The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn

Author:Sharon Shinn [Shinn, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101563977
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2005-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

What Fiona remembered about the rest of that season was Reed’s gentleness. The boy whose chatter could only be stilled by sleep, the boy who ran so fast he could only be caught by nightfall, became a young man who could sit still and silent for hours at a time. It was Reed who brought Damiana her breakfast in the morning, and Reed who carried her from room to room when she grew too weak to walk. It was Reed who sat and read to her for hours, or listened when she had the strength to talk. He did the household chores he had promised—weeded the garden, chopped the wood, shopped in the market, fixed the gate—but more of his time was spent indoors than out, his hand always on their mother’s arm.

Fiona, who would have said that she was the one better suited to caretaking, found that she could not bear the quiet vigils for long. She busied herself in the kitchen, cooking and canning; she made daily treks to Elminstra’s to fetch more serums or a new soothing tea that the witch thought might ease Damiana’s coughing. She tried making her own potions against pain, using cuttings brought back from Kate’s garden, and stirred these into her mother’s juice every morning. She greeted visitors at the door, and admitted them when she thought they might lift her mother’s spirits, and turned them away when she was sure they would not. She would have sent them all away, every one—how dare they intrude on these last few weeks when there was so little time left—except that she could tell Damiana was renewed by the visits, made happy by the small attentions. But she watched in some jealousy as friends from the village sat and laughed with her mother, making her forget, however briefly, that she was sick, that she was dying. Fiona herself did not have that gift. She had love, and she had grief, and she had strength, but she did not have the ability to pretend.

At the end of every day, Reed would carry Damiana to her room, and Fiona would go in to ask if she needed anything else and talk over the day, as Damiana had always done with her. At these times, Fiona tried her best to speak lightly, to gossip about the villagers, and laugh when the subject seemed appropriate; she would see Damiana’s face lighten, and she knew exactly what her mother was thinking. Fiona will survive this after all. She will be strong enough to continue when I am gone. And every night, she tried to leave the room while her mother still had that look of hope on her face, and every night she would return to the main room and weep.

And every night Reed would come and sit beside her and put his arm around her waist and hold her until the tears stopped. “How can you be so strong?” she whispered to him one night, when she did not think she would ever be able to stop crying.

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