by E. E. Holmes
I focused on calming down as I peeled myself off of the rug and into a sitting position. I put a hand to my throbbing head and felt something wet. What the hell was on my face? I stared at my fingers. They were covered in blood, but it wasn’t from my head. My fingertips were rubbed raw and bleeding, the blood mixed with something dark and dusty, running in rivulets down my arms. My skin, from fingertips to elbows was blistered, red, and peeling away, coated in what looked like ash. As I looked at them, the dull aching that had awoken me exploded into pain such as I had never endured before, and the sobbing began afresh.
What the hell had happened to me? What was the last thing I remembered?
A candle. A dark tower dungeon. Mary.
The prophecy. She was going to show me the prophecy.
I tore my gaze from my ruined arms to the floor around me. I was on the rug in the entrance hall, just in front of the enormous stone fireplace. Bits of coal and blackened firewood were scattered all around me, some smoking, a few still glowing in their hearts. The charred remains of one was still clutched between two of my numbed and battered fingers.
A scream rent the air and my head jerked up instinctively to find the source of it.
Olivia stood at the gallery railing, her hands clutched white-knuckled on the bannister. Her shriek was answered within seconds by a flurry of slamming doors, shuffling footsteps, and answering cries.
“What’s going on?”
“Is everything okay? Who screamed?”
“Olivia, are you…oh my God!”
“What is it? Who did it?”
“Someone get the teachers!”
No one was looking at me. They were staring around the room in apparent horror. Brushing the blinding tears once again from my eyes with the back of my ruined hand, I looked around myself properly for the first time.
The entire entrance hall, from floor to ceiling, was covered in drawings. No, not drawings. A drawing. One elaborate mural wrapped around the entrance hall from floor to ceiling like the embracing arms of a nightmare. All around me, figures were running, screaming, writhing, and falling, their faces a study in terror as they stared back at the source of their torment. I followed their gazes. High above the marble mantelpiece was the image of a towering doorway. Hordes of ghastly figures burst from it, flying in every direction, intent, so it seemed, on terrorizing the fleeing masses around us. And there, silhouetted all alone in the center of the doorway, was a tiny, dark haired girl, her arms outstretched, unleashing this unspeakable horror on all of them
And though her features were obscured in shadow, I knew who that girl was.
“Jessica.”
I tore my eyes from the drawing of the girl and found Celeste crouching about twenty feet away from me near the base of the grand staircase. She raised a tentative hand toward me, and I realized, with a swooping sensation in the pit of my stomach, that she was afraid to approach me.
“Jessica? Are you okay?”
I shook my head, blinking back another wave of tears.
“Can I help you?”
I cringed at the quaver in her voice, horrified that I could be the one to have put it there.
“Can I look at your hands? It looks like you’ve burned them pretty badly. Can I see?”
Wordlessly, I held them out to her. She stood very slowly and approached me so carefully I wondered what I must look like. She knelt beside me and, very gently, examined my hands and arms.
“We need to get you bandaged up. Mackenzie has already gone for the nurse. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
I calmed down enough to try to take stock of the rest of my body. One of my ankles was throbbing, though the pain could barely register in comparison to the agony in my arms.
“My right ankle, I think,” I said. My voice was a hoarse croak, and I began to cough.
“You may have breathed in some smoke from the fire,” Celeste said, and then turned to call over her shoulder. “Olivia! Get a glass of water and bring it here, please. Everyone else, I want you back in your rooms immediately.”
Hardly anyone moved. Many were still transfixed by the mural, but many had turned to stare at me.
“Beds! Now! Wait in your rooms until further instructions. If I see anyone out in the halls before permission has been given, that person will find herself facing Council disciplinary action.”
Slowly they all turned and disappeared into their rooms, whispering and huddling together. Olivia appeared beside Celeste and handed her the glass of water, which she tipped toward my face so that I could drink it.
As soon as Olivia had crept back up the stairs and out of sight, Celeste placed the glass down on the rug. “Jess, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, struggling to think through the pain, trying to recall what Mary had told me. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“Did you draw all of this?” Celeste asked, and even as she looked up, she seemed unable to tear her eyes from the scope of it. The drawings crept up into the dark recesses of the rafters in the vaulted ceilings and disappeared only where the shadows swallowed them. How in God’s name did I even get up there? I suddenly had a shrewd idea of how I sprained my ankle.
“I think so,” I said. “I think I did it with the ash from the fireplace.”
“And…do you know why you did it?”
“Aunt Celeste? I’ve got Mrs. Mistlemoore.”
Mackie stood at the base of the stairs with the kindly-looking old school nurse. She was bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet, barely daring to glance at me. Mrs. Mistlemoore hurried forward though, no trace of apprehension at all, only a businesslike efficiency as she examined my hands.
“Well, these are quite severe,” she said. “How did you sustain these burns?”
“I don’t know.”
“They seem to have been caused by the logs and ash in the fireplace,” Celeste said.
“But how —”
“That’s all we know, Mrs. Mistlemoore. Please bring Jessica down to the infirmary and get her bandaged up. Mackenzie, could you help Jessica up? Jessica, do you think you can walk?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“When you’ve done that, Mackenzie, I need you to find Fiona and have her meet me and the rest of the Council here in the entrance hall.”
Mackie nodded solemnly and walked around behind me, scooping her arms under my armpits and hoisting me onto my feet. My ankle began to shake like mad, and I shifted my weight quickly to my left leg before I collapsed to the floor again. Mackie slid her head under my right arm, careful not to make contact with the burned lower half.
“Ready?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
We began our slow and awkward trek down the north corridor. I chanced one look over my shoulder back into the entrance hall. Celeste stood alone, revolving slowly on the spot, taking in the full horror of the place, one shaking hand pressed over her mouth.
Mrs. Mistlemoore bustled on ahead of us, muttering about salves and bandages, and not until she was out of earshot did I risk speaking to Mackie.
“It was the Silent Child.”
Mackie stopped walking so suddenly that I stumbled forward ahead of her. “What?”
“Her real name is Mary. I followed her all the way down to the dungeon. She told me that Hannah and I were in danger.”
She hurried forward to support me again. “What kind of danger?”
“She said she had to warn me, that she and I were the same,” I said, the words falling over each other in my rush to say them. “She was murdered, Mackie. Her mother was one of the Durupinen, and her father was a Caomhnóir. She said that the Durupinen killed her when they found out.”
“Killed her? Come on, Jess, we would never…I mean, I know those relationships are forbidden and all, but that’s just for our protection —”
“Mackie, there’s no time to argue about it! She told me she was killed because of the prophecy. What’s the prophecy?”
Mackie’s face was completely
blank. “What prophecy?”
“You mean you don’t know what she’s talking about?”
“No, I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. I’ve never heard of any Durupinen prophecies. Did she tell you what it was about?”
“She said she was going to show me. And then she sort of flew into me, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the entrance hall burnt within an inch of my life, and surrounded by all those drawings. Mackie, I know I must have drawn them, but I don’t remember any of it, and I don’t know what it’s all supposed to mean, but I think what I drew must be the prophecy, or something to do with it. Now are you absolutely sure you can’t think of anything you’ve ever read, or maybe something Celeste or one of the others said about a prophecy?”
“No,” Mackie said, her face crumpled with concentration. “Honestly, Jess, there’s nothing. We don’t have prophets in Durupinen culture, at least not that I’ve ever heard of. But why are you and Hannah in danger?”
“She kept saying we were the same. I think …” I swallowed back a spasm of fear. “Mackie, I think she’s talking about my parents. I’ve never known who my father was, but now… ”
Mackie gasped. “You think he was a Caomhnóir?”
“He must have been! It’s the only thing that makes sense. He and my mother had a forbidden relationship, and now Mary is trying to warn me because she thinks…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence, but there was no need. What little color Mackie had in her face drained away behind her freckles.
“Jess, no. They would never…You can’t possibly believe that —”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore!” I said, more loudly than I’d meant to. I dropped my voice again as we hobbled around the last corner to the infirmary. “Find Hannah. Find her and tell her what’s going on. She needs to get out of here until I can figure out what this all means.”
“But —”
“Just do it, Mackie! Please! Maybe I have it wrong, maybe we aren’t in the kind of danger Mary thinks we are. But I can’t risk it. Promise me. Promise me you’ll find her and tell her to get out of here.”
Mackie opened her mouth to argue but something in my face made her snap it shut again. “Okay. I promise.”
“Thank you,” I whispered as we pushed open the infirmary door. Mackie helped lower me onto the nearest bed and was gone without another word.
Mrs. Mistlemoore was doing something to my arms, but my brain barely had room to register it. Whether she was using some sort of numbing agent on me or whether I was simply in shock, I neither knew nor cared. I struggled to reel in my scattered, frantic thoughts. I dropped them into two categories in my brain: things I knew and things I thought I knew.
What did I know?
I knew that Mary had been the child of a Durupinen and a Caomhnóir. I knew that she was killed because of her parents’ relationship. I knew she had then been rendered unable to communicate for centuries to cover up what had really happened to her. I knew she believed I was in danger, and that the danger stemmed from some prophecy.
What did I think I knew?
My father, whoever he was, was a Caomhnóir. This prophecy, whatever it was, had something to do with a child like Mary.
Like me.
Like Hannah.
And that drawing upstairs —that awful, impossible drawing —depicted the prophecy. And every bloody, ash-smudged inch of it spoke of misery, despair, and cataclysmic disaster. And if Mary was right, then Hannah and I were in serious trouble.
A sharp stabbing pain just below my shoulder made me jump. I turned just in time to see Mrs. Mistlemoore removing a syringe from my arm.
“What was that? What are you doing?”
“Just a little something to help you relax, dear,” she said, pressing a small adhesive bandage over the puncture. “The pain is only going to get worse as the shock wears off, and I won’t be able to do anything to help you if you’re thrashing around.”
“Wait, no! I can’t sleep! I can’t stay here, I have to —”
“You aren’t going anywhere, love,” she said with a chastising click of the tongue. “You are going to lay right down here and take a nice rest while we patch you up.”
My head began to spin, and a strange cottony drowsiness crept through me. “Jess?” I squinted as Finn’s form swam into view. He seemed to float across the room toward me.
“Finn! You have to help me!”
“Jess, what happened to you? How did you —”
“No time. You have to stay with me,” I said thickly.
“What?” He reached out to grip my shoulders but dropped his hands quickly as he saw the state of the rest of my arms.
“Oh my God, Jess,” he whispered.
“Please. Stay with me. Don’t let them do anything to me,” My eyelids drooped and I struggled to hold them open.
“Who? Who do you think is going to hurt you?” he asked urgently.
“Finvarra. The Council. There’s a prophecy…dangerous…don’t let them…don’t leave me…protect me…you promised… ” But the words were suddenly huge and marble-like in my mouth. My thoughts were juddering to a halt and then floating away from me. Finn’s face, twisted with confusion and concern, was the last thing I saw before the drug overwhelmed me and I passed out.
§
No haze clouded my thoughts as I woke up several hours later. I didn’t need to wonder where I was or what had happened; the knowledge was waiting to ambush me upon the first twitch of my eyelids. My panic was instantaneous, sharp as a blade to my skin, and my body struggled to catch up.
“It’s okay, Jess. I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.”
Finn was there. I took a deep, steadying breath and looked around me.
We were in the Grand Council Room. I was propped in an old-fashioned wheelchair, a blanket tucked around my legs, and my arms encased in thick, gauzy bandages. At the other end of the long, rectangular chamber, the Council had assembled, clustered here and there on the raised stone benches, whispering and murmuring to each other. Just as I noticed that Finvarra wasn’t there, the door behind us swung open and she swept in, followed by Carrick.
“Here we go,” I muttered.
“This emergency meeting of the Durupinen High Council is now called to order. Please take your seats so we may begin,” Finvarra called over the dull buzz of conversation; most of the Council members had not even realized that she had arrived. A flurry of movement followed as everyone scrambled for their assigned positions. “We have gathered here tonight to confer about the events that have taken place a few hours ago here at Fairhaven Hall. I see that Jessica Ballard is here already. Where is Hannah?”
“Braxton’s gone to fetch her, Finvarra. She will be here presently, I am sure,” Marion said, rising as she spoke. “He also has a man looking for Lucida, as you requested.”
“Very well,” Finvarra said, settling into her throne-like seat at the center of the highest bench. Carrick hovered off of her shoulder; his eyes darted around the room as though he expected a catastrophe at any moment. He was flickering with a strange, nervous energy that seemed to pulsate through his form and alternately brighten and weaken his visibility. “I think we should begin at once, rather than waiting for Hannah and Fiona to arrive. This matter is too vital to delay any longer.”
A dull murmur of assent met this pronouncement. Finn shifted his position so that he stood just in front of me.
“We are here,” Finvarra said, her voice ringing through the hall, “because one of our Apprentices, Miss Jessica Ballard, has experienced what we believe to be an episode of a prophetic nature, the subject of which is relevant to us all and the evidence of which has been seen by every member of our community. Jessica, could you come forward, please.”
It should have been quite apparent that I couldn’t “come” anywhere, but before I could even open my mouth to reply, Finn stepped behind my chair and pushed me forward, the rubber of the wheels grating against the stone, until I was positione
d upon the enormous triskele inlay in the floor. My heart was in my throat. I hadn’t had a chance to decide what I would tell them, had no idea who, if any of them, I could trust.
Finvarra’s first question was unexpectedly kind.
“How are you feeling?”
“I… fine.”
“We are sorry we had to bring you here when you ought to be resting in the infirmary. Are you in pain?”
“No,” I said, and it was true, at least for the moment. Whatever Mrs. Mistlemoore had given me had left my arms numb and heavy at my sides. I tried not to think of what they might look like under the dressings, or how the pain would come flooding back when the drugs began to wear off.
“I am glad to hear it. We will make this all as quick as possible, so that you can get the rest and recovery you need,” Finvarra said. She turned to Finn. “Thank you for your assistance in escorting Jessica. You are dismissed now with our thanks.”
Finn did not move. “High Priestess, begging your pardon, but I will be staying with her.” Finvarra raised a single eyebrow. “Your services are not required any longer, Mr. Carey.”
“My services are always required, if Jessica asks for them. She has asked me to stay with her. I will stay.” He shifted his weight subtly to settle just a bit closer to me, but Finvarra did not miss it.
Marion stood up, glaring at Finn with utmost contempt. “How dare you talk back to your High Priestess! You are bound by the sacred oath you took to obey her commands and you dare to —”
“My oath is to Jessica and the Clan Sassanaigh. I am honoring it.” Finn’s voice rose like a clarion call over Marion’s words, drowning them out.
She looked too shocked at having been interrupted to go on, and a full few moments ringing silence followed his words before she spoke again.
