The Death of Yorik Mortwell

by Stephen Messer

  “The mechanical problems—all repaired?”

  Dark whispering. “Yes,” said the captain.

  Yorik could see that the captain was lying. When Lord Ravenby responded, “Very well, I will leave tomorrow night,” Thomas gripped Yorik’s arm in terror.

  The captain stormed out. Lord Ravenby hesitated, then took the mammoth rifle down from the mantel and placed it across his desk before returning to his papers.

  Yorik pulled Thomas into the next room. “Come on,” he said to Thomas. “You’ve seen him. Now I must get you to the Princess.”

  Thomas shook his body no.

  “But you have to!” said Yorik.

  His eyes rolling, Thomas shook and refused.

  “Don’t you understand?” said Yorik. “There is nothing you can do for your father. And the Princess can’t protect you outside the glade. Do you want to end up like Doris? Consumed by the Dark Ones?”

  Thomas tried to make a shrug—I don’t care. He would not look Yorik in the eye.

  “Very well,” Yorik said testily. He reached into his pocket and produced two small, dryish mud-balls. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at Thomas. “These are the last two that Erde was able to make. Stay hidden, but if any Dark Ones find you, hit them with these.”

  Looking dubious, Thomas accepted the mud-balls.

  Yorik turned and faded through the wall, then raced for the aviary glade.

  Chapter Eleven

  More of the Dark Ones had gathered around the glade. Yorik had to run in a wide circle before he found an opening in their lines.

  At first he could not find the Princess. She was not with the partridges roosting in trees. Nor was she near the elm, nor walking by the pond, nor sitting on her sycamore throne. She was not in the clearing, where the remains of last autumn’s snares had long vanished.

  Finally Yorik discovered her beneath a spreading cherry bough. In this quiet place, the Princess had parted the long grasses to form a cradle. Erde lay within. The Princess knelt beside the withered brown girl, gently tapping her leafy twig and making little clouds of misty water that settled over Erde’s dry form.

  Yorik knelt beside the cradle. Erde was so small now, curled into a ball no larger than one of her old mud-balls. She wasn’t speaking, and her eyes were closed.

  “Is that helping?” Yorik asked, nodding at the mist.

  “No,” said the Princess miserably. She stood abruptly, waving the twig across the grass stains on her gossamer dress. The stains vanished. “So where’s the other ghost-boy?” she asked. “He must have appeared by now.”

  “He did,” said Yorik. He explained about Thomas.

  “Too bad,” murmured the Princess. “I could have used another servant.”

  Yorik could tell she was trying to resume her old imperious manner. But her heart was no longer in it. Even as the aviary glade burst with life, the Estate darkened, and Erde crumbled.

  Yorik stood too. “Poor Thomas,” he said, looking down at Erde. “He can’t do anything to help his father.”

  “If he’s so useless,” snapped the Princess, “then what did you want him so badly for?”

  “I only wanted to bring him here, for protection. But now I’m not sure how I would have gotten him in. A lot of Dark Ones are surrounding your glade now, you know.”

  The Princess laughed darkly. “I wish a few of them would drift a little closer, but they know better, don’t they?” This idea seemed to perk her up.

  Yorik continued. “And there are more of them everywhere, all the time. It’s getting harder for me to move around the Estate.”

  The Princess’s dismal mood returned. “What does it matter?” she said. “Did you really think you’d find a way to defeat the Yglhfm? In all these nights of prowling everywhere with those dogs, you haven’t, have you?”

  “No,” said Yorik, crestfallen. “Not yet. But I have learned something. The Dark Ones are focused on the Ravenbys. First Thomas, then his father. There must be a reason for that.” As he said it, he remembered the words of the topiary hare: Is not the fate of one bound to the fate of all?

  The Princess snorted. “You would think that. Humans think everything involves them.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Don’t you realize you are dealing with an ancient evil far more powerful than a few humans? Not to mention you, a stubborn little ghost-boy, not even one year old!”

  Yorik turned away. “At least I’m trying.”

  The Princess’s voice turned to icicles and venom. “Beware, ghost. I can banish you from my glade. You can spend your days among the Yglhfm if you like. You know very well I—”

  “—can’t leave the glade because of beastly Father,” finished Yorik. “I know.” He turned to her. The Princess’s leafy twig was sparking as though it were angry too. He pointed. “What if you let me use that? I could take it with me and use its power against them.”

  The Princess shook her head. “Can’t. It doesn’t have any power except the little I put into it. And it’s part of me. It can’t leave either.”

  “Right,” said Yorik. “Just like Thomas can’t leave his father.”

  The Princess sighed. Her glowing face looked weary, as Yorik had never seen it before.

  “You know, ghost-boy,” she said, “you see so many things, you think you see everything. But you don’t. There are things you fail to see that are right in front of you, and you shouldn’t even need ghost eyes to see them.”

  “Like what?” ventured Yorik cautiously.

  “Like your little murderer friend. Do you think he’s staying with his father because he’s stupid? Do you think he doesn’t fear the Yglhfm?”

  “Why, then? Why would he stay?”

  The Princess sank slowly into the grass, her gossamer dress billowing. Her glow dimmed. “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “it was something he did. Something terrible. And he feels responsible for everything bad that has happened since. He won’t leave his father because he doesn’t believe he deserves to be fixed. And so he stays there, among the Yglhfm, in the dark.”

  “My murder,” said Yorik. “He feels responsible for my murder. But I’ve forgiven him for that.”

  “I mean something really, really bad,” said the Princess distantly. “An unforgivable sin.”

  “Your Highness, I—” Yorik stopped. The Princess was not listening, nor was she looking at him. She was sitting in the grass with downcast eyes, her face shadowed, her fingers fidgeting with her leafy twig.

  Her voice was so quiet now that Yorik could hardly hear her. “Sometimes you do something,” she whispered. “Something so awful you can never atone for the crime. Even if you want more than anything to help someone you love … there is nothing you can do.”

  Yorik understood now that the Princess was no longer talking about Thomas.

  He looked up at the stars, thinking. These nights, the sky above most of the Estate was covered with writhing flame-blue clouds. Only here, above the aviary glade, could the stars still be seen. He watched them blink and shimmer.

  He looked back at the girl sitting in the grass, her head with its laurel crown cast down, her glittering hair spilling around her. “What could you …” He hesitated. “What could someone have done, for their sin to be unforgivable?”

  The Princess’s glow vanished. The aviary glade grew dark.

  Then the Princess drifted up from where she sat, rising through the cherry boughs.

  Yorik climbed swiftly, following her. In his ghost form, he could climb forever and never fall. At the very top of the tree he found her sitting as before, now on the very tip of the highest branch. Yorik crouched near her, balancing on a branch no wider than his finger.

  The Princess raised her arm and pointed with her leafy twig. The twig moved along the sky, across the length of the bright Milky Way, the river of stars. The white Way glowed ever brighter as the twig traced its path.

  “A girl was once given charge of a river,” came the Princess’s hushed voice, sof
t and sad. “A bright, clear, shining river.”

  As Yorik watched, the leafy twig twisted. In the river there appeared swift black shapes, dipping and rushing in the flow, free and happy in their swimming.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “They are dolphins,” said the Princess. “They asked the girl to come and play with them, and swim in the waters.”

  “Did she?”

  “At first,” she said. “The girl would come to the river’s edge each morning and call to them, and they would come to her and she would swim with them, up and down the river’s length, from its source in mountain springs to its end, where sea winds blew over salt waters.”

  Yorik watched the white Way glitter and gleam. It filled with more of the dark swimmers, and the stars around them seemed to dance.

  The Princess went on. “All was well, in the beginning. But in time, the girl grew bored. She became angry with her father for giving her only this river, when she thought she deserved so much more. And so she left it behind, and went to other places she thought more worthy of her. She ignored the shining river.”

  The stars that had seemed to dance slowed and then stopped. The happy swimming of the dark shapes changed too, becoming frantic and crowded. Something was terribly wrong, and despite himself,

  Yorik felt afraid. He almost did not want the Princess to continue. At last he spoke. “Go on.”

  “A long time passed,” whispered the Princess. “Then one day, the girl remembered her river. And she returned.”

  She twitched her twig in a sudden slash, and the bright, clear river darkened. The swimmers disappeared.

  “She had been gone for many years. In her absence, the river had become black and poisonous. When she saw what had happened, she raced to the river’s edge and called to the dolphins as she always had … but this time they did not answer. They were all long dead. There were none of them left.”

  Yorik felt as though his heart would break. “Princess …,” he said.

  The girl moved her twig, and the night sky became itself again. She sank back through the boughs, Yorik following. He knelt next to her as she huddled on the ground.

  “Now you know,” she said, her voice breaking. “Now you know why Father banished me to this glade, and why I may never leave.”

  “But, Princess,” said Yorik. “Look at all you have done. Your glade is so beautiful, and you’ve sheltered Erde here, and you protected the birds, and you fixed me when I was broken, and—”

  The Princess’s voice was harsh and ruthless. “It doesn’t matter. They’re dead, all dead forever, and it’s my fault. It is an unforgivable sin. I deserved to be punished. Father was right.”

  “Princess …,” said Yorik. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “DON’T TOUCH ME!” screamed the Princess. Bolts of lightning shot from her twig, and Yorik was hurled backward. The pheasants, disturbed from their roosts, flew muttering down from their trees.

  The Princess sat with her face in her lap, crying brokenly. Beyond was the grassy cradle where Erde lay helpless and dying.

  The Princess had done something terrible, and so had Thomas. Yorik remembered the flickering image the Princess had shown him, of the Dark Ones whispering to Thomas in the glade before he threw the rocks—he’ll find out what you did.

  He’ll find out what you did. Whatever Thomas had done, it had happened before Yorik’s murder.

  Yorik had to find out what it was.

  Chapter Twelve

  Yorik found Thomas hiding in the corridor outside his father’s study, where the Matron, with two Dark Ones on her shoulders, was confronting Susan.

  “Girl, what are you doing with that?” the Matron snarled, pointing at the supper tray Susan carried. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I made Lord Ravenby eat something,” retorted Susan. “He is ill, and no one else has brought him any food.”

  The Matron laughed. “Do as you like. But you shouldn’t stay here, you know. You should flee the Estate with the others. Wicked ways are afoot.”

  “No,” said Susan. “Someone must care for Lord Ravenby, whatever else might happen.”

  The Matron’s lip curled as her Dark Ones whispered. For a moment she leaned over Susan. Then she pushed past the girl and stomped away.

  Yorik slipped into the shadows behind Thomas.

  “Thomas,” he said, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  Thomas turned, startled. “Yrk!”

  Susan hurried away toward the kitchens, the supper dishes clattering on the tray.

  Thomas started after her. “Szz.”

  “No,” said Yorik. “Thomas, listen. I spent weeks watching out for Susan too, just as you did before you died.”

  Thomas stopped and looked at Yorik.

  “Yes, I saw you,” said Yorik. “I’d been told you were going to murder her. But I realized that was a lie.”

  “Blb!”

  “I followed her everywhere,” said Yorik. “The Dark Ones told her terrible things. They told her Lord Ravenby was going to turn her out into the snow, and she should slip poison into his drink.”

  “Glg,” burbled Thomas angrily.

  Yorik shook his head. “None of it worked. She is strong, like your father. Maybe even stronger.”

  “Fa—” croaked Thomas, lurching toward the study.

  “Wait,” said Yorik, grasping his arm. “Thomas, there is only one way to help them now. We have to find a way to defeat the Dark Ones. I believe you know something more about them.” He gave Thomas a searching look. “I need to know what happened.”

  “N—!” said Thomas, shaking.

  “You must tell me!” ordered Yorik sharply. “Little time remains.”

  Thomas shrank away.

  Yorik paused, thinking of the Princess’s terrible shame. “I know it’s hard,” he said, more gently now, releasing Thomas. “But you must tell me, for your father. And for my sister too.”

  Thomas nodded. His broken neck turned the nod into an odd bow. And then, his face grim, he shuffled forward, leading Yorik along halls and down narrow stairways, into the depths of the Manor.

  Down, deep down, below the servants’ quarters, below the wine cellars to the cold rooms where meat was stored. Down, to unlit passages where old things lay hidden under layers of dust, to deep levels of the subterranean Manor basements where no one had set foot for years. Or so Yorik thought at first. But as the dust thickened, Yorik discerned a trail of footprints. Here in the still air of these rooms, the footprints were undisturbed.

  In a dank passage at the dead end of the deepest basement was an antiquated iron door, rusted and ajar. Beside it in the churned-up dust were tools—scattered mallets, pry bars, and expired torches. Someone had recently pried open the door.

  As Yorik puzzled over this, he heard sounds: hammering, the groans of protesting iron—and a boy crying. The sounds came from directly in front of him. Dead echoes, he realized. Echoes of what had happened here, not long ago.

  Behind the door was a stone wall. On it was an inscription too old to read. Some of the stones had been smashed away, and behind them a narrow passage veered deeper down.

  Yorik looked at Thomas. He could only imagine how this must have seemed to a living boy—the depths, the cold darkness, the utter silence—as he worked long, dark hours to open these sealed paths.

  They moved through the stone wall and walked along the passage, followed by the dead echoes of whispers and tears and crackling torches. Soon they passed windows in the walls. The windows had bits of shattered colored glass in them.

  “I saw this building before,” said Yorik. “Ten thousand years ago.” He told Erde’s story to Thomas as they went.

  Thomas, nodding, pulled Yorik farther down the passage. In an alcove, Thomas pointed to a leonine skeleton with snapped and shattered bones.

  “Yes,” said Yorik. “The red lion.”

  Nearby were shovels, and fresh earth piled around a sloping pit. At the bottom of t
he pit, the rocky mouth of a cave appeared. As they descended, Yorik noticed a track where someone had slid down. There was blood too, as he imagined hands unaccustomed to labor might have bled from the punishing work of smashing and digging in the dark bowels of the earth.

  At last they emerged from the cave into an immense, vaulted cavern. Yorik gasped. “A mammoth graveyard!”

  Filling the cavern were the massive skeletons of creatures so large they could only have been mammoths. Yorik had heard legends of such things—mammoths burying, and mourning, their dead. This graveyard was ancient, the bones brittle. In some places the skeletons were piled atop each other, and some had fallen apart into mounds so high that their tips nearly reached the ceiling.

  “Yorik, dear Yorik,” sang a girl in a hollow voice.

  Yorik turned. Atop a mammoth spine sat a girl in a tattered dress, her bedraggled hair falling over her face.

  “Doris,” he said. “It’s really you.”

  Doris brushed her hair aside. She was gaunt and pale, her cheeks were sunken, and her eyes were empty pits. “Yes, dear Yorik,” she rasped. “But not for long.”

  “Ds!” shouted Thomas. He stumbled past Yorik.

  “Oh, Thomas,” moaned Doris. “You shouldn’t have come. Neither of you should be here. The Dark Ones will return at any moment. You have to flee.”

  Thomas kept toward her. “You mustn’t touch me,” Doris said, shrinking away. “I am filled with darkness.”

  “Doris,” said Yorik. “Tell me what happened. What did Thomas do? The Dark Ones made him open these passages, didn’t they?” Thomas stopped below his sister, moaning, ghostly tears streaking his face. “Mm s—”

  Doris spoke quietly, her voice weak. “I know you’re sorry, dear Thomas. I know it was hard. I saw things better after I died. I saw how Father expected of you things that you couldn’t give. I saw all your sadness and pain. I wish I had been kinder to you while I lived. But now there is nothing to be done. You must run.”

  Yorik did not see any Dark Ones in the high, arched cavern. But he did spy a blackness in its center. He walked closer. There was darkness here, a floating void that reminded him of a Dark One. Something was inside it. A scent wafted out, of rotting vegetation.