“How long ago was this vessel destroyed?” I asked.
Mr. Ward shrugged his bony shoulders. “Time moves differently here.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” I said, recalling the spinning hands of my repeater. “Actually, I wondered—”
“Mr. Ward?” Helen interrupted. “I’ve finished with this picture. Where is the one of the other vessel?”
Mr. Ward walked over to stand beside Helen and drew back a swath of shaggy roots. The wall beneath it had been shattered so badly, though, that it was impossible to make out the carvings.
“Oh dear,” Helen said, “how will we find that one?”
“Find the second vessel,” Mr. Ward said. “If it’s been opened you can go inside and look at the pictures on its walls. It will have the same drawings. They will lead you to the third vessel.”
“And if the second vessel is the one that hasn’t been destroyed?” Helen asked.
“Well, then, you’ll have no need to find the third. You will simply have to defend the unbroken vessel with your lives.”
I was afraid that we would have to go back through the tunnels to get out but Mr. Ward said that wouldn’t be necessary. “You can go out through the top,” he said, pointing a long finger toward the skylight in the ceiling.
Helen and I looked up and then down at her swollen ankle. Then she brightened. “Ava can fly us both up there!”
“Excellent idea,” Mr. Ward concurred.
I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. I could certainly fly the short distance to the skylight with Helen on my back, but it would be difficult to hover there long enough for Helen to climb through the oculus. Also it looked closed.
“Isn’t it sealed?” I asked, peering up through the gloom.
“The seal was broken when the vessel was destroyed. It opens into a cave near the surface. You shouldn’t have any problem getting back to your school from there. Not that I’ve been up there in quite some time.” He flapped his hands in the air and then clasped them together as though he were afraid they might fly away. I looked at his pale wrinkled face and his large sad eyes.
“Do you want to come?” I asked. “I mean . . . couldn’t you guard the vessel from up there? Or we could find someone to take turns guarding it for you. Our friends at Blythewood would help.”
“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “We could form an honor guard and take shifts and you could come live at Blythewood and teach, er, botany or something.”
Mr. Ward looked from Helen to me, his eyes shining in the light of Primrose’s wings. “That is very kind of you girls to worry about an old fellow like myself, but it is my duty to guard the vessel, broken or not, and I would never feel right leaving it. But . . . if you would come back and visit an old man after you’ve found the other vessels . . . well, I’d be glad to hear news of the other guardians.” He unclasped his hands to wipe a sticky tear away.
“We’ll let them know how admirably you are fulfilling your duty,” Helen said, clasping his hand.
“And we’ll bring you back their news,” I added.
“Thank you, my dears,” he said, holding each of our hands. “Tell them . . . tell them I am the vessel and the vessel is light. Now you’d better go or your friends will be wondering where you are. You may have been gone longer than you think.”
Despite the warmth of his hand I felt a chill at his words and an anxiety to be gone. I handed my quiver to Helen and reached around my back to unbutton the two vents that Miss Janeway had sewn into my shirtwaist. I didn’t need a corset anymore to keep my wings in. I’d learned how to fold and release them at will. I unfurled them now, feeling the relief of stretching them out to their full span.
Mr. Ward gasped. “A phoenix! You didn’t say!”
“Ava’s very modest,” Helen said, looking proudly at me.
“But that’s marvelous! Look—” Mr. Ward riffled through the hanging roots to uncover a carving of a winged woman with wings painted red and gold just like mine. “There is a legend that a phoenix will protect the last vessel.”
“I’ll certainly do my best,” I said, too impatient to be gone to enjoy the idea of being part of a legend. “Come on, Helen.”
I bent over so Helen could climb on my back. Then I flapped my wings and pushed up. The oculus was farther away than I’d thought. When we reached it and I looked down, Mr. Ward’s upturned face looked small and dim. I focused on it while beating my wings to stay in place while Helen grasped the rim of the oculus.
I felt sad suddenly that I’d hurried away when he’d been telling me about the phoenix legend. I lifted a hand to wave good-bye and he lifted both his hands, fingers splayed. His face, illumined by Primrose’s glow, looked like a moon half hidden behind tree branches. I suddenly had the feeling that I was looking at someone I’d known a long time ago—someone I would never see again. I looked up to tell Helen we should go back, but she was already crawling through the oculus and I was seized by the conviction that I would lose her too if I didn’t stay close, so I followed her. When I looked back down, the chamber was dark. Primrose must have extinguished her light to protect Mr. Ward’s privacy, but I had the uneasy feeling that they had both vanished into the oblivion of the past.
When I crawled out of the oculus I was cheered by the sight of Helen crouched beside a crackling fire.
“I did a needfire spell to warm us up a bit before heading back. It’s gotten so cold! I don’t remember there being a forecast for frost. It’s only September!”
“The weather can play tricks in the Blythe Wood,” I said, remembering ice giants and frost fairies while I warmed my hands at the fire. I draped a wing over Helen’s shoulders and she moved closer to me.
“I forgot you had your own furnace,” she said, rubbing her arms. “Marlin’s wings were warm too . . .” She stopped, her face rosy in the firelight. “I mean . . .”
“You needn’t pretend in front of me, Helen. I know you two are close. Have you seen him since you came back?”
“Er, no, not exactly, I mean once, but only briefly—we should go, don’t you think? We have to tell the others that the shadow crows are trying to get in the vessel. Nathan’s probably got a search party out looking for us.”
She doused the fire with a splash of conjured ice water and limped out of the cave as fast as she could. I folded my wings, glad for their warmth as I stepped outside. It was cold. The ground was rimed with frost, the hawthorn bushes bare and skeletal in the light of the full moon—
“That’s funny,” I said to Helen, “wasn’t the moon waning gibbous just two nights ago?” We were supposed to keep track of the phases of the moon, as they affected certain spells.
“I suppose. I can’t recall. Can we go, Ava? Those awful crows might still be about.”
I shuddered at the thought of the shadow crows. “Perhaps we should fly,” I suggested. “What with your ankle.”
“No, no, I don’t want to be a burden. I can limp along all right,” she said, lurching in front of me. I had the feeling that Helen wanted to be alone. Had something happened with Marlin? Maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d had a fight with her boyfriend.
I hurried after Helen, looking side to side for any sign of the shadow crows, but I didn’t see or feel anything stalking us. In fact, the woods felt empty, barren even. As if all the life had been drained out of them. The bare tree branches rubbed against each other with plaintive creaks that sound like scared mice. The wind moaned as though in mourning. Even the moon hid its face behind a shroud of tattered clouds. I’m just feeling sad about leaving Mr. Ward all alone, I told myself, and because I haven’t seen Raven all week. I’d go looking for him tomorrow. For now, I’d feel better when we got back to Blythewood.
After a half hour had passed I wondered if we’d struck off in the right direction. “Do you know where we’re going, Helen?” I asked, tugging at her shirtsleeve.
&nbs
p; She looked up at me, startled, as if I’d asked her a difficult question. “I-I don’t know . . . oh, wait, do you hear that?”
She held her finger to my mouth, telling me to be quiet. With my Darkling ears I should have heard it first. A bell chiming in the distance.
“It’s the Blythewood bells. They’re ringing us home! Come on!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me through a narrow path between fallen trees—I didn’t recall so many fallen trees at the edge of the woods. It looked like a tornado had come through here. Also, there was something funny about the bell. Yes, it sounded like one of the Blythewood bells—the big bass one—but if they were ringing us home why weren’t they ringing all the bells?
My worries were allayed when we came out on the lawn and saw the river glinting to our right and the dim bulk of Blythewood looming under a cloud-cloaked moon. The lawn was so swathed in fog that it was hard to see our feet, much less the castle. Helen stumbled twice, her ankle—and no doubt her older injury—clearly bothering her.
“Those confounded nestlings!” Helen swore. “They’ve left their hockey equipment on the lawn. I’m going to have a word with Dame Beckwith about them.”
“I’m sure Dame Beckwith and our teachers will want to hear about the shadow crows trying to get into the vessel first.” I pictured Miss Sharp, Miss Corey, and Mr. Bellows all gathered around the fire in the library. Funny they weren’t out here looking for us, though. And why was the school so dark? Even if it was very late I’d have thought they would leave lights burning to guide us back.
“Helen,” I said as we reached the edge of the hockey field where a torn goal net was flapping in the wind. “Don’t you think it’s strange . . .”
I never finished my sentence. Helen was standing mute and white-faced in the light of the moon, which had come out from behind the clouds. Her face reminded me for a moment of Mr. Ward’s, her eyes as wide as his, her skin as pale as his underground pallor. I followed her shocked gaze up to the tower of Blythewood—only there wasn’t any tower, just the skeletal fragment of one rising up out of the blasted ruin that had been our school.
4
“GONE!” HELEN’S VOICE was so hoarse that for a moment I thought the shadow crows had come back to caw over the gutted remains of Blythewood. Then, rushing forward, she cried, “Nathan!”
I grabbed her before she could throw herself on the rubble. She turned on me, flailing her arms in my face. “We have to get inside! People might be trapped and hurt . . . Nathan . . . and Daisy and Cam! Dolores and Bea! That’s why they aren’t looking for us, because the school was bombed just like Herr Hofmeister tried to bomb the Woolworth Building. Van Drood has bombed Blythewood! Don’t you see . . . Ava, why are you looking at me like that? Why don’t you let me go help them?”
“Helen,” I said, grabbing both her arms and looking into her wide frightened eyes. “Our friends aren’t in there. Look at it.”
“What do you mean? There’s plenty of building left!” She raked her eyes over the rubble, fully revealed now by the merciless moon. “There could be survivors.”
“Then they’ve survived for a long time. Look at the vines and moss growing over the rubble.” I dragged Helen over to a toppled wall and plucked at a vine climbing over the stones. It came loose with a dry snap. Something moved within the rocks. Mice. Or snakes. “This didn’t just happen, Helen. It happened years ago.”
Helen turned to me, the whites of her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “But we just left. We’ve only been gone a few hours.”
“We must have passed into Faerie at some point in the tunnels and come out in a different time. Remember how your watch stopped and my repeater started acting funny?” I took out my repeater now and opened it. It played the mournful tune the bells tolled when a Blythewood alumna had died. I looked up at Helen. Her eyes were full of tears.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” I followed the broken wall to a smashed marble heap that had been the front steps. The once majestic oak doors with their carved shield of Bell and Feather were still there but they were gouged and scarred as though animals had scratched at them. A rough plank was nailed slantwise across them with a rune burned into it.
“It looks like they tried to barricade and ward the doors,” I said, touching the rune. I felt a faint tingle of magic, its power drained. My fingers came away blackened. “Someone might still be inside,” I said doubtfully. The truth was I was afraid to go inside, afraid of what we might find amidst the rubble and the mice. But Helen was braver.
“Someone must be inside,” she said, squeezing my arm. “Else who rang the bell?”
I looked up at the bell tower. The belfry was a crater, but she was right—there must still be one bell hanging and we had heard it ringing. “We’ll explore,” I said, “but we have to be careful. The whole place could come toppling down on us.”
“So what?” Helen asked, her face stone white. “If all our friends and teachers are gone, what’s left for us to live for?”
I followed Helen through a gap in the stones. Blythewood’s walls were over three feet thick, built in the Middle Ages to withstand a siege, before they were carried to America. What could have been strong enough to bring those walls down? We had to scramble over a lot of stones, disturbing whole nests of mice. I felt like we were digging ourselves into a pit, but then we came out into a large vaulted space. Skeletal stone arches stood bone white against a midnight-blue ceiling spangled with gilt stars.
In Mr. Bellows’s history class he had shown us a picture once of a chapel in France with a vaulted ceiling painted with gold stars against a blue background. It wasn’t half as beautiful as this, because this ceiling really was the night sky. We were in the Great Hall, where we’d eaten our meals and listened to Dame Beckwith give her inspirational speeches. It was where I’d taken my oath to protect Blythewood—to stand by my sisters in peril and adversity. I could almost hear the ghosts of girls’ voices and the chiming of the handbells. I listened for a moment for my own bell signaling danger, but heard nothing. I had a bell that rang for danger and one for love, but none for the empty ache of sadness I felt now. All I heard was the wind clattering the loose glass hanging from twisted lead in the windows. The seven arched windows that had held stained-glass portraits of our founders—the seven bell maker’s daughters—had been reduced to a framework of glass shards. Our feet crunched on broken glass as I moved closer and looked up at one remaining pane that featured Merope, the youngest daughter. The top of her face had been blown away, leaving only a ghostly smile that smoldered in the moonlight like a dying ember. I felt a hand steal into mine.
“Come this way, Ava. The North Wing seems to be mostly intact.”
She pulled me into the hall that led to our old classrooms. Without the open sky it was darker here, but Helen found an old spirit lamp in the chemistry lab and lit it with a spell. It cast our shadows on the blasted walls. For a moment I thought I saw the shadow of Professor Jager, with his majestic mane of hair and his unruly eyebrows, lecturing an abashed Daisy on how air magic worked by creating a simulacrum out of a pair of scissors, but then the shape wavered and vanished as I followed Helen back out into the hallway where glass crunched under our feet, fallout from the display cases that held trophies and plaques from older classes. I peered into them now at framed pictures of girls in long dresses playing field hockey, bronze trophies for archery and bell ringing, engraved plaques for first place in Latin contests—Abigail Montmorency 1869, Lucinda Hall 1879, Honoria Thistle 1883 . . . I found myself saying the names aloud as I followed Helen down the hall until I came to one that brought me up short.
“Helen! Here’s Daisy! She placed first in Latin in 1914. So the school wasn’t destroyed before the end of our senior year.”
“Daisy was always good at Latin,” Helen said with a wan smile. The spirit lamp gave her face a ghoulish appearance, as if she were one of these dead girls in the pi
ctures. “Bully for her. Oh look, Dolores won for best essay—”
A loud bang from one of the classrooms interrupted Helen. We looked at each other, then both hurried into the room. I think for a second we were both thinking so much about Daisy we thought it was her, that we’d find her sitting in the first row, saving us two seats, chiding us for being late.
But the room—Mr. Bellows’s history classroom—was empty. The sound was one of the big heavy maps slapping against the wall in a draught coming in through a broken window. Helen marched to the map, put her spirit lamp down on Mr. Bellows’s desk, and ripped it from the wall as if she blamed it for raising our hopes. She stood clutching it in her hands, her back convulsing. I went to put my arms around her but she shrugged me off.
“If I hadn’t been so awful about listening to her wedding plans she’d be here with us now.”
“And would that be better for her?” I asked. “We haven’t found any . . .” I was going to say bodies but thought better of it. “. . . sign that anyone was hurt when the school was attacked. Perhaps they evacuated first. It would have happened after Daisy graduated.”
I was scanning the walls, looking for something that would tell us Daisy was okay—perhaps a note pinned to the corkboard where Mr. Bellows had put up interesting newspaper stories (“History in the making, girls!”), that said, “Went to Kansas to marry Mr. Appleby!” The board was covered with yellowed newspaper stories cut from the New York papers. Mr. Bellows would give extra credit to any girl who clipped out a story that he deemed “history making,” but he’d been discriminating.
“A sale on hats at Best & Company is not history making,” he’d lectured Georgiana Montmorency our first year. “But a bill passed to make killing birds for ladies’ hats illegal is.”
As a result, the board was usually only about half-full. Now it was not only full but the articles overlapped one another, leaving only the headlines showing. I scanned the top of the board.
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