Paper Confines

xxxviii. Fledgling, Sunshine, Etta

PAPER CONFINES.
38. / Fledgling, Sunshine, Etta

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       The outskirts of the palace were sunken and wet, its snow melted in the anomalous autumn sun, and the eldest was perched on the shoreline like a carrion bird.

Lichen sulked beneath her leathers as she settled more solidly onto one of the logs, scrawling inconsequential notes with a floating quill; the tide was strong, impressions of hobnailed boots painted a wet path along the rocks, front-foot-heavy like they'd been walking on tiptoes, and the birds were quiet. She didn't particularly care. Whatever muggle had wandered too far from their campsite would make a bone-white corpse at the bottom of Ladoga before catching so much as a glimpse of the palace below.

Pushkin knew that. This was an errand boy's job.

But she'd been cut off from Yves for weeks with no one but Dippet left in her pocket, and he was only halfway here these days. Errands were all she was allowed.

Her notebook clapped shut, and descended with her quill into a small blue satchel strapped to her belt.

Reid stared restlessly at the water. She hated it. She should have taken a job inland. Her father was in everything here, all trees and currents the shade of his eyes, and her mother was nowhere for miles to see. The language was hard, too, despite her efforts. It was rarely truly green here. The food was different, and she had little money to spare for delicacies without Etta at the mill this winter. She missed her sisters and the creaking stairs. She missed loving without lying, but she hadn't done that since she was a girl.

The hills behind her wept underfoot. Reid's head snapped around, wand-arm straightened on instinct, a shield in place.

He was pale and thin, the muggle. His brows were thick and beige over sunken eyes, all limbs too long, too callused and wrinkled where his hands flew upward. The movement was arthritic. The man was old.

Some of the tension fell away from her at his immediate surrender. The process of wiping his memory would be tedious, particularly if there were other muggles nearby awaiting him, but he was no threat. She would have seen the rifle if he carried one. Sometimes they did. There was an ugly, puckered scar on her shin to prove it—back when a job like this felt an honour instead of an insult.

"Что делаешь?" the man called out, stepping onto the rocks.

"Obliviate," Reid answered.

Shabby work. He was rendered quite dumb and fell over.

In a very manufactured fashion, she brought him over to the log and propped him this way and that, settling on a sleepy lean against his backpack before deciding that was ridiculous and leaving him instead on the ground at the edge of the woods. A dizzy spell. Dehydration; his waterskin was empty and it was a four hour trek from Priozersk. Muggles were funny that way, when they wanted to see something badly. Reid supposed her father had been the same.

She peered amateurishly into the old man's yielding mind, plucking the feathers of memory to skin. When she was satisfied, she waited across the trees for his companions or wolves, but he woke first, compelled with a muddled visage to retrace his steps, abandoning a fruitless pursuit of the lake's better landscape.

Dusk fell. Reid had no desire to return to the Ministry or anywhere else. She sat down in her lichen and ate black bread while the birds hunted for a better supper than hers.

Eventually, in her brooding, an owl came to rest on the log beside her. She squinted as it tilted its head, the hooks of its talons vacant of any jewel or missive.