A Masquerade of Spiders

Chapter 9: A Lesson In Poetry

Chapter 9: A Lesson in Poetry

"I'm the only one who won't pretend that you leaving didn't kill us."

Terrors rose through me in my sleep. I found no respite from their death, from the sight of Marin running into the night.

I saw it happening, again and again. Her scream, when they grabbed her, was cut short by a cloth pressed to her mouth. The door banged behind me as I ran out to her.

They saw me. They saw that I saw that something strange, something monstrous was taking place. And before anything could be done, to me or for Marin...they vanished into nothingness.

If only I hadn't allowed my presence to be known. If Marin was believed to be alone, my parents might have been spared.

I finally woke, an hour or so before dawn, to the rapid twit-twit-twit of a Nuthatch in a tree outside my window.

I drank the water in the glass by my bed, and then used the same glass to listen through the wall and hear the sleeping breaths of the maids in the room adjacent. I washed my face and teeth in the tepid water of the water basin and then built up the fire that had sunken down to embers during the night. The crackling flames chased away the chill. But my thoughts were all-consuming.

I could no sooner escape being Dylana than find answers to my questions. I didn't doubt that the only reason I had made it this far was due to luck, and I wasn't ready to trust my life—and Marin's—to something so fickle.

I decided to read the letter from Kitlidara, Dylana's sister, one more time, perhaps there was a hint I had missed. But the words were as hollow as the night before.

I made to throw it into the flames, when something curious caught my attention. When the firelight glowed through the paper, it showed words—another message—written behind the one which I read. I turned the letter over, the back was empty. But the paper itself was slightly thicker than normal writing paper.

Dawn greyed the sky, and I wondered if the maids had woken and were watching me. I folded the letter and placed it in my lap, yawning, and laid my head back, pretending to nap.

My mind raced with the prospects of this hidden message. Of course, it wouldn't be easy to decipher, but it would give me more than I now had.

The fire heated my body. I would do both: find a way to escape, and a way to believably be Dylana. There would come a time to choose, which course to take, and I would know what was best to do.

After a while of feigning sleep, I stretched and yawned and casually stepped towards the water basin. There, I carefully undid the thread from the edge of the hem and pulled out the small knife.

I cut a sliver of paper from the edge of the letter. I could see a hairline of space between the two sheets that had been glued together. After several attempts with my fingernail, I managed to wedge it between the two sheets, running it along the edges until they came apart.

On a thin sheet of paper, a poem was written.

The heart sleeps still

In the deep

But the lover will

Have its sheep

There is no stock for the king

Who is broken within

But put the score to test

And you will find rest

I read it, and then again, until it was committed to memory. I returned the knife to its hiding place, sewing the opening closed and then balled both the letter and poem into my fist before taking up the book of Cervi poetry I had been left last night and returning to the fire.