The Golden Specific by S. E. Grove

Author:S. E. Grove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-06-17T04:00:00+00:00

—19-Hour 42—

THE BED IN the little room overlooking the courtyard was softer and more comfortable than Sophia had imagined. But she could not sleep. Restless thoughts and persistent uncertainties kept her mind turning. The pretty room, which had clearly belonged to a girl her own age or younger, filled her with morbid thoughts about the deaths that had likely occurred in her place of refuge. Perhaps, she comforted herself, the family moved away to avoid lapena. But then, why would they leave all their belongings?

Sophia sighed and turned over restlessly. She could not decide what to do. Was it wiser to stay in Seville and wait for Remorse’s ally? Or would it be better to travel east to the Granada Archive at once? Sitting up, she leaned forward and opened the shutters to the window overlooking the courtyard. Moonlight poured into the room. She looked out at the roofs of Seville and imagined the plague creeping through the city on shadowy feet. Despite her exhaustion, she realized, she would not be sleeping.

Sophia took her notebook from her satchel. She filled the pages, drawing and writing by the light of the moon. The plague cleric, Whence and Partial, the boy and his mother who had given her bread, the lamplighter, Errol Forsyth, and the specter of Minna Tims. She could hardly believe it had all happened in one day. As she drew, the tolling of bells marked the night hours: the second vigil, the third vigil, the fourth vigil, and matins.

It was close to dawn, though the sky was still dark, when Sophia suddenly heard a strange sound: a stretching and creaking, like the wall of a house resisting the wind. Then a sharp cracking and splintering cut through the air: the sound of wood being smashed to pieces. For a moment, she thought of the front door, but no—the sound came from the courtyard. A clattering explosion, followed by the report of wood on stone, drove her to the window.

She looked down and saw the planter in pieces. The plants that had been growing inside the wooden container were now bursting from it; the soil lay scattered, the fully blossomed flowers partly trampled, as if someone had walked through them.

Sophia pulled away from the window with a gasp. “Errol!” she shouted. She unbolted her door and rushed out into the corridor. She could hear him in the room across the narrow hall, stumbling across the floorboards.

He pounded on the door of his room. “Open the door. Sophia. Sophia! Unbar the door!”

But Sophia stood motionless in the corridor. She stared up at the figure that stood not five paces away, blocking her path. Tall and strangely illuminated, emitting a golden light like the flame of a candle, the woman held her hand out toward Sophia, commanding her stillness. “Do not move,” she said, her voice sinuous as a velvet ribbon, winding its way around Sophia so that she felt rooted to the floor. Then the woman turned her palm upward, and a cluster of golden blossoms sprang from her hand.

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