“Never give your heart freely or as often,” Rose or Lilac would reprimand her. “The wrong kinds of people can place spells on it to gain and keep power over you.”
I wasn’t sure why anyone would want power over Daisy, because I couldn’t imagine her doing anything involving work. And Demian and Sam and Heath, obviously the wrong kind of people for my sister, wouldn’t know magic if it kneed them in the loins.
I once asked Rose why Daisy’s heart never lasted longer than her courtships, while Mother’s and Father’s heartsglass never needed replacing. “Hearts only last when you put in work to make them last,” she responded. She was, however, more forgiving of Daisy than Lilac was. “She can’t help herself,” Rose said. “Sometimes you can’t help who you love or for how long.”
? ? ?
With my sisters named the way they are, you might wonder about my unusual name. My mother had high expectations of her children—and of her daughters in particular. Fine, upstanding young ladies, she believed, needed fine, upstanding names. My sisters were named Rose and Lilac, Marigold and Daisy; by the time I came along, she had abandoned flowers. I grew up to the sounds of squabbles and running feet and love, and, despite my preference for ungainly books, I was unremarkable in every way.
But Fox? Fox was the family tragedy. His heart was a solid and dependable umber, bronze when held in the right kind of light. He was like a second father to me and is one of my earliest childhood memories. As the oldest, he looked after me when the rest of my siblings occupied my mother’s time. He joined the army when I was ten, and for two years, I read his letters home to my parents. There were no shortages of ill-mannered nobles who raised banners of gold and silver and called the throne their own, he wrote, and so King Telemaine sent soldiers like him, armed and primed for war, to force them down from such high, insolent ledges.
And then Fox wrote of strange and terrible tidings. These rumors sprouted up like bindweed along the edges of the kingdom and gorged themselves on whispers and fears. They told of daeva—strange and terrible monsters, maimed creatures assembled from scale-slicked bodies and yellowed fangs and spined limbs and horns. I was familiar with the legend: the daeva are the False Prince’s final curse on the world, and the Faceless are said to command them. Occasionally, the curse would take hold once more, and a daeva would rise from the dead to wreak havoc. Fox was periodically assigned to patrols that guarded Odalia’s borders and had seen one of the creatures for himself. But their commander had ordered a retreat; it was the Deathseekers’ job to kill the beasts in their stead. Fox had been impressed by these elite, magic-wielding fighters.
Shortly after that, Fox was killed “by creatures unknown,” as General Lode’s letter read. Military speak for daeva, Father said. There was nothing else—just a simple pine coffin, three months’ worth of his wages, and a single note that felt indifferent and regretful all at once.
My mother and sisters wept; they could have flooded Knightscross with the strength of their grief. My father and brothers held vigil for three days and three nights and said nothing with their impassive faces and wet eyes. I was only twelve, and I couldn’t see the kind, playful Fox I had known in that rigid body. I couldn’t recognize him in that pale, grim face. This was my brother, who had raised me and fed me and carried me on his shoulders, and it hurt to see him so still.
I was quiet when the mourners pulled the coffin lid shut. I was silent when they set the wooden box in the hole they had dug. Only when they poured the last shovelfuls of dirt onto the new grave did I speak. Even now I can recall how heavy those words felt when they fell from my lips.
“You can’t put him there. He can’t get out.”
“Sweetheart,” my mother wept, “Fox isn’t coming back.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re wrong. I saw him move. As sure as I know my own breath, I saw him move, but he can’t get out.” The syllables tripped on my tongue, tasting old and formal. It felt as if they came from someone using my mouth as a passageway through which words not my own raced. I had heard Fox. I had seen him move. In my mind’s eye, I had seen past the heavy stone, past the soil and the dirt and the rot, and I had watched my dead brother open his eyes.
I dashed toward the grave. Wolf and Hawk barred my path, but I ducked underneath their strong arms and slipped past. For a moment I imagined myself as my brother’s namesake, strong and sly, shaking hounds off the length of my tail. But the illusion soon passed, and I was a child again, tripping and falling. The ground slashed at me, marking both my knees and the palms of my hands with the sharpness of knives. Blood dripped down onto the cold gravestone and spilled across the ground.
A chorus of noises thrummed inside my head, a peculiar buzzing that also carried with it my brother’s voice, asking and pleading and yearning, answering a question I had not yet asked aloud: Yes, Tea, Fox whispered to me in my head. Yes, I am willing.
It was wrong of them to put him in the ground when he did not want to die.
A strange symbol burned before me. Without thinking, my bloodied fingers traced the pattern in the air, again and again and again, until my brothers took me by the waist and dragged me away.
“What has gotten into you, girl?” My father was shaken and angry. “There is no excuse for behaving in this manner—and at your brother’s wake, no less!”
What other reprimands he intended died on his tongue when the ground began to move. A terrible rumbling and heaving began underneath us, beneath the fresh dirt that made up Fox’s grave. There was a muffled splintering inside that small mound, like something within the coffin had escaped its confinement. As we watched, a cold, gray hand rose up, scratching and stretching, and gripped the tufts of weeds growing close to the grave. The strange being lifted itself out of its earthly prison with little difficulty and brushed the dirt off its tall, thin form. My mother fainted.
When it raised its head, I saw that it had my brother’s face, drawn and bloodless and dead.
“Tea,” the figure said.
But then it smiled, and it was Fox’s smile, quiet and kind.
The cave itself was sparsely furnished—two chairs, a stool, a long, wooden table, and a small, polished mirror hanging from a wall from where another smaller table stood, littered with glass bottles of various sizes. There was an impressive arrangement of flowers: a burst of color in otherwise somber surroundings. A wooden divider foraged from driftwood marked off a separate area, presumably for changing and sleeping. It made for impressive accommodations, despite its suggestion of impermanence.