by George Hagen
Listen, Gabriel, insisted Paladin. The nightingale saw Snitcher prove to the valravens that he was carrying the spirit of Corax in the torc around his neck. It’s just what the owls told us—the robin is commanded by the Lord of Air and Darkness. And according to the nightingale, the robin heard you talking about the Chamber of Runes. He knows you want to free your mother’s body, and believes you can do the same for Corax’s.
Abby, Somes, and Pamela leaned forward, confused because they couldn’t hear Paladin’s thoughts.
“What, Gabriel? What?” asked Abby.
Gabriel turned to his friends and explained Paladin’s news. “But I don’t know where this Chamber of Runes is,” he continued. “All I know is that it exists…somewhere in Aviopolis.”
“If Corax is trying to capture you,” said Somes, “he must believe you can find it.”
“Well, I won’t help him.” Gabriel folded his arms.
“He sent his valravens to capture you; he’ll do it again,” Abby said.
“Then we’ll fight them off again,” said Gabriel.
“Gabriel,” said Somes, “get serious. We barely survived that attack. Corax will do anything to get his body back so that he can command his stinking army of birds and—”
“Rule the world,” murmured Pamela.
“Don’t you dare go outside without us,” said Abby.
Gabriel threw up his hands. “First I couldn’t paravolate with Paladin, now I can’t even walk to school by myself?”
“Just be glad they didn’t get you today,” said Pamela.
“Get who? What are you talking about?” Trudy was standing in the doorway. Her eyes dropped to the box of bandages on the table. “Honey? Were you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” said Pamela. “But Gabriel, Somes, and Abby got—”
“Bitten by mosquitoes!” said Abby.
“Good heavens, they must have been enormous,” said Trudy.
“And vicious,” said Somes. “And it’s not even spring.”
For several days Gabriel had intended to tell his father what he had learned about the Chamber of Runes and Corax, but he kept putting it off because he would have to admit that he had paravolated.
You’re in far too much danger now, Gabriel, Paladin said. You must tell him.
I know, agreed Gabriel. I’ll do it tonight.
But dinner seemed to go on forever. Adam had made chocolate pudding for dessert, and Trudy took only the tiniest spoonful from her little bowl. “Oh, this is just too much,” she said, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Adam.
“It’s all that…chocolate,” she replied with a grimace.
“It’s perfect!” said Aunt Jaz, who had been savoring each spoonful. She looked curiously at Trudy. “You used to be crazy about chocolate. Remember when you baked constantly and made those delicious cookies and cakes for all the pastry shops in the neighborhood?”
“That must have been when I was in love,” said Trudy. “Chocolate is different when you’re in love.”
“Hmm. Perhaps it is,” said Aunt Jaz softly.
Amused, Gabriel kicked Pamela under the table.
“Mom?” said Pamela. “When did you stop liking chocolate?”
Trudy just sighed.
“Was my dad still around?”
Trudy’s eyes darted this way and that, suddenly aware of everyone’s curiosity. “I’m sure I can’t remember!” she snapped. “Why are you all staring at me?”
Gabriel turned to Aunt Jaz. Though she said nothing, he detected a hint of secrecy in her expression. At once, he felt sure that Aunt Jaz knew something about Trudy’s missing memory.
There was no chance to talk to his father in the kitchen. Gabriel helped clear the table and do the dishes, then padded upstairs to find him in the study, already snoring in his big leather armchair. A huge leather-bound volume lay in his lap, open at a page full of confusing Gutnish hieroglyphs.
Gabriel shook his arm. “Dad?” he said, but Mr. Finley continued to snore. Finally, Gabriel gave up and trudged to his bedroom.
When he reached the landing, Pamela looked out the doorway of her bedroom. “Gabriel, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you notice Aunt Jaz just now?”
He nodded. “Yeah, with that weird expression on her face, right?”
“I think it’s all connected. My mother, love, chocolate, my dad. Do you know what I think? It’s another Finley secret.”
Gabriel gave a weary nod. “There are a ton of them.”
“She knows something, and I have to find out what.”
“How?”
Pamela gave a faint shrug and a smile. “Good night.”
When Gabriel entered his room, he saw Paladin sitting on the bed knob. The raven hopped onto his shoulder and nuzzled his ear. A soothing melody from a violin swelled from Pamela’s room. Paladin cocked his head to listen.
She plays very well, he remarked.
“Yeah,” agreed Gabriel.
If I didn’t have you as my amicus, I would choose Pamela.
“Abby would be very sad to hear that,” Gabriel replied. “She really wants to bond with a raven.”
Paladin rearranged a feather in his left wing, then tucked his beak thoughtfully into his chest. Finding a raven—or a human—is as tricky as finding a best friend. You can’t plan it; you can’t predict it; it just happens.
—
On this evening full of secrets, there was another meeting going on at the top of Cemetery Hill. Hundreds of dark figures with dim yellow eyes were perched upon every statue and tombstone, waiting to hear a robin speak.
“This is outrageous!” cried Snitcher to the valravens. “Why haven’t you brought me the Finley boy?”
The robin paced along the shoulder of a great white statue of an angel. He glanced up at its gentle marble eyes, wishing this heavenly messenger would come to life and take over where the valravens had failed. But the wish was not granted. The torc held no power over angels.
“We almost had him,” muttered one valraven.
“How could you possibly fail when there are so many more of you than him?” the robin replied.
“We didn’t expect the girl to have such a fearsome weapon,” muttered another valraven.
“What weapon?” replied the robin. “You are immortal! Nothing can kill you!”
This question prompted a grudging silence; no valraven would admit that he’d been defeated by potatoes and tights.
The robin’s eyes darted back and forth with annoyance. “Can’t one of you do what I asked?” he snapped. “Seize the boy when he is unprotected!”
“The best time to catch him would be when he merges with his raven, Paladin,” said a gravelly voice. The one-eyed phantom, Hookeye, spoke from his perch upon a mausoleum.
This idea pleased all the valravens. It would be much easier to gang up on a single raven. They uttered caws and throks of enthusiasm.
“But the boy rarely does that,” interrupted the robin. “I know, because I’ve watched him for hours through his window. He would only do it if…”
The robin looked confused, as if his dim bulb of a brain couldn’t manage another thought. But the torc suddenly quivered around his neck, and his voice took on a deeper, more commanding tone.
“He would do it if one of his friends was in grave danger.”
“An excellent point, Your Eminence!” said Hookeye, guessing that Corax had found a way to speak through the robin. “The boy cherishes his friends,” he remarked with a sneer. “It is one of his weaknesses. Leave the rest to me.”
—
Abby couldn’t sleep. Her mind was full of the day’s adventure, and she had an uneasy feeling that it was not over yet. A shrill wind made the oak tree outside her window sway and creak. Breezy gusts blew twigs against the sill. The night felt rebellious; it didn’t want to settle. She pulled up the blind and peered outside. The waning moon in her backyard cast deep shado
ws. Then something silky and black fluttered upon her windowsill.
Abby put on her eyeglasses, and raised the window. Standing before her was a black bird with a blunt beak and satin wings. Its bold presence made her giddy with excitement. “A raven?” she gasped. “A raven at my window! Hello!”
It answered her in a deep and raspy voice:
“What has substance but no soul,
Needs neither air nor food
Yet flies in the sky?”
Her heart started to beat faster. Calm down, she told herself. And yet it was hard to relax when she knew what this opportunity meant.
“Let me think,” she said. But when she looked at the bird, she hesitated.
Ravens are tidy by nature, but this bird’s feathers were oddly tattered, and its beak was chipped from age. There was a gaping socket where one eye should have been. Abby couldn’t see its other eye because the bird kept its profile to her.
Shame on you, Abby! she thought. A raven finally invites you to answer its riddle and all you can do is criticize its appearance? It was probably attacked by a hawk or a great horned owl. The poor thing!
Blinded by desire, she imagined being the raven’s amicus. This bird would be her friend for life! She would be able to merge with it and fly across the city, coast across cloud prairies, and swoop through billowing white canyons.
“Hmm,” she said. “Let’s solve this riddle. Whatever this is has a body but no soul. Doesn’t need to breathe or eat. Yet it flies. Well, if it doesn’t breathe or eat, it can’t be alive….Wait a minute, I know what it is!”
She looked at the bird thoughtfully. “My answer is…a kite.”
As the words left her lips, she had a queasy feeling that her answer was wrong.
The bird turned to face her and revealed its other eye.
It was yellow. A sickly mustard tint. Yellow as bile, as curdled milk, that awful yellow you see in a polluted pond when the edge of the water froths into ghastly bubbles and leaves a vile stain. It was the jaundiced eye of a—
You’re a valraven, Abby thought.
You’ve answered my riddle and opened your mind to me, replied Hookeye. And until I release you, we are one!
In a horrible flash Abby felt herself wrenched out of her body and squeezed within the awful, musty, cramped insides of the centuries-old valraven. It was like being buried in a coffin full of dust, ash, and rotten food. She could smell everything the creature had devoured in the last hundred years—mouse skins, rat tails, grubs, beetles, lice and snake flies, maggots, cobwebs, fuzzy blackened fruit, and moldy cheese.
In the next instant, they were hurtling upward. Abby felt nauseated from the stench of the phantom’s insides. The higher they flew, the more sickened and revolted she became, but she was determined to keep her wits about her.
Please, Mr. Whatever You Are, she began. Where are we going?
To see your friend Gabriel, replied Hookeye.
Why?
Perhaps he’ll be moved by your cries to rescue you.
Oh, so that’s it. This is all a trap to capture him, said Abby. Well, I won’t do it. I won’t say a word; I’m not going to help you trick him.
You have no choice, my dear, replied Hookeye. Now that you’re inside me, I can use your voice any way I choose.
Gabriel heard a harsh tap on the glass of his bedroom window. He pulled the curtain and saw a valraven’s sickly yellow eye staring at him through the pane.
“Paladin!” he called.
The raven flew to his shoulder and peered out. Gabriel, I remember this phantom. He’s Hookeye, Corax’s general. A very powerful and dangerous bird.
“What should we do?” said Gabriel.
Nothing. He’s outside and we’re inside.
But then Gabriel heard a faint voice.
“Gabriel, it’s me, Abby. I’m…I’m stuck inside this valraven!”
“Abby?” said Gabriel. “What’s going on? Why are you inside a—”
“Never mind,” she interrupted. “I did something incredibly stupid. Listen, Gabriel. Whatever happens, don’t follow this bird. It’s a trap to capture you! Don’t follow—”
Hookeye clamped his beak shut, cutting off Abby’s words. The old valraven smiled grimly at Gabriel and Paladin, then flew off.
“We’ve got to follow her,” said Gabriel, and he threw up the window and spread his arms, preparing to paravolate.
“But that’s exactly what Abby told you not to do!” said Paladin.
Gabriel looked at the raven with an anguished expression. “But how can I let Abby be captured?”
Paladin drew a resigned breath. “I understand. It’s just that we’d be flying right into—”
“I don’t care. Jump!” cried Gabriel.
In that instant, Gabriel merged with Paladin, and they took to the air. He felt the wind, thick as water beneath his wings, as they soared in pursuit of the valraven.
Hookeye flew a haphazard course, sometimes ducking beneath tree branches, sometimes gliding into open spaces. Although shrewd, he had the disadvantage of having lost many feathers, so he didn’t have the powerful thrust of a younger bird. His wings were sparse and he flapped with great effort. Within half a minute, Paladin had caught up with him.
“Hookeye,” he said.
The valraven glared at him. “Ah, Paladin, my friend. And do I have the honor of greeting the Finley boy, too?”
“Let Abby go!” cried Gabriel.
“Oh, don’t worry, human,” gloated the phantom. “I will—when I’m ready.”
“Do it now, Hookeye, or I’ll pluck every feather from your wings until you plummet,” Paladin said, and to show that he meant business, the raven dipped in the air and seized one of Hookeye’s tail feathers. The valraven gasped.
Abby chimed in now. “Listen to him, you horrible smelly beast! He’ll take every feather you’ve got. If you let me go, you’ll still be able to fly, but if you don’t, he’ll pick at you until you’re as naked as a plucked hen!”
Oh, I’ll let you go soon, my dear, muttered Hookeye.
“Jump!” Abby said. “Jump! Jump! Jump!” She remembered that Gabriel often said this when he wished to merge with Paladin—or separate. “Jump! Jump!”
Oh, you can say that all you want, but it won’t do you any good.
Abby jerked and squirmed inside the valraven’s body. “Why can’t I get free?” she cried in exasperation.
Because when a human merges with a valraven, it’s a surrender, Hookeye replied. You’re my prisoner and you must wait till I release you.
Abby squirmed again. “I’ll scream,” she warned. “Aaaaaaahh!”
Hookeye’s single, sickly yellow eye grew watery as Abby’s shrill cry rattled through his brain. He spiraled down toward a traffic intersection, barely able to alight upon the striped awning of a shop on Union Street printed with the words PLESHETTE’S EXOTICS.
Paladin circled above, looking for a hint of a trap. I don’t see any other valravens, he told Gabriel.
I guess it’s safe, then, Gabriel replied. But did you notice where we are?
Pleshette’s shop, said Paladin. That nasty little man who sells potions, animals, and mojo-mechanisms.
The moment that Paladin alighted on the other end of the awning, a robin fluttered down from a nearby tree and perched between Hookeye and Paladin. Snitcher! said Gabriel.
“Ah, so here is Paladin,” said the robin. “I presume that the Finley boy is with you?” He gazed with gleeful mischief from Paladin to Hookeye. “Now that I have you both together, let’s proceed.”
“First,” said Paladin, “Hookeye must let the girl go!”
“Very well,” said Hookeye. He stretched his wings and gave a vigorous shake.
The figure of a girl with twelve blond pigtails sprang free of the valraven and collapsed upon the pavement. Abby got up, dusted off her pajamas, and adjusted her glasses. The moment she saw the shop window, and the cages inside, she whirled around. “Paladin! Gabriel!” she cried. “Go—�
�
“Wait!” cried the robin. “Hear me out. If you and the Finley boy tell me where the Chamber of Runes lies, and how Corax can reunite with his body, you may go free.”
“Never!” replied Paladin.
“To be trapped and powerless is a miserable existence,” said a deeper voice speaking through the robin’s mouth. “Show him how it feels, Snitcher.”
“I’ll never help you, Corax,” said Gabriel through Paladin.
A brilliant flash of blue light burst from the torc around Snitcher’s neck.
Hey, what’s happening to me? cried Paladin. I can’t move my wings or my head!
Gabriel felt the same sensation, as if they were held in a viselike grip. Maybe I can jump free, he said. He attempted a mental jump, but nothing happened.
He tried again. Nothing.
Then Gabriel saw Abby’s horrified expression.
“You’re in a cage,” she said. “It’s shaped exactly like a raven, with wire, rivets, spikes, and a metal beak. It’s a horrible contraption!”
Paladin squirmed frantically to escape, but the cage held him tight. His desperate movements caused it to fall off the awning and strike the pavement with a clatter.
Abby crouched next to it. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’re okay,” said Paladin.
She was startled by Paladin’s voice; she had longed for the raven to speak to her, but this was an awful time for such a privilege. “I’ll carry you home, and get help,” she said, but when she tried to pick up the cage, one of her fingers caught on a sharp set of spikes. “Ow!” she cried, flinching.
The cage’s metal fastenings were barbed to discourage an outsider from freeing its victim.
“This is terrible,” she said.
“Please try to get away before Snitcher harms you,” said Paladin.
“But, I can’t leave you—”
The cage vanished as Abby spoke.
“What’s going on? Where…”
A bluish glow emanated from the shop window. Abby peered inside and saw its source. High in the rafters, Paladin’s metal cage shone among many others of all shapes and sizes. Then its glow faded and the cage disappeared within the dark interior.
