“This is the barkeep?” Dalton asked, tapping his fingers on the glass counter. “From the Birch and Fox? So the rumors are true . . .”
“I understand your need for haste, but let us not make even one mistake.” It was a woman, small and almost frail, and she removed her hood to reveal starkly pale hair and skin. Her small, cunning eyes were a watery spring green, but her lips and cheeks lacked all color. Snowy white hair had been bound up in a single black ribbon, a few wayward curls brushing against her chin. Most perplexing was the talisman around her neck, a starlike enameled brooch with a gem that never resolved into any one kind of stone. In the space of a breath it had become a ruby and then an amethyst.
“And you are?” Dalton said, glancing hopefully at Niles, who became instantly busy with something underneath the countertop.
“That is not important,” she replied. Her voice, quiet but commanding, held the faintest hint of a dockside upbringing. Her dress surprised me, coarse, so unlike her fine porcelain hair and skin. “I know how to undo this curse. At least, in theory.”
“Very comforting,” Khent drawled, his eyes never leaving the woman’s face.
Her age was impossible to determine, though her hands were weathered and strong.
The stranger fixed Khent with a withering stare. Then she unpacked her parcel, removing a bundle of leaves, a smooth piece of wood, a sharply pointed bone, a bowl, and a corked bottle. “The storm worsens. Our time is short. If you have questions, ask them now, but I would rather begin the spell—it may take all night.”
Khent opened his mouth to snap back at her, but I stepped between them, lifting Mab’s cage onto the glass, setting it next to the bottle she had just unpacked.
“I only want you to promise me that you will not hurt this creature. The being trapped inside it is . . . precious. Very precious. Do what you can, but please, this being is innocent,” I said, looking into her shifting green eyes.
She tilted her head to the side and smiled at me as if I were a simple child. “You have a sentimental heart. My condolences, that will make this difficult indeed.”
“S-Sorry?” I stammered. “How so?”
“Have any of you others seen the creature’s true form?” she asked, still staring into my eyes.
Silence. I had expected that, but it chilled my blood nevertheless. Though we were surrounded by friendly folk and the anchoring comfort of so many books, I felt horribly alone then, sucked into a world where only I and this stranger existed, with her seeing directly into my heart. And my heart quaked. I did not at all like the look of that long bone implement. After all, I had not forgotten the notes.
Spell and sage, blood and ink, wine and water . . .
Blood. My hands had gone slick with perspiration, and I wiped them on my skirts, hoping the stranger didn’t notice. But she did, of course, and raised one white eyebrow.
“It falls to you. I hope you are made of stronger stuff than a tender heart and sweaty palms,” she warned, turning back to her array of instruments on the counter.
“Listen, you,” I told her, annoyed. “The Devil was my tutor, and I say to you now: do not underestimate me, for he taught me well.”
She only scoffed at that. “I’m terribly impressed. Now, it will not take long to prepare. That open area on the carpets will do. Surround it with eight candles, black if you have them. Put the creature in the middle and then kneel beside it.”
Dalton and Niles fell at once to action, Niles vanishing into a back room while Dalton went to clear more space near the carpets under the paper lanterns. The storm shook the store again, and I rubbed my arms, taking slow, reluctant steps toward the middle of the shop. Mary and Khent appeared at my elbows, and though they said nothing, I sensed their trepidation, as it so clearly echoed mine.
“Oh, Louisa, perhaps it will be all over quickly,” Mary said with a shiver in her voice. “Like one of Poppy’s screams. Maybe I can even shield you—I’ll ask her—though to say it true, I do not like the look of her.”
Khent proved far less optimistic. “She smells of old beer and vomit. And craft—ancient, terrible craft. I don’t trust her.”
“What choice do I have? We cannot keep Mother trapped in there forever.”
Selfishly, my fears had little to do with what pain or fright could accompany this ritual, but with how Father would react. Already I sensed a boiling inside me, a sensation like a teakettle growing hot to the touch, iron thrust in fire warming until it burned. This was his doing, after all, and though his exchange with Mother in my dreams—or simply in my mind—had intimidated him into silence, I knew that reprieve could not last. The sands were slipping through the glass, and only a few grains remained, my hands clutching into fists preemptively as if I had the means to stop a crashing wave with a small and whispered, “please.”
Perhaps Father’s displeasure was falling from the sky, the rush of rain against the bricks so noisy it sounded like the whole of London was sinking under water. I tried to ignore the deluge and the thunder, each random rumble making me jump.
What had Mother called me? A willing one? Aye, I was willing, but also I was so very afraid.
We needed allies. We needed help. I feared our escape from London would not be an easy one, and harder still whatever awaited us at Coldthistle. I remembered the feeling of safety and warmth I had felt in my dream when Mother came near, and it steeled my heart to think that I could carry that same feeling with me to confront Henry and ask for his help ridding Father from my mind. Or better still, perhaps Mother herself would know how to banish him without leaving me a soulless husk.
The mood became somber, that of a funeral procession. On the rich carpets I had so admired before, Dalton had placed Mab out of her cage. The fuzzy pink spider did not move, though it had turned to watch us approach. Niles breezed by us a moment later, mumbling to himself as he clumsily laid out the stubby black candles in a circle. Then we were all assembled, Fathom and Dalton standing nearest the entrance, Khent and Mary toward the counter, Niles huddling behind them. The stranger carefully flattened a burlap cloth next to Mab and put her instruments down upon it.
Lifting my skirts, I stepped over one of the candles, feeling its heat lick at my ankle as I joined Mab and the stranger.
“What are you?” I asked her, giddy with nerves.
She stood and faced me in her rough-spun barkeep’s woolens and gave me a mild smile. “Most would call me a witch. I studied under the last true Da’mbaeru of London, who disappeared some years ago. She taught me her craft, though in my heart I sense she withheld much.”
I lifted both brows at that and said nothing. In fact, I had a strong suspicion where that last Da’mbaeru had gone, and what her current occupation had become. Strange that they had both landed in positions of service. That this woman had known and been taught by Mrs. Haylam almost gave me solace. Almost.
“Nothing good comes of their arts,” I said at last, thinking of Lee and the curse I had thrust upon him in death.
“We are not performing their arts,” she replied tartly. “We are undoing them.”
“That does not sound like Father’s magicks,” I mused aloud, and the stranger nodded.
“The manner of binding Fathom described is not known to me, but binding as a concept is the foundation of our work. Had you not given me the list of steps in the spell, I would not have agreed to come,” she finished. Then she motioned to the spider and I knelt beside her.
“What can I expect?” My voice trembled now, and the heat of the candles circling us pressed in on me like eight too-warm hands.
“First, a chant,” the stranger murmured. “Second, a burning of sage. Then I will ask for your palm and prick it with a needle and ink, which is a common appeasement to dark spirits. Finally? A baptism and a sacrament. There will be no turning back once we begin, do you understand?”
I had anticipated that from what I had witnessed so far among Unworlders and Upworlders—a dangerous pact once started must be seen through to
completion.
The stranger cleared her throat once, crouched behind me, and placed her fingertips on my shoulders. I had enough time to glance at Khent and Mary, who were now all but hugging each other for comfort. Khent mouthed something to me, and it took me a moment to realize what he was saying.
“Courage.”
Then the stranger spoke directly into my ear. Her voice had changed, becoming more liquid, more dangerous. “Close your eyes,” she said. “And if you are willing, it will begin. Once the ritual starts, there will be no going back. You must endure.”
I did as she asked, though I had no earthly idea if I was willing or not. That one word—courage—repeated itself over and over as I drew in a weak breath. The stranger began to sing, a low hum that wound its way up and down until it sounded like the keening of a widow deep in her grief. The cry entered me and slithered into my blood, and my flesh felt suddenly as if it were on fire. I wanted to snap my eyes open, but instead I gasped, taking more of the wailing into me, drinking down the piercing sound.
At once I was plunged into darkness deeper than what lay behind my eyelids. It was a pit from which there was no escape and which no light penetrated. My breaths became short and harried, and then a single candle began to glow in front of me, and my whole being shuddered with primal dread. I did not know what sat before me, but my bones and blood did. Whatever ancient intuition had been gifted to humans and animals came to life, trilling with warnings.
Courage, I reminded myself desperately.
A voice emerged from the poisonous dark.
“Oh, but you will need far more than courage here, Daughter of Trees.”
Chapter Ten
The place I landed did not have the hazy quality of a dream, yet I did not recognize it at all. Dream or otherworldly realm, I could not say. My eyes would never adjust to this dark, for it was no natural darkness, but the true dark of hell. There was a table between myself and the voice, and even the candle that burned upon it glowed with a hollow purple flame, illuminating nothing. Had I reached out with my hands, there would be no way to see them.
The man—no, thing—seated before me almost appeared as if its head floated in the blackness around us. Yet when it shifted, I saw that it wore a mantle of serous ebony sap, as if a thick black sand were being endlessly poured over its shoulders. Nothing made sense; I could not see my own body, yet I could see this entity before me. Long, white fingers emerged from somewhere inside the cloak and tented, though they were fingers only in the loosest sense, as each hand possessed three “fingers,” each a writhing snakelike creature with an open sucking mouth. In the vast quiet, I could hear those horrid creatures teething softly on the air.
If indeed we breathed air here. I may as well have been taking in terror itself.
And the thing’s head, oh, its head. I wished for nothing more than the ability to tear my eyes away, but my gaze remained ever fixed on its white, rising skull, the length of it too slender and unnatural, waxlike, with a slimy surface that made my hairs stand on end. It had two narrow slits for eyes, black, and a serpent’s diamond nose. Its mouth never quite closed, lolling as if its jaw had been broken in a hundred places and never allowed to mend.
It leaned forward suddenly, carrying with it the smell I knew only to be death. Rot. It was studying me, examining me, peeling away flesh and bone so that I could easily see beneath, and I gasped again, my chest searing with pain, throbbing as if the thing had ripped open my rib cage to peer inside.
“Daughter of Trees, of Darkness,” it purred, ever-moving mouth slopping from side to side, the reek of corpses, sickly sweet, pouring out. “Willing One, Changeling Child, Servant of the Devil, Companion to the Moon’s Own Son, you come with a request.”
It was not a question. The way it drew out the sibilance in request prodded at my spine.
“I do,” I said, not knowing if there was some set exchange I was expected to know. “Who are you?”
Though the ancient strands of life in me knew the answer, I wanted to hear it spoken aloud. All of me shouted, it is Evil Itself, but I waited, my hands knotted and sweating. It pendulated, weighing my question, relishing it with what I assumed was a smirk.
“I . . . am a Binder. Eight are we. Eight we are who make the world. You know our work, little Unworlder. I sense its touch upon you.” And here the Binder wriggled one of its eellike hands, showing me again the undulating mouths of its “fingers.”
I felt a burn across my own fingertips and frowned, overburdened then by knowledge and fear.
“You make the books,” I said. “The Black Elbion—I touched it once and it marked me.”
“The mark was made forfeit by death, but still I know it upon you.” The Binder looked . . . proud. Smug. That expression twisted its liquid mouth into a hideous shape. “Yet I do not make the books, Freedom Seeker. Eight are we, and only one binds the books. I bind souls.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, trembling. It was best to hurry. I knew that nothing I said would surprise the Binder; it already understood me completely. “I came to unbind the Mother. Her soul is trapped inside a spider’s body, put there by my father ages ago.”
The Binder inhaled as if enjoying the bouquet of a fine wine, its slit-like nostrils flaring wide, revealing only moving black ink behind them. “Yes, I remember it well. Not a pact I took lightly. Not an easy binding to undo.” It leaned farther across the table, and I nearly retched from the smell of it. “This will not go well for you, Fae Spawn.”
“I—I’m willing,” I stammered. Courage. I remembered the frisson of bravery I had felt when Khent pressed his thumb between my shoulder blades. “What must I do?”
It waggled a wormy finger in my direction, shaking its narrow white head. “The chanting has already begun. Now”—it inhaled again, its entire body twitching with delight—“now comes the ssssage.”
I smelled it, too. The acrid tang of burning sage filled the air, a halo of smoke rising around us from the ground. It rose and rose until it began to choke me. The Binder remained unaffected, smiling ghoulishly as I coughed and patted my throat, my mouth raw from the hot sting of the smoke. I was breathing in fire, I realized, and it was scorching me down to my stomach. Then the flames came, erupting fast, circling me and leaping onto my gown. I struggled in vain to put out the fire, but there was nothing I could do. The skirt flamed with hungry red blossoms that climbed up my body, the pain in my legs so excruciating that they soon grew numb. Not numb, burned away. I could see bone then, and fluid muscle, and fat oozing from the fire, crackling and speeding the kill.
My screams must have been terrible, but I couldn’t hear them above the pop and sizzle of the flames. I watched helplessly as the remainder of my dress caught, and the flesh of my fingers burned away, nothing but furnace-hot bones left behind to claw at the flesh of my neck that bubbled and ran like wax. The screams ended, they must have, for I no longer possessed a mouth, just a gaping wound that breathed endless fire, cooking me from without and within.
I felt a deep throbbing in my face and then sudden wetness, a jolt that came with a sound like rifle fire. My eyeballs popped.
It was all over. I had to be dead, for the pain was madness and the fire had consumed me utterly. And yet . . . And yet. My vision returned, and with it, the Binder. It was as if nothing at all had happened. The flames were gone and my throat had only the lightest taste of char upon it. But my relief was short-lived. When I looked across the table and saw the smile that awaited me, I knew beyond certainty that my trials had only just begun. “Are you still willing?”
With the heat of the fire having left so abruptly, I felt chilled and clammy, as if I were experiencing the warning signs of an impending illness. I hugged myself tightly and looked away from the Binder, knowing that this was some kind of test or game. This stranger had warned me that there was no going back, that once the ritual began it must be completed.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m still willing. Is this what my father suffered? To d
o the binding?”
The Binder drew back, narrow eyes widening as if in surprise.
“After bleeding Mother to a state of death, he captured eight humans and carved the willingness into their chests, then burned them in a field of sage. The rain did not quench the embers for days. When they were ash, he mixed it with wine and feasted.”
“So others suffered instead? How very like him.” I shook my head.
“There is more than one way to gain the attention of a Binder,” it said. “Yours is a tender heart. His is stone. Now give me your palm, bold fool. A sacrifice is required.”
Had I not already sacrificed? And yet this was the step of the binding that I feared most. Blood and ink. The only way forward, I decided, was breath by breath. Nothing in this strange shadow land was real, even if the pain of the fire had been deeply felt. Even if my fear was undeniably real.
I reached my right hand across the small circular table between us, showing it to the Binder palm up. As I closed my eyes, the Binder ceased leaning in toward me. It was only when I opened them again that it moved. God, it was forcing me to watch whatever sinister thing it had in mind. I swallowed around a lump and sat straighter, determined to press on. Breath by breath. I simply needed to keep breathing and remember that this was a realm of tricks.
The Binder’s left hand hovered over my palm, its three wriggling fingers lowering inch by dreadful inch. The little mouths opened and closed rapidly, faster and faster as they neared my skin, hungry. My stomach turned and I held back a cough, as if my own guts were filled with those twisting snakes. I could tell the Binder was not watching our hands but my face, enjoying every twitch of discomfort that tightened my lips.
The Binder’s fingers found my palm, and at once the long tubes of them went rigid, attaching to my flesh. The sensation at first was mild, just a light tugging, as if someone were playfully pinching the meatier parts of my palm, but the pulling did not stop, and the pinching was no longer so playful. My eyes flew to the Binder’s, and the calming breaths I had ordered myself to take were ragged and noisy.
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