The Blood Mirror Never Lies novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Hollow

In a hamlet of the Unwritten an old woman hums the tune Elspeth's mother sang, and then Odette Crane arrives with gifts and a blood-quit paper. As Elspeth lifts the pen, a man's voice in her head tells her not to sign.

The Hollow was nine stone cottages in a dip of the moor, with three chimneys smoking.

I came down into it with my gown torn to the knee and the hounds still barking behind the ridge.

A woman was sweeping a doorstep.

She looked about fifty-five, with grey in her hair and a shawl the color of oatmeal.

She saw my wrist, and she didn't ask anything.

"They've done you this morning," she said. "Come in before your feet freeze."

Her name didn't matter to her, she said. She had lost it somewhere. Everyone called her the old woman, and she answered to it.

Her kitchen smelled of peat smoke and boiled barley.

She sat me by the fire and pushed a bowl into my hands.

Nineteen people lived in the Hollow, she said. Each of them had once lived at Court, and not one of them could say how they came to be there.

"You'll learn the rules fast," she said. "We don't ask what you were. We ask what you need."

"I need to know what I did."

"Everyone needs that." She smiled, not unkindly. "Eat."

I ate.

When the bowl was empty she was humming as she scrubbed the pot.

It was four notes, rising and falling, over and over.

I put my spoon down.

My mother had hummed that tune over the nets. The same four notes, the same dip at the end.

"Where did you learn that?" I said.

She stopped scrubbing.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "It was in me when I got here."

I wanted to say something. I had nothing to say.

A child's voice shouted from the lane outside. "Lady's coming! The Lady's coming!"

The old woman wiped her hands. All the color left her face.

"Stay behind me," she said.

I didn't.

I went to the door.

A carriage stood in the lane, black and polished, with two guards in grey at the horses' heads.

A woman climbed out of it.

She was young and slim, with pale gold hair in a long plait and a silver cup in one gloved hand.

Her left arm was bound in clean white bandage from wrist to elbow.

I had never seen her before in my life. The paper had told me her name.

Odette Crane.

She smiled at the whole lane.

"Please don't be frightened," she said. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

She meant it to sound kind, and it did.

The Hollow came out of its doors one by one, blinking.

Odette took a basket from the carriage and held it out to the nearest child.

Blankets. Four loaves. A cheese the size of a cartwheel.

"The Lord thought you might be cold," she said.

The child took the cheese in both arms and stared at her.

Then Odette looked at me and her face softened with real, careful pity.

"Elspeth," she said gently. "I'm glad you're alive."

I said nothing.

"I know you can't remember," she went on. "I know what a mercy that must feel like, and what a cruelty. I came because I wanted to spare you the worst of it."

"Spare me what?"

She held out a folded paper and a small silver pen.

"A blood-quit," she said. "You sign it, and the Court cuts the ring from your wrist. The bond ends clean. You walk free and you never have to feel him again."

I looked at the paper.

My wrist burned.

"And if I don't?" I said.

Odette's eyes went to the cottages, the smoking chimneys and the child holding the cheese.

"The Hollow stands on Court land," she said softly. "The Council could take it back tomorrow. Nineteen people, and nowhere to go. I'd hate for that to happen."

It was said so sweetly that for a moment I almost missed it.

The old woman had gone still beside me.

I took the pen.

The silver was cold. The words on the paper were small and neat, and my eyes crawled across them.

Everything in me wanted to sign.

I didn't know the man. I didn't remember his face. The paper in my coat had said he sat there while the glass took me.

The ring on my wrist hurt like an open wound.

I lifted the pen.

Then I heard a voice.

It was low, and it was rough, and it was a man's.

"Don't sign it, Elspeth."

I looked up.

There was no one there but Odette, smiling, with her silver cup.

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