The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff

  The last wisp of Mist melted, and the mass of approaching voices erupted into a cheer.

  “It’s over!” One voice soared above the rest. “Praise be! It’s over!”

  Jemma touched the Stone around her neck and smiled.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Let There Be Sun

  “It’s over—down with the Agromonds!”

  “Down with the Agromonds!” the chant began. “Down with the Agromonds!”

  A phalanx of people rounded the corner from behind the trees, headed by Berola.

  “Ma, Ma!” Flora, Tiny, and Simon ran toward her.

  “My babies!” she cried, breaking away from the crowd and rushing forward. “My babies! I been so worried—” The triplets flew into her open arms.

  Behind Berola, the crowd was gathering: men, women, children, even pony traps carrying elderly folk and infants. There were far more than the population of Hazebury could possibly be; everyone from the surrounding villages, it seemed, had come along. They gathered around Jemma in a large crescent, jostling and chattering. Noodle and Pie clambered onto her shoulders, and she couldn’t help smiling, thinking what an odd group they must appear to be.

  Voices petered out as stunned faces took in the ruins around them. Then one voice shouted, “She done it—the Fire One!”

  Jemma recognized the man from the group she and Digby had seen after leaving the storehouse, weeks ago. A cheer rose, and she noticed several other people who had been on the path that morning: Mrs. Scragg, Mrs. Jenkin, and the boy Ned. All trace of grayness had vanished from them, and their faces were animated as they joined in the general chatter.

  “Heard this commotion … looked up … castle, starting to crumble … Berola says, It’s the Prophecy come to pass … Mist thinning … sky, getting brighter … word got about fast … folks from everywhere: Dingleborough, Oxton—”

  “Jemma, lass!” Berola elbowed her way to the front with the triplets and threw her arms around Jemma, almost dislodging Noodle and Pie from her shoulders. “Thank you, thank you!”

  “Ouff!” Jemma gasped, winded by Berola’s hug. The rats scuttled into the safety of her pockets. “You’re welcome.… I couldn’t have done it without Digby, though.”

  “So where’s them Agromonds?” a woman yelled. “The monsters!”

  Jemma pointed to the ruins. “In there. Three of them are alive. The fourth, their son, is dead.” She felt a pang of sadness, especially thinking about how Feo must have felt when he saw his mother about to slaughter him.

  “Then let’s get ’em!” the man yelled. “Death to the Agromonds!”

  “Aye!” said another, red-faced. “They took my wee twins, just weeks ago. Death to ’em!”

  “An’ so say I!” A young woman was clinging to his arm, her face puckered with grief. Jemma thought of the two small bodies under Shade’s bed: this must be their parents. Their anguish tore through her.

  “I’m so sorry … I …” She was at a loss for words.

  “I’m with Murwyn an’ Vi!” came a voice from the crowd. “Revenge for their babies—for all of ’em! Death to those monsters!” Others joined in: “Death to the Agromonds!”

  “No, please!” Jemma looked at Digby in alarm. “No more bloodshed!”

  A group of men and women surged toward the castle, taking up the cry for vengeance. Jemma and Digby tried to hold them back but were swept aside. Jemma ran after them, pulling at their shirts and jackets.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop, please!”

  Digby raced ahead and stood in the doorway, his fists clenched.

  “You heard her!” he yelled above the crowd. “Toby, Pete—listen to me. Jemma ain’t been through all she’s been through just for us to be as murderous as that lot!”

  “Out of the way, Digby,” growled Pete. “Let us pass.”

  The crowd pressed forward, fists and voices raised. “Let’s get ’em! Revenge!”

  Jemma ran to Digby’s side and let out a scream at the top of her lungs. It cut through the rising pandemonium, the force of it stunning them into silence.

  “STOP!” she yelled. “Look at you, even turning against Digby—against your own kind! I know as well as anybody what the Agromonds are, and understand how you feel. They murdered my brother, and put my parents through years of suffering, keeping me here. But please, please, think! If you act like them, what makes you different from them?”

  A few people blushed and murmured, and shifted from foot to foot.

  “She’s right!” Berola barreled up and turned to face the throng, hands on hips, feet planted squarely on the ground. “An’ if you don’ stop this, Toby Weatherill and Pete McCloud, you’ll have my rollin’ pin to answer to—an’ no more of my meat pies, to boot!”

  The crowd tittered. Toby and Pete stepped back.

  “Well said, love,” said Gordo, striding up next to her with the triplets. Tiny nestled next to Jemma and stroked Pie’s head, which was peeking out from one pocket.

  “Then how do we avenge our babies?” shouted a woman near the front. “Tell us that!”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Duff,” Digby said. “We can’t stop feelin’ what we feel. But I seen from them Agromonds what it does when you act from hatred, killin’ for what you want without a thought for what’s right an’ wrong. In the end, it kills you too. Makes you soulless, just like them, till there’s barely nothin’ left that’s human.”

  “An’ what of our little ’uns’ souls, trapped for eternity in that pile o’ rubble?”

  “No, they’re not!” Jemma said. “They’re free now, all of them. They were led to the Light by Gudred—though we knew him as Drudge—”

  “Gudred?” said Pete. “You mean the famous Solvay Visionary? Come off it! He died hundreds of years ago.”

  “That’s what everyone thought,” said Jemma, “but he came here, to wait for this to happen, and help fulfill the Prophecy. His love, and the crag’s magic, kept him alive—”

  “Sounds like rubbish to me!” said Toby.

  “But it’s true, Toby!” Digby said. “Jemma should know! He was her great-great … well, I don’t know how many greats, but her great-somethin’-uncle, anyway. He gave his life, almost three hundred years of it, for this. For all of us! An’ now, at last, we’re rid of these tyrants, we can live in peace. So let’s honor all them little ’uns, an’ mourn ’em, an’ let ’em rest in peace.”

  “Aye, rest in peace!” Berola said, still standing firm, Gordo and the triplets beside her.

  “Well then, what do we do with them evil fiends?”

  “I got an idea!” A burly, leather-aproned man shoved from the middle of the crowd and strode up to them. “Griff Barton at your service,” he said. “Blacksmith, an’ mayor of Oxton, for what it’s worth. We got Inquisitors’ holdin’ cells wot are built to keep in an army, with locks the same. Made the locks meself, I’m ashamed to say.” He reddened, then smiled. “I kep’ duplicate keys, though. Put them Agromonds in there an’ they won’t get out in a hurry, I can tell you.”

  “Aye,” said Gordo. “Let’s put their so-called justice to good use!”

  “It’s a start,” Jemma said. “Thank you, Griff.”

  “My pleasure.” Griff smiled. “An’ I say we round up all them others wot have followed ’em all these years, too—Blackwater folk an’ the like. Come one an’ all to the Inquisitors’ Inn!”

  Most people were quieting down, but Murwyn and Vi, whose children Shade had so recently abducted, pushed to the front. They were trembling with rage and sorrow.

  “An’ what of our two,” said Murwyn, “crushed under all that rubble, their souls gone goodness only knows where?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jemma said softly. “We can dig for them if you like.… But their souls have gone. Into Light … We saw them both, they joined all the others near the end. It was beautiful, it really was.”

  Tiny reached out and took Murwyn’s hand. “Yes, it was,” he said. “All pink an’ blue they was, them two wot fl
ew in last, an’ it was like they felt happy, an’ it made me feel happy. Mr. Drudge, he was all sort of bright an’ airy too, then floated up an’ led ’em away—all together, jus’ like Digby said, flyin’ through the roof like one great big, bright balloon.”

  Vi gasped. “I saw that,” she said, wiping away a tear. “You did too, Murwyn, love. You even remarked on it, remember?”

  “Aye—we all saw it, not half an hour ago,” said a tall man at the back. “Gold, pink, an’ blue, like the lad said, an’ so bright we could even see it through the Mist, risin’ up from the castle. In’t that right, Amelia?”

  “That’s right!” said an equally tall woman next to him. “Then it moved over the forest an’ sort of hovered there for a minute, liftin’ light from the trees, an’ getting’ bigger an’ brighter. Quite lovely, it was.”

  “Lifting light from the trees?” Jemma gasped. “The forest phantoms! Drudge has taken them, as well.” Of course. He wouldn’t have left a single lost soul behind. All those twins and triplets were reunited at last, and free.

  “Y’know,” said an older man near the back, “I feel as though the heaviness I’ve carried since they took our Clodagh and Clodwin has sort o’ lifted.… Twenty years of sorrow, gone!”

  “Me too, I feel that,” several voices joined in.

  “An’ … that was their souls, you reckon, goin’ up like that?” said Murwyn. “If I knew at least their souls was safe, p’raps I could start to be at peace with it.”

  “Look!” Tiny yelped, pointing at the sky. Every eye followed his finger. In the middle of the blue, a large, bright patch had appeared. It grew brighter still, like a white lake reflecting every color of the rainbow in pale, luminous hues. It pulsed once, twice, three times. Then slowly, it faded away

  The crowd stood in awed silence. Then murmurs began again, swelling into chatter about that light in the sky, how intense it was, and how colorful everything looked now that all those poor children’s souls had been saved at last. Murwyn turned to Vi. The two held each other and dissolved into tears.

  “Let’s let ’em be, love,” Vi sobbed. “I’d rather remember ’em as they was.”

  Jemma heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, my,” she said, turning to Digby. “For a moment I thought we were going to have more violence on our hands.”

  “So did I, Jem. Got to say, though, I knows how they feel. I wanted to rip them harpies to shreds. Him too, even though he did save you from that beam.”

  “S’cuse, Miss Jemma.” Jemma felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned. Ned stood next to her, his eyes bright and alert. What a difference from the ghost-like boy she’d seen when she and Digby left the storehouse! “Thank you for bringin’ back the sun,” he said, then darted away into the bustling crowd. It was as though they had all been under a spell, but now it was broken.

  Jemma was never sure how much time passed in the whirl that followed. Question after question; person after person coming up to her and thanking her; snippets of Scagavay’s dramatic end chattering their way through the crowd; the surge to the door as Pete and Toby carried Nox out, still unconscious. Soon after, Nocturna and Shade were led out by Griff. They were deathly pale under the glare of sun and the hundreds of eyes watching them. The crowd fell back, creating a passage several people thick. The relief was palpable when the two were herded, bound in their coils of rope, onto a cart. They stood there, as stiff as mummies, as they were trundled away to meet their fate.

  Last to be brought out was Feo’s body, covered in Griff’s apron to hide his wounds. The story of his murder had circulated like wildfire, and a shocked gasp went up. There were even a few whispers of sympathy for the lad whose own mother had slain him in cold blood.

  “He was the only one of them who didn’t kill anyone,” Jemma said, her heart twinging as Griff and Murwyn carried him past. “He was so close to breaking away from them, Dig. Just couldn’t quite do it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Digby said, “I didn’t much care for him, ’specially when he was tryin’ to strangle me. But I s’pose his folks was as much of a magnet for him as mine is for me.”

  The crowd began to disperse, bidding Jemma goodbye and thanking her again before setting off. Carts rattled away down the rough track toward Hazebury, until only Jemma and the Goodfellows remained—and two other people, a woman and a boy, who hung back behind the Goodfellows’ cart.

  Rue and Caleb.

  Even from a distance, Jemma could see that Caleb looked taller, his back straighter; and Rue’s eyes were soft and sane. As soon as they knew they’d been seen, they turned and began to walk down the road to Hazebury—shy, Jemma guessed, after living in isolation for so long. They were about to disappear into the trees, when Caleb stopped and waved. Jemma waved back, and he paused for a moment, then smiled. In her mind’s eye, she saw him in a year’s time, walking taller than she. Saw him working as a baker in Hazebury, and Rue gathering crops in the fields. Whatever curse they’d been under had lifted. It would take them a while to adjust, but in time, she knew, the effects of it would also fade. Perhaps she could even help with that.…

  With a final wave, the two of them disappeared from view.

  “Rue an’ Caleb?” Digby said.

  Jemma nodded, and thought of the other person she’d met in the forest. Bryn. What did he think about the sun? He’d been content without it, but she felt sure he’d like the plants and flowers that would now flourish. She would visit him soon and find out.

  “There’s prob’ly a lot of folks who’ll take time getting’ used to this,” Digby said, turning his face up to the sun. “Me, I love it!” He grinned, then broke into laughter. “Hey, Jem, what d’you reckon Lok an’ his cronies are thinkin’ right now? I bet they’re none too pleased!”

  “No, I bet they’re not!” Jemma chuckled.

  “Unless they’ve all been under some kind of spell, of course,” he added. “Who knows? Maybe they’s as happy as skylarks.”

  Happy … Jemma looked at him, and the joy in his blue eyes, and realized that was what she felt—probably for the first time in her life. Happy, and free.

  “Time we was goin’ now,” said Berola, chivying Simon, Tiny, and Flora onto the cart.

  “Hop aboard, Jemma lass,” said Gordo. “We’ve plenty of room.”

  “Thank you,” said Jemma, “but I’d like to stay for a while with Noodle and Pie. Sort of … take it all in. And make a new kind of Offering. In honor of Drudge.” One was already taking shape in her mind, using sprigs of fresh greenery and some of the small white flowers that were springing up at her feet, as well as Bethany’s gold coin, if she could find it in the rubble of the dungeons.

  “I understand.” Berola hugged her, then climbed up next to the triplets. “Come by later, then, hmmm?”

  “I will. And … would you do something for me, and ask those two that just left if they’d like a ride down the hill? They might feel a bit lost. The boy’s lived around here his whole life, and it’s probably years since his mother left the forest.”

  “Course, lass,” said Gordo. “We’ll help ’em any way we can.” He pecked her awkwardly on the cheek before heaving himself into the driver’s seat. “Thank you again, Jemma Solvay. You’re welcome to stop with us as long as you like, y’know. Though I ’spect you’ll be wantin’ to get back to your folks as soon as you can.”

  “Yes,” said Jemma. An image flickered into her head: her parents, galloping over the moors with no Mist to stop them, heather and gorse vividly purple and yellow in the morning sun. Her heart leapt. “Yes! They’re on their way.… Marsh, too—her leg is already healed enough to ride. They’ll be here by nightfall.”

  “Then I’ll make a slap-up feast,” Berola said. “We’ll have a right proper celebration! I’ll tell Coral and Joe to make up beds at the Hazebury Inn for you all. You’ll be their first guests in goodness knows how long! Come on, Digby lad, let’s be off, eh?”

  Digby put his arm around Jemma. “Shall I come back later and fetch you in the cart?”


  She shook her head. “I’ll walk. Only this time, we’ll take the road.” Noodle and Pie squeaked their approval.

  “See you later, then,” said Digby.

  “See you later.” Jemma wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Digby held her for a moment, then kissed her softly on the lips. Her head felt full of light as he pulled away and then hopped up into the seat beside Gordo. He was grinning from ear to ear. So was she.

  “Bye, Jemma, bye!” Flora, Simon, and Tiny waved from the cart as Pepper plodded toward the road to Hazebury. “Bye, Noodle, Pie!” Flora chimed in. “See you later!”

  Jemma watched them and waved back. A warm gust of wind fluffed Noodle and Pie’s fur, tickling Jemma’s ears and flapping a short lock of flame-red hair across her eyes. As the cart reached the bend in the road, Digby looked up. The sun was now high overhead. He stood, turned, and waved again.

  “Hey, Jem!” he yelled. “You noticed anythin’ odd these last few hours?”

  “You mean, besides the sun, the blue sky, the lack of Mist …?”

  “No bell!” he shouted. “There’s been no bell!”

  No bell, Jemma thought as Pepper carried the Goodfellows out of sight. Time was no longer marked by that dark, heavy sound. Centuries of Agromond tyranny were over. No more Mord-days. From now on, it would be Sunday again.

  “It is done, it is done,” she whispered to herself, to the whishing trees, to Drudge’s spirit, to Majem’s, and to Jamem’s. “Now, Myst, be gone. Let there be Sunne.…”

  Beneath her feet, the ground trembled. But it was the tremble of awakening, not of cold or fear. The crag, shedding its deep slumber, was already stretching and yawning under the sunlight it had missed for so long. Coming back to life. And Jemma knew that its power would soon be available again, offered to anyone who needed it. It could nourish the fields, the crops. Be used for healing. For the benefit of all, rather than hoarded by the few for their own evil ends. And from now on, its gifts would be received with gratitude and respect. She would make sure of that.