by Leo Hunt
“So you think she should let her sister go?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t think she can.”
“I mean, what we’re going to do? This is madness. Summoning Horatio’s demon back from Deadside? I’m supposed to cut it open? Take the most perfect object in creation out of its belly? It’s insane. What she’s asking of us is beyond crazy.”
“I don’t want to go mad and die, Elza. I don’t think we have a lot of choice.”
“Can we not . . .” Elza starts to say something, then bites it back.
“Can we not what?”
“Is there some other way we could get hold of that chalice? Do we have to help her?”
“You think we should steal it from the Widow? Do we even know if that’s possible?”
“I mean, we can just borrow — if all you need is a draft . . .”
“I don’t think so, Elza.”
She sighs, tugs at her hair.
“I don’t see how we could,” I continue. “I mean, could we steal that spear from her? Isn’t it, like, part of her, somehow? And it wouldn’t be right.”
“No,” Elza’s saying. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“So tomorrow night, then,” I say. “Devil’s Footsteps. We follow Ash’s plan.”
“Seems like it.”
“I don’t see what else we can do,” I reply.
“Ash must really love Ilana,” Elza says.
Ham grumbles and turns over in his sleep. I look out the window at the dark sky. The moon looks back at me, bright and white.
“If I died, Luke . . .” Elza’s saying.
“If you what?”
“If I died before you,” she says again, talking slow and low, like she’s half asleep, “I wouldn’t want you messing around with stuff like this. Just let me go.”
She nestles closer against me.
“Elza . . . why are you saying this?”
“I just . . . I hate seeing Ash trying to tear the world apart to bring someone back to her. It’s not . . . healthy. You can see it in her. She’s too hungry. She wants to put the world back to how it was before. And she can’t. It’s not possible.”
“Neither of us is going to die,” I say. “Not for a long time yet.”
“Of course not,” she says.
We watch the DVD.
“But if,” Elza says again, later. “If I do. Just let me go. Do you promise?”
“This is getting kind of intense, Elza. Can we, like, drop it?”
“Sorry,” she says. “Being around Ash puts me in a funny mood.”
We lie together on the beanbag, Elza’s breath tickling down my neck, and somewhere along the line we fall asleep.
Thursday passes with the jangling queasy feeling you get from standing on a high-dive board. We meet with Ash after school in the place we agreed, the parking lot of the supermarket in the middle of Dunbarrow. My stomach is a writhing sack of insects. I see pigeons squabbling over a crust in the dirt. I see my own face distorted in an oily puddle. A chips bag flails in the branches of a nearby tree.
Ash is waiting by her car, wearing a white overcoat, white jeans, what has to be one of the only pairs of white hiking boots in existence. The wind ruffles her white hair as we approach her. She doesn’t look quite real.
“How’s everyone feeling?” Ash asks as we draw near. I feel like she’s exaggerating her accent again, chirping like some peppy cheerleader before the big game. I remember last night, how she bared her throat to Elza, told us to kill her. I remind myself what lies under her surface.
“All right,” I say. “Do we have everything?”
“Sure. I got the paint. We’ve got the Book of Eight in the reading machine in case we need it. You brought your sigil. Elza has the witch blade. Right?”
Elza pats the front of her leather jacket.
“So that’s everything?” I ask, holding up my hand so Ash can see the sigil ring.
“I think so,” Ash says. “The rite itself isn’t complicated. Once the demon is summoned, we should be able to bind it inside a devil trap.”
“What’s that?” Elza asks.
“Well, I only have one,” Ash says. “It’s an old mirror. Luke already tried it out. It will be kind of heavy and awkward to lug out there, but it’s the best way, I think.”
“And I’m not binding the demon to me?” I ask.
“We went through this,” Ash says. “You’re allowed to summon it into the living world. You still have that right. But the demon won’t be part of your Host. You broke that bond. You don’t have a Host anymore.”
“So it can kill me this time.”
“Yes,” Ash says. “It can. You don’t have any protection. It can kill all of us. So no mistakes.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Elza says.
We get into the car. I sit passenger side. Elza crams herself into the backseat next to the case with the reading device. I can see the mirror Ash trapped me inside propped up in the back, half-wrapped in cloth.
“How did Holiday take the news?” I ask.
“Oh, that I’m missing her charity fashion show? She was heartbroken,” Ash says. “So was I, actually. I was really looking forward to strutting my stuff.”
I laugh despite myself. You can almost imagine that we’re all friends, heading off on a road trip somewhere exciting. We pull out of the parking lot, heading through town, past the main street and over the bridge on the river, uphill, heading out of Dunbarrow. It’s nearly six o’clock, and the roads are full of people coming back from work in Brackford or Throgdown. The Devil’s Footsteps is pretty close to the high school, but you have to walk across the playing fields and then quite a way uphill through woodland. There’s no way we’re going to carry Ash’s mirror all the way up there. There is a more direct path, but finding where it joins up with the roads is difficult. We leave Dunbarrow as though heading for Brackford, then loop back around, looking for the entrance to the trail. After half an hour of arguing and jostling with the map — Elza is a backseat driver extraordinaire — we manage to find it, the National Trust road sign obscured by an overgrown hedge.
We drive down the lane for a few miles, the farmland turning to forest around us, trees thickening and darkening, the hedges pressing in like the shaggy flanks of an ungroomed monster. The road becomes muddy and rutted, and there are several points where I think we’ll end up getting out and carrying our equipment on foot. Eventually we round a familiar bend, and I recognize the tree I found Mum’s yellow car parked underneath, back on that morning in October. I remember not being sure I’d ever see Elza again, then her getting out of the car, the dawn light streaking her face. I think that was one of the best moments of my life.
“This is it,” I say, and Ash pulls to a halt.
We get out without much ceremony, dividing everything we need to carry between us. I take the mirror, Elza lugs the reading machine (although the idea of assembling the contraption and carefully arranging its spokes while we battle the Fury is funny, in a black, hopeless kind of way), and Ash carries the paint. We make our way down the path, turning off beside the rotten birch tree, climbing a shallow stony ridge and down the other side again, through dead orange bracken and the green exploratory shoots of this year’s growth. Before I know it, we’ve come out into the clearing, and I can see the Devil’s Footsteps.
The stone circle hasn’t changed since the last time I saw it. There are three standing stones: one tall and upright, maybe seven feet high, accompanied by two smaller, rounder stones, the lowest of which is almost like an angled table. If they weren’t set in the exact center of the clearing, you might think they were natural. We walk over spongy moss and clumps of needle-thin reeds. The ground is boggy, and some of the clearing’s hollows are half-full of stagnant water. The whole scene is overshadowed by a canopy of enormous ancient oak trees.
Ash puts the paint can down, gives a low whistle.
“Now, this is a passing place,” she says.
“D
unbarrow’s finest,” I grunt, resting the mirror faceup on the moss.
“How old do you think these are?” Ash asks us. “Iron Age? Older than that?”
“They’re supposed to predate metal tools, I think. The carvings are very crude,” Elza says.
“Do the standing stones make it a passing place?” I ask Ash. “I never understood that part.”
“Sometimes you can create a passing place. Sometimes they just happen on their own. But I’ll tell you one thing —” Ash pauses, seems to be listening to something in the air. “Whoever made these stones, I don’t think they were trying to get a doorway open. I think they wanted to keep one shut.”
“What makes you say that?”
Ash shrugs. “Just a hunch. There’s tension here. It’s easy to feel. I think this gateway to the other place was wider, long ago. Passage was granted more frequently. Whoever put the standing stones here was trying to choke the path off. Keep traffic more manageable.”
“Should we even be using them?” Elza asks.
“It won’t make a difference,” Ash says. “You can never keep a place like this entirely closed, but the gateway is more like a crack now. Bringing one spirit through won’t change that.”
“If you’re sure,” I say. There is something about this clearing, now that Ash has pointed it out. It’s hard to say what it is. It’s like a sound just beyond your range of hearing, something about to be said that never quite will be. It’s not that the stone circle feels evil, exactly, although some inarguably bad things happened to me here. It’s more that it feels uncomfortable, out of balance. You feel like you might look through the stones and see something else on the other side of them. Last time we came here it was midnight, and we were in a hurry, and I didn’t have much time to drink in the ambience. In the light of late evening, as the shadows lengthen, I feel like you can almost taste the world beyond the stones.
Setting up doesn’t take us long. Using a can of white aerosol paint, Ash draws a neat circle around the standing stones, walking backward and bent double. It looks uncomfortable, but she doesn’t complain. Once she’s done with the major circle, she adds a smaller one, just outside the main circle, a few feet in diameter, and then links them with a double line of spray paint.
“The circle’s done,” Ash says.
I make my way into the middle of the big circle, in the midst of the standing stones, and take a ring from my pocket. It’s not Dad’s sigil — I’ve still got that on my finger. This is one of his other rings, a golden band studded with red rubies. Elza and me missed a few tricks back in October, but Ash set us straight. I inherited nine rings from my father: a black-stoned sigil and eight binding rings. Each member of the Host had their own ring, and Dad would keep the spirits inside them when they weren’t needed. I don’t know why we never figured out what the other rings were for. I thought Elza was going to spit blood last night when Ash casually explained it to her.
This ring, gold with red stones, was the Fury’s binding ring. Ash told me I’d be able to feel which spirit had been inside which ring, the same way you know where your body is, even when you close your eyes. They were my Host, and I was linked to them; my spirit merged a little with theirs, and I found that I can still feel their presence in the binding rings. I place the ring on the moss in the middle of the Devil’s Footsteps. It ought to act a little like a fishhook, or maybe a magnet. I get confused sometimes, trying to compare magic with the real world. Anyway, Ash says we’ll get a faster result if I use the ring as the focus of the rite. I’m not entirely sure I want a fast result — part of me is really hoping the Rite of Return just won’t work — but it’s Ash’s show, and she calls the shots.
I make my way out between the standing stones and take my position in the smaller magic circle. My stomach is churning like a washing machine.
“OK,” Ash says loudly. I turn to look at her, standing beneath an oak tree, reading machine and mirror set next to her. “Let’s run through the safety basics again.”
“Yes, let’s,” Elza says.
“Luke remains inside his magic circle until the rite is complete and the demon has been bound inside the mirror. As long as Luke stays in the small circle and nobody crosses the boundary of the larger circle, we should be fine.”
“And if something does go wrong?” Elza says.
“I can summon the Widow. She’ll arrive within a few seconds.”
“And we all scatter,” I say.
“Do you think the Widow will be much good against that monster?” Elza asks Ash.
“They’ve fought before,” Ash says.
I grimace, remembering the Fury leaping on my Vassal, a fight so one-sided it barely seemed worthy of the name. My entire Host was terrified of the creature. Ash’s servant seems powerful, but when the chips are down, I have my money on the ravenous, merciless, soul-consuming demon.
“Her spear isn’t for show,” Ash tells me, obviously sensing my unease, “and demons aren’t invulnerable.”
“And if she can’t beat it?” Elza asks. “What then? We’ll have this thing loose in Dunbarrow, completely unconstrained.”
“There are other measures,” Ash says.
“Like what?”
“Nothing is going to go wrong,” Ash replies. “It’s a simple procedure.”
“Luke,” Elza says, “I changed my mind. This is —”
“Sorry, Elza,” I say. “Sorry. We have to do this. I can’t . . . I don’t want to go crazy. I just can’t.”
“We already agreed,” Ash says, hard-faced.
“Yes,” Elza says. “I suppose we did.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” I tell them.
Before I can think twice about the rite, I turn away from the girls and face the stone circle. I take a deep breath, like I’m about to dive down under the water, and raise my right hand, pointing my sigil toward the binding ring.
“What once I was, I will again be. By the stone and the hand and the ravendark tree, I beg my Fury: return to me.”
The leaves of the oak trees rustle.
The sigil is growing cold on my finger.
I speak again:
“What once we were, we will again be. By the river and the eye and the everburning tree, I beseech my Fury: return to me.”
The sigil is sending waves of power through my arm, up into my head, my teeth, my tongue, and now my voice is as loud and cold as the crash of Arctic waves.
“What once I was, I will again be! By the lake and the heart and the barrenwhite tree, I bid my Fury: RETURN TO ME!”
I finish the last words of the Rite of Return in an echoing yell. There’s a moment of perfect silence, stillness, and I feel amazing; the ritual feels important, like you’re important and you matter and just in this moment, the universe can hear your voice, dances to your tune, and the ring of stones seems like an invitation, a message written in a language you could read if you only looked closer —
“Luke!”
I come back into myself. One foot is poised to walk toward the Devil’s Footsteps and cross the line of my protective circle. I withdraw it and stand totally still.
My sigil is pulsing with cold, like a frozen heart.
“Are you all right?” Elza’s shouting.
“I’m fine,” I say. “It’s OK, really.”
“Did it work?” Ash asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
For a moment, nothing does seem to be happening. I’d almost think I got it wrong, except I know I didn’t, the way you sometimes know you’ll score a goal even before your foot touches the ball. The rite worked.
Then, silently, the golden ring lying in the middle of the Footsteps seems to explode, like someone struck oil under the mud and moss. Black smoke boils up out of the ground, and I see the hungry orange glint of flame. A screaming noise is building, a sound beyond the human and beyond even the animal, a cry of elemental rage. It builds and builds until the stones of the circle themselves must be vibrating, and I’ve got my ears
plugged with my fingers as the black mass within the circle surges and grows. It shoots out tendrils of shadow, probing the boundaries of the magic circle like an ink-dark jellyfish searching for a crack in a bottle.
The probing lasts only a few moments, and then the demon contracts, molding itself into a pillar of dark smoke maybe nine feet tall, higher even than the largest stone. The top of its mass congeals into a familiar jackal-like head, with two blazing pinpoints of flame where the eyes would be. The thing looks at me, then turns its head to take in Elza and Ash as well.
The Fury opens its volcanic jaws and treats us all to a deafening bellow.
Being careful not to move so much as an inch toward the boundary of my circle, I turn to look at the girls. Elza looks anxious, disgusted, one hand cradling the knife inside her jacket.
Ash’s face is impossible to describe.
She walks toward me, her gray eyes fixed on the stone circle, on the demon trapped inside. She approaches until she’s standing nearly beside me, and then gets even closer. She’s right beside the flattest stone, looking over it at the Fury. The demon stares back, leaning its awful black jackal head toward her, but she doesn’t shy away an inch. The white-haired girl and the beast of pure shadow take each other in.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Ash asks it.
The Fury gives no response at all.
“We were six,” Ash tells it. “We were little girls. I don’t suppose it matters to you how old I was. I don’t even know what you are, what it’s like to be you. Whether you feel afraid, if you feel anything at all.”
Ash’s white hands are clenched into fists.
“Afraid or not,” she says to the demon, “sorry or not. I’m still going to kill you. We’re going to break you apart. There’ll be nothing left.”
The Fury still hasn’t said a word. It’s impossible to read emotion in those burning eyes, the strange sculpted smoke of its body. It has as much reaction to Ash’s speech as the stones around it.
“If you’re waiting for it to beg,” I tell her, “we might be here a long time.”
Ash doesn’t reply.