by Libba Bray
“Do you believe that enough to stake everything upon it?” I ask. “I will not be threatened any longer. They have no power over me. This is your chance to be heroic, Mr. Fowlson. Don’t fail me. Don’t fail her,” I say meaningfully.
“I would never,” he says, looking down. And I realize that even Mr. Fowlson has his Achilles’ heel.
When we arrive at the Hippocrates Society, Mr. Fowlson bangs hard on the doors until they swing open.
“What is it?” a white-haired gentleman demands, several of his compatriots at his heel.
“Please, sirs, it’s Mr. Doyle. We need your help.”
The gentlemen push out in a haze of cigar smoke. Nursing his bruised face, Tom wobbles from the carriage with Kartik’s and Fowlson’s help while I follow.
“Doyle, old boy. What has happened?” the white-haired gentleman exclaims.
Tom rubs his sore jaw. “Well, I…I…”
“As we returned from dinner, ruffians set upon our carriage,” I explain, wide-eyed. “My dear brother saved us from those who would have done us harm.”
“I…I did?” Tom’s head whips in my direction. I plead with my eyes: Don’t muck this up. “Right! I did. Terribly sorry to be delayed.”
The men fall into shouts and questions. “You don’t say!” “Fantastic tale—how did it happen?” “Let’s have a look at that jaw!”
“It—it really was nothing,” Tom stammers.
I tighten my hold on Tom. “Don’t be so modest, Thomas. He dispensed with them single-handedly. They didn’t stand a chance against such a brave and honorable man.” To say this, I must fight the giggle that shouts “Ha!” from my stomach.
“A splendid display of courage, old boy,” one of the gentlemen says.
Tom stands blinking in the light, rather like an old dog without the sense to come in from the rain.
“Don’t you remember, Thomas? Oh, dear. I fear that blow to your head was more severe than we thought. We should take you straight home to bed and call for Dr. Hamilton.”
“Dr. Hamilton is already here,” Dr. Hamilton says. He steps out, a brandy snifter in his hand and a cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Single-handedly?” the white-haired man asks.
Another gentleman, with thick spectacles, claps Tom on the back. “There’s a good man.”
A younger man takes Tom’s other arm. “A warm brandy is all you need to get you back on your feet.”
“Indeed. I should like that very much, thank you,” Tom says, managing to look both sheepish and proud at the same time.
“You must tell us exactly how it happened, chap,” Dr. Hamilton says, ushering Tom into the small but cozy club.
“Well,” Tom begins, “in our haste this evening, my driver foolishly took a shortcut near the docks and was lost. Suddenly, I heard cries of ‘Help! Help! Oh, please help!’”
“You don’t say!” the gentlemen gasp.
“I counted three—a half dozen men of dubious character, brigands with eyes devoid of all conscience….”
I see I am not the only one gifted with imagination. But tonight, I shall allow Tom his glory, however much it vexes me. A kindly gentleman offers assurances to me that my “heroic brother” will be well looked after, and I’m quite sure that after tonight’s tale, his place in that society is assured.
“Tom,” I call after him. “Mr. Fowlson will carry me on to Spence, then?”
“Hmmm? Yes, of course. To Spence with you.” He waves me away with his hand. “Oh, Gemma?”
I turn back.
“Thank you.” He grins, bloodying his lip once again. “Ow!”
Fowlson gets the carriage under way. Kartik sits beside me. London rolls past us in all its grit and glory: the chimney sweeps soldiering home with sooty faces at the end of a hard day, their brooms balancing on their shoulders; the solicitors in their finely brushed hats; the women in their ruffles and lace. And on the banks of the Thames, the mud larks sift through the filth and the muck, searching for what treasures may hide there—a coin, a fine watch, a lost comb, some bit of glittering luck to change their fate.
“Beware the birth of May, beware the birth of May,” I intone. “How could it have been about Circe? She didn’t know I would come to her then,” I say aloud. I repeat the phrase a few more times, turning it over in my mind, and something new comes to me. “A birthday. The warning could be for a birth date. When was Amar’s birthday?”
“July,” Kartik says. “And yours is June twenty-first.”
“Nice of you to remember,” I say.
“First day we met.”
“When is yours?” I ask, realizing I don’t know, have never asked.
“November tenth,” he says.
“Leaves you out, doesn’t it?” I say, rubbing my temples.
I hear the boats in the distance getting closer. We’re near the docks. There is something familiar about this place. I felt it when Kartik and I came to meet with Toby.
“‘Upon the wharves of sorrow,’” I say, repeating a line of the Yeats poem I found in Wilhelmina’s book. The illustration opposite it: the painting of the boats on the wall. What if that wasn’t a painting but a window?
“Fowlson!” I shout. “Slow the carriage!”
“You don’ wanna do that. Not ’ere,” he calls down.
“Why not?”
“It’s as rough a place as you could ’ope to find. The Key’s full o’ prostitutes, criminals, murderers, addicts, and the like. I should know. It’s where I’m from.”
My stomach flutters. “What did you call it?”
He states it emphatically, as if I were a foolish child. “The Key. And you’re mad if you fink I’m stoppin’ this fine carriage ’ere.”
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
* * *
“DON’T LIKE THIS,” FOWLSON MUTTERS, TURNING UP HIS collar to the sticky damp as we make our way down slick cobblestones in the dark. He keeps his switchblade palmed like a talisman. A fetid smell blows off the river.
“You’re sure this place is called the Key?” I ask. The houses—if they could be called such—are narrow and as crooked as a poor woman’s teeth.
“That’s wot we always cawled it. For the wharves and the docks. Spelled ‘quay’ but sounds like ‘key.’ ‘Down in the Key,’ we say.”
“Yes, thank you for the lesson, Fowlson,” Kartik mutters.
“Wot’s that mean?” Fowlson grumbles.
I interrupt. “Gentlemen, let’s keep our heads about us. There will be time enough to play cock of the walk later. I hope.”
We travel the dark streets as they twist and turn. As Fowlson has warned, there are rough sorts moving in the shadows, and I don’t want to look too closely.
“Customs House ain’t too far,” Fowlson says.
“Brigid said that when Wilhelmina came to London, she was lost near the Customs House for a week. What if this was a place that was familiar to her? Where she felt safe, oddly enough?”
We turn another corner and another, until we come to a few dilapidated buildings that look out onto the old wharves. I hear the ships calling to each other; there’s a fine view of the boats.
“It’s here,” I say. “I recognize this from my visions. Come on, Wilhelmina,” I whisper. “Don’t fail me now.”
And suddenly I see her before me in her lavender dress.
“Do you see her?” I ask quietly.
“See ’oo?” Folwson asks, his knife in front of him.
“I don’t,” Kartik says. “But you do. We’ll follow you.”
Wilhelmina passes through the wall of a miserable tenement suitable only for tearing down.
“In here,” I say.
Fowlson draws back. “You barking?”
“I may be mad, indeed, Mr. Fowlson,” I answer. “But I won’t know until I go inside. You may follow me or not.”
Kartik kicks the rotting door, and I step first into the decaying, abandoned building. It’s dark and smells of mold and salt
water. Rats scratch in the corners; the sound of their busy claws puts a shiver up my spine. Kartik is at my side, his knife at the ready.
“Bloody ’ell,” Fowlson mutters under his breath, but I feel his fear.
We climb a rotting staircase. A man more dead than alive lies unconscious at the top of it. He smells of spirits. The walls peel from the moisture and decay. Kartik takes careful steps down the dark corridor with me just behind. We pass an open door and I see several people lying about. One woman’s head rises for a moment before her chin comes to rest on her chest again. The stench of urine and waste wafts out of the room like an overpowering perfume. It assaults my nose, and has me choking till I am forced to breathe through my mouth. It is all I can do not to run screaming from this place.
“Please, Wilhelmina,” I whisper, and then I see her just ahead, glowing in the murk. She passes through the last door. I try the handle but it’s rusted shut. Kartik throws his shoulder against it but it won’t budge.
“Stand aside,” Fowlson says. He flicks open his knife and meddles with the lock until the door gives a bit. “’E said I was good wif a knife.”
“So you are, Mr. Fowlson. Thank you.” I push the door open; it screeches as if angry to be wakened. The room is dark. The only light comes from a small window with a view of the Thames and the ships—what I took to be a painting of boats in the illustration. There’s no doubt: This is the room from my visions.
“Wot is this place?” Fowlson says, coughing against the damp.
“We’re just about to find out,” I say. “Have you any matches?”
Fowlson pulls a small box from his waistcoat pocket and hands them over. I strike one, adding the smell of sulphur to the others in the room. The match flares, and in the sudden brightness, I spy the table and a lantern covered with cobwebs. A small nub of candle remains. I light it, raise the lantern, and the room is flooded with light.
“Blimey,” Fowlson gasps.
The walls. They’re covered in words. And in the center of one is a drawing of the Tree of All Souls, bodies dangling from its branches.
The marks are faded by time, but I read what I can. “‘I see into the darkness. She has become the tree. They are one and the same. Her noble power is corrupted.’”
“‘She has deceived us all,’” Kartik reads. “‘A monster.’”
“‘The most beloved of us all, beloved no more. My sister, gone,’” I read. I stare at the tree. “Eugenia,” I whisper.
Fowlson crowds behind me. “You tellin’ me Eugenia Spence is now…that?”
“‘The Key holds the truth.’ That’s what she said. And I’m ready for it now.” I put my hands to the walls and call out to Wilhelmina. “Show me.”
The lantern’s brightness grows, the walls fall away, and I’m in the Winterlands on the night of the fire. A hard wind blows black sand and snow. A huge beast of a tracker in a black cloak as long as the Queen’s robes holds tightly to Eugenia Spence’s arm. She is on her knees as she throws her amulet to my mother. “You must close the realms! Go, now! Hurry!”
Dutifully, my mother drags Sarah toward the East Wing, and Eugenia begins her spell to seal the realms.
The tracker hovers over her. “You cannot close us out so easily, Priestess. Just because you deny us does not mean we do not exist.” He hits her hard across the face and she falls. Her blood spills across the ice and snow like the petals of a dying poppy. And she is afraid.
Another tracker arrives. “Kill her!” it snarls, revealing sharp teeth.
“Do it and we shall have her magic, but not the magic of the Temple! We’ll still have no means into their world,” the first tracker snaps back.
“We shall not sacrifice you. Not yet. You will help us breach the other world.”
Eugenia staggers to her feet. “I shall never do that. You will not break me. My loyalty is without question.”
“Whatever is without question is most vulnerable.” The tracker smiles. “To the tree.”
They drag her to the Tree of All Souls. It is not quite as majestic as the tree I have seen. One of the Winterlands creatures slices Eugenia’s hand. She cries out in pain and then in terror as she realizes what they mean to do to her. But her cries are meaningless. The creatures force her blood onto the roots of the Tree of All Souls, and within seconds, the branches crisscross over her legs and up her body.
“When her blood is spilled, she must join with the tree.”
The roots continue their march, devouring Eugenia, and then she is part of the tree, her soul joined to it.
“Let me go, please,” she begs in a whisper.
I see Eugenia trapped inside the tree, her mind splintering over the years. I see the first day she asks the creatures for a sacrifice and the smallest sliver of red shows in the roiling clouds of the Winterlands.
In awe, the creatures bow before her. “We are lost and require a leader. A mother. Will you guide us?”
The tree’s limbs stretch out, and wrap themselves around the Winterlands creatures like protective arms. And Eugenia’s voice drifts from the tree like a lullaby. “Yes…yes…”
The fog grows heavier. The tree speaks again. “There is one who comes, and she holds great power. She will give us what we want.”
“We’ll spill her blood at the tree!” a tracker thunders to great cheers.
“But first, I must pave the way for our return,” the tree says.
The scene shifts to the music hall. Wilhelmina Wyatt writes upon her slate: You must restore the East Wing and take the realms again. The Order must prevail.
Tears of joy flood Wilhelmina’s cheeks as she receives the message from her beloved Eugenia. She shows it to McCleethy, and the plan is set in motion. For how could the Order ignore a message from their beloved Eugenia?
But Wilhelmina can see into the darkness, and soon, she knows. I’m back in the room, watching Wilhelmina scribble her desperate message on the walls. And when the knowledge is too much to bear, she slips the needle under her skin and sinks into oblivion. I see her trying to warn the Order through letters and entreaties, but the cocaine and her fear have made her increasingly unstable; she frightens them and they dismiss her. And when she writes her book—a last, desperate attempt to reach them—they see her as a traitor and a liar.
Lost to the drug, Wilhelmina makes one final effort. She hides the dagger in the slate and walks out into the cold night. Her mind is frayed, and she sees haunts—trackers and beasts—in every shadowed corner. A carriage thunders down the lane, and in her mind, it is ghostly. She runs to the wharves, where she slips, hits her head on the pier, and falls into the Thames. And when the rivermen pitch her lifeless body back in, the darkness Wilhelmina feared surrounds her, but she is beyond caring. She sinks slowly into the deep, and I follow.
I break away from the vision with a loud gasp. Kartik is beside me, stroking my hair. He looks worried. “You’ve been in a trance for hours. Are you all right?”
“Hours,” I echo. My head aches.
“What did you see?”
“I need air. Need to breathe,” I pant. “Outside.”
Out on the wharf, the damp air of the river hits my face, and I am right again. I tell them everything.
“No one killed Wilhelmina,” I say, looking out at the boats bobbing on the water. “It was an accident. She slipped and hit her head and drowned. Stupid, stupid.” I might as well be speaking of myself. I’ve let it all get away from me.
No, not yet. I can still stop it. There’s time.
“Mr. Fowlson,” I say, “we must fly to Spence at once. How quickly can you drive us there?”
He smirks. “Quick as you like.”
“Let’s be about it, then,” I say.
We race to the carriage, which is still there, thank goodness, and Mr. Fowlson speeds us toward the east, and Spence.
“Amar tried to warn me,” I say to Kartik.
“Gemma, he’s lost. There’s no need—”
“No, he did. ‘Beware the bi
rth of May.’ It was a birthday. Wilhelmina tried to show me the headstone. Eugenia Spence was born May sixth. That’s tomorrow.”
Kartik looks out the carriage window toward the rising dawn. “That’s today.”
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
* * *
IT IS DAY BY THE TIME SPENCE COMES INTO VIEW, RISING from the deep green land like a mirage. A storm is moving in from the east. The wind’s a demon, whipping leaves off trees. Far in the distance, a dark shadow sits upon the sky like a cat on its haunches ready to pounce. The first splats of rain have begun to fall. They leave ugly wet marks on my dress.
I do not stop even to remove my gloves. I tear through the school, searching for Felicity and Ann. I tell them everything and ask them to wait for me. Then I go in search of Mrs. Nightwing. I find her in the kitchen, instructing Brigid on household matters.
“Miss Doyle! We didn’t expect you. How is your father—”
“Mrs. Nightwing, please, I must speak with you in the parlor. It’s rather urgent. I require audience with Miss McCleethy as well.”
The exigency of my tone has Mrs. Nightwing’s full attention. She does not even chide me for my lack of manners. Moments later, she enters the parlor with Miss McCleethy in tow. Miss McCleethy blanches at the sight of Fowlson.
“Mr. Fowlson. What a surprise.”
“Sahirah. You should have a listen,” he says.
“I know about the secret plan to rebuild the East Wing and enter the realms again. The plan Eugenia Spence left for you,” I say.
Miss McCleethy sits as if commanded. Her expression is one of shock.
“She told you that if you built the turret, you would be able to connect to that door and enter the realms again. But I have already opened the door.”
Miss McCleethy’s eyes widen. Mrs. Nightwing looks from McCleethy to me to Kartik and Fowlson, as if waiting for someone to provide her with an explanation.
“It doesn’t matter that I went in first—the plan was a lie. Eugenia betrayed you. ‘She is a deceiver’—that’s what Wilhelmina said. She tried to warn you but you thought her a liar,” I say, pacing before the fireplace. “Eugenia was in league with the creatures all along. Restoring the East Wing opened the seal between worlds, and my magic gave it power. She didn’t mean to give you a way into the realms; she meant to give those creatures a way into our world.”