Then
Astera was caught in a heatwave when Lark returned to Marchmain for her second year. Though it was early autumn, the summer heat dragged on, holding the city in stalemate. Everything was as still as a painting. The courtyard elms draped limp branches over dying grass; the river was flat and motionless, a dropped ribbon that bisected the city. At night, a fog of pollution rose from the factory district, where salt crystals—like the ones hewn from her family’s mine—were transformed into fuel and lamp oil.
The polluted air made for crimson sunsets, the sky streaked like blood, clouds clotted together in violent hues. Lark could smell the salt smoke on her hair and her clothes, and on her bedsheets at night as she lay sweating on top of the crumpled quilt.
It felt cruel, the way the summer lingered. The heat was a reminder of her time in Verse during year-end break, the painful memories that refused to let her go. She had held herself together in the last few weeks at home. Busied herself with her reading list. Lied to her brothers when they worried about her. She told them she was tired; she was anxious about staying ahead of her class.
It helped that Alastair and his father left the morning after Lark went to Saltswan. The house was all shuttered, the beaches and clifftops empty. That made it easier to pretend nothing was wrong. But as her brothers walked with her to the station, Oberon had gently asked, “Did you have a fight with Alastair?”
Lark quickly shook her head. “We aren’t close enough friends to really fight,” she told him. “It’s just that we have such different lives now.”
She managed to force down her tears until she was on the train. As they pulled out of the station and away from the platform where her brothers stood waving, she curled up in her seat as tight as a shell. With her knees hugged to her chest, she bowed her head and sobbed, hot tears soaking into the fabric of her stockings.
Damson met her at the city station. Lark stepped down from the carriage with her satchel and her suitcase full of books and watched as Damson emerged from the crowd. It was a surprise—they hadn’t planned to meet—and the gesture set fresh tears spilling down Lark’s cheeks. She was pulled toward her friend like a moth to a glimmering lantern.
While everyone else was hurrying to connecting trains or to the station exit, Damson stood as regal as a sculpture in her pinafore dress and polished Mary Jane shoes. Her hair fell long around her shoulders, unadorned except for a tiny ribbon pinned beside her ear. The strands gleamed like a polished coin. She said nothing, only held out her arms. Lark stumbled through the busy crowd and fell into Damson’s embrace.
Damson took out a clean handkerchief and blotted at Lark’s tearstained cheeks. She knew everything from the letters Lark had sent, written daily as she had promised. At the time it had been painful to put it all down on paper, the story of Alastair and the way he broke her heart. But now Lark was glad that it was already laid bare. She didn’t have to pretend to be brave anymore.
Damson frowned at Lark in tender sympathy. She looked as though she was about to cry, too. She rested her chin against Lark’s hair and held her close. “Boys are so dreadful.”
On the walk to Marchmain, they took a detour through the café district. The afternoon sun struck the sides of the buildings, and even the shaded space beneath the striped awnings was overwhelmingly warm. They bought fresh pastries filled with strawberry jam and topped with spoons of clotted cream, eating at the counter so quickly it had no chance to melt.
The sugar was a balm. Lark felt her sadness soften as she licked jam from her fingers. Even if the summer heat had followed her here, it helped to be far away from Verse. The span of distance between her and Alastair felt like a barricade that she could build and strengthen to guard her heart.
As night fell, she and Damson sat in the windowsill of Lark’s dorm. They wore soft cotton dresses and left their feet bare. Damson had brought in her dish of hairpins and her wooden comb. The humming song of insects flowed in through the open window as she braided Lark’s hair into a coronet.
Autumn twilight crept over the courtyard like a thief. The pollution-bright sunset was slowly fading to pastel, and the trunks of the elms were lit in pink and mauve. Lark’s scalp prickled from the press of the pins, and her neck felt bare, sleek as the curve of a swan’s throat. The barest breath of the wind stirred into the room, carrying the scent of soot and dry grass. She had never been so happy not to smell the sea.
She let her head rest against Damson’s shoulder. “You were right. I should have stayed here.”
Damson brushed a strand of hair back from Lark’s temple. “I only wanted you close to protect you, Lark. You’re so happy at Marchmain. If you stayed with me, I would have kept you safe.”
Lark sniffled, blotting at a fresh rise of tears with the handkerchief Damson had given her. She could tell Damson was pleased to be right, even though she was so gentle and sympathetic. The Canticle bells began to chime, the notes as mournful as a sad folk ballad.
“Next time, I’ll stay,” Lark said. She knew it was the right choice, but even so, it made her chest ache to speak it aloud. “But I’ll miss my brothers so much.”
Damson slid her arm around Lark’s waist. “Write letters to your brothers when you miss them. Write to them every day and leave that horrible boy to be forgotten in Verse.”
Lark smiled sadly and snuggled closer against Damson. Even with the leaden heat, which drew sweat from her skin in all the places they touched, it soothed her to be held like this. Alastair may have broken her heart, but Damson had given her a place to land after she fell.
She wiped her eyes, folded the handkerchief back into her pocket. Half jokingly, she said, “If I’m accepted into the curation program, then I could stay in the city forever, even after I graduate.”
Damson was silent, her fingers idly stroking Lark’s nape, the downy hair. After a long moment, she cast Lark a sidelong glance. “Are you going to apply?”
“I—I’ve been thinking about it.” Lark felt suddenly anxious. It was the first time she’d spoken about the program, except for when she told Alastair. She hadn’t even mentioned it to her brothers yet. It was too close-kept, like a spell that would be undone if she gave it voice.
She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Damson smiled, and said, “I have, too. We should apply together. If we submit a joint application, that will prove they need to accept us both instead of anyone else. After all, who would be better suited to curate Ottavio Caedmon’s works than two girls from Verse?”
“Would that be possible?”
“Of course,” Damson said confidently. “In fact, I’ve already spoken about it with Headmistress Blanche.”
“But you didn’t know I was even going to apply until just now.”
Damson took Lark’s face between her hands. She regarded her levelly, all dark-eyed seriousness. “I know you better than anyone, Lark.”
Lark bit her lip. Damson’s kindness was startling; it made a hot ache spread through her chest, made her want to cry again. So much was uncertain, but right now, Lark knew she had never loved anything—or anyone—as fiercely as she loved Damson.
They sat together and watched as early stars rose over the courtyard sky. Only a few were visible here compared with Verse, because of the pollution and the salt-powered streetlamps. Nights were different in the city. It was never truly dark.
How might it be to stay here and never return home, if not forever, then at least until she graduated? Lark pictured her life laid out as clearly as Caedmon’s The Dusk of the Gods mural, several key moments in their own painted panels. Walking beside the river. Buying strawberry pastries from the café district. Evenings in the gallery just before the closing hour, when the exhibition rooms were empty and the whole place felt like it belonged solely to her.
All through her first year at Marchmain she had longed to be back in Verse. Homesickness was a constant companion, rising to greet her in every quiet moment. But now when Lark thought of wildflower fields and the ocean’s hush, Eline left behind in her bedroom, she felt conflicted, sorrowful. Here at Marchmain she had purpose; she had someone who cared deeply for her, who knew her.
At Marchmain, there would be no Alastair Felimath to break her heart.
Lark wrote her brothers a telegram the next evening, after the first day of classes had finished. Standing at the desk in the campus post office, her hands shook as she penciled her message into the little box for the telegraph operator. The letters smudged and blurred, her unease marked on the page.
She handed over the form, paid for the express service. The coins clinked as the telegraph operator placed them in the till. Lark gripped the edge of the counter. She had to make a concentrated effort to loosen her grasp, to turn around, to walk away.
This was the right choice. It was. As Lark went into the library, where she and Damson had agreed to meet, she thought of the altar her family kept for Therion. She’d gone down to the sea caves and recited her prayers when she returned, laying a new shell down on the velvet cloth in offering.
Denying herself a return home, denying the familiar comfort of her brothers, was like that shell. An offering paid in sacrifice for the new life she wanted, far from Saltswan. Her future belonged to Astera, the busy city streets, the slow-moving river, the courtyard elms. Days spent with Damson, filled with library books and gallery visits.
But by the end of the week, there was a reply from her brothers in Lark’s student mailbox. A telegram asking her to call them. Her family didn’t own a telephone, but they had written down the number for the village post office. They would be waiting, and Lark should call them the next morning.
She didn’t tell Damson about the note. She couldn’t. In the past, whenever Lark had spoken at length about her family, Damson would turn solemn and silent.
“I know you don’t mean to hurt me,” she finally explained, “but think how it feels, to hear about your brothers who love you so much, when all I have is my grandmother, who can barely remember to write once a year.”
If Lark showed her the telegram, it would be a disaster. And Damson had been so kind to her since she came home, buying Lark little presents to cheer her up: a new velvet ribbon, a cherry-colored lip stain. She had even shared photostats of all the first week’s notes from every class, neatly highlighted, because she knew Lark was upset over Alastair and would have trouble concentrating.
So the telegram sat like a burning ember in the depths of Lark’s satchel, hidden and secret, as she left the dorms early the next morning. She slipped out through the side gate of Marchmain, even though it was against the rules to leave the campus so early without a permission note. In the city, she found an anonymous public telephone booth at the corner of two quiet streets.
At the other end of the block, people were crossing the main thoroughfare on their way to work. The sound of voices and footsteps, and the engines of passing cars, formed a backdrop to the ringing that echoed up from the receiver after she dialed.
Lark gave her name to the person who answered the telephone. “My brothers are expecting me to call.”
Soon Henry came on the line. “Lark, what is all this about you not coming back? Is something wrong?”
“No,” she replied, forcing herself to sound calm, though her heart was racing. “I just think it would be easier for me to focus on my studies if I stay here.”
There was a sound of rustling, and Oberon spoke. “But we already made plans. Remember—we talked about it when we walked to the station. We were going to take the train to Driftsea and visit the new bookstore that has opened.”
Lark toyed with the end of her hair ribbon as she remembered her brothers’ eager suggestions for her next visit home. In a guilt-stricken rush, she tried to explain, tripping over her hurried words. “There’s a postgraduate curation program here, at the gallery, and I want to apply. If I’m accepted, I’ll be able to study all of Caedmon’s works, perhaps even host my own exhibition.”
Her brothers were silent. Then the line went muffled, as though one of them had put his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver. Lark held her breath, trying to listen. She thought she could hear Henry and Oberon murmuring to each other, but it was impossible to be sure alongside all the noise of the city traffic.
“It’s very competitive,” Lark added. Her voice gave a little desperate quaver. She clenched her teeth together, swallowed down her unsteadiness before she continued. “They only take two students a year. And if I stay at Marchmain, I can do extra work in the term breaks and after my regular classes to help with my application.”
“I see,” Oberon said, his voice gone quiet. “That does sound perfect for you.”
“I will come back. After graduation, I’ll come home and see you both,” Lark told him. It was impulsive, this promise. A compromise she hadn’t been thinking about until this moment.
At the other end of the line, she heard a match being struck. Henry was lighting a cigarette. He breathed in, then exhaled with a slow sigh. “Graduation is still three years away. That’s a long time, Lark. If you change your mind, or get too homesick, or need us … we’ll be here, always.”
“I love you,” Lark said, and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand so her brothers wouldn’t know she had started to cry.
Her second year at Marchmain drew to a close. Spring emerged piece by piece across the winter-dark city, with leaves unfurling on the trees and budding flowers in the garden beds outside the gallery. In the refectory, they served fresh berries for dessert.
Lark and Damson spent every spare moment together. They sat side by side in classes, avidly taking notes they would compare afterward. They went early to gallery practicals and were always the last to leave. Their rooms were both so full of books, at night Lark felt as though she was going to sleep inside a miniature library.
And as the weather turned warmer, the air tinted by birdsong, exams loomed like the clouds of a gathering storm. From second year onward, academic results at Marchmain were posted on the board outside the commons building. Everyone was tense and anxious, Lark included, knowing their grades would be visible to the whole school. But the anticipation enlivened her, too.
She and Damson worked together whenever they could. After curfew, they separated into their own rooms. Lark would lose herself to photostats and index cards, staying awake well past the midnight bells as she underlined passages and memorized facts.
All the dorm rooms were furnished with a typewriter, and Lark wrote countless drafts of essays on the clattering, well-used keys. When she walked through the halls, the noise of other students typing in their rooms was a constant soundtrack. It became as soothing as the tap of rain against her bedroom window.
After they finished a draft, Lark and Damson would swap their essays. If the hour was late, they would slip the pages under each other’s doors. Damson would annotate Lark’s work in cheerful, bright blue ink. It gave her such a sense of connection whenever she saw her friend’s responses in the margins.
On solitary midnights when her homesickness crept back in, she read Damson’s notes instead of her brothers’ letters.
When the assessment results for the year were posted, Lark placed second. Damson was first. Lark pressed her finger to the typewritten list, pinned on the announcement board, where her name sat right under Damson’s at the top of the column. It felt like proof that she’d made the right choice.
She pictured the rest of her time at Marchmain like a thing she could unfold, a carefully cutout paper garland. Two Verse girls with their bookstacks and ink-marked essays, with their late nights in the gallery sitting on the bench in front of The Dusk of the Gods. The letters from her brothers that she would tuck beneath her pillow. At the end of it, she and Damson continuing on together as the gallery’s newest curation students.
And after graduation, she would go home. Surely then she would feel strong enough to step back into her old world and face whatever emotions rose. Surely then she would have forgotten all about Alastair Felimath and the way he discarded her, the way he had broken her heart.