My grandfather led the way, his Spade clinking against the ground with every step like a walking stick. Behind him, everyone followed by rank—the oldest Monitors of the High Court first, followed by the younger members, then finally by Clementine, the junior Monitors, and me.
We must have made headway with the car, for I could now feel the distant pull of the Undead on me as we trudged through the snow. The landscape was icy and stark, dotted with jagged boulders. As we ascended, the weather began to turn. The dry mountain air felt coarse against my throat, so thin that I had to take two breaths instead of one. With every step I sank up to my calves in snow, my gear weighing down my shoulders, digging into my skin through my coat.
The longer we walked, the more the landscape began to blur into one endless stretch of white. The lack of trees, of any kind of landmark, eroded my sense of depth. I couldn’t tell what was close and what was far. The twin peaks in the distance seemed to waver, first growing larger, then shrinking back into the horizon. Ledges of ice and rock towered around us, balancing so tenuously that any gust could have knocked them over. My clothes were caked with ice, the snow clinging to my hair until it crystalized into heavy white strands. My lips were so chapped they stung.
I placed one foot in front of the other, imagining I was stepping into Dante’s tracks, that he was just a few steps ahead of me. Every smudge of dirt in the snow I mistook for a scrap of his shirt left behind; every chill I mistook for his presence reaching out to me. I tried to remember the feeling of warmth. The kiss of the summer sun on my shoulder. The heat that bloomed inside me every time I felt Dante’s lips press against my skin. I only drew a blank.
Ahead, my grandfather and the elders hiked tirelessly through the cold, showing barely a sign of fatigue. As we pressed against the wind, which whipped against my face and made my cheeks burn, I wondered what was propelling them forward. At the front of the line, my grandfather paused and closed his eyes while he teased out the sensation of the Undead ahead of us. “They are moving quickly,” he said. “We must pick up the pace!”
The elders closed in around him. They weren’t just the most talented members of the Court, I realized. They were also the oldest. So close to death. Maybe they wanted to find the Netherworld, too, and were using this hunt for the Liberum as a way to search for it.
I leaned against a boulder for a quick rest, when I saw the white face of a girl peer at us over the side of a rocky overhang. Her hair fluttered in the wind as she disappeared behind it. She looked just like the girl I had seen flitting past the window of the house by the well, and darting through the trees in the birch forest, and yet her face looked slightly different. Older maybe, like a sister. But when I leaned forward to get a better look, she disappeared.
I turned to the others to see if anyone else had seen her, but all eyes were on the ground or the rocky ledge of the first peak in the near distance.
Who were these girls? They haunted each point like apparitions, and yet they weren’t dead; I couldn’t sense them at all. I knew they were following us, watching us, and yet they never revealed themselves. I thought back to the places where I had seen them: the house near the well, its kitchen floor inlaid with a mosaic of a canary; the birch cabin with the canary weathervane. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the canary was also the sign of the Nine Sisters. Were the girls I was seeing somehow related to them, to Ophelia Hart?
I searched for them on the cliffs as we walked onward. I knew then that we had to be nearing the third point, for the girls only seemed to reveal themselves as we neared each point on the map. We had almost reached the valley in the middle of the peaks when the air began to rearrange itself.
The line of Monitors slowed. “Do you feel that?” one of them said.
A murmur rose over them as the others agreed. It didn’t feel like the Undead. It felt like plain, stagnant death.
We moved faster then, walking toward the vacancy. At first, I thought it might be the pull of the third point, when I heard a shout up ahead. The elders had gathered around a patch of snow. Between them, I could just make out a leg protruding from the snow. It was clothed in a pair of wool slacks and tattered leather loafers, a sliver of skin peeking out beneath the hem of the pants.
I recognized those shoes, though they were now scuffed and soaked through from the snow. Pruneaux.
My grandfather bent over him, examining his mouth, his throat, his pulse. “The Liberum have discarded the cartographer,” he said. “He’s only been dead for a few hours.”
While the other Monitors gathered around him, a flash of something white caught my eye. I turned to the rocky ledge in the distance and saw the face of the pale girl disappear over a crest in the mountainside, her long blond hair trailing behind her.
Ms. Vine froze. “Did you see that?” she said, her eyes glued to the same outcrop of rocks.
“See what?” said Mr. Harbes from beside her.
“A girl,” she said. “She looked like an Undead, but I couldn’t feel her.”
“A girl?” Mr. Harbes said. “All the way up here?”
“I saw her, too,” said another Monitor. “So did I,” another chimed in.
“Search the area!” my grandfather said. “The elders and I will go forward toward the peaks in the wake of the Liberum’s presence. The rest of you spread out across the slope!”
The Monitors dispersed, some huddling over Pruneaux while the others backtracked, taking the steep route up the mountaintop to get a better view of the horizon. Amid the disorder, I slipped away and crept behind my grandfather up the icy path.
The air thinned, its freshness fading until the mountain breeze smelled stale. With it drifted the gritty smell of the mud and debris around me, then the damp scent of my backpack, which had carried the odor of rain and snow and heat, the sweet smell of my sweat, all the cars and trains and lodgings I had stayed in—it all grew muted.
I thought back to Descartes’s riddle. The nose, it next decays, death the only stench to stay.
The lines in the scenery began to converge into a familiar pattern, one that I remembered from the etchings in the chest. The jagged scar between the peaks of the mountains was far more terrible in person—a rocky gash that dipped so deep into the earth that it looked endless. My grandfather and the other elders gathered around its edge. I snuck to the far side, staying close to the rocky face of the mountain so they wouldn’t see me, until I saw a ripple of water. It was black and still as glass. I leaned over it, my face appearing in the pool below.
The water trembled, making my reflection quiver. The Renée that stared back at me was gaunt, her expression lost. Her hair blew in front of her face in a breeze that I could not feel. She took a breath in, then another. Her chest heaved as though she couldn’t inhale.
As I watched her, I felt my lungs compress. A thin stream of air curled up my throat. It seeped through the seam of my lips, through my nose, my pores. It folded in on itself, softening and rounding out until it transformed into a scent imprinted on my soul.
Dante. I could smell him, as clear as the winter morning, the woods clinging to his clothes, his hair as sweet as pine. I could smell his breath, cold like the wind in December; his skin, as clean and fresh as ice. The smoky smell of cabins and cozy wool blankets, of the wet pavement and the snow melting off the evergreens around us in the winter sun, of his scent still nestled in the bed beside me. I remembered the rustic smell of his shirt as he scooped me up from the lawn outside of Gottfried just before the Brother of the Liberum had lowered his face to mine in a kiss, and carried me through the woods, the wild scent of him filling my lungs with life.
But the memories soon faded into the autumn leaves of Montreal; the smell of thick sweaters and baking croissants and coffee brewing in the corner of a bakery. Of Noah, the waning fall afternoon clinging to his clothes and filling me with warmth. I almost believed that he was still sitting across from me, his legs tangling with mine beneath a cramped table at a patisserie.
Snap, rewind, and the scent was replaced with the crackling heat of Gottfried, of dusty chimneys and Eleanor’s saccharine perfume. The aroma of steam and shampoo wafting down the hallway. Of chalk and pencil grindings, of musty books and the stillness of the library, of the pine still fresh in Dante’s hair as he leaned over my shoulder...
That, too, unraveled, until I was left inhaling the salty breeze of the Pacific Ocean, the sticky scent of sunscreen and aloe vera, of charcoal crackling in the barbecue. Of California: the smell of the dew on the football field at night, of cheap beer foaming out of a bottleneck and cigarettes singeing the grass. One by one, the memories faded, stripping me of every rich smell and foul odor and comforting scent until there was nothing but a blank void.
I blinked, my reflection mimicking me, and backed away from the ravine. The air around me was odorless and thin, the wind so flat I barely registered it at all. I took a deep breath, trying to inhale the aroma of the mountains, but I smelled nothing. On the far side of the valley, my grandfather knelt over the pool. His long coat swept the ice as he stood up, his face startled. The elder Monitors of the High Court were all close by. Behind him, I spotted a pale cabin, the color of snow, nestled into the far side of the valley. It looked just like the cabin I had seen in the birch forest. The shape of a canary was etched into its door.
The last of the scents drifted past me, a swirl of memories that I would never get back. I turned to them as they swept down the far side of the mountain. And there I saw it: a circle of clouds swirling low in the sky. Jutting out of them was a lone mountaintop, which looked almost like it was floating. I recognized it from the underside of the chest, and though the engraving was far cruder, the likeness was unmistakable. According to the map, the fourth point was nestled somewhere in those clouds.
I should have felt happy. We were almost there. But there was no we anymore. There was barely a me.
My grandfather didn’t say anything about what we’d found, nor did any of the other elders. The junior Monitors were busy burying Pruneaux and searching for any signs of the Liberum and the white-clothed girl, but they’d found nothing. When they were finished, the elders led them around the edge of the mountain, avoiding the gash in the earth as though they hadn’t found anything there at all.
We followed the wisps of the Undead until the sun waned in the sky. A building emerged through the mist, built into the rocks on the side of the mountain, its gray stone blending into the rugged scenery. Its windows were fogged over, light flickering softly behind them. A sign hung above the door. WEILTERHÜTTE. My eyes watered with relief. An alpine refuge. A sign of life.
A burst of warmth welcomed us inside. A boy my age fed wood into a fire, making the embers crackle and dance, while a wiry man who looked like the boy’s father sat at the table, peeling potatoes. He had a ruddy face, and eyes set close together like a hawk’s. He led us down the hallway to the lodging rooms out back. My grandfather dropped his bag in front of the dormitory closest to the hallway. “Wash up and rest,” he said. “We’ll regroup again in an hour for dinner.”
I shared a room with the seven other female Monitors, including Clementine, who chose the top bunk next to mine. We didn’t speak while we unpacked, nor did we look at each other while we changed our clothes and washed our faces in the shared bathroom. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves, lest the Monitors grow suspicious. Our only communication was a brief glance we shared as I slipped out the door. I motioned to the two rooms at the end of the hall, where the elders were staying. She nodded as I disappeared into the hallway.
I nudged open the door of my grandfather’s dormitory with my foot. His rucksack was there, but otherwise the room was empty. The adjoining chamber was also vacant; the only sign of the elders was their gear, resting by their beds. Their Spades were gone. I ventured into the main room, where the innkeeper and his sons were busy prepping for dinner. Some of the junior Monitors were sitting by the fire, but the elders were nowhere to be seen.
My heart began to race. Where were they? Clementine had said they’d planned to meet tonight—to go to the camp of the Liberum, I’d assumed. Had they already managed to slip away? I peered back down the hallway, wondering if there was some other room I didn’t know about, but all I saw were three doors: one leading outside; one to a broom closet, which was slightly ajar; and one to the bathrooms. When I turned back into the main room, Clementine brushed past me.
“Have you seen them?” I whispered.
She shook her head. “I checked my father’s room, but there’s only one other junior Monitor there.”
I peered out the window at the white landscape that surrounded us. The snow had let up, though the wind was still howling against the sides of the refuge. “They must have already left,” I murmured, and turned to her. “We have to find them.”
We snuck to the back door. “Wait,” Clementine said, and ran down the hall to our rooms. When she emerged she was carrying two white bath towels. “Wrap this around your shoulders,” she said, handing me one. “You’ll blend in better.”
I did as she said, and with our shoulders draped in white, we burst out into the cold once more. I’d expected to spot them easily in the snow, but when we scanned the mountainside around us, we appeared to be alone. I spun around, shuddering as the wind thrashed about us. Dark rocks lined the slope, hanging over the trail in clusters; otherwise, everything was white and still. I searched the ground for footprints, but the ground was already so uneven with the prints we’d left hiking up to the refuge that it was impossible to tell which were new.
“I saw them last night,” I told Clementine. “A draft woke me up from my sleep. I thought it was...” I wanted to say Noah, but was it? Or had that part been nothing more than a dream? I couldn’t tell, so instead I continued, “...an Undead, so I followed the presence down to the woods, where I saw my grandfather and a few other Monitors doing something to three Undead boys.”
“Doing what?” Clementine said. “Burying them?”
I swallowed. “I don’t think so,” I said. “It looked like they were torturing them with gauze.”
A flash of red caught my eye in the distance. The scarlet scarf of an elder. I turned to an outcropping of gray rocks just over the edge of the hill. Unlike all of the other boulders around us, which were dusted in a healthy layer of snow, these were a little more dark and void of any accumulation.
Clementine must have been thinking the same thing I was because she stopped walking. “Were those rocks there before?”
I didn’t have to respond. Pulling our towels tighter around our shoulders, we crouched low to the ground and ran toward them, using the overhang of rock and ice to shroud us from view.
I had expected that when we found the elders, they would lead us to the camp of the Liberum; but instead, they stood in a huddle beneath a ledge of snow. The lapels of their coats were flipped upward to protect from the wind. I could just make out the large ruddy nose of my grandfather while he spoke to the others. We inched closer.
My grandfather huddled over a piece of paper. “‘Dear Mr. Winters,’” he read. “‘You don’t know me, but I know you. I know what you’re doing, and I want you to know that I’m watching you. Sincerely, Monsieur.’”
“Monsieur?” one of the elders said. “He has no name?”
My grandfather shook his head and tucked the page into his coat. “I received a similar note thirty years ago, just before the incident at the courthouse.”
Clementine’s eyes met mine. The incident at the courthouse?
“The day before the trial for the Undead, I found an envelope sitting on my desk,” my grandfather continued. “It had no postage or return address, just like this one. It said: Dear Mr. Winters, I know what you’ve been doing and I cannot let it continue. Please accept my apologies. Sincerely, Monsieur. The next morning, the bomb went off in the courtroom. I didn’t show the note to anyone; I wasn’t sure whom I could trust. To my relief, I heard nothing more from him after that day. Ove
r the years, I started to hope that he had passed away or stopped caring, though now I know that I was wrong. He is still here; he is still watching us.”
“If this Monsieur knows about what we’ve been doing all this time,” said one of the elders, “then why hasn’t he told anyone?”
All this time? Clementine and I shared a questioning look. Did that mean that what Clementine had seen the elders doing in the woods—it had something to do with the bombing in the courthouse all those years ago?
“Perhaps he has been waiting for the right moment to expose us,” one of the elders offered.
“Or perhaps he didn’t have enough evidence back then, and has been slowly gathering it,” another added.
“Monsieur must have hand delivered the note to the hotel,” my grandfather said. “Which means he has either been following us—”
“Or is among us,” another elder said. “One of the other Monitors, perhaps.”
My grandfather nodded. “We have to be more careful than ever. From now on we will only talk about our business late at night, and in seclusion.”
“We are far away from the others now,” another elder said. “Tell us—what of the Undead?”
“We made contact with our sources inside the Liberum last night,” my grandfather said. “They didn’t have any information for us about the Brothers. They said they needed time.”
Sources? Clementine mouthed to me. Had the elders been planting Undead boys in the Liberum, and using them as spies?
“Did you press them?” one of the elders said.
His choice of words me cringe. Was that what I had witnessed?
“Yes,” my grandfather said. “Three of them last night. All they were able to tell us before we released them was that the Liberum are getting desperate. They’ve been taking souls along the way to prolong their lives.”