Julia Vanishes (30 page)

“I'll give it some thought,” I say. I can't go back to my old life, my old self, but nor can I think of any other kind of life. I don't know what else I'm good for.
Your mother never learned to live without hope,
Liddy told me. But I don't know what to hope for.

“You've done well.” Esme nods to where Bianka sits playing with Theo, covering a marble with a cup and lifting it again, the marble rolling with the deck as soon as it is free. “A mother should be with her children.”

When I look at Theo, not quite the chubby imp from Mrs. Och's house, but clean, laughing, reaching for the marble, my heart clenches in my chest like a fist. I make my way over on wobbly knees and lower myself to the deck next to them. Bianka slams the cup over the marble and gives me a scorching look.

I will not ask for her forgiveness—I don't deserve that. But I cannot stop myself from kneeling before her and whispering fiercely: “I'd die before letting anything happen to him again. I swear to you, I'd die first.”

To my surprise, she reaches out and takes my good hand in hers, twining her fingers between mine. She says, “I know.”

I clutch her hand, but I can't meet her eyes. I can't undo any of it, but to see him well and happy and playing at his mother's side again—for that, I feel a gratitude I think will overwhelm me. Though I am not generally prone to prayer, I squeeze my eyes shut and offer my silent thanks and my wordless remorse to the Nameless One, the wheeling stars, the universe and whatever there may be in it that listens or cares. And I ask the universe, though I have no right to ask for anything:
Protect him. Protect him. Protect him.

T
he snow is coming down swift and thick, and the sky is black. I walk through the Edge and all the way down to Forrestal before turning north again. Moving keeps me calm, or something like it. Cyrambel Temple's great bulk rises up before me now, looming in front of the moon, and I quicken my pace. I stop on the bridge where I saw the murdered governess just a few weeks ago, though it feels like lifetimes. I am not that girl anymore.

From the bridge I stare down at the frozen river, the snow lying heavy and untouched over the ice. They will come to clear the snow and break the ice at dawn, for there's to be a Cleansing here tomorrow morning. This one will draw a crowd in spite of the cold, as Marianne Deneuve is to be drowned along with the other witches. It will be the first Cleansing in years that I will not attend; we are leaving early on a train to the south.

Liddy found us a place to stay, a place to hide, when we returned; we did not dare go back to Esme's, where Casimir would surely know how to find us. And Liddy directed Professor Baranyi to the unprepossessing house on the outskirts of the Plateau a few days after our return to the city. He brought with him eleven gold freyns and a new offer, which we unanimously accepted. We are to travel with Mrs. Och and the others to Yongguo. They intend to seek out Ko Dan, the monk Gennady spoke of, in the hope that he can undo what was done to Theo, somehow remove the text fragment from him without harming him. We are to act as bodyguards, spies, or whatever the situation requires. We will be well paid, Professor Baranyi assures Esme, and we all feel safer leaving Spira City for a time.

Every night since his visit, the others feast and drink while I go out and walk the empty, snowy streets. I don't begrudge them their delight in their new wealth, but I can't share it. I asked Liddy to give my share of Casimir's silver—what's left of it—and Mrs. Och's gold to an orphanage or some worthy cause so that I won't have to touch it or look at it. She raised one white eyebrow archly at the idea of me as a philanthropist but said she would do as I asked. I can't even wear the awful gown or the fur I bought, given what I did to earn them. I looked ridiculous in them, anyway. I am wearing my old gabardine coat over the mended dress Torne's fellows ripped open. Not as warm as a fur coat, but I feel more myself.

Casimir told me that all great ambition finds its root in the desire for vengeance or power, but I suspect it is the nature of a certain kind of man to think his own truths universal. He would not understand how powerful remorse can be, the desire for atonement. He didn't mention love, or grief. Still, we are not altogether unalike. Power doesn't interest me, but vengeance, yes. I understand what he said about vengeance. Mrs. Och said Casimir would not want to let me go, and nor will I let go of him, of what he did to me, to my mother.

I flex my hand, which feels stiff and strange—Esme took the bandages off this morning—and remember that other hand, in that other place. I told Dek a little of what Casimir said to me about our mother. I could not tell him, or any of them, about my vanishing to Kahge, if that's truly where it was. I can't bear for him to doubt who and what I am. Not before I know, myself.

I look up into the falling snow, and it feels like I'm flying, sailing up into the sky, leaving Spira City far below me. Goodbye, then, to the streets of my childhood, the streets where my childhood ended. Goodbye to the Twist, goodbye to the Edge, goodbye to the rats and the thin stray cats. Goodbye to the sparkling Spira City nighttime, and to the frozen water underneath the snow. Goodbye to the bones of witches at the bottom of the river. Goodbye to the bones of my mother. Goodbye to the witches who will drown here tomorrow.

Goodbye to the Julia who would sell a boy for silver. Light on my feet, I run the rest of the way home in the snow.

First thanks go to my agent, Steve Malk, who took a chance on the scrambled manuscript I was calling a book, and from whom I learned so much while revising it. I've heard authors say things like “I could not have written this book without old So-and-So,” but before working with Steve, I never really understood what they meant. Now I do. Thank you.

To my wonderful editor, Nancy Siscoe, to everyone at Knopf who has worked on
Julia
—I could write sonnets of appreciation for copy editors!—and to Amy Black and the team at Doubleday Books: I am so lucky to be working with you, and so grateful.

Thank you to Dan Gilman, Samantha Cohoe, Kip Wilson Rechea, Dana Alison Levy, and Katie Mei McCarthy, who read and critiqued various parts of the book at various stages. Tremendous gratitude also to Jim and Janet Hunter, whose generosity gave me an extra two mornings a week to write and saved me from losing what I like to call my mind.

My thanks and my infinite love to the following people, who read and shaped my writing and so much more: my parents, who are not just in my corner but pretty much built my corner; my brothers, without whom Julia's love for Dek would be a shadow of the truth; my grandmother Kato Havas, who has taught me so much about the joys and perils of the creative life; Jonathan Service, who is both the most serious and the least serious person I know—thank you for taking me more seriously and less seriously than anybody else at exactly the right moments all my life; Gillian Bright, thank you for incisive critiques and tireless cheerleading; Mick Hunter, my partner in all the very best and worst—thank you for brainstorming sessions, for keeping your cool through every storm, for doing all the hard stuff as if it isn't hard, for making me laugh every day, and for everything else, too. You leave this would-be wordsmith speechless.

Finally, all the love in the world, but no thanks at all, to James and Kieran, who have, from the very first draft, stood—loudly! exuberantly! irrepressibly!—between me and the completion of this book. Finished anyway. Smooch.