Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

23

  I SLEPT DREAMLESSLY that night and awoke the next morning to a world transformed. A storm had stripped all the last autumn leaves from the trees and glazed the bare branches with frost, like the icing on a cake. Autumn had become winter and our lives at Blythewood had changed just as dramatically.

  The ordeal of the crow attack, the mysteries that had been revealed to us by the candelabellum, and our night studying together had forged a bond among Nathan, Helen, Daisy, and me. A bond cemented when Nathan drew us aside the morning after exams and asked us for our help with a special research project.

  “A research project?” Helen scoffed. “Since when have you been interested in researching anything but gambling and drinking?”

  “Since I learned that those demons took my sister,” Nate replied, wiping the smile from Helen’s face. “I’m going to get her back.”

  “But you heard what your mother said,” Helen said. “Once a girl’s taken by a Darkling she’s . . . changed. You can’t get Louisa back, Nate.”

  “Ava’s mother came back from the woods. There might be something in the Special Collections that can tell us how to save Louisa. As long as there’s a chance, I’m not going to give up.”

  “What do you want us to do?” I asked.

  “I want us to study in the library the way we did last night so that I can get into the Special Collections.”

  “That’s all?” Helen asked, folding her arms across her chest. “But Miss Corey is always there. She’s not going to let you just go down into the Special Collections.”

  “She will if Ava bell-mances her.”

  “I can’t!” I cried. “I wouldn’t do that to a teacher!”

  “You did it to Miss Frost for Daisy.”

  “I didn’t mean to. And Miss Corey is different. I like her.”

  “Fine.” Nathan sighed. “You don’t have to bell-mance her, just study with me in the library. I’ll find my own way into the Special Collections.”

  To my surprise, Helen turned to me and Daisy and lifted an eyebrow. “What do you two think?” she asked us both. “Shall we aid and abet Mr. Beckwith with his illicit quest? If it turns out like most of his projects, we’ll probably end up sacked from the school.”

  I expected that shy Daisy, who hated even to be caught talking in class, would object, but instead she said, “I think it’s a very good idea. I’d like to know a thing or two more about the lampsprites to prove to Miss Frost that they shouldn’t be treated as they are.”

  “I applaud your progressive zeal, Miss Moffat,” Nathan said gallantly. And then, turning to me, “And what about you, Miss Hall? Anything you care to look up in the Special Collections?”

  I thought about all I’d learned in the last twenty-four hours. The boy who I thought saved me from the Triangle fire might be a soulless demon. My mother had come back from the woods covered in black feathers. The man in the Inverness cape said he knew my father.

  “Yes,” I told Nathan, “now that you mention it, there are a couple of things I’d like to look into.”

  From then on the four of us met each day, after classes, in the library at the long oak table that stood between the fireplace, from whose mantel marble busts of Homer, Plato, and Sappho watched over us, and the diamond-paned windows that looked out to the river, where the ice grew thicker each day until the river itself seemed to stand still in time. Outside, the high-pitched cries of the falcons patrolling the woods and the ringing of the bells tied to their legs echoed in the chill air as though we were sealed under a glass dome. Inside the library, beside the fireplace, the books from the Special Collections mounted up on the table before us as steadily as the ice forming on the river.

  I didn’t have to bell-mance Miss Corey; Nate was able to convince her to give him access to some of the “more harmless” books from the collections. “Perhaps we’ll find something in them that will help us ward off another attack,” he argued.

  Although Miss Corey insisted that “better minds than his” had combed through the books, he told her he’d heard what she’d said at Violet House about making all information available to every student. He even offered to help her bring the books up the spiral stairs. He was the first to sort through the books and hand them out to each of us. Gone was his attitude of boredom and cynicism. He seemed possessed by the desire to know more about the creatures that had stolen his sister.

  Daisy also seemed possessed by a new fervor after her “revolt” in Miss Frost’s class. “Are there any books by Sir Malmsbury?” she asked Miss Corey one day as the latter was helping Miss Sharp pick out books for a class project.

  “Why yes,” Miss Corey replied. “I’ll get them for you as soon as I’ve done helping Vi—er . . . Miss Sharp.”

  “I’ll fetch them,” Nathan volunteered, jumping to his feet and opening the trapdoor mechanism.

  “Well, um . . .” Miss Corey hesitated until Miss Sharp laid her hand on hers and asked whether the library had a copy of the secret fairy journals of Charlotte Brontë. Nate used her distraction to head down by himself and emerged some time later covered by dust and bearing a collection of leather-bound journals, which Daisy eagerly dived into.

  Even Helen gave up complaining about missing the New York season and applied herself to all her studies. I suspected that it was not from love of poring over old books, which often made her sneeze and which she complained soiled her nice clothes, but from the time she got to spend with Nathan. Just as I suspected that Mr. Bellows’s enthusiasm for spending time in the library stemmed in equal parts from scholarly ardor and the glow of Vionetta Sharp’s smile when he brought her, as he did almost every day, a bouquet of violets from town. I think we all basked in that glow.

  While Miss Corey and Nathan brought the books out from the Special Collections Room, Miss Sharp would stir the coals in the grate and put a kettle on for tea. She seemed at those moments like some ancient goddess of the hearth—the Greek Hestia, or Roman Vesta, or one of the Scottish hearth hobs we learned about in Miss Frost’s class, fairies who lived in fireplaces. The honey-colored light that streamed in through the leaded glass windows bathed her face and turned her hair to liquid gold. As she handed out the teacups she had a kind word for each of us. As we read she would come around to refill our cups, tuck a shawl around Miss Corey’s shoulders, brush crumbs off Mr. Bellows’s jacket, save Helen’s sleeve from an ink spill, tuck an errant pin into my hair, feed Nathan a biscuit, and straighten Daisy’s collar—all her motions binding us in a warm glow that lessened the gloom of what we were reading.

  The books Nathan brought us to read were all the ones that dealt with shadow attacks on the Order. There were many. The prioress of a Benedictine convent wrote in the fourteenth century that just before the Black Death ravaged the neighboring village she spied a murder of crows perched on the town walls, and that when she ordered the bell ringers to toll a peal they melted away “like smudges of ash” only to be replaced by a single figure of a winged man.

  In a fifteenth-century bestiary I found a reference to “a Darknesse of Shadoes” next to an illustration of rats melting into black puddles. In the margin of the text was a drawing of a winged man. The scribe had written next to it “Angel or Shadoe?”

  My circle of friends and teachers may have made it easier to deal with this grim material during the day, but at night the images—of crows flaking into ash and rats melting into puddles—made their way into my dreams. Worse, the images reversed themselves. I would be walking down Fifth Avenue with my mother, her boot heels clicking on slick cobblestones, and then her boot would land in a puddle and the puddle would turn into a nest of rats that swarmed over her, carrying her away from me. Or I was at the Triangle Waist factory, sitting next to Tillie, large flakes of ash floating through the air. When I looked up from my sewing and looked at Tillie I saw that the ash had turned to bats, which clung to her, sucking the blood from her veins. They were swarmi
ng over all the girls, tangled in their hair, I felt them in my hair, too, crawling over my skin.

  I would wake up in a cold sweat, batting at the empty air.

  One night I awoke and heard a pattering on the windowpanes above my bed. Shadows flitted over the glass. I lay for a moment, very still, watching the shadows moving, feeling a cold dread creeping over me as I grew sure that they had come for me because I was part of them. The girl who went to classes, and laughed with her new friends, and worked so hard to impress her teachers was an illusion—a trick of the daylight. I didn’t really belong at Blythewood. The real Avaline was the girl who carried laudanum home to her mother and worked in a factory. The real Avaline belonged in the Pavilion for the Insane. The real Avaline dreamed of monsters and longed for them. I belonged to the shadows and now they had come to take me back. I had only to lie still and they would take me.

  A floorboard creaked, breaking my frozen spell. Daisy was standing beside my bed, her long white nightgown spattered with the moving shadows. I sat up to warn her away, but she was already crouching on my bed, her face pressed to the window.

  “Look!” she whispered. “It’s snowing!”

  I crouched beside her and looked out. Fat snowflakes swirled through the night, lit by a half-hidden moon. Already the lawn was covered with a glittering white blanket. The hedges and statues in the garden had been transformed into fanciful ice sculptures; the great pine trees at the edge of the woods mantled in white looked like women in ermine cloaks.

  “Isn’t it . . . magical?” Daisy asked in a hushed voice.

  “Yes,” I agreed. More than all the spells and potions and bell changes we had learned, this felt like the true magic of Blythewood, as if a bit of Faerie dust had blown out of the woods and spread itself across the school grounds. Seeing the school like this felt like seeing its secret self. It made me feel like I belonged here.

  But even that magic had its dark side.

  In the morning Miss Swift, accompanied by Gillie and a hooded falcon, roused us all from our dorm rooms to gather on the lawn near the edge of the woods for a “tracking class.” There in the pristine white snow we found the cloven hoof marks of centaurs, the long clawed scratches of goblins, and, most frightening of all, a trail of blood that ended with a long black feather.

  “As we approach the winter solstice we must all be on our guard,” she lectured us. “Like All Hallows’ Eve, the solstice is a time when the barriers between the worlds grow thin. Fairies and demons slip though the gap and venture into our world. They’re particularly brazen at this time of year and use the snow as cover for their incursions. Observe.”

  She nodded to Gillie and he removed the hood from the falcon’s head. Immediately the bird was alert, eyes searching the ground. She cocked her head and strained at her jesses. Gillie made a clicking sound in his throat that sounded just like the falcon’s trill, and released her. She flew straight off his hand and dove into the snow. She came up almost immediately with something in her talons. Gillie cast a feathered lure down to distract the bird away from her prey and quickly scooped up the struggling animal when the falcon released it.

  Only it wasn’t an animal. It was a tiny winged sprite like the ones Miss Frost kept pinned in her classroom—but alive. This one was covered in white down and had blue eyes. Gillie cupped it in his gloved hands as it beat its wings furiously.

  “Who can identify it?” Miss Swift demanded.

  “Lychnobia riparia,” Daisy said breathlessly, “commonly known as a hyter sprite. They can’t make themselves bigger like some of the other sprites. There’s even a legend that they lead stray children home.”

  Miss Swift snorted. “Completely erroneous, as are all such legends of fairies helping children. There’s a similar story about your namesake, eh, Gillie?”

  “Aye,” Gillie answered hoarsely. “The Ghillie Dhu was said to find lost children and lead them home, just like the hyter sprites. This one is just a wee thing. Shall I let it go?”

  “And let it tunnel its way through the snow into the castle? That’s what they do. They get into the root cellar and granary and eat up all the oats and apples. Vermin.” She sniffed. “I’m sure Miss Frost will be happy to have it as a specimen. Bag it and give it to Daisy to bring to her.”

  Gillie lifted his black eyes up to Miss Swift. For a moment I saw a flash of green in them and his hands opened to let the sprite out, but when it tried to fly up it landed with a thud back in his hands. “It’s broken its wing,” he said sadly, “and probably wouldna last the winter.” He took a soft leather sack out of his hunting bag, popped it over the sprite’s head, tied the sack shut, and handed it to a wide-eyed Daisy.

  “Make sure Miss Frost is quick about it,” he said gruffly. Then he whistled for his falcon and stomped off in the snow. Miss Swift rolled her eyes. “Very well. I suppose it’s time for us all to go. Class dismissed.”

  I walked back to the castle between Helen and Daisy, Helen complaining about the cold and being up so early she hadn’t had a chance to curl her hair, Daisy cradling the bag holding the condemned hyter sprite in her arms. When we got to the house, Daisy suddenly wheeled on Helen.

  “How can you go on about your hair when this poor creature is about to die?” she cried.

  Then before Helen or I could say anything she ran toward the North Wing classrooms, sobbing.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Helen asked. “It’s not like the lampsprite’s human.”

  “Do we really know that?” I asked. “I mean, no, they’re not human, but they’re not animals either. The reason Miss Frost hates them so much is because she blames them for leading Sir Malmsbury astray.”

  “Well, not that I generally agree with Miss Frost, but she does have a point here. The important thing to remember is that these creatures are not like us.”

  I stared at Helen, who had paused by a gilded mirror to fuss with her hair. “And just because someone is not like you, that means it’s okay to torture and kill them?”

  “Oh please, now you sound like those horrible radicals preaching from their soapboxes in Union Square.”

  “Some of those ‘horrible radicals’ were my friends,” I said, thinking of Tillie, “and the people who they were speaking up for were people like my mother and me and all the girls at the Triangle.”

  Helen made a face in the mirror. “Everyone agrees that the Triangle fire was most regrettable.”

  “Most regrettable?” I cried. “You make it sound like a failed tea party. Girls were burned alive and all because no one cared enough about their lives to install proper fire escapes or trusted them enough to leave the doors unlocked—”

  “Well,” a voice came from behind me, “girls like that do steal. We had a maid once who stole my pearl earrings.”

  I turned and found Georgiana Montmorency standing with a cluster of girls. My argument with Helen had drawn a little crowd. These were the same girls who had cheered me a few weeks ago, but there were all looking at me queerly now.

  “I had no idea you worked as a seamstress, Ava,” Georgiana said, raising her eyebrows at Alfreda and Wallis. The rest of the girls were staring at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted horns. It was the way they looked at the lampsprites when they examined them. A factory girl was as much a different species as a lampsprite in their eyes. Georgiana, seeing that the tide of public opinion had turned against me, smiled sweetly. “I have some shirtwaists that need mending if you’re looking to earn some extra money. Who knows? Perhaps they were made by your friends at the Triangle. I’m afraid they’re rather slipshod.”

  I don’t know why this insult was the one that finally broke me. I heard the bass bell in my head and instead of trying to slow it I made it speed up and, somehow, I made it change tone until it was a high screech inside my head. The mirror behind Helen shattered. I turned to see if Helen was all right. Glass shards glittered in her hair like new-falle
n snow. Her eyes were wide and frightened. She was looking at me as if she saw a monster. I couldn’t blame her; it’s what I felt like. I turned and fled, the other girls scattering away from me in fear, and ran blindly through the halls until I turned a corner and ran into Nathan.

  “Ah, Ava, I was looking for you . . .” He stopped when he saw the tears streaming from my face.

  “Why?” I cried. “Do you have some mending for me to do? Or do you want a display of my freakish powers?”

  He stared at me, open-mouthed, and then slowly smiled. “Neither,” he answered. “I want to show you a display of my freakish powers.” Then he grabbed my hand and dragged me into the empty library and before I could protest he opened the trapdoor behind the fireplace and started dragging me down the spiral stairs.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “We’re not allowed down here without a teacher.”

  Nathan snorted. “Do you really care what anyone here thinks after the way they’ve talked about you?”

  “You heard them?” I asked, glad that he was ahead of me on the dark stairs and couldn’t see the blood rise to my face.

  “Helen’s little lecture on social inferiors and Georgiana’s offer for you to slave over her blouses for a few pennies? Yes. I heard that and much more. You think these girls are your friends just because they smile to your face? Do you think they’ll ever see you as an equal?”

  We’d come to the corridor at the bottom of the stairs. Nathan held up his lantern in front of the wall, lighting up a row of filing cabinets. “Do you know what these are?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Genealogical records,” he replied. “The Order has kept track of the bloodlines of their members since the original six sisters and six knights, down to the families that founded Blythewood and everyone who’s joined the Order since. They’ve made careful notes of abilities and flaws so that they could breed a better warrior. Why do you think Sir Malmsbury studied lampsprites? So he could understand how to breed people.”