The Greykeep Chronicles

A week after the shawl, Carol knocked on my door.

That was only the second time in her life. The first was the night of the dream, when she came down a hundred and forty steps with her hands frozen to the knuckle. So when I opened the door at seven in the morning and found her standing there in her own blue coat, dressed, with her hair pinned up and a small light drifting around her left ear, my heart did something unpleasant before my head caught up.

”Nothing’s wrong,” said Carol at once. ”Sorry. I should have just come in. I didn’t want to just come in.” She took a breath. ”I want to ask you something. You can say no.”

”All right.”

”Twins’ Day,” said Carol. ”Today. If you’ve got nothing on.”

I stared at her.

Then I turned around and looked at Seraphina, who was sitting up in bed feeding little Uriah porridge off a spoon, and who had very clearly known about this since at least yesterday.

”Go,” said my wife. ”I’ll keep your son. He likes me better anyway.”

”Ma,” said little Uriah, who can say about four words, and opened his mouth for more porridge.

* * *

Twins’ Day was Mary’s invention.

When we were six, Carol set fire to a hedge and I folded the dining table into the stable, both on the same afternoon, and both, as far as anybody could tell, because we were tired of being looked at. Every god in the Council had come by that month to see what we’d taken from them. Every visiting king wanted to watch us do a trick. People leaned over us the way they’d leaned over our cradles, waiting for sparks. So Mary sat us both down at the table in the little kitchen and said that from now on, one day a year, we were going to have a day that belonged to nobody but us.

Rules. Mary always has rules. Nobody was allowed to ask us for anything. Nobody was allowed to watch us do anything. No lessons, no Council, no visitors. We could go anywhere in Greykeep we liked, together, and do anything we wanted, as long as it wasn’t dangerous, and Helena would pack us a lunch.

We had one every year from six to twenty-one. The last was the day before my wedding. Carol and I sat on the top of the old gatehouse and ate an entire honey cake between us and didn’t say anything for most of the afternoon, and it was one of the best days of my life.

There hadn’t been one since. Neither of us had asked. I’m not sure why. I think we both thought we were too old.

”Mary says the rules still stand,” said Carol, as we went down the east stair. ”She’s put it in the book. Twins’ Day. Nobody asks them for anything. She underlined it.”

”Does that include Faelan?”

”She’s told Faelan specially. He’s very upset about it.”

* * *

Helena had packed us a lunch. Of course she had. It was in a basket on the scrubbed table with a cloth over it, and when Carol lifted the cloth to look, there was a whole honey cake inside.

”You’ll share it,” said Helena, without turning around from the stove. ”Equal halves. I’ll know.”

”How will you know?”

”I always know,” said Helena. ”Go on. Your grandfather’s expecting you.”

”We hadn’t decided to go to Grandpa’s yet,” said Carol.

Helena turned around then, with the porridge spoon in her hand, and gave us a look that I have been receiving since before I could walk.

”You always go to your grandfather’s first,” she said. ”Every year. Sixteen years. You’ll go to the workshop, and then the old nursery, and then you’ll end up on the gatehouse roof eating cake at four o’clock and come in late for supper with your hands sticky.” She turned back to the stove. ”He’s had the stove lit since five.”

* * *

Grandpa’s workshop is a long low room off the stable yard. It smells of linseed oil and oak shavings and the pipe he isn’t supposed to smoke, and every tool on the wall hangs inside its own painted outline so you can see at once what’s missing. It’s the warmest room in Greykeep that isn’t a kitchen. When we were small, Carol and I used to fall asleep on the shaving pile under the bench while he worked, and wake up with curls of oak in our hair.

He was at the bench when we came in, in his leather apron, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead and a half-finished chair leg in the vise. He didn’t look up.

”Sandpaper’s on the shelf,” he said. ”Fine grade. Horses are on the end of the bench. Ears first. Then the tails. Don’t sand the noses soft, they look like sheep if you do.”

There were horses on the end of the bench. Of course there were. There are always horses. Grandpa has been carving wooden horses for longer than I’ve been alive, and there’s a basket by the hearth in the solar with hundreds of them in it, one for every person anybody in the family has ever cared about, with name slips under their saddles. These were new ones. Twenty or so, in a row, rough-cut, waiting.

”Grandpa,” said Carol. ”It’s Twins’ Day. Nobody’s supposed to ask us for anything.”

”I’m not asking.” Grandpa turned the chair leg in the vise. ”I’m telling you where the sandpaper is. What you do with that information is your own business.”

Carol looked at me. I looked at her.

We sat down at the end of the bench and started on the ears.

* * *

It’s very quiet work, sanding horses. You hold the little horse in one hand and fold the sandpaper over your finger and go around and around the ears, slowly, until the rough comes off and the wood goes smooth and pale. Then you blow the dust away and look at it, and do it again.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. Grandpa worked on his chair leg. The stove ticked. Outside in the stable yard, one of the carthorses stamped and blew. A light came off Carol’s fingers now and then and drifted up into the rafters and went out among the hanging clamps.

”Grandpa,” I said, after a while. ”Why’s mine got a chipped ear?”

He stopped planing.

”Your horse,” I said. ”In the basket in the solar. The brown one. One of your first. It’s had a chipped ear as long as I can remember. I’ve never asked.”

”No,” said Grandpa. ”You never have.” He put the plane down and pushed his spectacles further up his forehead and looked at me over the top of the vise. ”I’ve been waiting twenty-two years for you to ask that.”

”Well, I’m asking.”

”Is that allowed? On Twins’ Day?”

”I’m asking you,” I said. ”That’s the other way around.”

Grandpa thought about that. Then he nodded, as if I’d made a fair point in an argument about chairs, and leaned on the bench.

”It was the first thing you ever folded,” he said.

Carol put her horse down.

”You were fourteen months old,” said Grandpa. ”I’d made you both a horse for your first birthday. Hers was gray, yours was brown. And you didn’t want yours. You wanted hers. You always wanted whatever Carol had. Still do, if we’re honest.” Carol snorted. ”So one afternoon, in the old nursery, she was sitting on the rug holding her gray horse, and you were sitting across from her holding your brown one, and you looked at hers. And you put yours down. And you held out your hand. And her horse just...” He moved his big scarred hand through the air, a little twist. ”Wasn’t in her hand anymore. It was in yours.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Only you were fourteen months old,” said Grandpa, ”and you didn’t know how to do it yet. You didn’t make a proper door. You just sort of tore one. And the ear caught on the edge on the way through.” He shrugged. ”Chipped clean off. Your grandmother found the bit on the rug that evening.”

”But mine’s the brown one,” I said. ”The chipped one’s brown.”

”Yes,” said Grandpa. ”Because your sister bit you.”

Carol made a sound like a kettle.

”Not hard,” said Grandpa. ”But she bit you, on the hand, and you dropped her gray horse, and she took it back. And then she picked up your brown one too, and looked at it, and looked at you, and you were crying, because she’d bitten you. And she leaned over and put her own hand where she’d bitten you.” He paused. ”You couldn’t heal yet, either of you. Not properly. But it went warm. I saw it. And then she reached out, very slowly, and folded your brown horse back into your lap. The wrong way. Through the same tear.” He looked at me over his spectacles. ”Took the other ear off doing it. I had to carve you a new one.”

”She folded?” I said. ”At fourteen months?”

”Borrowed it off you,” said Grandpa. ”Five minutes after you’d done it the first time. That’s the two of you all over.” He picked his plane back up. ”I kept the first horse. The one with both ears gone. It’s on the shelf in the old nursery. I made you a new brown one afterward, and chipped one ear on it myself, on purpose, so you’d remember.”

”Remember what?”

Grandpa planed a long curl of oak off the chair leg. It fell on the floor at his feet.

”That the first thing you ever took,” he said, ”you took without asking. And the first thing your sister ever did with a power that wasn’t hers was give something back.” He blew the dust off the leg. ”And that you were both fourteen months old and didn’t know any better, and that’s all right. Everyone takes things without asking at fourteen months. The trick is what you do about it afterward.”

Carol was looking at her hands.

”Is that why you’ve never fixed it?” she said. ”The ear?”

”Some things you leave,” said Grandpa. ”So you don’t forget how you got them.” He pointed at the horses with the end of his plane. ”Ears. Then tails. And don’t sand the noses soft.”

* * *

The old nursery is on the third floor of the old keep, at the end of the long gallery, past the portraits nobody likes.

Nobody’s slept in it since Elenos. Little Uriah has his own nursery now, the warm one against the kitchen chimney that Helena chose. But Helena keeps the old one aired anyway, every week, and the fire laid, and the rug beaten, as if she expects a pair of babies to turn up in it at any moment and is not going to be caught unprepared.

It’s a small room. Smaller than I remember, every time. Two windows looking east over the orchard. A low ceiling, painted blue, with stars on it, which my mother did herself, standing on a chair, when she was eight months along and was told to sit down by every single person in the castle. A rug with a border of foxes. A rocking chair. Two cradles, one on each side of the fireplace, side by side, close enough that two babies could reach through the bars and hold hands. Mary says we did. Every night.

And along the wall opposite the windows, a long low shelf, at just the height a two-year-old could reach.

The wooden horses were still on it.

Not all of them. The ones in the solar basket are the family ones, the ones that stand for people. These were the nursery horses. The first ones Grandpa ever made for us, before we were old enough to know what they meant. A gray one and a brown one, the first pair, the ones that had been ours before we could walk. A little red one Seraphina left here when she was two and never took home. A black one with a white blaze that was Ignatius’s. A big wooden boat, very lumpy, with a mast that came out if you pulled on it, which I’m told I asked for at two and which Grandpa insisted he hadn’t promised. A small blue ribbon, faded nearly white, tied around the gray horse’s neck.

And right at the end of the shelf, by itself, a little brown horse with no ears at all.

Carol picked it up.

She turned it over in her hands for a long time. The ears had come off cleanly, both of them, as if somebody had sliced them off with a very sharp knife. The edges were still pale. Twenty-two years, and nobody had sanded them.

”I don’t remember it,” she said.

”Neither do I.”

”I bit you.”

”Apparently.”

”I’m not sorry,” said Carol. ”You took my horse.” But she put her thumb very gently over the place where the ear had been, the way Grandpa said she’d put her hand on mine.

* * *

We sat down on the rug with the foxes on it, with our backs against the cradles, the way we must have sat when we were fourteen months old. It was very strange. The cradles came up to our shoulders now. When I leaned my head back, I could feel the bars.

”This is where the twin-room started,” said Carol.

I looked at her.

I’ve never tried to explain the twin-room to anyone outside the family. It’s not a room. Not really. It’s a place in the middle of us where we meet. Like a room with two doors, one on her side and one on mine. When we’re both all right, the doors are open and it’s warm and you hardly notice it’s there. When one of us is frightened, it goes cold. When one of us shuts the door, the other one feels it like a draft. It’s been there as long as either of us can remember. We’ve never been able to remember a time without it.

”I think it was the bars,” said Carol. She reached up behind her head and touched the cradle. ”Mary says we held hands through them. Every night. I think if you do that long enough, before you know where you stop and somebody else starts...” She shrugged. ”You make a room.”

”That’s very nearly poetic.”

”Shut up,” said Carol. ”It’s Twins’ Day. You can’t ask me to stop being poetic.”

We sat there for a while.

Then Carol said, looking at the painted stars on the ceiling, ”Did you lean?”

I didn’t say anything.

”At Skellow,” said Carol. ”When it sang your name. In Mary’s voice.” She didn’t look at me. ”Iggy told me. Thor told him. She said you went white as a sheet.”

I thought about saying no. I thought about saying it’s not the same. I thought about all the sensible things.

”Yes,” I said.

Carol turned her head.

”It said come in now, love, it’s cold,” I said. ”The way Mary used to, when I was small and I’d stayed out in the court too long. And for a moment, I wanted to. I wanted to go in. I wanted somebody to call me in and put a blanket on me and tell me I didn’t have to do anything else today.” I looked at my hands. ”Thor told me to say my name. I said it. It helped. But I leaned first.”

”You didn’t tell me.”

”No.”

”You made me a list instead.”

”Yes.”

Carol was quiet for a long moment.

”That’s why you made the list,” she said slowly. ”Isn’t it? Not because of me. Because of you. Because if you could fix me, then you wouldn’t have to think about...”

”Yes,” I said. ”I worked that out on the stairs, while Iggy was sewing.”

”Iggy’s a terrible sewer.”

”He was doing it backward on purpose.”

”I know he was.” She leaned her shoulder against mine. Not quite touching. Then touching. ”Garrick.”

”Mm.”

”Me too,” said Carol.

That was all. She didn’t say it’s all right, or you didn’t go, or you’re not like them. She didn’t make me a list.

She just said me too, and leaned against my shoulder, and somewhere in the middle of me, the door on her side of the twin-room swung all the way open, and so did mine, and for the first time since a gray thing stood up on the water at Skellow, the room was warm.

* * *

We ate the honey cake on the gatehouse roof at four o’clock, exactly as Helena had said. Brannoc came up the ladder halfway through, looked at us, said, ”Twins’ Day,” in his voice like an old shield, and went back down again without asking us for anything. We heard him tell Corra at the bottom, ”They’re on the roof. Leave them.”

We cut the cake into exactly equal halves. Carol measured it with a stalk of grass.

”She’ll know if we don’t,” she said.

”She’ll know anyway.”

”That’s not the point.”

We didn’t say much. We sat on the top of the gatehouse and watched the light go gold and then red over the hills to the west, and the long shadow of the castle go down the hill and across the town toward the river. The lamps came on one by one in Havenreach. The bells went for evening. Somewhere below us, Faelan’s voice came up from the court, very loud and very aggrieved, saying, ”But I only want to ask them one thing,” and Mary’s voice saying, ”No.”

And on the way down, at a quarter to six, with sticky hands, already late for supper, we stopped at Grandpa’s workshop.

He’d gone in. The stove was banked down to a red glow. The horses we’d sanded stood in a row on the end of the bench, ears smooth, noses not sanded soft. And at the very end of the row, by itself, there was one we hadn’t sanded.

A new one. Very small. Carved out of some pale wood I didn’t know, almost gray, with a grain in it like fog. It had two ears, both perfect. It had no name slip under its saddle.

There was a note beside it, in Grandpa’s square carpenter’s hand.

For the one in the west window. Until it has a name to put under the saddle.

Carol picked it up very carefully.

* * *

Mary wrote it that night, under the line she’d written in the morning.

Twins’ Day. Nobody asks them for anything.

Nobody did. (Except Faelan. Refused.)

One honey cake. Equal halves. Helena checked.

And the next morning, there was frost on all eight of Carol’s windows. And on the sill of the west window, under the little patch of gray fog with its ring of stars, there was a small pale wooden horse with two perfect ears.

Elenos says the fog moved down in the night. Just a little. Just far enough to be beside it.