Relic (The Books of Eva I) (4 page)

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to get you to not Test,” he says.

“I lost count of your legal arguments at a hundred. You might consider serving as a Lexor if the Testing doesn’t work out.” I’m nervous at what Jasper might say, and my sorry attempt at a joke just slips out. A Maiden should be more solemn:
let no humor cross your lips unless invited by the Gallant, Gentleman, or Lord in your company
.

Jasper smirks, but he quickly recovers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the support you needed, Eva. It must’ve been really hard for you to listen to me when you were already dealing with so much over Eamon.”

“Your protests didn’t help.” I don’t see any sense in denying it, no matter the niceties demanded by normal Aerie conversation. Given that we’re already in flagrant defiance of The Lex right now, honesty seems the only course.

“I need you to understand now why I tried to talk you out of Testing.”

I nod. The Lex forbids the Testors to speak to one another
for the duration of the Testing. More than one Testor has been sent back to the Aerie for violating that single rule. “Okay,” I say quietly.

Jasper breaks our gaze and stares down at the rough floor before continuing. “Eva, for a long time now, I’ve hoped that we could have a future together.”

I can’t help but wonder if my mother anticipated he’d make this confession as a last ditch effort to make me withdraw. My heart pounds. She’d be taking a huge risk, but of course, she could deny everything. Unions are strictly the purview of parents and Triad. Not Maidens and Gallants. A part of me is flattered; Jasper is considered one of the most eligible Gallants in the Aerie. But still, I don’t know how I feel about him. I haven’t allowed myself to experience any emotion since Eamon died. I’m fearful that, if I let in a single sentiment, the floodgates of grief will burst. Then I might as well withdraw.

I don’t want to commit to anything right now, and I definitely don’t want to insult him. Nor do I want to give my mother a victory. So I say as little as possible, using her logic. “I understand. It wouldn’t be appropriate for a future wife to Commit to the Testing. No female has competed for over one hundred years.”

Jasper looks up from the floor and grabs my hands. “That isn’t it at all, Eva. You have as much a right to compete as any other Founding family member. You proved to us all there are no Lex rules stopping you. And I don’t care what your mother or my mother or anyone else thinks about your behavior and The Lex for Maidens …” He pauses, blushing. “It’s just that I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt, and the Testing is dangerous. I couldn’t go on if something happened to you.”

I open my mouth, but no words come. I have no option
but to hide behind my Maiden mask of modesty. Lowering my gaze, I manage, “Oh.”

“Eva, I’ll do whatever I can to help you during the Testing, no matter The Lex, no matter—”

“Jasper?” My father’s voice bellows from the solar. “Have you found what you are looking for? Evensong will ring momentarily.”

I glance over at Jasper. He pulls the sealskin cloak out from under his fur mantle, where it had been all along.

“Yes, sir. I think I have.”

The floor and bed of my bedroom are strewn with preparations. Bags containing maps and books;
kamiks
, bear-claw boots, and climbing equipment; excavation tools; bows,
bolas
, and my
atlatl
; tents and cooking supplies; a small
umiak
and oars; and all my wearable seal and bear skins. Everything that I might possibly need. Everything of a material nature, that is. I can’t pack courage.

I use this clutter as a shield. Behind it, I am storing away the Boundary tools Lukas has given me, like my
ulu
knife. These items might be the difference between life and death in the first three Advantages. And then there’s my journal. The Lex forbids journals:
let nothing be so secret that you write or discuss it in private
. But since Eamon died, I’ve needed a place where I can be my true self. In the past, I was able
to act the Maiden—and be content with my role and my future as an Ark Gardener or wife—because I always had a reprieve with Eamon. A place where I could shed the Lex Maiden rules for a little while, climb the turret, poke fun at our mother, and engage in free talk. I could even whisper the banned Faerie tales I heard from my beloved Boundary Nurse Aga—like the one about young Maiden Snow who lays in a dream-state in an icy coffin, waiting for her Gallant to rescue her. Eamon begged for stories like these. This journal has to serve as a pathetic replacement for a conversation with my brother.

“What are you doing back there, Eva?” my mother demands.

I slide the journal and the tools under the largest bag, and meet her eyes to answer, “Just organizing my equipment.”

She shakes her head, gestures around the room at the chaos. “Eva, all this must fit on your back or on the dogsled tomorrow. How in the Gods do you think you’ll manage?” Her voice is at its true level, but she is no less the Lady in her quest for perfection.

“Don’t worry, Mother. It’s more organized than it looks. It’ll all fit.”

She glares at me. “I suppose I thought you’d still have the sense to quit now. In fact, I thought we’d had enough of your un-Maidenly behavior long ago with that tapestry business.”

My heart squeezes. I should have known she’d bring up that embarrassment: the ill-fated mark that ruined my otherwise perfect ascent toward Ladyhood. On the other hand, she has a point. What had I been thinking with the tapestry? I knowingly deviated from the Lex-prescribed depiction of the Healing by including a symbol of the false god Apple hanging from a tree. Worse: with a tiny bite taken out of it.
In my defense, those few illicit stitches had been prompted by a secret Faerie tale Nurse Aga told me about Apple, a Maiden, a Gallant, and a Garden … and I’d lost myself in the beauty of the tableaux. The daydream-fueled stitching led to banishment from the afternoon sewing circles. The Maidens who’d been my friends forgot about me.

Instead, I began my tenure as an apprentice Gardener.

But not all was lost. I discovered that I loved learning about botany and agriculture from the Ark Gardeners. I think that irked my mother more than blasphemy itself: that I grew to prefer my punishment in the Ark to my time sewing and chattering.

When I don’t answer, she continues. “Despite all that unpleasantness, you’ve decided to Test. Even though you’re a Maiden.”

“Other Maidens have competed in the Testing. What about Madeline? And Carina was given permission.” I almost wish Jasper were here to back me up. While researching The Praebulum and The Lex—in an effort to prove that a Maiden should be permitted entrance into the Testing—I learned about two Maidens who sought the Archon position in the past.

“Those two
Maidens
—” my mother practically spits out the word, “participated in the Testing or the Commitment over one hundred and fifty years ago, when some females still carried the vestiges of the unseemly qualities of the pre-Healing days. Before they fully transformed into the Maidens and Ladies of the Aerie that you see today—women of The Lex. Madeline even trained with Gallants. Do you want to become like Madeline and Carina? Brazen and coarse?”

“Mother, you don’t know what they were like—”

She raises a hand. “Enough. You’ve proven that I can’t
stop you, but that doesn’t mean I have to approve. You’ve managed to sway your father, but not me. Your place is here, in your home. And one day, perhaps with Jasper. If he’ll still have you after all this nonsense is over.”

And so it is as I’d suspected. I turn my attention back to my packing. There’s nothing more to say.

My mother exhales. It’s a sigh heavy with exhaustion, despair, and sadness. I almost feel badly for her. She’s suffered over Eamon, too, and even though I jest to myself and Lukas about her ridiculous adherence to The Lex, I know it’s her way of coping with her grief. I see her face soften, and I wonder if she might walk across the room to touch me. But then she hardens again into her Lady mask. As far as I can tell, all of my mother’s gentle emotion—what little she believes The Lex permits—died with Eamon. Only duty and appearances and survival remain.

The door slams shut. I thought I wanted solitude. I’d longed for it all day, even escaped to the turret to find it. I relished the thought of finally relinquishing the Maiden role. But now I feel truly alone. I make myself imagine the next morning, when I’ll stand alone on the town square dais with the eleven other contenders for the Testing. I envision the solitary departure from the Aerie, through the Ring—and the race out into the vast, white ice of New North, and onto the Frozen Shores. I might have to scale glaciers or descend into crevasses searching for artifacts, those terrible reminders of the past that washed onto New North’s shores in the Healing. Then, if I’m lucky enough to find a Relic, not even one of the scale my father found, I’ll study it in the isolation of my igloo. I’ll extract a lesson from my Relic so that mankind will never again repeat its catastrophic mistakes. Only then will the Gods select an Archon from among us twelve.

The other eleven Testors are Gallants, like Jasper. Of course.

Deep within myself, I believe I can do it, despite my lack of training and the fact that, until now, everyone thought of me as a Maiden. Not exactly compliant, but a Maiden nonetheless. I must believe. Is that what Lukas always tells me? And didn’t his insistence on faith in myself prove true as he pushed me to scale Aerie ice walls and learn all the types of snow by touch alone?

For the first time in days, I feel at peace. It is almost as though Eamon himself had given his blessing.

I unlace the front of my Feast gown to put on my sleeping shift. In the coming days, I’ll not have the luxury, but day after day will sleep in the same layers of skins and furs for warmth.

The stays of my gown are tighter than usual, as demanded by the Feast, and I struggle with them. I consider calling for Katja, but I hesitate. Katja was chosen explicitly to suit me as a Companion, and yet I have never felt particularly close to her. She’s nice enough, and loyal, but our relationship is nothing like the bond that had formed between Eamon and Lukas. That we all three shared, really.

A tiny knock sounds at my bedroom door. It can only be Katja. My mother is long gone, and my father’s knock is distinctive and forceful.

“Come in. I was just about to call for you,” I reply.

The door opens, and my throat catches. Lukas fills the room. Broad-shouldered and wide of chest, he somehow manages to make even the largest of tunics seem too small.

I turn around and scramble to pull tight the stays of my gown.

He backs away. “I’m sorry, Eva. I shouldn’t be here.”

As I reassemble my gown as quickly as possible, I rush to
reassure him. “No, no, Lukas. Please stay. I wanted to thank you for—”

“The turret? No need. I was just doing my job.”

I am angry in spite of myself. “Is that all it is? Your job?”

“Of course not, Eva. You know better than that.”

We stare at each other, uncertain what to say next. The Lex explicitly bars the kind of friendship that sprung up between us and Eamon:
let no familiarity pass with those of the Boundary; we are their caretakers, not their friends or families
. Consequently, I sometimes struggle for the right way to speak to Lukas. For me, this kind of free talk, unburdened by The Lex, makes me awkward and blunt. Even bold.

“Tell me about
Nunassiaq
again, will you?” I find myself blurting.

“I thought you were the storyteller, Eva. Not me.” He’s trying to put me off, referencing the times when we three hid away on the turret listening to the tales I respun from Nurse Aga. But I won’t have it.

“Come on, Lukas. Please.”

He pauses, then shakes his head.

“Eva, you leave the Aerie tomorrow as
upernagdlit
, not
Inuit
. When you make the Passage tomorrow, you’ll enter a land that isn’t
Nunassiaq
anymore. That place died when the floods came—excuse me, the Healing happened—and New North created the Boundary land for my people.”

Now I truly don’t know what to say. My mother would call Lukas’s slip about the “floods” blasphemy, but I’m not offended that the Boundary people sometimes have different beliefs. Mostly, I feel sorry for them, that they don’t have the comfort of our faith in the Gods. Besides, I have too much respect for Lukas to lecture him about the Gods-blessed events that led to the creation of New North: the voyage
taken by the Founders to the Arctic islands that became our home, the manner in which the Founders banded together to fashion a rightful society when the Healing submerged most of Father Earth, and New North’s sacred mission to avoid the mistakes of the pre-Healing world with The Lex and the Boundary and the Testing.

“Well … thanks for coming to say goodbye,” I finally offer.

“Eva, I came to bring you something. Something you might find helpful for the Testing,” he says softly.

A smile creeps across my face. I rub my hands together. Another Boundary-tool. I am not so confident that I don’t appreciate the help. “So, what’s the treasure this time?”