Fiona politely turns her back, rolling her eyes at my modesty as I change out of my nightgown. Once dressed, I usher her from the bedroom, closing the creaky door as quietly as possible behind me.
“Pa wants me back at the store before we open,” Fiona says, watching my hands—callused and raw from spinning—as I place the prepared skeins of yarn in a basket for her. “The Bards arrive today.”
The Bards. Suddenly I feel as though the house has been encased in ice. The town elders say there’s power in words—that certain phrases can change the world around you. The same was said for the color of the disease. Indigo was avoided as if merely the sight or sound of it would cause a resurgence of the sickness. Now it is referred to—when absolutely necessary—as the “cursed color.”
Only the Bards can harness words safely, through their Tellings. Everyone in Montane knows that any fool can speak disaster into existence by uttering something forbidden.
Some say my brother was one of those fools.
They say the Blot started with the written word. The havoc it wreaked has long since turned to terror at all words, written or spoken. Any careless utterance could be enough to revive the pandemic.
It was enough for Ma to stop talking completely after losing Kieran.
A familiar feeling of dread snakes through my gut.
The Bards arrive once or twice a year with barely a day’s warning, a message delivered by a raven to the town’s constable. He, in turn, summons the town in preparation for their arrival. They collect the town’s tithe for High House and—if they are pleased—they may perform a Telling to grant blessings to the land and its people.
They are rarely pleased. Aster’s offerings are meager: an armful of wool, a few bundles of pale wheat. The hide and antlers of a buck, if we are lucky.
A Telling in Aster has not occurred during my lifetime, but the oldest of the elders, Grandfather Quinn, often recounts one from his childhood. After the Bards left, his family’s wheat farm produced a harvest that lasted six weeks.
The last time I saw the Bards was from a distance, the day Kieran died. After, Ma forbade me from seeing them—the final words she ever said aloud to me. But it’s not as if I have time to peer in on their visitations. With the land scrubbed dry by a merciless sun, I often have to drive our flock miles away to be sure they’re fed at all. Last month, we lost a three-week-old ewe lamb to starvation.
Now I understand why Fiona came so early. If the meager skeins of yarn from our sheep make the town’s tithe look even a little bit better, perhaps the Bards will aid in ending the drought. The village of Aster has not seen rain in nearly nine months.
“Are you all right?” Fiona asks quietly.
I jerk my head up from the yarn and look at her. Lately, I’ve been haunted by strange things I can’t explain. Dreams that seem more like terrible, nonsensical predictions. I awaken with the growing fear that something is deeply wrong with me.
“I’m fine.” The words fall heavily out of my mouth.
Fiona narrows her large green eyes at me. “Liar,” she says bluntly.
I take a deep breath as a desperate, foolish idea starts to make its way through my head. With a quick backward glance at the closed bedroom door, I grab the basket of yarn with one hand, Fiona’s wrist with the other, and walk purposefully out of the house.
The sun has barely touched the sky as we step outside, and the air is still cold and dry. The mountains that surround us cut a dark, jagged line ahead and cast the valley in a veil of gauzy shadows while mist rises from the withered grass.
I lead Fiona around the side of the house in silence. Despite the chill in the air, my skin feels hot and prickly. My mind is spinning. I worry that if I turn to show Fiona my face, even for an instant, she will somehow know the truth.
I could be in serious danger, and by just being near me, so could she.
It started about a year ago, right after my sixteenth birthday. I was embroidering one of Ma’s headscarves, black birds arcing across the fabric, when I lifted my face to see a flock of them forming an arrowhead through the sky. Not long after, I was stitching a hare with a white tail onto a pillowcase, when one of the neighbor’s bird hounds came into the pasture with a bloodied white hare in its teeth.
A warm tingling began to fill my fingers whenever I sewed. Not unpleasant, but strange.
I spent countless nights lying awake, staring at the austere wooden beams of the ceiling, trying to figure out if I was mad or cursed—or both. There was only one thing I knew for certain: the shadows of sickness had fallen on us before. We have been touched by the Blot. We can’t possibly know what other catastrophe might befall us from that contact. And ever since I discovered my embroidered fantasies echoed in the world around me, Ma’s silence has felt more and more deafening. The house echoes with everything that is unsaid.
Loss. Exhaustion. Gnawing hunger, day after day.
The morning air sends a shiver through me, stirring the frigid fear in my gut. When we reach the side of the barn, I finally release Fiona, but can’t help another wary glance over my shoulder. The little gray wooden house is still and silent in the morning mist, as we left it.
“What’s gotten into you, Shae?” She quirks an eyebrow, suspicious, but intrigued.
“Fiona,” I begin, biting my lip hard as I realize I’m not sure how to say it. “I need a favor.” It’s the first truthful thing that comes to mind.
Her eyes soften. “Of course, Shae. Anything.”
Instantly, I want to choke back my words. I try to imagine what might happen if I simply explain the truth to her. I might be cursed by the Blot, so I want to ask if the Bards can cure me.
At best, I risk losing my friend out of fear that I’ve brought my curse upon her, and the whole town will know within the day. Her parents will cancel their deal with Ma, no one will buy our wool, and my family will starve.
Even saying such a thing aloud is forbidden; any word that conjures thoughts of malice must never be spoken. Such words are said to harbor curses of their own, upon the speaker as well as those who hear them. The words would likely summon such an occurrence into existence all on its own.
Worst case, I spread my curse to my dearest friend in the world.
I can’t take that chance.
Staring at Fiona’s sweet, eager face, I know I can’t. I can’t risk losing her too.
“Can I deliver the wool to your pa?” I ask instead. “I’ll need you to bring the flock up to the north pasture while I’m gone. They shouldn’t be too stubborn this morning, and I can give you all the instructions. You’ve seen me do it plenty of times.”
Fiona’s brow knits. “That’s all? Yes, of course. But why?”
My heart starts pounding heavily in my chest. I take a deep breath, leaning against the rough siding of the barn to steady myself and clear the scattered thoughts in my head, frustrated by how terrible I am at this.
“Oh, I know what’s going on.” A sly smile tips the corner of Fiona’s mouth and my heart suddenly goes quiet as it plummets into my feet. “You’re going to see Mads, aren’t you?”
“Yes!” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Exactly.” No one would question why I would go to town and see Mads unprompted—or if they did, their suspicions would be far from the ones I’m worried about.