There was something in the air. She could feel it. And something underground—a buzzing, rumbling, irritated something. She could feel that, too.
Her back hurt. Her hands hurt. Her knees and her hips and her elbows and her ankles and each bone in her swollen feet hurt and hurt and hurt. As each click, each pulse, each second pulled them closer to that point on the gears of Luna’s life when every hand pointed toward thirteen, Xan could feel herself thinning, shrinking, fading. She was as light and as fragile as paper.
Paper, she thought. My life is made of paper. Paper birds. Paper maps. Paper books. Paper journals. Paper words and paper thoughts. Everything fades and shreds and crinkles away to nothing. She could remember Zosimos—dear Zosimos! How close did he seem to her now!—leaning over his stacks of paper with six candles burning brightly around the perimeter of his desk, scratching his knowledge into the rough, clean space.
My life was written on paper and preserved on paper—all those bloody scholars scratching their notes and their thoughts and their observations. If I had died, they would have inscribed my demise on paper and never shed a tear. And here is Luna, the same as I was. And here am I holding on to the one word that could explain everything, and the girl cannot read it or even hear it.
It wasn’t fair. What the men and women in the castle had done to Xan was not fair. What Xan had done to Luna was not fair. What the citizens of the Protectorate had done to their own babies was not fair. None of it was fair.
Xan stood and looked out the window. Luna had not returned. Perhaps that was for the best. She would leave a note. Some things were easier said on paper, anyway.
Xan had never left so early to retrieve the Protectorate baby. But she couldn’t risk being late. Not after last time. And she couldn’t risk being seen, either. Transformations were difficult, and she had to contend with the possibility that she might not have the strength to undo this one. More consequences.
Xan fastened her traveling cloak and slid her feet into a pair of sturdy boots and packed her satchel full of bottles of milk and soft, dry cloths, and a bit of food for herself. She whispered a spell to keep the milk from spoiling and tried to ignore the degree to which the spell drained her energies and spirits.
“Which bird?” she murmured to herself. “Which bird, which bird?” She considered transforming herself into a raven and taking on a bit of its cunning or an eagle and taking on a bit of its fight. An albatross, with its effortless flight, also seemed like a good idea, except a lack of water might impede her ability to take off and land. In the end, she chose the swallow—small, yes, and delicate, but a good flier and a keen eye. She would have to take breaks, and a swallow was small and brown and nearly invisible to predators.
Xan closed her eyes and pressed her feet to the ground and felt the magic flow through her fragile bones. She felt herself become light and small and keen. Bright eyes, agile toes, a sharp, sharp mouth. She shook her wings, felt so deep within herself the need to fly she thought she might die of it, and with a high, sad cry of loneliness and missing Luna, she fluttered into the air and slid over the fringe of trees.
She was as light as paper.
Antain waited for their child to be born before he began his journey. The Day of Sacrifice was weeks away, but there would be no more births in the ensuing time. There were about two dozen pregnant women in the Protectorate, but all of them had only just begun to show their bellies. Their labors were months away, not weeks.
The birth, thankfully, was an easy one. Or Ethyne claimed it was easy. But every time she cried out, Antain felt himself die inside. Birth was loud and messy and frightening, and it felt to Antain as if it took a lifetime or more, though in truth they were only at it for the better part of the morning. The baby came squalling into the world at lunchtime. “A proper gentleman, this one,” the midwife said. “Makes his appearance at the most reasonable of hours.”
They named him Luken and they marveled at his tiny toes and his delicate hands and the way his eyes fixed upon their faces. They kissed his small, searching, howling mouth.
Antain never felt more sure of what he had to do.
He left the next morning, well before the sun rose, with his wife and child still asleep in the bed. He couldn’t bear to say good-bye.
The madwoman stood at her window, her face resting on the bars. She watched the young man slide out of the quiet house. She had been waiting for him to appear for hours. She didn’t know how she knew to wait for him—only that she did. The sun had not yet come up, and the stars were sharp and clear as broken glass, spangled across the sky. She saw him slip out of his front door and close it silently behind him. She watched him as he laid his hand on the door, pressing his palm against the wood. For a moment, she thought he might change his mind and go back inside—back to the family that lay asleep in the dark. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes tight, heaved a great sigh, and turned on his heel, hurrying down the dark lane toward the place on the town wall where the climb was least steep.
The madwoman blew him a kiss for luck. She watched him pause and shiver as the kiss hit him. Then he continued on his way, his steps noticeably lighter. The madwoman smiled.
There was a life she used to know. There was a world she used to live in, but she could hardly remember it. Her life before was as insubstantial as smoke. She lived, instead, in this world of paper. Paper birds, paper maps, paper people, dust and ink and pulped wood and time.
The young man walked in the shadows, checking this way and that to see if anyone followed him. He had a satchel and a bedroll slung across his back. A cloak that would be too heavy during the day and not nearly warm enough at night. And swinging at his hip, a long, sharp knife.
“You must not go alone,” the madwoman whispered. “There are dangers in the wood. There are dangers here that will follow you into the wood. And there is one who is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”
When she was a little girl, she had heard stories about the Witch. The Witch lived in the woods, she was told, and had a tiger’s heart. But the stories were wrong—and what truth they had was twisted and bent. The Witch was here, in the Tower. And while she didn’t have a tiger’s heart, she would rip you to shreds if given the chance.
The madwoman stared at the window’s iron bars until they were no longer iron bars at all, but paper bars. She tore them to shreds. And the stones surrounding the window’s opening were no longer stones—just damp clumps of pulp. She scooped them out of the way with her hands.
The paper birds around her murmured and fluttered and squawked. They opened their wings. Their eyes began to brighten and search. They lifted as one into the air, and they streamed through the window, carrying the madwoman on their collective backs, and flowed silently into the sky.
The Sisters discovered the madwoman’s escape an hour after dawn. There were accusations and explanations and search parties and forensic explorations and teams of detectives. Heads rolled. The cleanup was a long, nasty job. But quiet, of course. The Sisters couldn’t afford to let news of the escape leak into the Protectorate. The last thing they needed was to allow the populace to be getting ideas. Ideas, after all, are dangerous.
Grand Elder Gherland ordered a meeting with Sister Ignatia just before lunch, despite her protestations that today simply was too difficult.
“I don’t care two wits about your feminine complications,” the Grand Elder roared as he marched into her study. The other Sisters scurried away, shooting murderous glances at the Grand Elder, which thankfully he did not notice.
Sister Ignatia felt it best not to mention the escaped prisoner. Instead, she called for tea and cookies and offered hospitality to the fuming Grand Elder.