The candle flickered. The door hinges creaked. “Ceony?” Emery asked, punctuating her name with a yawn. “What are you . . . Telegram?” Ceony didn’t answer. Her thoughts danced around her family’s home and down into the river that had swallowed a buggy and its driver whole, almost claiming Emery and Ceony, too. They zoomed east to Dartford, to the paper mill’s newly rebuilt walls. Emery’s hand touched her shoulder. Handing him the telegram, she turned and walked away, the distance from the telegraph to her bedroom passing beneath her without notice. She flipped on the light. Fennel stirred. She crossed the room to her desk and pulled out a square sheet of white paper and a pencil. She wrote furiously, her words unaligned. She had just started her second sentence when Emery’s soft voice asked, “What are you doing?” “Warning my family.” “He doesn’t know where they live now, Ceony,” he said, gentle as a summer breeze. He entered the room slowly, his footsteps like a deer’s on the forest floor.
