The Secret Swan by Shana Abe

Author:Shana Abe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780553905076
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-28T22:00:00+00:00

THAT NIGHT THEY ATE WALNUTS FALLEN FROM THE trees, and blackberries found growing in hedges around the convent walls, hidden behind green leaves and thorns. There were also pears and apples from the ragged orchard beyond the chapel. The grapes were not yet ripe enough, and the birds had gotten to nearly all the plums.

But Amiranth had discovered treasure in the cellar, after all: wine, jugs of it, and half a wheel of moldy cheese, the edges of it gnawed away, most probably by rats.

She carefully sliced away the mold and those edges, and tried not to think of what else had tasted this cheese.

They had decided to camp in what was left of the chapel, since it had sustained the least amount of damage from the fire. The nuns’ cells had collapsed into mountains of stone—but the chapel still had four walls, and the beams of its roof. They built a fire near the altar from the green wood scattered on the grounds; the smoke whorled around them in billows of white, vanishing up to the stars. Amiranth sent a quick prayer for forgiveness up with it, hoping God might understand why they slept in His home on this night.

Tristan ate silently, almost sullenly, ignoring her for the most part, which suited her well. His hands were scratched from the blackberry thorns, his fingertips stained dark with their juice. He had finished eating before her—largely because she was the one who had prepared the food, she thought, vexed—and now slouched against a wall opposite, methodically tearing off the petals of a yellow rose he had stolen from the garden.

Amiranth watched him from beneath her lashes, discerning what she could of his humor through the smoke. The curl to his lips was still there, still comely, but there was something else to it now: a suggestion of the moody displeasure she knew so well of old.

She granted him his mood. She sensed that in some way he deserved it. Clearly he had not wished to return to the cellar. He had acted so strangely about it, had seemed almost panicked. She could not fathom what he was thinking; it was only a cellar, nothing very unusual at all, certainly the same as most others. Yet he had gone so cold in there. Cold and still, as if the life had drained straight from him, and left behind a man deathly pale, every aspect of him turned brittle and sharp.

Aboveground again he had only stared at her when she demanded an explanation, and she had seen it then, the savagery in him, a wild creature cornered and desperate.

How curious it had made her feel. She had not welcomed the sensation of tenderness in her at this; she did not want to care any longer about the enigma of Tristan Geraint. Perhaps he did not like the dark. Perhaps he was averse to the cold, or to the specters of this place…. Yet, no matter what the cause, she had to think that accompanying her back to the cellar had been naught but an act of bravery.

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