Chapter 3: Aoife (part 1 of 4)

  The Griffin sisters hurried away from Main Street in uneasy silence. When they had lowered themselves from Mr Rockford's rooftop, the wagons had just passed them by and the revelry on street level was about to start in earnest. They didn't stay to watch, however—not even for that cup of tea Aoife had been thirsting for—and said their goodbyes quickly.

  Aoife imagined whether this might be what it felt like to flee a crime scene. She could understand Clodagh's eagerness to leave, having been shaken by the sights of the faceless Wyvern and the listless Dragoon, but she had to wonder why she herself was so anxious to go. Her mind kept going back to the old blacksmith's rough voice and pained features as he spoke of the blight of the Khiimori Apparatus. The way he seemed to look directly at her, imploring her... to do what? As disquieted as she was by the gore and cruelty revealed by the Testimony, that was a world she had nothing to do with. She had a family waiting at home, her life to get back to.

  The offshoot streets were quieter now. The sun had decided to go down without showing itself after all, and now cast a dirty grey hue over the city. Lamplighters had come out with their stepladders and oil cans, slowly providing the pedestrians with pockets of murky light to line their paths.

  The sisters remained silent for much of the way, eventually turning a corner onto Ember Lane, an alleyway that would lead them to their house. The traffic thinned even further here, and as far as Aoife could tell, they were now the only souls on the alleyway. Here, even the dim light of the streetlamps didn't reach them, but both of them could walk the rest of the way blindfolded if they needed to. Aoife drew closer to Clodagh in any case, though she likely hadn't realized it herself.

  "Well, my mind's made up," Clodagh suddenly broke the silence in a distracted mumble, as though she were responding to a conversation only she could hear. "I'd better give up on this adventuring nonsense. Don't you think?"

  It took Aoife a moment to make sense of what she'd heard, to even register that Clodagh had asked her a question. In the crowded Griffin household, there weren't many opportunities to hold private dialogue. These brief moments on quiet streets were some of the rare times the two sisters could be truly alone. Aoife turned to look at Clodagh but in the thickening darkness, she saw only an indeterminate blur. When it took her a while longer to think of a response, Clodagh continued on her own. "It was just one of those silly ideas I sometimes get. You know me. But... well, I've decided adventuring isn't really for me. So that's that."

  Aoife didn't reply immediately, not because she didn't want to, but simply because she didn't know what to say. As far as she could remember, this was the first time her sister had really spoken aloud the hopes for the future she had harboured and now had apparently given up on. Aoife herself didn't even know what it felt like to have aspirations of her own. Despite the darkness, she could feel Clodagh tense up beside her as the silence drew on. It was her sister again that spoke first. "Well, have you got nothing to say? Aren't you at least going to ask me how I'd come to this decision?"

  "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

  "Well, I want to!" Clodagh abruptly raised her voice, and Aoife was surprised to hear a tremor within it. Were it not for the darkness, she might have seen that her sister was on the verge of tears. "When I saw that poor Wyvern, and when I saw that man in the back of the wagon... I realized. Well, you remember what Mr Rockford said. He said powerful Magic takes a toll on people, that some can handle it and others end up looking like that man. Well, when I saw him today, I knew right away that I'd be someone who couldn't handle it. Because when I saw him, I felt afraid. The sacrifices he made, what those adventurers are risking... I'm scared by it. I don't have what it takes, Aoife," then she let out something that sounded halfway between a snort and a sob. "Besides, I don't even know yet if I can Magick or not. So all of this might be for nothing, anyway. Yeah. Let's just forget it. No more nonsense. I'm just... me."

  Aoife sensed that Clodagh was saying all this more to herself than to her. Her first instinct was to feel relieved. As much as she loved and admired Clodagh's enterprising spirit, and as much as it pained her to see that very spirit crushed like this, she would feel much safer with her sister working in the factories or the cotton mills like most other Enfielder girls. If Clodagh had somehow succeeded in the pursuit of her dreams, she would be putting herself in danger every day, out somewhere Aoife's eyes couldn't reach. She ought to tell Clodagh exactly that. This was a good decision. You had your fun, but it was time to come to your senses.

  She felt those things and ought to have said them, but what she said instead was, "I didn't take you for a quitter."

  Beside her, Clodagh suddenly slowed and came to a stop. Aoife stopped too, and turned to face her sister's silhouette. The two of them stood facing each other without being able to look into each other's eyes.

  "Don't pretend this wasn't important to you, that it's something you can just pick up one day and throw it out the next. I've seen how hard you've been working at it. You're not fooling anyone. I haven't got an inkling what it takes to be an adventurer, and I don't know if you've got what it takes. But I sure as hell know that you're better than what it takes to have one bad day then decide you're too scared to keep going. I know you're better than what it takes to give up on your goal before you've even had a chance to prove yourself. You know how I know that? Because you're Da's girl, and Fionn Griffin didn't raise a quitter. We're made of stronger stuff than that, and you know it too."

  She was breathing hard by the end of her tirade, and she hadn't the slightest idea what had come over her. Somehow, hearing Clodagh put herself down and deny her own possibilities was more than she could bear. The Clodagh she knew wouldn't give up so easily, and in the moment, her desire for Clodagh to be true to herself trumped any thought of keeping her sister safe and under guard. Already, just a few seconds after she had said them, Aoife was starting to regret her words. Heated, thoughtless, reckless. But just as she was about to compel herself to make amendments, Clodagh cut in.

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  "Let's just forget it, alright? It's not worth getting worked up over," she was even quieter than she had been when she started the conversation. Then as if just remembering something, she clapped Aoife on the arm and continued with forced cheer. "Come on, let's go. I'm starving, aren't you? I wonder if Ma's put anything on for us..."

  They walked on in more silence the rest of the way. Aoife still hadn't made up her mind whether to take back what she had said, but she could tell that her sister was still ruminating as they walked. Perhaps it would be best to let Clodagh think on it on her own.

  The Griffins lived in a two-story annex squished between two larger apartments. It was exceedingly small for a family of six but it was still a marked improvement over the squalor they had fallen into during their time in Dubhlind.

  When they entered, they knew right away that Ma in fact hadn't put anything on. The house was cold, meaning no one had bothered to light the furnace. The air was absent of steam or the smell of cooking. The downstairs were lit, but only Liam and Fiona got up from the dining table to greet them. Ten-year-old Liam threw himself at Aoife, knocking the wind out of her, while eight-year-old Fiona did the same to Clodagh. Ma was nowhere in sight, though Aoife knew where she would find her.

  "Where's Niall?" she asked while ruffling Liam's hair, which was a shorter, rougher version of her own.

  "I don't know, and I'm hungry!" Liam cried. "Why'd you come home so late?"

  "That's... a long story. I'll tell you over dinner," she said, suddenly feeling a little guilty about going to the Testimony while neglecting her younger siblings. "But what do you mean you don't know where Niall is?"

  "I don't know and I don't care," Liam declared with an air of final authority on the matter. He and Niall must have had a fight. Again. But it probably meant that Niall was simply holed up in his room. Presently, Clodagh snuck up behind her and pulled out the bag of sweets she had bought on her way to the Testimony.

  "Look, who wants toffee?" Clodagh sang, brandishing the bag above Liam's and Fiona's heads. Liam jumped up and snatched the bag and the two of them ran back to the dining table, paying no more mind to their older sisters.

  Just then, the staircase in the back creaked and Niall also emerged, holding a bulky book by his side and frowning slightly, a favourite expression of his. Niall was fourteen and already nearly as tall as Aoife. He was also the only member of the family who wore glasses. He and Clodagh had the curliest auburn hair among them, and Niall liked to let a clump of it fall over the right side of his glasses, much to the ridicule of all other siblings.

  "Niall, what have you been doing?" Aoife hung her jacket by the door before striding over to her brother, shifting this way and that to avoid the boxes and objects littered on the floor. "The house is cold. Your brother and sister are hungry. Can't you do anything without been told?"

  Niall's one visible eye widened in alarm before he cast it downward and mumbled. "Sorry, I was reading. Lost track of time."

  Aoife glanced at the book in his arm, titled A Brief History of Watchmaking in Suvarnabhumi—just the latest in Niall's selections of light reading. He was certainly one of the stranger children Aoife had the pleasure of knowing. But regardless of where his odd and varied interests may lie, he was old enough to learn responsibility in the household. "Clodagh and I aren't going to be around all the time so you've got to learn to help around the house, you hear? When it starts getting dark, light the furnace. You know how to do that, don't you? And there's some leftover soup in the cellar so you could have put that on the—"

  "Well, Ma's home," Niall cut her off, quiet and sullen. "Why aren't you telling her about it?"

  Aoife sighed audibly. Yes, Ma was home. But on any given day, it was anyone's guess whether she would be functional enough to look after her children. The odds seemed to be increasingly tipping against their favour. Aoife knew that Niall was already putting up with more than most fourteen-year-old boys were asked to. He would walk his younger siblings to and from their school everyday and kept them busy at home if both Aoife and Clodagh were away. It broke her heart that he likely had to shoulder even more responsibility as their mother became weaker and more withdrawn.

  "I'll talk to her, Niall," she said, her tone much softer. "Go on, wait with the others while I cook. We brought back some sugar plums."

  His eyes lit up, all pretence of decorous indignation gone in an instant. He happily trotted over to the dining table where Clodagh, having started the furnace herself, already had Liam and Fiona crying with laughter. Strange books and hair covering one eye notwithstanding, he was still just a kid.

  Aoife trusted Clodagh to keep the troops entertained. She made herself some much-needed tea before heading into the pantry. It was a cluttered and poky space with only enough standing room for one. Most of what they kept in the pantry were not food-related. It more or less served as extra storage for the children's paraphernalia—clothes, old toys, and books.

  She bent down and lifted the heavy cellar door. To call it a cellar was perhaps a slight overstatement. It only took up the floor space of the tiny pantry and extended just an arm's length deep. Still, like most things in the Griffins' lives, it was better than nothing.

  Aoife peered inside, noting a pot of old soup, two carrots, and a small, hardened chunk of smoked ham. Slim pickings, but it was payday at her second job tonight so the cellar should be in much better shape this time tomorrow.

  She hefted the pot of soup and lugged it past her animated siblings, onto the top of the furnace that doubled as a cooktop. The carrots and ham she diced into bite-sized pieces and threw into the pot, which started to give off an oniony aroma. She then returned to the pantry and found half a loaf of stale bread. This also she decided to cut up, to be soaked in the soup when serving.

  Not long after, Aoife brought the now piping hot pot of soup onto the dining table. Her siblings made various appreciative noises while eagerly sniffing the air. Clodagh had already put the bowls out and began ladling the soup while Aoife divided the bread pieces evenly among the bowls—or she tried to. Liam was the first to impatiently grab a bowl and start slurping before she could finish filling it with bread. Fiona followed suit. Normally, she would have scolded them for their bad manners but just today, she decided to let it go.