The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  Comprehension dawned over Horace, but Chloe wasn’t through with him. She leaned against a nearby tree, and the Alvalaithen’s wings started vibrating. Slowly she began to back into the tree, disappearing bit by bit beneath the bark, her eyes locked on Horace. “I do remember the malkund,” she said, sinking into the tree until only her head and throat remained. “I remember how I destroyed it.”

  Goose bumps raced down Horace’s arms. “Stop that,” he said, his stomach twisting.

  “Imagine I get severed right now, Horace,” said Chloe, her face seeming to float in the darkness. “I’ll be melded. Imagine how it turns out for me.” A single hand emerged and drew a finger slowly across her scarred throat. Horace wanted to shut his eyes but could not stop staring. Why hadn’t he thought of this before?

  Suddenly Mr. Meister was in their midst. “Enough,” he said to Chloe. “We do not need this drama. We are well aware of the dangers.” Chloe stepped casually out of the tree, throwing a sullen glance Horace’s way, which—he knew—was about as close as she got to showing fear.

  “Henrik, maybe we should go,” said Mrs. Hapsteade. “We weren’t prepared for this.”

  Mr. Meister looked at Horace. Horace wanted to agree with Mrs. Hapsteade. A Tuner, an unknown Keeper with an unknown power, two packs of Mordin, Dr. Jericho. He wanted to agree it would be crazy to stay, except for one thing—the box had repeatedly shown all of them, waiting by the riverbank. According to the box, they would stay. And Horace had learned not to willfully abandon the future the box revealed. There were always consequences.

  But then again, now he had new information. Knowledge of the future could change the future. “Hold on,” he said. “Hold on.” He got his bearings as swiftly as he could, trying to gather all the threads neatly into a single woven braid—so many threads, more than he’d ever considered at once, a dozen individuals, Keepers and Tuners and Riven alike. So much danger just around the bend.

  For a moment the image of Chloe’s disembodied face surfaced, scattering his thoughts like leaves on an wintry breeze. But he collected himself and concentrated, struggling not to worry about what he might see. “No promises,” he murmured, half to himself and half to the others.

  “None expected,” Mr. Meister said. Mrs. Hapsteade frowned.

  It was 10:56. Horace opened the box.

  The scene had changed.

  Half in and half out of the chattering water, the dark slice of a canoe, hauled onto the bank, Horace himself beside it; a small boy still sitting in the canoe, his face pinched with worry; off to one side, Chloe, standing next to another new arrival—a slender girl almost as tall as Horace, with long straight hair; Chloe rubbing a hand against her own leg.

  “They’re here,” he said hoarsely, barely able to find his voice. The girl was messing with her hair, like she was trying to put in an earring. What was she doing? “There’s a girl . . . about my age. I think it’s Little Bo Peep. There’s a boy with her.”

  “And the Tuner?” Mr. Meister said grimly. “Where is she?”

  Horace spun slowly, noting that the old man apparently assumed the Tuner was a she. There were only two logical assumptions to make of that: either all Tuners were female, or this was the Tuner his mother had told him about. Powerful, she’d said. A thief. Banished. That was all Horace knew, but if it really was her out there . . .

  “I don’t see her,” Horace said, trying to shake his doubts. Through the box he saw—Gabriel, poised alertly with staff in hand; Mrs. Hapsteade beside him. But as Horace watched, Gabriel blurred, seeming to split into two. Mrs. Hapsteade briefly became an unrecognizable cloud. “No, no, no,” Horace murmured to himself. He turned farther, still looking. Now Mr. Meister, moving closer, ghosting smudgily through the trees as he approached the girl; something in his hand, a bird’s face with a glinting eye—or was it?

  Horace blinked and looked again. The glinting eye gone now, the empty hand obscured and hazy. What could that possibly mean? Horace turned in a complete circle and saw no one else, but as he came back to future Chloe and Little Bo Peep, they rippled slowly in and out of sight like stones beneath shallow waves. Another misty form stood by the water—Mrs. Hapsteade? Yes, but fading badly. Gabriel was a smudge of motion. And Mr. Meister, it seemed, had disappeared completely.

  Horace snapped the box closed. “It’s no good,” he said. “It’s getting blurry. Nothing is clear. I can’t tell if the Tuner is here or not.”

  “What is the difficulty?” Mr. Meister asked.

  “I think it’s because I’m . . . incomplete. Not grounded.” Horace stopped and gathered his thoughts. It was the Tuner that was unsettling him. His uncertainty about her in the present was rippling forward to make uncertainty in the future. “I’m trapped between knowing and not knowing.”

  “In what way, Keeper?”

  Horace looked Mr. Meister in the eye. “My mom told Chloe and me a story. About a Tuner—someone she worked with, years ago.”

  Mr. Meister took off his glasses. He pulled a small cloth from a vest pocket and began to polish them. His naked eyes were tiny and troubled.

  Horace glanced at Chloe. She nodded, urging him on. “And because of that story,” he continued, “there are things I suspect, but don’t know. Things you’re not telling me. Things that might have a big effect on how tonight turns out.”

  Mr. Meister put his glasses back on. He looked at Mrs. Hapsteade and she gave him the same nod Horace had just gotten from Chloe. “Very well,” he said crisply. “Yes, Mrs. Hapsteade and I believe that the Tuner on the river is the same Tuner that worked for us years ago. She worked with your mother.”

  “Okay,” Horace said. He hadn’t quite expected Mr. Meister to admit it. His heart began to race. “But how do you know it’s the same person?”

  “The way Neptune was cut off from her instrument—the way she had to struggle to become fully connected again. She was not merely severed. Her threads were tied off. I know of only one individual who possesses that particular talent.”

  “So she’s extra powerful,” said Neptune.

  When Mr. Meister didn’t answer right away, Mrs. Hapsteade stepped in. “Her harp is very powerful. So powerful that she might not have it completely under control.”

  That’s what Horace’s mother had described—people being severed with no warning, for no reason. He glanced at Chloe. She was fiddling nervously with the dragonfly. “My mom said you banished her,” he said to Mr. Meister. “Why?”

  “She stole from us,” Mr. Meister replied. “She fled, and was excommunicated. We proofed the Warren against her return.”

  “She only stole the harp that belonged to her, though, right?”

  Mr. Meister tsked impatiently. “Harps do not belong. Tuners are not Tan’ji. Surely your mother told you as much.”

  Horace tried to ignore a flare of irritation. “So one of your Tuners stole a fancy harp, and you hid the Warren from her. And now—” He laughed wryly as it all fell into place. “Now she’s with Little Bo Peep, following the daktan’s signal. So she can find you again.”

  Mr. Meister nodded. “So it seems.”

  “She wants revenge,” Chloe said suddenly.

  “We cannot know that. We cannot be sure what kind of danger she poses.”

  “Why else would she come back?” Chloe scoffed.

  “Who can say?” Mr. Meister said, gazing calmly at Chloe. “Perhaps she is seeking forgiveness.” At these words, Mrs. Hapsteade promptly turned and walked away. The old man watched her go and then said, “For what it’s worth, I do not believe the Tuner will do us any harm when she arrives.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Horace said.

  Mr. Meister shrugged. “Make of it what you will. Minutes are passing. Let us see what the Fel’Daera reveals.”

  Horace stepped up very close to Mr. Meister, speaking low so that no one else could hear him. “Or how about this? You’ve got some kind of Tanu that keeps the Tuner from finding the Warren again. How about you use it to hide our lo
cation from her now?” When Mr. Meister actually recoiled slightly in surprise, Horace explained. “I saw something in your hand, through the box. Just for a second. A bird.”

  “Remarkable,” Mr. Meister muttered. “How strange it is to hear of one’s own intentions before they have formed.” He reached deep into a large pocket of his vest, groped around for a moment, and pulled a small figurine halfway out, letting Horace peek at it. Horace recognized it from Mr. Meister’s office—the owl with a single glittering yellow eye. It occurred to him that the old man was retrieving it from his office right now, using the power of the vest.

  “A leestone?” Horace breathed.

  “A spitestone,” Mr. Meister corrected in a whisper. “It functions like a leestone, but it focuses its energies on a single individual. In this case, the Tuner in question.”

  For some reason, those last words aggravated Horace even further. “She must have a name. What’s her name?”

  Mr. Meister’s huge gray eyes darted around the clearing at the others. “Isabel,” he whispered, tucking the spitestone away. “Her name is Isabel. But the spitestone cannot hide us from her now—the lost Keeper follows the call of the daktan, and Isabel follows alongside.”

  “Then why did I see it in your hand?”

  “I don’t know, Keeper. The future is yours to see, not mine.”

  Horace turned and walked away, mulling over the few new facts Mr. Meister had given him, letting them trickle down through his mind like coins through a sorting machine. He didn’t feel confident that he could bulldoze his way logically through this situation, but at least now certain unknown quantities had been named. And the more he knew, the better. But did he know enough?

  Chloe followed and planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips. The Alvalaithen seemed to glow in the darkness. His eyes fell on the little scars that surrounded it, made by the Alvalaithen itself getting caught inside her flesh. Another angry stab of worry pierced him as he thought about the mysterious Tuner—Isabel—coming toward them now. How strange that even though Chloe was the most invincible of them all, she always seemed to be in so much danger.

  “I was thinking, maybe it’s my fault the Fel’Daera is blurry,” she murmured. “I put on that little show. I scared you.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Horace said.

  “You can’t be afraid for me. It’ll just make things go wrong, like it did that night you left the message in the toolshed.”

  She was right. Since then, he’d learned not to wish too hard for a safe future, but he hadn’t yet learned . . . what? Not to care? Was that the next lesson he had to master?

  “I worry about you,” he said.

  “Well, yeah. Who doesn’t?” She reached out and placed a single knuckle against the Fel’Daera, a shocking infraction. Her eyes practically dared him to say something. “You can’t control what people do, Horace. You’re only a witness.” Then she dropped her hand and walked away, leaving Horace there half heartbroken and half fuming, amazed as he always was by her raw courage, and leaving him entirely sure—for just a moment—that there was no more breathtaking thing in the world than being Chloe’s friend.

  Mr. Meister cleared his throat. “I believe it would be dangerous to assume she means us harm, Keeper.”

  It took Horace a second to realize he meant Isabel. “Right. But also dangerous to assume she doesn’t mean us harm.”

  “Just so,” said Mr. Meister, giving him a deep nod of acquiescence.

  Horace gripped the box and prepared himself. He felt sure now, more certain about the threads he had to gather. And part of his sureness, strangely, came from his knowledge that Chloe was wrong—he wasn’t just a witness. He was the Keeper of the Fel’Daera. He alone had access to what the future held, and whenever he opened the box he alone took the first step toward creating that future. He was a witness, yes—but he was also an architect, a tracker, a seer, a guide. All of those things, and none of them.

  He collected his thoughts and felt the path of knowing form, behind and ahead. It was just past 11:01. The breach was still set to fifty-nine minutes. When Horace was ready, he opened the lid and looked ahead into the midnight that awaited.

  To his relief, everything was clear and sharp now: Himself. Little Bo Peep. Chloe, standing up straight, her chin high. And someone else—a woman. “I see her,” Horace said, not allowing himself to wonder where she’d come from. This was the future as it would be. Isabel was here. “I can’t see her face, but it looks like she’s talking to us. She’s talking to Chloe, I think.” The dragonfly’s wings a shining blur; Chloe’s brow, wrinkling with irritation; her teeth flashing. Horace smiled. “Correction. Chloe’s talking to her.”

  “We’ve seen all we need to see, then,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. “Henrik, perhaps we can stop now?”

  “Not yet,” Horace replied. He kept looking, turning—Gabriel, off to one side, the boy from the canoe now clinging to his back, piggyback style; a small gauzy cloud surrounding them both. “I wouldn’t exactly say we seem relaxed,” Horace said. “Gabriel is over there. He has the boy from the canoe on his back, and the two of them are hiding inside the humour. Just them and no one else. But why?” He continued to turn. “Mr. Meister is standing right there, with Mrs. Hapsteade at his side. She’s looking over her shoulder at—”

  And then abruptly, the view through the box flickered and became smoky. For the barest of seconds, Horace was sure he’d lost his focus again, that the future was becoming unknowable. But almost right away he knew better.

  Gabriel had thrown the humour out wide, enveloping them all.

  But Gabriel never used the humour without a good reason. Horace spun back—Gabriel’s eyes, black and bottomless, his face torn with anger; the humour streaming from the tip of the staff like a flame; the boy on his back with his eyes squeezed shut, shouting words Horace could not hear. And then, farther back in the woods, Horace saw the reason—several monstrous shapes, spread out in a line among the trees, dark and gaunt and menacing. Mordin. He couldn’t make out their faces, but their shapes were unmistakable. Horace had never seen so many at once.

  “Mordin,” he said. “Five or six, at least. And now Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade are—” He stopped, rendered speechless by what he was seeing.

  Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade, running not from the Mordin but toward them; Mr. Meister reaching into his vest and pulling something free; then an approaching Mordin blown back as if struck by a car. Mrs. Hapsteade, wielding a weapon of her own—a wand? Seriously?—flicking it at another running Mordin; that Mordin jerking violently to a halt, as if chained by the neck.

  This was a battle in earnest now. A war.

  “What are you doing to them?” Horace breathed.

  “Nothing yet,” Mr. Meister said tersely. “Tell me about the Tuner.”

  Horace stared for another moment, catching a glimpse of what looked like a large stone, plummeting perilously from the sky and grazing one of the Mordin. That must have been Neptune. He kept turning, looking. Chloe, arms thrown back and head held high, roaring blindly into the humour; Little Bo Peep, groping slowly with eyes wide open, face lifted toward the sky.

  But where was Isabel? “I lost her,” Horace murmured. But that wasn’t all he’d lost. Where was Horace himself?

  Horace turned toward the shimmering midnight river and got one of his answers. His own future self standing beside the grounded canoe, looking across the water, empty hands held aloft—but no, the empty hands were an illusion. The Fel’Daera was there, invisible because the box never revealed its future self. Obviously Horace would be holding the box an hour from now, using it. He didn’t question why, but he dutifully noted the time—a handful of seconds past 11:02. And then he followed his own future gaze across the river. What he saw there turned his skin to stone—movement in the weeds; a towering figure like a tree come to life, a savage face flickering and melting like a flame.

  Dr. Jericho.

  He was forty or fifty feet away but stil
l a giant, several inches taller than every other Mordin Horace had ever seen. He stood alone. Through the box, the Mordin’s limbs and head seemed to writhe and divide, becoming many faces, many hands—a side effect of his shifting disguise and the uncertainties of the Fel’Daera. But Horace knew what was coming next—his many faces collapsing into a single, savage glower; his baleful black eyes seeming to lock on to Horace—this Horace, here and now—through the blue glass of the Fel’Daera.

  “He senses me,” Horace said aloud. “He knows I’m watching.”

  “Dr. Jericho,” said Mr. Meister. “He is here?”

  “Across the river. He’s just standing there, alone. He can feel the open box.”

  “Shouldn’t you close the box, then?” said Neptune.

  “No,” Horace said. “I want him to know I’m watching. Let him wonder what I’ve seen. He’s the one that should be worried.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Mr. Meister. “But where is our Tuner?”

  Dr. Jericho held his ground cautiously, apparently frightened of something—the box, or perhaps the Tuner? But there was still no sign of Isabel. Reluctantly, Horace turned his attention away from the scene on the riverbank, wheeling back toward the others and the battle that raged behind. “I still don’t see her,” he said. “I don’t know where she went. Chloe is standing right here. Her hands are wrapped around the Alvalaithen. She’s . . . pissed.”

  He continued to scan the area, pointing and narrating what he saw. “Mr. Meister is out in the trees, there, fighting the Mordin. Gabriel is right where he was. His lips are moving. Oh! Neptune just came down, right there—she’s taking Little Bo Peep’s hand. Mrs. Hapsteade is backing away from the Mordin, over there, she’s got some kind of—”

  But as even as he spoke the words, the view changed abruptly—Mrs. Hapsteade, fading and doubling, a ghost of her future self flickering to life twenty feet from where she’d been, surrounded by a ghostly sphere; now a blurry Neptune, leapfrogging ahead of Little Bo Peep like a film with frames missing.