The Eidolons of Myrefall

by Sarah McCarthy

  That was a relief.

  “I think I’ll leave on my Rite as soon as we get back,” Ferne said. “I’m really starting to feel the energy drain of the threads. Aren’t you, Avery?”

  Avery nodded, and Arabel noticed she stared fixedly into the fire for a while after that. Avery still hadn’t managed to sense the presence of eidolons on her own. Arabel knew how Avery felt about her helping—interfering—and told herself to stay out of it.

  They rode up to Myrefall early the next afternoon. They were met at the gates by a suspicious soldier, who, after several moments, finally recognized Arabel.

  “Let us in,” Arabel said. “I’m back. Er, winter holidays.”

  “The Lord Protector has given us strict instructions that no one—especially not a guardian—is to be admitted.”

  “Well, technically none of us are guardians,” Arabel said. “So you’re good.”

  The guard looked unimpressed.

  “Cecil Fossey has been arrested,” Avery said suddenly. “He attacked the guardians and has been taken prisoner. You’re likely wondering why he hasn’t sent a single instruction back for over a week. That is why.”

  Something clicked in the man’s eyes.

  “And that,” Avery said, “makes Arabel the new Lady Protector of Myrefall.”

  The man sucked in his breath and glanced at someone standing next to him, hidden behind the wall.

  “It’s true,” Arabel said. Was that true? Was she the new leader of Myrefall? That was a dispiriting thought. Useful in this instance, though. “Open the gates and you all get raises.” Her father was probably massively underpaying them. “Fifty percent raises.”

  They hesitated.

  “Forty five percent raises.”

  The doors opened.

  “Welcome home, Lady,” they said, bowing.

  “All right, back to fifty,” Arabel said as she, Avery, Ferne, and Charlotte swept inside.

  The place was so much smaller than she remembered. A dirty town with narrow streets; skinny, unhappy people everywhere. The castle was empty, echoing, and cold. That she remembered.

  Three floors down, exactly where Elyrin had said it would be, they found the painting of the fox. Arabel slid a finger along one edge, found the switch, and flipped it. The painting swung inward to reveal a narrow passage. The air was freezing, her breath coming up in clouds.

  At the end was a door with a small, iron-barred window. A key hung on the wall near the entrance, and Arabel, her heart beating fiercely, her friends standing slightly back, inserted the key and turned it in the lock. She had to jiggle it before it clicked into place; it clearly hadn’t been opened for some time. Pushing the door open, she entered a small, dark, windowless room. There was a desk with a chair in front of it, and on the desk sat a tiny oil lamp. Arabel lit the lamp and her breath caught in her throat. There on the small, spare bed, lay the thin, frail body of her mother. The long brown hair curled around her face, exactly as Arabel remembered it, only now it was streaked with grey.

  Arabel ran forward, falling to her knees. She wrapped her arms around the cold, stiff body, laying her head on its chest. Tears leaked out of her eyes as she shook with sobs. Avery laid a hand on her shoulder. Ferne and Charlotte knelt next to her. None of them said a word.

  All this time. Three floors below her. Not even fifty feet away.

  “Arabel?” Charlotte said. “Did you see this?” She pointed to a piece of parchment, covered with writing, that rested on the desk. Charlotte picked it up and handed it to her. Arabel took a deep breath, clasping her mother’s cold hand as she read.

  Dear, beautiful daughter. Arabel swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut for several seconds and then opening them. In case something happens, I wanted you to know some things. The first is that I love you. You are so strong. You’ve done so much alone that I should have been there for.

  The second is that I need to tell you why you are the way you are. You see, I had a hard childhood. Why exactly isn’t important, but my soul isn’t like everyone else’s. I can, as you saw, pull myself apart more easily, send myself out into the world. Remain connected to those parts of myself even as I send them away.

  When I was pregnant with you, I could feel parts of my soul becoming yours. This terrified me; I was still very young, and so much of my soul was filled with incredible pain. I didn’t want that same pain for you. I wanted to give you only the best parts of myself, but it turned out I couldn’t do that. I saw that your soul had the same cracks mine had. So, since I couldn’t prevent your pain, I tried to show you how to deal with it. Tried to show you what I had learned to make the pain bearable. I went inside myself, and showed the pieces of your soul how to leave and reform.

  When you were born, you were so beautiful. So perfect. I thought maybe I had spared you already. I could still see the cracks in your soul, but you seemed happy, and I didn’t want to ruin it by telling you things you weren’t ready for. I’m sorry; now I think maybe I should have. Part of me was happy to be, for a little while, just a normal mother with a normal daughter. Maybe normal isn’t the right word. You always had an extraordinary instinct for trouble.

  We were all so happy then. Cecil was, if not a good man once, at least a well-meaning one. He saved me. He gave up a lot to do it, too. He was young at the time, had just taken over from his father. In helping me, he lost the support of some very powerful sorcerers. He nearly lost Myrefall, and the city isn’t half what it could have been. But he never said anything about it. He just took care of me.

  And I took care of him, too. His father was very hard on him. He’d had no one growing up. He’d been alone for so long, struggling to live up to his father’s expectations. I was the first person he could really talk to. We were very happy together. For a while.

  I had grown up so cut off from the world. I wanted to see more of it. And Cecil encouraged me. He sent me to visit other cities. As many as I wanted, for as long as I wanted. I stayed away for months at a time. He always encouraged me to go and was never anything but happy to see me when I returned. I could tell he missed me. But I had to go, had to see the world.

  On one of these trips I met a guardian. His name was Ian. I fell in love the first moment I saw him, and after that we were together every day. He told me about eidolons, about the guardians, and I realized I had to know more. I wondered about myself, about what I could do, about what others might be able to do.

  I told Cecil I wanted to visit the castle, and as always, he agreed. But he could tell there was something I wasn’t telling him. I could tell it hurt him more than usual when I left.

  I stayed at the castle for several months, and I learned so much; my abilities expanded past what I ever thought possible.

  When I returned to Myrefall, Cecil greeted me with a smile as always, but the more he heard about what I was learning, the quieter and more withdrawn he became. Not wanting to hurt him any more than I had, I stayed in Myrefall for close to a year, even though my heart was at the castle every single day. During this time, you were born. And for a while, things were wonderful.

  But I needed to go back to the castle. I needed to learn more, and I needed to see Ian. It felt like the person I was supposed to be was there. As comfortable as Myrefall was.

  I left, bringing you with me, and we stayed in the castle for a few months. I wrote to Cecil every day but didn’t get a single letter in return.

  When we returned, Cecil had changed. He didn’t come to greet us at the castle gates as he always had. When I found him in his office, he barely looked up. I saw the hole in his heart immediately. He’d pushed away the love he had for me. The rage he felt at my betrayal. I think he did this so that he could let me be what I wanted to be. It hurt him too much to see me go, and I think on some level he guessed about Ian, but rather than demand I stay, or keep me there, he ripped out that part of himself.

  Of course, once that part of himself was gone, he was no longer the man he had been. All that was left of him was the part that
wanted power. He imprisoned me, told everyone I had died, and raised you himself.

  Arabel leaned back, lowering the letter and staring at her mother’s face. So much. So much she never knew.

  I’m sorry, Arabel. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you, and that your father and I both made so many mistakes. I’ll apologize on his behalf as well. He would if he could. I won’t ask you to forgive him. Feel however you feel. The man he once was would be ashamed of what he has done.

  I love you, always, and part of him does, too.

  Love,

  Your Mother

  Arabel shook her head, unable to speak as Avery sat quietly next to her, a hand on her shoulder.

  They buried her mother in the garden that she and Arabel had planted together when she was little. That night, Arabel went out alone into the forest. She would make her mother a headstone, but she wouldn’t use anything from inside Myrefall to do it. Her mother deserved better than that.

  For over an hour, Arabel walked silently through the darkened trees, hoping at any moment to see the fox, but it never appeared. Finally, she came across a large, pale white rock, glowing in the moonlight, about six inches across, ringed with veins of sparkling quartz. She picked it up and slowly walked back to town.

  She requested stone-carving tools from the servants, and slowly, painstakingly, carved her mother’s name into the stone, assisted by Avery, who somehow knew everything about stone-carving.

  The next day, they placed the headstone, with the blue jewel next to it, over the freshly-dug earth of her mother’s grave. Arabel said some words, and Avery, Charlotte, and Ferne listened, then waited while she said goodbye.

  47

  They stayed in Myrefall a few days more, Arabel struggling to put things in order, but she didn’t want to stay any longer than she had to. She found herself wanting to get back to the castle. Wanting to see Naomi, David, and the others.

  As they were leaving, one of her father’s assistants ran up to her, flustered.

  “You’re not leaving, are you, Miss?”

  “Yes.”

  “But… but there’s so much to do… There are permits… and allotments… and the matter of the new salaries you’ve promised…”

  Arabel grimaced. Then her eyes fell on Avery, who looked like she was listening with interest to what the man was saying.

  “Actually, I have an idea,” she said. “Avery. How would you like to run Myrefall?

  “What?” Avery said.

  “I know I said I wouldn’t intervene, but, actually, you just said to run it by you, right? So, this is me running it by you. I think you should run Myrefall. I’d be terrible at it. You wouldn’t. You’ll make this place into an economic powerhouse in weeks, I’m sure.”

  “But… I… I’m… I need to go on the Rite…” Avery said.

  “Yeah. Let’s do that. Let’s all go now, get you your eidolons, then come back and you can be the leader of this place.”

  “Great idea,” Charlotte said. “We’ll help. Too bad I already did mine, or we could get mine, too.”

  “But I have to do the Rite alo—”

  “Alone, yeah, but… maybe you were right. You still can’t sense them, right?”

  “I can come, too, right?” Ferne asked. “I have to get mine alone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you get yours. That’s like, the whole thing guardians do.”

  Avery blushed. She looked from Arabel, to Ferne, whose eyes were glowing, to Charlotte who was nodding enthusiastically.

  “I… but I always planned…”

  “True. But plans can change, right?”

  Avery looked deeply uncomfortable at the thought.

  “These people need you,” Arabel said, gesturing to the disintegrating town. “I’d do a terrible job. You know I would.”

  “She really would be awful,” Charlotte said.

  “This place would be broke, and on fire, within a month,” Ferne added.

  “Maybe… but…” Avery seemed to be running out of objections. She glanced at her hands, then at the sky. “Yes.” A smile began spreading across her face, hesitant but relieved. “Yes, thank you.”

  Arabel clapped the assistant on the back. “There you are, Avery will be much better than me.”

  “Er, will we still be getting those raises?”

  Arabel looked to Avery.

  “Yes, of course,” she said quickly, and the man relaxed.

  “Well, we’d better be off, then,” Arabel said. “We’ve got to get you your eidolons.” Which were probably things like secretly wanting to organize her books by page count rather than alphabetically by title.

  Avery’s smile widened.

  Together, the four of them rode out of the gates of Myrefall and into the forest, off in search of demons.

  Acknowledgments

  This book went through so many iterations, and I am incredibly grateful to the people who helped guide me along the way.

  Firstly, thank you so much to my sister, Carol, for reading the first, incredibly rough draft, and being generous enough to find things to like about it. You helped me pick out the real heart of the story. I’m so glad you wanted more of the fox.

  Next, thank you to my developmental editor, Kate Huebner. Your comments on character and setting were right on, and you made the book leaps and bounds better.

  Thank you so much to beta readers Robb and Josie. Thank you for catching all the timeline errors, and for making me think more about Arabel’s emotional journey. And for pointing out all the places I was passive aggressively using geometry terms.

  I am also so grateful to my husband, Sean, for his support, and for his help thinking through magic systems, and for coming up with cool names for things.

  Thank you also to my line editor, Rebecca Friedman, for her expertise on medieval worlds, and for fixing too many comma splices and misplaced modifiers to count.

  Lastly, I owe an incredible about of gratitude to the writer Nick Feldman, for his endless help and encouragement talking me through plot and character problems. Nick is an amazing writer and you can find his books on Amazon.

  The flower in the library is based on the work of Robert Plutchik. You can read more about him and his work at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Plutchik.

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