The Raven Boys

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 13

 

  Stepping through the black arch of the entrance, Gansey thought, Noah is good at finding things. He hoped that Noah was right about Ronan.

  The church enveloped Gansey in an incense-scented pocket of air, a rare enough smell that it instantly evoked half a dozen memories of family weddings, funerals, and baptisms, every one of them summer. How strange that a season should be held captive in one breath of trapped air.

  "Ronan?" The word was sucked into the empty space. It echoed off the unseeable ceiling far overhead so it was only his own voice, in the end, that answered him.

  The subdued aisle light made peaked shadows of arches. The darkness and uncertainty crushed Gansey’s ribs as small as a fist, his breathless lungs reminding him of yet another long-ago summer day, the afternoon he first realized there was such a thing as magic in the world.

  And there Ronan was, stretched out on one of the shadowed pews, an arm hanging off the edge, the other skewed above his head, his body a darker bit of black in an already black world. He wasn’t moving.

  Gansey thought, Not tonight. Please don’t let it be tonight.

  Edging into the pew behind Ronan, he put his hand on the other boy’s shoulder, as if he could merely wake him, praying that by assuming it so, it would be true. The shoulder was warm below his hand; he smelled alcohol.

  "Wake up, dude," he said. The words didn’t sound light, though he meant them to.

  Ronan’s shoulder shifted and his face turned. For a brief, unchained moment, Gansey had a sudden thought that he was too late and Ronan was dead after all, and that his corpse woke now only because Gansey had commanded it to. But then Ronan’s brilliant blue eyes opened, and the moment dissipated.

  Gansey let out a sigh. "You bastard. "

  Ronan said plainly, "I couldn’t dream. " Then, taking in Gansey’s stricken expression, he added, "I promised you it wouldn’t happen again. "

  Gansey tried again to keep his voice light, but failed. "But you’re a liar. "

  "I think," Ronan replied, "that you’re mistaking me for my brother. "

  The church was quiet and full around them; it seemed brighter now that Ronan’s eyes were open, as if the building had been asleep as well.

  "When I told you I didn’t want you getting drunk at Monmouth, I didn’t mean I wanted you drunk somewhere else. "

  Ronan, with only a little slurring, replied, "Pot calling the kettle black. "

  With dignity, Gansey said, "I drink. I do not get drunk. "

  Ronan’s eyes dropped to something he held near his chest.

  "What is that?" Gansey asked.

  Next to his chest, Ronan’s fingers curled around a dark object. When Gansey reached down to uncurl his grip, he felt something warm and living, a rapid pulse against his fingertips. He snatched his hand away.

  "Christ," said Gansey, trying to make sense of what he’d felt. "Is that a bird?"

  Ronan slowly sat up, still holding his cargo close. Another whuff of alcohol-laced breath drifted toward Gansey.

  "Raven. " There was a long pause as Ronan regarded his hand. "Maybe a crow. But I doubt it. I … yeah, seriously doubt it. Corvus corax. "

  Even drunk, Ronan knew the Latin name for the common raven.

  And it was not just a raven, Gansey saw. It was a tiny foundling, featherless mouth still a baby’s smile, wings still days and nights and days away from flight. He wasn’t sure he would want to touch something that looked so easily destroyable.

  The raven was Glendower’s bird. The Raven King, he was called, from a long line of kings associated with the bird. Legend had it that Glendower could speak to ravens, and vice versa. It was only one of the reasons why Gansey was here in Henrietta, a town known for its ravens. His skin prickled.

  "Where did it come from?"

  Ronan’s fingers were a compassionate cage around the raven’s breast. It didn’t look real in his hands. "I found it. "

  "People find pennies," Gansey replied. "Or car keys. Or four-leaf clovers. "

  "And ravens," Ronan said. "You’re just jealous ’cause" — at this point, he had to stop to regroup his beer-sluggish thoughts — "you didn’t find one, too. "

  The bird had just crapped between Ronan’s fingers onto the pew beside him. Holding the fledgling in one hand, Ronan used a church bulletin to scrape the majority of the mess off the wood. He offered the soiled paper to Gansey. The weekly prayer requests were spattered with white.

  Gansey only took the paper because he didn’t trust Ronan to bother finding a place to throw it out. With some distaste, he asked, "What if I implement a no-pets policy at the apartment?"

  "Well, hell, man," Ronan replied, with a savage smile, "you can’t just throw out Noah like that. "

  It took Gansey a moment to realize that Ronan had made a joke, and by then, it was too late to laugh. In any case, he knew he was going to let the bird return with them to Monmouth Manufacturing, because he saw the possessive way Ronan held it. Already the raven looked up at him, beak cracked hopefully, dependent.

  Gansey relented. "Come on. We’re going back. Get up. "

  As Ronan unsteadily climbed to his feet, the raven hunched down in his hands, becoming all beak and body, no neck. He said, "Get used to some turbulence, you little bastard. "

  "You can’t name it that. "

  "Her name’s Chainsaw," replied Ronan, without looking up. Then: "Noah. You’re creepy as hell back there. "

  In the deep, shadowed entrance of the church, Noah stood silently. For a second, all that seemed to be visible was his pale face; his dark clothing invisible and his eyes chasms into someplace unknowable. Then he stepped into the light and he was rumpled and familiar as always.

  "I thought you weren’t coming," Gansey said.

  Noah’s gaze traveled past them to the altar, then up to the dark, unseeable ceiling. He said, with typical bravery, "The apartment was creepy. "

  "Freak," Ronan remarked, but Noah seemed unconcerned.

  Gansey pulled open the door to the sidewalk. No sign of Adam. Guilt for calling him out for a false alarm was beginning to settle in. Though … he wasn’t entirely certain it was a false alarm. Something had happened, even if he wasn’t yet sure what. "Where did you say you found that bird again?"

  "In my head. " Ronan’s laugh was a sharp jackal cry.

  "Dangerous place," commented Noah.

  Ronan stumbled, all his edges blunted by alcohol, and the raven in his hands let out a feeble sound more percussive than vocal. He replied, "Not for a chain saw. "

  Back out in the hard spring night, Gansey tipped his head back. Now that he knew that Ronan was all right, he could see that Henrietta after dark was a beautiful place, a patchwork town embroidered with black tree branches.

  A raven, of all the birds for Ronan to turn up with.

  Gansey didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Chapter 10

  Whelk was not sleeping.

  Back when he was an Aglionby boy, sleep had come easy — and why shouldn’t it have? Like Czerny and the rest of his classmates, he slept two or four or six hours on weekdays, up late, up early, and then performed marathon sleeping sessions on the weekend. And when he did sleep, it was hours of easy, dreamless sleep. No — he knew that was false. Everyone dreamed, only some forgot.

  Now, however, he rarely closed his eyes for longer than a few hours at a stretch. He rolled in his bedsheets. He sat bolt upright, woken by whispers. He nodded off on his leather couch, the only piece of furniture the government hadn’t seized. His sleep patterns and energy seemed dictated by something larger and more powerful than himself, ebbing and flowing like an uneven tide. Attempts to chart it left him frustrated: He seemed more wakeful at the full moon and after thunderstorms, but beyond that, it was difficult to predict. In his mind, he imagined that it was the magnetic pulse of the ley line itself, somehow invited into his body through Czerny’s death.

  Sleep deprivation made his life an imaginary thing, his
days a ribbon floating aimlessly in water.

  It was nearly a full moon and it had not been long since it rained, so Whelk was awake.

  He sat in a T-shirt and boxers in front of the computer screen, operating the mouse with the unprincipled and dubious productivity of the fatigued. All in a rush, the countless voices invaded his head, whispering and hissing. They sounded like the static that buzzed over phone lines in the vicinity of the ley line. Like the wind before a storm front. Like the trees themselves conspiring. As always, Whelk couldn’t pick out any words, and he couldn’t understand the conversation. But he did understand one thing: Something strange had just happened in Henrietta, and the voices couldn’t stop talking about it.

  For the first time in years, Whelk retrieved his old county maps from his tiny hall closet. He had no table and the counter-top was cluttered with opened packages of microwave lasagna and plates with stale bread crusts on them, so he spread the maps out in the bathroom instead. A spider in the bathtub skidded out of his way when he flattened a map against the surface.

  Czerny, you’re in a better place than me, I think.

  But he didn’t really believe that. He had no idea what had become of Czerny’s soul or spirit or whatever you wanted to call what had been Czerny, but if Whelk had been cursed with whispering voices merely by his part in the ritual, Czerny’s fate must’ve been worse.

  Whelk stood back and crossed his arms, studying the dozens of marks and notations he’d made on the maps over the course of his search. Czerny’s impossible handwriting, always in red, noted energy levels along the possible path of the ley line. Back then, it had been a game, a treasure hunt. A play for glory. Was it true? It didn’t matter. It was an expensive exercise in strategy with the East Coast as the playing field. Looking for patterns, Whelk had painstakingly drawn circles around areas of interest on one of the topographical maps. A circle around an old copse of ash trees where the energy levels were always high. A circle around a ruined church that wildlife seemed to avoid. A circle around the place Czerny had died.

  Of course, he had drawn the circle before Czerny had died. The place, a sinister group of oak trees, had been notable because of old words carved into one of the trunks. Latin. It seemed incomplete, difficult to translate, and Whelk’s best guess was "the second road. " The energy levels were promising there, though, if inconsistent. Surely this, then, was on the ley line.

  Czerny and Whelk had returned a half-dozen times, taking readings (next to the circle, there were six different numbers in Czerny’s handwriting), digging in the dirt for possible artifacts, watching overnight for signs of supernatural activity. Whelk had constructed his most complicated and sensitive dowsing rod yet, two metal wires bent at a ninety-degree angle and inserted into a metal tube handle so that they could swing freely. They’d dowsed the area around it, trying to establish for certain the path of the line.

  But it remained spotty, coming in and out of focus like a distant radio station. The lines needed to be woken, to have their frequencies honed, the volume turned up. Czerny and Whelk made plans to attempt the ritual in the oak grove. They weren’t quite sure of the process, though. All Whelk could find out was that the line loved reciprocity and sacrifice, but that was frustratingly vague. No other information presented itself, so they kept pushing it off. Over winter break. Spring break. End of the school year.