Page 19 of The Blight of Hollowmire

I cannot deny my old instincts rising up within me with practiced familiarity. The urge to retreat, explain, defer, apologize—it’s all consuming. Make yourself smaller, Vireth, and things won’t escalate. This time, however, I let the instincts pass through me like a draft through a cracked window.

I find I am tired of being small.

Stuffing the book in my pack, I offer a fleeting smile to the mages—perhaps laced with an expression of pleading—and turn toward the doors.

“Thank you,” I tell the mages, and I call back the decay that I’ve threatened them with. It slithers back up through the heels of my boots and the soles of my feet until I can feel it settling within my veins.

Then I leave before anyone can attempt to shepherd me back into what they’ll tell me is my own safety.

I slip into the servant passages to the left of the library. Their cool damp silence helps to soothe some of the nervousness I can’t help but feel after escaping my room. Gods, I feel like a rebellious youth all over again—rather depressing since I’ve just bloomed 40.

The narrow corridors embrace me with sad familiarity. The light is dim here—the scent of dust and damp almost a comfort to my inner turmoil. I need no map of the twisting passageways—I’ve walked them almost as soon as I could stand on my own two feet. I walked them as a girl when the great hall felt too bright and loud. I walked them as a young woman when marriage proposals were quietly withdrawn and I was advised to be grateful for discretion. I walked them as an on-the-shelf adult woman, softly swallowing the incessant urges to take up more space than was offered.

In these tightly pressing passages, I’m struck with the notion that I have lived a small life in a large castle. Space could never be made for me, because there is never space for an outcast. Untethering myself from decades of failed expectations and disappointments is terrifying in its liberty—like standing atop a seaside cliff with buffeting winds threatening to pull you over, but gods, what a view from here.

Boots echoing softly on the stone staircase descending to the kitchens, I cannot help but wonder at the commotion my absence will cause when the ripple of alarm finally reverberates throughout the entirety of the castle. Will anyone miss me, I wonder. Will my sisters simply be glad for the respite from my vitriol? Will Ulfrid breathe a sigh of relief that my lustful eyes and teasing manner are finally absent from his afternoons? Perhaps everyone will simply say that my leaving simply confirms their fears—that I am owning my role in an impending apocalypse.

Let them.

When I reach the kitchens, they’re a hive of activity that often comes from preparations for the evening meal. For the briefest of moments, my desperate, depressing departure is forgotten as I stand among the din—enveloped by thick, humid steam rising from copper pots that smell of onions softening in melted butter. The long work tables are crowded with steaming loaves of bread cooling, chopping boards piled high with mounds of herbs, and bowls of peeled roots waiting to be diced. My stomach clenches, but I’m not certain if it’s because of hunger, anxiety, or sadness that this might be the last time I step foot into the only place in the castle where I’ve never had to measure myself so carefully. Here, I’m not a disappointment unless I accidentally burn the bread—and that’s a fair criticism. Bread is sacred.

A few heads turn in my direction when I enter, but the looks aren’t disgusted or wary—even if it’s likely that the news of my prophecy reached here almost as soon as it occurred upstairs. I’m no monster here—I’m simply an extra pair of hands that occasionally helps with the best compost in the kingdom, and a glut of luscious mushrooms in the blink of an eye.

“Evening, Lady Vireth.” The cook, Marta, has a resonant voice that carries above the hubbub without sounding like she’s yelling. She doesn’t look up from the dough she’s kneading, her forehead slick with sweat and striped with streaks of errant flour.

I’ve spent years slipping down here under the excuse of boredom or curiosity, tying on an apron and taking up whatever task is nearest, learning the rhythm of their work, the humble pride in a well-roasted joint, the quiet artistry of seasoning something just so. Sneaking down to the kitchens began as an antidote to boredom and became my private refuge. My powers always felt the most in control down here, and I seldom ruined the food or rusted a knife in a fit of emotional tumult. It was the most welcoming place in the entire castle for me. In the kitchens, I was allowed to take up space because space was needed.

But today, I don’t tie on an apron.

Marta’s gaze flicks to the pack slung over my shoulder and I know she sees it—hells, she might even be able to see what it contains, all the evidence of my resolution. Her eyes meet mine, and after a beat, something passes between us. The hopeful part of me that has often sought her approval wants to believe that it is understanding.

“Just passing through?” she asks lightly, doing a poor job of hiding the hint of sadness in her tone.

The young scullery maid, Kate, turns wide eyes on me that begin to fill with tears before Marta sends her out to the well with a sharp directive. After that, the atmosphere feels somewhat diminished, and my heart gives a squeeze because here, at least, I think I will be missed.

Marta sniffs and turns back to her dough. After that, no one asks why I’m here, and no one asks where I’m going. Some part of me knows that when the guards find their way to the kitchens and demand to know if I’ve been seen, the truth will remain buried beneath the pillowy dough Marta kneads with her expert hands.

My throat tightens with emotion, partly because this is most difficult place for me to leave. Perhaps if I’d been born to one of these women, I might’ve become something better. And yet… it’s futile to stand here mutely and wonder about what might have been, if things had been different. Instead, I’m here with a prophecy strapped to my back and the lingering, bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth.

I reach for what I need without haste and without secrecy, because there’s no need for either. I pluck a heel of still-warm bread and shove it into my pack. Marta deliberately looks the other way as a wedge of hard cheese disappears beneath a fold of cloth. Suddenly, on the table by the door, there’s a small pile of traveling goods that wasn’t there before: a parcel of dried herbs, a packet of dried fruits, a few strips of smoked meat and salty dried fish, a tiny pot of honey, and a small twist of salt wrapped in paper. I tuck each item into my pack, well aware that the tears now gathering in my eyes come from the tender care of these hard-working women. I have been loved here in small, practical ways—a bowl set aside, a joke shared, a knife pressed into my hand without ceremony—and it suddenly occurs to me that I’m not leaving because I was never wanted.

I’m leaving because being wanted in pieces is no longer enough.

The truth is I should have left years ago, when I realized that despite enduring the sideways glances and disgusted whispers, despite my attempts to be patient, kind, useful, palatable… that Hollowmire might eventually accept me, or at the very least, accommodate my differences. For a time I told myself I was taking the high road, exhibiting remarkable moral strength and honorable fortitude in the face of adversity. But really, I was enduring petty torments and slicing off pieces of myself, and numbing the parts that remained.

This afternoon, when Mother chose to lock my door out of some misplaced sense of protectiveness rather than trust my judgment, something in me finally understood what I have refused to admit—Hollowmire will always try to define me in ways that make me less threatening to its comfort.

If my powers are growing—moreso now than they ever did when I was younger and more biddable—then mayhap that isn’t a sign of corruption or destruction, but of growth. Perhaps I’m not unraveling, so much as I am… becoming.

What that is, I cannot yet say.

The postern gate resists and I shove it open with more force than is strictly necessary. The iron latch scrapes loudly, a harsh, unladylike sound that feels deeply satisfying.

Outside, the bog stretches wide beneath a low ceiling of sunset-golden fog, reeds standing up out of the black and green water like porcupine quills. The air is sharp with peat and tannic brine, cool enough to sting my lungs. The forest beyond the bog beckons me.

Then a loud shout sounds from the main hall—swiftly followed by another.

Ah, so they have discovered my absence.