Chronicles of Steele: Raven: The Complete Story

by Pauline Creeden

  The woman inclined her head toward the child lying in the bed across the room. The child slept fitfully, sweat beading her forehead. The ringlets of gold Raven admired earlier were fallen and ashen looking. The witch started toward the child’s bed. “I don’t like to speak of such perversions.” She looked Raven up and down and poked a pointed finger at her chest. "But I will because I believe you might be able to stop the fiend.”

  Raven resisted the urge to slap the woman’s hand away.

  The witch leaned closer and whispered, “She eats the child’s heart.”

  Jack sat on a stool and held his tea, forgetting to sip it. His foot tapped a beat on the floor. Why didn’t he go up with them? He leapt to his feet when the grandmother entered the room. She held a small vial in front of her, a distracted and cunning smile spread upon her lips.

  “Madam, how is the child?” He asked, offering to pull the chair from the table for her when she approached.

  Her silver eyebrows knit together in confusion. The knuckles on the hand holding the vial grew white as she gripped it to her chest. “Oh. I’m not sure. The doctor and the Wood Witch are attending her presently.”

  The butler rushed over with a tea cup ready for her, and the young kitchen maid brought toast with butter. With a swat of her hand, she dismissed them. They backed up into the shadows of the kitchen once more, the flames playing on their oddly pale faces. Jack blinked hard and stuttered, “They’re automatons.”

  Monroe and Rupert set down their cups and stared. The grandmother shook her head as though to shake a thought from them, not to disagree. “Oh yes—the best companions for me. They rarely make an error, and they learn quickly.”

  Jack furrowed his brows. “How is it that the most life-like automatons I’ve ever seen are here in the southern province?”

  The grandmother poured a drop of the clear liquid from the vial over her tea cup. “They are prototypes. My son and daughter-in-law designed and build them in their Ipswich factory. I’m sure that zeppelin-living New Haven will be the first to know when the mechanical creatures are complete and approved by the Bureau.”

  Jack watched the automatons move smoothly and deftly. “Do they speak like humans? That is…can you have a conversation with them?”

  The grandmother took a dainty sip of her tea. “The butler does, but the kitchen maid has no voice box. She is an older model. Besides, what need of talking has a kitchen maid?” She half laughed and took another sip of her tea.

  Jack couldn’t get past how much the butler looked like a real person. He did not appear to have any stiffness in his gait or mannerisms. Except for the fact that he stared blankly ahead, he seemed for all intents and purposes, human. Even on closer inspection, he appeared to have pores in the skin of his face, and slight wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. Jack decided to test it. “What is your name?”

  The butler turned his head toward Jack and made eye contact, his eyelids blinked in regular intervals. “My name is Gerald, sir. How may I serve you?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, sir. You are a stranger to this house and the lady has not said your name.”

  “How long have you been at this house, in the lady’s service?”

  “It will be a year next month, sir.”

  Jack turned toward the woman who slumped in her chair, looking a bit too relaxed. “Madam, this is a prototype? And you’ve had him nearly a year?”

  She sat up straighter, but her eyes looked distant as she answered. “Yes, I suppose it has been that long. I’ve had the kitchen maid for nearly two.”

  It hardly made sense that a factory could remain in existence with only prototypes available. Wouldn’t they try to get them out in the public as soon as possible? Why the secrecy? Even though it would be out of their way, he’d need to check this. “Madam, where did you say the factory was again?”

  Without tears, weakness cannot leave the body.

  Don’t be afraid to let them go—the weakness and the tears.

  RAVEN STOOD BEHIND Colton and the witch as they attended to the child. Nurse Raven? How ridiculous a proposition that would be? However, the witch asked her to get a few things for her out of the carpet bag.

  “Doctor, this is a pure and simple case of walking pneumonia in my opinion, would you agree?” the woman asked.

  Colton nodded his head, his face grave. “Yes. With rest and herbs she should be rid of the cough and congestion in another week or two.”

  “I have the antibiotic herbs and some fever reducing spices for them to put into broth.” The witch wiped her hands on her apron and held out her hand for the carpet bag. Raven handed it to her directly.

  “You are an excellent herbalist, madam. And with your skills at diagnostics, it’s a wonder that you didn’t go to the university and get a medical degree.”

  The old woman blushed and pushed on his shoulder like a school girl. She batted her eyelashes at him. “Go on, young man. You certainly know how to flatter a woman.”

  Between the two of them, they finished administering the medications and started a boiler in the room with some menthol herbs. Afterward, they all stepped out into the hallway. Raven could remain silent no longer. “Madam, do you happen to know the whereabouts of the official Wood Witch? She has kidnapped a child that was in my care, and I am desperate for his return.”

  The woman’s face fell into a frown. She scratched a mole on her chin while her cold blue eyes assessed Raven again. “If the Wood Witch has your child, it is a grave matter, indeed. As I said, the witch uses the darkest of alchemy and will be performing the process of taking the child’s power. Was he a special child?”

  Raven’s imagination drew outlandish conclusions, and she couldn’t speak for a moment with her heart in her throat.

  Colton answered for her. “Yes, he has been diagnosed by a priest as having a demon. The demon causes the child to have seizures and electrical items around him go quite haywire.”

  The witch cackled. “Oh my. A demon?” She laughed harder.

  Raven frowned at the woman who laughed so hard she literally slapped her knee. Shaking her head and wiping a tear from her eye, the witch finally got hold of herself. “That child has no demon. He has a rare gift. Electromagnetic manipulation. The child just has no control over it.”

  Raven blinked hard.

  Colton stammered. “Electromagnetic manipulation? You believe he has control over machines with his mind?”

  The old woman tapped Colton on the nose with the tip of her finger and batted her eyelashes again. “Exactly. You’re a smart one, too.”

  Raven shook her head at the flirting old woman. “So if we don’t find Darius soon, you are saying the witch will eat his heart to gain the power of electro…whatever you call it?”

  The woman rolled her eyes and nodded. “Exactly.”

  Adrenaline coursed through Raven’s muscles and her head began to throb with the need to hurt someone. “Have you heard of where I might find this witch?”

  “That’s not very tricky. I know exactly where the woman will be.”

  Suddenly, Raven’s vision became clear, and her hopes hinged on the woman’s next words.

  The woman trailed her fingers along the buttons of Colton’s waistcoat while she spoke. “She must wait for the new moon before she can do it, and there is only one location the Wood Witch can go and perform the ceremony necessary to transfer the boy’s heart to hers. The top of Cirrus Mountain.”

  Raven pushed past them in a flurry and dashed down the stairs. The questions flitted about her head like a caged, wild bird. What day was it? Which phase of the moon were they in? How much time did she have?

  At the bottom of the stairs, she nearly ran into the grandmother as the woman turned up the curving staircase. On the tips of her toes, Raven changed course around her, focused on the goal of the door. She barreled out and crunched through the snow, her eyes searching the sky, but finding no moon. The wind chilled her, and howled through the tops of the tree
s. The house was at the top of the hill so she could see over the expanse of neighbor’s homes. A zeppelin tethered in the back yard blotted out half the sky behind it.

  Grant and Monroe dashed up behind her, simultaneously asking the same question. “What is the matter?”

  “What phase is the moon in? Do either of you know?”

  They shook their heads in unison. Of course they didn’t know–only farmers and fishermen paid attention to that sort of thing. The drifts around the side of the house made the snow half way to her knee as she jogged through it to the backyard. Finally she saw it. The sliver in the sky showed a waning moon of less than a quarter. They only had a few days to find him.

  “What does it mean?” Jack asked over Raven’s shoulder as she shuddered in the cold. He removed his jacket and put it around her. She sank into it and let him put his arms around her.

  “We have only three days to find Darius before the witch eats his heart.”

  Confusion and horror slipped down Jack’s spine. “What are you talking about?”

  Colton and Rupert slid up behind Monroe. The old reaper shook his head, eyes wide. His voice sounded suddenly hoarse. “What do you mean the witch is going to eat his heart?”

  Raven shook her arms free of Jack’s coat and pulled away. The look on her face was stern and sad. Her watery eyes met his for a moment, and then she darted off again toward the woods. He took two steps to follow, but Colton grabbed him by the arm. “Captain. Marietta has told us about the Wood Witch’s plans. She has also diagnosed the condition that afflicts the younger baron with a greater degree of accuracy than I believe anyone else ever has.”

  Jack continued to stare at the spot in the trees where Raven had disappeared. “Who’s Marietta?”

  Colton cleared his throat. “She’s the herbalist and healer the grandmother mistook for the Wood Witch.”

  Jack tore his eyes away from the shadows and met Colton’s. For some reason, Colton’s cheeks had reddened. Monroe looked ready to start for the woods himself. Jack nodded to him, and without a word, the elder reaper darted for the woods.

  The witch caught up to them in the backyard while Jack stood with his two guardsmen. Her hair no longer looked wild as it was before. She’d taken a moment to tame it. The woman sidled up alongside Colton and looked up at him, batting her eyelashes. Colton stood tall and stiff, trying his best not to look at the woman. He leaned toward Jack. “Perhaps Marietta could be of assistance to us? She’s offered to allow us to stay at her house in Ipswich if we’re interested in using it is a base?”

  Jack gripped his coat in his fists and continued staring toward the woods. He nodded absentmindedly. It had grown too dark for travel. With the group’s loss of sleep the night before, it would be best to get a rest. He turned back toward Colton and the witch. “Tell me everything. Why did Raven mention the Wood Witch eating Darius’s heart?”

  Raven stopped and leaned against the rough bark of a pine. The deeper woods had grown pitch black, the trees shrouded shadows. She gasped, hyperventilating. Panic had her in its grip. She couldn’t let the witch kill Darius. He was her one chance to redeem her part in her father’s death. If the boy died now, it would be her fault and she’d need to redeem him, too.

  Leaves rustled behind her and she whipped her head toward the sound. Moving in otherwise specter-like silence, Monroe’s outline strode for her. He called out when he was still but a shadow. “Raven, you must stop running. You do not even know which way you are going. You cannot let your emotions take control of you now, when the boy needs you most.”

  Raven swallowed hard. What he said sounded just like something her father would say. And the thought of that sobered her but she couldn’t stop the tears. Monroe wrapped his arms around her. She sunk into him, wiping her face on his rags. He smelled faintly of animals and hay—the shed barn he’d slept in the night before. It was a comforting smell and reminded her of the farm she and her father had lived in outside of New Haven.

  How could she become so weak over this? She felt embarrassed. But the man reminded her of her father, and her father had never seen tears as weakness. Only because she needed to stay strong for the sake of other men did she learn to swallow her tears. He patted her on the back after she’d been silent for a few minutes. “Are you ready to return?”

  She nodded into his rags and pushed away from his chest. The dark sky peeked through the pine needle canopy, almost starless. She knelt, picked up a handful of snow, and scrubbed her face with it. The flash of ice cooled her hot cheeks and melted, washing away the streaks made by her tears.

  He patted her on the shoulder, and they walked together, backtracking their way toward Grandview. Monroe led her the same way her father would have. He blazed the trail ahead of her, while she followed his shadow. It became easier to see as they neared the edge of the forest. The gas lamps of Grandview created a glow at end of the trees. They broke from the canopy into the open, enveloped in amber light. Her eyes had adjusted in the slow progression.

  The three guardsmen huddled together next to the manor in deep conversation. Raven scooped snow again and wiped at her face once more. She hoped that her eyelids wouldn’t be lined with tell-tale red. With a set jaw, she approached the group beside Monroe.

  The witch spoke, her hands moving vigorously. “The very idea that the duke would kill his own son because he believed him possessed by a demon is ridiculous religious nonsense. This just goes to show why the southern province has continued to remain autonomous instead of coming under his rule. If the elder baron were to usurp his father’s seat, it would be an entirely different story. But as it is, we’d never come under the rule of a child-killing tyrant.”

  Rupert gripped his sword’s hilt, and his face held the grimace of a man trying his best to withhold a dissatisfaction. Jack and Colton listened to the woman with polite smiles, but neither nodded in agreement.

  “What the child needs is a tutor to help him learn to control the power he holds. I suppose I could tutor him. It would force me to relocate to New Haven, but I’ve got nothing tying me here, for certain.” The witch turned toward Monroe and Raven as they crunched through the snow on their approach.

  Jack and Colton’s smiles became more genuine. Rupert continued to grimace. He strode into their path. “Great. Now that we’re all present, I suggest we get out of this wretched cold and get a blasted night’s rest.”

  Guilt panged her chest. Her useless run into the woods had kept everyone waiting in the cold.

  The same open carriage pulled by a white horse started up the hill to the manor. Everyone stared in confusion. The witch cackled and rubbed her hands together. “I’ve got all of you wondering what sort of magic I used to call the taxi, don’t I?”

  The same reflection of confusion ran through the men as Raven felt.

  The witch continued, “Well, it must be ten-thirty, since I told the cabbie to return to collect me at that time. I’m surprised your stunt earlier didn’t keep him away. He probably likes the taste of my gold too much.”

  They followed her through the short snow pack. It had begun to ice over. Grant’s eyes rounded her in a questioning, worried glance. She quickly darted her eyes from his. She didn’t need his pity or his help.

  The cabbie gathered up his reins tighter as the group approached the cart. With a wave of her hand, the witch dismissed his apprehension. “I’m bringing this lot with me, Max. Open the back.”

  In a hesitant leap from his driver’s seat, the coachman rushed to the rear of the carriage and let down the gate. “I’ve got room for only one of you at the front with Marietta. The rest of you will need to sit in the bed of my coach. It’s for holding supplies, baggage, and cargo—not people, so I’m sorry for your discomfort.”

  Grant nodded toward Raven. “Take the seat. The men will sit in the rear.”

  Raven’s brows knit together and she opened her mouth to protest. Monroe set a hand on her shoulder. He nodded and his calm expression made her acquiesce. She pulled herse
lf up to the coach seat next to the witch. The woman smelled of strange and foreign spices, similar to cinnamon and ginger, but a little sharper. Once Raven sat, the witch pulled a brown woolen blanket over her lap to share. The blanket added the smell of leather and horses to the mix.

  The cart swayed while each of the four men hopped into the back of the cart. When the cabbie returned, he cleared his throat and spit before pulling onto the bench seat. The white horse woke to the pull on the reins and started forward. Between the warmth of the blanket and the steady rhythm of the cart as it rolled down the cobbles, Raven found herself wanting to doze off again. The day’s stresses weighed her down with such heaviness sleep could be the only cure.

  Her chest felt hollow and more broken than when she’d first met Gregory’s wife. Maybe the same hole remained but with the new heartaches, it had grown a little bigger. Her father’s death had created a hole she’d hoped to fill with Gregory’s love, but now that hope had been taken from her. Did she have the right to be mad at him for not waiting for her? No, it had been too much to ask.

  The witch put an arm around Raven’s shoulder and hummed a tune. The lullaby had an eerie but light tone to it—something happy which held promise. Though it didn’t fill the emptiness inside her, it made her ache a little less. Raven wondered if the woman was bewitching her. Somehow she didn’t care.

  The horse’s hooves clopped with a hollow sound as they crossed the deserted bridge. A grey haze hung over Ipswich and made the gaslight in town seem more yellow than amber. It mixed with the salty air and created a unique odor with the tar mixed in the street’s cobbles. Even the fallen snow hadn’t muted the scents.

  After passing the area where the crew had left the boat, the cart continued toward the industrial district. A harsh layer of soot covered the walkways and buildings in a black film. Homeless vagrants huddled together for warmth over fire-filled metal barrels. The change in scenery woke Raven as she searched the area for possible dangers. Someone dumped liquid toward the street from a second story window. She hoped it wasn’t a chamber pot. Surely this section of town had indoor plumbing.