Ravencliffe (Blythewood series)
Page 2
We stepped into a dim and dingy room. The only light came from a window facing an airshaft, inches from a brick wall, and a smoking kerosene lamp on the center of a large round table. Around the table were gathered a circle of indistinct figures hunched over piles of incongruously bright flowers, the only color in the room. The two women at the table wore gray dresses and dark scarves over their heads. The two little boys were so covered with dirt I could only make out the whites of their eyes as they looked up at us. Everyone looked up except for one figure at the far side of the room, who curled herself over the table and tugged her scarf down lower over her forehead.
“Etta!” the older woman cried, and then spoke in a stream of words I didn’t understand but recognized as Yiddish.
“Mammaleh, speak English!” Etta replied. “I brought a nurse from the settlement house to look at Ruth. I’ve heard her coughing at night.”
Mrs. Blum switched her gaze from her youngest daughter to her eldest. “Is that true, bubbeleh?” She reached out her hand to touch Ruth’s forehead but the girl squirmed away. As she did, her scarf slipped and I caught a glimpse of her face. She had the same dark hair and olive complexion as Etta, but her skin was mottled around her hairline and neck—a faint pattern of spots similar to the ones on Miss Corey’s face. And her skin wasn’t just olive-toned; it was distinctly green. As soon as she saw us she bolted out the open window onto the fire escape. Miss Sharp raced after her. Miss Corey tried to follow her, but the old woman stood up.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What you want with my Ruthie?”
I dodged around both of them and ducked out the window onto the fire escape.
The metal structure shook under my feet, reminding me of how the fire escape at the Triangle factory had twisted away from the building, hurtling everyone on it to their deaths. I clutched the rusted metal railing and looked up to see Miss Sharp’s blue serge skirt disappearing over the ledge of the roof. I climbed to the roof, wishing my corset wasn’t so tightly laced, and swung my legs over the brick ledge just in time to see Miss Sharp leaping over the dividing wall onto the roof of the next tenement, her petticoats frothing around her legs like feathers. I’d seen girls at the Triangle leap to their deaths, their skirts fluttering in the air like that.
I bit my cheek to banish the image and ran across the rooftop after Miss Sharp, who’d landed safely on the next roof and was chasing the changeling. The changeling was already two buildings away, leaping over the walls between the buildings like the gazelles at the Central Park Zoo. Nothing human moves like that, I thought as I vaulted over the wall. I landed hard on the tar-paper roof, my knees and shoulder blades tingling with the impact. Miss Sharp would never catch her, but she wouldn’t give up either. She’d kill herself in the chase.
I quickened my pace, catching up with Miss Sharp at the next wall. I leaped over it, my heart hammering against my corset stays—the damnable contraption! Surely I could go faster without it.
I reached under my shirtwaist and tugged at the laces to loosen them. Something ripped. I felt a sweet relief as cool air cascaded across my back. Ah! The wind felt delicious! I barely touched down on the next roof before I was off again, soaring over the roofs like a seagull skimming the surf, gaining on the changeling who’d reached the end of the row of tenement houses and was teetering on the edge of the last building. She turned to look over her shoulder and our eyes locked. We both knew there was nowhere to go but six stories down to the street.
She turned away and began to step into the empty air. I plunged through the air crying her name—the only name I had for her.
“Ruth!”
She turned, her eyes widening with horror, teetering on the edge of the roof. I somehow cleared the gap between us quickly enough to grab her and got a handful of shawl that began to unwind. I grasped the other end and she flung her arms around me, her sharp fingernails digging into my back. With both my arms pinned to my sides I couldn’t counteract the pull of the changeling’s weight. We were both going to plummet to the pavement. I felt the empty air beckoning us . . .
Then I felt something else pulling me back—a pressure along my shoulder blades as if someone had grabbed me by my corset and yanked. We both fell backward onto the rooftop, slamming hard onto the sticky tar paper, the changeling’s arms still wrapped around my back, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Quickly!” she cried, pulling me up and wrapping her scarf around my back. “I’ll hide your secret if you protect me. You of all creatures must know what the Order does to our kind.”
Secret? Creatures? Our kind? What was she talking about? I stared at her, but she was looking behind me. Baffled, I reached under the shawl and felt wet, slick skin where my shirtwaist and corset had torn. I must have scraped my back on the roof and started bleeding.
But as my fingers reached my shoulder blades, I felt something else beneath my torn skin: the soft silk down of newly fledged feathers. The wings that had been growing beneath my skin these past few months had finally broken free.
2
I’D KNOWN SINCE May, when Raven told me that my real father was a Darkling and the pains in my shoulder blades were fledgling wings, that this day would come. But I had hoped to forestall the moment with tight corsets and will power. I certainly hadn’t meant to reveal my true nature in front of a changeling—or my favorite teacher. Had Miss Sharp seen? A cold wash of horror, as if I’d been dunked into the rank waters of the East River, swept over me.
But when Miss Sharp reached us, panting, her hair loosened from its bun and whipping around her face, she had eyes only for the changeling. She withdrew the dagger from the sheath at her waist and held it up before the changeling’s face, spitting out words in Latin. The carved runes on the blade floated into the air and hovered over the changeling’s head. The mottled pattern on the changeling’s hairline and throat began to move under her skin, forming into the pattern of the runes. She moaned and writhed, her skin turning greener where it wasn’t covered by the marks.
“Please make her stop!” she cried, clutching my arm, her eyes pleading—eyes that seemed to be changing color even as I looked into them, into a blue-green that reminded me of my mother’s. Her hair was changing, too, turning the same color red as my mother’s.
“Let go of her!” Miss Sharp growled, pointing the dagger at the changeling’s throat.
The changeling’s hand slid off mine. Instantly, her eyes and hair changed back to brown. She had been changing into me. Only it had looked like my mother.
“You look like her,” the changeling said.
“How . . . ?”
“She was stealing your memories while she was taking your appearance,” Miss Sharp said. “Just like she stole Ruth Blum’s identity.”
“Not stealing,” she said, her eyes sliding slyly to mine. “I only borrow. I have not taken your memories away, have I, miss? Your secrets are safe inside you, no?”
I nodded, guessing at her meaning. “She didn’t harm me,” I said, raising my eyes to Miss Sharp.
“And what about Ruth?” Miss Sharp demanded. “Does she still have her memories wherever she is? What have you done with her?”
“I did nothing to her. She disappeared, so I took her place.”
“You’re lying!” Miss Sharp cried, moving the blade closer to her throat. “You can only assume a human’s appearance by touching them.”
“I didn’t say I never met her,” she said sulkily. “I brushed up against her on the excursion boat to Coney Island. Her memories of her family were very strong, but only because she was planning to leave them. When I knew she didn’t mean to go back to her family I decided to go back in her place—”
“That’s a lie!”
We all turned to see Etta standing in the middle of the roof with Miss Corey. Her hands were curled into fists, her eyes glaring at the changeling.
“Ruthie would never run away and leave me.”
“Where did she go?” Miss Sharp asked, pressing the point of the dagger into the changeling’s throat. “If you touched her thoughts you must have seen what she was planning.”
The changeling frowned. “I saw a man—someone who would be waiting for her beneath a sign—but I couldn’t see his face, only the terrible grinning face on the sign.” She shuddered.
“A grinning face?” Miss Corey asked.
“Like this.” The changeling drew back her lips into a hideous, unnaturally wide smile, revealing two crowded rows of small teeth. That smile was instantly recognizable as the face above the entrance to Steeplechase Park in Coney Island.
“So she was meeting a man at Steeplechase,” Miss Sharp observed. “Is that all you know? What was his name? Where were they going?”
“I don’t know. When Ruth thought about him, her mind grew dim, as if he were cloaked in shadow. Even the picture she had of him—here—” As she reached into her pocket Miss Sharp tensed, but the changeling only drew out a photograph. “Ruthie carried this with her that day, but she dropped it on the boat.”
We all looked down at the photograph. It showed a couple driving in a topless automobile against the backdrop of a great arch that I thought might be the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées. Or at least a painted backdrop of the Parisian avenue. I’d seen girls at the Triangle showing off such souvenir photographs. I recognized Ruth as the girl in the car, but the face of the man at the wheel was a blur.
I looked harder at the blurred face of the man and felt a shiver go through me. The face wasn’t just blurry; it was veiled by a shadow. As if the man in the car with Ruth wasn’t a man but a creature of the shadows.
I looked up to find Miss Sharp and Miss Corey exchanging a look. Last year a man who controlled the shadow demons—the evil tenebrae—had gained control of one of the students at Blythewood and attacked the school.
“Yes, I thought the same thing,” the changeling said. “The man who took Ruth is controlled by the shadows.”
I looked down and saw that her hand had crept onto mine. I snatched it away. “Then why didn’t you go and help her?” I demanded.
“How? We changelings have no power over the shadows. We only take the places of those who have gone missing. Luckily many girls go missing in this city.”
“Luckily?” I cried. “Did you never think to tell anyone of this to help these girls?”
The changeling stared at me, confused. “Who would listen to me?” she asked. “I’m no one.”
“Don’t you have an identity apart from the one you take?” Etta asked.
The changeling shook her head. “We are not fully grown until we take a human’s identity. I haven’t just assumed Ruth’s form; I’ve acquired her thoughts and feelings. I know how much she loved you because of how much I love you.” She reached her hand out to touch Etta, but Etta pulled away.
“You are not my sister!” Etta cried, tears springing to her eyes. “Because of you no one has gone looking for Ruth. We could have gone to the police.”
“Do you really think the police would do anything to find a poor Jewish factory girl?” spat the changeling. “Go and ask them—see how many girls go missing every day in this city.”
It was true, but I put my arm around Etta’s shoulders and said, “We’ll go together. My friend Mr. Greenfeder has connections at the police department.”
“Lillian and I will also help look for her,” Miss Sharp said. “If there are really many girls going missing, the Ord—the settlement house should investigate.”
“What will happen to her?” Etta asked.
“We could take care of her right now,” Miss Corey said, taking the dagger from Miss Sharp.
“No!” I cried, stepping in between Miss Corey and the changeling. “Don’t hurt her. She’s harmless.”
“How do you know?” Miss Corey snapped.
“Because . . .” Because she’d seen what I was and hadn’t revealed my secret? She might just be manipulating me. But there was something else.
“I don’t hear my warning bells,” I said, looking into the changeling’s eyes. They were no longer the blue-green of my mother’s eyes or the brown of Ruth’s; they had turned colorless as water. Inside them I saw my own reflection—and the stark fear of losing herself.
“We could take her back to her kind in the Blythe Wood,” Miss Sharp suggested, laying a restraining hand on her friend’s arm.
I expected the changeling to show some relief, but she cried out in a mournful voice, “No, please, I’d rather die here and now. If I go back to the forest, I’ll be no one. I’ll lose Ruth. I’ll lose her memories—my memories now—of Mama and Papa and little Schlomo and Eliahu and, most especially, of you, Ettaleh. Imagine, shvester, what it would feel like to lose your memory of the time Mama put salt in the Rebbe’s tea and he spit it out on the tablecloth and Papa asked if that was his blessing.”
Etta laughed, but then steeled her mouth. “You weren’t there.”
“But I feel like I was! Please . . .” She turned to Miss Sharp and Miss Corey. “Let me stay just a little longer. I can help you find Ruth. Her memories are still inside me. Perhaps there is some clue . . .”
“I thought you said everything about the man was shadowy,” Miss Corey said suspiciously.
“Yes, but I can try to see through the shadows.” She squinted her eyes. “I think I see something now . . .”
Miss Corey snorted. “She’s just playing for time.”
But the changeling’s face was undergoing a transformation. Just as before she’d assumed the grinning face of the Steeplechase man, now her face was changing into a man’s face. A familiar face. She was beginning to resemble Judicus van Drood, the man I knew was the Shadow Master.
“Stop!” I cried, terrified at the idea of seeing that face again.
The changeling’s eyes flashed open, her features reassuming the features of Ruth Blum.
“What’s wrong, Ava?” Miss Sharp asked, touching my arm. “Did you recognize the man she was becoming?”
I shook my head, not wanting to admit it had been van Drood. I had hoped he was dead—drowned on the Titanic. But if he were the one who had lured Ruth Blum away, then he was still alive.
“If the changeling could show us the face of the man who abducted Ruth, she could be useful,” Miss Sharp said to Miss Corey. Kneeling beside the changeling, she asked, “Do you promise to go peaceably back to the Blythe Wood once we’ve found Ruth?”
The changeling’s eyes shifted away from Miss Sharp’s and fastened on Etta. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it for Etta. That’s what Ruth would do.”
“How can we possibly take her word . . . ?” Miss Corey began.
“We don’t have to,” Miss Sharp said, laying the flat of the dagger on top of the changeling’s head. “I can perform a binding spell to make her keep her word.”
Miss Sharp recited a few Latin words I recognized from Mrs. Calendar’s Latin class as a promise-keeping spell. The elderly teacher had subjected us all to it to ensure that we returned our Latin spell books in good condition. I recalled that it had made the top of my head ache for days and that whenever I touched my Latin textbook I felt a little shock, but if the changeling felt any pain she didn’t show it. She kept her eyes locked on Etta as she recited the words: “Do meam verbam tibi in fide.”
When the spell was done we made our way back to the Blums’ apartment. Ruth walked beside Etta, with Miss Corey staying close behind, keeping an eye on the changeling’s back. Miss Sharp lingered behind with me.
“I feel sorry for her,” Miss Sharp said as we followed behind them.
&nb
sp; “Because she’ll have to go back to being no one?” I asked, shivering at the thought. I pulled Ruth’s shawl more tightly around my shoulders, hoping that Miss Sharp wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t mine.
She shook her head. “That sort of oblivion might sound awful, but when you think about it, she won’t know what she’s missing. No, what I pity her for is the life she’s leading now. Having to play a part around the people you care for most . . .”
Her voice faltered, and for a moment I thought she knew. Although she would be sorry to do it, she would have to turn me in to the Order. I would be exposed as a monster before all my friends, and then I would be killed. If Miss Sharp wouldn’t do it, Miss Corey would. I’d seen the merciless look in her eyes. One of these creatures had scarred her for life; she had no pity for them, just as she’d have no pity for me.
But then Miss Sharp gave me a bright, brittle smile. “But you don’t have to worry about that, Ava dear. You’re so open and honest. . . . I admired the way you stood up for the changeling back there.” Then she quickened her pace to catch up with Miss Corey and I followed, wondering why I didn’t feel more relieved.
3
TWO HOURS LATER I was staring at my reflection in a gilt-framed mirror while a lady’s maid in a starched white cap and lace collar stuck diamonds into my hair. I couldn’t imagine a more startling contrast to the tenement flat where we’d left Ruth and Etta.
Nor could I think of anything I wanted to do less than get dressed for Georgiana Montmorency’s ball. Georgiana was the richest—and haughtiest—girl at Blythewood. She’d made no secret last year of what she thought of a former factory seamstress attending the same school as her. But for her senior year she’d decided to throw a ball for all the “local” Blythewood girls—meaning the ones high enough in society—and because of my grandmother’s connections she couldn’t not invite me. There would be a few girls, like my roommate Helen, whom I’d enjoy seeing, but I didn’t feel ready to face the rest of them, not with the threat of my wings unfurling at any moment.