Lily handed me a silver skeleton key without looking in my direction. “You may find passage back to Everton in Mr. Whatley’s study. But for myself there is no other choice.”
“That is where you’re wrong.” I tucked the key away into the folds of my dress. “There is an alternative to The Ending.”
“Death offers his gift but once, if at all. Now, please leave me. The ceremony will begin soon and you had better find the children.”
We pleaded with her, but she ignored us and continued to prepare for her wedding. I pulled Henry grudgingly out of the room, but as we left he spoke to her one last time.
“I love you.”
She observed us in the reflection of her vanity mirror but remained silent as she watched us leave. I thought I noticed tears in her eyes, but Duncan was already weaving us through the house, carefully out of sight of the other guests, who lingered on the periphery of Darkling, voices raised, cutlery scraping together, heels clacking against tile; ghosts who lived just beyond the edge of sight.
When Duncan entered the dark room, I stopped and touched his arm. “We need to find the children,” I whispered. He observed me drily, the smile on his face slipping for a moment as he pushed his finger into the eye socket of one of the marble faces, opening the door to the circular chamber enveloped in concentric rings of silk veils. A boy sat on the metal chair, his feet dangling just above the floor.
“There you are,” he said. “I was worried you weren’t”—his face fell as we pushed back our hoods, the words dying on his lips—“coming.”
“What on earth are you doing here?” I asked him. James hopped down from the chair and approached us with caution and very adult suspicion. He was dressed in a black suit with a gray vest, a red cummerbund circling his waist. Yet even disregarding the finely tailored clothing, he held himself differently than the last time I’d seen him. He did not look any older despite the years that had doubtlessly passed for him since our separation, but nevertheless there was something changed in him.
“You came back,” he said to me.
“I never meant to leave.”
“But you did.” He hugged his father in a mechanical gesture without any emotion.
Henry did not seem to notice. “My boy,” he said. He smoothed out the curls of his son’s blond hair with unguarded sentimentality, but James pulled away, his face contorted in confusion.
“I’m not a child.” He shuffled back to the metal chair in the center of the room, where he removed a smoke-colored phial from his pocket. It was labeled INFIRMED.
“James, put that down!”
“Do you even know what it is?” Though he appeared to be only five, he spoke with all the stoic assurance of an adolescent.
“Someone’s death.”
“Not just anyone’s.” He held it to the dim light, picking at the stopper in a distracted way. “I remember the night she died.” He looked to his father. “You don’t think that I do, but you’re wrong. You left me alone with her to talk to the doctor, and she started to make a sound. There were noises coming out of her; she was gasping, and her eyes were wet, like she was drowning from the inside out. I think she was crying.
“I tried to give her a hug, but she jerked away from me, like I had hurt her. So I just stood by her side. I heard the doctor say that she was blind by then, but I felt like she could see me because she grabbed my hand. She pulled me close and tried to whisper something, but she couldn’t speak right. The words were all broken. But then she said it again and again, and I realized that what she said was ‘I want to die.’
“One night I asked her about it, if she remembered me there and if I helped make it easier. I wanted her to know that I cried when she was gone, but it only upset her and she ran from the room before she could answer. I haven’t asked her since.”
“And that’s her death?” I gestured to the phial still in his hands.
“I think so. I found it hidden in her room. I was waiting to open it, and tonight seemed appropriate. Duncan was going to help me.” He held it out to his father. “Would you like to try it instead?”
Henry went very pale, and a bead of sweat dripped from his brow. Yet he did not reach out to accept the phial. “No, thank you, James. I think we both experienced enough of your mother’s death firsthand.”
The boy nodded and handed the glass container to Duncan, who secreted it away in the folds of his jacket.
“Are you taking us home?” James’s green eyes found my own, and I could barely hold back tears of guilt.
“Yes, of course we are. I’m so sorry, James. It’s my fault you were trapped here alone.”
From the expression on his face I was certain that he felt pity for me. “We weren’t alone. Mother was here, and Mr. Whatley.” I noticed he hadn’t corrected me, but then he had no reason to. It was my fault that the door between Everton and Darkling had been closed, but that he had confirmed it made the changes wrought in him since the last time we had been together all the more clear. He had grown up.
“Did Mr. Whatley hurt you?” I asked, looking over his face for any signs of abuse.
“No, not at all. He protects us.”
“From what?”
“His friends.”
I found myself in the strange position of feeling gratitude to the master of Darkling. Fortunately Duncan chose that moment to usher us all out of the chamber and back into the claustrophobic darkness of the other room. We pulled our hoods over our faces and followed him in silence, James taking his father’s hand as we began to encounter the other wedding guests, mysterious figures garbed in cloaks identical to ours, human-shaped creatures much like Whatley, Samson, and all the rest of their circle.
Duncan escorted us into the medieval banquet hall that Lily had shown us on one of our prior visits, but instead of containing the mysterious ever-changing door that had tormented Susannah, it was now filled with row upon row of hospital beds, all of them occupied by poor creatures in varying states of decline.
The patient nearest to us might have once resembled an oversized earthworm, but it had been torn into pieces, its stumps bound in white gauze and placed along the length of the bed, struggling to squirm together in sequential rhythm despite the fact that they were no longer part of the same whole. Another victim was riddled with perforations in its head and torso, and thick metal spokes had been placed into the gaps of its flesh to brace the body against complete collapse. There were no doctors or nurses to tend to the wounded, only a dark-haired boy who stood at the other end of the room, struggling to help place what was left of Dabney Aldrich into a human-shaped suit.
Paul wiped a streak of sweat from his brow and scowled at his little brother. “I told you not to visit me here, James.”
“Come along, Paul,” I said.
He gaped at us, not understanding until we came close enough for him to see beneath the shrouds of our cloaks. He gently laid Dabney back onto the bed. The other boy’s face was just as angelic and beautiful as it had been before, but beneath his neck his human body was matted with the pieces of his actual one, bound together in bandages in a hopeless effort to give him something of a human shape.
Paul ushered us to a far corner of the room, away from his patients. “You’ve been gone for so long. I didn’t think we’d ever leave,” he stammered, rubbing the back of his head with his hands as if he were trying to decide something.
“What on earth are you doing here?” asked his father.
“The night of the engagement marked the start of the war. Someone had to tend to the victims, the ones damaged beyond repair. Their families either are in worse shape or have disowned them.” He gestured to Dabney, and I recalled the haughty dignity of Mrs. Aldrich. I could not imagine her having the compassion or the patience for long-term care. “I’ve stayed by their sides and helped as best I could.”
“That’s very brave of you,”
I said to him.
“No, they’re the brave ones. They endure without the hope and mercy of death. I only manage to find strength in their resolve.” His eyes shifted to me for a moment, wordlessly referencing our conversation by his mother’s gravestone all those months before.
Dabney stirred on his bed. “Paul.” His voice was a weak shadow of what it used to be. Still, the elder Darrow boy lifted him upright and helped dress the remains of his body for the wedding as we looked on in discomfort. When he was done, Paul placed his friend in a wheelchair. The other boy reached out and took his hand. “Are you leaving us?” he asked.
“I’m taking you to the wedding, just as you wanted, my friend.”
Dabney smiled and stared off into space as Paul wheeled him out of the makeshift infirmary.
“Is Mother coming with us?” Paul whispered. Henry and I exchanged glances. “We can’t leave her here.”
“And we won’t. Leave everything to me,” I said with a note of finality. I replaced the hood of my cloak as Duncan led us to the dining hall, where the guests had been informed that the wedding was about to begin.
A thousand wedding guests in hooded shrouds began to file into the ballroom, lavishly decorated for the event. Silver cages filled with firebirds hung from the ceiling. Sad, languid music was being orchestrated on a twenty-foot-long harp that took a dozen people to play it, some of them standing on ladders.
The Darrows and I sat down with Dabney while Duncan bowed to us and retreated to the far end of the hall. Across the aisle Olivia chattered flirtatiously with some of the younger guests, throwing her head back gently in a demure scoff, pleasantly scandalized by some rude observation. Her eyes flittered over us but did not stop. She gazed at her father with an expression carefully guarded by a well-practiced blank smile that did not show in her eyes as he took his place at the front of the aisle, smirking victoriously.
The music died out and the room became hushed in silence. The harp players began to strum their instrument until the notes resembled a wedding march. Lily Darrow stood at the entrance to the ballroom, dressed in her elaborate white wedding gown. She strode down the aisle. When she reached the section we were sitting in, she turned to us with a weak smile.
“Don’t do it, Mother,” James whispered to her loudly enough for everyone to hear. Lily looked from the children to Henry. Mr. Whatley grew increasingly impatient at the end of the aisle. She turned back to the task at hand, and Mr. Whatley glowered at the boys triumphantly. I removed the small, thin knife that I had taken from the highwayman and hidden in the folds of my dress.
“Do you trust me?” I asked Henry.
“Of course.”
“Then stay by my side and help me with the children.”
“What are you—?”
I took a deep breath and, hands shaking with conviction, plunged the knife into my chest. It did not feel as I thought it would. I had imagined more pain, more terror, but it was all very numb. The world slowed down, and I collapsed into Henry’s arms in slow motion. Lily turned to see what had happened, her veil fluttering before her eyes, one step behind the progress of time. She ran back down the aisle to my side. I pushed the hood of the cloak away from my face, and the crowd stood up to observe the chaos, blurry figures at the edge of my vision that I felt I recognized, but could not quite make out.
They were elated.
I heard Mr. Whatley above the crowd, demanding to know what had happened, for he could not see over the throngs of wedding guests despite his unnatural height. Henry cradled me in his arms, unsure what to do and trying to calm the children, who were beside themselves in shock and horror.
“It’s all right,” I choked, trying to comfort them even as my teeth became slick with blood. “Look!”
A storm had gathered outside, the moon obscured by a writhing tempest of black clouds that spilled down from the sky and into the horizon, churning over the bleak pine-colored hills of The Ending in a frigid, swirling vortex that pressed against the windows until they shattered inward. The firebirds extinguished themselves, and the lights in the room went out. A doorway made of night opened to meet us where we stood, and from within it there appeared the shape of a man clad all in black.
I had summoned Death to The Ending.
Some of the wedding guests began to cry with tears of joy, while others knelt in reverence.
“Really, there’s no need for that,” said the man as he stepped forward. Mr. Samson appeared beside him.
“We bid you welcome to The Ending, my lord.”
“While that’s very kind of you, I am no one’s lord, and I’m afraid I have more pressing matters to attend to.” He observed me on the floor with Lily, a pool of blood spreading before us, staining the hem of her white dress. The man bent over me and looked at my injury. He gestured to the knife. “Shall we remove this?”
I nodded to Lily, and she pulled the knife from my torso. I winced, gasping for air, the pain of it nearly causing me to black out, but I gritted my teeth together and bore through it.
“There, all better,” he said drily. If I hadn’t been in so much pain I would have laughed aloud. “Now, to the matter at hand. One of you has been dead for some time, and the other is dying in a place where death has never before occurred. What am I to do with the two of you?”
I sat up, and a gout of blood spilled down the front of my chest. “If I may, sir, there is only one reasonable course of action.”
“And what is that, Mrs. Markham?” asked the man. At the utterance of my name, the crowd fell away, and Mr. Whatley finally saw me with his fiancée. His eyes went very wide, and for what I assumed was the first time in a very long time, he was speechless.
“A soul must be taken,” I continued. “Lily passed on, but not completely, and I cannot die in a place where death does not exist. Reason would follow that you should take her into the light, and let me keep my life.”
“A reasonable point, but wrong all the same. Death did not exist here, until now. Hello.” He turned and waved to the crowd of onlookers with good cheer. “But this is still The Ending. I am, if anything, a man of the people, and the people of The Ending are different. New rules are needed.”
“Please, sir, take us with you,” Samson blubbered at his side.
“Yes, some of you would like that very much, but others would prefer to persist, even though they might say otherwise. I can sense it throughout this room. Normally it doesn’t matter, I would take each and every one of you all the same, but you don’t die. If I left, you would simply keep ticking away until the end of time. That is where you’re different, and that’s why I will give you the chance to decide. Come or stay, live or die.” He spun around again to face Lily and me. “The same goes for each of you. Which will it be?”
Lily Darrow looked at her children, and at her husband. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. “I think I’ve kept this gentleman waiting long enough.”
“This is outrageous!” bellowed Whatley, taking several steps forward until the man in black raised his hand with unveiled antipathy toward the master of Darkling.
“Do not interrupt us again, sir, or I shall be encouraged to take you instead. Do I make myself clear?”
Mr. Whatley fumed and glared, but remained silent.
James clung to his mother’s side, the adolescent confidence he had earned temporarily forgotten in the wake of his mother’s decision. “No, Mother, you can’t!” he cried.
“I must accept my own death if any of you is to ever live your own lives. I’m sorry if I’ve been selfish, but I love you so much I couldn’t bear leaving you behind.” She hugged the boys. Henry caressed the side of his wife’s face.
“I’m sorry, Henry.”
“Never be sorry.”
“Do you still love me?”
“Until the end of time.”
He kissed her softly on the cheek. I felt my
heart pounding in my chest, but then it could have been due to the loss of blood. As they parted, she wiped her eyes. “Charlotte, you will see to it that they get home to Everton?”
“Yes, of course.” The pain was settling into my body now, not softened but endured.
“Thank you . . . for everything,” she said as she took her place beside the gentleman who was Death.
“I’ll return in a moment,” said the man. “I imagine that you wish to be next?” He gestured to Mr. Samson, who nodded excitedly, nearly beside himself with joy.
Suddenly Paul stepped forward, pushing Dabney’s wheelchair in front of him. “If you please, sir. The injured should be taken first.” Paul placed a hand on Dabney’s ruined shoulders, and the other boy nestled his head against Paul’s arm with unspoken intimacy.
The man in black nodded in agreement. “An admirable observation.” He spun around and gestured to the broader crowd. “Would all interested parties please line up? I do love a good queue.”
Paul wheeled Dabney toward the door made of night and knelt beside him. I could not hear what they said, but by the end of it they were both crying, and Dabney watched Paul return to us as his mother accepted the hand of Death.
“Are you ready?” he asked Lily.
“No, but I imagine few people ever are,” she replied.
Together they passed through the door made of night and were engulfed by it, their forms obscured and faded in a dim burst of light even as the door persisted.
Mr. Whatley shrieked and collapsed to the floor in visible pain. Olivia ran to his side and took his arm to help him to his feet as the crowd began to murmur with excitement, some of the guests lining up beside Dabney and Mr. Samson, hand in hand, to follow the man in black into the afterlife.
I could see Mr. Whatley staggering up, somehow diminished in Lily’s absence. He met my gaze and cackled with manic abandon, his body shaking with the timbre of his voice. “You warned me, but I didn’t believe you. You threatened, and I ignored you. You’ve stolen my wife from me, Mrs. Markham!”
“Father, please!” Olivia had not released his arm. She held on to him very tightly, her fingers digging sharply into the fabric of his suit jacket.
Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling Page 24
