“Exactly.”
I thought this twist of my words a dirty trick.
“And even if it really were a map of where he’s gone,” Matthew continued, “all you’ve got is his vicinity, some stops he maybe plans to make. Tell me, where’s the destination? It’s not like you can just set out and find him.” My impending protest must have been obvious, because before I could respond Matthew changed tactics. “Okay,” he said, swallowing his condescension in an attempt that might have worked had I been ten years old and blind to the clear effort that he took. “Let’s say you’re right, this is a map of your father’s journey to . . . whatever. None of these places are far enough away that he’d be gone for very long. Your house is even on the route. The best bet you’ve got is to just wait it out.” He paused. “My school term ends this week, but if you’d like I can wait with you.”
“No.”
“I only meant,” said Matthew, reddening, “that I’d understand if you didn’t want to be all alone in the house. After Aunt Abby’s death, your . . . recent experience. But if you think you’re well enough to handle things, I can obviously—”
“I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t stay,” I said flatly. “Only that I won’t. By which I mean, I’m going to go.”
“Go?”
“To find my father. My name is on this list. The spirals all connect in the wood where he last saw me. He must be looking for me.”
Matthew pressed his knuckles to his nose. “Oh, come on. You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about his timing. You’ve nothing to go on. And besides . . .” He stopped, considering his phrasing, “I’d been under the impression you preferred to be alone.”
At once, I saw my path to victory. I knew precisely what Matthew meant, and the tact that it had taken to arrive there, but I blinked like a fool and asked him, “Why?” When he frowned, I continued, “I don’t follow your logic. Did you not just suggest I might need company?”
This was a strategy I’d employed throughout my childhood, most commonly on Mrs. Blott when she assigned me a task I found distasteful. I had learned the game from Peter, who was expert at exploiting fallacies, and whose explanations of such appeared far less manipulative than my own. I generally tried to hide behind a mask of na?veté, to imply that I had no ulterior motive, yet even at my most successful I could never disguise my glee at setting up a verbal trap and catching my partner in a snare of their own making.
Matthew did not take my bait. “What will you do if you go after him?” he said.
I thought for a moment. “I’ll learn about the things he’s studying. These circles and numbers. My involvement, why he’s written down my name.” However successful my improvised plan proved to be was secondary; anything seemed a choice alternative to sitting locked up at Urizon and unfolding my inadequacies, taking in the loss of Peter, Mrs. Blott. Better prepare for a new journey than contemplate the meaning of the one I had just taken, better sort through the tangible mystery of the map than parse the strangeness of my time spent in the wood and the pull that I now felt to return.
“How will you get there? Wherever there is.”
I squinted. “I suppose I’ll have to walk. Or I can bicycle. Neither seems especially difficult.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.” And to prove it I reached for the map, let my bare hands spin the paper so the spirals seemed to twirl, the shaded forest shimmering, before I pulled away. I was daring Matthew, testing his generosity, stretching the bond that death and mystery had lately formed between us. Will you really, I was silently asking, let me take this journey on my own? Is it true that you’re enamored of my body? Do you think you’re being practical? Or are you afraid?
Had Matthew not risen to my unspoken challenge, I cannot say that I’d actually have left Urizon. I’d been made bold by recent trauma, and mine was the sort of courage that would dissipate once enough time had passed. Matthew was right, there was the outline of a trip but no real substance, and it would not have taken long for me to realize the flaws in my plan.
But out of curiosity, compassion, or perhaps because he’d nothing more pressing to do, Matthew decided that his role in my story was not finished. His fascination intrigued me. His earlier insistence that he paid no mind to curses made me question my conception of my body. Was it possible to be both simultaneously frightened and awed? Already, though at the time I did not know it, my life and Matthew’s were entwined on both sides of the moment that he cocked his head, and frowned at me, and told me that in four days, once his last exam was over, he would help me to explore the nearest spiral if my father had not yet returned.
The Promise Ring
Helen, 1666
The daughter of a wealthy engineer, Helen was one of the first generation of Blakelys to live at Urizon just after the great house was built in the spring of 1653. Her father William had left the village of Coeurs Crossing as a young man, setting out to make his fortune by championing new methods of waterpower and hydraulic development. Helen was three years old when William returned, successful, to raze the old family property, erasing any sign of what the Blakelys had once been. The frame of the little house Helen was born in had been easily demolished, but when the workmen went to pry up the tiles in the cellar, they were seized by superstition, claiming to feel strange chills each time they bent down with the shovel. Pushing through, they found a dirt-laden manuscript buried beneath the floor, nestled next to an odd wooden carving. The man who took both discoveries to the woodpile found himself sobbing unexplainably once he set them down there, his partner struck with the same melancholy until the objects were removed and returned to the site of the house.
They did not ask the owner’s permission. William Blakely did not know of the carving until it was embedded in the woodwork of the servants’ stairs, at which point it was too late to remove it. He never knew of the manuscript, slipped onto a shelf at the back of the library.
Aside from these small remnants of the old world, William and his wife made their home a paragon of new money propriety. Urizon was lavishly decorated in the finest trappings of the age, impeccably staffed. The children were provided the best governesses, tutelage in music and painting, instruction in etiquette. William was determined to surpass his feudal roots, to establish the family as significant not only in Coeurs Crossing but the county, the commonwealth, even the unexplored reaches of the world. Such a task would be difficult, but not fully impossible. With money, William thought he might do it. With money, and with marriage. Which is, perhaps, why Helen’s actions struck him such a blow.