by Jeff Wheeler
She rushed over to the dilapidated crate and lifted it. Rodents scurried away from the disruption, and Cettie helped Joses curl up and then crouched down next to him and covered them both with the crate. The gaps were huge. It didn’t provide much cover.
The noise of the approaching gang reached the alley. “Oy! Where’d they go!”
“I dunno, Clayton.”
Clayton let out a curse. “They can’t be far.”
“No. Did they go through one of the back doors?”
“I dunno. Joses is clever as a rat. But I stuck him. He won’t make it far. You two, that way. You two, this way. I’ll take this one. Holler if you see them. We’ll be rich as the prince regent if we catch her.”
They went different ways, but it was Clayton who walked toward where they were hiding. Cettie needed desperately to breathe, but she held her breath and tried to hold completely still. Joses writhed in pain and started to groan, but she covered his mouth and tried to calm him.
The slap, slap of Clayton’s shoes stopped right next to them. Cettie froze, willing him to look anywhere else, but a quick glance upward revealed that he was standing right by the crate.
“I’ll kill him,” Clayton grunted savagely.
Cettie closed her eyes, squeezing the dirk’s handle in her hand. Suddenly the crate flew off of them, cracking into splinters. Had he seen them, or was he just venting his anger? It didn’t matter. With the sudden rush of air, she heard Clayton’s surprised gasp. He saw them now. She flung herself at him and stabbed him in the meat of the leg as hard as she could, letting go of the knife only when she felt it jar into bone.
Clayton howled with pain, dropping down to squeeze his knee. Cettie did the technique of butterfly hands Raj Sarin had taught her and hit him in the chest. He stumbled backward and toppled, yelling and cursing in pain. Cettie kicked him in the jaw, and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he lay limp and unconscious. She saw Joses trying to stand, his hand still pressed against his bleeding back, and, despite the obvious pain he was suffering, he grinned at her and nodded in respect.
She helped him rise, and they hurried away as quickly as they could.
Joses’s strength was failing. He walked hunched over, grunting with pain, and his coughs grew more severe. They were in the depths of the Fells now, not the tenements but a neighborhood. Children poked their heads out of windows to look down at them. At least they were no longer being chased. Cettie was hungry again—no, famished. But she didn’t know how to steal, and she didn’t dare try lest it bring the officers down on them in moments. Joses needed a doctor, but he refused to consider it, insisting instead that he bring her to the abandoned house. All the windows were broken, and no one had lived there in years. It had become his private refuge, a place to escape the gangs and life on the street. He said there wasn’t any food there, but it would provide shelter.
It was hidden in a backstreet, split by a narrow alley. One could have reached out from the broken window and touched the window on the other side with a small pole. The exterior was falling apart. The cracked windowsills gaped emptily. Not a single pane of glass was left. The front was on the other side, but Joses led her to the back.
“Open the trapdoor,” he whispered, gazing up at the roofline high above. “It’s for the cesspit, but it’s not used anymore. It doesn’t smell so bad, and no one will see us enter this way.”
She dreaded cesspits, but there wasn’t another choice, so she nodded and gripped the handle of the trapdoor and pulled. The stench was bad but not overpowering. She carefully set the lid down and then helped Joses to the edge.
“I can make it,” he said with a dreamlike voice. With one hand guiding him, he descended the narrow steps leading into the cesspit. Cettie followed, and she heard him call behind him to shut the door.
It was as black as a well.
“Come closer. Hold my arm. I’ll guide you.”
The passage was narrow and foul smelling. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he led her deeper into the cesspit. Fear crept up her spine—what would she do if a ghost attacked them in the dark?—but she kept moving. It felt like they’d been walking forever when she suddenly felt him stop. They’d reached the stairs at last. As they went up, the black turned into gray, and she could begin to see again. Still, she could not help but worry some hand would grab her from the dark.
The home had long been abandoned. Even the rugs had been torn up, leaving stubs of nails beneath. They walked carefully, their shoes echoing on the planks. It was a narrow, little home, nothing like Fog Willows, but it wasn’t as bleak as the tenements. The walls were discolored from where pictures had hung in frames. The baseboards were nicked and scarred. She could almost hear, in her mind, the sound of laborers carting off the things as the family had to abandon it. There was a sadness to the house, a sense of loss.
But there was also something else. As they walked down the corridor on the main floor, she sensed something speaking to her mind. It was the source of the memories that haunted the halls. Not a ghost, but an awareness. A knowing thing. It had gradually become aware of her as she’d mounted the steps from the cesspit.
She saw the narrow door halfway down the hall and knew by instinct that the source of the feeling was hidden inside. It felt similar to the locked door at Fog Willows, except it wasn’t polluted.
“I have a place set up upstairs,” he whispered. “By the skylight. There’s a blanket. Some old shoes. A knife and spoon. Not much, but it’s my own. You can stay with me, Cettie. As long as you need to. Then we’ll sneak back another way to the square. I just need . . . just need to rest a bit.”
She had let go of his shoulder after reaching the top of the stairs but now squeezed him again. She pointed to the door with a questioning look.
“Oh that,” he said, a crooked smile on his face. “That’s where they hide the Mysteries. Have you ever been in one of these?”
She shook her head no.
He gave her a smug look. “I picked the lock. Come and see. Then we can—nngghh—go upstairs.”
As they approached it, she felt drawn to it, filled with an eager curiosity to learn the secrets of the room. Joses limped forward, twisted the handle, and pulled the door open. It creaked.
Cettie peered inside. It was a small closet that contained another door. She felt the sense of awareness coming from behind that one.
“It’s not locked,” Joses assured her, and motioned for her to go in. He leaned against the wall, wincing. “I don’t go in very often. Makes me feel strange.”
Cettie stepped into the closet and put her hand on the inner door handle. As soon as she touched it, she felt her mind begin to unwrap layers. She’d experienced something similar in Gimmerton Sough and the day she had confronted Mrs. Pullman’s thoughts. More memories began to come alive in her mind, memories that weren’t hers. She could see the father of the household sitting in a small den crowded with bookshelves. She could see a mother and three little girls. Cettie saw affection, hard work, and caring. These were the memories of someone else, hidden and buried within the house itself. She squeezed the handle and twisted it, and the door yielded.
When it opened, she saw two glowing lights in the dark. The lights were not very bright, but they were bright enough to drive the shadows back. The lights came from a hunk of stone, about as high as her waist, sitting on a carved stone pedestal. A face was carved into the hunk of stone, and the eyes of the face were glowing. A sense of peace and serenity came from it, as if it were welcoming her back home.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. As she stepped deeper into the shadowy alcove, the light in the eyes began to grow brighter, bright enough to illuminate her ragged dress and the scrapes in her hands. Reaching out her hand, she gently touched the rock.
It wasn’t exactly a voice that spoke to her. It was more like a whisper, a soft kiss against her mind.
Are you the keeper?
Cettie stared at the face. It was a woman’s face, carved a
nd sculpted with the elegance of a statue. She could see in her mind the image of the previous keeper, a woman who had been loyal to the family and its children, who had nurtured and cared for them and the dwelling. A position of trust and authority.
Yes, Cettie thought in her mind. She knew the stone could hear her thoughts, even though she could not speak.
I’ve been waiting for you.
And then Cettie heard music fill the house, the same beautiful strains she had enjoyed at Fog Willows. The lights all began to shine, coming from apertures fixed into the walls, which she suddenly realized were also made of carved stone, only smaller. Every aspect of the house was commanded by this central stone, which had decided to obey her. Memories gushed inside her, knowledge of the previous inhabitants, the families who had lived there for generations. Her mind was engulfed by the information and names and history extending for hundreds of years.
Suddenly her contact was broken. She felt Joses’s fingers digging into her arm as he yanked her away from the stone obelisk.
“What are you doing?” he shouted at her. “Turn it off! Turn it off! The music—they’ll hear it!”
CHAPTER THIRTY–SEVEN
REVERSED
Cettie did not know how to turn it off. Everything within the house was coming alive at once. Even the smell of flowers that suddenly wafted into the stagnant hall. Music swelled in the corridor, a tinkling melody that belied the ruined look. Joses bent over, groaning with pain. He was pale—too pale—and slouched against the wall again, looking on the verge of collapse. She tried to silence the music, to return the house to its former quietude, but it wouldn’t listen to her.
“We can’t stay here now,” Joses wheezed, shaking his head. “The whole street will know we’re here. Clayton will find us.”
Cettie held his arm and tried to help him walk away from the room of Mysteries. He leaned heavily against her, and she noticed the red smear he had left on the wall. Together, they continued down the main corridor, which was now brightly illuminated. The front door was across from them, a little crooked on its hinges, and a loud thumping sounded on it, startling her.
Intruders are coming into the basement.
She heard the whispered premonition, and suddenly she could see into the cesspit through a set of eyes that were not her own. It was glowing now, flooded with light, and she saw the boys of Clayton’s gang descending into the pit. Clayton had a strip of leather tied around his leg, but he hobbled forward with determination. Sickening fear shot through Cettie’s heart.
Can you stop them? she thought to the house’s magic.
Yes.
She felt a throb in her mind, and suddenly the stone carving in the cesspit took on a menacing air. It radiated fear and danger, triggering unthinkable terror in the boys’ minds. She watched in joy as the boys turned around and fled in panic, nearly trampling one another to escape. As soon as the last one had fled, the trapdoor lurched over and shut all by itself, and the image in her mind cooled and faded.
Her relief was short-lived. The door handle jiggled, and suddenly Cettie could see the man standing outside, through another set of eyes. He had a fashionable hat and coat and looked concerned at the noise and commotion he heard within the house. The lock held because the man did not have a key. No matter how fiercely he struggled against it, it would not open.
Joses crumpled to the floor.
Cettie instantly knelt by him, worried for her friend, but she could not rouse him. The pounding on the door continued awhile longer and then went silent. Still the music played on.
Cettie lifted Joses beneath his arms and began to pull him up the stairs. She wanted to find a place to hide, for she knew that the officers would be called to respond. The dwelling was very narrow and tall, each floor holding a different room. With all her strength, she heaved and pulled him up the stairs. It was a slow and grueling process, but she managed to find the floor where he had made his little shelter. She wrapped him up in his blanket, hoping to at least warm his cool skin. There was nothing she could give him. No food, no drink. She couldn’t even speak to him, and the helplessness of that was overpowering. Overhead the skylight shone down on her. Time stretched and faded. The shadows on the floor moved.
“Cettie?” Joses mumbled, coming awake at last.
She rushed to him and knelt, smoothing his hair from his brow. Down below, she heard more pounding on the door. She summoned the power to her and could see who was on the front steps. When the vision opened, she saw the same man as before and Lieutenant Staunton as well.
“You’re sure this is the one?” Staunton asked the man.
“Yes, and you can still hear the music playing. This house has been abandoned for years. The deeds are all tangled up in the courts. Something has awoken the house. Someone’s inside. I don’t know how.”
“Thank you for calling the ministry,” Staunton said. “You did the right thing. My men and I will investigate. Return to your home.”
“It’s unnerving hearing that music from an abandoned dwelling. Do you think the house is haunted?”
“Don’t be superstitious. I’ll see that it stops. Good day, sir.”
It was as if Cettie were standing on the porch with them, the same experience she’d had at Gimmerton Sough. She could see and hear through these strange stones placed throughout the house, all of them connected to the master boulder in the keeper’s room.
“I’m cold,” Joses said with a shiver. She gazed down at him, her heart twisting with sadness. She was watching his life ebb away, helpless to save him. Anxious tears stung her eyes. She leaned down and kissed his cheek, kissed his forehead, trying to offer him comfort in a way other than words.
She heard Staunton say something, a word she didn’t recognize, and suddenly the doorknob turned. She saw officers, about six, enter the dwelling.
Keep them out! Cettie ordered the magic in her mind.
I cannot. They are officers of Law.
She felt the defenses of the dwelling start to fade. The combined will of the six men was enough to overwhelm them. The music went quiet. The lights dimmed. She stared down at Joses’s face, saw the pallor deepen.
“It’s growing dark,” he said worriedly, his lip trembling.
Cettie wanted to tell him it was only the lights in the house. But she could say nothing. She stroked the side of his face, listening to the noise of boots marching up the steps. Staunton wouldn’t help her friend. To those men, Joses was just another dying street urchin. A flickering candle. So what if another one blew out?
Well, to her he was so much more. She gripped his hand and squeezed it hard. His eyelashes fluttered. He gazed at her, looking worried.
“I’m afraid,” he whispered. “I’m afraid of becoming a ghost.”
The grip of his hand was getting weaker. She squeezed even harder, feeling tears drip down her nose.
“You always looked after us,” he croaked. “You sang little songs when we were frightened in the dark. It’s so dark now. I wish you could sing again, Cettie. I’ll miss that.”
Stay with me, she thought toward him. She could sense his life spark quivering, dandelion fluff about to be blown away by a breeze.
The noise of boots came down the hall. She turned and saw Staunton in the doorway.
The officer gazed down at them, his face impassive, and she glared back. “That was quite a chase, Cettie of the Fells. In the end, his blood led us to you. You should have abandoned him in the street.”
Cettie let go of Joses’s hand, and it fell limp to the floor. She rose, feeling her insides boiling with anger, with the desire for revenge.
Attack him, she thought to the stone face down below.
I cannot. He is an officer of Law.
She clenched her fists with fury. Attack him!
Cettie felt the room begin to brighten with light. Her thoughts were overpowering the magic. Staunton’s eyes widened.
“There are six of us and only one of you,” he said angrily. “I don’t ca
re how strong you are. You cannot overpower us. Now come with us right now. He’s gone. There’s nothing more you can do.”
She shook her head no and backed away from him. She would fight them all if she had to.
Staunton scowled. “Very well. Then I will drag you back to the zephyr in bonds.” Three more officers crowded around the doorway.
Cettie increased the pressure on the stone, commanding it to obey her. In her heart, she knew she could summon fire from it and burn the entire house down. She would do it if necessary. She would not go with them. She would not be used as a tool against Fitzroy.
“She’s strong,” one of the officers said worriedly.
“Take her!” Staunton said.
Suddenly there was a ping of broken glass, and something struck Staunton in the chest, knocking him backward. The glass from the skylight shattered down, raining in fragments. The pool of glass lay between Cettie and the officers. A shadow blotted the light from above, and then Raj Sarin descended into the room, gliding down like a leaf.
Her heart thrilled with recognition as he landed amidst the crushed glass.
Staunton had staggered back, holding his chest. He dropped his hand and looked at the small gray ball that had struck him. There was no blood, but his face was a mask of pain.
“I think, gentlemen,” Raj Sarin said, “that you have forgotten how to count.” Then he leaped forward, taking in a gulp of air, and crashed down in the midst of the officers. Cettie watched in transfixed joy as he struck each man, bringing them down one by one with a series of sharp blows. She recognized his forms, saw how all the moves he had been teaching her could be used in practice. The officers quailed before the Bhikhu. One took an elbow in the mouth, another a foot in the stomach. One tried to fight back, but his arm was broken when Raj Sarin scissored his arms across his elbow and forearm. He howled in pain before being silenced by a well-placed punch to the throat.
Then Fitzroy landed in the heap of glass. He held a weapon like the one Cettie had seen him use at Dolcoath—an arquebus. It was partly made of wood, partly of metal, like a half staff. She realized that Fitzroy was the one who had shot Staunton through the glass.
