The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  “What about me?” Joshua asked.

  “You,” Isabel said blankly, and then broke into a sudden smile. She grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a jovial shake. “Yes, of course—you. You stick with me. You’ll get what you came for, I promise.”

  Horace’s mom returned, carrying the pie and a stack of plates. “It seems Joshua was the only one that had an appetite for dinner,” she said. “Which means there ought to be room for dessert.”

  They each took a slice of pie. Raspberry, Horace’s favorite. They ate in silence until Isabel said abruptly, “It’s lucky you two found each other.”

  It took Horace a beat to realize she meant Chloe and him.

  “Why?” asked Chloe.

  “I’m assuming you look after Horace.”

  “We look after each other,” Chloe corrected.

  “But it’s the Keeper of the Fel’Daera who really needs protection, isn’t it?” Horace’s mom shifted uneasily in her seat, looking sidelong at Isabel. Isabel said, “And my daughter is the one who’s doing the protecting.” She smiled at Chloe. “I’m glad. It’s in your nature.”

  Chloe said, “I must’ve gotten that from Dad’s side of the family.”

  Isabel laughed softly. “Yes, and you got your moxie from mine.” She plucked a berry from her pie and ate it. “Jess, I never imagined that our kids would grow up to be friends. That they would look after each other. Support each other. Love each other.”

  Chloe sank down in her seat. Horace stared studiously at his pie.

  “Well,” said Horace’s mom cautiously, “we’re lucky to have Chloe around. She’s practically—” She cut herself off, but everyone could hear the words she’d left unsaid. Part of the family. “It’s like we’ve known her forever,” she finished limply.

  Isabel nodded, and then got to her feet. “I’m afraid I’ve got to use the restroom. Where was it again?”

  Horace’s mother pointed. “Upstairs, first door on the right.”

  “Feel free to talk about me while I’m gone,” Isabel said, and left.

  After she’d gone, Horace’s mom pantomimed wiping sweat off her brow. “I cannot tell a lie,” she said. “I’ve hosted better parties.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Chloe. “This was a mistake.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m glad to see her face to face again.”

  “So what do you think about her?”

  “She’s definitely unpredictable.”

  “Yeah, but . . . what do you think?”

  Jessica mulled it over. Then she turned to Joshua and said, “Joshua, would you excuse us for a moment? If you like, you can go downstairs and watch TV.”

  Joshua looked doubtful. “I don’t watch TV.”

  “Okay then, I tell you what, there’s a world atlas on the shelf down there—”

  “Yes please, thank you,” Joshua said, and he was up and gone, leaving his pie behind.

  Horace’s mother watched him go, then leaned over the table conspiratorially. “I’m not crazy about passing these kinds of judgments, Chloe, but if you’re asking me if you can trust your mother, my answer is no. You were right—she hasn’t changed much since I saw her last. She’s still too overwrought about the wicker harp, and about her status as a Tuner. I’m sure she surrendered the harp to Mr. Meister because she thought it would soften him up. That it would get him to help her in the long run. But that’s not to say she doesn’t love you, that she doesn’t want to be back in your life. Honestly, I think she wants to reconcile with the Wardens and with her family.”

  Chloe squirmed uncomfortably but didn’t disagree.

  Horace’s mother continued. “Now, if you’re asking me if you should help her . . .” She reached out and took Chloe’s hand, squeezing it. Chloe stared down at the hand and then squeezed back. “Chloe, she’s your mother. In an ideal world, she’s the one that should be helping you. But this world—our world—is rarely ideal.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Isabel has to prove herself to you. To everyone. And I think the least we can do—and possibly the most we can do—is to give her that chance.”

  “Cautiously,” Chloe offered.

  “That goes without saying. But I do believe she only wants good things for you.”

  Chloe nodded, swallowing. “Okay. Let me ask you this, then. What if . . . what do you think about the possibility that . . .”

  She looked at Horace, pleading, and he stepped in. “We’ve been talking about whether Isabel really could become Tan’ji. We’re wondering if somebody with the right talents could help. If, for example, maybe someone who was the Keeper of a Loomdaughter could—”

  His mother sat up straight, dropping Chloe’s hand. “Hush,” she hissed. “Don’t say that word again.”

  “But—” Horace began.

  “You shouldn’t have spoken that word out loud, even to me. Not here.” She leaned back and peeked out into the kitchen. “Some secrets need to stay buried. Isabel can’t hear anything about this, do you understand?”

  Horace and Chloe exchanged a look, but neither of them said a word. They went silently back to their pie. Horace’s mother ate, too, but watched them both anxiously, clearly perturbed. At last, nearly in a whisper, she said, “For the record, what you’re asking sounds impossible, but I’ve never—”

  Suddenly she went stock-still, her face a mask of shock. She rocketed to her feet so fast her chair tipped over. She raced from the room.

  Chloe bolted after her. Horace followed, bewildered. His mother ran up the stairs and burst into her own bedroom, the kids on her heels.

  Isabel sat on the bed. An object lay in her lap—a boat with sails of shimmering string.

  “Stop that,” Horace’s mom said through gritted teeth. It was her harp, of course. Isabel was looking down at it sweetly, and the strings vibrated on their own, as if an unseen hand were plucking them. “Isabel, stop. That doesn’t belong to you.”

  Isabel looked up, her expression dreamy, unconcerned. “Or you. You said so yourself.” The strings continued to play. “But I suppose the old man let you keep it for services rendered, is that the idea?” She gestured at the mighty leestone on the bureau, the sculpture of the raven and tortoise. “And this too! I guess it’s true what they say—what goes around comes around.”

  Horace had no clue what that meant. His mother didn’t reply, seemingly transfixed by the shimmering harp in Isabel’s lap. And now he realized there was something floating inside those strings—a clear crystal sphere the size of a large marble. A raven’s eye, its power spent. Where had that come from?

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” his mother demanded, “but you need to stop. That can be felt for miles.”

  “Oh, come on—you’ve got a leestone fit for the Warren. You know we’re safe. Snug as bugs.” Isabel bent her head over the harp. The raven’s eye danced, and the strings glittered musically around it. “I surrendered Miradel, you know. To Mr. Meister. It was so hard.”

  Chloe opened her mouth to speak, but Horace’s mom stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure it was,” she told Isabel, sounding sincere.

  “And then I came up here and I felt your little harp and I just . . . I couldn’t resist. I’m sorry, but I—”

  “I understand the urge, Isabel,” Horace’s mom said. “You know I do. But we were just talking about regaining trust. Your own daughter wants to learn to trust you again. And from what you’ve said, I think you want that too. Do you think this helps? What you’re doing right now?”

  “What is she doing?” Horace said hoarsely, transfixed by the floating raven’s eye.

  His mother just shook her head. Apparently she couldn’t follow whatever Isabel was doing.

  “I told you,” Isabel said petulantly. “I’m just toying. And that’s all this harp is, anyway—a toy. No offense. I suppose that’s why Mr. Meister let you keep it.”

  Now Chloe did speak, her voice like a blade. “It may be a toy, but you’re the child
. You say you want to be back in our lives. But what you’re doing right now tells me that there’s no place for you here.”

  Isabel visibly flinched. She sulked, unable to look Chloe in the face, and then focused on the floating raven’s eye for a moment longer. Abruptly, the glittering strings of the harp went still. They faded from sight. The raven’s eye fell and rolled across the floor. Chloe scooped it up, inspecting it closely. It looked unchanged.

  “I told you, just playing,” Isabel said, standing and holding out the harp. “Surely you understand, Jess. I mean no harm. I’m trying . . . I really am.”

  Horace’s mom took the harp, folding it up again. “It’s time for you to leave.”

  Isabel held up her hands as if surrendering. “I agree. Matthew should be here any second. I called him ten minutes ago.” When Horace’s mom looked baffled, Isabel shrugged wryly. “I knew you’d feel me using your harp,” she explained. “I knew it was the sort of transgression that would get me uninvited.”

  “But you did it anyway.”

  “Yes, I did it anyway.” She pushed past them and headed downstairs. Halfway down, Horace’s mother spoke to her.

  “I might have let you use it, you know. If you’d asked.”

  Isabel paused. “Yes. You might have.” She bustled on down the stairs, calling for Joshua.

  Horace’s mom thrust her hand out to Chloe. “The raven’s eye. Quick.”

  Chloe hurriedly handed it over. Horace’s mom peered into it as if she were a jeweler assessing a great spherical gem, turning it this way and that.

  “What did she do to it?” Chloe asked.

  “I don’t know. She was running huge threads through the foramen, but all I can see now are traces.”

  “Foramen?” Horace asked.

  “Yes. Every Tanu—even a simple Tan’kindi like a raven’s eye—has a foramen, a permanent structure crafted out of the Medium by the device’s Maker. It’s sort of like . . . the eye of a needle. An anchor point, but also a passageway. It connects the Tanu to the Medium while also allowing the Medium to flow through. The foramen is the thing we Tuners feel for first when we’re working—everything stems from there.”

  Despite the circumstances, Horace hung on her every word. There was so much he still had to learn—so much he might never truly understand. “But this raven’s eye is all used up,” he said.

  “It’s still Tanu. The foramen remains intact. And like I told you before, Horace, every Tuner craves a Tanu to work on.” She unfolded her harp with a flick of the wrist and set it on the bed. She plucked lightly at the strings with one hand as she examined the raven’s eye in the other, like a doctor diagnosing a patient.

  “So did she do anything to it?” asked Chloe.

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Could she be tricking you?”

  “Yes,” Horace’s mom said immediately, continuing to gaze into the raven’s eye. “Isabel is a hacker, of sorts. She could always string the Medium places you wouldn’t expect, and no one is better at tying off flows. But nothing’s coming in or out of here—that’s for certain. And if there’s anything here at all, it’s delicate beyond anything I think even Isabel could do, even with the wicker harp. I’m guessing that she really was just playing, feeling the thrill of the Medium again. I won’t pretend I don’t understand that urge.”

  Swiftly, Chloe snatched up the raven’s eye, slipping it into her own pocket. Horace’s mom opened her mouth as if to argue, but Chloe said decisively, “I’m not leaving this here. Just in case.” Horace’s mom shut her mouth and gave Chloe a resolute nod.

  The doorbell rang. Horace heard the front door open, and then the deep, friendly voice of Chloe’s dad. But before they went down, there was something Horace needed to know. “Chloe, wasn’t that your raven’s eye? Why did Isabel have it?”

  “I let her have it. I had my reasons at the time, but I guess she did too.”

  “Yes, and it might have been the simplest reason of all,” Horace’s mother said, herding them toward the door.

  “What’s that?” Horace asked.

  “Need.”

  Downstairs, Chloe’s dad filled the doorway. Huge but gentle, he apologized for not coming to dinner. Horace noticed that every time he so much as looked at Isabel, he seemed stupefied by her very existence. Meanwhile, he treated Chloe like a precious stick of dynamite. Seeing the three of them together—broken apart in so many ways and now shoved jaggedly back together—was unmistakably sad. Horace knew his mother could feel it, too.

  Good-byes—maybe for the sake of Chloe’s dad—were said calmly, though not quite warmly, as if the incident with the harp had occurred long ago but hadn’t been totally forgotten. The only reminder was when Chloe held the raven’s eye up to Isabel, like a challenge. “This is coming with us,” she said.

  Isabel’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t say a word.

  Joshua shook hands again and solemnly recited thank-yous, plus a long and technically incomprehensible compliment of their atlas.

  With a polite rumble, Chloe’s dad cleared his throat. “I’m ready when everyone else is,” he said.

  Isabel examined Horace’s mother one last time. “I should have asked,” she said simply, and then turned to go. Joshua fell in beside her, Chloe’s father right behind.

  Chloe was the last to actually leave. As she stepped over the threshold, Horace muttered under his breath, “You don’t have to go.”

  “Someone has to,” she whispered back. Horace understood at once—her dad. She was looking after him again. Still. Chloe leapt lightly out the door and trotted out into the growing dusk after the others.

  And then they were gone. Horace’s mother shut the door and blew out a long breath. “This is why we don’t have more people over,” she said.

  “Really? This is why? How many Tuners do you know?”

  Horace’s mom rubbed her face and smiled at him apologetically. “Sorry. For a while there it was like junior high all over again.” She shivered. “Chloe can handle this. She’s got her dad, and Madeline, and you.”

  “And you,” Horace said, feeling a surge of warmth and pride and gratitude for his own family. His mom was so awesome that . . . well, she had mom to spare.

  “Yes, and me,” she agreed. She wandered into the dining room. Horace followed. She shook her head at the table piled with uneaten food. “I can’t cope with this right now,” she said, and put her arm around him. “It’s Friday night. We gonna play chess or what?”

  Horace grinned. Nothing had ever sounded better. “Okay, but fair warning. It’s going to be a rough end to a rough day. For you, I mean.”

  She grinned right back, his mother as he’d always known her. “Bring it, box boy,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Fear Is the Stone

  CHLOE SAT IN THE BACK OF THE BEAT-UP WAGON HER FATHER drove, watching Joshua watch the city slide by. She could practically see the miles—and the busy world that filled them—etching themselves onto his strange little mind. Chloe held the raven’s eye in her hand, trying to remember its warmth from long ago, trying to imagine what Isabel might have done to it. But maybe she’d done nothing, just like she claimed. Maybe she’d only needed to feel that power again. Chloe could relate to that.

  In the front seat, meanwhile, her father and Isabel weren’t talking. He’d asked how the dinner had gone, and Isabel had only replied, “It’s nice to know Chloe has such good friends.” Her voice sounded sad.

  Good friends, yes. And truth be told, it was because of Horace and his mom that Chloe had the raven’s eye now. The most suspicious part of Chloe imagined that Isabel had been trying to plant some dangerous device in Horace’s house, to do away with the Fel’Daera somehow, once and for all. And if there was even a chance that that was true, Chloe would take this danger with her instead.

  Isabel and her father were murmuring now, discussing directions. Isabel was telling him not to take the Kennedy. Her father agreed without complaint. Joshua,
meanwhile, looked confused. Chloe didn’t know much about driving around the city, but hearing her father give in to Isabel so easily made her grind her teeth. She felt like she could practically crush the raven’s eye in her hands. She gripped it so hard that after a while, it felt as warm as it had when it was working.

  They crossed the river. Chloe caught a glimpse of it gleaming in the twilight, lined by trees, a surprising slice of wildness here in the city. She thought back to the riverbank two nights before, and that horrible Auditor. Despite everything, despite all of Chloe’s power, what might have happened if Isabel hadn’t shown up when she did? Her rage boiled higher. She hated the thought that she might’ve actually needed Isabel’s help. She gripped the raven’s eye until her fingers hurt, squeezing it harder and harder.

  So hard it started to burn.

  Chloe opened her hands. Her palms were warm—warmer than they should have been. And there between them, deep in the center of the raven’s eye, she spied a speck of light. A golden spark, small and distant. She stared and stared, hardly daring to breathe, watching as the tiny glint of light grew brighter.

  “What did you do?” she whispered.

  Her dad looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, Clo, what did you say?”

  She ignored him. She lifted the raven’s eye up, cupping the tiny glow in both hands. Isabel turned, looking over the seat. When she spotted the yellow light, her face went slack with wonder—or was it dismay? “No,” she breathed.

  An icy finger of dread ran down Chloe’s spine. “What did you do?” she said.

  Isabel turned to Chloe’s father. “Take us to the lakeshore. Hurry.”

  “No,” Chloe said, her voice as thick as dirt. The glow of the raven’s eye continued to grow in her hands, like a candle flame drifting slowly up from the deeps. “Stop the car. Stop the car, Dad.”

  “We can’t stop,” Isabel said. “They’ll find us.”

  Chloe held her breath. She’d endured so much over the years—overcome so much, escaped from so much—that fear no longer came easy. But somehow these words chilled Chloe straight down to the marrow.