The Turnaway Girls by Hayley Chewins

Author:Hayley Chewins [Chewins, Hayley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536204445
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

It’s the Childer-Queen’s gold-fire gawking that pushes me to do it — to meet Linna at the statue of Rullun Harpermall. It’s the Festival of the Sea-Singer, too. I have to get away from picturing all those ribbons as slashed tongues, the sea swirling redder and redder. And Sorrowhall means facing Bly and all the questions he raises in my gut.

But there’s another reason, if I’m honest with myself. And it’s frightening, the reason, because —

I want to see Linna.

I want to feel as though I am made for my skin again. I want my soul to hum along with a song only Linna’s soul sings.

It feels as though the empty streets are getting narrower and narrower, pinching at my elbows. The sky lowers its clouds to catch me in a mist.

I take a seat on Rullun Harpermall’s golden boot, resting my head on my folded arms. Rain falls, filling the stone-gouged Featherrut, but I stay still. I don’t want to miss Linna.

Finally, I hear footsteps.

Linna is limned in starlight. She’s carrying a bunch of tongue-fruit. She looks impressed with herself. Impressed with her loot.

She looks impressed with me, too.

“You came,” she says, giving me the tongue-fruit and pulling me up. Her fingers are warm, as though she’s touched gold. Her pockets are full of fried and leaf-wrapped seaflowers.

Then her mouth opens like the Childer-Queen’s did — opens to the raindrops that glimmer around us, up to the heavens, as if she’s worthy of having the sky touch her tongue. As if she’s not afraid of it. As if she could swallow lightning. I sway, remembering the tree with keys for leaves, that look the Childer-Queen handed me, my belly so full of unspoken secrets that I couldn’t avert my eyes.

Don’t tell.

The Featherrut is filling up with rainwater.

“Does it always flood?” I ask.

“Always,” says Linna, rolling her eyes. “The water’s taken to the Childer for her morning bath — but if you rise early, you can slurp a handful from one of the buckets. It’s meant to be good luck.”

“Good luck?” Nothing to do with the Childer-Queen seems like good luck.

“It’s worked for me so far,” Linna says, winking. She looks around, then turns to golden Rullun Harpermall and pushes her finger into his right eye. The statue rises a little off the ground, then slides to the right, revealing a deep black hole.

“What’s that?”

Linna laughs at my gaping mouth. “First rule of hiding — camp out under your enemy’s nose.” She slips into the hole, her feet pattering down a ladder. A few steps and she’s gone.

I stare in, my toes at the edge.

It looks like a trap — a place I can’t crawl out of on my own. But Linna says my name, and I know I will follow her. Because no one’s ever said my name like that. As though it means something terrifying in an ancient language. As though it holds courage in it the way a fruit holds seeds.

“Throw the tongue-fruit down!” she calls.

I do. I hear her catch the cluster in her arms.

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