S. Grove - The Glass Sentence

“I first met Shadrack more than fifteen years ago. He was a young man in his twenties when he arrived at the academy of cartology in Nochtland. I was the housekeeper. It is a grand old stone building near the center of the city, with lovely courtyards and covered walkways. I had a staff of ten, and I ran everything—the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. The academy had perhaps fifty students and teachers at any given time. I think it’s fair to say that I was good at my job.” Mrs. Clay smiled wistfully. Sophia smiled back, but in truth she had difficulty imagining the timid and rather scattered Mrs. Clay overseeing even one employee, let alone ten.

“I’d already been there several years when Shadrack arrived,” Mrs. Clay went on. “From the first moment we saw him, we knew he would do well. You see, having students from New Occident is very unusual. The professors, of course, come from almost all over the globe; but the students tend to be from the Baldlands. We were not certain students from New Occident even knew of our existence. Shadrack had somehow learned of the academy and was determined to go there despite—you’ll excuse me—the backwardness of his home age.

“During the two years he spent in Nochtland, he grew particularly close to one of the other students in his class, a young woman from the Baldlands—a very gifted cartologer. After the first year, when their degrees were conferred and they began their apprenticeships, they became inseparable. We all were sure they would get married and leave together, heading either north to New Occident or south to her family in Xela.

“But they didn’t. Shadrack finished his apprenticeship before she did, and their friendship seemed to cool. No one knew what had happened. And then, instead of waiting a month for her to finish her apprenticeship, Shadrack simply said his good-byes and left. It seemed to me that a part of her had left along with Shadrack. I liked her very much, and I worried about her.” Mrs. Clay paused. “Her name was Veressa.”

Sophia sat up straight. “What? Veressa is a person ?”

Mrs. Clay nodded. “She was at one point your uncle’s closest friend.”

“But he’s never mentioned her,” Sophia protested.

“Well, as I said, the two of them evidently had a falling out just before Shadrack left. For all I know, they never spoke again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shadrack hasn’t mentioned her because the recollection is painful.”

Sophia shook her head. “He never told me any of this.”

“I’m sure he has good reasons,” Mrs. Clay said quietly. “You and Shadrack are as close as two people can be.” She furrowed her brow. “Let me tell you the rest.” She poured herself more coffee and took several sips. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts—and her strength.

—19-Hour #: Mrs. Clay Tells of the Lachrima—

“AFTER SHADRACK LEFT,” Mrs. Clay began, “Veressa was slow to complete her apprenticeship. She was not well during that time; she seemed only a shadow of her former self. I think she must have loved your uncle very much. When she graduated, she came by my room to say good-bye, but I wasn’t there. She left me a box of sugared flowers.” Mrs. Clay smiled. “Even when she was unhappy, she was always very kind. Well . . . I never saw her again. I heard her name now and then from the professors, but Nochtland is a big city and you can live within its walls a lifetime without ever seeing most of its inhabitants.

“Then we had some quiet years. The students came and went, and the professors continued their teaching and their research. I was very happy. Then, about seven years ago, my troubles began.” Mrs. Clay stared into her coffee cup and sighed. “No matter how much you’ve read, Sophia, there are things you don’t know about the Baldlands. There are,” she paused, “creatures there that don’t exist here. Oh, I know they make a fuss about the raiders at the borders and people with wings or tails or whatever else. But those are, after all, still people. There are other creatures that few have seen and that no one understands. It was my misfortune to meet one.

“I remember that I first heard it on a beautiful Sunday in October. Most of the students spent Sunday resting in the gardens or visiting attractions in the city. I had hung all the bed linens to dry on the back patio, and because the sun was so pleasant I sat at the edge of the courtyard, watching the white sheets flutter in the breeze. My staff took Sunday afternoon off, so I knew I was alone. In those days I wasn’t afraid of the silence, the way I am now—on the contrary. I sat there for nearly half an hour, simply soaking in the sun and the silence. And then I heard it. At first I thought it might be coming from the street, but it sounded much too close. It was the quiet, unmistakable sound of someone weeping.

“I sat up, concerned. The sound was quiet but piercing; a stab of grief pulled me to my feet. My thought was that one of my staff had holed up on the back patio to have a cry. I went to look, and as a sheet fluttered in the wind I saw someone hurrying away. Perplexed, I tried to follow, but the person was gone.

“The sound of weeping continued from one of the rooms—I did not know which—and as it did all the sadness of those muffled cries pierced me, so that tears spilled down my cheeks. Suddenly, I was grieving, too. I took all of the bed linens, which had dried, off the laundry lines, and then stood in the middle of the empty patio, trying to control my tears and pinpoint where the sound came from. That’s how two of the girls who worked in the kitchen found me—standing there, crying. As soon as they approached me, the weeping stopped and the sense of despair I had felt lifted. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked them. They shook their heads, shocked at my appearance. ‘Hear what?’ they asked.

“The next day, I heard it again—the moment I awoke—and the horrible sensation of grief returned. Before even getting dressed, I knocked on the doors of the rooms to my right and left. No one was weeping; no one could tell me where the sound I heard came from. Still, I believed that there had to be someone who was hiding, sneaking into corners to cry in private. And over the next few days, the weeping grew more constant. I began to hear it everywhere, all the time, even when others were present. And then they began to hear it, too.

“Wherever I went, the sound of weeping followed, and the sadness began to wear on me; though I knew it had no rational cause, as long as the weeping was audible my grief was uncontrollable. The sound was heartbreaking. At times, the thing I heard wept quietly, bitterly. At other times, it moaned and sobbed. And still other times it nearly screamed, as if subjected to some terrible violence. I had no choice, then, but to accept the truth: I was being followed by a Lachrima.”

Theo made a noise of surprise. “A real Lachrima?”

Sophia remembered what she had heard Mrs. Clay saying to Shadrack, on the day parliament had closed the borders, and she asked the question she had been unable to ask then. “What’s a Lachrima?’

“I’ve never seen one,” Theo said. “They’re supposed to be horrible.”

The housekeeper nodded sadly. “They are. No one knows what the Lachrima are or where they come from. Some believe they are spirits. Others believe they are creatures from a terrible future Age. There are so many stories about them that it’s hard to know which are true. All I know is what I heard—and saw.”

“You saw it?” Theo asked breathlessly.

“For several weeks, the professors at the academy put up with it very kindly, insisting that the presence of the Lachrima was no fault of mine. But the truth is that everyone—not just me—found it unbearable. Imagine what it is like to hear the sound of weeping all the time—even when you are trying to sleep. Imagine feeling that burden of inexplicable, inconsolable grief. For the sake of the others, I shut myself up in my room, thinking that, if I simply waited, the Lachrima would tire of following me and go on its way.