The Turnaway Girls Read online

  The Cloister

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  The Old Sorrows

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hiddenhall

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Sea

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Garden of All Silences

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Mother Nine says it’s the wall that does it — fills the shimmer-room with music and gold. But I know it’s someone on the other side.

  I know it’s a boy.

  A boy who was born and wrapped in scrolls of music instead of blankets. A boy with bells crowning his head, the sea a chorus of thrash and spray behind him, lifting a stone-flute to his lip. Breathing songs into living.

  Mother Nine says I couldn’t tell a flickermoth’s wing from a falling feather, but I know one thing: music needs a throat. Lungs and spit and gut’s blood.

  Don’t tell, Delphernia. Don’t.

  I crouch, pressing my ear to damp stone. There’s nothing there except the kind of silence only walls can make. It’s a dead sort of quiet: a sound you’d expect to hear belowground and not above it. Even the sea hushes as though it’s waiting for someone to make their penance.

  I know it’s not the wall that threads notes through the air like a crying bird — I know, I know, I know. Because when I push past the hard-kept silence of the lifeless wall, there are footsteps there, knuckle cracks. There’s a tongue clicked and a cleared throat. I know he’s there — I know. The sea rushes, howling, and splattered salt drips through starlit gaps.

  I flinch, jumping back.

  All my life I’ve been told that the sea surrounds the dome of the cloister just as the night sky holds the moon.

  And that it swallows girls like me.

  Don’t tell.

  The door to the shimmer-room opens like a cough, and the othergirls shuffle in. Their bare feet scuff the moss-spotted ground. They line up and I weave among them, moving past their stare-straight eyes to plant myself in the back, back row.

  The hammering clangs of Mother Nine’s footsteps ring through my heels. The othergirls dip their chins. I gulp all my secrets down, but they churn in my stomach like a bad soup, clawing up my throat to get out.

  Here she is — wrapped in muddied silks, cloisterwing feathers sewn to her sleeves to honor the First Mother. She makes a show of holy words, strikes a shard of hushingstone against the wall until it makes a shhhh sound and glows with fire.

  Then she summons the music — from the boy, the boy outside, he’s there, I know he’s there — with one cold-uttered word: “Breathe.”

  Beyond the cloister, the city of Blightsend rings its bells.

  And the boy behind the wall begins to play.

  The othergirls lift their heads. Then Mother Nine says my name, and I know that it is time. Time for me to fail at kneading music into gold.

  Making shimmer, Mother Nine calls it, because that’s the thing with her sly-sticking tongue: she likes to turn words over until they mean nothing but what they aren’t.

  I walk until I’m close enough to feel the wall against my lips. Mother Nine holds up a mirror of polished gold and my face appears: dark eyes, brown skin. My hair’s pulled back in a coiled bun, black curls fighting against being pinned. I pretend the bruise under my eye is only the shadow of a cloisterwing, picture it circling my head like a dark diadem.

  I mutter the prayer we’ve been saying since we could speak: “Let me forget that I have eyes. Let me forget that I am an I.”

  “Go on,” says Mother Nine, lowering the mirror.

  I know what I’m supposed to do, not because I’ve ever actually done it but because I’ve watched the othergirls so many times — the ones in my class.

  Maybe it’s because I have a singing throat — Don’t tell, Delphernia, never tell — or maybe it’s because I am broken in my bones, but I can’t make shimmer the way they do.

  When they make shimmer, the othergirls face the wall with open palms, the music flowing through their bones. The notes gleam at their backs, thick-burnished threads, and they turn to face the strands of light, pulling music out of air, letting it sit heavily in their hands. They knead each piece until it becomes a knotted clump of gold. Mother Nine claps afterward — more of a warning than an applause — and we say another prayer to the First Mother: “Thank you for giving us the gift of knowing our place.”

  But there won’t be any clapping now. Not for me. Because my hands are always empty. And empty hands, as Mother Nine likes to say, must be filled.

  Filled with the hum of lashes.

  Filled with blood.

  Empty hands make for empty bellies — that’s another thing she likes to say. And it’s true. Because if we didn’t make gold, the Custodian of Blightsend wouldn’t drop seaflowers and hook-strung eels through the skydoor.

  We’d starve, then.

  Nothing grows in the cloister except lungmoss and half-dead tongue-fruit trees that don’t even sprout petals. You can’t eat darkness, and you can’t chew stone. And you can’t leave the cloister unless you’re born in the right year. Unless you’re led out by a bell-crowned boy to make gold for his pockets.

  I show the wall the scars on my palms.

  The thing is, I’m always too busy listening to the music to let it pass through me. When I was as small as an egg, I thought that I could be the same as the othergirls if only I tried hard enough. But even when I tried, my spine sprouted fingers. My knees became tight-fisted hands, my ankles knots. Every joint gripped every note that the stone-flutes sent rising, grabbed at every bright-quivering voice.

  My bones take hold of the music now. It sticks, thickens my marrow like one of Mother Nine’s stews. I wish the wall were mist so I could peer through and see him — see the boy with the stone-flute raised to his lip — I know he’s there; I know. But I can’t make mist out of stone. So I listen. I gather the music inside me. I lock it in, close myself up like an old chest of drawers. The musician wavers, unsure if he should continue. He can sense that I’m not making shimmer. That there’s something wrong. That I am wrong.

  I want to twist my mouth into a mocking, ask Mother Nine if rock ever hesitates, but before I can, she untucks a twiggy switch from the folds of her skirt and slices the back of my hand with it. A stripe of redness appears, raising the skin across my finger bones.

  The music stops, and a truth settles in my belly like a bird folding its wings into a nest. I will never see the sky in its entirety. The sky wouldn’t ever want to set its eyes on me.

  Mother Nine says, “The whisper-room — now,” and I know I will not hear the rest of th
e songs. The songs the othergirls turn into gold.

  The songs that no girl in Blightsend is ever allowed to echo.

  The door to the shimmer-room closes behind me. The passageway of black stone is unlit, but I know the way well to the whisper-room.

  I press the little music I heard into the curve of my ribs. I want to keep it for later — for my time in the hollow tree. My feet tap against stone, but I take care not to make any rhythm.

  I might lock songs in my bones for safekeeping, but that doesn’t mean they belong to me.

  I’m a turnaway girl and so I know: music belongs to the Masters.

  I do not look at the hollow tree on my way to the whisper-room. I can smell the damp of its ungrowing branches, but I do not look. If I glimpse one leaf, I will run to it, climb inside. I will fill it with singing.

  And singing’s something I do only after bedtime, when I can be alone with wings. With the cloisterwings. My cloisterwings.

  It’s safe then. Mother Nine makes a noise of dreams and her cheeks are marked with pillow creases and I know she won’t wake up. She takes foul-smelling droplets to her tongue each night, and not even a stone-rattling storm can wake her. Not even a girl blowing on her eyelids.

  Don’t tell.

  I walk down Teeth Row, the cobbled lane that keeps the trees on one side and our rooms on the other. I pass eating-rooms, sleeping-rooms, scrubbing-rooms, the shimmer-room far behind me. But I can’t think of eating or sleeping. I can’t even think of a hot bath. The ache in my hand is dulling now, and I’ve lost all thoughts of switches and bruises — but I’m thinking of another pain.

  Pain no bruise could show.

  The whisper-room’s door is as heavy as the one that closes the music inside the shimmer-room. The air is just as cold. But while the shimmer-room is made of stone and more stone — gloom and more gloom — the whisper-room has faces in it. They’re chiseled into the walls in an army of stillnesses, lanterns of hushingstone arranged to light their eyes.

  It’s beautiful, the whisper-room is, beautiful and fright-filled. Because they’re not just any faces, the ones that adorn the walls. They’re the faces of the Mothers.

  And their eyes know exactly how awful I have been.

  The First Mother is there, a cloisterwing sitting in her open palm. I have been sent here to tell her I’m sorry. To tell the cloisterwing, too.

  I don’t mind the thought of praying to a bird. I sing to them every night, all my secrets held in the timbre of my voice. But even the First Mother — dead as she is — knows I would sooner give her my right ear than a paean dug from the mud of my heart.

  Still, I bend my neck and touch my fingers to my lips when I see her gold-dusted brow. She was the first turnaway girl in Blightsend. The best. The quietest. They say she floated instead of walking, her soundless feet a tribute to the silence girls must leave upon our land.

  Mother Nine’s heels leave no such silence, but if I questioned her, she’d say the rules are for me and not for Mothers. She’d say she is the rule — and I the one to obey it.

  She would be right.

  I kneel. I count my breaths.

  “I forgot,” I whisper. “I forgot to let the music flow through. I’m —”

  I can’t say it.

  All I wanted — all I’ve ever wanted — was to keep something beautiful for myself. I shouldn’t have to make penance for that. Not when I live in the cloister, in a dome of hushingstone that keeps everything out — everything — including the sky and sea.

  The carved eyes of the Mothers peel me open like a slit tongue-fruit. I’m supposed to keep my gaze lowered out of respect, but still — I look up. I look into the First Mother’s eyes.

  I want to prove that she can’t hurt me. That even if she was the best turnaway girl in Blightsend, she’s gone now. Gone and dead — like the seven Mothers after her. Which means I’m better than she is in at least one way: I am alive.

  She looks at me with a quizzing smile.

  And then I break another rule. I stand and walk toward her portrait until I’m close enough to lick it.

  I half expect the ceiling to crumble. Half expect the First Mother to slap me, add to the artful bruises Mother Nine’s left behind. But the walls remain unmoving. Everything is still.

  I trace the cloisterwing’s shape with my finger.

  In Histories, we learned that the First Mother carved the cloisterwings out of Blightsend’s hushingstone — carefully, as all things hushingstone should be handled, with a sculptor’s knife. I know my cloisterwings — the ones I sing to each night — come to the world hatched from speck-and-fleck eggs, but I like to think of the tale as truth. I like to think that stone as cold as this can make something flying — something as glossy and proud as a bird with outstretched wings.

  Rushing steps echo across cobbles, louder and louder, and my fingertip catches against the cloisterwing’s pointed beak. I run back to the center of the room. I kneel again. I dip my pounding head.

  The door opens.

  Mother Nine breathes ragged breaths, walking a circle about me. “Do you know, Delphernia, why I never look you in the eye?”

  I stare at the ground. “You don’t look at a thing invisible,” I say. “You don’t look at a thing that is not to be seen.”

  “And what of you?” She slaps the twig-switch against her palm.

  My skin is a sack, and I’m wriggling inside it.

  “Turnaway girls are not seen — they see. Turnaway girls are not heard — they hear.”

  “Good,” she says. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten everything I’d ever taught you.” She holds out a pale, unblemished hand. She was a good turnaway girl. She’s not broken in her bones. She doesn’t need to be put back together with whispers and slaps and penance.

  I grip her fingers, get to my feet.

  She curls her silks around me. The feathers on her sleeves quiver. I want to rip them off her. She doesn’t deserve them. She hates cloisterwings. Hates anything that sings.

  “I’ve told you before, Delphernia — you’ve decided who you are instead of letting me tell you. That’s why you can’t make shimmer.” She shifts, one hand gripping my shoulder. Her scattered glancing lands on me for a second — only a second.

  “Yes, Mother Nine,” I say.

  “And what is the one thing you must always remember?”

  I wait as long as I can before I say the words. Because even though I know they’re true, my body doesn’t want to say them. My jaw aches.

  “Girls with singing throats are swallowed by the sea.”

  “Swallowed by the sea,” Mother Nine repeats.

  “Swallowed by the sea,” I whisper.

  Mother Nine has always punished me, but this week has been worse than ever. I suppose it’s because the Festival of Bells is nearing, and soon the Custodian will be here, watching us. Watching her. And I am a blot that won’t rub out. I am the only turnaway girl in Blightsend’s history who can’t make gold out of melodies.

  “You know I only want the best for you,” she says.

  I nod, even though I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. You can’t want the best for someone and wish for them to bleed.

  “It’s the truth,” she says. “About girls with singing throats. The sea has made many dinners of them.” She flicks her chin at the door, and I move toward it.

  She follows close behind. Then she bends to touch her lips to my ear. “Remember that and you’ll keep your lungs from tasting salt.”

  It’s past midnight before I’m able to uncoil from under my bedclothes, spread my arms out in the wet-smelling dark. Bare feet. Bare heart.

  I feel Mother Nine following me as I tiptoe across Teeth Row, even though I know she’s snug under heavy quilts in her sleeping-room. I hear her heels banging against stone, her switch scraping a trail along the ground. I turn, sharp-shouldered, but there’s no one there. Of course there’s no one there.

  I sprint the rest of the way across the Row. The cold wrings my bones
in its hands, but the thought of the softness of lungmoss I’ll feel beneath my feet when I get to the trees, the trees, the trees, makes it worth the ache. Here I am: skimming the damp, the crooked ghosts of branches gathering me close. I love all the trees in the cloister, but the hollow tree is my favorite.

  The cloisterwings sigh among half-dead leaves, waiting for me to sing to them.

  I loosen a dangling strip of the hollow tree’s bark and press it to my tongue. It tastes of the rain that pours through the skydoor once every week when Mother Nine opens it to receive our food from the Custodian and our water from the clouds, when the cloisterwings are locked in bent-gold cages so that they can’t escape. It tastes of how it must feel to see the whole sky in one go. It tastes of having wings.

  I grab one of the drooping branches and hoist myself into the hollow tree’s belly, sliding down, down, down. My finger bones prickle as I settle into the joy of the dark. In the dark, I am hidden. In the dark, I can sing. In the dark, I am as much cloisterwing as girl.

  I close my eyes. And then all I know is the sound of the sea and the gap-whistling wind and the cloisterwings’ rustling feathers. My voice stitches their melodies together.

  I draw the music from my side — the music I stowed there hours before — into my throat. I yawn my mouth open.

  The night-pocket fills with my voice.

  Sea-waves beat and beat. I can hear the cloisterwings tapping their beaks, the twitch of feathers and the crick-crack of claws. They lift out of their nests and shift their wings in the branches around me, cutting a glide through air.

  Then a quick wing brushes my bruised cheek, and my eyes open to a glaring shot of light, a twisting spiral above my head. I squint, unaccustomed to anything other than the thickness of the dark, and make out a cloisterwing flapping its wings up and up, out of the hollow tree’s trunk. For a moment I think Mother Nine’s come with her hushingstone lantern to singe my skin off.

  Then I realize: I’ve made light-strands. The way the othergirls do in the shimmer-room — but out of my own singing. The strands move slowly as poured sap, tangling and untangling, looping and unlooping. I stretch my arm up, touch one with the tip of a finger, and it loosens from the air and settles in my palm, curled up like a sleeper.