Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
“What’s the birke?”
“A name we have here. Birke-birch tree.”
I could tell she wasn’t keen to talk about it. “And…?”
Maude sighed, making a face at her own reflection. “They’re called birke because they look like the trees-only they aren’t. They’re sprites who prowl the Wood. Once, they fed on idleweed, but folk here keep it stored up for ceremonial or medicinal practices. Now, the birke feed on flesh. And what flesh they like best-” She tapped her brow. “Eyes. That’s why we paint charcoal on our faces. The illusion of hollowed skulls. I know. It’s garish-painting your eyes so they don’t get eaten. But name me a tradition that isn’t garish.”
I thought of the trees I’d seen my first night in the Chiming Wood, and was suddenly cold all over. “When I dreamed of the Faithful Forester’s stone chime, it was always in a circle of reaching birch trees, only those trees moved. And their knots…” I shuddered. “Their knots were made of terrible blinking eyes. Are those…”
“Indeed. Birke.”
An hour later, when the sun had bid the clouds goodbye and surrendered to the moon, the knights arrived at Petula Hall.
They waited outside, just as they’d waited outside of the Diviner cottage to escort us to Coulson Faire. Only now they weren’t wearing full armor, just breastplates and the garb of the Wood. Leathers, cloaks.
Their faces were painted like skulls.
We were just finishing up painting the gargoyle’s face. Maude had said it wasn’t necessary-that birke had no interest in eyes made of stone-but the gargoyle had been offended to be so excluded, and so we painted him.
When we were done, Maude applied a final dab of charcoal to my mouth and turned me toward the hallway looking glass.
The effect of the charcoal was not so startling with my eyes hidden behind my shroud. But my brow, my cheeks, my jaw bore all the contours of a head without flesh. A skull, emptied out by shadow.
“I look like I’m dead,” I murmured. And because everything did, that made me think of the Diviners.
Maude smiled at my reflection. “You’re perfect.”
We stepped outside into the courtyard. Benji was at the front of the line, talking to Hamelin and two other knights I recognized. Dedrick Lange, who hailed from the Seacht, and Tory Bassett from the Cliffs of Bellidine.
Rory stood slightly apart from the others, arms crossed over his chest, taking in the sight of me in my new breastplate. I thought, having so often seen him with charcoal around his eyes, that the effect of the paint would not be so striking.
I was wrong. Rory, black hair awry, rings in his ear, face painted like a skull-he looked as far from a knight as I dreamed a man could. He, like me, looked like death itself.
“Well, Six.” Benji’s arm was there. “You’re about to see me prostrate before man and god alike.
Again.”
I sighed. Took his arm. “If I could draw the short straw and do it in your place, I probably would.”
The smell hit me before we reached the sacred glen. Sharp. Pungent.
Idleweed.
It wafted through the trees-a mist that smelled so severe it put tears in my eyes and made the gargoyle cough.
At the mouth of the glen, five hooded figures waited. Their cloaks were yellow, like birch leaves, their faces painted in the same skeletal design as the rest of ours. Like the esteemed families who waited at the Fervent Peaks, the nobles of the Chiming Wood fixed their gazes upon Benji.
“I am Helena Eichel,” one of the hooded figures said, nodding at Maude. “My family, like the Bauers, have lived in the Chiming Wood for hundreds of years.” She was old-stooped, with a deep, croaking voice. “You, new king, are another
Benedict Castor.” She paused a long while. Her painted eyes were hidden beneath the hood of her cloak. Still, I knew the moment they turned to me. “But I can see you are nothing like your unbelieving grandfather. It is an honor beyond all reckoning that you have brought a daughter of Aisling to our Wood.”
“A good portent,” one of the other nobles said. “I can feel it.”
“A sign of great things to come from the Faithful Forester,” another added.
Night fell, and it began to rain. We filed into the glen, where the rain did not touch us. The trees were too dense, some of the birches growing in such immediate proximity that animals had gotten caught and died between them. There were antlers, skulls-the grotesque remains of creatures long dead.
Chimes hung from their bones.
Above, leaves wove together, forming a yellow roof that did not let the rain through. It lent a dampness to the air. An oppressive closeness. We walked through trees-through smoke and gloom-and then I saw it.
A dais, standing in the center of the glen. At its edges, pyres of idleweed smoldered.
The noble elders gathered upon the dais. Held out their hands to Benji. When he joined them, standing before us like an actor upon a stage, they removed his breastplate. Pushed his shoulders down until he was kneeling before them. “It takes more than a strong arm and a sure axe to be a forester,” one of the nobles called. “You must consort with your senses, understanding your tree from its roots to the tips of its leaves before you fell it. You must know its place in the Chiming Wood, and intuit what its absence will bring. By touch or sound or smell, you must know what the bark is like before you cut into it. You must learn to feel.”
The nobles ran their hands over nearby chimes-a discordant knell. “Only the wind will tell us what is to come,” they murmured.
“We cannot see good portents, nor bad,” another proclaimed. “That is for the Omens, and their harbingers. But we can feel them-just as, with the sacred smoke of yellow idleweed, we feel the holy presence of the Faithful Forester among us. She is the song of the wind, near and far, hither and yon. Felt, but never seen.”
“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.
“For it is the
Omens who rule Traum,” all five nobles said at once. “Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” They looked out over the knighthood. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”
“Ever but visitors,” Benji said.
“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.
I said nothing.
A flint sparked and more idleweed was lit. Orange light perforated the trees, painting the entire glen a hungry orange hue.
Helena Eichel came onto the dais. In her hands was a velvet cushion with a gray object upon it. When she lifted it, my body seized.
It was a chime. Not like the others in the glen, fashioned of wood or metal-this chime was stone. Old, and strange. I’d seen it thousands of times before.
But only ever in my dreams.
“Take it in,” Helena Eichel said, scouring the crowd. “Listen to the wind. To the voice of the Faithful Forester, sounding between the trees.” She lifted her hand. Struck the chime. “And feel.”
The Knight and the Moth
THE CHIME
The ring of the chime was beautiful. Steady, melodic.
But it split into me like a chisel. Suddenly I was fissuring, my mind cracking open. The glen of tightly woven birch trees became a blurred visage, and my thoughts became unmoored. I was everywhere and everything at once. Foundling, Diviner. Sybil, Six. I danced around a pyre in Coulson Faire, climbed a mountainous path in Fervent Peaks, rushed through bustling streets of the Seacht.
Then-familiar noises, echoing in the walls of my mind. Footsteps on the stairs in the Diviner’s cottage. A young Three and Five, laughing. A comb, tugging through Four’s dark hair. One, breathing long and low in her sleep. The batlike gargoyle, humming to me as I worked the wall.