Chapter 172: Little Heart

She had never been given a name, so she had never learned to mind not having one.

The girl sat on a wet rock at the edge of the sea, her bare feet in the foam, folding a square of sealskin smaller and smaller. She was perhaps fourteen. Her hair was long and pale as moonlight, her eyes were the silver of a new coin, and her skin was so white it seemed lit from inside. Beneath her thin shift, in the hollow of her chest, something beat slowly. *Thud.* A pause. *Thud.* It beat like the heart of something much larger than she was.

"You were told," said a dry, clerical voice behind her, "to *destroy* the skiff."

The girl didn’t turn around.

"I wanted to see how it went together," she said.

"It went together with *nails.*"

"The nails are wrong." She smoothed the sealskin on her knee. "It could have been made without them. I think whoever built it was in a hurry." She frowned, a small, puzzled crease. "I took the boards apart and put them in a spiral so it would be easier to see. Is that bad?"

The thin demon came around the rock and stood over her.

He called himself Mister Thistle, which was not his name. He had the face of a clerk who had died of boredom and been too stubborn to leave, long grey fingers, and a coat of black wool buttoned to the chin. Behind him loomed a second shape, much larger, carrying a sack the size of a boulder: Grathul, nine feet of horn and scar, with a mouth full of crooked teeth and the shy, anxious eyes of a very large dog.

"It is *wasteful,*" Mister Thistle said. "Not bad. Wasteful. The Master did not send us across a cursed sea so you could play with carpentry."

"I’m sorry."

"Good. Now." He produced a small black bead from his sleeve, pressed it, and the air in front of the girl rippled. A voice, deep and slow and smoking with satisfaction, spoke out of nothing.

*Little heart.*

She went still.

*Do you remember what I told you?*

"Yes, Master."

*Say it.*

"Find him." She lowered her eyes. "The Sanguis boy. The one with the blood I was made from. He has hurt many of your children, Master, and he is not kind, and he will try to make me weak." The words came out smooth and flat, like a lesson memorized in the dark. "Kill him."

*Good girl.* A rumble, warm as a coal. *Do it quickly, and I will give you what you have always wanted.*

The bead went dark.

The girl sat looking at the grey sea. The thing in her chest beat, slow and heavy, and she pressed one hand over it.

She did not tell them what she felt.

It was not hatred. She’d been told, many times, that it ought to be. But somewhere inland, beyond a black ridge and a field of grass, something was *pulling* at her. Faint and warm and steady, like a thread tied to the inside of her ribs. A pull she had never felt before.

*Father,* the thread seemed to say, and she did not know where the word had come from.

---

They walked all morning.

Mister Thistle led, consulting a book. Grathul followed with the sack, and the girl walked between them, bare feet light on the stones. The island watched them go. She could feel it watching. Every ridge and gully seemed to lean in as she passed, and something in the earth went quiet, then *attentive.*

"They can sense the heart," Mister Thistle remarked, not turning. "Every horror on this island is hungry, and you are the best meal it has ever smelled. Stay close. Do as I say."

"Yes, Mister Thistle."

"Do *not* wander."

She hadn’t been planning to. She’d been looking at a strand of her own hair, caught on a bramble, and wondering whether Father would see it. She had left a few along the shore. She wasn’t sure why. It had seemed polite.

By noon they came to a hill, and over it lay an orchard.

It was beautiful. She stopped on the crest, and for a moment forgot to breathe. Hundreds of slender white trees stood in neat rows, their branches heavy with fruit, golden-red and glowing faintly in the shade. The air smelled of honey and warm bread. Soft, silvery drops fell from the leaves and pattered on the grass like rain. It sounded like someone very far away was weeping.

"Oh," the girl said, in wonder.

"Ah," said Mister Thistle. "The Weeping Orchard. It’s in the book." He closed it with a snap and smiled thinly. "The straight road to the ridge crosses a field of grass that listens. The only way around it runs through here. The sap is harmless, I’m told. The fruit is *not.* The rule, as it happens, is simple. Don’t touch what hangs overhead."

"What happens if you do?"

"Something unpleasant."

"What kind?"

"The kind we won’t test." His eyes slid sideways to the huge demon, quick and bright, and slid away. "Grathul. Carry the young miss. Walk in the middle of the row, with your arms folded. Touch nothing."

"Yes, Mister Thistle," Grathul rumbled.

He knelt, and the girl climbed onto his shoulder, careful of the horns. His skin was rough and hot as a bread oven. She’d ridden there before, on the ship, on the cold nights, when she couldn’t sleep and he would let her curl in the crook of his arm and pretend not to notice. He smelled like iron and old smoke and the strange sweet bread he baked in secret from stolen flour.

He had never once said it out loud, but she knew he was fond of her. It was the first thing in her life she’d been quietly sure of.

They walked into the trees.

---

Halfway through the orchard, her stomach growled.

It was a small, mortifying noise. The girl clapped a hand over her belly. She hadn’t eaten since the ship, because Mister Thistle said island food was dangerous, and dried biscuit gave her hiccups.

Grathul slowed.

"Hungry, little heart?" he whispered.

"No."

Her stomach growled again.

He chuckled, softly, so as not to attract the clerk’s attention. A wide, battered hand rose toward the overhanging branches, where a single piece of fruit hung ripe and golden, glowing like a tiny sun. He plucked it gently, the way you’d pick a flower.

"Grathul," the girl said. "*Don’t.* Mister Thistle said—"

"One won’t hurt." His face was warm. "You’ve been so brave. You should have something sweet."

He held it out to her.

The trees stopped weeping.

She heard it stop. All around them, in every row, the soft pattering died, and a silence fell like a held breath. The leaves turned, slowly, toward the huge demon with his hand still raised.

Grathul’s smile faded.

"...Oh," he said.

The branches closed around him.

They didn’t strike. They *embraced.* Slender white limbs wound gently about his arms and his throat and his waist, tender as a mother’s, and a thousand small, soft mouths opened along the bark and *bit.* Blood fountained from his shoulder. Grathul roared. The girl was flung from his shoulder, and she hit the grass hard and rolled and came up screaming.

"*Grathul!*"

"R-run," he gasped. A white root pierced his side and came out at his back, glistening. Another went through his thigh. He was still holding the fruit. He lifted his other hand, enormous and trembling, and pressed it into her palm, and the fruit was still warm. "Run, little heart. Don’t look."

She looked.

She would remember it for the rest of her life.

---

Something happened then, and she didn’t understand it.

The thing in her chest *thundered.* One huge, deep beat that she felt in her teeth. A wave of silver light went out from her in a ring, and every tree in the orchard recoiled. Boughs jerked away from Grathul as if burned. The mouths in the bark snapped shut. Roots uncoiled and slid back into the earth.

It was too late.

He had been a very large demon, and there wasn’t much left. He slid slowly from the grasping branches and fell, in pieces, onto the weeping grass. She knelt beside him, with the fruit clutched in her hand, and put her fingers against his face.

His eyes were open. They were still shy, and kind.

"Was it sweet?" he whispered.

"I didn’t—" Her voice cracked. "I didn’t eat it."

"Oh." A small, rattling breath. "That’s all right." He smiled. His crooked teeth were red. "Next time."

He did not say anything else.

For a very long time, the girl did not move. The orchard stood silent around her, bowed low, trembling like a congregation. She had power, then. She had a great and terrible power that she hadn’t known about, and it had come an instant too late to be of any use at all.

Behind her, a boot scraped.

"Remarkable," said Mister Thistle softly. He stood at the edge of the trees with his book open, scribbling. "The orchard *bowed.* I had my doubts. The Master will be so pleased."

She stood up slowly.

"You knew."

"I suspected." He did not look up from his notes. "The old stories said it takes whoever picks the fruit. They also said it would kneel to a heart like yours. I couldn’t test both at once, dear. And Grathul was *replaceable.*"

The silver light flickered at the edge of her vision.

"You *knew,*" she said again, and her voice was different. It was lower. It had a thing in it that she’d never heard before.

Mister Thistle finally looked up.

He saw her eyes, and for the first time in his long, dull afterlife, he took a half step back.

"Now, now," he said. "Let’s not be hasty. We have a task to complete, and the Master is watching. I am only a servant. I am *only* a—"

She did not answer. She bent down, very carefully, and tucked the golden fruit into the pocket of her shift. Then she turned her back on him, and on the weeping orchard, and walked on toward the ridge, toward the thread in her ribs that tugged and tugged.

"*Father,*" she whispered.

And behind her, forgotten in the grass, the huge demon’s hand curled slowly closed around nothing.