The manor is the color of blood.
I drag Nori by the arm, through the mud, the last few feet. The rain has started hard, but at least we are cleaner. I drop her hand, thinking, I hope you’re not dead, and stare up at the manor. It’s the kind of big that makes you smell cakes and tea, see sugar lumps and silver tongs to lift them with. But the door is old. Paint flaking and peeling off like pencil shavings, the wood swollen by years of hard winters. The shabbiness of it gives me the backbone to lift the cast-iron knocker.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
It echoes beyond the door.
Seems like a bad idea at first; I want to run away. Hear Mam’s voice telling me that Auntie Cath is circling the loom, Silla darling. Only Nori is lying in the mud, rain pounding down with her completely oblivious, so I set my teeth and I pound again.
Let. Bang.
Me. Bang.
In. Bang.
The door opens a crack. A thin, weathered face with large, sunken eyes peers out.
“No thank you. I don’t buy anything—”
Funny how she seems to freeze when she realizes. When she sees.
“Presilla?”
I nod, once.
The door widens then, like a book opening on the first chapter, and there she is, standing in the gap to a warm, dry place, stunned like she just saw a giraffe doing backflips in a tutu. I can see her wanting to ask all kinds of questions, but her brain short-circuits with all of them rushing at her, and all that comes out is: “Oh my God. Oh, you poor thing. Why… why are you here?”
I turn away to get Nori and she must think I’m leaving ’cause she reaches out a hand and says, “Wait!” like she’s the one desperate for us to come muddying up her carpet and not the other way around. “I didn’t mean…” She trails off when she spots the lump that is Nori, in the mud, dead asleep.
“Oh my God! Is that—is it—”
I haul my little sister up and stagger a little. The woman—Cath—gapes at me but lets me pass. I drag Nori through and dump her on the floor just inside. The dark beams of wood that run the length of the entrance hall look older than Cath herself.
Cath shuts the door, leaning her head against it for a good half minute before she turns around. I get that. Needing a moment to gather strength. Though, when she does turn and see us, it’s all too much, and she slides down the door onto her bum and stares at us completely bewildered.
“Presilla… Eleanor…”
“It’s Silla now,” I tell her. “And Nori, she’s called.”
“Silla, yes. Nori. Okay.”
“Hello, Aunt. We’ve come to live with you.”
1
la baume
Welcome home,
warm and whole
to open arms
and healing balms
welcome child,
welcome, child.
Cath wore a blue-and-yellow kimono-style dressing gown, wild hair hovering around her shoulders like a mane. She stared at me with horror when Nori’s head thumped on the lip of the door as I dragged her inside. She flinched and reached forward like she wanted to lift Nori up into her arms. She didn’t, instead standing back, hand over her mouth.
“My goodness, oh dear.” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll get a blanket.” She turned away, and then hurried back. “Oh, dear. She can’t come into the house dripping like that.” Cath leaned forward and lifted Nori’s shirt up to pull it over her head.
I pushed her away. “Leave it.”
She blinked at me.
I forced a smile. “I can do it.”
“Okay. I’ll bring two blankets and we can get you both cleaned up and warm.”
She hurried off, her footsteps echoing through a house draped in shadow. I sat down beside Nori and turned her over, resting her head in my lap. She was fast asleep, so I leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
“We found it. We found the jewel.”
I stared around me, taking in the entrance hall. So dark. So empty. Safe. We were safe at last.
The tea was good, but that was about it. It was a touch snooty, maybe, with weird flavors and all—no Tetley here—but that was expected in a place like this. A manor like this. That’s where my amazement stopped.
This wasn’t so much a manor as a skeleton.
Where were all the baroque antiques? The oil paintings of stern, proud old men, and the string of ancestors in suits of armor? Wasn’t there supposed to be a plethora of finery and riches? I looked around with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and took another sip of fancy tea.
I was still wondering about the bloody color of the manor, to be honest. Made Mam’s voice pop into my head uninvited. Crazy Cath. Circling the loom.
Nori was dead noisy when she ate, for someone who couldn’t talk to save her life.
“Shut your mouth, would you?” I muttered.
Sweary word, mouth’s a turd. She made quick work of the signs, despite the jam gooing up her fingers.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”