The crest of the Nine Sisters. The same symbol of a canary had been etched into each of the clues that I had followed last semester to find the chest. Had this house once belonged to the ninth sister—the same sister who had betrayed the others and hidden the chest?
Ophelia Hart,
I said, speaking her name, but the words came out soundless, pulled from my mouth by an external force. I followed it across the room to the sink, where the faintest trace of my voice seemed to echo before disappearing down the drain. The copper faucet was tarnished with patches of oxidized green. Trembling, I lowered my head to the sink and spoke to the ninth sister.
Are you still alive?
The words left me like a long exhale, the sounds pulled from my lips before I could feel the shape of the letters on my tongue. I looked up to find Anya watching me, her eyes wide as if she suddenly realized what we were looking for.
She motioned through the window to the field out back.
The well,
she mouthed.
Descartes’s riddle reverberated through my mind.
The
nethers first call from their hollows by dark.
Their hollow. Just like a well.
Sounds, they fade to the ground, the earth’s music
unsung.
Fade to the ground. Anya had to be right.
We ran outside through the snowy field, Dante and Theo on our heels. Our footsteps were silent, the woods surrounding the house so quiet they felt fake. The well was boarded up, a layer of snow packed on top. I brushed it off and pried open the lid. Stale air gusted from the hole.
The darkness telescoped into a pool of black water. My reflection stared back at me from the bottom, though as the surface rippled, my face began to shift. The Renée in the water bent over, pressing her hands to her ears as she shouted, though no sound came out.
I raised my hand to my lips, but they were shut, my other arm by my side. I bent over my reflection, confused, when a thin thread of air seeped through my lips, pulled out of me by the darkness in the well. With it, my memories began to unravel, their sounds echoing in my mind. I heard Dante’s voice, its richness filling me with warmth as I remembered the way he sounded every time he had called out to me in the woods, every time he’d whispered my name under the sheets just before morning, every time he’d told me
I love you
. But as quickly as the memories passed through me, they faded, the sounds folding in on themselves until Dante’s voice was nothing more than an echo in the hole in the earth.
Then I heard him again. This time he sounded younger, more cautious. He spoke in Latin.
Desiderum
, he whispered, the word rolling off his tongue the way it had when he had whisked me into the classroom at Gottfried, pressing me against the chalkboard, our bodies smudging the word until it was illegible. I tried to hold on to the memory, but it quickly faded, and before I could do anything to stop it, another memory began to unfold.
I’m Dante,
his voice said, echoing in my mind. His voice was cautious, stilted, the way he’d spoken it when we’d first met at Gottfried.
No,
I tried to say.
Not this one. Let me keep
this memory
. But it, too, slipped away from me, his voice growing softer until I could barely make out the trace of his breathing.
One by one, the sounds of my past unraveled, echoing in my ears one last time before dissipating into the void. The irregular beat of his heart; the way it vibrated through me while I drifted to sleep, my head resting on his chest. The sound of his feet trudging through the snow; the wind whistling through the trees in a minor key.
They coiled out of me, pulled by some invisible force. I pressed my hands to my ears, trying to hold the sounds in, but it didn’t help. All I could do was listen. I heard the sound of my grandfather rustling the newspaper in his study, the sound of Dustin bustling in the kitchen, the pots and pans clinking together in a smooth rhythm. The crackling of Anya’s incense as I fell asleep in her dorm room. The Chopin nocturnes that my mother used to play on the piano. My father whistling while he washed the dishes after dinner. The
shh-shh
of the ocean sweeping the California coast in the morning, until everything was gone, all gone, and I was left in silence.
I fell back into the snow, the last thread of cold air leaving me. The world around me was so quiet it felt empty. I tried to remember the sound of my mother’s voice or the song my father used to hum, but drew a blank. Dante had backed away from the edge of the well beside me, squinting into the sunlight as though he had forgotten something.
He is still here
, I thought, relieved. Even if I couldn’t replay the sound of his voice in my head, I would be able to hear it again soon.
Theo and Anya lingered by the well across from me, the sun glaring off their cheeks as though it had washed them clean.
I stood, about to call out to them, when something in the distance behind Dante caught my eye. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, only that the pattern of the landscape looked familiar. Maybe I had seen it on a postcard before, or in a painting or some kind of engraving....
When it finally dawned on me, I caught my breath. It couldn’t be.
I pointed to the landscape behind him, but when Dante followed my gaze, instead of sharing my excitement, he only frowned.
The map,
I said, but the well swallowed my voice. Didn’t he see it?
I took one step to the left, then another to the right, but from either position, the view was nothing more than a pastoral winter scene. I led him to the edge of the well where the hollowness was strongest, and motioned to the mountains far off to the west.
Together, we inched back until the three rivers in the distance converged into an icy blue braid. Dante opened the chest and held it up to the horizon, comparing the map to the landscape in the distance. The three interlacing lines etched in the chest between the first and second point mimicked the braid of rivers almost exactly, the water in front of us bringing the map to life. All we had to do was venture just beyond the place where their waters converged. The second point was nestled behind it. We had found the path.
T
HE WORLD GREW LOUDER
as we pushed back through the brush toward the car. I began to hear the weeds and branches tangling together behind us, until the house was nothing more than a chimney rising over the trees. By the time we pulled out of the driveway and onto the road, I could hear the hum of the engine, the gravel popping beneath the tires, the squeak of the leather seats as Anya and Theo shifted their weight, the steady breathing of Dante beside me.
And yet they all sounded the same—muted and dull, their sounds inspiring nothing. The screech of the brakes no longer hurt my ears, and the lull of the wheels rolling over the pavement no longer put me at ease. I could still see the black pit of the well telescoping beneath me; I could still feel its pull on me, wrenching the voices and music from my mind, rewinding my memories until every sound from my past had vanished.
“Say my name,” I whispered to Dante, relieved to hear my own voice.
“Renée,” he said.
I waited, hoping it would bring back all of the sounds I had lost, but when he spoke, his words lacked any emotion. I could hear each syllable forming my name, but I couldn’t detect the warmth or longing in his voice, the richness of its undertones, or the subtle lilt of his Latinate tongue, a sound I could now only vaguely recall.
Dante watched me, his face pained as he realized why I had asked him to speak. “Your hearing is dulled, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering, I turned on the radio. Classical music floated out of the speakers, filling the car with cello, though to me, it sounded like nothing but noise. I waited for the music to pick up, for something to click in my mind, but the notes were hollow. I fiddled with the radio knobs, adjusting the volume, the bass, the equalizer, but nothing helped.
“Can you turn it off?” Anya said from the backseat. “I can’t—it...it sounds like—”
“Like nothing,” Theo said, completing her thought.
Dante turned to me. “I—I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t sound like anything. This was the world he had been inhabiting for all these years, I realized. This was what it felt like to be Undead.
“Say something else,” I said, trying to convince myself that with enough time I might be able to hear the richness of his voice once more. “Keep talking to me.”
“I love you,” he said, but the words could have been replaced with any others with no difference. I stiffened in my seat, wanting to be stirred by his voice the way I used to be, but I couldn’t feel anything. Instead, a whisper rose within me.
A part of your soul is gone,
it said.
There is no going
back.
We rode in silence, not sure where we were going, other than that we had to make our way toward the braid of rivers we’d seen from the well. All we knew was that the next point was hidden somewhere behind them. In the backseat, Theo quietly flipped through Pruneaux’s notes. “There isn’t any information about Descartes after he left the Netherlands,” he said. “He went to Egmond-Binnen in 1649. He died a year later in Stockholm, Sweden. But as for the time in between—we have no idea where he went.”
While he spoke, I could feel the pull of the Undead behind us, their vacancy lapping at me in thin threads of air.
“The Liberum,” Theo said. He must have felt them, too.
Anya peered out the rear window. “But how are they so close? They couldn’t have known where we were going.”
“They have Pruneaux,” Theo said. “After our talk with him yesterday, he must have had a good idea as to where the first point on the map would be.”
“And the Monitors are probably on their trail,” I said. I turned to Dante. “We have to move faster.”
We drove all night and through the next day, the reverberations of the tires filling the car with white noise. It startled me, how quickly sound could be forgotten. Its absence settled in around us until it felt normal. There was no direct road leading toward the braid of rivers in the distance, which peeked in and out of view with each turn. We were forced to zigzag and circle and retrace our route, with nothing to guide us but our sight. We studied the elaborate lines etched into the chest in the shape of a bird, each line mirroring the crest of a hill, the ripples of a lake, the flat line of a valley. We could only hope that beneath the pavement there was a far more ancient path rolling out before us.
We sat in a stiff silence the entire way; even Theo, who was normally so gregarious, spent most of the ride staring out the window. Anya glanced at her watch, then quietly removed a tin from her bag. Inside were dozens of vials and plastic bags filled with pills, powders, and ointments in an assortment of colors.
Theo’s attention shifted toward them. “Whoa,” he said under his breath. “So those are your elixirs.”
Without responding, Anya searched through them until she found three bottles. From them she measured into her palm a large yellow pill, a capsule filled with a strange green substance, and a white pill the size of a breath mint.
Theo watched her. “What are those?”
“Concentrated chrysanthemum pollen, which helps enhance your hearing,” she said, swallowing the yellow pill. “A mix of blossoming algae and ginseng, which restores your memory,” she said, placing the green capsule on her tongue. She picked up the white pill, holding it between her fingers. “And this is just a multivitamin,” she said, washing it down with a swig of water. Though it didn’t look like a multivitamin at all.
Theo scoffed. “No pill can restore your hearing. Or your memory, for that matter.”
Anya only shrugged. “You’re free to believe whatever you want.”
Theo squinted at her, as though she had taunted him. “Fine,” he said. “Let me try one.”
“Who said I was offering?”
“Come on,” said Theo. “You have more than enough to share.”
Anya narrowed her eyes, but proceeded to drop two pills in his hand, omitting the multivitamin.
“What about the third?”
Anya hesitated. “You don’t need that one,” she said.
Theo shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He tipped his head back and swallowed them without any water.
Anya turned to Dante and me. “And you two?”
“I’ll take my chances without,” Dante said.
I strained to hear the fullness of his voice, but it sounded plain, like it could have belonged to anyone. “I guess it can’t hurt, right?”
I reached into the backseat, feeling the two pills drop into my palm. They went down easily. I caught Dante studying me as I took a sip of water, but I ignored his gaze. I could tell he didn’t approve, that he was already having doubts about me being here with him. I turned to the window and waited for the sounds of the car to suddenly grow richer. But nothing changed.
“The effects aren’t immediate,” Anya said, reading my thoughts.
“How long is it supposed to take?” Theo said.
Anya shrugged. “Like everything else, we just have to wait and see.”
“I don’t like waiting,” Theo said.
I leaned my head against the window. “Me neither.”
Theo leaned over the seat. “Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?”
“My father’s store. He owns a pharmacy and convenience store in Montreal.”
“Sounds like an unconventional pharmacy,” Theo said. “So what else is in there? Uppers? Sleeping pills? Anything that could zonk me out for the rest of this car ride to make it a little more bearable?”
“My supplements aren’t for recreation,” Anya said.
“What about that one?” Theo said, nodding to the corner of her tin, where a lone black pill sat in a vial all by itself. “That one looks like it could be fun.”
Anya quickly closed the tin and stowed it in her bag. “It’s for emergencies.”
Theo narrowed his eyes. “What kind of emergencies?”
“Ones that don’t concern you,” she said.
I studied her in the passenger’s mirror, just as curious as Theo, but the distant look in her face made it clear that the conversation was over.
The landscape changed from the windmills and rolling hills of the Dutch countryside to the sprawling farmlands of Germany. The sun dropped behind the trees, leaving us to the purpling dusk. Though we knew we were close to where the second point should be, without light it was impossible to compare the chest to the scenery outside, so we decided to find a place to spend the night. The horizon was barren except for an orange light flickering in the distance, like a fire burning in a hearth. As we approached, I could see the reflection of windows, warm light glowing behind them. A sign hung on a post at the end of its driveway:
MÄDCHEN INN
.
A wooden cottage stood before us, its sides buried in layers of sloping snow, which made it look like a gingerbread house. Frost clung to the edges of the windows, giving off a warm, wintery glow. Dante knocked four times, the rap of the brass hitting the door, and the patter of footsteps that followed sounded like a distant clatter of noise.
A ruddy, matronly woman opened the door, the buttery aroma of a home-cooked meal following her. She spoke to us in German, which only Dante understood.
He spoke back to her in a perfect accent. After he finished, the woman smiled. “American?” she said, with a heavy accent.
“Willkommen, willkommen
.
”
She didn’t ask where we came from or why we were there. Instead, she shooed us around a bare wooden table in the dining room and served us a hearty German meal of pork chops, wild mushroom soup, and spaetzle sautéed in butter. I should be have been hungry, but felt my appetite fade away once the food was before me. Anya must have felt the same way, as she pushed the vegetables around on her plate, barely touching them. Theo was the only one who was enjoying himself, his napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt, lips glossy with butter.
“Do you want that?” he said to Anya, pointing to her pork chop.
“No,” she said, and slid her plate over. “How do you even have an appetite?”
“What do you mean?” Theo said. “Only one of our senses in muted. Taste is just fine. And come to think of it, I’m pretty sure those pills of yours are working, because my hearing feels clearer. I can almost hear the delicious sizzle of the cook frying up another round of pork chops in the kitchen.”
I frowned. “Mine hasn’t gotten any better.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Neither has mine,” she said. “And that’s the sound of a faucet running. Someone is washing dishes.”
Theo waved her away with his fork. “You have your interpretation, I have mine.”
Dante sat silently beside me, the food on his plate untouched.
Theo pointed to Dante’s spaetzle with his fork. “You don’t have any use for that, do you?” he asked through a full mouth, winking at me, though none of us found his joke funny.
Dante’s silverware was still positioned on either side of his place mat. “No,” he said, and slid his meal over. The Undead never ate.
Theo grinned and scraped the food onto his plate. “More for me.”
While the innkeeper bused our dishes, I cleared my throat. “We’re travelers. We’ve never been to this part of Germany, and we were wondering—are there any sights in particular that we should see?”
The woman gave me a confused look, then turned to Dante. He translated, speaking in German. The woman’s face grew animated as she responded.
Dante listened, then said, “She’s talking about local towns and shopping.” He paused while she spoke, then continued, “She’s telling us about all of the good restaurants nearby...and biergartens....”
“What about natural sights?” I said. “Can you ask her if there are any in particular that stand out?”
Just before Dante relayed my question to the innkeeper, Theo wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Why don’t you ask her what places we should
avoid
?” he interjected. “If the second point is anything like the place we just came from, I doubt it’s a tourist destination.”
Dante paused, nodding in agreement, then repeated what Theo said to the woman.
She paused, and for the first time since she had invited us in, she took a long look at each of us, as if she suddenly saw something now that she hadn’t seen before.
“Where the
rivers meet,”
Dante translated.
“The rivers?” Anya repeated, unable to hide her excitement. Her eyes met ours over the table. “How do we—?” she began to ask, but the innkeeper backed away, shaking her head.
“I don’t like to talk of such places,”
Dante said, translating her words.
She gave us our keys and pointed us upstairs. Before we could ask anything more, she bid us good night.
Our room had four nesting beds, each made of whittled wood, as if they belonged in a dollhouse. We dropped our bags, and while the others began to unpack and wash up, Anya pulled me out into the hallway.
“Do you remember the other night in Paris?” she said. “When I left?”
I nodded.
“I went to the Monitor Archive. They have records there for all of the cases heard by the High Court. I thought maybe they would have something on Theo. And they did. Kind of.” She slipped a document from inside her coat and handed it to me.
I unfolded it and scanned the pages. Most of it consisted of Theo’s physical and educational details. Height, weight, body mass index, hair and eye color, spoken languages, specialized skill sets. The year he enrolled at St. Clément; the year he dropped out. The year he was awarded his Spade, and a list of the members who witnessed it, my grandfather among them. And then I saw it. Halfway down the page, in thin red letters.
Current status: DISBARRED
.
So I’d been right. I
had
seen him sanding the red dye from his Spade that night. I felt a twinge of excitement as I turned the page, eager to see what he had done to deserve such a punishment, but the rest of the document was blacked out, the words
CLASSIFIED BY ORDER OF
THE HIGH COURT
stamped beside it.
I flipped the sheet over, confused. “What—?” I looked up at Anya. “What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “But you were right about his Spade. I should have believed you.”