The Sweetest Dark - By Shana Abe Page 0,1

sort of precise, lilting intonation that indicated I might have just stepped foot from the king’s court—or so I overheard them mutter. I couldn’t explain it; I couldn’t prevent it. That was simply how I spoke. And for all my elegant words, I never once told anyone where I’d come from or mentioned any second of my life before the day the tinker had found me.

I didn’t remember. I really didn’t.

Yet there were some things that did come back to me, a few basic things. Arithmetic, reading, writing—someone from the misty veil of my past had taught me that much. I would chase the discarded sheets of the dailies that blew into the courtyard of the orphanage, clutching each page close to my face, devouring the printed words as eagerly as if they were that delicious hot pie and cold gin I’d once consumed on the floor of the constables’ station.

Like all the orphans crowding the Home, I felt certain that I did not belong where I was. That someone, somewhere, was surely searching for me, because I was special.

Unlike all the rest of the orphans, I was right.

• • •

I began to hear things.

Elusive noises, pretty sounds no one else seemed to perceive. As I grew older, they blossomed into full melodies. Snippets of song followed me about, trailing my every step. Even when I cupped my hands hard over my ears, I couldn’t stop the notes from seeping around my fingers, tickling the inside of my head.

That would drive anyone barmy, wouldn’t it?

At the age of twelve, I realized the songs were coming from the high stone wall surrounding the Home. From the metal rings and keys of the matrons who walked the halls with their nightsticks. From the pale, blazing diamond fixed in the stickpin the Home’s director, Mr. H. W. Forrester, wore in his necktie every single day.

From even the distant stars.

They weren’t the worst of it, though. The worst was the voice. The one that seemed centered not inside my head but instead just exactly inside my heart.

It was cunning and fiendish, whispering the maddest things: That it was natural that gemstones would sing to me. That it was good to hate the Home, with its dull walls and dull boiled turnips and dull spiteful girls who openly scorned me, who tripped me in the hallways and dipped my plaits into ink pots during our few hours of schooling.

The heart-voice would say things like, Smite them. Tear them apart. I won’t let you alone until you are who you are.

And I wanted to. I was trapped and friendless, and if I’d had the slightest notion of how to smite anything, I bloody well might have.

I grew up considered by one and all to be peculiar at best, aloof at least, and most likely destined for the streets the day I turned seventeen, since even the factories had standards for hiring.

None of them knew that each black night, long after they themselves had curled into their dreams, I would steal from my bed to perch upon the sill of the window close by, my no-color hair a slippery curtain against my back. I would press my palms flat against the glass and gaze down at the cobblestone courtyard below, four long stories below, and puzzle over the fiend in my heart.

Every night, the fiend would whisper, Open the window. Jump.

So finally I did.

Chapter 2

The Moor Gate Institute for Socially Afflicted Youth

Case File No. 039985–27b

Subject: Eleanore Jones, Aged 16 years (approx.; actual DOB unknown)

Date: August 28, 1914

Date Admitted: October 21, 1913

Assoc. Dr. Julius M. Sotheby, assigned.

Subject is physically hale child of unknown descent, average height, underweight. Complexion, hair color, eye color: Fair.

Subject admitted Moor Gate via Blisshaven Foundling Home. See: Mr. Henry Forrester (director). Subject physically, verbally combative in Home; Melancholy; Antisocial; Complained of constant, nonexistent songs/voices; Unusual sensitivity to tastes, colors, smells.

Diagnosis: Behavior consistent with adolescent Feminine Hysteria.

“Tell me, Eleanore. How are we feeling this morning?”

“I’m well.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. How was breakfast?”

“It was fine.”

“Mrs. Pearl informs me you finished all your eggs.”

“Yes.”

“And … how did they taste?”

“They were fine.”

“Powdered, were they?”

“I … suppose.”

“You couldn’t tell?”

“No.”

Appetite showed marked improvement in past six months. No weight gain as yet. Subject no longer leaves meals unfinished.

“And how did you sleep?”

“Well.”

“Any dreams?”

“No.”

“Really, Eleanore? None?”

“I …”

“Mrs. McLeod left a note here for me. It says she heard you moaning last night on her rounds. Tossing about. You don’t remember that?”

“I—I might have dreamed. I’m sorry, I really don’t recall.”

“That’s