I flinched as a shadow slunk behind me. Raven gripped my hand tighter as I turned to look at what surrounded the grove. Shadow crows filled the trees like a second snowfall made out of ash. Long trails of soot wound around the tree trunks—shadow wolves prowling the edges of the grove, tightening the circle as Merope’s bell grew weaker. It was only a matter of time before they overcame her. Even now the shadows were creeping toward her, nosing at her flesh. A crow dislodged from a branch and landed beside her, then another and another, each one coming closer, talons scrabbling over snow, beaks darting toward soft flesh . . . I lurched toward her to stop them, my legs rubbery in the deep snow, but Raven pulled me back.
“Wait,” he whispered in my ear, his breath the only warmth in this frozen world. His arm grasped my shoulders and he pointed at the sky. “Look.”
Huge black wings spread over the grove, scattering the crows. They beat the snow into a lather of white, flecked with the torn feathers of the carrion crows and drops of blood.
The shadows . . . bleed? It was a thought so horrible I couldn’t even say it aloud, but in the teacup snow globe Raven heard me and whispered back, his voice as filled with horror as my thought.
Yes, inside every shadow creature is a bit of the animal—or person—it once was.
The huge winged creature cleaved his way through the bloody and smoldering crow carcasses to reach Merope. When he reached her she had already been pecked and torn by crows, but she was still alive. He lifted her up, blood dripping from her torn flesh and filling the hollow impression where she had lain through the night. But I saw her arms wrap around her winged savior and her eyes fasten on him. I heard the treble bell ring out, not the one on the ground, or the one in my head. I heard it ringing inside her head.
“She knew him!” I cried. “And loved him.”
Raven clamped his hand over my mouth to hush me. Why? Weren’t we just spectators here?
I heard Raven’s answer in my head, not in words but in images. Merope and Aderyn—I heard his name in Raven’s voice— loved each other, but it was forbidden. A Darkling could not love a mortal. But he could not let her die. When he rescued her and took her as his bride the Darklings were cursed. They could ferry souls to the mortal afterworld and Faerie, but they themselves could never cross into Faerie again. As this part of the story fell into place, I felt Raven’s sorrow and his longing—but whether that longing was for the world his kind had lost or for the love that Aderyn and Merope had, I couldn’t tell. And there was no time to ask.
Aderyn rose with Merope in his arms just as a jangle of bells filled the clearing and the knights arrived, their horses steaming the air, their shouts scattering the shadow creatures. They gathered up Merope’s sisters, who cried and screamed when they saw the bloody shape in the snow, but who were too weak to do much else but cling to the backs of their rescuers as they rode out of the grove, trailed by the shadows.
Come.
Before I knew what was happening, Raven had lifted me up—as Aderyn had Merope—and we were winging through the driving snow, following the route of the knights and the rescued sisters. They were pursued by the shadow creatures on land and in the air—a thick stream of crows and wolves. At the edges of the shadow stream, though, I could make out other creatures—lampsprites and goblins and trolls—fighting back the shadow creatures.
“They were trying to help,” I said.
“Yes,” Raven replied, his voice mournful. “The creatures of Faerie are no friends to the shadows. They’ve battled them for eons. Wherever the shadows are, the fairies try to fight them. Sometimes they lose and the shadows take over their forms.”
I saw a goblin fall under a cloak of shadow crows that pecked holes in his tough hide. He screamed out to his companions—and in the spell of the teacup what would have normally sounded like jibbering grunts turned into words.
“Kill me!” he cried. “Slay me rather than let the tenebrae eat my soul!”
I watched, horrified, as another goblin threw himself on his companion and ripped out his throat with his teeth. I looked away and heard Raven’s voice in my ear. “This is why your kind think that the fairies are aligned with the shadows. But look, even the Darkling who rescued Merope tried to save her sisters.”
I saw that another Darkling was flying beside us, the girl perched on his back calling instructions into his ear and pointing to the figures on the ground. The knights had reached the castle gate. They formed a guard around the sisters to get them through the gate while fighting off the shadows. It was the same scene I’d witnessed in the candelabellum, only now from my aerial vantage point I could see what I hadn’t before—on the edges of the battle goblins and sprites fought off the shadows and from above Aderyn staved off the attack of the crows. If not for Aderyn and the fairies, the knights and sisters would not have gotten to safety, but they were not able to save the prince. When the last of the crows landed on him I wanted to look away. I didn’t want to see him ripped apart again. But I couldn’t look away. I was drawn to the cluster of darkness that formed around him as if it were a magnet that pulled me toward it, its power growing greater as each shadow filled the hollow shape of the struggling prince.
Watching, I grew limp in Raven’s arms. He landed beside a rampart of the castle and braced me against the wall. I felt his breath in my ear, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The toll of the bass bell was too loud in my ears. I hadn’t heard it when I watched this same scene in the candelabellum, because that had been a shadow play. This wasn’t. Whatever magic ruled the teacup, it was stronger. This wasn’t a play I was watching; it was real. The prince was being ripped to shreds in front of my eyes. The shadow crows were burrowing beneath his skin, devouring him from the inside. I could see the crows squirming and bulging beneath his skin. I moaned aloud at the horror of it.
And the shadow-thing turned toward me. Its face was a mass of roiling, raw flesh, but its eyes were already sentient and they were fastened on me. They saw me. His mouth opened and smoke curdled out as he spoke.
I screamed. Raven squeezed my hand so hard I felt my flesh rend . . . and then we were back in Raven’s nest and I was crouched on the floor, Raven’s wings mantled over me, one arm around my shoulder, the other cradling my closed fist. Blood spilled from between my clenched fingers.
“It’s all right,” he was saying, his voice audible now that the bass bell wasn’t ringing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize your magic was so strong you could make the scene real. I had to do something to break the spell.” He was prying my fingers apart, picking shards of broken china out of my shredded flesh, murmuring over and over again that he was sorry and that it was all right until his words blurred into a cooing like the sound pigeons made on the windowsill in the city. Dimly I felt him cleaning and wrapping my hand and then he was wrapping me in a blanket because I couldn’t stop shivering and then he was laying me down on the pallet, which was surprisingly soft, like a feather bed, and he was covering me with his wings because I still couldn’t stop shaking because a part of me was still standing in the snow watching the shadow-thing turn and fix me with its red eyes, open its mouth, and say my name.
26
I AWOKE TO the calls of mourning doves. With my eyes still closed I could imagine myself in our Fourteenth Street apartment, my mother spreading breadcrumbs on the window ledge and talking to the pigeons, her voice low and murmurous as the birds. I used to lie in bed listening and imagining I would learn my mother’s secrets by eavesdropping on her morning talks with the birds, but she spoke so low I never could catch a sound.
Only I wasn’t in my apartment on Fourteenth Street. As the events of last night came back I felt a slow, dawning horror creep over me. I’d been taken by a Darkling. He had cast a spell over me. He had made me see visions in a teacup. My hand was cut and bandaged. I was in his lair now. The Bells knew what he was planning to do with me. I opened my eyes.
Raven was perched on a window ledge holding out a handful of crumbs to a flutter of
doves, their wings a blur as they crowded around him.
“There’s plenty for everyone, dovelings,” he murmured. “What was that?” He tilted his head as if to listen to a fat gray dove that had landed on his shoulder. The dove puffed up its chest and trilled a long histrionic tune. Raven listened gravely.
The dread melted from my bones. A boy who was this gen
320 Blythewood
tle with birds wasn’t going to hurt me. And the visions I had seen in the teacup last night were real. “Can you really understand what they’re saying?” I asked, sitting up.
Raven turned to me, his lips quirking into a smile at the sight of me. Too late I realized what I must look like. I patted my hair and found it a tangled mess full of twigs and feathers. He looked politely away as I tried to put it to rights, giving his attention back to the doves.
“Mourning doves are quite easy to understand. They usually say the same three things over and over again: ‘Woe is me,’ ‘Where’s the worm?’ and ‘Who are you?’ This one, though, is upset about the shadows she’s seen massing in the forest. She’s afraid it means that it will be a hard winter. I’m afraid it means something worse than that.”
He stroked the dove’s ruffled feathers until they lay flat again. “Don’t fret, doveling. I’ll go into town and buy extra seed to see your entire dule through the winter.”
The dove bobbed its head, cooed contentedly, and then took off in a flutter of wings. Raven brushed his hands together to scatter the remaining crumbs out the window and turned to the kettle that had begun to whistle on the stove. While he made tea I finger-combed the twigs out of my hair, picked feathers off my jersey, and straightened my clothes, none of which solved the more pressing issue of my toilette.
“I thought we’d take the tea in a thermos flask groundwise and have our breakfast there,” he said, pouring tea into a silver flask. “You might . . . er . . . like to be on solid ground.” “Yes, that would be nice,” I replied, embarrassed but relieved.
“There’s a ladder right there.” He tilted a chin toward an opening in the floor I hadn’t noticed last night. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
I slithered through the hole, found worn but solid ladder rungs with the tips of my toes, and climbed down, trying not to hurry. When I reached the ground I danced around until I found a downed tree that afforded me some privacy and gratefully crouched behind it. Raven’s tree house was cozy, all right, but I’d miss indoor plumbing.
When I was done, though, I looked around the forest and saw how beautiful it was in the early-morning light. A thin layer of ice coated each branch, giving a pearly sheen to everything. The first rays of the sun streamed slantwise through mist, turning the ice to fiery opals. Birdsong filled the upper canopy—a sound that made me feel curiously safe.
Because the birds wouldn’t be singing if there was danger nearby.
When had I leaned that? I wondered. Was it something Miss Swift had taught us? The hunter must become the thing she hunts, Gillie had told me. That’s why we studied birds. But when had it become second nature to think like one . . . ?
A branch snapped behind me and I turned to find a doe standing only a few feet away nibbling the lichen off a fallen tree. She lifted her head and looked at me out of gold-flecked eyes. Her fur was the color of the last brown leaves clinging to bare branches and the rough bark of the trees. Her eyes were the color of the sunlight streaming through the morning mist. I didn’t feel like a hunter. I felt as much a part of the forest as she was.
“She likes you.”
Raven’s voice came from close behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. So much for my survival skills.
“Why isn’t she afraid of me?” I asked.
“Because you smell like the forest.” He plucked at my sleeve and held up a black feather, one of his that had been stuck to my jersey. “You smell like a Darkling and the creatures here know we won’t hurt them.” He reached inside the canvas bag strapped across his chest—he was wearing a shirt, wings tucked beneath it—and brought out an apple. He held it out toward the deer. Her black wet nose twitched and then she stepped forward, delicate as a ballet dancer en pointe. She stretched her long graceful neck toward Raven’s hand. She pulled back her lips, revealing white blunt teeth, took the apple out of his hand, and crunched into it. The crisp scent of apple made my mouth water.
“Here, we might as well share our breakfast with her.” He sat down on the fallen log where the deer had been nibbling and took out the thermos flask from his canvas bag and poured milky tea into two tin cups. I sat beside him and took the cup and a roll stuffed with cheddar cheese. We sat side by side, eating our rolls and cheese and apples in quiet, the doe crunching her apple companionably beside us, as the bands of sunlight widened in the morning mist.
“It’s hard to believe it’s so peaceful after all I saw last night.”
“But you know it was real, don’t you?”
I looked down at my bandaged hand. “Yes,” I said. “I do. I know because that man . . . that thing . . . I’ve seen him before. He was at the Triangle.”
“The Shadow Master,” Raven said in a low growl that frightened the deer away. “Yes, the creature who came for you at the Triangle was the same kind of monster, only in a different body—a body taken over by the shadows, or the tenebrae as we call them. The Darknesses.”
“What are they?” I asked, shivering.
“Pure evil,” he answered. “Hatred, murder, envy, greed, disembodied evil that has lurked on the edges of the world since time began. They lodge in animals, especially crows and wolves and snakes, but then can lodge in anything alive, human or fairy, as long as there’s already a chink of darkness to let them in.”
“What happens to the creatures they take over?”
“Usually the tenebrae burn out their host in a few years, but sometimes they find a vessel strong enough for them to live inside for decades, even centuries. That creature you saw became a shadow master—he can control the tenebrae, drawing them into other life forms and controlling them. The prince became a shadow master who ravaged the countryside for years, infecting the creatures of Faerie and the Darklings. Only the knight and sisters were able to fight them off with their bells—that’s why your Order thinks that the fairies are evil. They don’t understand that it’s the shadow master controlling them—not even when the tenebrae infected one of their own kind.”
“What happened?” I asked, chilled at the thought that the shadow creatures could creep through the stone castle walls and spells of the Order.
“Merope destroyed him. Only a chime child can destroy a shadow master. That’s why this one is trying to capture you before you can become strong enough to destroy him.”
“Capture me?”
“If he’d wanted to kill you, he would have. He set the factory on fire as a distraction to snatch you. I should never have let you out of my sight for a minute.” He swore under his breath. I stared, horrified.
“A distraction? A hundred and forty-six people were killed! Are you saying it was all my fault? And why were you there? To snatch me away before he could?” Raven laid a calming hand on my arm, but I shook it away and stood up. “And what will you do to me now?”
Raven stood and faced me. His wings were struggling to unfold beneath his shirt. “I will not do anything to you. All I’ve ever done is try to keep you safe. But yes, you’re valuable to us— and to the Order and to the Shadow Master.”
“So that’s why you took me last night? To use me as tool against the Shadow Master?”
“I was also trying to save you from those goblins.”
“Oh, it’s pretty convenient, isn’t it, you always being around when I’m in trouble!” I wasn’t sure why I was so angry. Perhaps it was because it sounded like Raven was only interested in me because I had some special ability to defeat the Shadow Master. Which shouldn’t have bothered me. So why was I storming off from him as if it did?
“Ava,” he called as I plunged throug
h a mote-filled sunbeam. “Wait!” He grabbed my arm and held me back. Although my feet were planted in several inches of snow I was teetering on the edge of a green meadow surrounded by gently swaying willows and starred with a million wildflowers.
“A bit of Faerie,” Raven said softly. “At this time of year the barriers between this world and Faerie are thin. Look, you can see the Riding of the Gentry.”
The sunbeam widened to reveal a procession of men and women on horseback. The horses were all white and decked out with gold saddles and bridles and silver ribbons braided in their manes. A beautiful woman in green rode on the lead horse. Her hair was the same color as the horses’ manes and braided with bells that made a lovely sound, a silver tinkling that was nothing like the iron clanging of our bells. The sound was so lovely I was drawn to it. I stood up and took a step toward her . . . but Raven’s hand tightened on my arm.
“Unless you don’t mind leaving your friends behind for a hundred years, I wouldn’t go any farther. Time is different in Faerie—in fact, they don’t have ‘time’ as we know it. Once you go in there, there’s no telling when you’ll come out again—if ever.”
I longingly watched the procession as it passed by me. The woman in green turned her head and looked at me out of slanting green cat’s eyes. Looking into those eyes I felt everything I had learned at Blythewood slipping away. It wasn’t that those eyes looked innocent—far from it. Those eyes saw everything. They saw me: my doubts and fears and everything that had happened to me. They saw my mother laughing and telling me fairy stories and they saw me going to the chemist for her bottle of laudanum. They saw Tillie Kupermann flirting with the law students and the Triangle girls jumping from the ninth-floor windows. They saw the cocoa parties with Daisy and Helen, and Miss Frost’s specimens. They didn’t judge. The woman in green came from a place that was beyond time—and therefore beyond judgment of what we called good and evil.
Blythewood Page 27
