Daughter of Chaos

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Eostre, the Lady of the Lake, wore a broad silver ribbon around her own eyes. But every vivid blue eye set in each tall feather was trained on me.

  “Hail, Lady,” I said. “I hope you will see us, and not find us wanting.”

  “The night has a thousand eyes…” murmured the Lady. “And many are mine. Though not all. You never know what is watching you from the dark. Do you, Sabrina Morningstar?”

  Through gritted teeth, I said: “It’s Sabrina Spellman, actually.”

  The Lady’s laugh was a ripple on the silver surface of the pool. “Does calling yourself that make you not what you are? A rose by any other name… would still be a rose. Neither you nor the roses can change your fate.”

  Roz made urgent eye contact with me, and I recalled I was meant to beg the Lady for a boon, not contradict her. Begging wasn’t really my style, but for Nick, I would.

  “Our Lady, I humbly ask your aid.”

  “Humbly,” repeated the Lady of the Lake, her starlight-distant voice amused. “Do you think you can open a cage of lies with a key of lies, child?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Do you want me to demand your help?”

  The hem of the Lady’s robe floated on the waters. I couldn’t tell whether her feet rested on the surface of the lake. “He for pride hath heaven lost. No doubt whose daughter you are.”

  I lost patience.

  “Will you not help us?”

  “I didn’t say that,” the Lady murmured, wind-soft. “I have no quarrel with the throne of chaos or its heir. I only remind you that those who soar high, fall far. Are your friends ready to fall with you?”

  She turned her blindfolded gaze upon each of my friends in turn.

  “Cunning child,” she said to Roz. “You kneel before a different god.”

  Roz clutched Harvey’s arm. “I do, but—I respect you.”

  “How gratifying for me,” said the Lady, inclining her head Theo’s way. “What do you search for in the woods, child of the pastures?”

  “I wanna help my friend,” Theo said firmly.

  “Nothing more?” asked the Lady. I felt a tremor run through Theo’s fingers where they were twined with mine. “I see. What of you, angel’s gift? What would you give, to aid your… friend, the Morningstar Princess?”

  “Anything,” said Harvey.

  The Lady’s voice was arch. “Your life?”

  “No,” I snarled.

  I turned to Harvey in terror. He squeezed my hand.

  “Um—another option would be great. If you’ve got one.”

  “You’re a truth-teller, aren’t you?” the Lady asked. “Except to yourself.”

  When Harvey flinched, she smiled. The storm clouds above us writhed. Behind the Lady’s snow-white head I glimpsed sun and moon sharing the same dark sky.

  “So this is your fellowship, Sabrina Morningstar,” said the Lady of the Lake. “On your quest to redeem your paramour from hell. The seer, the rebel, the pure knight, and the dark princess.”

  Harvey made a face. “What are you trying to say about me, exactly?”

  “You ask for my aid,” continued the Lady. “You hope I will not find you wanting. Prove to me your fellowship is worthy. Who is your leader?”

  “I am!” I declared, then turned to the others in a moment of misgiving. “If that’s okay, guys.”

  My friends shared an amused glance.

  “Nah,” said Theo. “I randomly demand to be the leader. Go ahead, Sabrina.”

  The Lady asked, ”Will you accept my challenge?”

  I flung my head back. “I will.”

  “My challenge, or anyone else’s,” murmured the Lady of the Lake. “You must be devoted to your paramour body and soul. But what of your companions?”

  The calm before the storm turned into silence.

  “Well, I like Nick,” Roz said awkwardly at last.

  “Seems a cool guy,” Theo mumbled.

  Harvey coughed.

  “Truth caught in your throat?” murmured the springtime goddess.

  Harvey’s eyes narrowed. Clearly, he’d taken against the Lady of the Lake. Harvey disliked anyone he thought was mean.

  “Wouldn’t describe myself as devoted body and soul,” he said curtly. “But you don’t have to like someone to think they shouldn’t actually be in hell. We want Nick back.”

  “Are you certain?” The Lady’s whisper was insinuating as wind through thickly clustered reeds. “No second thoughts? Best to be sure. In this chain, there can be no weak link. Each of you must consent to be tested alone. If any tries to help the other, you all fail.”

  I could’ve heard a single drop of water hitting the silver surface of the lake.

  “How do you mean, tested?” Roz asked.

  Roz and I tended to test pretty well. I was sure we could coach Harvey and Theo through whatever Eostre had in mind.

  “I will set you each a task,” said the Lady. “The leader will take the last and most dangerous challenge. Demons and death will threaten, but she must not falter, and she can never look back.”

  “Agreed,” I said instantly.

  The wind rose with the Lady’s voice, lifting the hair that streamed to her feet like a bridal veil into the air. For a moment it seemed as if the shadow she cast was white.

  “The heir to chaos knows no fear. But what of the mortals? A mortal life is brief and frail as a candle flame. Any one of them could be lost with a breath. Who volunteers for the place of greatest mortal risk?”

  “Me,” said Harvey.

  There was an immediate rush of protest. Harvey shook his head obstinately, untidy hair flying in the Lady’s wind.

  “Guys, it’s gonna be me. If anything happened to either of you, I couldn’t live with that. I wouldn’t want to. It has to be me. Please.”

  His voice broke on the last word. The look he gave first Roz, then Theo, was so full of terror and tenderness it struck doubt like a sword through my heart. If something happened to Harvey, or Roz, or Theo…

  Maybe I shouldn’t have involved them. Maybe I should send them home, and work out a way to do this on my own.

  “Okay.” Theo’s voice shook. “Harvey can do it. But me next.”

  “Theo!” Harvey exclaimed.

  “Hey, I’m a manly man too,” joked Theo. “No offense, Roz.”

  “I could be next,” argued Roz. “I have the cunning. Visions of the future could help me. You take the least dangerous task, Theo.”

  “I can shoot and I play way more video games than you, so I understand higher levels meaning higher difficulty settings,” Theo argued. “I already called this. And I want to do it. Really, Roz.”

  Theo’s voice was firm now, commanding belief. Even I felt I couldn’t argue with him.

  “The choice is made,” said the Lady. “Each of you will have your night of ordeal. Each of you will find your own path alone through the woods. First the seer must bring to your leader a jewel from the shadows. Next the rebel must bring to your leader a robe made of feathers. Then the pure knight must bring to your leader a sacred bough. Armed with these, your leader must use them to find my grail. Once you lay the treasures of my heart at my feet, dark princess, I will grant you the weapon most suited to your task. Do we have a bargain?”

  I nodded. “We do.”

  The Lady smiled. “One more thing. My eyes will be on you.”

  She spread her arms, the most splendid scarecrow in the world. A hundred tiny silver birds erupted from the surrounding trees to land along the shimmering lines of her arms.

  “If you fail my test,” the Lady continued, smooth as the Milky Way, “your bodies will be consumed by my demons. Your souls will become my eyes, to watch the skies until the stars grow dim.”

  Theo put up his hand. “To clarify. Our souls will become birds?”

  The Lady’s smile was answer enough.

  She lowered her arms. The birds fluttered into the air as though shaken from the branches of a silver tree. Their wings a bright blur, they flew t
oward us. I wanted to shield myself from the birds as though they were arrows, but I was holding onto Harvey’s and Theo’s hands. I wouldn’t let go.

  They didn’t let go of me, even when the birds alighted on us. One bird perched on Roz’s shoulder, a couple flew to Theo, three darted at Harvey, and four settled on my shoulders, two on each. I felt as if I was wearing silver epaulettes to go to war.

  “My birds will follow wherever you go,” the Lady told me. “They are my eyes, my messengers, and your relentless judges. They will speak to your lonely shivering souls, and learn what your souls are worth. Some of them even remember how it was to be human.”

  One bird turned its small quicksilver head to look at me. Its eyes were not bird’s eyes. They were a clear blue, brimming with tears. They were the eyes of a scared girl.

  “Wow,” said Harvey severely. “Are all your birds made from souls? Are you aware actual birds exist?”

  The Lady stopped smiling.

  Harvey was shaking his head. “Will we even know how to fly if you turn us into birds? Or will we just roll around for a while until we get the hang of it? What if someone steps on us?”

  Deep grooves appeared on either side of the Lady’s mouth.

  I began to grin. “He’s asking legitimate questions.”

  “Harvey,” Roz said. “Can you stop pissing off the Lady of the Lake?”

  “Why is magic like this,” muttered Harvey.

  Roz was probably right. Eostre, radiant goddess of springtime and starlight, was starting to look testy.

  She said, voice cold as the dark stars live in: “This is the place where the mountain was leveled, and the angel fell. No place on earth lies so close to hell as Greendale. When the dark paths come clear to you, glimpses of hell will open to your sight. You are children who sleep sharing a pillow with devils. Every one of you is stained, and your leader is the heir of darkness. You come to me pleading for a chance in hell. Maybe you’ll get it. Maybe you’ll be sorry you did. Maybe you’ll all be dead in three days. Whatever path you take, whatever love you betray, whatever lie you tell… Be sure I see you.”

  Sarah Rees Brennan is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve books, both solo and cowritten with authors including Kelly Link and Maureen Johnson. She is the Lodestar Award and Mythopoeic Award finalist for her book In Other Lands. She was born in Ireland by the sea and lives there now in the shadow of a cathedral. Visit her at sarahreesbrennan.com, or follow her on Twitter at @sarahreesbrenna (they stole her last N, and she may resort to magic to recover it).

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  Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpt from “Dirge Without Music” from Collected Poems. Copyright 1928, © 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. www.millay.org.

  First printing 2020

  © 2020 Archie Comics Publications, Inc.

  Cover art by Adams Carvalho

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-32609-3

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