Are you safe? Are you well? What happened?
Please write to me, whenever you can.
Roman sent the message through his wardrobe not long after Iris sent her abrupt one. He knew something unexpected and terrible must have happened, for her to misspell three different words. He paced late into the night, his eyes straying to the closet, to the clean-swept floor before it. Hour after hour passed, dark and cold, and she didn’t write.
What was happening? He was desperate to know. Eventually he was so exhausted that he sat on the edge of his bed, overwhelmed with misgivings.
Perhaps the town she was stationed in had come under attack. He imagined Iris having to take shelter while bombs cascaded, exploding in a blazing array of sparks and destruction. He imagined Iris wounded. He imagined Dacre’s soldiers swarming in victory, taking her prisoner.
Roman couldn’t bear to sit.
He stood and paced again, wearing a trench into the rug.
If something befell her … how would he learn of it?
“Iris,” he spoke into the lamplight. “Iris, write to me.”
It was three in the morning when he withdrew her old letters from their hiding place. He sat on the floor and reread them, and while he had always been moved by her words to Forest, he realized that he felt pierced by all the words she had written to him. They made him ache, and he didn’t know why.
He left his room to walk the mansion’s dark corridors. He took the route that he had walked night after night in the wake of Del’s death, when sleep evaded him. When he had been fifteen years old and so broken that he felt like his grief would bury him.
Down the stairs he went, quiet as a wraith. Through cold rooms and winding passages. Eventually he was drawn to faint light spilling from the kitchen. He expected to step into the chamber and discover the house had set out warm milk and biscuits for him, sensing his distress. Roman startled on the threshold when he saw it was his nan, sitting at the counter with a candle and cup of tea.
“Roman,” she said in her typical brusque tone.
“N-Nan,” he replied. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to … I’ll be going now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nan said. “The kettle’s still warm if you want a cup of tea, although I know you prefer coffee.”
It was an invitation to talk. Roman swallowed; he was haggard as he slowly entered the kitchen, reaching for a cup. He poured himself some tea and sat on the stool across from his nan, fearful to make eye contact with her at first. She had a knack for reading minds.
“What has you up at such an hour?” she asked, her shrewd gaze boring into him.
“I’m awaiting a letter.”
“A letter in the dead of the night?”
His face flushed. “Yes.”
Nan continued to stare at him. She had smiled only maybe three times in her entire life, and so Roman was shocked when he saw her pursed lips curve in a grin.
“You’re finally putting my typewriter to good use, then,” she said. “I take it you’re writing to Daisy Winnow’s granddaughter?”
Roman hesitated but conceded to nod. “How did you know?”
“A mere hunch,” she replied. “Considering that Daisy and I were both determined to keep our typewriters in the family rather than surrender them to that pitiful excuse of a museum.”
Roman thought about the letter Iris had been writing to him before she was interrupted by whatever it was that was currently happening, kilometers away. She had figured out the connection between their typewriters, and he was keen to know what exactly was binding them together.
“You were friends with Daisy Winnow?” he dared to ask, knowing his grandmother was reluctant to talk about the past.
“That surprises you, Roman?”
“Well … yes, Nan,” he replied with a hint of exasperation. “Our family is—”
“Upper-class snobs built on new money?” she supplied. “Yes, I know. Hence why I loved Daisy so much. She was a dreamer, innovative, and openhearted. Alouette and I never cared about her social status.” She paused. Roman was quiet, waiting. He held his breath as his grandmother began to tell the story about her friendship with Alouette Stone and Daisy Winnow, and the typewriters that had once kept them connected.
He was stunned at first. He drank his lukewarm tea and listened, and he began to see the invisible threads that drew him to Iris. It didn’t feel like fate; Roman didn’t quite believe in such fancies. But it certainly felt like something. Something that was now stealing his sleep and making his chest ache with each breath.
“What’s she like?” Nan asked. “Daisy’s granddaughter?”
Roman stared at his tea dregs. “I’m not sure. I don’t know her that well.”
“In case you forgot, I can tell when you lie, Roman. You squint.”
He only laughed, because hadn’t Iris said the very thing to him last week? “Very well, Nan. I would say she’s like her grandmother, then. Given your descriptions of Daisy.”
“Is that so?” Nan fell quiet, pensive. “Hmm. Is that why you wanted the other half of my myth? To send it to…?”
“Iris,” he whispered.
His grandmother only arched her brow. But then she said, “Iris,” and the sound was so gentle it made Roman shiver.
“Yes.” He thought it was time to leave, before she said anything else that made him uncomfortable. He was rising from the stool when his grandmother drawled, “And you’re going to let her slip away, then?”
He froze. How was he to answer that?
He said, “I don’t think I have much of a choice, Nan.”
Nan puffed and swatted his hand. “There is always a choice. Are you going to let your father write your story, or will you?”
He was silent as she rose with a slight grunt. Nan walked to the threshold but paused, and Roman tensed, uncertain what she was about to say.
“I am seventy-five years old, Roman,” she began. “I’ve seen endless things throughout my life, and I can tell you right now that this world is about to change. The days to come will only grow darker. And when you find something good? You hold on to it. You don’t waste time worrying about things that won’t even matter in the end. Rather, you take a risk for that light. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
He nodded, although his heart was racing.
“Good,” his nan said. “Now wash those cups, or else Cook will fuss about the mess.”
And then she was gone. The kitchen shadows felt deeper without her as Roman carried the pot and cups to the sink, realizing that he had never once in his life washed any dishes.
He did his best, setting the porcelain back into the cupboard before he retreated to his room, where he glanced at the wardrobe. Still no letter.
He slid down to the floor and dozed at last. When he stirred at first light, he saw she had finally written to him. Roman scrambled over the rug, his pulse hammering in his throat as he unfolded her letter and read:
I’m safe and well. Don’t worry! I apologize for having to abruptly leave last night.
I don’t have time to write a long letter this morning as I need to go. It’s back to the infirmary today, but I’ll write you soon.
P.S. I’m hoping to send you more soldier letters this evening or the next, to mail in the post, if you don’t mind.
He shuddered in relief, even as he knew whatever had happened last night hadn’t been good. But she was safe and well, and Roman sighed, leaning his head against the floor.
The reassurance was like a warm blanket, and he suddenly realized how sore and weary he was. He wanted to fall asleep with Iris on his mind but resisted her taunting draw.
His wristwatch was ticking, nagging him.
Roman groaned as he checked the time. He rose in a hurry, gathering Iris’s letters, returning them to their hiding place. Quickly, he dressed. There was no time to shave, no time to polish his shoes or even comb his hair.
He grabbed his messenger bag and flew down the stairs.
He was late to work.
“Come, the last of the frost has passed and the garden needs some care,” Marisol said that afternoon. “I could use both of your help. We’ll till today and plant tomorrow.”
Iris was relieved to be given a task, even if it was the difficult one of breaking hard ground with a shovel, which she had never done before, growing up on the stone and pavement of Oath. The three of them worked in the B and B’s backyard, where a garden plot lay dormant from winter, covered in weeds and withered old stalks.
“It looks like someone was here before us,” Attie remarked, crouching to trace deep gouge marks in the soil.
“That would be the hounds,” Marisol said as she worked with a hand trowel. “That’s the trouble with planting a garden in Avalon Bluff. The hounds like to trample everything when they stalk the town at night. Sometimes we go months without seeing them, but sometimes Dacre sends them every night.”
Iris and Attie stared at the gouges, which they now could recognize as claw marks. A shudder went through Iris, and she returned her attention to shoveling up the dirt.
“You plant a garden every year, Marisol?” she asked, noticing the raised beds off in the corner, where flowers, lettuce, and other cold weather crops flourished.
“Yes, but only because of Keegan,” Marisol replied.
“Who’s Keegan?”
“My wife.”
“Where is she?” Attie asked. Iris recognized the careful, respectful tone; neither of them were sure if Marisol’s spouse was alive. She had made no mention of her, although she wore a wedding band.
“She travels for work,” Marisol replied. “There’s no way for me to know when exactly she’ll be back home. But soon, I hope.”
“A saleswoman?” Iris asked.
“Something like that.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Well, Keegan was traveling through the bluff one summer day, and she rented a room here,” Marisol began, wiping dirt from her hands. “She said the house was charming and the food was delicious and the hospitality was perfect, but my garden was in a sad state. I didn’t like that comment so much, as you might imagine, but the truth was, this place was my aunt’s, and she was an excellent gardener and grew most of our produce that we cooked with. And while I had inherited the place from her, I woefully didn’t acquire her skill with plants.
“After I fumed at Keegan for her bluntness, she decided to stay long enough to help me with the garden. I think she might have felt bad at first, because my aunt had passed away a year before and I was missing her fiercely. And while I wanted to refuse her help … Keegan told the most amazing stories in the evenings, and I decided if she wanted to help restore my aunt’s garden for free, who was I to turn that away?
“The garden came back together, slowly but surely, with both of us working side by side. Sometimes we argued, but most of the time we were laughing and enjoying each other’s company and stories. When she eventually left, I told myself not to hope. I thought she wouldn’t return for a long while. She had always been a roaming sort of soul, never prone to stay in one place too long. But she came back not a week later, and she chose to stay with me, and I knew she was the one, as silly as that might sound.”
Attie was smiling, dimples flaring as she leaned on her shovel. “Not silly at all. Although I cannot even imagine you saying a cross word, Marisol. You’re like a saint.”
Marisol laughed. “Oh, trust me. I have a temper.”
“I can believe it,” Iris teased, to which Marisol tossed a weed at her in playful reproach.
They returned to their work, Iris watching the ground soften and crumble beneath her efforts. She spoke before she could stop herself. “I hope we get to meet Keegan soon.”
“As do I, Iris. She will love you both,” Marisol said, but her voice was suddenly tremulous, as if she were swallowing tears.
And Iris realized Keegan must have been gone for quite some time now, if the garden had fallen into this much disarray again.
Iris, full of nerves, wrote to him that night:
Would you ever want to meet me?
He replied, swiftly:
YES.
But you’re also six hundred kilometers away from me.
Iris countered:
If I had wings, I would fly home for a day. Since I don’t, it’ll have to be whenever I return to Oath.
He asked:
You’re returning? When? Do you know, or will you wait for the end of the war?
P.S. You truly don’t have wings? I’m shocked.
She paused, uncertain how to respond. It suddenly felt as if she had a host of butterflies within her, and she typed:
I’ll return most likely when the war is over.
I want to see you. I want to hear your voice.
P.S. I most certainly don’t have wings.
She sent that confession over the portal, and her mind added, I want to touch you. It took him a minute to answer, which had her biting her nails and fervently wishing she had kept those things to herself.
Until he wrote:
I want the same.
Perhaps we could go irritate the librarians of Oath with our quest for missing myths, or I could take you to meet my nan over tea and biscuits. I think she would take a shine to you. You could also settle the debate about my chin being too pointy and sharp, and if I look more like a knight errant or a rogue. Or maybe we could even just walk the park together. Anything you would like, I would too.
I’ll be here, waiting for whenever you’re ready to see me.
She read it twice before hiding her smile in the crease of the paper.
Dear Ms. Winnow,
We have on record that one private Forest M. Winnow of Oath enlisted for Enva’s cause on the first day of Shiloh, nearly six months prior to your query. He was sorted into Second E Battalion, Fifth Landover Company, under Captain Rena G. Griss. We are unable to provide you with any further information at this time but advise you to write to the E Brigade C.O., stationed in Halethorpe. Please be advised that mail running through Southern Borough has been unreliable, and hence could be the reason why you have not received word from Private Winnow or his C.O.
Best,
William L. Sorrel
Second Asst. to Brigadier-General Frank B. Bumgardener
