Gabriel Finley and the Lord of Air and Darkness

by George Hagen

“I’m sure Septimus intended to steal them all, but perhaps he had a difficult time removing that first one and gave up on the others,” said Mr. Finley. “So he gathered some rocks, hoping to bluff Pleshette into buying them. Pleshette probably promised him a fortune for Corax’s rune, much more than he dreamed.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Gabriel. “The stork told us that the captives had to be freed with a riddle.”

  “A riddle, right!” said Pamela. “That’s the thing I forgot to tell you, Mr. Finley.”

  Mr. Finley looked pleased. “This should have been obvious to me,” he said. “It takes a riddle to free a rune. And Septimus despises riddles. You can be sure that he’ll want me and my riddle-solving expertise along when he returns to the Chamber of Runes. The only problem that remains is this Corax business.”

  Gabriel regarded his father curiously. “Dad, when the elixir wears off, couldn’t you just agree to help free Corax, but free Mom instead?”

  Mr. Finley was silent for a moment. “Gabriel,” he said, “I promise I will do everything possible to free your mother. But I will not risk freeing my diabolical brother. As you know, Corax’s valravens wiped out whole species of birds and dominated and enslaved thousands of creatures in Aviopolis. If he was set free, I could be responsible for the misery and despair of millions of people, too.”

  They were all quiet after this. Even Gabriel, desperate as he was, didn’t know what to say.

  “On the other hand,” Mr. Finley added, “you may be sure that Corax’s valravens will find a way to pay for his release, and Septimus will come back to me for help.”

  “And what will you do?” asked Gabriel.

  Mr. Finley heaved a long sigh. “I shall have to think of some clever solution.”

  —

  As they walked with Somes back to his house that evening, Gabriel and his friends tried to imagine how the valravens could come up with enough money to pay for Corax’s freedom. Would they pay by cash, check, credit?

  “They might rip wristwatches from Wall Streeters,” said Somes.

  “Pinch coins from parking meters,” chimed Pamela.

  “Swipe diamonds from engagement rings,” said Abby.

  “Wring gold bling from hip-hop kings!” quipped Gabriel.

  “Steal some paintings from a fancy museum.”

  “Then charge lots of people a fortune to see ’em!”

  “Find the world’s biggest oyster on Rockaway Beach.”

  “And pull out a pearl as big as a peach!”

  After they had stopped laughing, Pamela wondered aloud if the valravens might simply give up.

  “You’d better hope they don’t, for Gabriel’s sake,” said Somes.

  “Why?”

  “Because his dad needs to find his mom’s rune, and Septimus knows the way.”

  “This is so twisted,” said Pamela. “So the only way Mr. Finley can free Gabriel’s mother is to help Septimus free Corax, too?”

  “Yeah,” said Gabriel. “But it’s more than twisted. It’s a catastrophe.”

  —

  A week passed. Gabriel still hadn’t seen any valravens; and though he kept an eye out for Snitcher on his windowsill, the bird did not appear.

  Pamela knocked on his door on Wednesday evening, after everybody else had gone to bed. “Gabriel,” she said, “don’t you think it’s strange that you can get Paladin to sleep in your room, but Vyka won’t set foot inside mine?”

  “Oh,” Gabriel replied, “I think it’s because I found Paladin when he was just a chick. But Vyka is a wild raven. She’s cautious with people and scared of being caged.”

  “Then why isn’t she afraid of me? And why did I become a raven’s amicus when Abby is so much better at riddles?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “And why can I get the stove to cook, when you, Abby, and Somes can’t?” Pamela continued. “And why was I the only one who could get the writing desk to cooperate? That is, until it ran away from me.”

  “I don’t get it, either.” Gabriel paused thoughtfully. “But I bet somebody in this house has the answer.”

  Pamela reacted with a start. “Gabriel, it has to be my mom!”

  “You’re kidding,” he replied. “She doesn’t believe in magic at all.”

  Jumping up, Pamela said goodnight and left his room. A moment later, Gabriel heard her playing the violin, a bold, purposeful tune that seemed to hint she was concocting some plan to get the truth out of her mother.

  —

  The next morning, Trudy Baskin and Pamela boarded the subway and sat down. They watched the car fill up with passengers at the next couple of stations. Then, when it was crammed as tight as a sardine tin, the train began its long underground trip toward Manhattan.

  It was at this moment that Pamela turned decisively to her mother. “Mom, who is my dad, really?”

  Trudy fidgeted in her seat. “You’re asking me here? Now?” she said.

  “I want to know.”

  “I told you, dear.” Trudy lowered her voice. “His name was Ramsey Baskin.”

  “Was that his real name?”

  “It was the name…he gave.”

  “Whatever that means,” said Pamela. “Did you love him?”

  “Love him? Of course. I always loved him.”

  Pamela’s eyes narrowed slightly. “When did you meet him?”

  Trudy blinked nervously. A nun with a trembling chin peered up from her newspaper, eager to hear Trudy’s reply.

  Trudy glared at the nun, whose face swiftly disappeared behind the newspaper. She looked at Pamela. “This is a terrible time to ask these questions! I will not say another word.”

  Pamela waited about a minute, then turned to her mother again. “I know, Mother. I know what the truth is. I just think it’s time you admitted it, that’s all.” This was a big gamble, because Pamela, of course, had nothing but a hunch.

  She continued to wait, eyes locked on her mother’s.

  Trudy was thunderstruck. How could Pamela possibly know the truth? she wondered. She had been keeping this a secret for such a very long time. It was embedded in her—almost a part of her body. She feared she might actually fall to pieces if she revealed it now.

  She fanned herself and let out a deep sigh, and then she realized that all eyes in the subway car had settled on her. Their intensity was unnerving. Passengers craned their necks in expectation. Then a woman in a leopard-skin pillbox hat gave her a smile. A man with a goatee wearing a vest and an alligator tie clip murmured a soft noise of sympathy. A pair of girls sharing a picture book gave Trudy a nod, as if to say “Go ahead! Tell your daughter what she wants to know.” Even the nun dipped her quivering chin in encouragement.

  Trudy took a deep breath. “When I was a little girl, I liked Jasmine’s older brother, Corax,” she began.

  “I know,” said Pamela—because she really did know this.

  “And he ran away from home.”

  “Right.”

  “But sometimes he returned very briefly to see me. He would appear on a crowded street and pass me a note that said something sweet like ‘I’ve been thinking of you.’ Sometimes he asked me for news of his family. It was his way of keeping in touch. He was ashamed, you see, but too proud to go back home.

  “Those visits were always extremely quick, and months…or years…apart. Until one day he appeared at my door,” Trudy continued. “By now he was all grown up. He told me he’d been studying ancient mythology and rare objects and collecting peculiar pieces of art. He was ashamed of the person he had been as a boy, he explained. Something sad had happened back then, a terrible event that had made him run away. So he’d made a fresh start and changed his name to Ramsey Baskin. I promised to keep his past a secret.”

  Trudy paused, and a sweet expression filled her eyes. “You see, I knew that I’d loved him for a long time. We were so happy together that we married. And that was when you were born, my dear.”

  Pamela’s mouth fell open.

 
Around her, the subway passengers looked enthralled. The train came to a halt, and a group of them reluctantly got off—the nun and the man with the alligator tie clip were especially hesitant to leave. Only the girls remained.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Pamela asked.

  Trudy nodded. “The night you were born, a snowstorm buried the whole city. The ambulance couldn’t get to me, and I had to call Jasmine to help because I was going into labor. I remember that I glanced out the window and there were ravens everywhere. Their bright yellow eyes watched me from the trees, fences, and lampposts.”

  Pamela shivered. “Ravens don’t have yellow eyes, Mom.”

  Trudy paused. “Why, yes, they do, dear.”

  “I think what you saw were valravens.”

  “Valravens? Well, whatever they were, I hated them.”

  Trudy paused for a moment.

  “There was another baby,” she said at last. “You see, I was carrying twins.”

  “What?” cried Pamela. “Twins?”

  “Jasmine arrived and helped deliver you, and she tucked you into the crib, and then I gave birth to your brother. He was a strange little thing, hardly looked like a baby at all. I remember his terrified little eyes. He was so small and frail, like a little bird….”

  “A bird?”

  The train stopped at the next station. The two girls were led reluctantly away by their mother.

  Now that she had revealed this much, Trudy couldn’t stop. She talked faster. “He looked like a bird because…he was so small and delicate, I mean. Such big eyes. I was terribly tired after his birth, and I fell asleep while Jasmine cleaned him and wrapped him warmly.”

  “So I have a brother,” murmured Pamela.

  “But later, when I woke, I saw a horrible sight. A huge raven stood before me, with black feathers, big wings, and eyes like yellow beacons, and he was holding my baby boy, and I fainted.”

  Trudy blinked and clutched Pamela’s hand. “I never saw my husband or my little boy again.” She paused, turning a ring on her finger. “That raven must have taken them away.”

  Trudy drew in a deep breath and looked at Pamela with tears in her eyes. “I knew it made no sense; I was afraid people would say I imagined things and think I was mad. It was better to say that it never happened. Jasmine promised she would take care of us. ‘Family is family,’ she said, and she’s always kept her word.”

  Pamela didn’t speak for a moment. Had Corax transformed into a valraven before her mother’s eyes and terrified her? Had he taken the baby—her brother—away? Why? Her mother’s memory seemed so confused, and yet there was sense in what she said. She still loved this mysterious man, and Pamela was his daughter, Mr. Finley’s niece, and Gabriel’s cousin.

  Now she understood why she could paravolate and how she had inherited the Finleys’ ease with mojo-mechanisms. But the final fact, the one that horrified her, took a while to sink in.

  Pamela repeated it a few times to herself, just to believe it.

  My father is Corax Finley, the Lord of Air and Darkness.

  “Ah, Pamela, come in,” said Aunt Jaz. She was correcting homework that afternoon, curled up in a large wicker armchair in her bedroom.

  The air felt so clear in this room, perhaps because it was filled with plants, vines, and a large rubber tree with shiny oval leaves reaching to the ceiling. The collection of objects on Jasmine’s mantelpiece offered a hint of her curiosity and knowledge about unusual things—a gyroscope, a lemur’s skull, a trilobite fossil, and a mermaid’s purse.

  “Aunt Jaz?” Pamela began cautiously, settling her eyes upon the marching animal figures on the carpet at her aunt’s feet. “I know Corax is my father. Today I found out from my mom that she had twins the night I was born, and that she couldn’t remember what happened after that. She said I have a brother.”

  Pamela expected Aunt Jaz to be surprised, but her voice was calm and sensible. “Yes,” she said softly. “I was waiting for you to learn the truth, my dear. After all, you’re entitled to it. Perhaps I can elaborate on the details, as I’m sure your mother was in a state when she told you.” Aunt Jaz patted a wicker ottoman and plumped its cushion. “Come sit, and I’ll explain.”

  When Pamela was settled, her aunt began. “On the night of your birth, Corax, your father—the Lord of Air and Darkness, if you will—had an awful choice to make. He thought he could give up the life of a merciless overlord when he married your mother, but when she gave birth to you and your brother, he had to choose between two paths.”

  “Because my brother was a valraven?”

  Aunt Jaz looked startled for the first time. “Your mother told you this?”

  “No,” admitted Pamela. “I guessed that part. If my father is a valraven, then he might have had a son who was at least part valraven.”

  Aunt Jaz nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so. And a newborn valraven must eat flesh within minutes of being born or he will perish. Corax couldn’t let him die, so he chose to leave Trudy and you and raise the boy somewhere safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Aviopolis, of course.”

  “But didn’t he have to feed him first?”

  Suddenly, Pamela remembered the scene she’d witnessed in the snow globe with her friends. “Somes’s father was attacked on the night of a blizzard by a creature that bit off the tip of his finger! Could that have been my father, feeding my brother?”

  “Why, yes. Fascinating,” agreed Jasmine. “You know, I thought the baby didn’t survive that night, but if what you say is true, then he may be alive today—somewhere.”

  This gave Pamela a curious new feeling of hope. “I wonder if my brother knows that I exist.”

  “My dear, I think it is unlikely. There is no reason I can imagine that would have caused Corax to tell him about you, I’m afraid.

  “What a night that was for your poor mother,” Aunt Jaz continued. “She saw Corax in his valraven form and it terrified her. She has been scared of ravens ever since. She was so tormented by nightmares for the next few days that I decided to help her. I used the stove downstairs to make a potion that clouded her memory.”

  “So she doesn’t know what really happened?”

  Jasmine sighed. “Pamela, her memory was merely obscured to ease her pain. It was not erased. She may one day choose to remember the truth—that Corax is a valraven who carried away his valraven son—but that is entirely up to her.”

  “She told me that she was afraid people would think she was crazy.”

  “My dear, half the world worries that people think they’re crazy.”

  “And the other half?”

  Aunt Jaz shrugged. “The other half is crazy.”

  Pamela smiled in spite of herself as she wiped away a tear. “So I have a brother I’ve never met, and a horrible monster of a father who doesn’t ever want to see me or care if I exist.”

  Aunt Jaz put her arm around Pamela. “My dear, if a person calls himself Lord of Air and Darkness and condemns thousands of creatures to serve him or die, he creates many enemies. Perhaps he has done you a kindness.”

  —

  As the Finley house went to sleep that night, Pamela lay in bed, puzzled, excited, and horrified. My father is Corax! Lord of Air and Darkness. He ate the flesh of his amicus and became a hideous half man, half raven. He wiped out dozens of species of talking birds and ruled Aviopolis in the cavernous depths beneath Brooklyn. His hunger for the torc’s magic was so fiendish that he locked his own brother—Adam Finley—in a dark cell for years, and almost killed Gabriel. She trembled as a horrible realization occurred to her. Corax spoke to me in Aviopolis when we rescued Mr. Finley just months ago. He invited me and my friends to join him in his quest to conquer the world without knowing I was his daughter.

  Pamela shuddered at this memory, and yet she was proud to have stood up to the demon at the time.

  But she felt different about her brother. Maybe he’s a valraven, she thought. But he must be part human, too. I wonder if we�
��re anything alike. He’s never known our mother. I’ve never known our father. There’s so much we could tell each other, and so much to learn!

  Her thoughts wouldn’t settle, so after tossing in bed for an hour, Pamela threw on her robe and padded downstairs.

  The stove suddenly stirred into activity and offered her a cup of steamy hot chocolate. Pamela took a few sips, then wandered into the backyard and listened to the whispers of the tall oaks swaying above her.

  Vyka? she thought, hoping the raven might be near. Are you there?

  And then it occurred to her that Vyka might be disgusted by her. What if she can read my mind and knows that I’m Corax’s daughter? she worried.

  Vyka? she thought. Please, Vyka, answer me!

  I’m here, came a reply.

  Oh, please don’t be afraid of me, said Pamela, detecting the raven’s cautious tone. I would never do anything to harm you, I promise!

  What if Corax were to command you?

  I’d rather die. You can hear my thoughts, so you must know that I would never betray you.

  Nor would I betray you. But you must be prepared for those who will question our loyalty. When ravens or humans learn that you are Corax’s daughter, some will suspect us of being his servants. Are you ready for that, Pamela?

  I am.

  The moment Pamela said this, there was a swift movement behind her. The blue raven alighted upon her shoulder. Oh, please, Vyka, Pamela said. Let’s paravolate right now, the way Gabriel and Paladin do.

  I can’t wait! said Vyka, laughing with relief.

  The girl and the raven faced each other, concentrating as deeply as they could.

  Raising her arms, Pamela let her fingertips quiver for a moment; then she jumped. A strange ripple spread through her body, extending to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  The experience of merging is never quite the same for any two people. Pamela didn’t feel crushed and crammed inside Vyka’s body (as Abby had in Hookeye’s). It felt more as if she’d slid entirely out of her own skin and into Vyka’s with the ease of slipping into a snug, warm bed. Pamela felt her bones adjust, her shoulders roll backward, her legs shorten, her toes extend into talons, and her skin become alive with thousands of feathers.