by E. E. Holmes
Our silence was answer enough. She was right. I’d never stopped to think about who the other ghosts were or why they had never crossed over. Their presence seemed natural at Fairhaven Hall. If the Silent Child had never tried to communicate with anyone else before, she would have just blended away into the spirit masses, trapped in plain sight. It was a terrible thought.
Hannah, who’d been reading through the marked section of the book, broke the quiet. “There are instructions here for a ceremony to break the Caging.”
“Yeah, I saw that, and it looks really bloody complicated. You’ve got to do it in the middle of night at the full moon and on consecrated ground. There are about a thousand steps to that casting,” Savvy said.
Hannah was still reading, but she was nodding her head. “Yes, it will be difficult, but not impossible. We’ve just got to follow the instructions carefully. And it needs four of us to perform it properly, one for each of the classical elements.”
“We’ve got to do it,” I said, rejoining the group and starting to read over Hannah’s shoulder. “The Silent Child is trying to tell me something, and I can’t just ignore her. If this really is what’s going on, then someone’s left this poor little girl voiceless and trapped for hundreds of years!”
“I’ll help you,” said Hannah at once.
“And me,” said Savvy.
I turned a pleading gaze on Mackie. “Come on, Mack. It takes four. We need you.”
Mackie was hesitating, as I knew she would. She was chewing on her lip, playing for time. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea. Consecrated ground in the middle of the night already puts us out of bounds and breaking curfew, and that’s before we’ve even done the casting itself.”
“I know we’ll be breaking a few rules, but this is important!”
“And what if we’re unleashing something dangerous?” Mackie asked.
I frowned at her. “What do you mean, dangerous? She’s not dangerous, she’s just a little kid.”
“That doesn’t mean she can’t be dangerous. At some point a long time ago, a Durupinen performed a Caging on that spirit for a reason, and never took it off. That sounds to me like something we might not want to mess with.”
Mackie’s expression was wary. Savvy’s face, on the other hand, was proportionally enthralled. “That sounds like exactly the kind of thing we should mess with!”
I couldn’t suppress a grin. It looked like Savvy’s penchant for rule breaking and general shenanigans of all kinds was about to pay off for once, instead of blowing up in our faces as it usually did.
“Savvy don’t be absurd, please,” Mackie spat.
“Who’s being absurd? Look, when you lot came pounding on my door and recruited me for all this, right, you made it sound like a real adventure. But so far it’s been nothing but a load of school work. I barely passed year ten, so what the hell am I doing here? I might as well have stayed home and worked in a shop or something. At least I’d be getting paid. But now we’ve got the chance to do something exciting! This is what I thought it was gonna be like! Now you’re not gonna go and spoil the only fun I’m likely to have by being all sensible, are you?”
“This isn’t about having fun,” Mackie said.
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not. It’s about doing what’s right. That little girl needs help, and I have to be the one to do it. I can’t do it without all of you. Please, Mack.”
Mackie continued to frown, but heaved a long-suffering sigh and said, “Give me the book. Let me see that casting.”
“Thank you,” I breathed.
“I’m not agreeing to anything yet,” Mackie said firmly, flipping the book open and starting to read.
§
We sat up planning well into the night, because Mackie would only agree to help if we had every detail accounted for. She also insisted that we prepare ourselves for the possibility that we might need to Cage the Silent Child again, which Hannah wasn’t too thrilled about. Neither was I, but in the end, we all had to agree that, despite my gut feeling about her, the Silent Child was a mystery, an unknown quantity, and we couldn’t predict what would happen when we broke through the original casting. We had to at least learn how to perform a Caging, and be ready to do so if need be.
We agreed we would do it the following Saturday night, which was the night of the next full moon. I hated to wait, but we had no other choice. We had to follow the instructions to the letter, or risk the integrity of the entire casting. In a way, it was good that we had time to prepare; the casting called for things that were not a standard part of our starter kit, and we would need to track them down. Mackie seemed fairly confident she could borrow most of what we needed from Celeste. There was just one item she was unsure about.
“She’s got drawers and drawers full of every precious stone and mineral you could think of, so none of these will be an issue,” she said, running a finger down the list. “She also has all of these herbs, and half of them grow on the grounds anyway. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard of lapis lazuli powder.”
“I have,” I said, and she looked at me in surprise.
“You have?”
“Yes. Fiona uses it in her restoration work. It was one of the rarer powders used to make blue pigments for paint during the Renaissance.”
“Brilliant!” Mackie said. “Do you think you could get your hands on some? We only need enough to draw one rune.”
“I’ll find a way,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea how, but I’ll do it.”
Luckily, I would have plenty of opportunity for the right moment to present itself, now that I was spending every evening in her surly company. Thursday night when I arrived, she was working intently on a huge gilt-framed painting and there, laid out on the table beside her, was her set of apothecary jars full of powders.
I placed my bag carefully down on the table, sat beside her, and waited for her to acknowledge my existence. I had found that this was the best way to avoid her easily-wakened wrath. Finally, after about ten minutes, she spoke.
“You remember how to mix the vermillion?” she asked me.
“Yes, I think so,” I said.
“You’d better know so, or you’re not touching those pigments.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes with extreme difficulty. “Yes, I remember how to mix the vermillion.”
“Well, do it then, and add it to that palette over there for me. And bring me some of the varnish remover from the supply cupboard.”
I went to the cupboard and dug out the varnish remover and a bottle of linseed oil. Then I returned to the table and set to work while Fiona grumbled under her breath about dirty varnish layers and smoke damage.
Without consciously making the decision, the question bubbled to my lips.
“Fiona, do you think it’s possible that the Necromancers are still around?”
For the first time since I arrived, Fiona looked up from her work. Her face was astonished. “Of course not! What in the world would make you ask me such a question?”
I kept my eyes carefully on the bottle of linseed oil as I measured it out into a tiny glass bowl. “I’ve been writing a paper about them, so I’ve been doing a lot of research.”
Fiona nodded absently and returned to her work. “Well, if you’ve been reading carefully, you’ll know that they were destroyed centuries ago. There was nothing left by the time we were done with them. No order could survive an utter routing like that.”
I said nothing, but began adding the linseed oil very slowly and carefully to the little mound of red powder. I could feel Fiona’s eyes back on me, probing me.
“Jess? Is there any other reason why you are asking?”
I looked up at her and caught her eye. The concern in her face was completely unadulterated by its usual measure of contempt and annoyance, and I realized for the first time that Fiona could be pretty.
I almost told her. I almost let loose the floodgates and told her everything.
Almost.
&nb
sp; “No. I just found the whole idea of them creepy, and I know we’ve still got the Caomhnóir, so I just wondered if that’s what they are supposed to protect us from, that’s all.”
Fiona furrowed her brow. I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not. Finally, she seemed to decide that it didn’t matter. She discarded the cotton ball in her hand and snatched up another before returning to her work. “The Caomhnóir have many functions besides fending off enemy cults. They are indispensable in maintaining safety during spirit interactions, and also in keeping the outside world from discovering our secrets. Believe me, they’ve found plenty to keep them busy in the several hundred years since the Necromancers were destroyed.”
I concentrated on working the powder into the oil slowly and methodically. “I hate that we have to have them around.”
“Do you?” Fiona asked.
“Yes! Don’t you? Doesn’t it feel backwards? Here we are, this powerful, female-centric society full of strong, independent women in every type of leadership role, and we need men for protection? It doesn’t make any sense!”
Fiona didn’t say anything.
“So it doesn’t bother you at all?” I asked, looking up.
Fiona’s face had gone slack. Her hands hung limply at her sides. As I watched, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she began to mutter under her breath.
My heart began to thud against my ribcage. I glanced around the room, but if a ghost was present, it wasn’t revealing itself to me. “Fiona? Can you hear me?”
She continued to mutter unintelligibly. Realizing I could not hope for a more perfect opportunity, I grabbed the tiny stoppered bottle of powdered lapis lazuli and pocketed it. As I did so, Fiona’s hand began thrashing around, searching through the air, and I realized she was looking for something to draw with. I jumped up, knocking my newly mixed paint to the floor and lifted the valuable old painting out of her reach, knowing she’d be inconsolable if she destroyed it with a spirit-induced drawing. I carefully lay the painting aside and snatched a pencil and a nearly blank canvas off of the table. I positioned the canvas on the easel and thrust the pencil into Fiona’s still flailing hand.
Immediately she began to draw, her hand moving over the canvas with unnatural speed. There was no logic to the strokes she made on the paper, as there would have been if she’d been drawing of her own free will; a line here, a curve in another corner, an oval shape over there, seemingly completely unrelated until, through the building up of more disparate strokes, they began to form a picture. It was a young man in an army uniform, with a friendly smile and smudges of mud all over his face. He had some sort of large gun strapped across his chest.
Before I had even taken in the image in its entirety, Fiona dropped the pencil to the floor, but her hand, rather than coming to rest, began to knock, one-two-three, one-two-three, against the table top.
Something was stirring in the back of my mind, but it wouldn’t coalesce into a clear memory. Why was this familiar? I had never seen the soldier before, and yet there was something familiar in his face.
Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock.
I closed my eyes and tried to feel out into the space around me, trying to find the spirit that Fiona had connected to, but the two of them were too tightly latched together.
I opened my eyes and looked back at the face again. It was the eyes, something about the eyes.
Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock.
Then about a week later, the uniformed officer showed up and destroyed my mother with three sharp knocks on our battered screen door.
I jumped to my feet.
“No. Please, God, no.”
I abandoned Fiona there, still knocking absently into the silence. I flew from the room, my eyes filling with tears as I tore down the stairs, from corridor to corridor, all the way back to our room. My breath was fire in my lungs. It couldn’t be true. It could not mean what I thought it meant.
But I knew those eyes.
I flung our door open. It crashed against the wall, causing Hannah to leap off of her bed and Milo to flicker out of sight and back again in shock.
“We need to do a Crossing. Right now.”
“Jess, are you alright? You look terrible! What happened to —”
“That ghost you mentioned before, the one that was drumming or knocking, is he still around?”
“I…yes, he’s been around since then. I hear him every now and then, but he doesn’t seem to want to Cross. Why are you —”
“Please, I have to know. I think I know, but I can’t…please, we have to do a Crossing. We have to do it now!” I said, the panic sharp and bitter in my mouth.
“Okay, okay!” Hannah said, grabbing for her casting bag. “We can’t do it in here because of the wards.”
I turned and walked out of the room into the hallway. I lifted the edge of the carpet runner on the floor directly outside our door and flung it aside, revealing the bare stone beneath.
Hannah stood in the doorway, staring at me. “You want to do it right here? In the hallway?”
“Yes! Just do it, do it now!” I shouted at her, barely suppressing a sob.
Half-consoling, half-terrified, Hannah set swiftly to work, drawing the circles. I tried to light the candles while she did this, but my fingers were shaking too badly, and she pulled them gently from my hands, lighting and placing them herself. We took our places and I stammered through the incantation. I felt the Gateway open between us, felt the flow of energy, and braced myself for what I feared would come next.
At first there was nothing. Just us in the flickering light, chanting, and for a moment I thought it hadn’t worked at all, that we’d somehow done something wrong, or that, by some wonderful miracle, I’d been mistaken. Then it came.
Flash.
Lying on the roof of a rusted out car, watching fireworks explode over my head as an ice cream cone dripped, forgotten, between my fingers. Running through a field, chasing after the laughing, bobbing head in front of me.
The face from Fiona’s drawing, laughing and smiling, younger and happier.
Watching that same face grow smaller and smaller as it waved to me from the window of a train full of soldiers, running and waving and crying until I thought my lungs and heart would burst. Sitting in my darkened bedroom, talking to that same face, aglow with happiness at his return.
There was something about him, the way the shadows didn’t touch him, the way he made no sound as he shifted his weight on the bed.
Sitting at a scrubbed white kitchen table and hearing it, the three knocks. Watching my mother open the door to the uniformed officer, watching her crumple to the ground, as the officer tried to catch her before she hit the floor.
I knew this story. I knew this boy.
Watching a dark-haired, pale-skinned girl enter my office, sensing her barely-contained panic as she extended a shaking form to me, begging to be signed into my class. Standing by in helpless terror as the same girl writhed and shrieked, under attack by something I could not see.
I could barely keep my grip on Hannah’s hand. My sobs came one upon the other, drowning me in my own sorrow.
Laying on a cold stone floor, watching my own blood pool against my cheek, as a figure turned in the doorway to look at me one last time —a figure with pale, nearly colorless eyes.
One last thought flickered through my head.
I’m sorry, Ballard. I tried. Stay safe.
The Gateway pulled shut behind him, locking him forever on the other side. The blood was rushing in my ears, deafening me to every other sound except that of my own wracking sobs. I lurched to my feet, knocking over the nearest candle, and took off down the hallway. I could hear Hannah hurrying along behind me. I felt her fingers clutching at the back of my t-shirt.
“Jess! Jess, wait! Where are you going?” she cried.
I twisted my shoulder violently so that she lost her grip and I plowed on, stumbling on the uneven floors as my tears blurred my vision into a distorted haz
e.
He was dead. Pierce was dead. And it was all my fault.
No. Not my fault. Their fault. Her fault.
I hadn’t known where I was going, but I did now. Changing direction with a suddenness that made Hannah shriek, I made for the North Tower, Hannah and Milo calling after me every few steps. In what felt like no time at all, I reached the base of the staircase and took the stairs two at a time, relishing the pain in my lungs as I gasped for breath. Pain was good. Pain made me angrier. Milo appeared, hovering several paces in front of me as I climbed, clutching a cramp in my side.
“You can’t just go storming up there. Just stop and think for a minute,” he cried.
“I…don’t…care…” I panted. “Did they stop to…think before they just left him exposed? He’s dead now, and they did nothing to protect him!”
His replies were just meaningless noise in my ears as I mounted the last landing and stood facing Finvarra’s door. I hammered on it with both fists.
Almost instantly, Carrick materialized in front me, his arms held out before him in a protective gesture. His expression was at once confused and upset.
“Jessica? What is the meaning of this?”
I ignored him and pounded on the door again. “Finvarra!” I shouted hoarsely.
“Jessica, answer me! It’s the middle of the night! What are you doing here? What’s happened to you?”
“Get out of the way, Carrick. I need to talk to her. Now!”
Carrick stood his ground, and the force of his presence billowed out, thrusting me away from the door like a sudden gale of wind. I caught my heel on the carpet and fell backward into Hannah, who had just staggered to the top of the stairs, panting.
“Jess, stop, just stop!” she begged as we both climbed to our feet.
“He’s…dead!” I gasped. “He’s dead and it’s her fault! FINVARRA!”
