The Raven King

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “It’s how Persephone died. The body can’t live with the soul too far away. I don’t intend on wandering. If he’s not close, I’ll come back.”

  The Gray Man trusted Maura to know her own limits, as he assumed she trusted him. He placed his gun on the floor beside his foot — out of easy reach of the girl, if that’s what she was — and took Maura’s hand.

  She leaned into the scrying bowl, and as her eyes went blank, he began to count. One, two, three —

  Adam gasped and twitched. One hand flailed out, grabbing for a handhold that wasn’t there, nails scratching against the plaster in a thin attack. His gaze swam onto the Gray Man with obvious effort.

  “Wake him,” he said in a slurred voice. “Don’t let him stay there by himself!” The hooved girl leapt up from her position without any sluggishness. (Maybe, the Gray Man thought in retrospect, she had actually not been scrying at all, and had instead remained perfectly still only as camouflage when Maura and the Gray Man came into the house, a chilling but perfectly plausible thought.) She threw her arms around Ronan where he sprawled, then began to agitate at him, hands pressed flat against his cheeks, pounding his chest, speaking all the while in something that sounded like Latin but was not.

  Then a peculiar thing happened. In principle, the Gray Man knew what was happening, but it was a very different thing to see it actually occur before one’s eyes.

  Ronan Lynch brought something back from his dreams.

  In this case: blood.

  In one moment, he was asleep, and in the next he was awake, and his hands were mired in gore. The Gray Man’s brain moved uneasily between those moments, and he felt that it had neatly removed the most difficult image, the one in the middle.

  Adam had clambered unsteadily to his feet. “Bring Maura back! You have no idea —”

  Yes, ninety seconds, it had been ninety seconds. The Gray Man used Maura’s hand to tug her away from the scrying bowl, and because she had only wandered in shallowly, she returned to him at once.

  “Oh no,” she said. “It’s awful. It’s so awful. The demon — oh no.”

  She looked at once to Ronan on the couch. He had not moved even a fraction, although his eyebrows had become more intentional over his closed eyes. There was not a lot of blood on the outside of him, in comparison to how much a human generally carried on the inside, but there was nonetheless something fatal-looking about the display. It was the combination of blood and mud, the bits of bone and viscera stuck to the heels of his hands.

  “Fuck,” said Adam vehemently. He had begun to shake, though his face had not changed.

  “Is Ronan hurt?” Maura asked.

  “He doesn’t move right after,” Adam said. “If he brings something back. Give him a second. Fuck! His mother’s dead.”

  “Look out!” the girl shouted. And it was that, and only that, that kept the Gray Man from dying when Laumonier appeared around the corner with a gun.

  Laumonier did not hesitate for even a second when he saw the Gray Man: To see him in this context was to shoot him.

  The sound was bigger than the room.

  The girl let out a shriek that had nothing to do with the sound a human girl would make and everything to do with the sound that a crow would make.

  The Gray Man had hit the deck immediately, taking Maura down with him. He found, in that bare second on the worn floorboards, that he was facing a choice.

  He could try to disarm this part of Laumonier, securing the area and reminding him that now that Greenmantle was dead, Laumonier should not have had any quarrel with the Gray Man. It was not as impossible as it sounded: The Gray Man had a gun within easy reach of his hand as well, and Adam Parrish had already proven himself extremely cool and resourceful. Such a negotiation would leave the Barns open to Laumonier’s interest, of course, and once Laumonier caught sight of the girl with the hooves, that interest would be undying. This part of the world — and along with it 300 Fox Way and Maura and Blue — would forever be open to threat unless they fled as Declan and Matthew Lynch had. If he chose this path, he would have to be constantly vigilant to protect them from the interested parties. Constantly on the defensive.

  Or the Gray Man could shoot Laumonier.

  It would be a declaration of war. The other two parts of Laumonier would not let it pass without remark. But perhaps a war was what this twisted business needed. It had been devolving into a dangerous anarchy of alleyways and basements and kidnappings and hit men since some time before him, and had only become more unruly. Perhaps what it needed was someone to impose some rules from the top down, to get these messy kings in line. But it would not be easy, and it would take years, and there was no version of it that meant that the Gray Man got to stay with Maura and her family. He’d have to take the danger elsewhere, and he’d have to once again throw himself into that world.

  He wanted to stay so badly, in this place where he had begun to put violence down. In the place where he’d learned how to feel again. In this place that he loved.

  Only a second had passed.

  Maura sighed.

  The Gray Man shot Laumonier.

  He was a king.

  It was not at all impossible for Blue to believe that a demon had killed Ronan’s mother and was killing Cabeswater, too. When they came back from the lunch at the schoolhouse — having received dozens of calls from both Ronan’s phone and 300 Fox Way — it felt like the end of the world. Knots of clouds snarled over the town and inside the house, where the Gray Man was packing the few small things that he had left behind there.

  “You kill the demon,” he told them all. “I will do my best to handle the rest. Will I be back some day?”

  Maura just put her hand on his cheek.

  He kissed her, hugged Blue, and was gone.

  Jimi and Orla, shockingly, were gone as well. They did not deserve to be in the line of fire, Maura said, and had gone to stay with old friends in West Virginia until it was certain what would happen to Henrietta and the psychics in it.

  Every appointment had been canceled, so there were no clients, and the hotline was set up to send every caller straight to voicemail.

  Only Maura, Calla, and Gwenllian remained.

  It felt like the end of everything.

  Blue asked Adam, “Where’s Ronan?”

  Adam led Blue and Gansey out of Fox Way into the chilly day, moving carefully to avoid unseating Chainsaw, who perched on his shoulder with her head hung low. Ronan’s car was parked on the curb a few houses away.

  Ronan sat motionless behind the wheel of the BMW, eyes fixed on some point down the road behind them. A trick of the light played over the passenger seat — no, it was no trick. Noah sat there, barely present, also motionless. He was already slouching, but when he caught a look at Blue’s stitches, he slouched down even farther.

  Blue and Gansey walked to the driver’s side and waited. Ronan did not roll down the window or look at him, so Gansey tried the door, found it unlocked, opened it.

  “Ronan,” he said. The gentle way he said it nearly made Blue cry.

  Ronan did not turn his head. His feet rested on the pedals; his hands rested on the bottom of the steering wheel. His face was quite composed.

  How miserable it was to imagine that he was the last Lynch left here.

  Beside Blue, Adam shuddered violently. Blue looped her arm around him. It was terrible to imagine that while Gansey and she had been having lunch, Ronan and Adam had been wandering through a hellscape together. Gansey’s gallant magicians, both felled by horror.

  Adam shook again.

  “Ronan,” Gansey said again.

  In a very low voice, Ronan replied, “I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do, Gansey. Tell me where to go.”

  “We can’t undo this,” Gansey said. “I can’t undo it.”

  This did not make a dent in Ronan’s expression. It was terrible to see him without any fire or acid in his eyes.

  “Come inside,”
Blue said.

  Ronan didn’t acknowledge this. “I know I can’t undo it. I’m not stupid. I want to kill it.”

  A car groaned by them, giving the three of them a wide berth where they stood by Ronan’s open door. The neighborhood felt close and present and watching. Inside the car, Noah leaned forward to make eye contact with them. His face was miserable; he touched his own eyebrow where Blue’s was scratched.

  It wasn’t your fault, Blue thought at him. I’m not upset with you. Please stop hiding from me.

  “I’m not going to let it get to Matthew,” Ronan said. He took a breath through his mouth, released it through his nostrils. Slow and intentional. Everything was slow and intentional, flattened into a state of tenuous control. “I could feel it in the dream. I could feel what it wanted. It’s unmaking everything I’ve dreamt. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to lose anyone else. You know how to kill it.”

  Gansey said, “I don’t know how to find Glendower.”

  “You do, Gansey,” Ronan replied, voice uneven for the first time. “I know you do. And when you’re ready to get him, I’ll be sitting right here, waiting to go where you tell me.”

  Oh, Ronan.

  Ronan’s eyes were still trained on the road ahead of them. A tear ran down his nose and clung to his chin, but he didn’t so much as blink. When Gansey said nothing else, Ronan reached for the door handle without looking, with the thoughtless stretch of familiarity. He tugged the door free of Gansey’s hand. It closed with less of a bang than Blue had thought Ronan was capable of.

  They stood there outside their friend’s car, none of them speaking or moving. The breeze shuffled dried leaves down the street in the direction of Ronan’s line of sight. Somewhere out there was a monster eating his heart. Blue couldn’t think too hard upon the trees of Cabeswater under attack, or she became too restless to even stand.

  She said, “Is that the language puzzle box in the backseat? I’m going to need it. I’m going to go talk to Artemus.”

  “Isn’t he in a tree?” Adam asked.

  “Yeah,” Blue said. “But we’ve been talking to trees for a while.”

  Only a few minutes later, she picked her way out across the exposed roots of the beech tree to its trunk. Gansey and Adam had joined her, but had been given strict orders to remain on the patio outside the back door and to come no closer. This was going to be about her, her father, and her tree.

  Hopefully.

  She could not count how many times she had sat beneath this beech tree. Where others had a favorite sweater or favorite song, a favorite chair or a favorite food, Blue had always had the beech tree in the backyard. It wasn’t just this tree, of course — she loved all trees — but this tree had been a constant her entire life. She knew the dips in its bark and how much it grew each year and even the particular smell of its leaves when they first began to bud in the spring. She knew it as well as she knew anyone else in 300 Fox Way.

  Now she sat cross-legged among its torn-up roots with the puzzle box resting on her calves and a notebook resting on top of it. The jostled ground was damp and cold against her thighs; probably if she was being really practical, she would have brought something to sit on.

  Or perhaps it was better to feel the same ground the tree felt.

  “Artemus,” she said, “can you hear me? It’s Blue. Your daughter.” Right after she said this, she thought maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe he would rather not be reminded of that fact. She corrected, “Maura’s daughter. I’m sorry in advance for my pronunciation, but they don’t really offer books for this.”

  She had first begun to have the idea to use this puzzle box of Ronan’s earlier that day while talking to Henry. He had explained to her how the bee translated his thoughts more purely than words did, how the bee was more essentially Henry than anything that actually came out of his mouth. It got her thinking about how the trees of Cabeswater had always struggled to communicate with the humans, first in Latin, then in English, and how they had another language that they seemed to speak with each other — the dream language that was featured on this translation box of Ronan’s. Artemus didn’t seem remotely able to express himself. Maybe this would help. At least it might look like Blue was trying to make an effort.

  Now she spun the wheel around to translate the things she wanted to say into the dream language, and jotted down the words that appeared. She read the written sentences out loud, slowly and without surety. She was aware of Adam and Gansey’s presence, but it was comforting, not awkward. She’d done stupider-looking rituals in front of them. Out loud, the sentences sounded a little like Latin. In Blue’s head, they meant:

  “Mom always told me that you were interested in the world, in nature, and the way people interact with it, just like me. I thought maybe we could talk about that, in your language.”

  She wanted to ask about the demon straightaway, but she’d seen how badly that had gone for Gwenllian. So now she simply waited. The backyard was the same as it had been before. Her hands were clammy. She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected to happen.

  Slowly, she moved the dials on the puzzle box to translate another phrase from English. Touching the smooth, skinlike bark of the beech tree, she asked it out loud: “Please, could you at least tell me if you’re listening?”

  There was not so much as a rustle from the remaining dry leaves.

  When Blue was much younger, she had spent hours setting up elaborate versions of the psychic rituals she’d seen her family undertaking. She’d read countless books on tarot; watched web videos on palmistry; studied tea leaves; conducted séances in the bathroom in the middle of the night. While her cousins effortlessly spoke to the dead and her mother saw the future, Blue struggled for even a hint of the supernatural. She spent hours straining her ears for an otherworldly voice. Trying to predict which tarot card she was about to overturn. Waiting to feel something dead touch her hand.

  This was exactly that.

  The only thing that was slightly different was that Blue had started this process somewhat optimistic. It had been a very long time since she’d fooled herself into thinking that she herself had any connection with the otherworld. If she wasn’t being bitter about it, it was because she hadn’t thought that this was about the otherworld.

  “I love this tree,” Blue said finally, in English. “You don’t have any claim to it. If anyone could live inside it, it should be me. I’ve loved it way longer than you could have.”

  With a sigh, she stood up, brushing muck off the back of her legs. She gave Gansey and Adam a rueful look.

  “Wait.”

  Blue froze. Gansey and Adam both looked sharply behind her.

  “Say what you just said.” Artemus’s voice emanated from the tree. Not like the voice of God, but rather like a voice coming from just behind the trunk.

  “What?” Blue asked.

  “Say what you just said.”

  “I’ve loved this tree?”

  Artemus stepped from the tree. It was the same as when Aurora had stepped out of the rock back in Cabeswater. There was tree, and then man-and-tree, and then just man. Artemus held out his hands for the puzzle box, and she put it in them. He sank to the ground with the box in his lap, folding his long limbs around it, turning the dials slowly and looking at each side. Watching his long face and tired mouth and slumped shoulders, Blue was amazed by how differently Artemus and Gwenllian wore their age. Gwenllian had been made young and angry by six hundred years of marking time. Artemus looked defeated. She wondered if that was from the six hundred years in total, or only the past seventeen.

  She simply said it: “You look tired.”

  He peered up at her, small eyes bright in his long face, wrinkles deep-set around them. “I am tired.”

  Blue sat down opposite him. She didn’t say anything at all as he continued testing the box. It was strange to be able to identify the origin of her hands in his hands, though his fingers were longer and knobbier.

  “I am one o
f the tir e e’lintes,” Artemus said finally. “This is my language.”

  He turned the dials on the unknown language side to spell tir e e’lintes. The translation shifted on the English side, which he showed to her.

  “ ‘Tree-lights,’ ” she read. “Because you can hide in trees?”

  “They are our …” He faltered. Then he turned the dials and showed her the box again. Skin-house.

  “You live in trees?”

  “In? With.” He considered. “I was a tree when Maura and the other two women pulled me out of it years ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” Blue said, but kindly. She was not uncomfortable because of the truth of him. She was uncomfortable because the truth of him suggested a truth in her. “You were a tree, or you were in a tree?”

  He looked at her, doleful, tired, strange, and then he spread his hand for her. With the fingers of his other hand, he traced the lines in his palm. “These remind me of my roots.” He took her hand and placed it flat on the skin of the beech. His long, knobby fingers entirely eclipsed her small hand. “My roots are yours, too. Do you miss your home?”

  She closed her eyes. She could feel the familiar cool bark beneath her skin, and felt once again the comfort of being under its branches, on top of its roots, pressed to its trunk.

  “You loved this tree,” Artemus said. “You already told me.”

  She opened her eyes. She nodded.

  “Sometimes we tir e e’lintes wear this,” he continued, dropping her hand so he could gesture to himself. Then he touched the tree again. “Sometimes we wear this.”

  “I wish,” Blue said, then stopped. She didn’t have to finish the sentence anyway.

  He nodded once. He said, “Here is how it began.”

  He told the story just as a tree grows, beginning with a seed. Then he dug in fine roots to support it as the main trunk began to stretch upward.

  “When Wales was young,” Artemus told Blue, “there were trees. It is no longer all trees, or it wasn’t when I left. At first, it was all right. There were more trees than there were tir e e’lintes. Some trees cannot hold a tir e e’lintes. You know these trees; even the dullest man knows these trees. They are —” He glanced around. His eyes found the weedy, fast-growing locusts on the other side of the fence and the decorative plum tree in a neighbor’s yard. “They do not have a soul of their own, and they aren’t built to hold anyone else’s.”