I
Charcoal and Cerulean
When Joan blinks her eyes open in the morning, her head is a slab of marble while her thoughts slip and slide off of it, unable to find purchase.
She allows herself to come to before rising and going through her everyday motions. She is in the midst of pulling on her stockings (there is a breath of frost on her windowpane) when she remembers where she and the rest of the town must gather today.
The Day of Choice.
The process is short from what she remembers. Her father told her once how people tried to trick the Whipping Tree. They believed that if they were not themselves on the Day of Choice, the tree would be confused and decide on someone else.
The notion is ridiculous to Joan. What did they not understand? Though she has only faced a Choosing twice in her life—the first too early even, for her to remember—she knows if it was so easy to delude the tree, there would be a solution to their Noci problem already, and that is something no one is close to discovering.
Vera appears in her room shortly after her pondering and runs a comb through her hair. The two have become a mother-and-child pair, and while Vera has warm thoughts of Joan’s infancy, she wants more than anything to see the girl return to herself.
Sometimes she sees Joan as the child she once was, and other times the glimmering in her eyes makes her seem a thousand years old. The in-between has disappeared for her, a chasm having opened up and swallowed the bridge between her past and future, and that is a perfect way to describe it, thinks Vera, because the girl is nothing if not stranded.
“Have some breakfast before you leave, Miss Joaneveive. Please.” She offers a smile in the mirror, a hopeful one, and she receives her answer in the form of a nod.
“I will.”
Joan forces down a slice of bread and a handful of fruit before she is following the path to the tree.
There is no one there at this time and she is not surprised. The townspeople avoid the tree like they would a disease, for even without a criminal chained to it or a Choosing looming ahead, the still tree elicits a chill that wriggles to the core.
She faces it with her arms at her sides, palms facing forward. A burst of heat hits the back of her head and her eyes squeeze shut.
“A memory. Nothing but a memory,” she tells herself, and the warmth disappears just as quickly as it came.
Four steps take her to the trunk and she places her feet in the footprints from the previous day when she visited.
She imagines she can hear the tree breathing, that Byron sits before her.
She wants to say something to the tree, ask it whether it is painful to feel the minds of hundreds before it and still choose whom to send to their death.
“I don’t despise you,” she ends up murmuring. She traces the knotholes in the trunk and wraps her arms around it. “You did what you could to make amends afterwards.”
She stands there until the rest of the townsfolk begin to appear, and all that she thinks about is how different, how opposite she was and is to Byron.
“Miss?”
Joan barely registers the tangle of voices behind her.
“Miss Joaneveive?”
She pulls away from the Whipping Tree and allows the hand on her shoulder to guide her backwards.
When she lifts her head she sees faces upturned, stretching down the path on both sides of the tree. The noise quietens to a trickle and she immediately recognizes Tomas’ uncle, Gareth, as he steps forward.
He greets the townsfolk with a dip of his head and positions himself in front of the tree. His hair greys and his face is drawn, and Joan realizes then that it has been months since she last looked at his face properly. The loss of Tomas must have impacted the man just as much as it had Joan, if not more.
Without further delay, he begins an oath, and a chorus of voices follow his lead.
We, as children of Imorda,
Will not waver.
In the Wardens our faith lies,
In Abeor we find course,
And in Imorda we find resolve.
So long as the Wardens shall exist
We shall find our solace.
Their voices are sprinkled with sincerity, but just as snow melts upon contact with flesh, the gratitude is fleeting, for despite the prayers sent to Imorda during harvest and to Abeor when keeping vigil beside a loved one’s deathbed, the people of Brevinham can only focus on the injustice being presently inflicted upon them.
Gareth begins to circle the tree, his eyes scanning for symbols. New knots appear in the bark as the selection progresses.
Joan used to fancy that she could see the symbols, too: long-lashed eyes for a female, the bulb of a flower for a child. She asked Gareth on one occasion and he traced the grooves for her to see. She saw no eyes, no flora. How Tomas’ uncle deciphered the tree’s messages she would never know.
He pauses before a certain point and runs his hand several times over a twist in the wood. He murmurs under his breath for several moments, measuring the defect with his fingers and stooping to examine it carefully.
Joan feels her parents’ presence behind her. She’s certain neither of them will be chosen; they are here for formality and for her, and in that moment she feels a twinge of responsibility to not…fail them.
“Female,” he says, and only the Ailemers and a few others close enough hear him. He announces it again, louder.
There are several exhalations of relief and a few sharp intakes of breath.
Joan appraises the people amassed and sees husbands embracing wives, brothers embracing sisters. The men start to filter away, though some stay unmoving next to their loved ones.
Gareth is already searching for the next mark. He pauses a few times, the women tensing whenever he does, but it takes several minutes before he finds it.
It is an arm’s length above his head and he cranes his head to study and scratch at it.
“Young,” he says.
Perhaps a third of the women are left.
Joan looks around and sees the panicked faces of the girls. She looks inward and is surprised to find herself calm.
We, as children of Imorda, will not waver, she repeats.
“Hair that is brown.”
Joan runs a hand through the locks Vera combed this morning and glances about. Fourteen other girls remain and the Lord and Lady are tense behind her.
The next symbol takes longer to find and in the silence, their stances speak volumes.
“Eyes that are blue.”
Half leave.
It’s me, she thinks. It’s me. She almost knows it for certain now.
“Rose?” Gareth appears to be confused for a moment, but when he turns and scans the seven girls left, his gaze alights on Joan.
She looks down at herself and realizes she donned a pale pink shift dress that morning, a raggedy thing that she nearly wore to pieces and does nothing to keep her warm, though she doesn’t seem to mind the cold like she used to.
She hears hysterical voices and they do not belong to her parents. She will hear it eventually when they return home, she is sure. The feverish tones belong to the six other girls there who have not been chosen.
“In Imorda we find resolve,” she says in a voice she tries to keep a tremble out of.
“The tree has chosen,” Gareth says. He strides forward and Joan meets his conflicted expression with a face she convinces herself is strong and unflappable. “I’m sorry,” he says to Lord and Lady Ailemer.
They are gracious enough to decline his apology, say it is not his fault.
He turns his back to the scene and takes his leave after gripping Joan’s shoulder gently.
Joan dislodges herself from her parents’ hold and stares at the tree. She offers a sad smile to the skies with a hand braced against the trunk. When she steps back, she bumps into one of the last seven girls, around her age with matted hair.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. Their eyes meet for a moment, and the girl’s are wide and frightened with a glimmer of something else.
She curtsies hurriedly and scurries off, glancing over her shoulder at Joan several times until she joins the crowds by the stalls a ways down the street.
“Joan,” Lady Ailemer calls softly, beckoning.
She starts down the path after her mother and father and speeds up to walk between them. Their hands join and they continue on in silence.
As they reach a bend in the trail, the trunk of the Whipping Tree twists and morphs again.
Another symbol, but no one is there to see it.
(**A/N: Names aren't very creative, I know. Who snorted at "Day of Choice"? *raises hand* I totally did. It'll serve as a stand-in name until I think of something better.
A couple things. Exams are coming up for me in less than two weeks so I'm kind of...apathetically freaking out. This tiny little voice inside my head is going "What the pho do you think you're doing abort all internet and social connection abort abort abort" and then the already-got-accepted-into-uni part of me is just scoffing and sipping iced tea.
Yeah.
Anyway, back to the chapter. I thought about splitting it into two parts for more suspense instead of lumping it all together in this one chunk, but...eh.
So now that Joan's been chosen, what d'you think's going to happen next? :D Maybe I'll get the QotC thing started on this story, too.
Thanks for reading! Pmuah!)