by Kelly Creagh
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Isobel gaped at Scrimshaw as he peered around at the fragment-strewn floor, his eyes flitting from his severed arm, the one portraying the etching of the long-haired and diamond-tailed mermaid, to the smashed shards, and finally, to the unlikely figure who had wrought the destruction.
As he stared up at Pinfeathers, the look of shock on Scrimshaw’s face began to fade, transforming into demonic rage. He opened his mouth, let loose a howl, and dispersed into swirls of black ink. Re-forming on his feet, Scrimshaw ran full tilt toward Pinfeathers, who stood ready.
Scrimshaw closed the distance between them. He pulled back his remaining arm and prepared to swing at Pinfeathers, who at the last moment dissipated into wisps of violet ink. Then Scrimshaw loosened once more into black swirls, slithering through the air to entwine with the purple vapor.
The two of them merged into one cloud, a virulent mixture of opposing currents, each struggling to overpower the other. Together they flew across the room, past Isobel, who pressed herself to the floor as they collided with a patch of wall just behind her. A torrent of rose petals burst forth.
Their faces, sharp and snapping, swam up through the murk of the smoke as they shot along the concave ceiling, cutting a sawlike path and sending down a spray of more bloodred petals.
Isobel pushed herself to her feet. She ran out into the center of the room, to the fountain. Grasping the railing, she peered up into the domed ceiling, her eyes seeking out Pinfeathers. Was he . . . could he possibly be . . . protecting her?
One of them, she wasn’t sure which at first, transformed into a bird. Flapping giant wings, the enormous creature suddenly switched its path of attack, aiming itself straight for her, talons bared.
Isobel screamed and, falling to her knees, lifted her arms to cover her head just in time to shield her face from the claws that slashed the flesh of her wrists and hands. They raked at her mercilessly, and the sound of her own cries joined with the creature’s piercing screeches, until a second bird swooped in to divert the first.
In a flurry of tearing feathers and stabbing beaks, the two birds freewheeled far up and away from her. They fluttered madly against each other, almost seeming to become one beast for a brief moment, until with talons locked, they began to plummet toward the ground. They tore apart at the last second, the larger of the two birds ripping free one wing of the smaller.
The smaller bird—a crow—squawked as it burst into murky violet wisps, re-forming with a hollow cry into the figure of Pinfeathers, his arm now missing from the shoulder socket down. The second bird, a raven, hurtled itself fast as a bullet toward Pinfeathers, who had lost sight of the other Noc.
“Behind you!” Isobel cried as she saw Scrimshaw solidify at his back.
Pinfeathers swung around, just in time for Scrimshaw to plow into him.
Isobel heard a sickening crunch, the sound of a delicate glass object wrapped in cloth being smashed to bits. A second crash followed as Pinfeathers tipped onto the floor, half of his side caving in on impact, the back of his head collapsing inward like the shell of an egg.
“Pin!” she cried, and ran toward him.
She saw his eyes flicker out and become empty pits, as hollow as the hole in his cheek.
She stopped as Scrimshaw looked up from the body of his slain opponent. His eyes narrowed on her, no longer full of morbid playfulness or cryptic mirth but genuine malice and hate.
“You,” he seethed. “This is all because of you. I am tired of you. It ends . . . now!”
He rushed her and Isobel fell back, sprawling against the floor as his shadow grew long over her. He raised his arm, claws gleaming.
All she could do was cover her face with her hands and wait for the deathblow to rain down.
31
Crushed
The blow never came.
For what felt like an eternity, Isobel stayed crouched where she was, curled into herself.
Was he waiting for her to look up? Was it that he wanted her to see it coming?
Isobel refused. She would not lift her gaze. She couldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the terror on her face.
Her thoughts, those that would surely be her last, went to Pinfeathers and his efforts to try to save her.
Whatever he’d been, whatever tortures and horrors he had brought with him before, here, in this moment, he had tried to protect her. He had tried and he had failed. Why?
Isobel shifted her eyes in the direction where Pinfeathers had lain, scattered and broken. But she did not see him there.
Except for a few splintered bits, he was gone.
She risked a glance up and saw Scrimshaw’s single hand now groping at his throat, attempting to pry away the red-clawed fingers that gripped him there, squeezing.
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Trembling, she watched as the hairline crack along Scrimshaw’s skull began to widen. Others soon appeared as the pressure increased. The web-thin fissures spread quickly across his startled face like black veins.
Pinfeathers continued to tighten his hold on Scrimshaw’s neck until, at last, the blue Noc succumbed, sinking to his knees.
For a moment, it seemed as though Scrimshaw might try to speak, to say something to her, but his words were cut off, crushed into silence along with his neck, which caved at last under Pinfeathers’s unrelenting grip.
Isobel shrieked, cringing as Scrimshaw’s head toppled from his shoulders. It fell to the floor, where it shattered amid the layer of dust and petals. His body followed soon after, slumping slowly to one side, then toppling to the floor.
Isobel stared at the empty torso, transfixed by its hollow interior. Her eyes skimmed the surface of the remains, focusing on the few beautifully carved images that, despite the extent of the destruction, had managed to remain intact. A swirling whirlpool, a rolling cascade of waves and foam, the curling tentacles of a giant octopus. There was the sailing ship too, only half of which now existed, the other half seeming to have dropped off into the jagged and open cavity of his side.
Looking closer still, Isobel noticed what seemed to be a miniature portrait among the carvings. Engraved just above the heart, the image showed the quarter profile of a young woman, her head turned as though she was peering back at something over one shoulder. Her eyelids, heavy and drooping, veiled her downcast eyes, which seemed as though they wanted to close. The girl’s dark hair, etched with care in minute curving lines, was bundled around her head in an old-fashioned style. Isobel thought she recognized the image, but before she could place her finger on it, her attention was drawn to Pinfeathers’s wavering shadow.
Isobel tilted her head up to find the Noc still hovering over her.
He swayed, seeming disoriented, even lost as he peered down and around himself. It made her wonder if he even knew what had just happened, what he had just done, or exactly how much damage he had sustained.
She watched as he lifted his hand to his collar. Grabbing hold of the top strap of his jacket, he wrenched it loose, baring his chest. He touched the fragmented area just above his heart, the place he had repaired the morning Isobel had found him sitting by the fountain. He cringed as several shards tumbled forth, falling to clink against the marble floor.
“I . . . told you,” he wheezed, his words almost entirely voiceless. It was as if, like a shattered violin, he had lost the ability to resonate sound. “Didn’t . . . didn’t I tell you?”
Holding his hand over the open crater in his chest, he tottered away from her, away from the mess that was Scrimshaw. As he moved, his whole frame creaked, groaning like a rickety structure preparing to collapse in on itself.
Isobel placed her palms on the ash-powdered floor, about to push herself to her feet, when a quiet pop made her stop. It was the sound of one of his knees fracturing. He began to list to one side, then slip straight down toward the floor. He landed on his knees with a crack. The weight of his tor
so caused his upper body to tip forward, like the trunk of a tree whose base had been sliced cleanly through.
Fumbling forward, Isobel caught him as he toppled into her open arms. His hand fell away from his chest, allowing a slip of fabric to pour halfway out of him as he slumped against her.
Keeping a firm hold on him, his broken form as light and lifeless as a marionette’s, she guided him gently to the floor. Then her eyes went to the thin length of smooth cloth that had tumbled from his chest and partially into her lap.
Isobel frowned at the sight of the pink satin ribbon. Her ribbon.
She seized it and peered down at Pinfeathers, who stared upward and past her at something above them.
She glanced briefly at the statue of the woman who stood atop the fountain.
“You let her win,” the Noc rasped. “You make it so easy. ”
Isobel returned her gaze to him. “Pinfeathers,” she said, hoping to bring his attention back to her.
“Present,” he said, his eyes shifting to meet hers, “if unaccounted for. ”
She held up the pink ribbon. “Where . . . where did you get this?”
He squeezed his eyes shut as though the question pained him. When he opened them again, his lips began to move, attempting to form words. “You gave it to us,” he whispered, making a feeble gesture with his hand before turning his head from her, refusing, it seemed, to meet her gaze. “Asked us to keep it. Said you needed it. Or don’t you remember?”
“I . . . ” She shook her head. “I gave it to Varen. ”
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“Yes,” he hissed.
Scowling, confused, she looked down at the ribbon, one end held in her quivering hand, the other still tucked inside his empty shell of a body.
It made her realize that when Pinfeathers had been piecing himself back together that morning at the fountain, he’d also been sealing the ribbon inside himself. But how had he gotten it?
“The bookstore,” she said, murmuring the words aloud as soon as it occurred to her. “You took it from the attic in the bookstore, didn’t you? It was there. The dream was real. ”
His eyes narrowed into slits. “We . . . took it,” he said, the words clipped and sharp.
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because!” He snapped his head toward her, his frame crackling. Isobel flinched as a new fracture erupted across his face. “We wanted it,” he said.
“I—I don’t understand—”
“You can’t understand us. We don’t even understand ourselves. ”
“Please,” she said, “please help me. Promise to help me find him and—and I can try to put you back together. ”
He laughed, the sound low and continuous, deep and corrosive. And as he laughed, he began to crack apart, his body crumbling while the fault line in his face threatened to split wider. Then, as suddenly as it had come, his laughter ceased and his smile fell away. He seemed to relax as he rolled his head carefully in her direction, as though he knew that his next movement could prove to be his last.
“Is that why you came back?” he asked. “To fix us?”
The way he was looking at her now, his half-splintered face shorn clean of its malevolence—it reminded her of another face. A calm and quiet face.
“Varen?” she whispered.
His eyes, which had begun to fade out, the black murk within thinning into a filmy and translucent glaze, suddenly grew solid again.
She scooted herself still closer to him, cupping his cold, hard face in her hands.
“Tell me where he is,” she said, her voice shaking. “I know you’re connected to him somehow. I know you know where to find him. ”
He lifted his hand toward her, and even when she felt his claws graze her cheek, she did not pull back.
“We’re still so very far from you, cheerleader,” he said. “Never as close as we appear. ”
“Tell me where. ”
“Home,” he said, smiling his jagged smile. “We are ever and always home now. ”
With that, he allowed his arm to fall. As it met with the floor, it sent a vibration ricocheting through his body. The fissure in his face could bear no more. It split wide, and his head cracked in two. Instantly his eyes became empty sockets.
Staring down at him in numb shock and disbelief, Isobel scanned the rubble of the nightmare creature who had once taken so much delight in tormenting her. But no measure of relief came with his demise. Instead, as she pulled the ribbon free from his crumpled chest, a wave of sorrow swept over her as she thought she finally understood what he was.
In some way, he had belonged to the deepest essence of Varen’s being. All the broken pieces of himself that Varen had buried, all those bits that terrified his own mind, all accumulated into one beast, a deranged creature born out of everything he knew he wasn’t supposed to do or feel. An entity made of desires and emotions and all the longings Varen could never admit to anyone—not even himself.
And if the Nocs were demons, she thought, then they were the most personal kind. Shrapnel of the soul, Reynolds had called them. But then, did that make them soulless?
Isobel turned her head to look back at the shattered form of Scrimshaw, knowing at once whose portrait she had seen carved into his chest. It had been Virginia, Poe’s young bride. His Lenore.
Like Scrimshaw with the tiny etching just over his heart, Pinfeathers had carried her close too. Hidden within.
And just as Pinfeathers had changed, so had Varen.
It was the only thing that made sense. It was the only explanation for why Varen wasn’t here now. Why Pinfeathers had been waiting in his stead.
The shift she had feared had happened. Her dream of Varen in the bookstore attic had been no dream.
She felt something warm slide down her cheek.
Frowning, Isobel lifted one dust-caked hand and pressed her fingers to the place where Pinfeathers had touched her a moment before.
She lowered her hand and saw a smear of crimson.
Blood.
32
Melancholy House
With a careful hand, Isobel wound the satin ribbon slowly around one trembling wrist.
Its softness helped to calm her, if only for a moment.
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She avoided looking down as she moved forward through the wreckage, the bits and pieces, the empty limbs strewn across the floor. Making her way to the wall of flowers, she did her best to block out the sound of shards popping and crunching beneath the soles of her boots.
She stopped at a section of interlacing iron and vines uninterrupted by any archway. Reaching out, she clasped the empty air next to one of the iron bars, and as she did so, a matching ornate door handle materialized in her fist.
Isobel twisted the handle and the door swung outward.
As she’d suspected, the world outside the rose garden held the muted and gray landscape of the woodlands.
Trees, black and dead, stood innumerable before a glowing violet horizon. Leaden and tattered, the clouds hung low in the slate-colored sky, while the interlocking boughs of the trees created a webwork of shadow patterns over the ash-coated ground.
Within the dense forest, Isobel could discern two rows of old-fashioned lampposts, their glass holders lit with violet flames.
She stepped out of the garden, drawn by the flickering of their otherworldly light, her boots sinking into the spongy ash.
On either side of her, through the network of trees, she could also see a line of familiar houses, though their structures were far less recognizable now.
The foundations beneath supported mere frames, the facades themselves in crumbling ruin. Doors and windows lacked panes and wood, giving the homes the appearance of blackened skulls, their vacant entrances like slack-jawed mouths gaping in shock.
With the fountain at her back, Isobel did not have to guess to know whe
re she was.
It made sense.
Like the bookshop, Varen’s neighborhood had a mirror-image dreamworld counterpart.
A twilight version of reality, she thought, remembering the words Gwen had read aloud from the book describing Lilith’s domain.
That was why she had found Pinfeathers at the fountain on the morning she’d ridden Danny’s bike here—to the real here. Like the Noc had said, he’d been waiting for her all along.
And Pinfeathers . . . in the moment before he’d shattered apart, hadn’t he told her that Varen was “home”?
Isobel glanced in the direction of Varen’s house. Through the thick cluster of trees, she could determine only the vague outlines of the homes farther down the street.
She moved onward, trying to ignore the sharp sting of the scratch that marred her cheek.
But the pain, like the thought of what the wound meant, would not relent.
Pinfeathers . . .
The way he had touched her had seemed so gentle. Like a caress. But she now knew that he’d inflicted the cut on purpose.
It had been his last act of protection. His final warning.
His way of telling her that Varen . . .
No.
Isobel stopped, refusing to let her thoughts stray in that direction. She knew better than to let the things that occurred in this world take root in her mind and grow. If she allowed that, she risked forgetting what was real, forgetting that what she’d had with Varen was real. That it still was.
It had to be.
A burst of wind slipped past as she continued to make her way down the desolate street. It was the first breeze she had felt since leaving the garden. Cool and brisk, it carried with it that familiar scent. Incense, spice, crushed leaves.
Ahead, the solemn structure of Varen’s house loomed into view, a darker twin of its real-world equivalent, its facade in complete reverse.
Unlike the other houses, which all looked as if they’d been blown through from the inside out by well-thrown grenades, Varen’s, though distorted, seemed to be intact.
The now-blackened windows gave the mansion a wounded look. And the stained-glass front door, no longer golden hued, hung slanted in its frame. A deep violet glow emanated from its colored panes, reminding Isobel of the purple chamber from the Masquerade, the room where she had left Varen on Halloween night.
