I doubled over, retching at the thought, and felt something snatch at my arm. I flailed out, but it was Nathan dragging me away from the snapping jaws of a tortoise-faced goblin and into the Rowan Circle. Letting go of me, Nathan spun around to face the creature, dagger flashing. Helen was beside him, an arrow drawn in her bow. Daisy reached into her pocket and drew out a handbell that had been stoppered with a handkerchief. She unstoppered it and rang the bell in a slow steady beat. My friends had all brought weapons to fight the enemy—only I had come empty-handed.
Or almost empty-handed. Reaching into the pocket of my jersey I found the black feather. I ran my fingers along its bristled vane and the bell inside my head slowed. I felt immediately calmer. I looked down at the feather and wondered if this was what Miss Emmaline had meant by finding something to focus the bells. Wasn’t it odd, though, that it should be a feather from a Darkling? But I couldn’t worry about that now. I held the feather up and watched it sway in the wind, proud and regal as the plume of a warrior going into battle. The chittering goblins, ringed all around us now, went silent. I felt the force of their yellow eyes all trained on the black feather.
Nathan, Helen, and Daisy followed the direction of their gazes to me. “Brilliant!” Nathan cried. “Are you doing a mesmerizing spell like the one Miss Sharp did?”
I had no idea what I was doing. My arm was moving in a definite pattern, but I wasn’t controlling it. Light as it was, the feather was pulling my arm into wide swoops and flourishes, writing furiously on the air as if driven by the mind of a mad poet possessed by the muse. I could almost see the words it wrote rising luminescent into the night air and floating up into the trees, a desperate distress message sent out by a sinking ship.
The bell in my head was tolling to the rhythm of my swaying movement as if I were conducting a symphony. Even the goblins grew quiet watching the runic signs floating up into the air. Was this shadow magic? I wondered. If it was, how did I know how to do it? The wind stilled and all the creatures of the forest went silent, as small birds and mice grow quiet when a hawk is on the wing.
Into the silence dropped the sound of a long low whistle, followed by the thunder of feet pounding the forest floor—a hundred goblins running away from us and scattering into the trees as fast as they could go.
“They’re all running away!” Daisy cried.
“Yes,” said Nathan, “but what are they running from?” He turned from the woods to me and then tilted his head up. “Perhaps you’d better stop now.”
But it was too late. Above us the moon and stars were blotted out by enormous black wings. The Darkling landed in front of me, its huge wings beating away Nate and Helen and Daisy. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Helen draw back her bow and Nate lunge forward with his dagger. Daisy was ringing her bell but the sound was drowned out by the whoosh of wings.
The Darkling paid no attention to any of them. He stepped forward and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me tightly against his chest. I felt the length of his body against mine, the steely power of his arms holding me, the beat of his heart against my breast, the long hard muscles of his legs bending and tensing as he sprang up.
And then we were airborne, rising above the Rowan Circle and into the dark.
25
I MUST BE dreaming, I told myself, as we rose into the sky. I had had this dream so many times before. But in those dreams I hadn’t felt the heat of the Darkling’s skin, or heard his heart beating against my cheek, or noticed the long white scar that ran from his elbow to his wrist. Nor gotten a cramp in my arm from trying to hold on to him.
“Hold on a few more minutes,” he shouted against the wind. “We’re almost there.”
There? Where was he taking me? To Faerie, where monsters would rip me apart and feast on my bones? We were still above the treetops, which looked like spearheads waiting to impale my falling body. I would wait until we reached the ground, I thought, and then run.
Only we didn’t reach the ground. We flew lower to the treetops and then he suddenly folded his wings, tipped forward, and plummeted straight down. I’d watched hawks perform the same maneuver when they spotted their prey, always miraculously swooping back up before they crashed into the ground, but as branches whizzed by us, frozen pine needles brushing against my face, I was sure he meant to dash my brains out on the forest floor.
As quickly as our descent had begun, though, so it ended. His wings snapped out, cupping the air, and beat backward. We landed on a thick pine bough, scattering snow. The whole tree swayed with the impact, icicles in the branches clattering against each other like wind chimes. I felt the motion in the soles of my feet when they touched the bark, not the movement just of this tree, but of its neighbors swaying in sympathy, the whole forest moving from pointy treetops down to roots burrowing deep in the rich loamy earth. I felt a part of it all . . .
Until he let go of me. Then my arms flailed and my knees buckled. He laughed and steadied me with a wing. “You’ve got to get your tree legs. But until then, perhaps you’d better have a seat.”
Still steadying me with his wing, he lifted up a needled branch and gave me a gentle push forward. I groped in the darkness until I felt solid wood beneath my feet. We were on some kind of platform built into the tree branches, but it was too dark for me to see how far it went. I stood still and looked up. Between intertwined branches I saw stars so bright and so close I felt I could reach up and touch them.
Then light bloomed around me as if one of those stars had exploded. I looked down and saw the Darkling crouched over a lantern adjusting its wick. The light cast his winged shadow on the curved wall behind him and the sloping roof above us, painting the whole space with a delicate lace-like feather pattern.
He stood up and the space was filled with the beat of wings louder than the beat of my heart. I stepped back . . . into the
CAROL GOODMAN [ 307 wall. I could see how powerfully built the Darkling’s chest and wings were. Taut muscles rippled under his marble-white skin. Ebony wings thrashed the air into a windstorm. One flick of those giant wings would crush me. Still I held my feather up between us as if I could use it to fend him off.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” he asked, folding his arms over his chest.
“It summoned you, didn’t it?” I asked, feeling suddenly foolish but determined not to show it.
His lips quirked into a crooked smile. “You think that’s why I came to your rescue? Because you waved a feather in the air?”
“Rescue?” I squawked. “Is that what this is? It looks more like a kidnapping to me. If you were rescuing me why did you bring me to your . . . your lair?”
“Lair?” He raised an eyebrow. “Look around you. Does this look like a lair?”
I looked around. We were in a circular room with a floor laid with smooth planks, the walls and ceiling woven of tightly intertwined branches kinked and mortared with soft green moss. Even in the depths of winter, plants grew in the moss pockets—orchids and hanging ferns and fragrant herbs. Under the scent of pine I detected rosemary, mint, and something deliciously sweet . . . violets! Some were growing in the moss, but there was also a bouquet in a glass vase on a shelf beside a stack of books. A teapot and blue-and-white willow-pattern teacups were on another shelf along with an assortment of clocks, some of which had been taken apart, and other metal contraptions. Violets? Clocks? Teacups? He was right. It wasn’t particularly lair-like.
“Do you . . . live here?” I asked. He started to laugh again but then he registered the look in my eyes. Slowly he stilled the beating of his wings and drew them in close to his back until they were folded neatly between his shoulder blades. Then, keeping his eyes on mine and moving with the same cautious pace as I’d seen Gillie use approaching a skittery hawk, he reached for a shirt hanging from a hook and put it on. I noticed the shirt had neatly sewn slits to allow his wings to come out. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
As he spoke I realize
d that the bell had stopped ringing inside my head. Did that mean there was no danger here—or was the Darkling able to silence it?
“Why should I believe you? You killed my mother.”
This brought him up short. “Killed . . . ?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “Why would you think that?”
I brandished the black feather. “Because I found this by her side. Do you deny that it’s one of yours—or one of your kind’s?”
He stepped forward until he was only a few inches away. His wings were beating behind him, agitating the air. I felt the breeze from them on my face, and despite all of my reasons to fear this creature, I felt my fear dissipating.
He took the feather out of my hand and ran his finger along the vane, then held it up to his nose. “It’s one of ours, but it’s not mine,” he said, handing it back to me. “Another Darkling must have come to your mother when she was dying, but he wouldn’t have hurt her. Why do you think any of us would hurt you? I came to the Triangle to help you; I caught you when you fell from the roof.”
“But you let Tillie die!” I cried.
“Is that what you think?” he asked angrily. “After all I’ve done to help you and your friends?”
Abashed, I remembered how he had helped Tillie and Etta and me up to the roof. But then I remembered something else.
“You took me to Bellevue!”
His face darkened and his wings began to unfurl again, but he tightened his jaw and drew his wings back between his shoulder blades. He took a deep breath and I saw his lips moving, as if he were counting to himself to master his anger. I wondered if he heard bells in his head. When he spoke his voice was icy and formal.
“I regret that you ended up in that awful place, but I don’t understand why you think I brought you there. I laid you down on the sidewalk so that I could help the other girls. I saved a few, but there was only so much I could do.” His lips trembled and he looked away from me. I saw the pain etched in his face. I suddenly understood that his anger wasn’t directed at me—it was at himself for failing to save more of the girls and for failing to keep me out of Bellevue. Still, when he reached toward the shelf with the clocks and teapots and removed one of the metal contraptions, I jumped.
“What are you going to do with that?” I asked suspiciously.
“With this,” he said, changing his icy tone to a menacing growl. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea.”
z o Z I sat on a low bench while my Darkling abductor performed the homely and practical chore of tea making. The metal object was a small gas stove. He lit it and poured water (melted snow, he told me) from a ceramic pitcher into an iron teakettle.
“I thought fairies couldn’t touch iron,” I said.
“I’m not a fairy,” he replied, shaking a tin. “Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”
“Earl Grey,” I said. “Are you a . . . Darkling, then?” His lips quirked into that crooked smile again—they were
full, finely molded lips, shaped like a bow—and he whistled softly under his breath. I’d heard the falcons in their mews make a similar sound. “Isn’t it customary in your society to introduce oneself by name first before identifying one’s race?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling as if I’d been admonished by Miss Frost. “I didn’t think . . .”
“That I had a name?” He asked, quirking one eyebrow up. “Well, I do. It’s Raven.”
“Oh! I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Raven,” I held out my hand to shake his, determined now not to neglect the social niceties. He laughed so hard he spilled water from the kettle.
“Just Raven,” he corrected, taking my hand. As it had when he first touched me, I heard the treble bell chime inside my head, startling me so that I dropped his hand abruptly. He turned away and busied himself cleaning up the water he’d spilled. “As for what your kind call us—Darkling is one name for us. The Greeks called us aggelos, messenger, because we traveled between the worlds and carried the souls of the dead to the next world—the mortals to their afterworld and the fairy creatures back to Faerie.”
“That rather sounds like what angels do . . . oh!,” I said, clapping my hand to my mouth. “Are you telling me you’re an angel?”
Instead of answering he lifted the kettle from the stove and poured a stream of steaming water into a brown glazed teapot. He swirled the water around and then dumped it into a moss pocket. He measured out tea leaves into the pot and refilled it with boiling water and placed it on a silver tray next to two blue-and-white china teacups, a sugar bowl, and a creamer.
(A creamer? I wondered. Wherever did he get cream?)
“That’s your word for us,” he finally answered. I wasn’t sure anymore what I was more surprised by—that I was standing three feet away from an angel or that he had a supply of fresh cream (from a bottle labeled “Honeybrook Farms, Rhinebeck, N.Y.”) and a tin of chocolate biscuits. “Later we were called nephilim or fallen angels because our wings were black instead of the pretty gold-and-white ones in paintings. Whenever we’d show ourselves to humans they thought we were demons. Then your lot came along and decided all creatures from Faerie were demons.”
“Aren’t they?” I asked. “Those ice giants tried to kills us!”
“Yes, the Jotuns are pretty vicious, but at least they’re slow and they’re only in the woods for a few months during the winter.”
“Well, those goblins that were chasing us certainly weren’t very nice.”
He shuddered and his wings strained against his shirt. “No, goblins aren’t nice. Sadly they developed a taste for human flesh.”
“Hell’s bells!” I swore, getting to my feet. “My friends! We have to go back and save them!”
“Calm down,” he said. One wing stretched through the hole in his shirt, blocking my way. The feathers only grazed my arm but I stopped. There was something soothing in their touch, something that reminded me of my mother’s hand when she stroked my hair when I’d had a nightmare. “Once I scattered the goblins they took off for their burrows. They won’t show their rat faces for another fortnight. Your friends will be all right.”
As he talked he continued stroking my arm with his feather tips, and then gently led me to a bench beside the tea tray he’d set up. He sat down on the bench beside me and tucked in his wing. His feathers rustled as he gathered them together until the wing was tucked back between his shoulder blades and nearly invisible. Then he poured tea, as if it were the most normal thing in the world: fold wing, pour out tea, add sugar.
The homely motions along with the soothing touch of his wings and the hot, sweet tea calmed me, but then I remembered what Dame Beckwith had said about the Darklings practicing mind control.
“Why should I trust you?” I asked. “Your kind has hunted down my kind. I saw it in the candelabellum. You abducted Merope and destroyed the prince. You turn into crows and eat the souls of your victims!”
“Ah, the candelabellum,” he said, his lips twisting into a sneer. “Yes, it shows pretty pictures, but how do you know it tells the truth? I can show you a picture show as well. Finish your tea.”
“What?”
“Your tea,” he repeated slowly. “Finish it. It’s for—” “Shock. Yes, so everyone keeps saying. I am not in shock.”
“I was going to say it’s for a story. Our side of the story.” His long fingers wrapped around the blue-and-white teacup, which suddenly looked tiny in his hand. He held up the cup and revolved it in the air, his tapered fingertips grazing the figures in the china pattern—a man and a woman in Chinese dress, a pagoda, a boat, two birds.
“I know the story of the willow-wear pattern,” I said a little smugly, taking the cup in my hand. “A girl who’s promised to another runs away with her lover and her jilted fiancé tracks them down and kills them, but they’re resurrected as birds.” I touched my fingertips to the two blue birds, their beaks locked in an everlasting kiss. Although I’d started out telling the story in a bored voice just to prove I knew as much as him, my hand trembled as I touched t
he birds. I was remembering my mother telling the story, and how her voice would fill with emotion whenever she got to the part about the lovers transforming into birds, how she would place the cup in my hands and say, “Nothing can keep true lovers apart.”
I felt Raven’s hand slip beneath mine, cradling my hands just as my hand cradled the teacup. Suddenly my hand felt just as fragile as the delicate china, and my body as hollow. His other hand splayed over the cup, fingertips resting lightly on its rim.
“Look into the cup,” he said, his voice a husky purr next to my ear. “This is our story.”
With a flick of his wrist, he twirled the cup. It began spinning in my hand like a top, only when it should have stopped, it spun faster, the blue-and-white pictures blurring like muffled shapes moving through a snowstorm, flakes of snow gusting past them, so hard and fast I felt its sting on my cheeks and saw the whirl of flakes all around me, so dizzying that I couldn’t tell if I were watching snow rising from the spinning cup of if I was inside the cup watching the snow falling down . . . or if I were the one falling.
I fell into the snowy woods. Only Raven’s hand still gripping mine kept me from tumbling to my knees into a waisthigh drift. We were standing in a snow-filled woods. A bell was ringing—not the bass danger bell, but the sweet treble, tolling out its forlorn tune. Remember me, remember me. I squinted through the driving snow and made out the figure of a girl slumped over a large bronze bell—a girl no older than me and much thinner and slighter, and yet she rang steadily with hands that were white with frostbite and raw with blood. Around her lay her sisters, each beside a bell, too exhausted to keep ringing, and around them . . .
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