003.

[outsidebones]

The movie we are watching today features Harrowhark Nonagesimus, tiny ten year old genius. Despite her age, she stalks the gloomy halls of the underground stone castle with confidence, and every person she meets behaves as though she is more than royalty, something more akin to a saint or a saviour. Even her mother and father, though grand and imperious, don't muster the same level of devotion. Harrow treats both of them with incredible deference and attempts to please, which they meet in turn with effusive pride and praise and yet there's a chilly reserve towards her that's difficult even for a ten year old to mistake. To everyone else, Harrow is gracious, if incredibly haughty and spoiled, but the obvious over-the-top affection means nothing to her. She thinks, most days, about finding the best way to die.

There is one place on this whole planet that otherwise seems to revolve around her that she is forbidden to enter. The Tomb beneath the castle, the one they pray every morning in the chapel will never be disturbed. This isn't her first time trying, but she's more determined today than ever; bruised and bloodied from a fight, her hands still wet with the blood she'd clawed from Gideon's face. She makes it through the variety of necromantic traps that would stop anyone less talented than her, and she makes it to the rock that is never to be rolled away, but when she presses her bloodied hands against it, this time it gives way.

It moves beneath her hands, and the thrill of it carries Harrow away. Of doing something she should not be able to do, proving her genius and therefore her worthiness to live; of doing something so terrible and blasphemous and proving her unworthiness as well. But that feeling of triumph and sick pleasure gives way to something else. She can see what's inside. It's a pool, the same pool whose waters fill the other caverns and rooms in the base of the castle. But at the center of the pool is a crypt, and within it is a woman, wrapped in chains, encased in ice, frozen and dead. She's taller than a person should be and beautiful, with matted, wet hair and long, ice covered eyelashes. Also, just obviously a corpse. It's fine.

Harrow loves her, instantly, and she realizes for the first time that she doesn't want to die. She has to leave, but she comes back the next day, and the next, stealing into this forbidden place to get a glimpse of her.

And then one day the other girl, the angry, brawny, red-haired orphan a year older than her, sees her as she's leaving. She doesn't know how far she got, but she knows Harrow is doing something she is not supposed to do, the one thing that is forbidden of her. And she and Harrow hate each other the way only lonely, angry children can, so she runs and Harrow knows immediately she's running to tell someone what Harrow has done.

When Harrow reenters the familiar chambers of Castle Drearburh, her mother and father are waiting. Her father is stern and tired and her mother, as always, is silent and cold, and they are both trailed by their large, elderly, red-faced cavalier primary, Mortus. It is obvious from their expressions they know what she's done and they're terrified. They think she has brought the apocalypse on them and they think they have created a monster and should have known it would do something monstrous someday. Harrow knows that she has just proven the lie of every justification they have ever made to themselves of the events that brought her into existence.

They are kind, kinder than Harrow can remember them ever being. They explain that they need to make this right. It isn't her fault, they say, gentle with her the way you might expect parents to be with a beloved daughter, and it feels unfamiliar but deeply wanted, if only the context weren't so horrifying. It isn't her fault, but the transgression needs to be paid for. There is sorrow in the Reverend Father's eyes as he delivers the instructions and helps Mortus onto his chair, and the Reverend Mother is the warmest as she has ever been as she ties her own noose and then helps Harrow tie hers.

Harrow watches what they do, feels that she owes them that much, but she cannot do as she's asked. She gazed upon the Body and decided to live. So she waits in the room with her mother and father and old Mortus purpling and hanging from the rafters, waits alone for hours until she is finally discovered by Gideon hiding outside the door. She looks stricken, terrified and guilty by what she sees, but Harrow doesn't have it in her to react. She closes the door behind her.

The Ninth House is only her now, and there is much to do.