Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow: Nevermoor 3

by Jessica Townsend

  That made Morrigan stop pacing. The families who want them back. She pressed a hand to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

  Would some of their families not want them back?

  Who was Sofia’s family? Morrigan felt suddenly wretched. She’d never asked.

  ‘Where is Sofia now?’

  Anah sighed. She seemed to regret having told Morrigan as much as she had, but it was clear she was in this now. ‘Still in the quarantine wing. Ward 4A. Now listen carefully, because if you want to see her, you’ll only have a very brief window.’

  Morrigan had memorised Anah’s instructions for sneaking into Ward 4A without getting caught, and her friend had crept back out into the hallway to go home, and ever since then she’d been counting down the hours until her very brief window arrived.

  She’d used the time well. She’d vowed revenge on selfish Dr Lutwyche. She’d fumed silently about Dr Bramble the hypocrite, who supposedly wasn’t giving up on finding a cure, but was happy to ship a bunch of inconvenient Wunimals off to the zoo in the meantime.

  But most importantly, she’d crafted a plan. Lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the hours tick away – Emmett tucked under her arm, just like when she was little – Morrigan plotted her next move as patiently as a chess grandmaster.

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the softly padding footsteps of the evening nurse on her midnight rounds, and once they’d disappeared into the distance, she sat up in bed and whistled.

  A short whistle, low and eerie.

  There was a moment when she doubted it had worked. Then she heard it, cutting through the wheezing and snoring: a deep, reverberating growl.

  It came from the shadows under her bed.

  ‘Come out,’ she whispered, trying to make it sound like a command rather than a plea, while a primal fear tiptoed delicately down her spine.

  The shadows took the shape of a wolf, and the wolf slunk out from beneath the bed. It brought its enormous face close to hers – teeth bared, red eyes glowing. Morrigan squeezed Emmett tighter, summoned all of her courage and addressed the dark, monstrous thing in a voice that didn’t shake.

  ‘I want to speak with him.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Opening a Window

  The wolf seemed to appraise her for a moment, then disappeared in a swirl of black smoke.

  Was that it, Morrigan wondered. Surely it couldn’t be that easy. She’d thought she might have to do something to convince it to obey her, perhaps a demonstration of the Wundrous Arts. But sure enough, the wolf vanished in one instant and returned the next, bringing with it the rest of the wolf pack. And their master.

  ‘Don’t go getting ideas about summoning me,’ Squall said quietly. He stood at the end of her bed, cloaked in shadow. ‘This won’t work every time, you know.’

  ‘It worked this time.’

  ‘Because I was expecting it. Though you certainly took longer than anticipated.’

  ‘I’ve been asleep for two days.’

  His eyes flicked briefly upwards. ‘Of course you have. Your stamina is abysmal.’

  She ignored the insult. ‘You said you’d fix the Hollowpox.’

  ‘And so I did. Have you brought me here to say thank you?’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she insisted. ‘The Wunimals are still hollow. They’re still unnimals. You promised—’

  ‘I promised the destruction of the Hollowpox, and that is what I delivered.’

  ‘You promised a CURE!’ Morrigan raised her voice, then flinched as Mr Schultz in the far corner of the ward spluttered in his sleep before settling back to his steady wheezing. ‘You promised a cure,’ she repeated in a harsh whisper, leaning forward. The shadow wolves growled a low warning, but she didn’t stop. ‘On the rooftop, that day at Proudfoot House. Do you think I would make something I couldn’t unmake? That’s what you said.’

  ‘But curing something and destroying it are two entirely different matters.’ His face was inscrutable. ‘I told you I would provide a cure for the Hollowpox if you became my apprentice. I don’t recall offering to do it out of the goodness of my heart. What happened in Courage Square was a fair and mutually beneficial arrangement. I wanted to keep Wintersea out of Nevermoor, and you wanted to stop the spread of the Hollowpox. That’s our business concluded, as far as I’m concerned. If you want something more, you need to offer something in return.’

  ‘Fine.’ Straightening her spine, Morrigan pushed off the blankets and got out of bed. She slid her feet into a pair of warm slippers Jupiter had left for her, gathered up her coat from the back of the chair and buttoned it over her pyjamas. ‘Fine, I agree. I’ll be your apprentice. Now let’s go.’

  There was a long, tense silence between them, broken only by the snoring from across the ward. She waited for Squall to react, but he was as still as stone, his black eyes glassy in the dim light.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said finally. ‘Why would you do this?’

  Morrigan wanted to throw her hands in the air and shout at him, but that would have brought the overnight nurse running.

  ‘Why do you think I would do this?’ she asked in a hoarse whisper. ‘And more importantly, why do you care? You’re getting what you want!’

  ‘And what if I’ve changed my mind?’ he asked. ‘What if it’s not what I want any more? Perhaps I’ve decided you’re not a good enough Wundersmith, that you’ll never be—’

  ‘You haven’t,’ she snapped. ‘So don’t pretend. This is what you’ve wanted since the first day we met, Mr Jones. You’ve never given up. You keep coming back to Nevermoor, keep trying to persuade me. Well, congratulations! You’ve finally offered me something I want more than I don’t want to be your apprentice.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I want Sofia back!’ Morrigan cursed the break in her voice. Cursed him for hearing it. ‘I want to talk to her. I want Dame Chanda to get her friend back and be happy again. I want Brutilus Brown to go home to his family, and Colin to go back to the library, and every other Wunimal in this building to just … to be Wunimals again. This isn’t fair. It’s grotesque. They’re in cages, for goodness’ sake. It isn’t RIGHT.’ She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. Squall stared at her, emotionless. ‘Just … just tell me how to f-fix it.’

  ‘You?’ He frowned, seeming genuinely confused. ‘You can’t fix it.’

  ‘I couldn’t destroy the Hollowpox either,’ she said. ‘But I did. I can do this too. Tell me the steps and I’ll follow them, just like in Courage Square.’

  Squall chuckled as if she’d just told an excellent joke, then stopped abruptly. He made a strange little noise in the back of his throat – somewhere between pity and disgust – that made Morrigan feel approximately two feet tall.

  ‘Miss Crow, destroying the Hollowpox and curing its victims are two very different tasks, requiring vastly different skillsets. You are …’ He waved a hand up and down, casting her a disdainful look. ‘… a blunt instrument. Your performance in Courage Square was the equivalent of taking a hammer to a teacup. Destruction is easy. It didn’t really take much in the end, did it, for all that built-up frustration and anger inside you to explode outwards?

  ‘But this is different. Only an extremely skilled Wundersmith could restore those Wunimals to their former state, and I wouldn’t even describe you as a moderately skilled Wundersmith. At this point I’d hardly call you a Wundersmith at all.’

  ‘I have the Inferno imprint.’ She held up her left hand. ‘I’ve met the Kindling. I brought the fireblossoms back to life. I am a Wundersmith.’

  ‘Bravo,’ he said dryly, giving her a tiny two-fingered clap. ‘You can burn things.’

  Morrigan gave an impatient huff. This wasn’t what he’d said in Courage Square. Where is the girl who brought down the Ghastly Market? Bring her back! What was it he’d said about not being small?

  She tilted her chin upwards, determined to stand her ground. ‘Just tell me how—’

>   ‘Set that bed on fire.’

  ‘I – what?’

  ‘The bed,’ he repeated. ‘Set. It. On. Fire.’

  Morrigan glanced at the door, suddenly uneasy (someone would surely come running the instant her bed caught ablaze), but nonetheless she took a deep breath, and—

  Nothing.

  She tried again.

  Nothing. Not even a spark.

  ‘You see,’ Squall said softly, his face twisted in disgust. ‘The “how” is irrelevant. Even if the task wasn’t far, far beyond your abilities, just … look at you. You’re a dead battery. Too depleted – two days later – to accomplish even the simplest task. Any Wundrous energy swarming around you now is very hard at work helping you to not die.’

  Morrigan checked the clock on the wall. The brief window Anah had promised her was drawing nearer; she didn’t have time to argue. ‘Then how long will it take me to—’

  ‘You are not listening to me,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘It would take days of recuperation, years of study and practice. These Wunimals will waste away and die before you become the kind of Wundersmith who might be able to save their lives. You have neither the energy nor the skill—’

  ‘But you do,’ she said. ‘You have both.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And … last year, you said I gave you a window into Nevermoor, that you were leaning on me through the Gossamer and that’s how I could do all those things that I’d never learned how to do. You said that once I started to learn the Wundrous Arts for myself, once I was using all the Wunder that gathers around me, there wouldn’t be enough of it to lean on any more. The window would shut.’ She took a deep breath, hardly believing what she was about to say. ‘But what if I wanted to open it?’

  Morrigan kept to the shadows as much as she could, but it turned out shadows were hard to come by in a brightly lit hospital. ‘My friend is a hospital assistant; she told me we’ll have a window of maybe five minutes during the changeover. The quarantined wards are all kept locked, but there’s a key in a drawer in Dr Lutwyche’s—’

  ‘We are not sneaking around, and we’ll take as long as we need,’ Squall said, with more than a hint of contempt. ‘We are Wundersmiths. Here, hold up your hands like this.’ He removed his black leather gloves and tucked them into a pocket, then held up his own pale hands, palms facing Morrigan. He had two imprints identical to hers – a shimmering golden W on his right index finger, and a tiny flickering flame on the left middle. Of course he had the same imprints. (Logically, he must have others that were invisible to her; Morrigan knew you could only see someone else’s imprint if you had the same one of your own.)

  Her hands remained by her sides.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you wish to be my apprentice or not?’

  So this was it, she thought, dread and curiosity doing battle within her. Some kind of Wundersmith ceremony that would bind them together. No going back from that.

  She held up her ever-so-slightly shaking hands, mirroring him, then snatched them back. ‘Wait! Just to be clear: I’m agreeing to be your apprentice Wundersmith. That means you can teach me the Wundrous Arts, not … evil lessons.’

  ‘Very droll.’

  ‘I’m not joking. This doesn’t make me your puppet, or your proxy, or your partner in crime! I’m not agreeing to conquer Nevermoor on your behalf, or do your bidding, or anything else except learn how to use the arts in the normal, non-evil way that Wundersmiths are supposed to. Is that understood?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘And as long as we’re clarifying things: your side of the bargain is a complete, permanent, no-strings-attached cure. For every single Wunimal victim—’

  ‘Miss Crow, enough. Time is short. I have no wish to renege on our deal. Nor have I any interest in keeping Wunimals hollow; that isn’t my fight. And besides,’ he said, holding up his hands again and looking vaguely offended, ‘when I give my word, I keep it.’

  Morrigan took a deep breath. She had no idea whether she could trust him. But she had no choice. The Wunimals would be moved tomorrow, and who knew where most of them would end up? If they were doing this, it had to be done tonight.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she held up her hands again. Their fingertips met through the Gossamer, and suddenly – without even moving – he was rushing towards her, they were rushing towards each other, cold and black, two oceans pouring into one.

  In that second, Morrigan felt a chilling flash of clarity.

  She’d made a terrible mistake. It was like Golders Night all over again, but this time it wasn’t water filling her lungs, it was something else.

  Chaos. Madness. Power.

  Whatever it was, she was going to drown in it. She wanted to pull her hands away, but she couldn’t. They felt magnetised. Danger, her heartbeat said. Danger. Danger. Danger.

  ‘Stay calm.’ Squall’s quiet voice broke through her panic, like a flare in the dark.

  ‘What is this? What’s happening?’

  ‘We’re building a tunnel. A temporary bridge across the Gossamer. Stay. Calm.’

  After what felt like a long time but must have only been moments, the two oceans stopped pouring, and were still. Morrigan had the strangest sensation of peaceful, passive certainty. She felt like she was captaining a ship that already knew where it was going. She was still in command, but she barely had to steer.

  She imagined it was a bit like how an actor in the theatre must feel, perhaps how Dame Chanda felt when she put on the elaborate costume and mask of the villainess Euphoriana. She had the unsettling feeling that she’d stepped inside Squall’s skin, or he had stepped inside hers.

  ‘Little crowling, little crowling,’ she heard herself sing, ‘with button-black eyes …’

  Wunder gathered, and it was nothing like when she gathered it on her own. Squall had scarcely sung a note through her when Wunder bristled all around, like a thunderstorm was in the air.

  She’d expected, when he leaned on her through the Gossamer, to feel her sense of self encroached upon, somehow lessened. But this wasn’t that at all. Instead she felt her person-hood ballooning and stretching, as if she had finally been granted permission to take up space in the world. There was nothing frightening about it, not the way it had been before. Her powers weren’t being hijacked without her knowledge; this was a collaboration.

  A crackle of electricity charged through her veins. It felt like she could stare down the sun if she wanted to. She was unstoppable, unbreakable, unmessable-with.

  And she finally understood the canyon that existed between Squall’s ability and her own. Was this how he felt … all the time?

  Was this truly what it meant to be a Wundersmith?

  As they walked down the empty hallway, side by side, Morrigan caught sight of her reflection in a pane of glass. She was shocked – and almost a little disappointed – to see herself looking just the same as always. How could she still be an ordinary girl on the outside, when an entire universe was swelling up inside her?

  She didn’t look like an ordinary girl for much longer, however. Every few steps, they passed another window in which Morrigan saw her reflection. With every window they passed, she was changing.

  It reminded her of seeing Dearborn transform into Murgatroyd, or Murgatroyd into Rook. She saw her body shrink until she was a head shorter, her hair turn grey and wispy, her limbs grow frail and bony.

  ‘What’s happening to me?’ Morrigan asked. She felt no panic, just a vague curiosity.

  ‘Masquerade,’ Squall said simply.

  By the time they reached the vast oak doors leading to the quarantine ward, Morrigan’s reflection had become Elder Quinn. Yet when she looked down at her hands and body, she found they were her own. She hadn’t really transformed at all; it was just an illusion.

  Squall pressed through the Gossamer, and Morrigan saw her hands push on the doors, heard the click as the lock turned, felt her legs carry her into the ward. One of the nurses rushed forward to stop her,
looking startled. She walked right through Squall as if he wasn’t there. Because of course, to anyone but Morrigan, he wasn’t.

  ‘Elder Quinn! Forgive me but this ward is closed to everyone, even— Please, wait. You’re not wearing the appropriate—’

  ‘Get out. All of you.’ Morrigan felt the vibrations in her vocal cords, felt her mouth form the words, felt the air expelled from her lips. But even she could scarcely believe she’d said it; the voice was so convincingly Elder Quinn’s – frail, croaky and ancient, with a hint of steel. The nurses on duty didn’t hesitate to obey. ‘Shut the doors behind you. Don’t let anyone else in.’

  Morrigan felt the illusion of Elder Quinn fall away as she and Squall were left alone in the ward.

  Only they weren’t alone, of course. The walls were lined with Wunimals big and small – some in beds, some in cages – but far too many to fit comfortably in the space. Most were sedated, or at least in some half-sleeping, half-waking state that could barely be described as alive.

  ‘Can you sense it?’ Squall asked her. ‘The void.’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was just as Jupiter had described. They were hollow, every one of them. Morrigan couldn’t see it the way her patron could, but she could feel it, and it was perhaps the most deeply upsetting thing she’d ever experienced – like a nausea she felt in her heart instead of her stomach. Unnatural and wrong.

  No wonder Anah had been so upset lately; if Morrigan had had to be near this all the time, she’d be constantly crying too.

  She cast a curious glance at Squall and saw that he was staring at the ceiling, apparently unable to look directly at the hollow Wunimals. She could feel layers of his own fear and horror and disgust. It only made her furious.

  ‘You did this,’ she reminded him in a low, angry voice. ‘Look at them. Maybe Wintersea asked for it, but you did it.’

  He didn’t respond.

  Morrigan led him from one ward through to the next, and the next, in silence. Finally she found what she was looking for.