Blythewood

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  Evangeline!

  The bells played my mother’s name, and then I heard my mother’s voice, as clearly as if she had been in the room with me, give back his name. Then the shadows swallowed him and the music stopped. I was alone in the dark room with only the echo of a man’s name in my mother’s voice.

  Judicus.

  z o Z I’m not sure how long I sat there. Dimly I remembered that somewhere up above me Nathan was dragging Raven into the woods, but that seemed like another story that the shadows were playing.

  It was another shadow story. The reason the man in the story looked so familiar was that he reminded me of Nathan. The way he retreated into the library and hid behind his books. The way he snuck down into the candelabellum chamber and watched the shadows . . .

  Of course. That’s what Nathan had been doing. He had access to the dungeons. He wouldn’t have been able to resist the lure of the candelabellum, especially if he thought it could tell him how to find Louisa. But the stories the candelabellum told weren’t entirely reliable. They were made of light and shadow, and so the story changed depending on what you focused on— the light or the shadow. Nathan had been lured into the shadows, into believing that Raven held the key to finding Louisa. It wasn’t just Raven who would be destroyed if I didn’t find them. Nathan, too, was in danger of being swallowed by the shadows, just as Judicus van Drood had been.

  I got to my feet and crossed the darkness to the door. When I opened it, light poured in through the corridor beyond, which meant that the trapdoor to the library was open. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to close the door to the candelabellum chamber. As I closed the door I heard the faint tinkle of bells— a last remnant of the song my mother used to sing to me, calling to mind the story I’d just watched. A story made up of light and darkness. Which had I focused on?

  Feeling as though I’d missed something, I turned and walked toward the light.

  34

  With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.”

  AS I WALKED up the stairs to the library I heard a murmuring voice.

  “Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow.”

  Miss Sharp was reciting a poem. It wasn’t one I’d heard before.

  “For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow and plough. And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.” It was a poem that celebrated the unusual, the marred, the imperfect—things neither light nor dark, but somewhere in between. It seemed a fitting anthem to my return from the dark into the light.

  “All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) I reached the top step at the last line of the poem. Miss Sharp and Miss Corey sat at table, a tray with teacups and scones to one side. Both their heads, one gold, one russet, were bent over the same book. Miss Corey was not wearing her hat and veil. Without it I could see the dappled pattern that spread across her face. Miss Corey’s face was as mottled as the brindled, freckled things the poem celebrated. She looked like an exotic creature, as strange in her way as the fairies that populated Blythe Wood, but also quite lovely, which must be why Miss Sharp was reading a poem that celebrated such “counter, original, spare, strange beauty.” Miss Corey was certainly looking at her with gratitude—so intently that she didn’t see me. But when Miss Sharp looked up from the page, she startled, her eyes widening.

  “My bells! What’s happened to you, Ava? You look like you’ve been . . .”

  “In a fire,” Miss Corey finished, closing the book Miss Sharp had been reading from with a decisive snap as if she could erase what we had heard by closing the book on the poem.

  “Your face is covered with soot.” Her eyes grew even wider. “And there are feathers in your hair!”

  I patted my hair and plucked out a black feather—one of Raven’s from when we kissed. I blushed at the memory of it.

  “You’ve been with a Darkling,” Miss Corey said.

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but I can explain. He’s not evil. He’s been

  CAROL GOODMAN [ 417 explaining things to me since we met on the winter solstice—” “You’ve been seeing him since then?” Miss Corey hissed.

  The blood that had suffused her cheeks a moment ago had

  drained away now, the strawberry-colored stains on her face

  standing out vividly against the white. Her eyes slid away from

  mine when I looked at her. Was that how it was going to be from

  now on? Would my reputation be so besmirched by my association with a Darkling that all my friends would turn from me? I

  didn’t have time to worry about that.

  “This is not the point!” I cried. “Nathan has taken him to

  the woods.”

  “Nathan has taken him?” Miss Sharp asked. “Don’t you

  mean the other way around?”

  “No, she doesn’t.” The voice came from the doorway, where

  Helen and Daisy stood. “We saw Nathan leading a Darkling

  into the woods,” Daisy went on. “He had Mr. Bellows’s dagger

  in his hand.”

  “Are you sure Nathan was in control and not the Darkling?”

  Miss Corey asked. “They’re devious creatures—ruthless, cunning, and inhuman.”

  Miss Sharp winced at the harshness of the last word. “Really, Lil, I thought you were more tolerant. You sound like the

  social Darwinists.”

  “We’re not talking about different sorts of people, Vi. You

  have no idea what these monsters are like. One of them killed

  my grandmother.”

  “Are you sure?” I interrupted. I hated to see two of my favorite teachers arguing. “Raven says that the tenebrae can disguise themselves as anything. Maybe it was one of them that killed your grandmother.”

  “Or maybe you’ve been mesmerized by the demon. When they found my grandmother she’d been ripped to shreds by one of the creatures, but she died begging my grandfather to open the window so she could see him one last time.”

  “Like Cathy in Wuthering Heights,” Daisy murmured, “begging Heathcliff to open the windows so she can smell the heather on the moors.”

  “Life is not a romantic novel,” Miss Corey said, wheeling on Daisy. Then turning back to me, “And the Darklings aren’t misunderstood romantic heroes. Life is a lot crueler than you can possibly imagine. You might as well learn that now.” “What a terrible thing to say, Lillian!” Miss Sharp said, her eyes blazing. “You’re the last person I would have thought would be cruel because someone was different.”

  All the color had drained out of Miss Corey’s face, leaving only the dark mottling of her skin, which now looked like an angry rash instead of the beautiful “dappled things” praised in the poem. “Perhaps I’m just trying to protect her from nightmares,” she said.

  “Protect whom from what nightmares?”

  The question came from the doorway. Mr. Bellows stood there, an apple in one hand, a book in the other. He looked innocently from Miss Corey to Miss Sharp and then to me, taking in my bedraggled state. “Ava certainly looks like she’s taken a fright.”

  “Ava’s been with a Darkling and Nathan is missing,” Miss Sharp said quickly, waving him into the room and shutting the door behind him. “We’re trying to decide what to do. Ava

  claims that Nathan took the Darkling.”

  “Whyever would Nathan do such a thing?” Mr. Bellows

  asked. “And how could he control a Darkling? I’m quite sure we

  haven’t covered that in the syllabus.”

  “He has your dagger!” I cried impatiently. “He’s been practicing shadow magic with it. I’m afraid Nathan’s been taken

  over by the tenebrae.”

  “Then we must find him immediately,” Mr. Bellows said,

  his face pal
e.

  “We’ll have to tell Dame Beckwith . . . ” Miss Sharp began,

  but Mr. Bellows shook his head.

  “She’s not here. Gillie drove her to Rhinecliff this morning

  after breakfast to take the train to the city for an emergency

  meeting of the Bell & Feather. She won’t be back until tonight.

  And then imagine her horror on hearing that her son is lost in

  the same woods where her daughter disappeared. She’ll send in

  the Hunt to flush out any Darklings in the woods—” “We can’t let her do that!” I interrupted. “Raven helped

  me. I can’t be the reason he and his kind are hunted down and

  killed!”

  “If we begin the search ourselves now we might find Nathan before Dame Beckwith returns.”

  “And how do you plan to get past the Dianas and their

  hawks?” Miss Corey demanded.

  “Wasn’t Gillie going to hold a workshop on imping the falcons’ tail feathers today?” Mr. Bellows asked. “The Dianas will

  be in the mews with their birds all afternoon.”

  “They leave one on duty,” Miss Corey objected. “But today it’s Charlotte Falconrath,” Mr. Bellow’s replied.

  “And she’s . . . well . . .”

  “A ninny,” Helen put in. “One of us could easily distract her

  while the rest of us sneak into the woods. I suggest Daisy do it.

  No one would suspect Daisy of subterfuge.”

  “The rest of us?” Miss Corey repeated. “You don’t think

  you’re going, Helen? We can’t afford to lose another student in

  the woods.”

  “I have to go to watch over Ava so she doesn’t run off with

  her Darkling paramour.”

  “My what . . . ?” I began to object to Helen calling Raven my

  paramour, but Miss Corey had raised another objection. “Why must we bring Ava?”

  Helen let out an exasperated sigh. “Because Ava’s been

  meeting the Darkling since Christmas. She’ll know where to

  find him.”

  I stared at Helen aghast.

  “What?” she said. “Did you think I’m blind? You do know

  where he lives, don’t you?”

  I didn’t think it was the right time to say he was presently

  living at Violet House. Besides, I knew where they were going. I

  pushed past Helen to get to the window seat, where Nathan had

  stacked his books. I picked up the top one. To Elfland and Back

  by Thomas the Rhymer. The book below it was entitled Oisin’s

  Travels to Faerie. I quickly sifted through the rest of the books.

  Most were books about travel to Faerie, but there was also one

  on using shadow magic.

  “They’re almost all about traveling to Faerie,” I said. “Nathan must have glimpsed Louisa in Faerie on the solstice. That’s why he’s taken Raven. He’s going to make him open the door

  to Faerie and let him in.”

  “Can a Darkling do that?” Miss Sharp asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “They can open the door but not go through

  it. And they can’t help anyone out. If Nathan goes to Faerie . . .” Mr. Bellows finished the thought for me. “He might not return for a hundred years.”

  z o Z Miss Sharp insisted that we gird ourselves for the expedition rather than rushing in willy-nilly. She sent Miss Corey to the mews to prolong the imping of the birds to give us more time.

  “You have a way with Gillie,” she said, attempting, I thought, to put their quarrel behind them. But Miss Corey only seemed offended anew to be shunted off on a secondary errand while we armed ourselves for a mission into the woods.

  “Miss Swift won’t have taught you expedition protocol yet, so we’ll have to cover this quickly. The most important thing to remember is bell, spell and bow. Strap these bells around your wrists. You can use them to ward off the lesser fairies, and we can track each other by the sound of the bells. If you fall into Faerie, follow the sound of the bells out.” She demonstrated two separate ringing patterns for warding off fairies and for signaling to someone trapped in Faerie.

  “So it is possible to go into Faerie and come right out again without spending a hundred years there?” I asked.

  “The hundred-year phenomenon—or Rip van Winkle effect—is rarer than people think,” Mr. Bellows replied, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his chin. “Time is different in Faerie, but if you carry a reliable timepiece . . .” He took out of his vest pocket a gold pocket watch inscribed with the Bell and Feather insignia, “you can find your way out.”

  “Will this do?” I asked, taking out the repeater.

  Miss Sharp’s eyes widened at the sight of the watch. “That’s one of my grandfather’s watches,” she said. “Yes, it should work most admirably. But you must also remember not to eat anything there or play any games.”

  “It was the game of nine pins that did old Rip in,” Mr. Bellows commented.

  “Dancing is also to be avoided,” Miss Sharp added. “That’s what beguiled Oisin into his two-hundred-year stay. It’s understandable. The music there is divine.”

  I saw Daisy staring open-mouthed at our instructors. I, too, was surprised. “You sound as if you’ve . . . gone there,” Helen said.

  Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows regarded each other guiltily. “You’re not supposed to know about it until the senior-year field trip,” Miss Sharp said. “Everyone at Blythewood has to go once to Faerie before they graduate. It’s required for induction into the Order. We’re carefully prepared and trained to get each other out. If Nathan hasn’t eaten anything, or danced, or played any games . . .”

  “Or kissed anyone,” Mr. Bellows added with a rueful smile. “The natives can be quite . . . flirtatious.”

  “Why, Rupert!” Miss Sharp exclaimed with a mischievous smile. “Did someone flirt with you on your journey?”

  “A siren,” he answered, blushing. “She employed all her feminine and fay wiles, but I resisted by conjugating Latin verbs. The magic of Faerie, you see, is incompatible with logic. If you concentrate on something logical—and dull—you can’t be seduced. Besides, fairies hate Latin.”

  “I can see why,” Helen, whose least favorite class was Latin, remarked. “I don’t think conjugations will work for me.”

  “Try reciting the Social Register,” Daisy suggested. “You’ll bore them to death.”

  “I suggest you both use the spell against enchantment you learned in Miss Calendar’s class. Defendite me artes magicas.” She made us repeat it three times. “Excellent,” she said. “And if that doesn’t work, shoot the creature with these.” She gave us each a quiver full of iron-tipped arrows. “We’ll pair up teacher and student. I’ll go with Helen, as she’s such an excellent archer and I’m not. Ava, you’ll go with Rupert.”

  “What about me?” Daisy asked, clearly unhappy not to be paired up with Rupert Bellows.

  “After you’ve distracted Charlotte Falconrath, you can meet up with Lillian. Together you can watch the woods for our return. If we’re not back by the time Dame Beckwith returns from the city, you should tell her where we’ve gone.” She gave me an apologetic look. “There will be no choice then. Dame Beckwith will send in the Hunt and flush the woods of the Darklings.”

  z o Z At noon Gillie whistled the falcons up to the rooftop mews. We watched from the library window. They came flying to him from across the lawn, their shrill cries rending the air. The Dianas came in their wake, trailing behind their birds as if they were tethered to them and not the reverse. “Dame Beckwith will tell ye that the falcon is trained to its mistress,” Gillie once told me, “but it’s just as true that the girl is trained to her bird. The falconer becomes a little bit a falcon, just as the hunter becomes the thing he hunts.”

  But here at Blythewood we hunted fairies. Did that mean we each became a little bit fay?


  I didn’t have time to ponder the question now. Miss Sharp gave me and Helen the signal to follow her and Mr. Bellows. We each had a pack basket strapped to our backs. Our story, should anyone challenge us, was that we were going to the gardens to collect flowers and herbs that had appeared in Shakespeare’s plays.

  Luckily, most of the girls had retreated to the house for lunch. The day that had begun so warm had grown chill. Only Charlotte Falconrath stood on the lawn, her small kestrel perched on her gloved hand. Daisy was already approaching her. We could hear her voice through the still air exclaiming at how pretty “the birdy” was and Charlotte’s bored patrician drawl responding that it was a hunting animal, not a pet, and that he’d bite Daisy’s fingers off if she weren’t careful.

  “More likely that Charlotte will bite Daisy’s fingers off,” Helen remarked as we crossed between the greenhouse and the mews. “I can’t say I envy Daisy her job. I’d rather converse with fairies and demons than Charlotte Falconrath. Although I think I ought to be the one to go with Mr. Bellows. We two are the best archers and can go on ahead to clear the way for you and Miss Sharp.”