9780805083279

JONI SENSEL is the author of the middle-grade novel Reality Leak as well as two picture books. She lives in Washington State.

The Humming of Numbers

Lana Nicarbith hummed of the number eleven. The sound caught Aidan's attention as he swept the path near the abbey's front gate. He stared, open-mouthed, while Lord Donagh dragged the girl through the entry, past Aidan's poised broom, and inside. Plenty of people filled Aidan's ears with the chiming of four or seven or nine, and many of his brothers in the order purred softly of six. Never in his seventeen years, though, had Aidan O'Kirin met anyone endowed with the energy of a number higher than ten. He'd seen Lana before, but only from a distance--too far to hear the eleven that wafted from her now like fragrance from a flower.

Aidan followed. He noted the hand clamped on her arm and wondered why the ruler of eight clans had hauled his bastard daughter to the monks. His own footsteps quickened, along with his pulse. He risked a chiding if the abbot saw him being nosy, but the birch broom in hiswork-calloused hands gave him a meager excuse. He trailed a few paces behind Donagh and the slender ginger-haired girl. They angled through the yard toward the abbot's quarters, which sat near the gate on the sunny side of the stone chapel.

Clearly not happy to be there, the eleven girl stamped her bare feet and struggled and screeched.

"Stop squawking," Donagh ordered, yanking her forward. Fury and embarrassment glowed from his face. "This is a holy place."

"Not to me," she retorted, her head whipping around. Her eyes struck Aidan. Impaled by their blue fire, he did not drop his regard as would have been proper. She went stiff. Her protests fell silent. The humming eleven, if anything, grew louder.

Aidan had realized long ago that he alone heard the numbers humming from people and things. To him, the mathematical tones were as natural as colors or smells, just one more detail to notice and rather more pleasant than a whiff of dung or sour breath. His attempts to discuss it as a small boy, however, had failed. Nobody understood when he tried to explain. He'd been humored, at best, and more often had met with bewildered irritation. While still young, he'd grasped the truth: Others heard birdsong, windsong, human speech. But nobody elseheard the more subtle buzzing that he did. The music of numbers otherwise fell on deaf ears.

So the girl staring back at him now, the one whose skin whispered eleven, could not have been startled for the same reason he had been. She should have been embarrassed, caught acting so wildly, yet her face spoke plainly of some disappointment. It seemed to be aimed straight at Aidan. Wondering why, he raised his eyebrows in silent inquiry. She scowled. After a long, frowning look, with her neck craned to keep him in view, she stopped resisting completely and turned to follow sullenly behind her captor. The flash of silent communion between her and Aidan had somehow proved more persuasive than the lord's command or rough handling.

They approached the abbot's thatched house. Donagh rapped on the door, which opened to admit them. Nobody bothered to close it behind them. Aidan halted to perform some halfhearted sweeping in case the abbot reemerged with the visitors in tow. Fixing his brown eyes on the already-smooth ground, he let a swath of his dark hair partly hide his narrow face.

When the doorway remained empty, the young monk-in-training slipped nearer. His feet, still bare in the autumn sunshine, padded soundlessly on the earth. They faltered near a stone bench tucked under the abbot's thatchedeaves. Aidan didn't dare venture closer. He was supposed to be sweeping the path near the gate and meditating on cleanliness and purity before the noon prayers. It would be impossible to even pretend obedience if he went any farther. Poking his broom at a dead leaf under the bench, he tried to quiet his breath, the better to eavesdrop.

"She was alongside the pilgrims' route," Lord Donagh was saying. "Selling these. Or trying to." Aidan's ears caught the clatter of wood tumbling across the table.

"Pilgrims are beset by evil at every turn," sighed Abbot Bartley. The abbey was an attraction along the popular Saint Nevin's Way, and brigands and thieves knew it well. Many a pilgrim arrived empty-handed or beaten, giving the monks ample chance to practice hospitality and compassion.

The girl in the abbot's dim chamber apparently had no interest in compassion. "If they're foolish enough to believe that their sins can be wiped away just by--"

Her voice was interrupted by what sounded like a slap. Aidan had never met Donagh directly, but he'd grown up in the shadow of the lord's fist. It fell unevenly across Donagh's domain. Wealthy enough to sneer at the fines imposed for his own misdeeds, the lord invoked the law when it pleased him and scoffed when it did not. Aidan had long ago pegged the man as an eight, although less kind than most and even more unpredictable.

"Shut your mouth, or I'll see that shame shuts it foryou," Lord Donagh growled to the girl. "Since you can't pay the restitution accorded your crime, I'm tempted to chain you in the stocks and let pilgrims loose their spittle on you. Your mother's pleading is the only reason you're not there already."

Aidan's slender artisan's fingers tightened on his broom handle. He'd seen dishonored men in the stocks, with their ankles locked in place, unable to dodge any foul thing pitched their way. And spittle was hardly the worst thing that flew. The thought of the girl's pretty face splattered with rotten fruit or manure made him cringe.

The threat frightened her as well, evidently.

"Forgive me, Rí," she murmured, using the traditional title that acknowledged his rank. She knew better than to call him Father, Aidan noted, even though that's who he was. Unlike some noblemen, who boasted the count of their illegitimate children, Donagh preferred to ignore them. Aidan reflected how difficult it must have been for her to grow up amid so much pretense and gossip.

"But why have you brought her to me, lordship, if I may ask?" The abbot sounded dismayed. Some cousin of the lord, the two-ish fellow did not much like surprises.

His ears straining, Aidan risked moving closer.

"Put her to work in the kitchen or fields" came the reply. "She needs a dose of humility. Perhaps hard work and the Holy Spirit may cleanse her of sinful ways."

"But, Lord Donagh, surely a convent would be--"

"Don't be ridiculous. She's not worth the cost of entry at Saint Brigid's, not to mention the trip. Besides, we've had word of Norsemen on the move."

"Nearby, my lord?" Bartley squeaked. A Viking raid might bring fleeing farmers into the monastery's already bustling enclosure. The defensive ramparts could help repel raiders while the holy bones of the saint offered even more potent protection.

"Not that I've heard. But travel is out of the question. You have a wife here yourself, do you not? As does Father Niall."

"Yes, but--"

"She can be confined here, then. She's not handsome enough to threaten any chastity vows."

The abbey rules forbade argument, and besides, Aidan could hardly speak up from outside, but contrary thoughts crossed his mind. The lord must have meant mostly to brush off objections.

"If she causes you trouble," Donagh continued, "more extreme measures will be necessary."

"No, please," came the girl's voice, even softer than before. "Please don't chain me or send me to nuns far away."

"But, your lordship--"

"As a favor to me, Bartley. I will express my gratitude to you and Saint Nevin on Sunday. With silver."

"As you wish, then," the abbot sighed. Donagh's vassals griped about his rents and his temper, but few who tilled his lands or depended on his favor would dare speak against him. The abbot proved no exception. "We will try."

Aidan busied himself with his broom as Lord Donagh took his farewell. The lord emerged abruptly over the threshold with a scowl. Accustomed to the presence of both servants and monks, he did not give the thin, sharpfaced novice so much as a glance.

The stamping footsteps retreated toward the gate.

"Peddling false relics is a serious sin," Abbot Bartley said after a moment of silence.

"How do you know they're false?" the girl asked. Spirit had returned to her voice.

"Even we don't have fragments of the True Cross," he scoffed.

"Exactly," she said. "So you don't know what it looks like, do you? Touch it. 'Tis not oak or elm or alder, certainly. So this could be the wood of the Cross, couldn't it?"

Aidan grinned despite the sober accusation against the girl.

"Broken rake handle, more likely," the abbot said. "How would a lowly girl like you possess a relic like that?"

"A tree sprite told me where to dig near the base of its tree," she replied.

Aidan's eyebrows shot up. He'd heard a few peopleclaim to commune with the Otherworld, but her whirring eleven gave her words weight. They also troubled his heart.

Numbers had hummed to Aidan his entire life. By his twelfth year, however, when his father had first suggested the monastery, Aidan had stopped mentioning them to others. After a few winters of study, the thoughtful young loner had decided his awareness of numbers must be the whisper of God, a gift delivered to him and not anyone else. He had embraced the idea of joining the monks, and not only because his three older brothers would claim all of his father's cattle and pigs. Saints often heard voices, after all. Hearing the humming of numbers was not so different. Or so Aidan hoped.

Not long after formally becoming a novice last fall, he had cautiously brought up the subject with his mentor. Brother Eamon's reaction had dispelled Aidan's sense of privilege, planting a fear in its place: A whisper that nobody else heard might come not from God but from demons.

That same dread rose again now at the new arrival's claim.

"Enough lies, young charlatan," Bartley told the girl in his chamber. The abbot obviously held no belief in tree sprites and no fear of demons. "You would have done better to confess your sin. But I trust that a day of fasting will strengthen your soul."

"He said kitchen work," she protested, as more footsteps sounded. Feet scuffled as if their owner were dragged.

"There will be grain enough to grind on the morrow. Until then, my lamb, you can reflect."

"Wait! My wood-"

"You won't need it."

They were about to emerge. Aidan realized that he should have moved away sooner. Now he would almost surely be spotted and censured.

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Excerpts

Aidan nodded to the men. “Set the thatch alight. Quietly. Don’t throw any torches atop yet.” His fear thinned to a hazy relief. There was no turning back now.

While the men spread their flame among the torches and touched them to corners of the roof, Lana asked Aidan to hold out his flame as well. When he offered the lamp, she dipped the very tip of the yew in the flame. The needles began smoldering immediately. She closed her eyes and wafted the smoke into her face, inhaling deeply. When she opened her eyes again, a new, wild light shown there.

Gripping the holly in one hand and the sputtering yew in the other, she whispered, “And we enter, Aidan. The yew is alit. It will burn us to life or to death.” She blew gently on the yew branch. To his surprise, the green bough burst into flame. For the first time, Aidan understood that his concern for her might be misplaced.

“Godspeed,” Kyle whispered behind him. “To you both.”

From nearby, Michael growled, “Don’t make me come in after you, Aidan.”

In a few paces, Aidan and Lana reached the door. She flung her hawthorn twig against the sill. She had assured him it could unlock as well as keep sealed, and that it would loosen the door, even if it were bolted inside. He hadn’t really believed her. Nonetheless, he followed the instructions she’d given and stomped the door as hard as he could with the flat of his heel, half expecting to break his foot against the strength of a bolt.

The door flew open. It bounced back and would have slammed shut again but that Aidan’s force carried his whole body into the doorway. Flailing desperately to regain his balance, he stumbled to fall just inside the door. It struck him and stopped there, half-open.

A chorus of startled grunts greeted him.

Excerpted from The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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The Humming of Numbers

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