The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  She watched in horror as the pavement shook. A hole opened up in the centre. Bricks, stone, concrete . . . The hole sucked everything inside, widening the edges, growing broader. A sinkhole. The tree . . . Tuoni had taken his soul, and the tree was growing. Subsidence was beginning to disturb the city’s foundations. The Rookery . . .

  In the distance, a siren began to wail.

  Alice shivered and slammed the door shut, taking refuge in the void.

  ‘Cygnus Street,’ she shouted. She fixed the destination in her mind’s eye. The derelict building opposite Coram House, its black door littered with fly posters belonging to the Fellowship. The door that had been her gateway to so many other doors in the city.

  She groped the darkness expectantly, searching for the door handle to take her home. Blackness enveloped her, the chill wind biting at her burns. Too cold. It didn’t soothe her wounds; it exacerbated them.

  ‘Cygnus Street,’ she pleaded. ‘Come on. I can’t . . . I need . . .’

  Her energy was too depleted to think straight. And so she stood numbly in the darkness, like a lost soul, with no idea what to do next. The door wouldn’t open. She cast out again, searching for the door handle. Nothing. Helpless frustration ballooned in her throat. I just want to get home. Please.

  ‘Cygnus Street,’ she whispered.

  Nothing.

  She pressed her fingertips to her eyelids while she tried to think what to do. There was another door she could try one street away, an old teashop. Their door was always open for custom. Alice exhaled shakily and pictured the entrance, the solid wooden door engraved with a bronze plaque, Caddison’s Twenty-Four-Hour Tea Rooms. The metallic doorknob bloomed from the darkness and Alice grabbed it as though it might disappear. She twisted the knob and hurtled through the doorway. The door fell shut behind her and she limped through the streets, skin throbbing, to make her way home.

  A stitch jabbed the muscle below her ribs and she pushed a hand into the gap as she reached the end of the road. Not far now. Fifty metres or so once she rounded the . . . She stopped dead. Her hand fell away. Shock heaved her stomach and slackened her mouth.

  ‘No,’ she moaned quietly. ‘No . . .’

  And then she was running, despite the pain. Past the stunned people standing around, and those knee-deep in rubble, shifting bricks with purpose. Past the wreckage of the houses she’d grown so familiar with. Past the yawning gap that had once been the site of the neighbouring buildings. Past the rift in the city’s foundations that had swallowed the derelict building whole. Coram House . . . Thank God! It was still standing – though half the street had gone. Collapsed. What if one of her friends had been—

  The door to Coram House flew open before she had the chance to knock. Crowley bore down on her, anguish written on his face. Her shoulders sank with relief. He was alive. He snatched her into his arms and slammed the door shut behind them.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he shouted into her hair, clutching her tight against him. She flinched in his arms and he released her, regret on his face. ‘I thought you were . . .’ His apology trailed away as he noted the singed and blackened clothing. He frowned at her, his eyes searching. ‘You’re hurt.’

  She winced. ‘My back.’

  He moved to inspect her, but she turned to block his view.

  ‘What have you . . .’ His face drained of colour. ‘Burns? How?’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Crowley, the street outside.’

  ‘Gone,’ he said hoarsely.

  It was only then that she noticed the smudges of dust on his face, the grit in his hair, the ripped trousers, the white shirt stained with dirt, the bloody gash on his thigh.

  ‘Help is coming,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve been doing all I can. Four survivors so far, but . . .’ His eyes glazed.

  ‘I’ll help,’ she said.

  His attention snapped back to her. ‘No. You’re injured. It feels like things have settled for now – you should take the opportunity to go up and rest. Are they burns from ordinary fire?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Bad?’ He looked at her, concern in his eyes. ‘May I see?’

  ‘I’ve taken the final draught. I think they’ll heal quickly.’

  He didn’t look convinced. ‘I can heal them.’

  ‘You’re busy,’ she said. ‘I can wait.’

  ‘Don’t be—’

  ‘The draught,’ she croaked. ‘I’ve taken it. It will help.’ Her skin shrieked with pain, but she set it aside. What right had she to claim injury when there were people out there who might never . . . ‘Are Sasha and—’

  ‘They’re helping the coordinated response. Jude has gone to check his forge and to help the efforts there. Sasha and August are four streets away.’ His face softened. ‘Show me your back.’

  Alice shook her head. ‘It can wait. You go, and I’ll . . .’ She trailed away.

  He hesitated before nodding sharply. ‘Then please – rest. Sleep, if you can.’

  ‘I can’t sleep while people are out there—’

  ‘Please, Alice,’ he said wearily. ‘For once. Please don’t fight. None of the rest of us are injured. Rest now and you’ll be better placed to help later if . . .’

  Crowley trailed away. If there was a later.

  He turned on his heel and hurried back out to the street. She slumped down on the stairs and put her head in her hands.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes snapping open in the dark. Shit. How long had she been out? She’d showered the soot and sweat off her skin and meant to sit on the edge of the mattress for only a minute. Just to catch her breath before she ignored his instructions and made her way outside to help.

  It was eerily silent.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two o’clock in the morning,’ he replied. ‘Things have calmed for now, but—’

  ‘How many streets have been lost?’ she asked, sitting up with a wince.

  ‘No official figure has been released yet.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  His face tensed. ‘Many. Half of Oxford Circus has gone.’

  She quailed and sagged back onto the pillows. The cotton rubbed against her burns and she inhaled sharply.

  ‘May I see now?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  He waited expectantly, and she shuffled to the edge of the bed. After a moment’s pause, she unbuttoned the shirt she had borrowed from him. She slipped it over her shoulders, exposing her back. Behind her, she heard his breathing pause at the sight. She’d seen the raw blotches, sticky with plasma, in the bathroom mirror; they were red and angry and agonizing. When the cool water had sluiced over them, her sudden tears had mingled with the shower water rinsing dirt from her skin.

  ‘You said you could wait, but Alice, these are—’ He stilled. ‘How did it happen?’ he murmured.

  Falteringly, she told him all that had unfolded since she had left them to return to the university. He maintained a stony silence when she told him of Whitmore’s death and of Risdon – Tuoni – waiting for her in one of the House’s portal forests.

  He laid a cool hand on her back and she sucked in a breath at his touch. The sting began to fade under his palm and she relaxed to his ministrations as she recounted her confrontation with Risdon. At the mention of the fire, his hands tensed and he paused for several long moments before he continued. She considered whether to remain silent on her part in the Summer Tree’s growth, but it tumbled out with everything else.

  He healed her back, and she told him of her nightjar’s desperate act to save her, and of what they must now do to re-link the Summer Tree and the Rookery Stone – to stabilize the tree and the city itself in the absence of Tuoni’s soul. But she was silent as to the particular role she would have to play, saying nothing of the final step she alone would have to take. He couldn’t know what she had planned. If she could just have this short time with him to sustain her through it, it
would be enough. Sitting here in the dark, remembering the feel of Crowley’s gentle hands on her back. This would be enough.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he said quietly, ‘what the book – the one Leda annotated – said about the final step. How can we expect to know if it has worked?’

  She hesitated, stiffening under his hands. Was she imagining the disquiet in his tone?

  ‘Tree becomes stone, and stone becomes tree,’ she said.

  ‘But what does it actually mean?’ he murmured. ‘Isn’t it simply a flowery way of saying they join together?’

  ‘I think its meaning is literal,’ she said as his fingers skated along the back of her neck and paused. ‘I think . . . the tree roots have to be petrified. Turned to stone, so that the Summer Tree and the Rookery Stone can be fused completely. Each . . .’ She searched for the words. ‘Becomes the other.’

  ‘In doing this,’ he said quietly, ‘we’re going to see something that only Mielikki and Pellervoinen have ever seen before. Just we two, and them.’

  Silence fell between them, and she forced herself not to break it. She would not risk the fragile tension in the room by revealing the truth to him: that she wasn’t only going to bear witness to a remarkable event – she was going to sacrifice her nightjar cord to make it happen. And once she was done, her soul was too dangerous to remain in the city. The Sulka Moors was the only place fit for her.

  ‘I know,’ Crowley ventured in a hoarse voice, ‘that chaos exists outside this room. Outside this house. But for once – just for one night – I would like to close the door on it.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘But Crowley—’ Her words fell away at the press of his lips against her bare shoulder.

  Her breathing stilled. Every thought in her head dissipated. Her focus sharpened to the feel of his mouth tracing a path across her skin. His fingers slid down her spine, leaving tingles in their wake, and she shivered.

  ‘Alice?’ he murmured.

  She twisted on the mattress to face him. His eyes caught hers and held her in place. She flushed at the intensity in his heated gaze. The mattress springs creaked as he leaned closer, his dark hair swinging down over his forehead. His warm breath puffed out across her skin and she met him halfway. His lips pressed against hers, once, twice – chaste kisses, checking this was invited. Alice reached up to sweep his hair back and her fingers settled at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.

  He inhaled sharply and opened his mouth to her tongue. The warmth thrumming between them ignited. She pulled him backwards, their mouths unbroken and desperate. His tongue slid inside, exploring, while she reached for his shirt buttons. She arched upwards, her fingers struggling to free him of the shirt. They twisted and pulled but there was no give in the cotton.

  ‘Crowley,’ she murmured. ‘Your fucking buttons are stuck.’

  He rumbled with laughter and pressed a quick kiss to her temple before leaning back and pulling it over his head. He tossed it aside and reclaimed her mouth. She gasped at the feel of his hand sliding up her thigh, reaching for her underwear. One finger hooked around the cotton and he tugged it gently – but the hem tore and he swore quietly.

  ‘I was aiming,’ he panted, ‘for a little more sophistication.’

  She pulled him down and kissed him hard before easing her hips off the bed so that he could tug her underwear down her legs.

  He made to move down her body but she grabbed his arms.

  ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t want to wait.’

  Crowley’s eyes glittered in the darkness, his pupils liquid ink. He kissed her deeply, his tongue lighting fires in her fluttering chest while she surged beneath him like a wave. She wanted to drown in him. Death by drowning was better than the death she had planned. She squeezed her eyes shut and pushed away every dark thought. No. Just for tonight, let me have this. Please, let me just have this.

  Alice moved her hands to the buttons of his trousers, and they were dispatched with speed. He rose on his forearms above her.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he asked, his voice ragged.

  She stretched up to kiss him and slid her knees apart, pushing herself against him. This was the only thing she was sure of. This one thing was all she needed in the world.

  Crowley’s head dropped forward, his breath on her collarbone. He positioned himself between her legs and she urged him on with gentle pushes and pulls. He sank into her body with a gasp and they began to move together.

  And without words, she tried to say her goodbyes – with soft sighs and hitched breaths, pressing him into her forever so that she had this one good moment to take with her.

  There were no Runners. Those manning the barriers outside had vanished, and they had met none on the stairs. Perhaps they’d deserted their posts at the same time as their commanding officer, or perhaps they’d begun to escape the Rookery like many others. The hairs on Alice’s arms lifted with suspicion at their absence, but in the end it was irrelevant; if there was a trap waiting for them, they had no choice but to walk into it with their eyes open.

  Glass crunched beneath Alice’s feet as she stepped into the devastated atrium. Cool, sterile daylight poured through the shattered ceiling, casting harsh shadows against the walls, the dark outlines of rubble, heaps of broken wooden shelves, piles of books and broken flagstones. Everything was under a layer of glittering glass fragments. So much destruction.

  Alice peered up at the towering tree, studying the creaking sway of branches and the fountain spray of tapered leaves. She moved closer, clambering over its wooden limbs to stroke the gnarled bark. Her palm smarted, tingles trailing through her arms, and she let go a trembling breath. She closed her eyes, imagining Tuoni’s soul inside, trapped like a butterfly under a glass. Long gone now, and his pale nightjar too.

  ‘Alice?’ Crowley murmured.

  She turned to him as though sleepwalking and withdrew from the tree. Crowley was standing a few feet away, watching her with concern. Their gazes locked for several seconds, and then Alice shivered and hoisted Tilda’s book from under her arm. She flipped it open and devoted her attention to it, forcing her emotions behind a wall. They had a job to do.

  ‘The corridor I saw Whitmore coming from,’ she said, spinning round, clutching the book, ‘was that one.’ She jerked her head at a narrow opening that led from the atrium.

  Alice glanced down at the book again. There was a hand-drawn image of the chamber, scratched out in thin lines of ink. It showed a small enclosed room, the stone walls curved and something that had once been indecipherable in the centre – but which she now recognized as the Rookery Stone.

  The rubble of broken flagstones shifted under Alice’s feet as she marched off towards the corridor. Crowley followed close behind, reaching to steady her when her foot slipped into a crack.

  Heaped books littered the tight space but trailed away as they ventured further in. The sunlight didn’t stretch far enough to light the deepest end of the corridor. The walls either side were roughly hewn and poor at reflecting the little light they did have, and so they were fumbling about in the dark.

  ‘I can try to call the fireflies,’ said Alice.

  Something flared, and warm flames cut through the shadows to illuminate Crowley’s face. ‘No need,’ he said quietly. He held a ball of fire, cupped in his palm.

  He traced the light over both walls, searching for an opening, or a doorway – some secret entrance to the chamber created by his ancestor. He moved back and forth along the corridor, crouching down to the flagstones and up again to the ceiling. It was a painstaking process.

  Their breaths filled the small space, adding to the insufferable warmth created by the flames and the lack of air. Crowley’s shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, and his top button was open. Crouching down, his hair swung into his face. He swiped it from his eyes, taking care with the cupped flames, but it hung down again seconds later. Alice reached down to tuck his hair behind his ear, and he glanced up at her. She smiled at the echo of Crowley fixing he
r crown at midsummer – but his eyes narrowed and his expression suddenly grew serious.

  ‘There,’ he said, rising to point at the wall behind her.

  She turned to examine the stone, but in the flickering glow she could see nothing.

  ‘No bigger than a thumbnail,’ he said, ‘and so shallow it seems non-existent. It’s Pellervoinen’s mark – from his tapestry.’ He leaned closer. ‘Or is it?’ He frowned, squinting at the wall. ‘It could just be a scratch, from when they carved out this part of the corridor.’

  Crowley squeezed his palm, and the flames winked out. In the darkness, she felt him running his hands along the wall, fingers questing. Then he took in a sharp breath that stiffened her spine.

  ‘I can feel it,’ he whispered. ‘It’s here.’

  There was a spark of white light in the gloom, a glowing pinprick on the stone wall. Alice watched, her skin prickling as the tiny grain of light was joined by another, and another, until there were thousands.

  ‘What is it?’ she said in awe.

  She felt him shake his head in the dark. ‘I don’t know.’

  The shining pinpricks suddenly grew stronger and larger until they formed a clear shape. Light bled from the outline of a door. They heard a grinding rasp of stone against stone, and the rectangular door shuddered open.

  Crowley reached for Alice, but she had already taken a step towards the opening. Peering all around her, she crossed the threshold. She found herself in another corridor, this one sloping downwards.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Crowley, a cautious voice over her shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and set off into the darkness. It was no brighter here. In fact, the shadows seemed to cling tighter. But she held both hands out, brushing the sides of the walls as she trudged slowly along the path.