.”  She squeezed your hands and looked into your eyes. “An’ I won’t lie to ye gal. Yer right to fear it.”  

 

You bit your lip and tried to pull away, but Rosemary kept your hands locked in hers.  “Ah, now. Still yerself.  Breathe and listen.”  You try, but the anger, the worry, makes you jump like a foal.

 

“Fear is a great friend, and he can keep you sharp. But he’s a teller of tales. And if you don’t keep yer wits about ye, those stories will become yer whole world.” 

 

She held her eyes on yours until something gave out within you, and you looked down. She let your hands slip free, and with that release, tears fell down your cheeks.  The rage had turned in your chest, revealing itself again as sorrow.  Your knees wanted to buckle, but you stayed standing and looked back at up to her, nodding.

“You have a good heart, gal, like your father.  A good compass.  But no one will save young Ryland if you dive headlong into the storm.” She reached up and brushed the tears from your face. “Oh, Hope. The world wants nothin’ more than to teach us, every day.  So don’t go paying for things it gives you freely.”  You blinked as she tapped your eyes, your ears.  “Use these and these, and everything betwixt, and you’ll never starve for knowin’. Now here -” She handed you the small, golden apple-thing.  Surprisingly light, warm. “See if  you can understand that.”

---

 

The docks change as the day changes; the crowds blend and swim together, different peoples at different times.  The shift is slow, like clouds.  Seasons of the day.

 

You are out here earlier and earlier every morning now, listening, watching.  The first day you came at dawn, and the fishermen had already left.  You remembered Father getting up in the night, readying for his day's journey. You would wake at his muttering and clanging about, but you had no idea of the hour.  Night was night, there was no marker to it.  Sometimes you’d go to the kitchen and talk with him as he boiled coffee over the fading coals, and he would toast a heel of bread and make you an egg-in-a-bucket.

 

 - Up late, you.

 - Can’t sleep.

 - Bad dreams?

 - Good books.

 

He laughed.

 

 - You could come with me. See the world. Your father might be a dull-wit, but Parsley is good company.

 - He must have a lot to say.

 - You might just be surprised.

 

It’s the first time in days that you think of him and smile.

 

---

 

Your back aches, and you shift against the hoary wood, absently rolling the small, golden machine over in your palm, listening to the tink tink tink of its delicate innards.  A ratchet, you think, small weights maybe winding a spring?  

 

You lift your eyes again to watch as a schooner raises sail and turns quickly across the wind.  The paths of these ships run loops in your mind now, north-south, north-south; some small and flat, hemmed close to shore, some with many masts and deep keels, curving down to Langdon.  Uncoordinated fleets of food, cloth, fuel, and information - and with them, language, stories, and ideas - these were the connections that wove Angland, Eirland, and the North - into single kingdom:   Wisteria.

 

But in all of that, only one vessel sails eastward to the open ocean.  To the Hangmen.  A low, heavy-set, nameless thing.  

 

And she leaves tonight.

​

009

WINNING PROMPT

@rainfell 

 

POV: the red bitch

 

When I was a child I had a doll; a rags-and-wood knight that I took with me everywhere. It kept me company during the long, silent carriage rides I shared with my mother as we traveled to a string of rich estates and duchies the year I turned twelve. 

 

I clutched it to my side as I was put on display in those gaudy, pink-stoned prisons - as my manners and dress and diction were subtly tested by typical courtly types, sometimes plainly mocking me as another sort of doll.  As if, from my position, they didn’t seem a collection of cracked and empty-headed porcelain figurines themselves.

 

My mother and I had to submit to this gladly, of course. At thirty five, she was far too old to remarry, and worse, my father had died an ignoble death. It was embarrassing enough that she was a widow, but to marry a traitor’s widow would be worse than marrying a peasant. 

 

Thankfully, in the public eye, at twelve, her daughter was free of such sin.  And so I represented the last path to the great wealth of my mother’s dying family.  

 

It may sound shocking to modern ears, but marriages in the north, at least among the aristocracy, are still arranged quite early even today - though being so public about it is out of favor in this Queen’s times. 

 

It’s easy now for ladies to stylishly complain about the way things were done then, the old ways, as it were.  But this is because the wars have settled things, and allow men and women time for lengthy digressions on romance; wondering at this and that, entertaining endless would-bes and possibly-sos.  

 

Time is wasted. This is what we fight for, so that our lives have the room to be frivolous, meaningless, with precious seconds spent like coins in a fountain.

 

Many would have thought her cold, my mother, if they had known her as I did.  Many think me cold now.  But this gives me great pride.  Because in the stillness of those carriage rides my mother was her true self.  And I was the only witness.  

 

Outside the bounds of that rattling, ornate egg, she was elegant, clever, and seductive; anything required to open doors and close mouths. No one saw what I saw.  The peace she felt when words didn’t crush the air around her.  When her feelings for me could be shared with a nod to the beautiful lands through which we slid; haunting sunsets dipping into wisps of evening fog, gem-like beads of spray gathering on the windows from coastal waves. Columns of sweet smoke rising from burning leaves. Wisteria; the land, the sea. We seemed alone in it, thankfully, gloriously alone together, and it spoke for us.

One day we arrived at a ruin, a manse whose wings had been shattered by cannon fire a hundred years ago, still wearing its scars with pride.  A garden party spilled drunkenly over the broad lawn. This was the home of the man I would marry, and, though I didn’t know it then, would later murder. 

 

I was nervous, and in the moments before the footmen came to open the door, my mother turned to me, seeing the wariness in my eyes.  “There’s something you don’t know,” she said, taking the floppy knight from my hands. 

 

She looked at it, turning it over, its chipped wooden shield clattering against its head. “How long have you had Sir...”

 

“Sir Gotobed.”

 

“Sir Gotobed, yes. How long?”

“Since forever.”

 

“Yes, well,” she began, and pulled his head free, placing it on the seat beside me.  “First, this costume doesn’t matter.”  She pulled off his wood grieves, his sword, and his little carved boots in turn.  In a moment, all that remained was a thin little blue-cloth rag-man.

“Now look here.” She took Sir Gotobed’s head between her thumb and knuckle, and pulled at the top, where a rusty grommet held the cloth together in a cinch. “Everyone has a secret self.”  She pushed upward until  a paunch of fabric poked out from the hole. “Even those with whom you’ve traveled for a long time.” She handed the doll to me.  “Tease it out.”

 

I pulled, and soon he had entirely inverted himself through the ring of the grommet. I laughed in shock: the cloth which was a dull blue on one side was a colorful print on the other: a thousand yellow and orange stars and moons shone out from within.

 

The carriage door was opened, and she gave me one last, true smile before donning the mask once again. “Some are beautiful, like this old knight.  And some are terrible,” she said, with a sharp glance toward the approaching entourage. “But it’s always better to get at the truth if you can.”

 

She was right of course.  And even today I hold her secret, keeping it tight in my heart. 

 

My mother was a spy, you see.

And I was her cover.  

​

010

Inspired by Marc LeBlanc

'The Voyant'

​

The game had been going on for an hour, but my mother needed more time, so I picked up my remaining knight and examined it - pinching the horse’s neck between my fingertips. “It’s so lovely,” I sang.  And It was. I wanted to steal it.  Why not? I had folds enough in this ridiculous dress.

 

“It should be. The figures are Roylish waterstone,” bragged the young Marquess. His voice was a chirping version of his father’s, though not drunken, thank heaven.

 

The set was exquisite. Each piece was delicately nested within a yew cuff that protected its true identity from the opponent, leaving only a tiny glass window that faced backward. Within it was the piece’s real rank, annotated as K, R, N et cetera, no matter what the sculpture above portrayed.  In play, bishops could be rooks, pawns could be queens.  This was Masquerade

 

This board had clearly lain as dormant as the books here in the Duke’s library, and dust had collected in the seam between the wood and stone on many of the pawns.  Decorative, unmoved; surely no one in the house touched it in years.  The Marquess may have fiddled about and smashed the knights against each other, but he seemed to understand only the most basic rules, and hid his ignorance with feigned boredom. 

 

He had hid his preparation terribly: I had instantly seen that most of these pawns had simply stayed pawns.  There was no need to fear them.  

 

I couldn’t let on that I knew this, however; my mission was to keep him here as Mother rifled through maps in his father's office.  The Duke was away riding, or drinking, or drinking and riding, and it would be nightfall before he returned.  So I had to draw it out. 

 

If the game were over too quickly - meaning if I crushed the little snot the way I wished to - or, if I bored him for too long, he might go whining to his nanny, Ms. Able, about me.  The woman had the sharpest eyes in the house, and more than once I had seen her leering at me with catlike attention.

 

So I played at thinking through moves and guesses, making faces as if vexed by his cunning, teasing him with the joy of my defeat. But it was frustrating. I could have checked him ten times over by now.

 

The rook in his King’s corner had sat untouched for turn after turn; it was clearly his King, and he was unwilling to risk playing the role it needed to play. 

 

The boy tapped the table, annoyed.  “Did you forget who you are?” 
 

I quietly bit my cheek to keep from slapping him. “So sorry your lordship; it’s a devilish game.”

 

He was picking at the edge of an encyclopedia. “You can always concede.”

 

Not on your life, you prig. “Just a little longer.”

 

He shrugged. I couldn't look away from the rook.  I wanted so very badly to unveil it.  

 

The special pieces, the voyant and the assassin, waited next to the board. With the first, I could peek at the true identity, the coeur, of any of his pieces, which, if I hadn’t been dead certain of his king’s placement, would be the natural next move.  With the latter, though, I could win the game. 

 

All I had to do was place it next to that damned rook and topple it to reveal the K at its base.  If I were wrong, I would lose.  But I wasn't wrong. I knew it.  And yet I had to continue with putting on this dreadful act.  It was galling.

 

The Marquis turned a page as if he were distracted, but I felt his eyes fixed upon me.

 

I reached for the assassin.

 

“I think you mean the other one,” he croaked, suddenly attentive. “The girl with the spyglass.” He sat up, pushing the book to the floor with a thump, and picked up the piece.  He handed it to me. This is the voyant - that’s what you want. The other one - the dagger - that’s the assassin.”

 

“Oh, of course. So silly of me.”  I turned the pewter girl in my fingers until her gaze was level with mine.

“An easy mistake to make,” said my mother from the doorway. “Your lordship is kind to have pointed it out. My daughter loves games, but she sometimes lacks the patience to truly learn them.”

 

“Of course, m’lady,” said the Marquis, affecting his fathers’ dismissiveness. “Some can never learn, I suppose.”

 

I gritted my teeth, turned to her, expecting a sharp look.  But instead I saw understanding in her eyes, and the slightest, saddest smile.  Then, to the Marquis she said: “Perhaps we all might  walk the paddock before sunset?  Your father tells me you keep the most fabulous mare.”

 

The boy leapt up with great enthusiasm, suddenly very childlike. “Oh, I do!  Do you want to meet her?  She was brought from the Royal Mews, raised by the Queen’s own stableman...” He prattled on as he ran out the door. “Come on! She’s ever so smart!”

 

My mother waited for me, and I stood to follow, when through the warbling glass of the casement window, I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Able as she darted back inside the house from the yard. 

​

A chill ran through me. How long had she been standing there, and what had she seen?