It was appropriate, then, that they had to walk past the Shadow Garden. Lynet ordinarily liked the garden, especially seeing it from above, where the bare branches of the trees stood out against the snow like trails of ink spilled over paper. Today, though, she could only think of Queen Sybil and the story behind all those dead trees.
Centuries ago, before Whitespring had earned its name, the Shadow Garden had been called the Queen’s Garden, because it had belonged to Queen Sybil. But when the queen’s only son was thrown from his horse to his death, the queen hanged herself from one of the trees in her garden. At the instant of her death, the winds changed, and snow started to fall over the northern half of the kingdom, though it was spring. The castle froze, the passing of time blurring into one long winter, and the Queen’s Garden remained in its new, grim state: a grove of dead trees, a garden of shadows. The Queen’s Garden became the Shadow Garden, the castle was renamed Whitespring, and the everlasting winter became known over the years as “Sybil’s curse.”
Past the garden, at the base of the North Tower around the back of the castle, was a small door slightly below ground level, a short flight of steps cutting through the snow. When they reached that door, Nicholas froze, eyes fixed on the handle. Lynet gently put her hand on his arm. “We don’t have to go this year, if you don’t want to,” she said, trying not to sound too eager.
He rested his hand on hers for a moment, perhaps drawing strength from it. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t deprive you of this. It’s the only time we have with her.” And without any more hesitation, he opened the door to the royal crypt, where Lynet’s mother waited.
Nicholas lit the lamp that hung by the door and held it up, offering his other hand to Lynet. The stairs down to the crypt were uneven and winding, and Lynet often had trouble with them, especially when she was little, so she gratefully took her father’s hand and let him lead her down.
Her father pressed her hand gently as they submerged into the stale air of the crypt, and she managed a weak smile in return. These visits meant so much to him; she didn’t want him to know that she always dreaded this day. They always honored her mother’s death shortly before Lynet’s birthday. When Lynet was younger, she hadn’t thought much of it, but now she understood that this was her father’s way of separating her mother’s death from her birth. He wanted to spare her the guilt of being the cause of that death. She was thankful for that, she supposed.
Lynet kept her eyes down as they passed through shadowed walls. She didn’t want to see the massive stone columns, because then she remembered that those pillars alone kept the crypt from collapsing under the pressure of the earth above. She didn’t want to glance up at the walls, because all along them were long, narrow alcoves, each housing a casket. The bodies of all her ancestors were here, and one day she would join them.
She had to look up, though, when they reached the Cavern of Bones.
Past the dead trees of the Shadow Garden was a statue of Queen Sybil standing over the lake. Her stone hands covered her face as she wept eternally, her grief strong enough to banish spring from the North. Here in the crypt, in the Cavern of Bones, was a statue of a different sort.
Lynet forced herself to look at Sybil’s bones, laid out on her bier. All around her were the remains of other skeletons, martyrs who had died on their knees when they came to pray to Sybil, asking her to end the curse that bore her name. Since then, the custom when passing through the Cavern was to stop and kneel and offer a prayer to Sybil in the hopes that one day her curse would end.
Nicholas knelt down, and Lynet followed, shutting her eyes to block out the sight of death. She prayed, as she had been taught, for the end of the curse, for the survival of the North, for respite from the cold.
When they finished their prayers and finally reached the alcove that held her mother’s casket, Lynet was so tense that she almost let out a moan of fear. Her father still held her hand tightly, and she was suddenly convinced that he would lead her straight into the casket to take her mother’s place.
“Papa, I—”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to say anything, my Lynetbird.” He released her hand only to put his arm around her and hold her close. “Look,” he said. “Look at her.” They were only words, but Lynet felt as though he were holding her eyelids open, forcing her to stare at that smooth wooden box.
“Every year,” Nicholas said, “when we come to see her, I always feel the pain of her loss all over again. I think of her laid out in that casket, her eyes forever closed, her soft hands crossed over her chest. I can imagine her so vividly as the woman she once was.”
Lynet could imagine her too: a corpse laid out, eyes closed, hands crossed—but the corpse had her own face. Thanks to the strong resemblance she shared with her mother, Lynet knew that if she opened that casket now, she would see something like herself—her own body, her own face—after nearly sixteen years of decay. Perhaps life was the only thing that set Lynet apart from her mother, the boundary between them as indistinct as a single breath. The faint sound of Lynet’s breathing, the rise and fall of her chest—without them, Lynet might have been indistinguishable from the woman in that box. She kept her eyes wide open, afraid that if she closed them, she would see the inside of the casket behind her eyelids.
Her father turned to her, studying her face. “You become more like her every year.”
“I’m not her,” Lynet said, barely above a whisper.
Her father smiled fondly, mistaking her terror for fear of inadequacy. “You will be. A few more years, and you’ll embody everything that she was.”
All Lynet wanted was to run outside and climb the highest tree, as far away as possible from this place, and then she would be more certain than ever that she was alive—that she was herself. But her father’s arm kept her weighed down beside him, and when they were finished paying their respects, Nicholas led her out of the crypt. Lynet followed in a daze, blinking away the sight of the casket.
Nicholas hugged her close and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m so thankful for you, Lynetbird. On this day, especially, I see how fortunate I am.”
Guilt and pride mixed in equal measure in her chest—pride because she had made her father happy for one brief moment, and guilt because she knew she would disappoint him again. She could never be her mother, even if she’d wanted to be.
Only when they had emerged back into the fresh air did Lynet start to come out of her stupor and feel her blood flowing again. She could see the outlines of the dead trees in the garden and hear the distant lapping of the lake, all of these sights and sounds more vivid and sharp after the suffocating gloom of the crypt.