MARKS- Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

I swear, the rock walls of this cave get closer in every day. The air seems less, and the rock seems more and I may as well be buried alive for all I feel I can breathe. These people have been here for years. I’ve been here only weeks, and already I think I’m losing bits of my sanity. My only relief from the rock prison comes when I need to attend to a personal need. The tunnel Nolan told me to take if guards come is also the one we use to go outside whenever such needs arise.

Or, for me, whenever Liddy has such a need.

I’ve become her favorite companion for the short hike. This is her third time today, and it’s not even lunch. As dangerous as going outside is - for who knows who could spot us - I relish the sunlight and the feel of wind on my face. And I like having Liddy follow me everywhere. It’s like she’s a shadow where Ashtin used to be. Or should have been.

I shiver in the cold air, the ground is cold underneath where I sit waiting for Liddy frozen. But the day is bright and sunny, the sky a blue so pale it’s almost white. The cold bites through my cloak and the air holds the smell of snow in it.

A twig cracks. I spin, ready to run.

Nolan smiles down at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

I nod and sit back down. “It’s all right.”  

So much of my childhood has come back to me these past few weeks. The being on edge. The always looking over my shoulder. Just like when I was small. Always running. Always hiding from the King. My body is constantly tight, and I’ve craved my work at Houghman’s so much these past few nights I’ve actually dreamed of Scarlett.

Nolan sits down beside me in the grass. Surprising as he’s more cautious than I am. But we’re hidden enough from view behind the thick laurel bushes. And besides, there are two men on the lookout on the bluff above us.

He smiles at me. “You’re waiting for Liddy, I presume.”

I chuckle and nod my head then crack my knuckles and stare out at the fields. All the land has gone dormant. It’s why I hate this time of year. Nothing seems to be happening. I turn to Nolan, who’s staring at my fingers. I snatch them back and glance up at him. “I worked as a dyer.”

“I can tell.” He stares at my hand, and the black marks on my arm feel like fire on my skin. “Gretta,” he finally says, “do you know how to make black dye?”

Well isn’t that an interesting question. “We didn’t dye much black at Houghman’s,” I tell him. “It takes a lot of dye to get the color that dense, so we didn’t take a lot of orders for it.”

“Can you make other dark colors?”

“Sure. Brown is easy. You can make that from walnut shells.”

Nolan studies the trees for a moment then looks back to me. “Would you be willing to help us? I need material dyed dark, as dark as you can get it.”

I let his request settle down inside me. He won’t tell me what the fabric is for. But that doesn’t matter. Because I’m pretty sure he’ll use it to somehow go against the King. And it would give me something to do. “Yes.”

His request must be important, because within an hour Nolan has sent someone with me to collect walnut shells. We bring in five basketfuls, and Nolan has a workspace made for me in the same room Ward and the other men met in the other day. Torches cast a warm glow in the cavern, and a fire burns in the middle of the room. A long oak table is pushed up against one wall, a stool beside it. A few small pots rest on the table, wooden spoons beside them. Stacks of linen lay bunched on one end.

Finally, something I know. The room comes alive as I work, fire poked and licking at the bottom of the pot I have over it. I pound walnut shells - rotten ones we found scattered on the forest floor - and smile as they collapse into tiny pieces. A man comes and runs rope across the room, crisscrossing over my head, then leaves me again in the steady rhythm of work. The pots aren’t as big as the ones at Houghman’s, but by evening I’ve managed to dunk several pieces into the dye enough to transform it from dull cream to a light brown, the color of dirt in summertime.

Footsteps echo on the rock, and I drape another remnant of cloth over the line as Nolan emerges from the tunnel. He runs a studious gaze over the cloth.

“I’ll need to re-dip it,” I tell him. “The dye is weak, so it’ll take several times to get it as dark as you want it.”

Nolan nods. “We’ll need to go out and get more shells.”

I nod, agreeing.

“Ward’s here. He can help. It’d do him good to get outside.”

“Does he come here every day off?” I hope my voice sounds more casual to him than it does to me.

“Goodness no, it’s too dangerous.” Nolan fingers another cloth and holds it up to the light. “All the guards have quarters in the city. He stays there some so no one starts wondering where he is.”

“How long have you all lived here?”

“Our family was the first. We’ve been here three years now, since Ward was taken as guard.”

So he’s seventeen, just like me. And they’ve been living in a cave ever since then. No mention of parents. “Did you ever think of running, so that he wouldn’t have to?”

Nolan drops the cloth and looks at me. “The King has conquered three neighboring kingdoms in just seven years. Where would we run where he couldn’t find us?”

Nowhere. Oh heavens, nowhere. I’m such an idiot. Ward didn’t choose being a guard. He just chose not to die or send his family to death by refusing. And I can’t hate him for that. I’ve done things I wish I hadn’t to stay alive.

Nolan moves up the tunnel, and I follow him, wrapping my arms around my middle as if to keep the shame I carry from exploding across the room. Ward is sprawled out in front of a fire. Liddy snuggles up under the crook of his arm and lays her head on him, as if he were a big pillow made just for her. He’s so different here. Not rough and prickly like I’d imagined him to be.

Or wanted him to be.

He’s not evil just because he’s a guard. What all has the King made him do that he wishes he could forget?

“He hates it,” I say, more statement than question.

“Yes,” Nolan says. “It’s hardened him. He used to be so gentle. But you can’t be gentle and make it as a guard.” He smiles across the room at Liddy. “He’s like laundry that’s gone stiff cause it’s been hung out in the cold. She helps soften him back up.”

Liddy presses up on her elbow and says something to Ward, her tiny body engulfed in his. A rock to hide behind. A sprawling oak tree to climb and watch a sunset in.

He’s her somewhere safe.

Tears prick my eyes before the pain even zings through my heart. Who will keep Ashtin safe? Such a ridiculous thought, Gretta. She has her family. Her father.

She doesn’t need you.

Nolan walks to the fire, and I stand rooted in place, my grief an anchor to the floor. Nolan eases up behind Blair who is bent over a fire, stirring something in a pot. He places his hands on her waist and kisses the back of her neck. She turns her head into his shoulder, and the smile on her face is like a lullaby, soothing and sweet and able to melt the strongest fears into dreams.

Papa used to do that to Mama. Sometimes gentle and sweet like that, or sometimes he’d startle her and she’d shriek, and I’d giggle while she chased him around the room. Papa would snatch me up and hold me in front of him, a weapon against Mama’s playful whacks. “You can’t hurt Gretta!” he’d tell her as Mama came at him with a wooden spoon. Then he’d grab Mama and smoosh me between them and we’d all laugh, all because Papa wanted to steal a kiss.

I close my eyes and picture us together, all six of us, our laughter and love bursting in my mind into a thousand colors, all pink and green and yellow.

When I open my eyes, nothing stares back except the rock walls of the cavern. The colors are still here. Love and laughter and the colors of joy thriving under this brown-grey canopy of stone.

Blair nuzzles her head under Nolan’s chin, and I blink back tears as I look away.

Ward stares up at me from his place on the floor. My cheeks flush red, and I gather my skirts but have no idea where to go. How many years have my feet longed to run somewhere, but have had nowhere to go? I’m no less trapped here than I was in the city.

“Ward,” Nolan says. “Gretta’s been making what we need. You should go look at it.”

Ward glances from his brother-in-law to me. He rises slowly and sets Liddy on the ground. Then he nods to me and heads down the tunnel.

I follow, my arms wrapped around me. I nearly hit him last time, and would’ve if he hadn’t stopped me. I trail behind him, taking a step and a half for his every one, his large frame towering before me. I’m sure on his scale of hatred, I rank somewhere below the King and above the stomach bug.

When we reach the room, I pause, unsure what to say. If I should say anything. Stars, what should I say?  “Nolan says you need dark fabric,” I spit out.

Brilliant, Gretta. You’ve stated the obvious. Now you can be a hateful girl and an idiot at the same time.

Ward’s eyes sweep the room, taking in the yards of brown fabric drying on the lines strung across the room. “You did this?”

“Not all at once,” I tell him, my throat suddenly dry and my voice crackly. I unfold my hands and move to the table. “Brown is made from walnut shells, and you have to crush the shells then steep them to get the dye.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I was a dyer. Houghman’s guild.”

He nods and doesn’t reply. His brows furrow as he fingers the fabric.

“I’ll need to do the process a few times to get them darker,” I tell him. “There may be a way to make brown out of something else, but if there is I don’t know it.”

Again, silence.

Ward looks over my shoulder at the walnuts and shells strewn across the long wooden table. They have no mortar and pestle so I’ve been using rocks to pound out the shells. Hard work, but worth it to be doing something.

I’ve run out of things to say, and it’s as though the silence itself is echoing off the rock walls. I peek up at Ward’s face. His blondish hair is askew as usual, as though it grows out of his head not knowing what it wants to do. Dark circles rim his eyes, and his usual posture has fallen into something more relaxed.

“Long day?” I ask him.

He glances sideways at me. “Long week.”

“It must be hard.”

He looks at me, an eyebrow raised.

“What you do. Working for the King, when he’s…” I need to shut up. “It must be hard.”

“It is.”

Silence again, and I can no longer bear it. I turn and step back toward the main room.

“I don’t enjoy it, Gretta.”

I spin back to him. His eyes are pained, full of longing and regret. I smooth down my skirts, unable to look at him. “I could tell that the first day I met you.”

He doesn’t answer, and the silence squeezes my brain. I grab my skirts and turn again.

“You going to forgive me, Sparks?”

Oh heavens. Here he’s seen my anger so much he’s nicknamed me for it. I swallow and turn, and hope the pink in my cheeks doesn’t show. “For kidnapping me or making me walk through sewage?” I laugh, a fake one that comes out breathy and hollow and dripping in the nervousness I can’t seem to hide.

“For what I said the other day.”

I shrug. “I guess I have to, considering I’m so horrible, too.”

Blast that truth and the fact it slipped out. Ward’s face is expressionless for a moment, and I suppose it’s all he can do not to shout his agreement that yes, I am horrible. Even more so than him.

But the corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile. “Good thing, Sparks. I wouldn’t want you to stay mad at me forever.”