The Humming of Numbers Read Online Free Page B

she tripped back into his thoughts. Chores left him no time to wander before darkness and the first nighttime prayers. Afterward, on his way back to the hut that served as the novices’ dormitory, Aidan took a detour. He hung back from those traipsing toward their beds and slipped away to the rose garden. It was indeed a dark night, but as he crept from one building or stone cell to the next, he unconsciously let his ears guide him. Not only the hidden monks but the wooden timbers, the grass thatch, and the roses hummed a muted trail of numbers to follow.
    The brothers remained silent throughout the night, except for the Nocturns worship at midnight and Matins a few hours later, so he wouldn’t be able to speak to her this time. But the memory of her fear and her fingers straining
out of her cell, as though from an unfinished tomb, had haunted his prayer time. He wanted to check whether she had fallen asleep as advised.
    She hadn’t. As he made his way between the shadowy rosebushes, he heard her softly crooning an old song to herself. The notes drifted to him like the fabled music of faeries. Chills ran along his skin.
    Perhaps he gasped or she heard his footsteps. The song stopped. Aidan had never before minded the strict silence that followed the last prayers of the day. Now words clogged in his throat. He wanted to ask her to continue her song. He’d heard plenty of monks singing in chapel, some with more talent than others, but he’d never heard a trilling like this. Her voice, harmonizing with the chimes of eleven, could have been that of an angel.
    Struggling to keep his tongue still, he snapped another rose off its stem and passed it into the gap in the wall. Her hand was not there. Unsure if she’d notice his gift in the dark, he tapped his nails on the stone. This noise stretched the bounds of obedience, but he couldn’t see how a little rapping of fingers differed so much from soft footfalls or the creak of a door.
    She heard him. “Aidan?”
    He couldn’t reply, but he might not have answered anyway. He wanted to hear his name again in her silvery tones.

    She didn’t repeat herself. She did not sing again, either, though he waited so long he feared his absence from the dormitory might be noticed. He could feel her eleven-ness and her strangeness and her girlish defiance just on the other side of the thick stone wall. No rustling or even the sound of her breathing, however, escaped through the slot. He put his hand to it, but the stone was hard and rough and empty of both roses and fingers, other than his. So he pulled away and crept out of the garden, hoping she did not hear him leave.
    The nighttime and predawn worship passed in a sleepy blur, as those hours often did. When Aidan awoke again in the morning, he forgot briefly that the abbey held anything different. Eagerness spiked through him as memory returned. He rose in haste and then slowed, telling himself he might as well forget again. He would likely never get closer to Lana or speak to her any more freely than he already had. Yesterday’s risks had been disobedient and foolish. It occurred to him, belatedly, that her intriguing eleven-ness might even be the work of Satan, designed to tempt him from his duties, not to mention from the path that would lead him to the scriptorium someday.
    His guilt took flight right after breakfast, when old Brother Nathan caught him on the way out of the Great Hall where they ate.

    â€œSee me after daily instructions,” the stern monk told him.
    Aidan nodded, struggling to keep his face from cramping in worry. A delayed punishment might be coming, and perhaps not just for hiding under a bench. Someone may have spotted him whispering with Lana yesterday.
    Standing among the gathered monks, Aidan thought instructions would never end. The abbot rambled on about the state of the crops, preparations for winter, and next week’s assignments for scrubbing the latrine.