by C. R. Grey
“I was on my way here, and I saw her—with Lyle!” he said.
“And you didn’t stop her?” Bailey asked. “Maybe she forgot we were meeting.”
“Would that make it any better?” asked Hal. “If she just ‘forgot’ that we’re trying to do something important like, I don’t know, save the kingdom?” He paused and took a deep breath. “I didn’t talk to her, no. But…”
Tremelo raised an eyebrow.
“But what?” he asked.
“I might have followed them,” Hal said. “Just for a minute! Just to listen.”
“Hal!” said Bailey. “That’s weird.”
“Listen? Or eavesdrop?” asked Tremelo, a mischievous smile breaking out from underneath his mustache.
“It wasn’t like that! And anyway, I think Lyle’s got his own Science Competition entry in the works,” Hal said. “Tori’s helping him! They’re going to ‘try it out’ at the end of the week, after some part they’re missing gets delivered.”
“Aha, so it’s not that you’re jealous of Tori’s wayward affections—you’re worried about your standing in the Fairmount scientific community,” Tremelo said, laughing.
“Neither,” said Hal, a little too forcefully. “I just dislike when people don’t keep appointments.”
Bailey studied the machine taking shape on the desk. Since the weekend of the Dominae’s visit, he and Tremelo and the others had built an almost exact replica of the casing of the machine according to the specifications of the blueprint. The result was a boxlike structure with an apparatus in the center that would hold what Tremelo referred to as the “orb,” the missing piece. The casing had been relatively easy to build, with an assemblage of wires that mimicked the blueprint. But the orb remained a mystery.
“I wanted to show you all something I’m trying out,” Tremelo said, gesturing to the machine. “It’s a shame the girls will miss it.…”
It was clear that Tremelo had been busy since the boys’ last visit to the workshop. He’d added three gramophone earpieces to the machine’s top, as well as a system of wires and metal cuffs protruding from the machine’s side.
“Those weren’t on the blueprint,” Hal observed.
“I admit, I’ve struck out on my own,” said Tremelo. “But this is something that’s been buzzing around in here”—he pointed to his noggin—“for ages. And I think that maybe, just maybe, it might help us understand Viviana’s project.
“You see, this casing has been built to hold something volatile—something that’s meant to be a conduit of a very large amount of energy. And so from what I can tell, this machine is meant to be an amplifier of that energy. It harnesses that energy and then directs it outward.”
He whistled, and Fennel left her chair and hopped dutifully up to the desk. Tremelo picked up what looked like a metal bracelet and fastened it around the fox’s neck like a collar. It was connected to the machine’s base by three thin wires.
“When Gwen left her harmonica behind, it got me thinking of an experiment. We still don’t know what this orb does, but what we can use now is the amplifying system.…” Tremelo trailed off as he clamped a wired cuff onto his wrist. “Tell me what you hear,” he said to Bailey and Hal. Then he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes tightly.
Bailey couldn’t know what passed between Tremelo and Fennel then. He didn’t know what memory they were reliving together, or whether they were just having a wordless conversation. But it didn’t matter—what mattered was the unearthly, beautiful sound that flowed out of the gramophone horns. It was like nothing he’d ever heard, a humming that rose and fell in volume and tone until it sounded like many notes at once.
He felt a vibration in his own chest, like the strings of an instrument being strummed. It was the same feeling he’d had when he’d walked into the woods to see Taleth, the feeling of energy thrumming inside him. As he listened to the sounds Tremelo and Fennel were producing, that thrumming in his chest grew until he was sure he wasn’t listening alone: somewhere in the nearby woods, Taleth was hearing it too. He could almost feel her ears perking up as though they were his ears, and he was the one standing on a mountainside, watching the school in the dying light of day. Just the thought of her—this small connection—made Bailey feel more at ease than he’d been in weeks.
Tremelo took off the wrist piece, and the music stopped. Bailey’s connection with Taleth faded away.
“Incredible,” said Hal. Bailey nodded, speechless.
“It’s just an experiment,” Tremelo answered. “Still some kinks to fix. I call it the Halcyon.”
“How does it work?” Bailey managed to ask.
Tremelo pointed to the metal cuffs.
“When Fennel and I are connected by those,” he began, “our bond creates an energy that I can channel into the machine, sort of in place of the missing orb. The sound you hear is that energy becoming magnified, and released into the air around us.”
Bailey nodded again. “I was sure that Taleth could hear what I was hearing too.”
“I felt the same,” said Hal. “Like I was whirling around the clock tower with the bats.”
“Wonderful!” crowed Tremelo. “So you see, the Animas bond is an interconnected web. When I magnify my bond, it in turn magnifies yours. It affects everyone, all the time!”
Tremelo’s enthusiasm was contagious. Bailey broke into a grin.
“Which means, you could make everyone in the kingdom feel it too,” he guessed. “They could become more closely bonded; everyone could.”
“This machine, as it is now, is nowhere near that powerful,” said Tremelo. “But still, it’s a start, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. He had been so focused on the fight against Viviana that he hadn’t thought about what he and his friends were fighting for—it was this, the bond and its goodness. It had the power to connect him to another living creature, to all living creatures. For just a minute, he forgot about the danger they faced. He felt nothing but gratitude that he’d Awakened, and could take part in this.
As Bailey stood in awe, Tremelo’s face changed. A darkness crossed over it.
“But Viviana is using some of this same technology.”
“For what, though?” asked Bailey.
“That’s precisely what I’m afraid of,” said Tremelo.
VIVIANA STOOD IN A snowy field, concentrating intently on the woods in front of her.
She held a long brass blunderbuss decorated with a golden stag and crow, which Clarke had fashioned for her. She enjoyed the weight of it, its solidness, compared to a smaller pistol. Behind her in the land train, her staff busied themselves in the kitchen in preparation for dinner. Clarke, meanwhile, stood by politely and watched her hunt.
Once as a child, she’d traveled to the Golden Lowlands with her father, King Melore. Just as it did then, the Lowlands struck her as the most boring landscape she could imagine. Rolling fields and small towns with dusty main streets. She was in need of a distraction, after the message was delivered that morning.
The girl has fled. Have arranged for a tracker.
She wanted to crumple it up and discard it. Instead, she tucked it into the inside pocket of her embroidered coat.
“Clarke,” she said, calling her chief tinkerer to her. “I’ve had an idea, regarding the Catalyst. Discard the prototypes you’ve been working on—we’ll be using a new casing for it.” With the Child of War still unlocated, she could take no risks: the Catalyst needed to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
She heard the rustling of dead leaves, and from out of the woods walked a male deer. Viviana focused her gaze on it. The stag came toward her as if it were being pulled by a heavy, invisible rope. Even hunting was boring, Viviana decided, when you could simply summon your kill to you.
“An excellent specimen, my lady,” said Clarke.
Viviana braced her shoulders to steady her aim with the cumbersome blunderbuss, but she could not so easily steady her mind. Not since her illuminating visi
t to Fairmount. The memory of that one child—one of the students, she learned, who had been missing from campus at the time of Joan’s death—leaping through the air so powerfully, so brazenly. And without her kin in sight. Now she’d fled the school. Was it possible, Viviana wondered, that she’d found the Child of War so soon?
“Sophia Castling,” Viviana whispered. “Who are you, and what do you know?”
She breathed out once more, readying herself for the kick of the gun. She aimed at the stag and pulled the trigger.
AFTER A DAY’S RIDE from the Gray to the rocky western mountains, a heavy layer of mud and snow caked the bottom of Gwen’s coat and boots. She abandoned Tremelo’s motorbike when it ran out of gas, and continued on foot. The valley that separated the Seers’ Land from the northernmost edge of the Velyn mountains was full of cliffs that slowed her progress, and what had been a thin layer of melting snow outside the city had become thick white heaps that she had to slog through. Once she’d left the city, the flock of owls who had accompanied her from Fairmount reconvened to follow her again. Crossing the valley took her another day, but the presence of the owls encouraged her.
Heavy clouds hung overhead in the afternoon sky when she finally reached the Statue of the Twins. It had been built by the first rulers of Aldermere, who, the Elder had told her, had direct communication with the Seers of the western mountains. Situated at the entrance to the valley, the statue marked the division between civilized, settled Aldermere, and the Seers’ Land. Nature herself had once lived here, where she had given birth to the Twins of legend. Those like the Elder—people who believed that the Seers still existed—often came here, only a short distance from the city, for reflection. But for Gwen, it was entirely new. In all her years as the Elder’s apprentice, she had never been allowed to come with him to the Seers’ Land. She’d imagined the grandeur of the statue, but now the sight of the tumbled stones in its place filled her with profound sadness. This had once been a symbol of the Animas bond, but now it was little more than a stone slab.
The feet of the boy and three paws of the fox remained intact. Gwen ran her hand along the base where the Elder had taken the fourth stone paw. Something in her belly quivered, and Gwen felt herself transported to that day at Fairmount, when she’d stood with the others around the Elder’s funeral pyre. She sat down on the cold stone slab and wiped her watering eyes. She pulled her rucksack onto her lap and fished inside it for the stone paw.
“This belongs here,” she said as she placed the paw back onto its crumbled niche like a piece of a puzzle that the Elder had left for her to put back together.
From the statue, the highest peak lay to the southwest. She could see white patches of snow dotting the rocks of its side, many miles away. Shouldering her pack once more, she crossed the valley and began the climb up the rocky ridge.
For days, she scrambled over rocks and behind trees. Still, she was nowhere near the highest peak, and she was exhausted. Sleep wasn’t easy on the mountainside, where there was no shelter from the cold winds. She made small campfires, despite her worry of being seen—freezing was more of a concern to her. The owls accompanying her had become more agitated as well. Gwen could see it in their shuffling talons, and she could feel their anxiety in her own chest.
The owls sensed a new presence in the mountains, watching and tracking them from the air. Someone’s kin, another bird, was pursuing them, and Gwen knew that an animal pursuer meant a human one as well. She was being followed. Gwen climbed faster, and tried to stay hidden behind the thin trees of the mountain as best she could.
After many days, she reached a cliff that cut off the clearest path up the mountainside. Far below, a rogue tributary of the Fluvian river burbled. She needed to keep moving southwest; in the distance, she could see the cliff she was meant to reach, just past another row of mountains before her. But to her dismay, the ravine was impassable.
Desperate, she scanned the edge of the cliff, looking for a place to climb down—but steep sides loomed up from the river like smooth glass. The owls swooped around her. She hadn’t stopped to think of what she might need before she’d left Fairmount. If she had rope…but that didn’t matter. She needed another way.
“Help,” she said. It was a whispered hope, one that no human could hear and surely no owl could understand. She walked quickly along the edge of the cliff, searching for a path down or a fallen branch—anything that could help her cross the ravine.
The birds did not come with her. In fact, they stayed at the tip of the cliff, hopping and flying in small, nervous spurts of energy.
“Come on,” she called. “There’s nothing there.” She kept moving forward.
Behind her, she heard a series of excited hoots. The owls still hadn’t moved. She searched the sky for signs of the other bird—for signs of their pursuer—but there was nothing.
One of the smallest owls hooted loudly and flew forward off the edge of the cliff. Puzzled and frustrated, Gwen watched as it swooped away into the middle of the ravine—and then perched in midair. The ground was hundreds of feet below, but the owl seemed to be sitting on something solid, and its wings were still. As Gwen watched, the entire flock of owls left their branches and perched between the cliffs, seeming to sit and float on nothing but air.
“What in Nature…?” she breathed. She hurried back to the spot where the owls had taken off. “What have you found?!”
The clouds overhead thinned for a moment, and an orange ray of early-evening sunlight spread over the ridge. Gwen saw a shimmery outline of a bridge hanging all the way between the cliffs. She bent down, crawled forward to the edge of the cliff, and put out her hand to touch it. It was made entirely of ropes: silvery, transparent threads that were almost sticky to the touch. They’re spiderwebs, Gwen realized with astonishment. As she pulled back her hand, a few small fibers of the iridescent material stuck to her fingers. She rubbed them together, and the fibers fell away. Carefully, she stood and placed one foot on the closest point to the cliff. She heard the ropes creak beneath her, but the bridge felt solid, and she took another step forward. The owls watched her, hooting in encouragement.
Looking down, she saw nothing but empty air and the white river flowing. She almost turned back in fear and panic. But the ropes underneath her held firm, and she was able to grip two ropes on either side for balance. Carefully, she began to inch her way along the bridge. The words of the Elder’s letter came back to her: true sight is a light that grows—the physical world is a limited thing, strengthened and made clear by what is stronger and unseen…If the owls hadn’t helped her, her journey would be at an end. All she needed to do was have more faith, just as the Elder had said.
Below, rough rocks poked their heads through the rushing waters of the river; it was a long, long way to fall. But the height also made her wonder if this was akin to flying—the thrill she felt being so high above the ground was intoxicating. She walked faster, and once she’d felt the courage build inside her chest, she began to run.
Suddenly, though, Gwen faltered. She grasped for the ropes near her hand but felt nothing at all—they must have torn. The bridge swayed and she lost her footing. She slipped, but held fast to her pack while she grabbed desperately for the bridge with her other hand. She couldn’t see it, but she felt the silky thread move across her slick palms. Clawing for her life, her left hand finally tightened around the invisible thread, and she dangled over the side. Above her, the bridge swayed. The owls who had perched along the transparent bridge fluttered to her and flew in helpless circles around her as she kicked her feet in the air. Sweat pasted her short hair to her forehead, even through the chill of the mountain air. She felt as though she were being torn in two; with one hand she clung to the bridge, and with the other she gripped her pack. It was so heavy, and it kept her from pulling herself up. She tried to lift it over her head and swing it onto the bridge, but she wasn’t strong enough, and the bow and quiver of arrows she wore made maneuvering her arm next to impossible. She ha
d to drop the pack, with the Seers’ Glass inside, or she would fall and be killed.
The owls clustered around her, beating their wings as they tried to take the pack from her. They were too small, though, and the pack was too heavy. Gwen couldn’t hold on anymore, and with a cry that echoed through the deep ravine, she let the bag fall.
The owls, not giving up, dove after it. One by one they tried grabbing at it with their talons, but they weren’t strong enough. The bag plummeted toward the river as Gwen watched, sorrowful but safe, with both hands holding tightly on to the rope bridge. Two small owls fell with the bag, still trying to lift it. Gwen begged them, without saying a word, to come back. Let it go, she thought. No more deaths, I can’t bear it.
Suddenly, another bird swooped underneath the bag and caught it with its beak. The bird began beating its wings, bringing the bag up the side of the far cliff. With a groan, Gwen swung her right leg up onto the ropes, and pulled with all her might until she was back on the bridge. From here, she watched as the bird disappeared over the treetops at the other side of the cliff with the bag.
“Wait!” she called in dismay. “Come back!”
She stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the darkening sky for a form that would not return. Her mind raced, calculating the supplies that she still had—matches in her pocket, a metal bowl and spoon tied with cords to her belt, and a blanket, as well as the bow and arrows, on her back. But the Glass was gone. The thing she’d needed to keep safe was now gone, and the presence of the unknown bird confirmed that someone was watching her. And now, the Glass could be in the hands of the Dominae and his or her well-trained kin. Either way, she couldn’t be sure of anything—except that she had failed.
BAILEY AND HAL SAT in their common room in the Towers, where a pleasant candle glow lit the room. A half-dozen other nocturnal students were crowded around a table, finishing their last hand of Rabbit Flash. Their good-natured jeers and shouts made the space seem homey and safe, although Bailey’s thoughts were still on Gwen and Phi—if Gwen was safe, and when Phi would come back. Without them around, Phi especially, Fairmount seemed to give in to the winter dreariness.
