Blythewood

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  “Why, Helen, I thought Daisy was the one with the crush on Mr. Bellows!”

  Helen scowled. “She is. Do you think I’d give a fig for a schoolteacher?”

  “He’s not just a teacher, he’s a knight of the Order,” I objected, not sure why I felt offended on Mr. Bellows’s behalf.

  “That’s all well and good, but he still only makes less in a year than my dress allowance. No, I simply think we’ll make better time and find Nathan sooner if I go on ahead.”

  “Ah,” I said, understanding at last, “you want to be the one to save Nathan. And what’s Nathan’s yearly income? He is the son of a schoolteacher, after all.”

  Helen looked at me aghast. “The Beckwiths are one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in New York. If I have to be stuck in this uncivilized wilderness I might as well set my cap at the only eligible bachelor in the place. It’s better than ending up with the ancient van Groom my mother has in mind for me.”

  I thought of the charts and files in the Special Collections Room—of the page still crumpled in my pocket—and wondered how much choice Helen would have about whom she married. Perhaps I should try to warn her. “Do you really think that Nathan, with his proclivity to loitering in taverns and opium dens, is marriageable material?” I began, but one glance at Helen stopped me. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes burning, her hair slipping out of its pins. She wasn’t fretting over Nathan because of his income, but because she genuinely cared for him.

  “Very well,” I said. “If they don’t object, you go with Mr. Bellows and I’ll go with Miss Sharp. There—he’s signaling for me now.”

  Our teachers had reached the edge of the woods. Miss Sharp was standing watching the lawn a few feet away from where Mr. Bellows was peering into the trees. I pushed Helen forward and went directly to Miss Sharp. By the time I reached her, Mr. Bellows and Helen had already vanished beyond the tree line.

  “What happened?” Miss Sharp asked. “Why didn’t you go with Rupert?”

  “Helen wanted to,” I said simply.

  Miss Sharp rolled her eyes. “Another of Rupert’s conquests, eh? Didn’t you want to contend for the honor?”

  I shrugged. “Honestly, I’d just as soon go with you. There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Of course,” she said briskly. “But you’ll have to do it as we walk—and keep your voice low. The Bells know what’s watching us from in there.” She slid her eyes toward the tree line and I saw for the first time that she was frightened, which made me frightened. I’d already been in the woods twice, but as we passed from the sunlit lawn into the thick dark shadows beneath the trees I felt a tingling on my skin that was different from anything I’d felt before—a pulse of magic.

  “Why does the magic feel stronger now?” I asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, brows furrowed. “You feel it?”

  “How could I not? It’s like I’m standing in a bath of fizzy water.”

  “Interesting,” she replied, turning back to the path to follow the sound of Helen’s and Mr. Bellows’s bells. “Not all the girls at Blythewood do, you know. No matter how much we train you, we can’t teach you to feel magic. There has to be a little bit of it in you. I suspected you had it at your interview when you saw the board members turn into crows.”

  “You knew about that?” I asked, surprised. I’d never mentioned to anyone what I’d seen and nowhere in my classes had anyone mentioned that we would be learning how to turn into birds.

  “I wasn’t supposed to but I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The higher ranks of the Order are able to transform themselves into the creatures we hunt, but it’s not something we’re supposed to tell the students. The Order has grown up alongside the fay. Would it be surprising that we have each grown a little like each other?”

  “The hunter must become the thing she hunts,” I quoted.

  “Precisely,” she replied. “Only that frightens some of us.”

  “Like Miss Corey?”

  She sighed, a sound like a mourning dove’s coo. If Miss Sharp turned into a bird, I thought, that’s what she would become. “Lillian’s family history is complicated. The Coreys have been fay and demon hunters for centuries. She was raised to hate and mistrust all the creatures of Faerie equally.”

  “Weren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, aren’t all the members of the Order?”

  “I was raised by my grandfather, and he was different. He thought that some of the creatures of the woods might not be evil.”

  “Then there’s a chance that what Raven told me is true?”

  Miss Sharp stopped and turned to me at the edge of a small clearing where a tree had fallen, making a hole in the canopy through which vertical bands of sunlight stood like glowing pillars. In her white dress and with her golden hair she looked like a Grecian goddess against that backdrop.

  “You want to believe that, don’t you? This creature . . .”

  “Raven.”

  “This Raven was kind to you?”

  “Yes!” I cried a bit too fervidly. “He rescued me from the fire at the factory. He saved me on the winter solstice and did nothing to hurt me. He wants to be a clockmaker and live an ordinary life.”

  Miss Sharp laughed. “Ah, an ordinary life. I’m not sure I know anymore what that would look like.” She smiled sadly. “But if you feel he is good I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes I think we of the Order have been too quick to condemn what we don’t understand just because it is different. My own experience has encouraged me to be more tolerant.”

  She squeezed my hand, her smile widening. A band of sunlight touched the back of her head, turning her hair the blazing gold of an angel’s halo. A tightness in my chest relaxed and I felt sure that if Vionetta Sharp could come to believe that the Darklings were redeemable, then they would be redeemed.

  I smiled back at her. Satisfied, she turned, stepped into a bar of sunlight, and vanished.

  35

  I STOOD PERFECTLY still, staring into the mote-filled sunlight, sure that if I didn’t move Vionetta Sharp would reappear. I called her name—first Miss Sharp and then Vionetta. In the silence I heard doves cooing and then the faint chime of a bell.

  Bells! That was what I was supposed to do! I lifted my hand and shook my wrist in the pattern she’d taught us. Then I listened. The woods, which had been buzzing with birdsong a few moments ago, had gone strangely silent as if all the smaller creatures had fled in the wake of a raptor’s shadow. Then, faintly, I heard an answering chime coming from the center of the clearing, which was empty of everything but sunlight that filled the circle now like water filling a well. I was inches from the edge of the light. If I took one step I would fall into it—and into Faerie. I might find Miss Sharp, but then who would find me?

  I sounded the chime again—for Miss Sharp, but also for Mr. Bellows and Helen. They’d been only a few yards ahead of us. Shouldn’t they hear the bells and come back?

  Unless they had fallen into Faerie, too.

  In which case I was their only tether to this world. I rang the bell again and heard a faint echo of its chime coming from inside the empty well of sunlight—fainter than before. Miss Sharp was straying farther away. I had to find her. I ventured one toe into the sunlight . . . but something yanked me back.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” It was Raven, his wings stirring up the air into a whirlwind of sun motes and feathers. “You’ll be gone for a hundred years!”

  “What happened?” I demanded. “Where’s Nathan?”

  “The fool insisted I open the door to Faerie for him, so I did.”

  “Couldn’t you do anything to stop him?”

  Raven stared at me. “He had me completely at his mercy with that blade of his. Should I have let him kill me?”

  “No! Only now Miss Sharp’s gone into Faerie, too. I saw her vanish in there but I can still hear her bell.”

  I shook my wrist and the bells jangled in a crazy rhythm. An even m
ore frenzied peal sounded from the empty glade. Raven snorted. “Did they teach you that at your school? Don’t they know that fairies will echo any sound you give them—like mockingbirds. Listen.” He whistled a complicated tune. After a moment the sound came back. “Do you think your teacher did that?” he asked.

  My eyes filled with tears. “But I know she went in there. I have to follow her!”

  Raven stared at me. His wings beat slower and I felt my heartbeat slowing with them, the air stirring against my face gentle as a caress.

  “No! You can’t stop me! Let me go!” I cried, even though he wasn’t holding me back or even touching me.

  He sighed. “There is one way. As long as I hold the door open you can come back into this time.”

  “You can do that for me?”

  His eyes skidded away from mine, but he nodded. “You have to be quick. Find your friends and come straight back. You mustn’t eat anything, or play any games—”

  “Or kiss anyone, yes, I know the rules. I promise I’ll come back.”

  He nodded again, still not meeting my eyes. His face was taut, jaw clenched. “Stand back,” he barked. “When I’ve opened the door you can slip underneath my wings.”

  I moved to the side. Raven stepped to the edge of the light. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, his lips moving in some silent prayer. Where the light from the glade touched his skin it shimmered into an iridescent glow. He winced, then flexed his wings so suddenly I stumbled backward. When I regained my balance, I saw him silhouetted against the blazing light, black wings stretched wider than I’d ever seen them, each feather tip limned in fire. His wings weren’t black at all, I realized now— they held every color in the rainbow. I was so mesmerized by their beauty that for a moment I couldn’t move. Then I heard someone scream from inside the glade. I ducked underneath Raven’s wing and plunged into the light.

  CAROL GOODMAN [ 431

  z o Z It was like stepping through a waterfall. I emerged feeling clean and shining, like I’d been scoured and polished. I looked down at my skin and saw that it was glowing. I turned around to look back at Raven. His eyes were closed tightly, as if he were concentrating to keep the door open. Not wanting to disturb his concentration, I turned back to look for Miss Sharp and Nathan.

  I was standing at the edge of a grassy meadow that sloped down to a riverbank lined with green willows. Wildflowers of every imaginable color dotted the grass. White and pink blossoms floated from flowering trees through the air. I stepped toward one of the trees and saw that there were ripe apples amongst the pink blooms. How could it be, I wondered, that the tree bore flowers and fruit at the same time? It was as if it were spring and fall and summer all at the same time. Then I remembered what Raven had said about the timelessness of Faerie. Looking down at the ground, I saw spring violets growing beside late-summer goldenrod, all glowing in the golden light that flowed around me like honey.

  I looked up into the lavender sky but could find no sun. The honey-colored light bathed everything evenly. It wasn’t just that time was different here; there was no time at all—or all time all the time. Spring, summer, fall—even winter, I noticed, as I looked into the surrounding pine trees and saw icicles hanging from their boughs—were all happening at once, as were all the times of the day. The grass was wet with morning dew, the sky as bright as noon, the edges of the meadow shadowy with dusk, the woods dark as night. All of time was here at my fingertips, for me to pluck as easily as I might pluck the red-and-gold apple from the tree.

  I did pluck it, my thought turning into action as swiftly as a hummingbird’s wings. The apple was in my hand, firm and round, so fragrant it made my mouth water . . . I could almost taste it already . . . perhaps I had tasted it already. Time meant nothing here. I had already done everything I ever would and everything I ever had. If I bit into the apple I would be merging with all time. I could move within it freely. Perhaps I could even go back and undo what I had done. Perhaps I could go back to the day of the fire. I could warn the girls not to go to work that day. Or I could go back even further, to the day my mother died. I could stay home with her and fight the tenebrae with the bells inside my head. . . .

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  I looked up from the apple into my mother’s face. I dropped the apple. It rolled over the grass toward my

  mother and cracked open at her feet. She knelt, picked it up, and held it out for me to see. Inside, the pulp was black with rot. The sweet, sickly odor of decay rose into the air between us.

  “You can no more go back and make me live than you can make this apple whole again. But”—she tossed the apple away and stepped closer to me—“I can enjoy your company for a few moments.” She held out her arms and I rushed into them.

  She was real—solid and warm, indeed, more solid than I remembered her from her last months when she’d grown so fragile. When I buried my face in her neck and inhaled she smelled like violets and rosewater, not laudanum.

  “Yes, it is really me, my dearling Avie.” She stroked my hair and then tucked a strand behind my ear, the touch so familiar I burst into tears.

  “Don’t cry, dearling, I’m all right now.” She held me at arm’s length to look at me. “To see you looking so well is all I need for an eternity of peace. I was afraid the shadows would find you . . .”

  “I led them to you!” I cried. “It’s my fault you died.” Her face, which had looked so radiant and peaceful a moment ago, darkened, and the light around us dimmed as well. “Oh no, Avie dearling, it was I who led them to you! I had sunk so deep in my own fear and despair that I’d become easy prey. When I saw Judicus on your birthday I was frightened they would take you from me.”

  “You knew him, didn’t you? Judicus van Drood. You were engaged to him.”

  A shadow of pain crossed her face—even here where there were no shadows. “Yes, the Order arranged the match. At first I didn’t mind. I cared for him . . . but then he changed. Or maybe I changed and it was my fault that he became lost in the shadows. I ran away when I should have faced him . . . and then I lost myself in the shadows. I’m sorry for that, dearling. I should have been braver, but sometimes the hardest thing to do is to remain yourself. When the tenebrae came for me I knew that if I let them in they would destroy us both. I did the only thing I could to defeat them.”

  “You drank the laudanum before they could get inside you?”

  Her eyes widened and gleamed. “No, dearling, I let them in and then I drank the laudanum. It was the only way to destroy them so they wouldn’t get you. I would never have willingly left you otherwise.” She stroked my hair back behind my ear and cupped my face with her hand. I felt the hard calluses on her fingertips from years of sewing and trimming hats to feed and shelter us. All other signs of age and care had fallen from her face, but not those signs of wear.

  As if she’d heard my thought she held her hands out, palms up, between us. “Here in Faerie we keep the marks we’re proud of. I am proud of these calluses I got working to keep you safe. But I’m not proud of the fears I let prey on me, so I’ve let those go. Remember that, Avie, remember the strong things I did and forgive the weak ones. . . . Oh, there’s so much I have to say to you, but there’s no time!”

  “I thought there was all the time in the world in Faerie,” I said, surprised to feel a smile on my lips.

  She returned the smile, but sadly. “Yes, we in Faerie have all the time in the world, but your friends don’t.” She took my hand and pulled me down the hill. “Vionetta has been trying to get Nathan to leave with her, but . . . well, you can see why he won’t.”

  Below us on the banks of a river that looked much like the Hudson, Vionetta Sharp stood above two figures sitting on the rocks. I recognized one as Nathan and the other as the girl whom I’d seen before in Faerie.

  “Louisa! He’s found her!”

  “Yes, but it’s too late for Louisa to leave. Look . . .”

  The girl was hunched over, looking intently at something laid
out on the flat rock where she sat. I moved closer and saw that she was staring at a line of playing cards. She turned one over and let out a little yelp. “The queen of hearts! Exactly what I needed.”

  “Patience?” I asked. “She’s playing patience?”

  “Not just patience,” Nathan said. “La Nivernaise. She’s working through all the solitary card games in Lady Cadogan’s Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience. Klondike, fortress, General Sedgewick, La Belle Lucie . . .”

  “Light and shade is next,” Louisa said. “That’s a really hard one. But I’ve gotten very good at it.”

  “She ought to have,” Nathan said. “She’s been playing for seven months.”

  “Isn’t there any way to make her stop?” I asked, sitting down next to Nathan.

  “Not that I know of,” Miss Sharp said. “Playing the game has bound her into the fabric of Faerie. If she breaks those bonds . . . well, it might break something inside her mind.”

  “Anything is better than this!” Nathan cried. “I can’t just leave her here playing cards for all eternity.”

  “There might be a way.”

  The voice came from behind us. I turned and found a tall middle-aged man in a pith helmet and tattered, brightly hued rags. He looked familiar.

  “Sir Miles Malmsbury?” I asked tentatively. Although he looked like the photograph in Miss Frost’s classroom, that man had had trim muttonchops and wore a neatly pressed khaki safari jacket and trousers. This man had a full-grown beard and long straggly hair braided into a long queue. His jacket appeared to have once been a khaki safari jacket but was covered with tiny brightly colored feathers. But the biggest change was in his eyes. The man in the photograph had looked out at the world with a haughty, superior expression. This man’s eyes were humbled, and more than a little bit mad.