Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
“What would he want with my mouth?”
Amazing how, even with a face entirely of stone, the gargoyle could admonish me with a single look. He’d been giving me that look for days now. Maude and Benji, too-though they’d taken to running like dogs who’d heard a high-pitched whistle every time Rory and I were in the same room. A frequency no one could hear, but we all felt.
It had begun the night I’d told Rory my name. Maybe earlier, if I was being honest with myself. But I’d noticed it distinctly when he’d changed the bandage on my neck.
He’d peeled old linen away with such poignant effort, you’d think he was removing my skin. One hand on my chin, the other on my shoulder, Rory had turned my head, tendering the teeth marks in my neck a pointed look.
“Well?”
“Getting better.” I’d smelled something sharp, then the sweet, aromatic scent of beeswax. Rory spread wax over the punctures the Oarsman had left.
I’d shivered when his thumb had grazed the hollow of my throat. “Just a chime and a loom stone left,” I’d said, “and your king will have successfully taken up the mantle.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he’d murmured, eyes on his work. But then they’d lifted, darting over my mouth. His cheeks had gone red, and my heart had cantered, and I’d felt his do the same in the pulse of his thumb… two beats, arguing for dominance.
Rory had dropped the linen. Cursed. “I’ll get more.”
Left the room in a rush.
And that was how it went. He’d change my bandages, applying balms and ointments and honey, and I’d hold so still I imagined myself carved of stone. But no matter Rory’s precision or my stillness, we were always flushed and breathless by the end.
I thought it would stop once I’d healed. But telling him my name-grieving in front of him-had changed something between us.
It felt like a fever, looking at him. I was dizzy and thoughtless for it.
The gargoyle tutted. “You two have been posturing long enough.” He shouted at Rory. “I say, Bartholomew! Won’t you come over here a moment?”
“What are you doing?” I seethed.
Rory’s dark eyes swung my way. His throat hitched, and then he was coming over, looking bored but for the telltale red in his cheeks. “Help you with something?”
“For the sake of my sanity-” A dandelion seed flew up the gargoyle’s nose. He leaned back. Cried out. Sneezed in Rory’s face.
I barked a laugh, and Rory shut his eyes. “That’s why you called me over? To sneeze on me?”
“A thousand apologies. What was I saying? Ah, yes.” The gargoyle put a stone hand on my shoulder. “For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”
Rory eyes jerked open, brows locking in a scowl. Behind him, Benji and Maude, who were doing a poor job masking the fact that they were eavesdropping, let out a collective exhale that came out a wheeze.
“In love with…” Oh, he was red now. Rory’s hands lowered to his sides, gauntlets tinging as he fidgeted, his eyes narrowing over the gargoyle, then me.
I choked on my own tongue and leveled a finger in the gargoyle’s face. “You can’t just say things like that. It’s horrifying.”
He tapped his stone chin. “Have I gotten it wrong?”
“Decidedly.”
“Oh dear.” His chest puffed. “Then it’s you who’s in love with him, is that it?”
There was no knightly virtue vital enough to keep Maude from hiding her glee. She was quivering with it. Benji, slightly less so. His eyes were shifting between Rory to me in quick turns.
“Pith-no.” Sweat pooled in my palms. “Must you always make nothing into something?”
Again, he tapped his chin. “Was it nothing, that knock in the Fervent Peaks, Bartholomew?” He nodded at Rory. “He came to our door, and you disappeared for many hours. When you returned you were wet and took off your tunic and threw blankets over yourself. I tried to sleep, but you were terribly annoying, breathing loudly, sighing and making little sounds and stirring in your bed-“
I slapped a hand over his mouth.
Maude gripped the king. “I told you they were sneaking around. I knew from that first night at Aisling when he came back and smoked an entire branch of idleweed that he was fucked, one way or another.”
“So I’ve gotten it right?” The gargoyle clapped. “How marvelous. Oh-look! The knighthood has arrived.”
He sauntered off, humming, as if he hadn’t just massacred my pride in the village square.
Voices echoed. The Chiming Wood was a palette of green and white and yellow, grass and birch trees. But through it, down the brambly road, I could see flashes of purple, of silver. The king’s banners-and the knights beneath them.
I followed Maude and Benji on their way to greet them, knocking into Rory’s shoulder. “An entire branch of idleweed?” I quipped.
“Little sounds?” came his slow, mirthful reply.
Back at Petula Hall, gray clouds swaddled the sun, lending the sky outside my window the same pallid quality as birch bark. “Looks like rain for the ceremony.”
There was a bang, followed by an affronted shriek. “Careful of my toes, Bartholomew!”
Feet shuffled in the corridor, and Maude grunted. “Your toes are made of stone, you great lummox.”
The gargoyle shrieked again. I heard him storm off, and then Maude was in my doorway, winded, carrying an iron object.
A breastplate.
“Is that-“
“Yours. You’ll be needing it for the ceremony in an hour. And since your squire has just stomped away”-she grinned ear to ear-“I get to put it on you.”
The maiden voyage of my breastplate onto my body did not take long. The straps were tightened, and the clasps set. It felt strange to be held closely by something so heavy. I didn’t know if my breathlessness was from bearing it, or from loving it. “It’s beautiful.”
“The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.” Maude rapped a knuckle on my breastplate. “But sometimes, I think the spectacle means something. I felt like I was a hundred feet tall the first time I put on armor-like I could do anything. When I was older, I ordered Rory and Benji their first sets. Watched them grow into them. And that meant something, too.”
My voice was small. “I still can’t pay for it, Maude.”
“Oh, the pride on you.” Her green eyes shone. “Would you still wear it if I told you it was a gift?”
I looked down at myself. Maude had told me on the road to the Fervent Peaks that she didn’t know anything about being maternal. And it heartened me that someone as honorable and purposeful as Maude Bauer could still get some things wrong. She was the most nurturing woman I’d ever known. “Yes.”
“Good.” She disappeared back down the corridor. When she returned, she held a wooden palette with wet charcoal upon it. “Now let’s get ourselves painted.”
She smeared the charcoal around her eyes the way I’d seen her wear it a hundred times. Only this time she did not stop at her eyes-drawing dark hollows over her cheeks, a dark triangle over her nose-lines over her lips.
I watched, transfixed, like a painter’s understudy. “Why do folk of the Wood wear it? Charcoal, I mean.”
“Tradition-an old safety precaution. Because of the birke.”