Give the Dark My Love Read online

  But it was Papa who now glowered at the road, disappointment evident on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as Jojo plodded down the road.

  Papa’s eyes widened. “For what?” He turned his gaze from me quickly and clucked his tongue at the mule.

  “For going,” I answered in a small voice. My scholarship would pay my way, but it wouldn’t give my father help when the cart needed unloading, or pay the butcher when Mama ran out of meat, or help Nessie with the chores I was leaving behind. The cost of an education like the one I’d get at Yūgen was far more than any scholarship could cover, and it was my family who would sacrifice for me.

  Papa yanked the reins, pulling Jojo up short. The mule didn’t care; she ambled to the side of the road and started munching on a low-hanging branch of tigga leaves.

  Papa turned to me. “Nedra,” he said, his voice softer and kinder than it had been all day, “I’m not mad at you for going.”

  “Disappointed then,” I said, sliding my eyes away.

  “I’m proud of you, my love,” he said, turning to me, the intensity of his words palpable. “I’m happy for you. I’m mad at myself.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry you, and instead I made it all worse. But . . .”

  “Why are you mad at yourself?”

  “Because I’m selfish, Ned.” He laughed bitterly. “I want to keep you with me always. But I know I have to let you go.” He glanced back at the book cart, heavy and dusty, the wooden shelves unable to fully protect the texts from the dirt road. “You think I want this for you? You think I want you to marry a farmer or a butcher or a fisherman, that I want you to always wonder if you’ll have enough to feed your own babes?”

  “You always took care of Nessie and me—” I started, but he was having none of my words.

  “I got this cart from my father, and he from his.”

  “I can still work with you on the book cart when I come back,” I said quickly.

  “No!” The words burst from him. “I don’t want you to. That’s my point, love. You can leave.”

  I watched the red-and-yellow-striped leaves Jojo hadn’t eaten yet. “I’m not going to be gone forever.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “I hope you are,” Papa said, a fervent tone underlying his voice. I looked up at him, startled. “Or,” he added, a small smile peeking from behind his mustache, “not forever. But Neddie, my love, your path has always been longer than this little road. You’re meant for the city streets, for ships across the sea, for places where there are no roads. I don’t want you to take my book cart. Maybe whoever Nessie marries will, but it won’t be you. I’d never fold you up into books sold to strangers. You’re going to live your own story.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “I thought—”

  “Who do you think wrote the Emperor?” Papa said, and I heard the note of pride in his voice.

  “You wrote the Emperor?” I laughed.

  “Him, the governor before he died, the new governor after, that headmistress of the school, the chancellor of the city—”

  “How many letters did you send?”

  “When they rejected you that first time, I was a bit angry,” Papa conceded. “I wrote everyone I could think of. I guess someone eventually noticed.”

  “Papa.”

  “Aye, I’ve been upset,” Papa said, switching the reins across Jojo’s side and getting her back on the road. “But not at you. I don’t like being reminded that you’re not my little girl anymore.”

  I dropped my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. “I always will be,” I promised.

  TWO

  Nedra

  It was getting late by the time we reached the dock at Hart. Papa waved to someone on a flatbed cargo boat as Jojo plodded down the path. Two people—a girl about my age and a boy probably a few years older but quite a bit larger—were lifting crates onto the boat. They stopped and waved back when they saw us coming.

  “You’ve heard me talk about Oslow and Mae,” Papa said, his eyes on Jojo. “Their kids took over the farm. Carso—the oldest one—he makes weekly runs to Northface Harbor. He agreed to take you over.”

  I tried to recall them. Papa traveled every week across the northern part of Lunar Island—from the tip to the forest—and he knew someone from every village, but it was hard to keep up when all I ever heard were stories about strangers.

  “Room for her trunk right here!” the boy said cheerily as he and my father hauled my belongings off the cart, and I hopped down.

  The girl stuck her hand out. “I’m Dilada.” I noticed the dirt making crescent moons under her fingernails. She pointed to her brother. “Carso.”

  “Hi. I’m Nedra,” I replied.

  Papa and Carso wedged my trunk between two crates of turnips, clumpy red clay still clinging to the purple skins. Carso put a basket of carrots on top of it.

  And then it was time to go. Papa looked at me, his eyes a little too watery, his hands on his hips until I threw my arms tightly around him. He dropped his chin to the top of my head. “Write us,” he said, his voice a little choked. “And don’t forget about us.”

  I squeezed tighter.

  Dilada and Carso climbed into the boat. They weren’t rushing us exactly, but it was time to go.

  “You ready?” Papa asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “One last thing.” He went back to the cart and withdrew a tube about as long as my arm, the kind used for carrying documents or maps. “This is for you,” he said.

  I peered at the package.

  “Don’t open it yet,” Papa continued. “You’re going to a new city, all by yourself. It won’t be easy, and we won’t be there to help you.” His voice dropped low, just for me. “Open this when you need us, and remember that we’re never too far away.”

  I wanted to thank him, but my throat was tight with emotion. Papa hugged me once more, then held my hand to steady me as I stepped from the dock onto the boat. It dipped under my weight, and I struggled to find balance as I wove between the crates of vegetables and sat down on a box behind Dilada. I settled my hip bag beside me and clutched the carrying tube in both hands, too nervous to let it rest on the wooden floor of the boat.

  Carso stood, using a long rod to push off from the dock and point the boat south while Dilada set the sails. I tried to be as small and out of the way as possible, stuffing my shirt into my waistband so the wind wouldn’t blow it around. Behind us, Papa had moved Jojo back up the hill and sat on the cart, shading his eyes with his arm, watching us until we were out of sight.

  “He’s a good man,” Dilada said, plopping down beside me.

  I nodded silently.

  “Helped us out after . . .” Her eyes shifted.

  After. Suddenly, the memory burst inside me. Papa talking about the farmer in the village beyond the chryssmum gate, his wife who baked better than Mama, their two children . . . a boy and a girl, left as orphans after the parents fell ill with the Wasting Death and died.

  The ride to Northface Harbor wasn’t unpleasant. The water was clear and blue, the waves gentle. Carso made one stop—dropping his sister off at the forest in the center of the island, where she had a job waiting for her to help cut timber. Carso and I lunched aboard the boat, snacking on produce from the crates and dropping the carrot stems into the water when we were done. I shared the bread Mama had packed for me.

  “Is that where the governor lives?” I asked, pointing to a castle on a small island close to the shore. Gray stone steps dipped straight into the water, leading up to a tall brick building with spires on each corner and a giant clockface on a tower in the center.

  Carso shook his head. “Nah, that’s the quarantine hospital.”

  I stared up at the ornate building. It was a good idea, I thought, to put the hospital in the bay, using the water to separate the sick from
the healthy.

  Carso grew quieter as we approached Blackdocks at the base of Northface Harbor. He had to wait for the dock master to clear him a spot, and then he hopped down, waving over a man with a cart. The two clearly knew each other, and they started talking as I carefully made my way off the low boat and onto the dock.

  “Your pa gave me coin to make sure your trunk got to Yūgen,” Carso said, nodding to the other man. “You can ride with him while he delivers the produce. It’ll put you at the school a little later. Or you can walk up on your own, and he’ll bring the trunk tonight.”

  I looked up the hill. Everything about Northface Harbor was built on an incline; the streets wound their way higher and higher. Blackdocks bustled with activity, and the factories and mills that sprouted along the water spat out smoke that obscured my vision. But it seemed as if the houses grew nicer the farther uphill I looked, and I wanted to see my new city on my own terms.

  “I’ll walk,” I said. I adjusted my hip bag and repositioned the tube from Papa—I wasn’t willing to entrust those for delivery.

  Carso grunted in a way that made it clear he thought I’d made the right choice. “Take that street,” he said, pointing. “Go up—you’ll run right into that school of yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I make deliveries every week.” His eyes searched mine. “You need to come home, just meet me here. I’ll take you.”

  “Did Papa . . . ?” I asked, patting my pockets, looking for my coin purse.

  “You go on,” Carso said, nodding toward the street.

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  “Hurry it up!” the dock master shouted. “We need the ports!”

  Carso and his friend turned back to unloading the boat, and I headed toward the street that would take me to my new home.

  “Flowers for the governor!” a young female voice called. I watched as a girl with cropped hair and an apron full of red poppy-buds dashed up to a couple standing on the corner. They were well dressed; a hunter green suit for the man, a tailored dress with a sweeping skirt for the lady.

  “Just two coppers,” the girl insisted, thrusting the flower under the lady’s nose. When she ignored her, the girl turned to the man. “Buy a bud for your lady,” she insisted. “The governor’s own flower, sure to bring luck tonight.”

  “Go away,” the man said, not even deigning to look at her. He bore an accent I wasn’t familiar with, and I wondered which of the fine ships in the bay he’d come from.

  The girl turned, eyes hopeful, as she heard me approach from the dock. But I was clearly not a lady from the mainland waiting for a carriage. She gave me one glance from head to toe, taking in my rustic braids and homespun tunic, and turned her back on me, not even bothering to offer to sell me a flower.

  Overhead, the globes of the streetlamps had been slathered with shining mercury paint to display the new governor’s silhouette, and green-and-black bunting decorated the posts and many of the windows. In the bay, a ship with three masts stood proudly, the Emperor’s flag flapping in the wind. Several other ships bore the insignias of nearby lands.

  Already, I was composing a letter home in my mind. The Emperor was in the city when I arrived, I would tell Nessie. The new governor’s inauguration meant that the streets were decorated, and people from all different lands came to visit. I would leave out how the rich couple awaiting their carriage were so rude, just as I wouldn’t mention the stench of the docks, the hazy air from the smokestacks in the factories, the crowded throng of people that overwhelmed me.

  I readjusted my bag and headed uphill.

  “Out o’ the way, out o’ the way!” a man with a deep voice shouted, his wagon thumping on the cobblestones. I stepped off the main street. The man’s cargo was draped in white canvas. He drew his horses up short in front of a whitewashed building a block away. Curious, I drew closer.

  “Hey!” the wagoner shouted, clanging his bell in the direction of the building’s door.

  People rushed out, and the man turned, whipping the canvas cloth aside to reveal his cargo. About a dozen people sat in the cart. Their backs were hunched as if their heads were too heavy to bear, and two children lay on the floor of the cart, their eyes open but their expressions blank, as if they weren’t aware of their surroundings at all. A man about Papa’s age sat near the back of the wagon, weeping.

  “We have no room here,” one of the women who’d come from the building said.

  “Whitesides has always taken care of Mackrimmik’s workers,” the man driving the cart said, frowning.

  I peered closer, noting the clammy sheen on the people’s faces, the hollowed shadows in their cheeks, the hopelessness in their eyes. The blackened limbs they tried to hide in their shirtsleeves and beneath the hems of their pants.

  “The Wasting Death,” a bystander on the street hissed, his accent like my own. My hand flew to the knotted cord at my neck, and I instinctively took a step back.

  “We’re full,” the woman snapped at the cart driver. She didn’t wear the dark blue robes of an alchemist, but she did have a crucible in the crook of her arm. “Take them to the quarantine hospital,” she ordered, pointing down to the bay and the hospital on the island. The man grumbled but clucked at his horses and turned the cart back down the road.

  * * *

  • • •

  By the time I arrived at Yūgen, I was exhausted from the uphill climb, and sweat had made my hair stringy. I noticed the school’s gate first. It wasn’t like the village gates in the north. Its wrought-iron doors had three runes running down the side, one in gold, one in silver, and one in copper, with the words YŪGEN ALCHEMICAL ACADEMY etched across the top. Through the iron bars of the gate, I could see a group of brick buildings forming a square with a grassy courtyard in the middle.

  My battered trunk sat on the sidewalk, skewed and scratched on one side. Carso’s friend had delivered my belongings sooner than expected, but he had merely dumped them on the ground and left.

  I dragged my trunk to the gate. “Hello?” I called.

  No one answered.

  I tried the handle.

  Locked.

  “Hello?” I said again, the word coming out as a question. Surely someone would open the gate. I had been told to arrive today, but not given a precise hour.

  My coin purse held sixteen silvers, the result of more than a year of saving. Would it be enough for a room at an inn for the night? I didn’t have to eat . . .

  My stomach rumbled at the thought of food.

  And what would I do with my trunk? It was too heavy to carry for long, and it would be too awkward to juggle it with the tube from Papa.

  A wagon clattered on the cobblestones and I jumped, recognizing the driver from earlier, when his cart was filled with the sick and dying. Now, though, his bell was silent. The cart was empty of everything but a single child-size shoe, bumping along the floor of the wagon.

  THREE

  Nedra

  “Hello?” i called again, more urgency in my voice.

  “What’re you doing out there?” A gruff-looking man emerged from a small cubby built into the gate on the other side of the bars.

  “I’m a student,” I said, sighing in relief.

  “No, you’re not. I know all the students that go here. Go on with ya.” The guard started to turn away.

  “I’m new!” I said, taking a step forward so my body pressed against the iron gate.

  The guard narrowed his eyes.

  “I am,” I insisted, aware of how childish and overdone my tone sounded.

  “All students were supposed to be at the inauguration,” the guard said.

  “I just arrived.” I indicated my trunk.

  The guard looked at it with an expression that seemed to imply I held illegal contraband within my luggage. Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and stro
de back into the small gatehouse.

  “Wait,” I said weakly, but then I heard the man’s indistinct voice as he spoke with someone I couldn’t hear. He emerged a moment later.

  “Right. You Nedra Brustin?”

  “Brysstain,” I corrected.

  The guard rolled his eyes, then unlocked the gate. “Come in.”

  He didn’t offer to help me with my trunk, so I dragged it behind me, the wood clattering on the uneven paving stones. As soon as I was through, the guard slammed the gate shut and relocked it. “You’re to go to the administration building.”

  I looked at the tall brick buildings that towered over the grassy courtyard, my eyes skimming the façades for some indication of which was the administration building.

  “That one,” the guard added impatiently, pointing. “The one with the clock tower.”

  The clockface shone brilliantly. When I looked behind me, I could see the clock of the quarantine hospital was positioned directly across from the school’s. They were a matching set, just like Ernesta and me.

  “I’ll take care of that,” the guard added as I struggled to lift my trunk again.

  “Thank you,” I said, relieved, and that at least earned a bit of a smile from him. He offered to take my hip bag and the carrying tube from Papa, but I kept those with me.

  The sun had fallen more quickly than I’d expected, most of the stars obscured by clouds. The courtyard was cut into four smaller squares by gravel paths lined with gas lamps. My feet crunched over the tiny stones, and I was grateful for my thick-soled boots.

  In the center of the courtyard stood a statue or . . . I squinted up at it. Some form of art. It didn’t look like much of anything but a lump of coal, so black I almost ran into it despite the glow from the lamps.

  As I neared the administration building, I saw a man standing by the door.

  “Nedra Brysstain?” he asked as I approached. When I nodded, he immediately turned and headed into the building. I followed him into a grand foyer, the walls covered in gilded paper and decorated by larger-than-life portraits of people I could only assume were the past headmasters of Yūgen Academy. The man turned sharply toward a door that led to a staircase and descended. I raced to follow him.