“And with no shadow,” Crocey sneered. Though with the scudding cloud overhead there were few chances to check for the presence of a person’s shadow even if Nona hadn’t still been in the shade of the cloister walls when challenged.
Elani came across, her sneer echoing Crocey’s, her arm still splinted from Nona breaking her elbow in the dormitory attack. “It’s a pity you’ll never reach the tree. I would enjoy watching you try to hide in it.” She waved her good arm at the stark branches that stood like a thousand black fingers raised against the sky.
“Good!” Mally was one of the last to arrive. “We can go and eat at last!”
Normally the trial was held in Verity on seven-days and each candidate got to try her luck across a whole seven-day from dawn to dusk, with the sixth fail ending the matter. Since the novice cloisters were all but deserted on a seven-day Nona had managed to get Sister Apple to agree that she might try at any non-lesson time between breakfast and dinner, one attempt per day for the six days leading up to the seven-day. If she hadn’t succeeded by dinner on six-day then the trial was over and she had failed. This meant of course that none of those on guard duty could get lunch without weakening the defence.
“Couldn’t you just try before lunch?” Mesha trailed in behind Mally, rubbing her stomach. “Everyone knows you’re not going to make it. So be a saint and fail early!”
“On the bright side. Only three more days to go.” Joeli led the rush for the nearest exit. “Challenge you tomorrow, Nona!”
* * *
? ? ?
THAT NIGHT, IN the dark wake of the focus moon, Nona slid from her bed. She took her clothes and crept from the Mystic dormitory. On the stairs she hurried into her habit, tying her shoelaces blind. She stood, struggling into her range-coat. Dressed, she went down into the main corridor and stopped outside the Grey dormitory. She gave the lightest pull on a thread visible only within the clarity trance and using a quantal’s eyes. Ara opened the door moments later and handed over the lantern and rope they used on their caving trips. A moment later she fetched the hooded lantern kept for trips to the necessary and closed the door while Nona lit the first lantern from the second. Ara retrieved the hooded lantern and returned to her bed. Neither girl spoke during the whole exchange.
Nona left the building with the lantern trimmed so low that its glow barely reached past the smoky glass. She crossed the convent, keeping to the walls, avoiding the places where nuns were most likely to patrol.
In the bushes outside the sanatorium windows Nona recovered a heavy rope net and a wooden tub of kelp juice, five pints at least. She could smell the stuff as she picked the tub up. Burdened by her load, Nona made her way next to the novice cloisters, taking the path along the west side, a narrow alley between the laundry rooms and the low winery building.
“And where might you be off to, young lady?”
Nona froze. She turned her head slowly, seeing nothing in the darkness.
“Pssst.” The hiss made Nona look up. Kettle watched her from the winery roof, crouched low, darkness wound around her in sheets, untouched by the wind. “What are you up to?”
“No good,” Nona said.
“Be on your way then.” Kettle grinned and melted into the night, as if the dark had swallowed her then poured from the roof like oil.
Nona hurried into the novice cloister via the arch through the laundry rooms that filled the south wing. First she positioned the net then went to search through the laundry for the well. She found it after trekking through the washing and airing halls. It lay at the bottom of a short stair. The door to the well chamber had been locked but the device was simple and Nona soon found the necessary thread to pull in order that it be unlocked. It was a trick Hessa had showed her years before.
Nona secured her rope to the well-head, tied her lantern to her belt, and started to descend. A person of Darla’s size would probably not fit. Even Nona felt distinctly trapped as the sides rose around her, dark with slime and nitre, the lantern scraping on stone while she slid down the rope. The faint sounds of running water rose from far below.
Do you never sleep? Keot grumbled, stretching out along her arm, almost as if yawning. What hole have you found to crawl around in now?
Nona continued down the rope not bothering to reply. She became aware of the shaft opening up around her without needing to see it, something about the quality of the sound. She shinned another yard down the rope and looked out across the pool beneath her. The lantern’s glow reflected all around her, the light moving across rock walls capturing the ripples. Where the cavern opened out beyond the pool the forest of the centre oak’s roots swallowed all illumination.
Nona started to swing. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth swing she released the rope and arched her back. She landed in two feet of water and stumbled up onto the rocky border. There, she unslung the kelp tub, uncorked it, then took out the cloth she had stuffed in an inner pocket and wetted it with the juice. The stink of the liquid took away her breath.
“Ancestor!” She spat on the stones. “This had better work.”
Nona approached the nearest root that came low enough to reach and wiped the cloth across it, leaving dark smears of the kelp juice along its length. She moved to the next. Then the next. She kept to the fringes, the younger roots. They emerged in sheets from any crack that would let them through the rock. In the midst of the cavern the thickest and oldest roots reached the floor and sprawled out across it, but those were stone-clad.
Within half an hour Nona discovered that, however much fighting you might do, any work that required you to hold your arms above your head soon became exhausting. Added to the fatigue in her arms was the fact that no matter what care she took the kelp juice still managed to drip on her. One drop stung in her left eye, another found its way into her mouth and filled it with a sour foulness.
Keot made no further comment, perhaps having fallen back to sleep.
The lantern had started to gutter by the time Nona let up. She had used most of the kelp juice and all of her patience. Stinking and bone-tired, she took herself back to the pool, put the lantern down and steeled her nerves.
“Seven ice-baths in a day . . .” She plunged in and thrashed about, gasping, hoping to rid her habit of the kelp-stink. Keot’s wordless howls of outrage provided just enough warmth to keep her from freezing. After that, the long climb back up the well-shaft nearly defeated her, but it did at least get her muscles working and her blood flowing once more.
Nona hauled herself over the low wall surrounding the well and slithered to the floor where she lay gasping. After a minute she picked up her lantern, recovered her rope, and set off to brave the ice-wind one more time in a wet habit.
* * *
? ? ?
“ATISHOO!”
“Sounds nasty!” Darla rumbled from her bed, just a mound beneath the covers.
“Atishoo!” Nona repeated herself. Grey fingers of morning light reached across the dormitory.
“It’s your own damn fault.” Darla rolled over, muttering to herself.
“Part of your next disguise?” Crocey called from across the room. “You’re going to sneeze your way past us today?”
“I’m certainly going to try.” Nona levered herself up and groaned. It felt as if she’d slept for three minutes rather than three hours. On the floor beside her bed her habit lay in a heap, water pooled around it.
Nona hung her clothes up to dry and went to breakfast in Darla’s second habit, which was more of a tent than a garment but warmer than her own second habit which had been patched to the point at which there was more replacement material than original.