The Iron Thorn

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Look at you, so spirited.” Tremaine straightened his collar and sleeves. “I take that to mean you have good news for me.”

  “I’ve found your cursebreaker,” I lied, but I knew by now I could do it convincingly enough. Tremaine nodded encouragement.

  “No need to build to it. Spit out your plan, child.”

  My hands were trembling so violently I thought that I might break my fingers, but I curled up my fists and looked Tremaine in his fathomless, soulless eyes. “Before that, I need something from you. Right this moment.”

  Tremaine’s lips twitched in irritation. “Very well. Say it.”

  I exhaled, my breath steaming in the chill air. All at once, I didn’t want to know. But I pressed on. “Tell me about my brother.”

  Tremaine looked away from me, sighing. “All the secrets of the Folk at your fingertips and you’re still harping about that boy.”

  “Either you hold up your end of the bargain, or I’m going to walk,” I said. “And your queen will sleep forever, until the world rots away around her.” I folded my arms. “My brother. Where is he?”

  “I told you, I find this new attitude of yours distasteful,” Tremaine said. “But the Folk keep their bargains.” He folded his arms, bracers clanking dully like coffin lids. “Your brother is dead, Aoife.”

  My heart stopped. “No …” The word slid out past the wire that strung itself around my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak except to blurt out, “That’s a lie.”

  “He fell to the Proctors in Arkham Village,” Tremaine said, placing a hand on the back of my neck. “I sent him back, as I sent you, so that he might help me release my queen and the Summer Queen by consulting your father’s library. He was not as adept at evasion as you appear to be.”

  “He can’t be.” I felt as if everything inside of me had frozen. Conrad. Dead. I thought of the last time I’d seen him. I’d never imagined it would truly be the end. “He can’t …,” I tried again. “Bethina said shadows took him away.…”

  “The chambermaid? The blithering girl who can’t see the end of her own nose, who fears the sight of us so much that she makes up stories about ghosts in moonlight? You trust her word above mine?”

  “Tell me …” I shut my eyes, unable to stand the sight of Tremaine’s sharp diamond face for another moment. “Tell me how he died.”

  “You don’t need to know that, child,” Tremaine sighed. “You don’t need more nightmares.”

  “Tell me!” My shout echoed off the glass coffins and the hills beyond, like a faraway bell.

  “He was shot in the back running down a village street,” Tremaine said. “My strix owls couldn’t stay long. Arkham is bound in iron and we do not know where they took his body. A pauper’s funeral, I imagine, and then the crematory furnace to burn off any memory of their crime. Is that good enough for you, Aoife?”

  The world slid sideways. “You’re lying.” He had to be lying. Conrad’s end couldn’t be so simple.

  Conrad had to be alive.

  “You know that I would not,” Tremaine said. “You know that’s what happened, child, because you know your brother. I wish he had survived, truly. He was an intelligent and respectful boy. Very much not like you.”

  I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I didn’t want to believe that Conrad was gone, but there wasn’t a hard certainty, just soft, slithering doubt taking up residence in my heart.

  “I’ve given you a task,” Tremaine said. “Now you give me your half.”

  When I didn’t speak, he clapped his hands in my face. Once, sharp. Like the gunshot that had taken Conrad away from me.

  “Aoife,” Tremaine growled. “Focus. What will break my curse?”

  “I think …,” I started, and then couldn’t continue.

  Tremaine’s lip curled, and he placed his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t think, child. Know. Thinking won’t help me.”

  “The Engine,” I said numbly. “The Lovecraft Engine. Thorn doesn’t have Engines or anything like them, you said it yourself. I can use my Weird. Send the power that the Lovecraft Engine generates into Thorn. Use it to wake up your precious queens.” My will to defy Tremaine had run out. I felt as hollow as one of the Proctors’ ravens, just a mess of gears and metal on the inside. No feeling. No will.

  Tremaine, for his part, patted my cheek. “Good child. I knew you’d be the one. Of course, I’ll be far more excited when you succeed.” He took my elbow and guided me back into the hexenring. “May you have fair weather and a following sea in your task, Aoife Grayson. You know what will happen if you fail me. Your brother may be gone, but Dean and Cal are still alive, I take it? They will still bleed if you force me to find them?”

  I just shrugged. It didn’t matter any longer. Nothing did.

  Conrad was dead.

  “And there’s your mother,” Tremaine mused as the hexenring took me. “So alone, in that madhouse. So many other screams to cover hers up …”

  I tried belatedly to reach for Tremaine again, to demand that he leave Nerissa and Dean and Cal alone, that I’d do his work even though he’d tricked me, had known Conrad was dead. Had known from the moment he took me in the orchard.

  Too slow, I touched nothing. A sob wrenched from my throat.

  “Aoife.” Dean’s face blurred back into view, lines at his mouth and eyes. “Dammit, I hate it when you just blink out like that.” He examined me more closely and his jaw set. “You look awful. What’d he do to you?”

  I tried to speak, but all that came out was a soft, broken sound. I fell against Dean and he wrapped his arms around me to save me from falling. My tears were silent, but they soaked my face and the fabric of Dean’s shirt. All I saw was white as I clung to Dean, and all I felt was a widening black pit where my insides used to be.

  The Flight of the Crow

  “MY BROTHER’S DEAD,” I whispered after twenty heartbeats. “The Proctors shot him in the back.”

  Once the words flew from my lips, the truth slammed into me, a weight I could never shake off. I fell to my knees, grit and old dirt digging in through my stockings, and I shook, wrapping my arms around myself.

  “Oh, princess.” Dean knelt and hugged me again. I sobbed, wretched sounds ripping from my throat, as a knife of memory twisted deep in my stomach. I would never see Conrad again. Never tell him that I knew he wasn’t mad. Never tell him that I understood why he’d run away.

  I could never tell him I forgave him.

  I had wasted my time on the Weird, on Dean, on relishing my own freedom. I had let Conrad fall and I hadn’t been there to hold out my hand.

  “Bethina said he was alive last she saw him,” Dean whispered. “That those shadow folk took him. Nothing about being shot. The Folk lie, Aoife. They’re already a lie to most rational people, so why shouldn’t they lie to you?”

  “I don’t …,” I managed. “I don’t think he was lying.”

  “You don’t know that for certain,” Dean said. “Nothing in this life is ever certain, doll.”

  I had lost my tears, and my eyes stung, swollen and gritty. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow,” I muttered. “Doesn’t matter that he lied to start. I made my bargain. I have to go back to the city, Dean.” Before Tremaine could unleash his particular brand of sadism on everyone else I cared for. Even if I’d lost Conrad already, I could still lose Dean and Cal. And then I couldn’t go on.

  Dean helped me to my feet, gently. I was fragile now, a thing that needed to be cosseted. I despised myself in that moment.

  “That’s a dangerous proposition. You saw what the Proctors do to heretics who fly across their radar.” Dean rubbed out my tears, tried to clean my face off, but I couldn’t stop more tears from coming.

  “I have to,” I repeated. “I have to go back.” Words had lost their weight, their usefulness. Words hadn’t kept Conrad from a bullet in his back, alone on a cold stone street.

  “All right,” Dean said. “All right. We’ll work it out. We can talk about it.”


  I let him lead me down the ladder and out of the library, feeling adrift as if I were floating in a vast new sea, a sea of sorrow. I had no anchor and no weight. I could float forever.

  * * *

  Bethina and Cal sat at the kitchen table, cards arrayed between them. Bethina slapped her hand down, victory in her grin. “Gin.”

  Cal sighed and threw his cards down. “This isn’t normal. You’re some kind of cardsharp, missy. You belong back in the old days in Dodge City.”

  “Kid,” Dean said. Cal turned and saw me, and his eyes widened.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Shut your trap. She’s had a bad shock,” Dean said. “Bethina, you have any hot tea?”

  She pushed back, scattering their rummy game. “Sure enough. Just brewed a pot.”

  “With something stronger, if you have it,” Dean said. “For a chaser.”

  Bethina pumped water into the chipped enamel kettle and hung it on a hook over the fireplace. “Mr. Grayson kept some whiskey in his desk in the library.”

  Dean sat me in a chair and left. He had a half-full bottle of amber when he returned. I couldn’t muster the words to say anything, to do anything except sit and stare.

  Cal watched us with a sharp frown. “Aoife, what in the Builder’s name happened? You look like someone walked over your grave.”

  “Conrad’s dead,” I whispered. It wasn’t any easier to say, but if possible, the words tasted more bitter.

  Cal slumped, like a scarecrow with all of its stuffing pulled out. “How?”

  Dean accepted the cup of tea Bethina handed him, added a jigger from the bottle and put it in my hands. “Drink,” he said. “It’ll keep you upright.”

  “I’m not sure she should be drinking at a time like this,” Cal said.

  Dean sat with the bottle in his hands. “Cowboy, if this isn’t the time for drinking, there ain’t no time at all.”

  “We have to go back to Lovecraft,” I said. “We have to go today.”

  “Aoife, that’s suicide,” Cal told me. “You said so yourself.”

  “That was before,” I said. The tea was terrible, bitter black tea leaves and whiskey combined to burn my throat and tongue, but it calmed the constant waves of vertigo. “Before I made the deal with the Folk.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cal edged his chair back. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Dammit, Cal!” I slapped my hand against the table. The playing cards jumped. “This is not the time! And I’m not crazy! Your life and Bethina’s and Dean’s too … they’re all in this balance, so for once, Cal, listen to me.”

  “All right, fine.” Cal made a gesture of surrender. “I’m listening.”

  I told Dean, Cal and Bethina about Tremaine, my first visit to the Thorn Land, the task he’d set upon me. I told him about how I intended to go home, to the Engine, and try to awaken the queens with my Weird.

  I did not tell them how my Weird reacted to even the slightest touch. To feel the Engine flowing through me, the vast and breathless power of its pistons and gears … what would that power do?

  I didn’t think about it, and I didn’t say it. I kept my tale short and sparse, because talking about the Folk left a foul taste on my tongue.

  When I was finished, Dean gave a low whistle. “That’s a burden to lay on you, Aoife. True enough.”

  “It’s … unbelievable,” Cal said. “And impossible.”

  “Impossible just means they ain’t thought of a name for it yet,” Dean answered. “What it is, is dangerous.”

  “I’m going back,” I told them. “With or without all of you.” I was decided. I had never been so decided before.

  “I’m just telling it like it is,” Dean said. “Think on the danger before you go running back into the iron jaws of that place, will you? For me?”

  “You saw what can happen,” I said. “Tremaine isn’t a good person, but I made a bargain. My family has a history with the Folk, and I have the Weird, and it means I have the history now. The duty.”

  I stood up. The tea had flushed me, warmed me, and dulled the ache of losing Conrad. I had to move now, before I became a cripple again.

  “You can help me or you can stay here. I won’t blame you either way. But I’m going back to Lovecraft.”

  The Peter Pan jitney depot on the outskirts of Arkham was pockmarked with rust, chrome rubbed off, glass shattered. No one else sat on the damp bench inside the shelter. I was the only one, the old carpetbag I’d found in the wardrobe stuffed with my school clothes and my father’s journal, plus the invigorator and Tremaine’s goggles.

  I hadn’t taken much. I wore the sturdy boots and woolen coat and the red dress. I didn’t need anything else.

  In the end, I’d elected to leave early in the morning, silent and alone. Cal and Dean needn’t be part of this. It was my bargain to uphold and my burden to bear.

  I’d slept not at all. I kept thinking of Conrad, of how it was all gone now—the smile, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand on my shoulder. His simple tricks, the last, anguished glimpse of him before he dropped the knife and ran from my dormitory room.

  I had to pack it away and move on because I wasn’t a simple schoolgirl any longer, one who had the luxury of flinging herself across her bed and crying.

  I had a duty. My father had lost his brother too. He hadn’t let it stop him. I wouldn’t be the weak link in the Grayson bloodline.

  The crows flapped overhead, one alighting on the shelter’s roof. It cocked its head, danced to the left, stared at me with its glass bead eyes.

  “Why don’t you go fly back to Tremaine and tell him I’m doing as he asks?” I snapped at it.

  “She wouldn’t.” Dean’s voice startled me, his appearance out of the ever-present fog like a camera lens clicking.

  I kicked at the carpetbag with my toe. It was indescribably ugly, great orange cabbage roses on a hunter green background. “How can you know?”

  “The crows don’t serve the Folk.” Dean sat next to me and performed the ritual of tapping and lighting a Lucky. He clicked his lighter shut and nodded to the crow. “They’re psychopomps. Guardians protecting the ways between the lands. Iron, Mist and Thorn, they all got doorways.”

  “I don’t see why they’re always bothering me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Dean took a drag. “Then why are you at the jitney stop, sweetheart?”

  I shot him a glare. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  He picked up my hand and pressed his lips against the back, the briefest of touches, but it shattered the fragile dam I’d built around the events of the previous day. I moved into his arms silently, and let his body warm mine while the fog swirled.

  “You’re alone?” I said.

  “Nah.” Dean exhaled. Tobacco smoke made a halo around our heads. “The kid’s coming too. I left him with time to say goodbye to Bethina.”

  “Good. I hope he goes back to her when this is over.” I checked the schedule for the dozenth time. There were still quarters of hours yet before any jitney would come, but my stomach was throbbing with nerves.

  “I know you’re not scared, not you.” Dean’s heartbeat was steady, steady as a clock. “So what are you? I know something’s up after that scene about your brother.”

  “I’m angry,” I said. “I’m angry that I know nothing about my family and that those Proctor bastards shot Conrad, and I’m angry there’s nothing I can do about any of it except take orders from that pale bastard.” I crumpled the schedule and tossed it into the road. “That’s all my life’s been, Dean. Doing what I’m told.”

  Dean dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his boot. “I made you something.”

  “Oh really?” I grumbled, not in the mood to be cheered up. “Have you taken up knitting in all of your spare time?”

  Dean pressed a folded scrap of vellum into my hand. “That’s what folks in my part of the underworld call a geas.”

  The scrap was folde
d on itself eight times, inked with a circle and a cross. “Dean …” I flinched as it prickled on my palm. “Dean, did you go snooping in the witch’s alphabet? You used it?”

  “No!” Dean exclaimed forcefully. “I told you, I can’t do that sort of thing.”

  “Then how?” I demanded, fed up with his denials. I wasn’t dumb. “You said you didn’t have a Weird, just a knack. Either you’re lying or snooping.”

  Dean heaved a sigh. “Those the only two options you can come up with, eh? I’m either a liar or a spy?”

  “Or both,” I shot back. “Dean Harrison, tell me what is going on this instant. And take this.” I thrust the paper at him. I wasn’t prepared to bear any more secrets for anyone else.

  “A geas is a powerful enchantment,” Dean said. “It can steal your free will and your breath in the same moment. You shouldn’t give it back lightly.”

  “I expect fibbing from Cal,” I said, getting angry he’d try to flummox me with a silly trick. “But I’d think you, at least, would be straight with me.”

  “I am being straight with you!” Dean shouted. All around us, the crows took flight. “I made that. Made it for you, and nobody but. I didn’t need a musty book to tell me how, either.”

  “You said you didn’t have a gift,” I gritted. “So either you lied, or you didn’t trust me.”

  Dean jumped up as well and met me, our gazes inches apart. “You’re right, okay?” His face bore two spots of red and his chest was heaving with angry breaths. “I’m not like you, but I do have something. Did it occur to you that maybe I’m not as thrilled about it as you are? That maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth?”

  That put the damper on the flaming spout of anger boiling in me. “Dean … I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “For your edification, princess, my mother taught me that geas,” he said, voice rough as sandpaper. “She stuck around just long enough to teach me to find north. Find lost things. Bind the truth. Nothing like your great gift”—the way he said it was like a slap—“but enough so that I could get by with one foot in Iron and the other foot somewhere else.”