“They did hear an odd rumor,” Miss Sharp said, reading from the letter. “Some of the river men have reported unusual activity on the river at night—tales of boats vanishing in the vicinity of Spuyten Duyvil.”
“Spuyten Duyvil?” I asked. “That’s a stop on the train, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s the southern-most neighborhood of Riverdale,” Miss Sharp said, “named for the creek that flows into the Hudson, which in turn—”
“Is named for the treacherous currents that occur where the creek enters the river,” Miss Corey continued. “In Dutch it means ‘spouting devil.’”
“A fitting name for the entrance to the Hellgate Club. It could be the whirlpool that swallowed the girls and Raven.”
“There are peculiar legends about the area,” Miss Sharp said. “In the seventeenth century a man died trying to swim across the river. A witness claimed that the devil, in the shape of a giant sea monster, seized the man and dragged him beneath the water.”
“Just as Raven was dragged under the water by the kraken,” I said, feeling suddenly chilled although I was standing by the fire. “And now Mr. Bellows says there are rumors of boats vanishing in that area?”
“Yes,” Miss Sharp said, looking back at the letter. “And yet, when Mr. Bellows checked with the river authority he found that no boats had been reported missing.”
“So perhaps the boats that are vanishing mean to go into the whirlpool,” I said.
“But that’s—” Miss Sharp began.
“Utterly possible,” Miss Corey finished for her, jumping to her feet and crossing to a shelf. “There was a case like it in the mountains of Romania.”
“Ah,” Miss Sharp said, “the Scholomance?”
“The what?” I asked. It was sometimes hard to follow Miss Sharp and Miss Corey when they started finishing each other’s sentences.
“It’s a legendary school of black magic in the Carpathian mountains,” Miss Corey said, plucking a book from a high shelf and flipping through it.
“Run by the devil,” Miss Sharp said, looking over Miss Corey’s shoulder. “There are only ever ten students at a time and they spend ten years there learning the black arts. At the end of ten years one of the students is claimed by the devil to do his bidding and guard the school, which—”
“Is in the middle of a lake,” Miss Corey said, slapping the book down on the table open to a page that showed an engraving of a ruined castle on a mountain lake. “It can only be reached through an underwater passage. The castle appears to be a ruin to anyone who tries to approach it by boat. In order to see it as it really is you must go through a whirlpool that is guarded by the tenth student and his dragon.”
“So the Hellgate Club could be any one of the mansions we’ve looked at, but we wouldn’t see it as it really is unless we go through the whirlpool?” I asked.
“Yes,” Miss Corey said. “Only you probably wouldn’t live through it if you didn’t control the monster.”
“Unless you were a good fighter,” I said. “Raven could have gotten through and been captured. He could be there now. All our girls might be there. We have to find a way to go through the whirlpool.”
“I know how.”
The small, shy voice came from the doorway of the library. A tiny figure was standing there, dripping water onto the parquet floor and covered in pine needles and wet leaves. For a moment I thought it was a forest sprite, but when she stepped forward I saw it was Etta.
“My dear!” Miss Sharp cried, jumping to her feet and drawing Etta to the fire. “What’s happened to you? Did you fall through the ice skating?”
“That’s just it,” Etta explained as she allowed herself to be draped in shawls. “I’ve been to the forest to see the changelings. They’ve finally thawed! And they know where Rue and the other girls are!”
Only when Etta had changed her clothes and drunk three cups of hot tea would Miss Sharp allow her to bring us to the woods.
“We can’t all go,” Etta explained. “They’re still recovering from being frozen all winter. They say it’s never happened to them before—they usually hibernate under rivers and streams before the first frost comes—and they’ll be frightened by a crowd. They want to see Ava and—”
“I’ll go,” Miss Sharp said firmly. “There should be one adult.”
“Yes,” Etta said meekly, “but it will need to be Miss Corey. They especially asked for her.”
“Me?” Miss Corey said, blanching so that her mottled freckles stood out lividly on her skin. “But they must know how I feel about them.”
Etta shrugged. “I said you might not like it, but they insisted.”
Miss Corey looked at Miss Sharp and then sighed. “Oh, very well. I’ve gotten used to Darklings; I suppose I can get used to changelings, too.”
“That’s the spirit, Lil!” Miss Sharp said, patting her friend on the back. “I’ll go get your galoshes. It will be muddy in the woods.”
It was, indeed, prodigiously muddy. The thaw had come as quickly as the frost had, dissolving the winter’s accumulation of ice in one wet swoop. Pools of slush stood on the lawn, and the trees dripped in the woods, the ground soggy and tender. Our feet sunk into the newly released earth and churned up mud. It smelled rich and loamy and sucked at our rubber boots with loud rude squelches and smacks that all but drowned out the song of a thousand birds celebrating the end of winter.
By the time we reached the Rowan Circle, we were daubed in mud head to foot, but we were nothing compared to the changelings. They appeared to be wholly sprung from the wet earth. They lounged in the circle, scantily clad in moss and long grasses, stretching their glossy limbs in the sun. As they moved, their skin changed from brown to green to the blue of the sky overhead, as if they were absorbing all the colors of the awakening forest. Lampsprites flitted through the clearing, casting their own warmth and radiance over the thawing changelings.
“They barely had bodies when I saw them earlier,” Etta whispered.
“Ah, we felt so cramped by a winter spent bodiless, we needed legs to stretch,” one said, approaching us. She—or he, I really couldn’t tell and I had a feeling neither could she/he—raised long arms to the sun and stretched like a cat. Then, in a flash of sunshine, the changeling was a cat—a tawny mountain lion arching its back—and as the creature passed into the shade, she/he became a green-limbed boy with elfin features and a mischievous glint in his dark green eyes. The changeling was as fluid as the water dripping from the trees and as mercurial as the spring sky. She/he was sheer possibility.
“Sheer,” the changeling whispered, apparently hearing my thoughts. “I like that name. Call me that while we talk today. It might keep me . . .” She/he laughed and rippled like a stream moving over rocks. “Stable long enough to tell you what I need to.”
“Thank you, Sheer,” Etta said, and then under her breath to me and Miss Corey, “We’d best follow along; they’re hard to understand while they’re in this changeable state.”
We each pronounced Sheer’s name and she—for she had decided for the moment at least to settle for a feminine air—grew more solid. She motioned for us to sit on some toppled tree trunks in the center of the circle. The other changelings gathered around us, their shapes changing as they moved. It made me dizzy to watch them, so I focused on Sheer, who sat on a log and crossed her long legs.
“Ah,” she sighed, “the sun feels so good on my flesh. How can you bear to go about so . . . covered?”
“Yes,” Miss Corey said impatiently, “we’ll consider becoming nudists when this is all over. In the meantime, Etta says you know where Rue is being kept. We think our girls are there, too. If you tell us where it is, we’ll go get them—”
“You’ll never get through without us,” Sheer said, with a shudder than made her skin ripple. “The only entrance to the house is through the water—through a hellgate.”
/>
“Do you mean the whirlpool?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sheer said. “A hellgate is a whirlpool that a wizard may use as a doorway to a fortress.”
“Like the Isle of the Scholomance in Carpathia,” Miss Corey said.
“Yes,” Sheer agreed with another skin-rippling shudder. “That one was guarded by a dragon. This one is guarded by something far worse—a kraken.”
This time I was the one who shuddered. “I saw it in a vision I had of the Titanic sinking.”
“Yes, the Shadow Master found the monster in the North Atlantic and brought it here to guard the hellgate to his castle. That’s where he’s keeping Rue. We found her last winter, but before we could tell you, we were frozen. Rue would not come with us because she said she must stay with the other girls to protect them. She said their minds were being bent to do terrible things.” She shuddered again, this time so violently that she melted into the log where she sat.
“Sheer!” Etta called. “Stay with us. Did Rue tell you what the girls were being used to do?”
“No,” Sheer said, reassuming her shape. Her features had changed, though, to a face that looked familiar. I saw Etta pale as we both recognized Ruth’s face—or Rue’s, I supposed, as the changeling told the rest of the story in Rue’s voice.
“We are kept in a gilded palace like birds in a cage, made to dance all day and night, never to rest or eat or speak—only dance.”
“It’s Herr Hofmeister’s dancing school,” I said. “I knew it! But why—”
“We only know the steps, not where they are leading us,” Sheer said in Rue’s voice, and then in a voice that was neither Rue’s nor Sheer’s but a dozen girls all shrieking from one mouth that bulged as if all those girls were inside trying to get out. “You must stop us!”
For a moment I saw the faces of a dozen girls flit over the one changeling’s features. Among them I recognized Beatrice and Susannah and lastly Daisy, her face drawn and thin, her eyes sunken in their sockets. “Ava,” she whispered, “they are going to make us do a terrible thing, please—”
But by the time I had moved the few feet to where she sat, Daisy’s face had melted away and only the bland, mud-colored eyes of the changeling blinked up at me.
“We will take you, but you must know that the journey could kill you,” Sheer said. “Few survive the kraken.”
“Did Raven?” I asked.
Sheer shook her head. “I don’t know.”
I sank back down onto the damp log, which nearly crumbled beneath my now leaden weight. “I’ll go with you.”
“I’ll go, too,” Etta said.
Sheer shook her head. “Van Drood has put a spell on the gate to keep humans out—only a Darkling can get through—or a changeling.”
“Ava’s only half-Darkling,” Miss Corey said. “What if half isn’t enough?”
Sheer tilted her head and looked curiously at me. “We won’t know until we try.”
“That’s not good enough!” Miss Corey cried. “Ava, I can’t let you take the risk. We’ll get one of the Darklings to go.”
“I have to go,” I said, turning to Miss Corey. “The Darklings have already lost one of theirs. If the Darklings and the Order are ever to work together, they must see we’re willing to take equal risks.”
“That’s a fine speech,” Miss Corey said with a sniff. “But you’re going because of that boy.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “If Miss Sharp was there, wouldn’t you go?”
“That’s not . . . oh, Hell’s Bells, I suppose I would. But then I’m going with you.”
“But you can’t,” Etta began, “Sheer said—”
“I said only changelings or Darklings.” Sheer stretched her arm out to Miss Corey and placed her hand on her face, her fingers tracing the mottled marks there. Miss Corey flinched but remained still, so pale the marks stood out more lividly—a pattern that appeared on Sheer’s face.
“A changeling did this to me,” Miss Corey said, tilting her chin up and staring defiantly at her mirror image. “Does that give me the power to go through the Hellgate?”
“No, Lillian, that would not give you that power, but you can go through the gate. A changeling didn’t do this to you. You are a changeling.”
31
“NO,” MISS COREY said, swatting Sheer’s hand away. “A changeling was trying to take my shape. My father stopped it and killed it, but it left these marks on my face.”
“We don’t make marks on the faces of our hosts. Did you see any on Ruth’s face?”
“No,” Etta answered for her. “But I saw them on Rue’s sometimes.”
“When we take on a host’s personality, there’s a period of transition. Rue had not completely transformed into Ruth—and you had not completely transformed into Lillian Corey when her father found you. He probably would have killed you, only his daughter died first.”
“I—this thing—killed her!”
“No,” Sheer said gently. “Sometimes we come to take the place of a dying human. It’s always dangerous, because if the host dies before the transformation is complete, the changeling might die, too. You nearly did.”
“My father said I almost died from the attack.”
“But he nursed you back to health. He loved you—first because you had tried to save his daughter, and then because you became his daughter. His love—his belief that you were his Lillian—saved you.”
There were tears streaming down Miss Corey’s face. “He lied to me.”
“He was afraid that you would hate yourself—that you would have felt . . . different.”
“I always have.” A scarlet flush swept over Miss Corey’s face. “Is this why I’m . . . why I . . .”
Sheer laughed. “Why you love whom you love? Don’t be silly. Vionetta Sharp loves you, and she’s wholly human.”
“Oh,” Miss Corey said, a small smile appearing on her face. “How do you know all that?”
“Because when I touched you, I felt how beloved you are.” Sheer looked sad for a moment; her glossy limbs lost a bit of their shine, their sheen turning chalky as dried mud. “That’s what we all dream of.” She turned to me. “I felt it in you, too, Ava. Raven loves you, and so do your friends, Helen and Daisy and Nathan. They love you, not a Darkling or a human. Just you.”
I nodded, wiping tears from my face. “Then I’d better go find Daisy and the other lost girls. I’m ready.”
“And so am I,” Miss Corey said.
I spent the afternoon exchanging information with Nathan and Mr. Bellows, who had returned from the city. They told us there were three mansions in Spuyten Duyvil owned by new investors brought in by the Council to replenish funds lost by the Titanic disaster.
“And now they’ve tied up their funds in some secret investment,” Nathan said. “They claim that no one can know what it is until the ‘big unveiling,’ whatever that means.” Nathan swore and flung himself out of his chair to pace across the library floor. Helen followed his movements worriedly.
“I just can’t believe we’re sending Ava and Miss Corey alone to defeat van Drood’s monster!” he continued in frustration.
“There’s no reason the other Darklings can’t go with them,” Miss Sharp pointed out, consulting a manual of wards. “Lillian and I and Nathan can go in the boat, too. Once you’re all in the mansion, Ava can disarm the wards and send the Darklings for the rest of us. We just have to wait close enough to see a signal.”
“I don’t like to wait for a bunch of birds to come fetch me,” Nathan said, scowling. “The second I see the house unwarded I’ll be there . . . with this.”
He drew a dagger from under his coat jacket. It was like the one I’d seen Mr. Bellows carry, but it had a different pattern on the hilt.
“Is that a knight’s dagger?” Miss Sharp asked. “I didn’t think—”
“I ga
ve it to him,” Mr. Bellows said—rather defensively, I thought. “I know he hasn’t had the full training, but in times like these . . .”
“You did the right thing,” Miss Sharp said, her eyes shining. “We can none of us be slaves to the old ways while those dear to us are threatened.” She withdrew a dagger from the folds of her skirt. “I’ll be standing at the ready, too, waiting for the signal.”
That night, we set sail from the Ravencliffe boathouse. Miss Corey and Miss Sharp came, and the Fledgling League. Nathan said he had “borrowed” the boat from the Astors’ boathouse. I remembered that Helen had told me once that she and Nathan had played pirates on the river as children. I had always pictured them on dinghies, but it now was apparent that they both knew very well how to sail.
It was a thirty-foot teak yacht called Half Moon. Nathan gave orders for hauling this and raising that, which Helen followed quickly, telling us all what rope—or “line,” as I learned they were called—to hold and where to sit. At first Marlin looked baffled, but when the main sail was raised and it caught the air like a silver wing in the moonlight, his face lit up. As the boat leaned into the wind and picked up speed, the light of the full moon turned the froth from the prow white and shone on the silvery shapes of the changelings swimming beside us. One leapt through the air like a dolphin. Miss Sharp, who was sitting beside Miss Corey in the cabin, laughed aloud at the sight and whispered something into Miss Corey’s ear that made her smile. I gathered that Miss Corey had told her about being a changeling. I didn’t see that it had made any difference in Miss Sharp’s feelings, except to make her even fiercer in her affections.
“Why, it’s just like flying!” Marlin cried.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Helen beamed at him, but with a wistful look in Nathan’s direction. “Go sit with him,” Helen whispered to me. “He’s all alone.”
Nathan did look grimly solitary standing at the helm, piloting the Half Moon down the river like the Ancient Mariner. The first thing he said to me was, “I’m not happy about you going into that Hellgate.”
Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) Page 28
