CHAPTER 29

The “surprises” King Damien had promised Tovi earlier that day were now nothing but a memory, but she feared she would never get the images out of her head. They had been horrifying—a collection of sculptures and paintings he kept in a gallery in the palace. Each one depicted human bodies hideously contorted until they were almost unrecognizable. There had been so much anger in their eyes, pain and fear in their faces. Yet Damien described them as beautiful expressions of love and pleasure.

After dinner, Tovi and Xanthe made their way to the Bottom Rung clothed in less conspicuous dresses and covered in dark cloaks. They passed few people except near the pubs overflowing with nighttime revelers.

They stopped outside of a building in sad need of repair. It was seven stories high with some of its windows broken out. A green wooden sign advertising tailoring swung back and forth in the slight breeze, causing an eerie scraping noise. There were sagging iron balconies stretching around the whole building on the second and fourth floors, and a man with green hair leaned against the upper railing, watching them in the street below. Xanthe lifted her gloved hand in a strange salute, like she was drawing half of a heart in the air. The man called something over his shoulder that Tovi couldn’t hear.

A moment later a woman with hot pink hair and chubby cheeks answered the door. The woman’s hands were bare, and when they were all inside, she held her palm face up. “Greetings in the name of Adwin,” she said with a toothy smile.

Xanthe wasted no time. “Lyra, this is Tovi. She’s from Adia.”

Lyra’s large teal eyes grew even bigger as she grasped Tovi’s hands. “Adia?” she asked breathlessly. “Are you really?”

Tovi nodded, and Lyra threw her arms around her guest. “Wait ‘til the others meet you!” Tovi followed Lyra through a maze of rooms and up several flights of stairs, and finally they came to a dark room lit by a few flickering candle stubs. Tovi could just make out a circle of nearly a dozen people sitting on the floor passing what looked to be a loaf of bread and a jar of honey.

“We have a special guest tonight,” Lyra announced excitedly, one arm wrapped around Tovi’s shoulders. “This is Tovi. She is from Adia!”

Even Xanthe couldn’t help smiling at the uproar caused by this news. Tovi was hugged, kissed, and swung around the room as the clandestine rebels of the Hidden Heart laughed, exclaimed, and danced. When the hubbub finally died down, Tovi was invited to sit, and everyone returned to their place on the floor.

They all had unkempt hair of varying hues and patterns. The women had plain, kind faces, lacking makeup and smudged with the grime of their labor. The men had scraggly beards and rough looking hands. Their gray clothes were threadbare, but there was evidence of careful mending and patching. Even the disguises worn by Xanthe and Tovi were too extravagant to blend in with this group, but no one seemed to mind.

“Where is Meira?” Xanthe asked, glancing around the circle. The group’s joy deflated into silence.

“We haven’t seen her since last night,” Lyra answered. “She told us goodbye and that she hoped to see us again soon. Said she was doing something for Adwin and couldn’t tell us more. I think—”

“Tovi, you are very welcome here,” the man with green hair greeted from the other side of the circle, cutting off Lyra’s story with a kind but firm tone. He looked strangely familiar to Tovi. “We’ll each introduce ourselves, and then we’d love to hear about you. My name is Hesper. I am a hunter, and Lyra is my wife.”

“My name is Zephne,” said the girl sitting next to Hesper. Tovi guessed that she couldn’t be more than sixteen. If her hair had been clean, it would have been as red as an apple. She had eyes that reminded Tovi of a clear night sky. “I work in the kitchen in Calix and BiBi’s home.”

Startled, Tovi said, “But that’s where I live.”

“I know,” Zephne responded kindly. “Most people don’t notice us. Please don’t feel bad.” She smiled, and Tovi knew she meant what she said.

“Sorry I am late!” came a voice from the dim doorway, and goosebumps ran up Tovi’s arms as she recognized bright orange hair and piercing yellow eyes. It was Leeto. How could he be a part of this group?

Then he stepped closer to the candlelight, and she realized it was not Leeto; it was someone who looked quite a bit like him but was much taller and broader. His nose wasn’t quite as pointy, and there was kindness in his face.

“Who’s this?” he asked, inclining his head toward Tovi.

“This is Tovi! She’s from Adia!” Lyra squealed once more. “This is Thad. He’s Leeto and Rhaxma’s eldest brother. But don’t worry . . . He’s not one of them.”

Around the circle they continued. Tovi learned that Stavros was a lumberjack who had the opportunity to travel down the mountain and get closer to Adia. Missa tended the bees that provided them with the honey they were eating. Lux and Galen were both former artists who had been moved to cleaning the streets when King Damien’s interests changed from landscapes to portraits. Lyra was a seamstress, Illias was a hunter like Hesper, Magan and Rhea washed laundry in the palace by day and helped Lyra with her tailoring business in the evening, and Tovi recognized Ghita, one of Rhaxma’s servants. She clasped Tovi’s hands and ensured her that all was forgiven and that the horrible comparisons were not her fault.

“What’s it like in Adia?” Ghita asked, her eyes shining with excitement.

Tovi closed her eyes, picturing home. Her audience leaned in, intent on drinking in each word. “Everything is perfect and green and covered in flowers. The sky is always blue, the sun always warm, and the river always cool. It’s in a valley, surrounded by rolling hills and mountains in the distance—this mountain is one of them. Our homes are all built up in the tall trees, and there are bridges and ladders and rope swings. Sunrise and sunset are magnificent, and at night you can see the sparkling of a million stars.”

The room had fallen completely silent. Lyra had tears in her eyes, which she unashamedly allowed to trickle down her cheeks.

In a hushed whisper, Stavros asked, “Is it true that he made it all?”

Magan interjected, “You know, Adwin. Did he really make the whole world like the legends say?”

“Our legends say that, too, but I don’t know.”

There was a strained silence as the group’s hopes were dashed. Xanthe took this opportunity to cut in. “I know all of you are going to be a little disappointed. I was, too, at first. But I think that if we tell her the stories we have heard, we can compare them to what she has been taught. Maybe we can all learn something tonight. I do so wish Meira was here, though. She’s the only one who says she’s met him.”

The others nodded in agreement, and Galen asked Hesper to share his story.

Hesper began, “When I was a boy, my mother taught me the importance of always wearing my gloves. She insisted that if I ever showed anyone the heart on my palm, I would be thrown in the dungeon for the rest of my life. She had the heart, too, and she warned me to hide it from my father who did not. Each day I put on my gloves and went to school, terrified of being found out.

“One day when I was outside, I overheard my parents fighting. I snuck to the window to see what was going on. I watched my father rip the glove from my mother’s hand, and he roared in outrage. He dragged her straight to the palace. As promised, Damien threw my mother in prison.

“Scared that Father would come for me next, I ran away and hid in the alleyways of the Bottom Rung. Another little boy—about my age—lived in the alley, too. He looked so much like me we could have been brothers. I told him my story, and he showed me a secret door into the dungeon of the palace. He said he used it all the time, and that I could use it to check on my mother. Sure enough, there was a little trap door, hidden from view on the backside of the palace. It led directly down into the chamber, and the guards always sit at the top of the stairs on the other end. I went as often as I could, making sure not to be seen by anyone but Mother. It was really pretty easy.

“And that’s when Mother told me about him. A man came every day to visit the prisoners. At the time I found it hard to believe, but she told me it was Adwin from the old tales. One day she looked at me sadly and told me goodbye. She said she was going to take his offer to be free from this mountain. I was still very young and didn’t understand what she meant, and I didn’t even know the right questions to ask. All I know now is that she was gone the next day. The other prisoners said that she left with the visitor.”

“Wasn’t she locked in a cell?” Tovi asked.

“Yes. Somehow, she got out. Nobody knows how they did it,” Hesper answered.

“But what about when the guards realized she was gone?”

Lyra reached over and patted Tovi’s hand as the candles around them flickered. “Strange things happen inside that jail. There have been many disappearances. Sometimes prisoners are beaten almost to death, and the next morning they have vanished from their cells. Others have grown old and sick, and they vanish as well. They were just gone. The guards must have thought that Hesper’s mother simply disappeared like the others.”

“But surely you know,” Tovi said, looking around the circle of serious faces. “Don’t you know what happens when you die?”

Hesper cocked his head to the side.

Tovi continued, “Haven’t you ever seen someone fade and disappear?”

She could feel the pulse quicken in the room. “Tovi,” Lyra said slowly, “When someone dies, they go into the eternal sleep. We bury their bodies outside of the city. No one just disappears.”