by D D Croix
What was left of my strength was evaporating like steam billowing from the stockpot behind me. “Please, you must help me!”
The Faytling in my hand glowed more brightly.
Curiously, the talisman beneath Marlie’s blouse glowed as well. Noticing it, she dropped the thyme stem she was holding and covered the jewel. Her glance darted around, searching for something.
“I’m nearly out of herbs and need a few more sprigs,” she said to the cook behind her. “I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for permission and her hand still over her chest, she hurried to the pantry. I followed. When she closed the door behind her, she pulled out her Faytling and stared straight at me. “You? What are you… I mean, how—”
“You can see me?”
Relief flooded through me, overriding the lethargy that had taken hold.
“Of course I can. I’m talking to you. But how—”
“There’s no time to explain. The performance is starting. You must stop it.”
She froze. “The calliope?”
I nodded and gulped for air. “You have to do it.”
“But the color is draining from you. You must return to yourself before it’s too late.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Where are you?” she pressed.
“I don’t know the room, but I can take you there.”
“Hurry then.”
The Queen was my paramount concern, but I was too weak to argue with Marlie. Instead I pointed at the door, and when she opened it, I led her back to the room that imprisoned my body.
We were standing in front of the locked door when I realized I still had no way to open it. “The key,” I murmured, the lethargy making it almost impossible to form words. In the distance, I could hear someone testing more chords on the calliope. “MacDougall… has… it.” I should have been frustrated. Angry even. But I was too tired. Sleep was all I wanted. A nice bit of floor would do just fine.
“Don’t you worry about that.” Marlie slipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out a hairpin. “Step aside, if you would. I could do this through you, I suppose, but I’d rather not.”
Somehow I moved away from the door and she went to work at the lock. She poked her pin into the crevice, jiggled it, repositioned it, jiggled it again, and there was a distinct click. She turned the knob and pushed it open. “There we are! Now let’s get you together.”
Her words seemed so distant now and I didn’t even care about the calliope. I was drifting off. I didn’t care where. I didn’t care about anything.
“Sounds like we don’t have much time, so c’mon. Don’t give up.” She snapped her fingers in my face. “Remember the Queen. Remember who you are.” She paused and looked over her shoulder, then turned back and in a lowered voice said, “You are Jane Shackle. You are a Fayte Guardian.”
Jane Shackle. A Fayte Guardian. Was that who I was?
Yes, that was it. And the Queen. I had to save her. From the calliope. From the shadow creature.
Somehow, I moved into the room, and I saw myself standing at the wall, paralyzed.
“Squeeze your Faytling and think ‘awake,’” Marlie urged.
I mustered my last shred of strength, squeezed the Faytling, and thought the word.
All at once I was spinning and falling until just as suddenly it stopped. I opened my eyes. The wall stood before me. I looked at my hands. They weren’t glowing and they were heavy. My feet, too.
“Everything all right?”
I turned to find Marlie’s forehead creased in concern. I wiggled my fingers and moved my feet. “I think so. I feel… better.”
“Good, then—”
The start of a calliope tune stopped her short.
“I think that’s our cue. Let’s go.”
She ducked out the door and I followed. Then she stopped and straightened. With her arm behind herself, she waved me back.
“You shouldn’t be here.” It was a male voice I didn’t recognize. I heard hard steps coming our direction.
Marlie moved farther into the corridor, away from the door. “You’re right about that. I got myself good and lost. I was trying to find the orangery, if you can believe it. Know how I might get there from here?”
“The orangery? That’s clear on the other side. Here, if you’ll just take these stairs and then…”
The rest of the conversation was lost as they moved down the corridor.
So, once again I was on my own. I couldn’t wait for Marlie to come back. I had to move now.
The calliope had gone silent, which meant the performance must be starting soon. Or had whatever Mr. Bailey—whatever that shadow creature—had in store already been done?
Was I already too late?
That fear drove me forward. I didn’t know where, but my feet carried me, fueled by something beyond myself, down one corridor then another and through a drawing room until I was back in familiar territory. I stormed through the anteroom, where I again found the two footmen lingering.
This time, they saw me and pulled back.
I can only imagine how I appeared. Locks of hair worked loose from my usually tidy bun, eyes frenzied and wild.
I didn’t care. My only thought was to get through that door, to stop this evil in its tracks.
The door opened, and Mr. MacDougall emerged. His hateful gaze trained on me, his shoulders squared. He shut the door behind himself and drew up to his full, terrifying height. Narrow shoulders sharp and rigid. Lips slashed in a tight, twisting sneer. “Come no farther, Jane.”
He looked to both footmen and issued a single, deliberate nod. In unison, they fell in beside him, flanking him, one on either side. Like guards.
“Don’t do this,” I begged. “We must save her. You won’t let him harm the Queen, will you?”
Something shifted in the footmen’s gazes. Their blank stares on me darted to Mr. MacDougall.
“She’s lying,” he said flatly. “She’s a trickster. She will lie and steal, anything to achieve her ends. Do not allow her to pass.”
My ends? What was he talking about?
“I’m not the threat here.”
“Oh no? Then how is it you know exactly when to get underfoot with your mischief? You are playing with things beyond your understanding, girl. Now leave us to our business.”
“What business?” I cried. “The death of our Queen? The destruction of our empire?”
The footmen looked to him, new questions in their eyes.
Mr. MacDougall waved them off. “Don’t listen to her, men. She’s lying. The only thing that will be destroyed is that damnable efficiency campaign. You want your colleagues back, don’t you? Our household restored in its entirety? This is the way. When the mayhem ensues, Her Majesty will see for herself that it is people that keep this castle in order, not her Prince’s modern ideals.”
What nonsense was this? Was it a ruse, or did he truly believe what he said?
The light in his eye gave it away. He didn’t know what Mr. Bailey intended. Mr. MacDougall had only been a pawn in this game, not the mastermind.
I could see there was no point in arguing. These men meant to block me. Nothing I said would change that. I balled my hands into fists and pressed them to my temples.
Lady, tell me what to say! Tell me what to do!
No answer came, not that I expected one. Not really. I could traverse the entire castle in spectral form and unlock every secret with a touch, and none of it would help me stop the violence about to unfold behind those doors. Even this stupid Faytling was powerless against that.
I stared at it in my hand. Still glowing its stupid purple light, but who cared? It was useless. Worse than useless because it, more than anything, had given me hope.
Edward Bailey had won. That shadowy creature of a man in my nightmares had won.
Fury welled within me. A swirl of rage that replaced every other thought. The Faytling’s glow intensified. The purple brightened to white, pure as st
arlight in my hand.
I sneered at it. “Worthless.” I hurled the thing across the room, striking the door inches above Mr. MacDougall’s head. I smirked. It would have hit him square in the forehead if he hadn’t ducked.
“Take your stup—”
Purple smoke billowed from the Faytling.
A footman stared at the place where it had landed. “You broke it,” he muttered and looked to Mr. MacDougall. “Sir, they never break.”
Mr. MacDougall pressed himself against the door as if to block it, but it didn’t matter. Smoky tendrils seeped through the space between the door and its frame. It seeped into the room where the calliope now played at full force.
“No, no, no,” Mr. MacDougall repeated frantically. He wheeled around and pulled the door open.
In the confusion, the footmen stepped aside, and I ran into the room behind Mr. MacDougall.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop the music! It’s a trick! It’s dangerous!”
I rushed to the instrument. A monocled man in a waistcoat and tails sat at its piano keys, gaping at me. He opened his mouth, but it was Mr. Bailey’s voice I heard rising at the far end of the room.
I turned and was struck dumb, seeing that I was standing not only before the Queen, but Prince Albert, the royal children, the ladies in waiting, a number of grooms, and I don’t know how many other officials and members of the household, their chairs all arranged in tidy rows.
Mr. Bailey stood in the center aisle, his face red and eyes bulging with rage. “What have you done?” he wailed.
Yet I hardly noticed him barreling toward me because I was watching a cloud of the purple smoke slip out an open window at the back.
Was that it? Was that all it was going to do? I had hoped for something that would help. Anything.
But it did nothing.
My will to fight drained from me. Nearly.
I spied the Queen. She appeared in good health if not fine spirits, cowering as she was into Prince Albert’s shoulder. So it wasn’t too late. I approached the man sitting at the calliope. “Don’t lay another finger on that instrument.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Mr. Bailey said, gasping and breathless. “She’s only a maid for goodness sake. She’s mad.” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me.
I yanked out of his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
But then other hands were on me. I turned back. MacDougall’s footmen were pulling me, dragging me from the room. I fought them, and fought the onslaught of images, wild and chaotic images, that descended on me.
The Queen hid her face behind a black lace fan and whispered to the Prince. Then others were whispering, filling the room with low murmurs.
“No!” I yelled. “You’re going to be—”
Before I could finish, a violent crash shook the walls and the back window exploded inward in a cloud of shattered glass and gray mist. No, it wasn’t mist. It was a mass of tiny wings. Hundreds, thousands of tiny wings. Dragonfly wings. A swarm of silvery-white angels identical to my beloved friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In perfect unison, the tiny insects lifted one of the crimson draperies from the window, carried it over the crowd like a canopy, and then, in one smooth and coordinated motion, let it drop over the calliope. I watched it descend with a soft thump over the instrument, trapping the steam and the danger beneath it.
“No!”
The scream was Mr. Bailey’s. He rushed to tug at the curtain, trying to free the pipes. Each time he exposed a corner, the dragonfly horde moved it again. He batted at them, but they ceded no ground.
Still, as I watched that battle, I could see a small wisp of red smoke emerge from a corner of the fabric and float along the floor. Like the purple cloud, it traveled among the chaos of boots and limbs and chairs to the far edge of the room.
I rubbed my eyes. Was it a trick of the light? No, it was there, a ball of crimson mist fluttering in the afternoon sunlight. All around people screamed and ran. Dragonflies hovered in a massive cloud. But I ignored it all and followed the tiny red trail to the window.
The thing, whatever it was, moved like a breeze beneath chairs, some of them overturned in the occupant’s haste to get out of the way.
I hurried after it, winding my way around the legs of people and chairs when I could and anything that got in my way. I followed it to the window, where it climbed the wall to the shattered glass and the splintered sill and traveled out into the open air.
I stood at the broken window and watched. Where was it going?
After a moment, I spied the tuft of smoke again, traveling along the ground toward the castle’s northern wall.
Then I knew.
I bolted for the door.
Mr. MacDougall blocked me. “You aren’t going anywhere.” His furious eyes glared down.
“Leave her alone!” Mr. Wyck yanked Mr. MacDougall’s hand away.
The older man’s fury collapsed into confusion then alarm. “Stand aside, boy.”
Mr. Wyck squared himself to the man. His height was not as great as Mr. MacDougall’s, but the breadth of his shoulders and fighting stance made him more formidable. “I will not.” The words came from somewhere deep within him, like a growl.
I stepped back.
“Go.” Mr. Wyck motioned to me then stared down Mr. MacDougall. “And you need to explain why you’ve been lying to me.”
Mr. MacDougall glared at Mr. Wyck. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He turned to me. “Don’t you dare leave this room. You will be held accountable for what you’ve done.”
“As you and Mr. Bailey will be held to account,” I snapped back before running to the door. I paused and glanced back. Mr. Wyck’s face was as red as I’d ever seen it. He spewed words I couldn’t hear over the chaos.
If there was any doubt where his loyalty lay, there was none now. He was on my side, and I could have kissed him for it.
Quickly, I tore through the corridors, past the baffled pages and footmen jogging toward the Rubens Room, alerted by the screams and commotion. I slipped by them all easily until I reached the door to the northern staircase.
A small flutter at my shoulder stopped me. I turned to find my dragonfly perched there, gazing at me with an inscrutable expression.
“Thank you,” I said, though those words had never sounded so inadequate.
Still, I could feel her smile even if I couldn’t see it.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you saved the Queen. Maybe everyone in that room.”
My heart was full to bursting with pride and appreciation, but she wasn’t interested. She wanted me to follow the crimson trail.
“All right. I’m going.” I scanned the garden. I couldn’t see the smoky tendril anymore, but I could feel my dragonfly urging me toward the castle gate. “The Slopes?”
Even as I said the words, a prickly sense of dread clawed along my spine. “I’m going.”
I moved as quickly as I could. At the gate, I heard someone call my name. It was Mr. Bailey. And it was strange beyond belief to see his portly frame lope across the garden’s pathways.
My dragonfly urged me on. She didn’t want him catching up.
“Don’t worry. I know what to do.”
I searched the ground near the door until I spotted it. The rock I used to prop open the door. I grabbed it and held it until we were on the other side. When the gate latched, I wedged the stone into place at the door’s base. I tested it again. It barely budged. I hoped it would at least slow him down.
I turned back to my dragonfly. “Where to now?”
She set off, banked a curve, and headed toward the trees.
“We’re going back to that place?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. I knew that’s where she was taking me. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I muttered as I hurried behind her.
When we reached the grove’s edge, I nearly lost my nerve. My dragonfly must have sensed it because she darted in front of me, urgi
ng me to leave the path for the trees.
Reluctantly I did. Perhaps it was my fear, but the grove seemed different. Was my memory skewed? Was this not the place Mrs. Crossey and I had been before? But that tree wasn’t there. That singular tree that had drawn me in.
I trudged deeper searching for something familiar. The temperature dropped and a thin blanket of fog swept across the ground, swallowing my feet and ankles.
That’s when I realized we weren’t alone.
Something was moving farther on. A shadow that slid among the trees. I knew that shadow. Just as I knew those bloody red eyes.
My dragonfly darted through the trees after the shadow creature, and I followed. When we reached a clearing, she slowed.
“Where did he go?” I lifted my hand, offering a perch.
She ignored the gesture and circled around me instead of answering.
It was hardly necessary, though. I could feel him like a burning ember in the midst of all this cold. He was close.
“Who are you?” I called out to the shadows.
Come to me, and you will see.
It was a voice—his voice—but it didn’t come from him. It was part of the forest. It came from the trees and the brambles, from the very air.
“What do you want?” I yelled back.
Come to me.
My dragonfly buzzed the perimeter of the clearing, skirting the darkness. But then she reeled back and flew in a straight line deeper into the grove.
“Wait.” But it was too late. She was gone. I didn’t want to follow, but I knew I must. I left the clearing and entered the shadows.
A dirt path extended in front of me, but when I took a step, I was falling, endlessly falling, until my foot landed on the ground. Was this a dream? The space I’d occupied a moment before was only inches away, but a wall of liquid light now separated me from that spot.
Instinctively I grabbed for the Faytling around my neck, but it was gone. Shattered and abandoned on the Rubens Room floor.
It wouldn’t protect you. A low rumble from the shadows, a figure half hidden behind the trunk of a tree.
I pushed back the fear stealing over me. “What is this place?”
The density of trees, the thick carpet of dead, decaying leaves and twigs, the fog dampening my skirts. It all looked like an ordinary grove, but it was darker. Grayer. Colder.