Avenged

by Lynn Carthage

  Much like a tarot deck, the runes do not give an explicit and unambiguous message. Instead, the diviner must listen to the symbols and reach through the wood, stone, or what the delivery material is, to hear the intention of the cipher.

  —Divination Practices

  It’s dark now, and candles and lanterns light our work as Phoebe drains the pond. She’s the water woman, the Lady of the Lake. She frowns to remember, but then it’s an easy chain of words and gestures for her.

  The water recedes.

  Against the sky, the silhouette looms. We see the full power of the yew on its side. It’s grown since the last time I saw it, monstrously large. As large as the limits of the pond.

  And entangled in its branches and roots are the bodies, scratched to the utmost by a greedy force.

  The runes don’t glow but instead appear to be burned into the wood. I approach, my shoes sinking in the murk. I can read their message now: She is here. Is the she Tabby?

  At the limits of the lost lake stand the rest of the party, loath to come closer. With the exception of Steven, restlessly sleeping in the car with the fever I foisted on him, all the Arnauds are here, as well as Miles. Tabby is thankfully asleep at this hour in her mother’s arms. Even Kate Darrow stands ready to assist; she’s seen too much to not be included.

  “Do we set fire to it?” I ask. No one answers.

  “We should give these people a decent burial,” says Anne.

  “Not one of them,” says Phoebe, pointing to Madame Arnaud, whose black skirts have become like lace by the stretching and tormenting of the tree. I walk closer and see that her eyes have rolled into the back of her head, leaving egg whites peering out at me vengefully. Unsettled, I retreat to stand with the others near the flames, throughout the centuries our weapon against the night.

  “But the rest of them,” Anne insists.

  “How do we do that?” Miles asks.

  “That man . . . the one who tried to buy us off,” says Anne slowly. “He tried to stop the bulldozer.”

  She shifts the sleeping child in her arms as her words come in an inspired burst. “He wants to keep all of this quiet. That’s his aim. So he’ll enlist the help of all the people who put together money to keep us from renovating the property, and some of the police must be in on it, or he’ll pay them off, and they’ll get the bodies back to their families. He’ll figure it out: what to say, how to do it.”

  I marvel at her calm reasoning in the face of everything she’s endured: not just today, but in the months since her elder daughter’s death. She has the backbone of a queen.

  “I don’t think we should burn it,” says Phoebe suddenly.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because the villagers would’ve burned it if they thought it would work.”

  “Good point,” says Miles. “But cutting it down and drowning didn’t seem to be all that effective, either.”

  “It was effective,” she says. “As long as Madame Arnaud was around.”

  “Or,” I say slowly. “Effective until Tabby arrived.”

  Everyone turns to look at her, slumped in the sleep of the innocent.

  “We’ll go,” says Anne. “Tonight. I don’t give a damn about any of our things. Needless to say, I don’t want to renovate the Arnaud Manor anymore.”

  “Mom . . . are you taking Steven with you?” asks Phoebe.

  “I can’t,” says Anne. “I believe Eleanor when she says he was the victim of dark magic, but I can’t forget that he tried to—” Her voice falters.

  “Steven can’t stay here, though,” says Miles. “It will work its way into him again.”

  “You’ll have to lie,” says Kate. “Take him back to the States with you, and then detach from him.”

  “I don’t think I can,” says Anne. “It would be too hard.”

  Phoebe starts to cry.

  “You have to get him as far away as possible from this estate,” I say to her firmly. “It will be hard, but it’s for Tabby’s sake.”

  Anne leans her head down onto Phoebe’s head and closes her eyes. “They say many marriages end in divorce after a child dies,” she says quietly. “I had hoped to beat that statistic.”

  It sinks in. Boswick will get his way after all. He can rebuild the wall that blocks the driveway. He’ll let the archeologists catalog the swords, maybe take them away, maybe rebury them.

  I stare bleakly at the yew and its horrifying litter of corpses.

  What will Boswick tell their families? What explanation will satisfy them?

  Ages have passed since Myrddin learned his protégée, his beautiful partner, had lain with the king, also his protégé. How world-weary he must have felt, that the young lives he shaped so lovingly turned away from him and toward each other. This one detail—their love—changed everything, caused him to become enchanted and thus Camelot to fall, Arthur impotent without his counsel and magic. And yet this detail never made it into the chronicles.

  Today, the fragments and remnants of those long-ago people find a way to lodge in the new generation, through bloodlines and genetics and pure, inexplicable magic. Calendar pages flickering in the fire. Whoever chooses the identity of the babe growing in its mother’s womb?

  Would Myrddin have been angered to be recast as a female servant despite the monumental maleness of him? Miles and Phoebe kept their genders . . . why did I change?

  I smile ruefully at the simple answer. Because Myrddin was always a shape-shifter and trickster.

  Some of us carried through, but not others. Launcelot, Galahad, Bors, and Perceval: their lives perhaps continue in some vaunted sunburst hall where the Grail radiates and holds them in a beautiful thrall of purity. Guinevere, although her loveliness was distracting, had no life after her death. I continued, and continue, as does Arthur on his island and Nimue wherever she lies, whatever Madame Arnaud did to her.

  So Tabby must be another who carried through. I just don’t know her genesis and her meaning.

  I probably never will. There’s nothing I can do. I will linger in this state forever. Forever wondering.

  As I look at Tabby, she rouses in her mother’s arms. She lifts her head up and looks directly at me.

  Directly.

  Her arm comes off Anne’s neck. She’s got something clenched in her little palm. She reaches out to me.

  “What is it?” I murmur.

  I step closer and she smiles sleepily at me, her face half lit by the flickering light of the lanterns.

  She opens her fist and shows me. The golden capstone key.

  “Key,” she says.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks in a heartfelt way go to Mary Volmer; Alison Mc-Mahan; Gina L. Mulligan; Jennifer Laam; Erin McCabe; Ian Wilson; Clara, Reid, and Alan; Michaela Hamilton, Lauren Jernigan, Karen Auerbach, Randie Lipkin, and Arthur Maisel.

  Many thanks to the Chaucer Middle English Glossary online, which I relied on to create the prophecy. It is fun to click around at www.literature-dictionary.org/Chaucers-Middle-English-Glossary. Also huge thanks to beautiful writer Essie Fox for helping my English characters sound as English as possible.

  If you loved this book, it’d be really helpful (and appreciated!) if you posted a review online or told a friend about it. It will boost your chances to become Sangreçu someday.

  Just in case you missed the first book in the Arnaud Legacy trilogy, here is a sample excerpt . . .

  Told from the point of view of

  PHOEBE IRVING

  You know you’ve done something pretty awful when your family moves because of it. Not just within San Francisco, nor within California . . . not even within the country.

  My stepdad, Steven, has a remote job, so it was no problem for him to relocate. Mom is a stay-at-home mom for Tabby; her job “traveled,” too. As for me, they unen-rolled me from school just a month before sophomore year ended.

  Crazy.

  When you’re a major screwup, it helps if your stepdad has an ancestral mansion in England r
eady to move into. Well, not exactly ready. It’s been uninhabited for a long time and needs some serious TLC, I heard him tell Mom. He’d been trying to sell it for years. But at least it’s a place to live, and a place for me to reflect on my behavior and improve it.

  My therapy would be a lot more effective if I could remember what I did.

  * * *

  Emerging from the tunnel of trees to the clearing where we could finally see my stepfather’s manor, I let out a moan of disillusionment. This wasn’t the crumbling but still-impressive castle surrounded by broad, grassy lawns I’d imagined back in California, with swans wafting snootily around a lily-ponded lake. Instead, it was a grim, stone-walled prison with the grounds so overgrown they were nearly impenetrable.

  I had allowed myself to become interested, had thought there was a lovely poetry to the phrase, “ancestral mansion in England.” But nothing could quell the immediate sense of grinding apprehension the manor gave me. Nothing about it felt right.

  As we drove up into its shadow, the manor leaned down over us to look. More than idly curious, it practically rubbed its leathern hands together in glee. Visitors. At last.

  It was built in the shape of a U, making it hard to see where exactly one of the wings ended since it was lost somewhere to our left in a thick group of trees. The central courtyard that we inched along was cobblestoned, the size of a grand but cheerless park.

  “Um, how many ancestors did you have?” I asked.

  “It does seem large for one family,” Steven answered, sighing and looking at Mom. “The Arnauds were very powerful and wealthy in the early 1700s when this was built.”

  “And the size of our family . . .” said Mom. Steven reached over and touched her cheek.

  “We’ll make it work,” he said. He parked the car, turned off the engine, and got out. Mom sat there for a while, then turned around to check on Tabitha, my little sister, still sleeping in her car seat.

  I got out and looked up at the Arnaud house while Steven started pulling luggage out of a hard plastic carrier atop the car. When I looked all the way to the top of the manor, my neck strained with the effort, my head hanging back heavily. God, how big is this place? There were hundreds of windows, dozens of gables, and a million stone designs of birds and beasts carved into the dark stone walls.

  The manor’s heavy breath stirred the hairs on the back of my neck. It surveyed me. It examined Mom and Steven and Tabby. Each of the windows looked smeared with time, but it seemed like the house could still see through them.

  It would be easy to get lost in a house that size—and no one would find you.

  I turned around and looked at the surrounding forest, ragged with illicit shrubs. It didn’t look like any gardeners came to take care of this overwrought mess.

  “No neighbors?” Mom asked.

  Steven shook his head. “I think the original landholdings were even larger. There’s no one else around for miles. This is the only house on Auldkirk Lane.”

  Mom unbuckled Tabby and pulled her out. “Welcome to your new home, sweetie,” she said. My little sister rubbed her gray eyes, which were huge in her tiny face. She was wearing a headband with a pink flower on it, crooked from her nap. When she turned her head to look at the manor, I could see a tuft of snarled auburn hair in the back.

  Steven grabbed the biggest suitcase, my mom’s. I expected him to head toward the double wooden doors that clearly marked the main entry, but he ducked into a smaller door on the right wing, marked with a small stone roof.

  “You’ll be relieved,” he called over his shoulder, “to see our quarters aren’t quite as ancient as the rest of the house. The information the real estate people sent me was that there is a very comfortable living space in the east wing.”

  Mom and Tabby went inside directly behind him, and I heard Mom coo in amazement. I hesitated outside, unwilling to go through the portal and enter the house’s influence. I waited, listening to the wind sing through the tree canopy. This was our new home. Because of me.

  I lowered my head and followed them in—and saw why Mom was so surprised.

  It was completely modern inside. Well, modern as of the 1970s. The living room had plaid and leather sofas, adorned with small circular pillows. The rug was a shag sunrise, as the colors moved in a rippling line from pale yellow to bright gold. Giant orbs hung on linked chains from the ceiling, hovering over the furniture to provide lighting.

  Mom and I walked into the kitchen, which had avocado-colored appliances. With a little smile, she tried out the stove’s gas burners. “Well, at least I won’t have to use a cauldron,” she murmured.

  Behind the kitchen was a den, with a pigeonholed desk, a leather armchair, and a standing floor lamp whose lampshade was decorated with orange and brown stripes.

  I looked for the bedrooms next. Oddly, there was a nursery with a crib and a dresser with waddling ducks painted on each drawer. I had to think: Had Steven said he’d been born in this house? Maybe this had been his room once.

  The master bedroom, oversized and smelling slightly stuffy, was clearly not for me.

  My room had a twin bed covered in a bright green spread, with matching carpet. If the room had windows, I was sure the drapes would have been the same glaring green. The effect was that I was a worm who’d burrowed into the dark heart of a lime.

  On the plus side, the room was as large as a master suite, and the tiny bed viewed from the door looked like a forgotten slipper in a queen’s dressing room. My room in California had been pretty small; this had possibility. I could have a lot of friends over. That is, if I could make some here in Grenshire.

  I didn’t mind leaving behind my stuff; everything was from IKEA anyway. Maybe Mom and I could cruise yard sales and do a shabby chic thing for my room.

  A mirror hung above the dresser. I didn’t look that bad, considering everything I’d been through. My long auburn hair was still reasonably wavy and I didn’t need concealer to hide circles under my green eyes.

  I’m not a knockout but last year I did manage to snag one of the hottest guys in school, Richard Spees. Total surprise here, because guys don’t stop in the school hallway and pivot to keep their eyes on girls like me. I’ve seen that happen a lot, but always to someone else.

  Luckily, I’m an athlete—a swimmer—so at least I don’t worry about my weight, although I would really, really like to get rid of that one huge mole right in my cleavage. What little there is of that, that is. I definitely fail the pencil test Bethany told me about—it’s when you put a pencil horizontally under your boob and see if it stays by itself.

  I read constantly, and subsequently have the kind of vocabulary that makes English teachers’ eyes light up (which doesn’t exactly help with the guys, but I can’t prevent the stuff that comes out of my mouth). Last year I took a creative writing class, and found something I thought I could be good at. I could be a swimming author. A literary mermaid.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. I didn’t mind the color scheme, but the room had hardly any light. Why no windows? It sucked not to be able to get some fresh air. Maybe whoever designed this was worried about teens sneaking out the window at night.

  I returned to the living room with a big sigh. “My room’s acid green,” I announced. No one said anything, and I gritted my teeth. They would see it as a complaint, and here I was trying to be a better daughter. Mom and Steven’s parenting technique: ignores anything verging on whining. “It’s okay,” I amended. “Green’s good.”

  Still no response.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Steven rescued me. “Any interest in seeing the rest of the house?” he asked, holding up what looked like floor plans.

  “Yeah,” I said. I gave him a big smile, but he wasn’t ready to return it. Parents are so big on that punishment thing.

  “Not right now,” said Mom. “You go along. I’ll stay with Tabby.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “My guess is, it’s n
ot the safest place for babies. You scout it out first.”

  “I don’t imagine it’s babyproofed,” he said drily, and she laughed.

  “Tell me if you see those medieval outlet covers,” she said.

  “Medieval? It’s not that old,” he protested.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” she said with a grin.

  “All right,” he said. “If I’m not back in an hour, call the fire department because I’ve probably fallen through a rotten floorboard.”

  “That’s all I need,” she said. “Seriously, be safe.”

  He kissed her and Tabby, and went back outside, with me following behind. The air was a little cooler now that it was late afternoon. I straightened my back; was someone watching me? It didn’t help that the light was fading prematurely thanks to the intense foliage. The shadows of leaves agitated by the wind made strange patterns on the ground.

  “Twilight at the haunted mansion,” Steven intoned in a deep voice, and then he chuckled.

  “Not so funny,” I said. “There’s a legitimate creep factor here.”

  He led me toward those big main doors I had seen before, and pulled from his pocket an enormous, antique-looking key. A man’s anguished face made of iron was the lock; the key went into his open mouth. He looked like he was in the midst of a scream, and the key was meant to be his gag.

  The doors were heavy. Steven’s face turned red as he pushed one of them inward. It groaned like it hadn’t been opened in centuries.

  “Are you sure we should go in?” I asked.

  “It’ll be good to get some fresh air circulating,” he said quietly.

  Inside, holy crap. Huge. Dynastically huge. The entry hall with its vaulted ceiling was so large I could have thrown a rock with all my strength and it would only get halfway across the floor. The stones forming the floor were arranged in patterns of dark gray and lighter gray, creating a somber chessboard stretching into the distance.

  The grand staircase at the other end was wide enough to hold dozens of people on each riser, and the chandelier hovering over us was so full of glass and iron that if it fell it would plow through the bedrock beneath the flooring, like a meteor. Most of one wall was taken up by a fireplace large enough to roast several standing horses—you know, if you ever wanted to.