But she would need those things, Ama’s body reminded her with a violent shiver. Fuel to burn for heat. Food and drink, too. And those things, she did not have.
The deluge slowed, then stopped, but Ama was soaked all the way through, Pawlin’s cloak and her dress beneath it heavy with rain. Her black slippers had been pierced by sharp-edged paving stones, and within them her feet felt like battered claws.
Ama had ceased knocking on doors as she considered her predicament, but she had continued walking. And then, there, ahead, was the wall of Harding.
Ama remembered the Eyes.
“They are considered prizes beyond measure,” Emory had told her when first they had come to the wall—was that just days ago? It felt like lifetimes. He had said, “The Eyes of Harding are said to bestow fortune upon he who possesses them. Only the glassblower can form them . . . and it should go without saying that no one may take an Eye from the wall.”
Ama had asked, “Will an Eye give its bearer luck?”
“Some say it does,” Emory had said.
There was the wall. On its far side, the Eyes.
Ama remembered Tillie’s aunt, and her wish, and how it had been granted. Not, perhaps, in the way she had hoped—but granted, just the same.
Only a desperate soul would take such a risk as to scoop out an Eye from the wall. But, Ama decided, there was no more desperate soul than she.
Ama’s Wish
No one stood guard at the door. Whether this was a good omen or bad, Ama did not know. The rain had stopped. The clouds parted to reveal a cold, hard disc of sun. Droplets clinging to branches and leaves caught the sunlight, sending out thousands of tiny glittering auras.
Ama did not know if the sun’s appearance was a good omen or bad, either. She tipped back the hood of Pawlin’s cloak and looked around, to see if anyone would appear to stop her.
There was no one—not a single person in any direction.
Ama pulled back the bar that kept the door closed, and slowly, with a warning moan, the door swung inward, opening for her.
Ama stepped outside. She blinked and looked around.
Inside the wall, within the serpentine twists and turns of the labyrinthine town and, at its core, the labyrinthine castle, there were walls everywhere, constraints at every turn, misdirections and confusions, tightness and limitations.
Here, just on the other side of the wall, the world seemed to widen with possibility. Here, there was distance. There was the line of the horizon, so far away that it blurred. There was open air, unsullied by smoke and bodily smells and intrigue and deception.
There, far in the distance, was the hill where she and Emory had stopped, where he had first told her about the Eyes. Then, she had not had any reason not to trust him, not to take him at his word.
Could it be that so short a time had passed between that day and this? Ama felt tired to her bones, as if she were a hundred years old, though her memory’s reach was shallow.
On the other side of the wall, Ama turned to see the Eyes. There they were, tucked into the wall’s mortar. She ran her hand across the wall—rough and wet from the rain—and across one Eye, as well. It was smooth and cold, also wet, as if lubricated by tears. This Eye was bright blue, beautiful . . . but not the right Eye for Ama’s wish.
It was crucial to match the Eye to her wish, just as the correct key is needed to open a specific lock. Ama knew this suddenly and certainly. She walked slowly along the wall, running her hand on it, stretching up and down for every Eye within her reach.
Not the green Eye. Not the violet one. Neither this one, nor that, nor the other.
She closed her own eyes, walked blindly along the wall, allowing her fingers to trail behind her as if through water, across the smooth orbits of the Eyes and the rough mortar between. She felt her way until finally—there.
She stopped, hand pressed against the wall, the cool orb of an Eye beneath her palm. It was, she knew, the right Eye for her wish.
Bring back my Sorrow, she prayed, eyes squeezed tight—and then, quickly, more careful with her words—Bring back my Sorrow, healthy and well, for me to keep.
Now she opened her eyes and lifted her hand. The Eye staring back at her glowed amber in the light, and Ama may well have been looking into a mirror, so much was this Eye like her own.
There were pebbles and rocks on the ground, and Ama hunted about until she found one with a sharp, pointed edge, and she used it to scrape at the mortar that glued the amber Eye into the wall.
She worked as quickly as she could. It would not do to be caught at this work; it would not do at all. Sandy mortar rained down as she dug out the Eye, trying not to think about what it would feel like if she were to be caught, if her own eye were to be dug out from her head in such a manner.
“Who left the door open?” bellowed a man’s voice from the other side of the wall.
Ama stifled a gasp, hand frozen in the air, sharp-edged rock clutched tight.
“Where is the watcher?” demanded the man, but to whom, Ama did not know. “They will have his head, the castle will, when they hear of this treason!”
Ama forced her hand back into action. She had mere moments before she was discovered. The sharp-edged rock found purchase in the mortar and crunched through it. Ama angled the rock’s tip up under the amber Eye and dug, hard, begging the Eye to come loose for her.
“Anyone could have come right through,” the man’s voice went on, and another voice, quieter, higher, returned, “’Tis true, ’tis true.”
Her knuckles scraped against the mortar, grating and bloodied, but Ama pushed harder with the stone. She felt the Eye loosen, like a child’s tooth, and, heartened and terrified, she pushed harder, shimmying the rock into the growing gap, until, at last, the Eye popped out of the wall and into Ama’s open, waiting hand.
No time to spare, Ama tucked the Eye under the cloak and down between her breasts inside her gown. She threw the rock she’d used for a tool as far away as she could and ran her bloody knuckles against the fabric of the cloak.
“What’s this?” came the first man’s voice.
“A girl?” said the second voice incredulously.
They were outside the wall now, as well, and they had seen her—what they had seen, exactly, Ama did not know.
She arranged her face and turned, eyes hooded by the cloak, to face them.
Sorrow’s Cry
“Well,” said the first man. He was tall, Ama saw, and slender. “What’s this, here?”
“Have you seen my lynx?” Ama said. It was hard to hear her own voice over the rush of blood in her ears. Her heart, still trapped in its cage of ribs, was trying to escape from her body.
“Didn’t your da ever tell you that it’s not safe out here, beyond the wall? Especially for a girl,” said the second man. This one was tall too, but thick, and bearded, all of which made his thin, high voice that much more off-putting.
Had Ama ever been so small, so unsure, as she was in that moment? She felt the cool orb of the Eye tucked between her breasts, the roughness of the mortar that still clung to it. If she could wish again, in a different way, would she wish instead to be away from this place, from these men, who were walking toward her now, hands loose at their sides, grinning, swaggering, tracking?