Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
Behind me, someone chuckled.
Hamelin was there, saddling the horse to our wagon.
I walked over. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Only-” He smiled, like he was telling a joke I was not in on. “Benedict’s hamlet is Coulson Faire. He’s taken it to heart, that creed. ‘The only god of men is coin.'”
He handed the reins to the cart driver, then left to find his own horse.
Folk of the Wood came to watch us go, many dropping their hoods-pressing their axes to their chests in salute-to see Maude go by. Mouths turned, faces drawn by adoration and reverence lining the road, tales of her bravery abounding, the awestruck words sprite killer echoing through the trees as we rode out of the Chiming Wood.
She was in pain. That was why she preferred the cart and not her horse. The morning surrendered to day, and while the roll of the cart wheels and the wind in the trees and even the off-tune hum of the gargoyle was a soothing lull, Maude could not get comfortable, twisting and wincing in her seat.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“In truth?” She was looking up at the trees, the fingers of her uninjured hand idling over her axe. “Like a fool.”
“You’ll heal, Maude. You’ll get better, and you’ll be useful again and not feel so helpless-“
She put up a hand, stopping me. “If I was fixed on being the most useful version of myself”-she gestured at her bandages-“it would be all too easy to hate my body when it was not. I don’t. People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”
Her words shamed me. “Then why do you feel like a fool?”
She sighed. “Because my mother killed sprites, and her mother did, too, and they were noble women. We grow up, searching our guardians for what is right and what is true, thinking they have all the answers, like they already understand the signs of life. But they don’t. No one does.”
She looked away. “I see how Benji is, desperate to achieve what his grandfather could not. How you are, fighting to unstitch all the lies the abbess sewed into you. And while I am a hunter, a killer, like all Bauer women, I should have looked harder at myself and less at them.” There were tears in her eyes. “I always hated killing sprites. They are just creatures, trying to live, like the rest of us. Maybe I never knew that until I killed the Faithful Forester and finally felt what a righteous kill could be like. But I kept slaughtering sprites. I might kill one now, if it came onto the road.” Daylight dappled in through the trees, painting her tears gold. “It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”
I brushed my thumb over my shroud. If it would not pain her, I’d lay my head in Maude’s lap and let her tears fall onto my face, because it would cleanse something in me no spring water ever had. “I hated dreaming,” I said. “I hated it so much I decided I’d be perfect at it so that no one ever knew.”
She faced me. “Why do we do these things to ourselves?”
“The answer is rather simple.” The gargoyle swatted birch branches as we passed them by. “When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
“That is a very keen thing to say, gargoyle.” Maude put her uninjured hand on his shoulder. “How is it you came to know so much more about life than the rest of us?”
His chest puffed with pride. “I am years beyond my wisdom.”
I smiled and did not correct him.
Of all the beauty Traum held-its tors and cities and peaks and woods-none had prepared me for the splendor of its seaside.
The Cliffs of Bellidine were a marvel.
Green sweeping hills spotted with sheep. The higher the hills reached, the more flowers lay upon them. Thrift flowers-carpets of them. If I rolled down any which one, I would be stained a brilliant shade of pink. The heart of the hamlet rested between hills, populated by dozens of crofts and houses made of stone. And just beyond them-
Sheer white cliffs. The glorious Sighing Sea.
We rode over the last finger of the Tenor River, saw the last birch trees, and then I was gasping-looking over the sea. “Oh, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, standing in the cart. “It’s like looking out over the edge of the world.”
It was. Even the knighthood, who were not new to the splendor like me, slowed their horses to look out over the hills, the cliffs, the water. Hands were put to eyes, lips pulled over teeth in smiles. Benji, who rode at the front of the line, winced against the wind. Next to him rode Rory. Only he wasn’t looking out over the view.
He was watching me take it all in.
I let out a heavy exhale. Held his gaze until I was burning.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
“That sounds like a storm,” Maude said.
“Pishposh.” The gargoyle stuck his nose to the wind. “I can always smell it when it’s going to rain. The thunder was but a collision of clouds.”
It began to pour twenty minutes later.
“Always smell when it’s going to rain, my foot,” I grumbled. Wind whipped and the horses brayed, rain pelting us from every angle, pinging over armor-ricocheting into faces. “Not as wise as we think, are we?”
The gargoyle wrapped his wings around himself and pouted.
By the time we got to the main road-to the circle of crofts-the king and his knights looked positively drowned. We reached an inn and adjoining stables. “I hate it!” the gargoyle wailed against the rain. “How do the flowers bear this incessant abuse?” He covered his eyes, wobbled, then fell out of the wagon into mud and thrashed. It frightened the boy who’d come to take our horses so acutely he fled into the inn and did not come out again until his mother was with him.
We took our armor off in the stables. The knights were each given a key, and a room to share. When the innkeeper gave me mine-wrought iron-I noticed that she was wearing a circle around her neck. A stone, with the center carved out.
Her eyes caught on my shroud-then lowered to my knightly under armor. “Bless me. You’re a contradiction.”
“Rude,” the gargoyle muttered behind me.
The woman smiled. There was a web of fine wrinkles around her eyes. “Sorry. I’ve never been to Aisling. Never seen a Diviner in the flesh.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat and nodded at her necklace. “Is that a loom stone?”
She put a wrinkled hand to her throat. “Got it practically the day I was born. We all wear one.” Again, she smiled. “We’re all weavers here.”
I waited for her to ask me about Aisling. For her to bring a piece of cloth, a thread, maybe, and ask me if I saw any signs or presages or portents or any which word people used when they spoke to me of the Omens.
She didn’t. She just gave me the key to my room and smiled.
“They seem a gentle folk here,” I said to Maude as we passed a reaching loom, a dozen women working it.
“They believe in the Omens as much as the others,” Maude said as we moved up the stairs. “But the Heartsore Weaver is all about presages of love. Heartbreak. Both of those things tend to bring people together. I don’t know. It’s made folk of this hamlet strangely kind.”
I opened our room and led her inside. How world-weary I’d become to be surprised that an Omen could have a benevolent impact over their hamlet. “We’re still going to kill her,” I said. “The Heartsore Weaver. We’ll kill her, and then we’ll go to Aisling.” My voice hardened. “I want to look the abbess in the eye before we rid Traum of its final Omen.”
“That’s all well and good,” the gargoyle said from the corner of the room. He shook a blanket at me. “But who’s going to tuck me in?”
Hours later, when the storm was over and the night quiet and Maude and the gargoyle snoring, a note slid under my door.
Meet at the beach?
-R
The innkeeper, knighthood-everyone was in bed. I tiptoed down the stairs, past the loom, past the room with the hearth. The fire was still alight.