“Enva’s harp, the only one of its kind, was first born in the clouds. Her mother goddess loved to hear Enva sing and decided to fashion an inimitable harp for her. Its frame is made of dragon bone, salvaged from the wasteland beyond sunset. Its strings are made of hair, stolen from one of the fiercest harpies in the skies. Its frame is held together by the very wind itself. They say the harp is heavy to mortals, and it would refuse to let such fingers play it without screeching. Only Enva’s hands can make it truly sing.”
Now, onto the news you won’t like: I’m going to be away for a while. I’m uncertain how long at the moment, and I won’t be able to write to you. That’s not to say I won’t be thinking of you often. So please know that, even in the silence that must come between us for a little while.
I’ll write to you whenever I’m able. Promise me you’ll remain safe and well.
Yours,
—C.
Dear Carver,
Let me first say thank you for the myth snippet. I enjoyed it, immensely. I wonder if you are perhaps a wizard, for how you’re able to find missing myths the way you do. As if by magic.
But I also can’t help but wonder … where are you going? Are you leaving Oath?
Love,
Iris
She waited for him to write a reply. And when it never came, she hated how her heart sank into the silence.
{25}
Collision
Dear Carver,
I don’t know why I’m writing this. You just told me last night you were going away, and yet here I am. Writing to you. As I’ve been doing so compulsively the past few months.
Or maybe I’m truly writing for myself today, under the guise of your name. Perhaps it’s a good thing you’re gone. Perhaps now I can fully lower my armor and look at myself, which I’ve resisted doing since my mum died.
You know what? I need to completely restart this letter to you to me.
Dear Iris,
You don’t know what’s coming in the days ahead, but you’re doing just fine. You are so much stronger than you think, than you feel. Don’t be afraid. Keep going.
Write the things you need to read. Write what you know to be true.
—I.
“We need to get the seeds in the ground,” Marisol said with a sigh. They still hadn’t planted the garden yet, despite the fact that it was tilled and ready. “I’m afraid I won’t have time to do it today, though. I’m needed in the infirmary kitchen.”
“Iris and I can plant them,” Attie offered, finishing her breakfast tea.
Iris nodded in agreement. “Just show us how to do it and we can get everything planted.”
Half an hour later, Iris and Attie were on their knees in the garden, dirt beneath their nails as they created mounded rows and planted the seeds. It caught Iris by surprise—this weighted sense of peace she felt as she gave the earth seed after seed, knowing they would soon rise. It quieted her fears and her worries, to let the soil pass through her fingers, to smell the loam and listen to the birdsong in the trees above. To let something go with the reassurance it would return, transformed.
Attie was quiet at her side, but Iris sensed her friend was feeling the same.
They were nearly done when a distant siren began to wail. Instantly, the warmth and security Iris had been experiencing bled away, and her body tensed, one hand in the soil, the other cupping the last of the cucumber seeds.
On instinct, her eyes lifted.
The sky was bright and blue above them, streaked with thin clouds. The sun continued to burn near its midday point, and the wind blew gently from the south. It seemed impossible that a day this lovely could turn sour so quickly.
“Hurry, Iris,” Attie said as she rose. “Let’s go inside.” She sounded calm, but Iris could hear the apprehension in her friend’s voice as the siren continued to blare.
Two minutes.
They had two minutes before the eithrals reached Avalon Bluff.
Iris began to inwardly count in her mind as she rushed after Attie, through the back doors of the B and B. Their boots tracked dirt along the floor and rugs as the girls began to pull the curtains, covering the windows as Marisol had once instructed them to do.
“I’ll take the ground-floor windows,” Attie suggested. “You go on upstairs. I’ll meet you there.”
Iris nodded and bounded up the steps. She went to her room first and was just about to snap the curtains over one of the windows when something in the distance caught her eye. Over the neighbor’s thatched roof and garden plot and into the expanse of the golden field, Iris saw a figure moving. Someone was walking toward Avalon Bluff through the long grass.
Who was that? Their foolish persistence in walking during a siren was threatening the entire town. They should be lying down where they were, because the eithrals would soon haunt the skies, and if the winged creatures dropped a bomb that close … would it obliterate Marisol’s house? Would the blast level Avalon Bluff to the ground?
Iris squinted against the sun, but the distance was too great; she couldn’t discern any details of the moving figure, other than they seemed to be briskly walking in defiance of the siren, and she hurried into Attie’s bedroom, finding her binoculars on the desk. Iris returned to her window with them, palms sweating profusely, and she looked through the lenses.
It was blurry at first, a world of amber and green and shadows. Iris drew a long, calming breath and brought the binoculars into focus. She searched the field for the lone individual, at last finding them after what felt like a year.
A tall, broad-shouldered body dressed in a gray jumpsuit was striding through the grass. They carried a typewriter case in one hand, a leather bag in the other. There was a badge over their chest—another war correspondent, Iris realized. She didn’t know if she was relieved or annoyed as she dragged her eyes upward to their face. A sharp jaw, a scowling brow, and thick hair the color of ink, slicked back.
Her mouth fell open with a gasp. She felt her pulse in her ears, swallowing all sound but that of her heart, pounding heavy and swift within her. She stared at the boy in the field; she stared at him as if she were dreaming. But then the truth shivered through her.
She would know that handsome face anywhere.
It was Roman Confounded Kitt.
Her hands went cold. She couldn’t move as the seconds continued to pass and she realized he was this close to her and yet so far away, walking in a field. His ignorance was going to draw a bomb. He was destined to be blown apart and killed, and Iris tried to envision what her life would be like with him dead.
No.
She set down the binoculars. Her mind whirled as she turned and ran from her room, passing Attie on the stairs.
“Iris? Iris!” Attie cried, reaching out to snag her arm. “Where are you going?”
There was no time to explain; Iris evaded her friend and bolted down the hallway, out the back doors and through the garden they had just been kneeling and planting in mere minutes ago. She leapt over the low stone wall and dashed across the street, winding through the neighbor’s yard. Her lungs felt as if they had caught fire, and her heart was thrumming at the base of her throat.
She finally reached the field.
Iris sprinted, feeling the jolt in her knees, the wind dragging through her loose hair. She could see him now; he was no longer an unfamiliar shadow in a sea of gold. She could see his face, and the scowl lifted from his brow as he saw her. Recognized her.