by Hanna Howard
Were it not for the gradual changes in the forest, I might have believed we had been trapped in some enchantment that would keep us locked in an unchanging pattern for the rest of time, doomed to repeat the same day over and over. But the trees soon started to look different: they were thicker than before, with more color and signs of life. There was also more variety in the kinds of trees, and after two weeks of travel, I even began to see living leaves.
“The Darkness is thinning,” said Yarrow in satisfaction the first time I pointed out a leaf—a true, green leaf sprouting from a high branch. “Good. It’ll be easier for you to reach the sun soon.”
My stomach squirmed.
But it was hard to remain oppressed by even self-inflicted anxiety when every day the colors in the forest grew brighter, the branches and leaves thicker, and the world around us lighter. By the third week we were walking on springy moss, purple heather, and green grass, picking through underbrush and listening to small animals scurry through shrubs that looked soft instead of prickly. There were even noticeable changes in the daylight now, with the gray sky becoming almost silver at midday and only utterly black at night. I was even beginning to feel what I could only assume were traces of true warmth: dry and fresh and clean on the breeze when it blew from the north.
“Are we nearly there, Yarrow?” I asked him one day. “It’s so light here. Surely we must be close.”
He patted me roughly on the back in that way that seemed to say, Buck up, you poor, naїve creature. “Not close at all. I’m sorry, Weedy.”
I slumped in bitter disappointment. “I’ll never make it all the way to the mountains.”
He gave me a sidelong smile. “You will. I’ve found you can do just about anything when you have no other choice.”
23
CHAPTER
The next day the landscape became rockier and more sloped, and Yarrow said we were drawing nearer to Myrial Lake, which was surrounded by an intricate natural cave system. He explained that the area had been heavily populated by magical species in the days before the overthrow, especially dwarves and naiads, and some of the caves were famous for their beauty.
“I doubt we’ll meet anyone out here now, though,” he said. “Iyzabel raided these caves almost as thoroughly as she did Luminor.”
Around midday, he led us all into a narrow fissure that opened up just a few paces into the rock. The cavern was enormous, with hewn stairs leading down into a cave that glittered like bronze and diamond in the lantern light, its depths disappearing into darkness. What we could see appeared to be some kind of banquet hall with a dais at one end and several carved stone chairs upon it, and a range of long tables, many upended or cracked. As I peered around, I could see that the place had been largely untouched since whichever invasion had interrupted its last feast, and though fifteen years had taken its toll, there were still many golden plates and goblets scattered about beneath the dirt and cobwebs. It was sobering to think that Iyzabel had left so few survivors to her purge that, in over a decade, no one had returned to so much as loot the place.
I felt someone brush past me and saw Merrall traipse down the stone steps, her garments fluttering in the cold subterranean air. She dropped to her knees in the dust of the banquet hall, bowed her head, and began to speak quietly in the guttural sounds of some language I didn’t know. Praying, perhaps, or offering her respects to the dead.
Yarrow didn’t say much, and after a few moments of peering around from the top of the steps, he turned and made his way out of the cave again, looking solemn. Merrall followed him, and I thought I saw the glimmer of tears on her cheek.
“I’ll be right out, Yarrow,” said Linden, raising his lantern as he picked a path down the stone steps and crossed toward the dais. I hesitated a moment before following to see what had caught his attention.
He was holding the lantern up to one of the carved chairs, which seemed to have an insignia etched into its back.
“What is it?”
He gestured at the symbol. “I saw this in Beq’s house, and I wondered if it was the seal of her chief. Dwarves don’t have kings, you know, but instead elect chiefs. Beq must have belonged to this clan before the overthrow.”
“Do elves have kings?” I asked, glancing sidelong at him as I tried to remember what Yarrow had said about elves when I had asked as a child.
“Certainly. Why?”
“Just curious.” I had a sudden vision of Linden dressed in fine silks and sitting on a throne like this one, hair neatly combed and topped with a crown. I barely repressed a snort. “Are you related to any?”
He laughed, the sound echoing through the cavern and filling me up like sunlight. I chewed back a smile.
“No,” he said, grinning and nudging me with his shoulder. “I’m just a peasant. I hope that doesn’t bother you too much.”
My head was starting to swim from the way his eyes poured into mine in the little halo of lantern light, holding them mercilessly.
“Why should it?”
“Oh, well, I just thought a royal personage such as yourself might not want to associate with the dregs of society like me, so I was going to offer to remove myself from your esteemed presence if you—”
The laughter burst out of me, and as his grin widened, I tried to push him away. He caught my hand and held it loosely, sending a bolt of heat up my arm. Somewhere in my brain, a distant voice was telling me to pull away from him, but I barely heard it.
Somewhat tentatively, Linden took hold of my other hand too. His fingers were gentle, and his eyes held mine, searching, uncertain. I was beginning to find breathing difficult, so I looked away. The light inside me swelled and billowed, expanding through my limbs, and the awareness cleared my head a little. Soon, I remembered, it would seep through my skin . . . and that would not be good. I tried to remember my training.
But then his thumbs skimmed over the insides of my wrists, lighter than the brush of leaves, and just as quickly my head became muddled again. I looked up. In the glow of the lantern, his green eyes roved over my face. I could see uncertainty there, but for the first time I was sure I could also see his own longing, the mirror of mine.
I wanted him to kiss me more than I had ever wanted anything in my whole life.
My hands trembled as he slipped his fingers into my palms again, interlacing them with mine. I could feel his pulse against my wrist, as strong and wild as my own. His eyes softened so much they seemed to send spidery cracks through my entire body, breaking me into fragments held together by skin.
He leaned toward me—and I jerked away just as the cavern exploded with light.
Both of us stumbled backward as I gasped and yanked the sunlight back into myself, reeling with shock and horror. For a moment the lantern light was useless as my eyes struggled to adjust, and then at last I began to see shapes again. Linden was standing against the table, looking agitated.
“Siria?” he croaked. “Are you okay?”
My eyes burned with tears of shame and self-loathing. How could I have been so stupid as to think I could ever learn control over this force, this insane power? Linden would never be safe from me. “Fine,” I stammered. “Did I burn you again?”
“I’m fine,” he said dismissively. “But you . . . do you . . . ?” In the shadows, his face was a mask of confusion and doubt.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice breaking.
“Ah,” he said, with rare awkwardness. “So you don’t want . . . you don’t . . . feel the same, then . . .”
My stomach lurched as comprehension caught up to me. He had interpreted my silence, my pulling away, my blazing light as a negative reaction. And though my immediate impulse was to assure him I did feel the same, I realized a second later he had given me an opportunity I could not waste.
His shoulders were slightly hunched, and in the tumble of dark hair over his forehead I saw traces of the little boy I had known as a child. My best friend. The thought of what I must do next made me feel like someone was
smashing my heart with a rock. I swallowed against the lump in my throat and forced myself to look at his neck, at the mottled handprint beneath the stubble. If I told him the truth, he would say he didn’t care—that a few burns didn’t bother him—and how would I have the strength the resist him then?
“No,” I choked, squeezing my eyes shut. “I don’t.”
And then, before I could take back the lie, I turned and hurried through the cavern, my footsteps echoing as I ran. I was so distracted by the roaring inside my head, by the pain tearing me apart, that I did not hear the other noise until I was a dozen paces out of the cave and into the forest. But then it reached me—a sound that made me feel as though a gust of frozen wind had blown through the trees. It was a note: a long, high, unearthly note that wavered and swelled on the air, unlike anything I had ever heard before.
I stopped and whirled just as Linden appeared through the fissure of the cave, his eyes so cold and hard I almost couldn’t believe they were the same ones I had been lost in moments before. But then he heard the sound too, and his face drained of color. Chills rolled down my spine.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s that sound?”
“Get to the others,” he said hoarsely. “Run!”
In three strides he had caught up with me. He pushed me ahead of him, and we began to sprint, our footfalls thundering out an accompaniment to the voice that rose as we ran.
“Together!” Yarrow bellowed from the dimness ahead. “Get together! Siria! Linden!”
He and Merrall came into view as we rounded a stand of beeches, drawing together just ahead of us. The strange music was all around.
“What is it?” I panted as we reached them, and Linden pushed me between himself and Yarrow. My shoulder jammed against Merrall’s back, and Yarrow squeezed in on the other side. I realized they were trying to keep me close to the center, protected. The eerie music rose another octave and swelled to a volume that made gooseflesh erupt all over my scalp.
“It’s a banshee,” said Yarrow. “A herald of death.”
24
CHAPTER
Most of what I knew about banshees I had learned from girls at Gildenbrook, who had, in any case, always been more interested in scaring the wits out of each another than exchanging real facts. All I could recall was that banshees wailed when someone was about to die.
I shivered again. At the moment, that seemed all the information I needed.
Prying at Linden’s arm, I tried to squeeze myself free. I didn’t know what I could possibly do to help without using my hideous powers, but I couldn’t let them all die trying to protect me . . .
But Linden refused to budge. “They’re only heralds,” he hissed, shaking off my scrabbling fingers. “They don’t kill people, they just announce an approaching death.”
“Well, they’ve got it wrong!” I said, panic tightening my throat. “No one here is going to die!”
“Hush, Siria,” Yarrow snapped.
The keening grew louder and closer. Wild terror swirled in my chest as I struggled against my companions—Linden and Yarrow, whom I loved so much, and Merrall, who had sacrificed years of her life to help me, despite our mutual dislike—wondering who the wailing was meant for, and how it could possibly be for any of them. Or was it for me? Were Umbraz soldiers lurking nearby? I wanted to scream for the sound to stop; it was unbearable.
Evidently Yarrow thought so too.
“Cease!” he bellowed suddenly. “Stop, banshee, and show yourself!”
To my astonishment, it did stop. The eerie wail broke off, followed by a long moment of silence in which only the breeze could be heard. Then a voice—thin and uncertain—called, “Don’t any of you feel . . . a little bit, maybe . . . like you might die?”
I looked at Linden and Merrall, whose faces were uncomprehending, and then stood on tiptoe to peer in the direction of the voice. In front of me, Yarrow lowered his Runepiece.
“No,” he said warily. “We’d all planned to go on living, actually.”
A new sound came then: a sniffling noise, and then a sob.
Through a gap in the trees ahead, a pearly, silver light appeared. As slowly as if it were drifting on the breeze, a small, slender figure approached, bright as a will-o’-the-wisp, its head bowed. It stopped just beneath the shadow of a thick maple tree, crying softly.
“That’s enough,” said Yarrow. “Come out and explain this nonsense.”
With a choked, gulping sound, the weeping ceased, and the figure wafted out of the trees to hover in front of Yarrow. It was a young girl, and she was not silver, as I had believed, but emitting a lustrous light from her ghostly pale skin. She was petite, even for a child, and her long, gray, wispy hair hung in curtains around her face, ending in the middle of her back. I thought her wide eyes and draping, tattered gray dress made her look a little bit like Merrall, though Merrall herself obviously thought no such thing; she was giving the newcomer the same sort of look she gave Umbraz soldiers.
Very slowly, our group broke apart and edged closer to the banshee, though Merrall kept well to the back.
“What’s your name, child?” asked Yarrow.
The banshee gave a sniff and said, barely audibly, “E-e-elegy.”
“Hello, Elegy,” Yarrow replied, sounding torn between exasperation and curiosity. “I’m Yarrow Ash, and these are my companions. We stopped when we heard your song, as you might expect, but we remain in suspense: Might I inquire whether any of us is actually scheduled to die?”
At this, Elegy dissolved into fresh sobs. Her whole body shook with them, and she seemed to struggle to hold herself upright. Yarrow gave an impatient grunt, and on a sudden impulse I ducked around him and took hold of the banshee’s hand.
Two things happened at once: The ghostly silver light around the girl vanished as instantly as if it had been blown out, and she stopped crying. She looked up at me with her bottom lip trembling, as solid as any of us, and drifted down to stand on the ground. “Y-you’re not afraid of me?”
“No,” I lied, hoping this was the right answer. “I just want to know why you’re crying, and why none of us have died yet if you’re a banshee.”
Elegy stared at me, eyes very wide. Up close I could see they were a stormy shade of violet. “It’s b-because . . . I’m . . . I’m a b-bad banshee.” Her lip quivered dangerously again.
I crouched down to look her in the face. “Why would you say that? Did you do something terrible?”
Elegy shook her head. “No, I’m bad at being a banshee.” She took a deep breath. “I’m twelve, and I’ve never predicted a death. Most of us do before we can walk, so . . . I-I’ve been banished.”
“Your family banished you because you can’t predict when people will die? And you’re twelve?” I imagined a pale, straight-backed couple in gray clothing sneering down at this banshee child with the same impatient expression I had so often seen on Phipps’s and Milla’s faces. A sudden and surprising desire to shield the banshee girl from her family’s disapproval rose up in me, and I bent closer to her, brushing a tear from her death-white cheek.
Elegy started at the contact but raised her eyes to mine. “It’s not that unusual,” she admitted. “Banishment is one of the ways we can learn to find the Sight, if we don’t have it already. And if we don’t succeed, we can go find another life—” She faltered. “Away from our own kind, whom we have disgraced.”
“You haven’t disgraced anyone,” I said firmly. I didn’t know what surprised me more: that I believed what I said, or that I wanted her to believe it too. “Come with us. Maybe we can help you.”
“Siria.” Yarrow’s voice was full of warning.
I turned to him, mutely pleading.
“Excuse us a moment, Elegy,” said Yarrow, giving her a little bow before towing me back toward the others. Linden looked conflicted, but Merrall was staring at me as if I had sprouted tentacles from my eyeballs. We all retreated a few steps and faced each other.
“I am sorry, sunchild,”
Merrall burst out at once, “but this I will not permit. We cannot take in a banshee.”
“Hush!” I hissed. “She can hear you!”
“They bring death,” she railed, not troubling to lower her voice. “They are bad omens, bad luck. Their power makes them filthy, an abomination.”
“Bad luck?” I said, starting to feel angry now. “She’s a little girl! And she’s no filthier than any of us—probably a good deal cleaner than me, at a guess.”
“Siria,” said Yarrow wearily, “banshees are notoriously secretive about their practices. Even I know very little about them. For all we know, banishment is a very effective way to inspire the Sight in those who lack it. Be careful meddling in things you don’t understand.”
“You want to leave her alone in the woods?” I said incredulously. “A child, with no one to help her, who’s crying? Anyway, since when is it ‘meddling’ to offer to help someone?”
He seemed to deliberate. “It may be meddling to assume that what we can offer her is help. She could very well be worse off with us than on her own.”
Merrall ranted on, “. . . banshees have a terrible reputation—”
“So do I!” I interrupted, rounding on her. “Anyway, you heard her—she doesn’t even have any magic yet. And she’s completely alone. Maybe we should let her prove for herself whether she’s worth all this judgment.”