Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

  “A ninny,” Helen put in. “One of us could easily distract her while the rest of us sneak into the woods. I suggest Daisy do it. No one would suspect Daisy of subterfuge.”

  “The rest of us?” Miss Corey repeated. “You don’t think you’re going, Helen? We can’t afford to lose another student in the woods.”

  “I have to go to watch over Ava so she doesn’t run off with her Darkling paramour.”

  “My what . . . ?” I began to object to Helen calling Raven my paramour, but Miss Corey had raised another objection.

  “Why must we bring Ava?”

  Helen let out an exasperated sigh. “Because Ava’s been meeting the Darkling since Christmas. She’ll know where to find him.”

  I stared at Helen aghast.

  “What?” she said. “Did you think I’m blind? You do know where he lives, don’t you?”

  I didn’t think it was the right time to say he was presently living at Violet House. Besides, I knew where they were going. I pushed past Helen to get to the window seat, where Nathan had stacked his books. I picked up the top one. To Elfland and Back by Thomas the Rhymer. The book below it was entitled Oisin’s Travels to Faerie. I quickly sifted through the rest of the books. Most were books about travel to Faerie, but there was also one on using shadow magic.

  “They’re almost all about traveling to Faerie,” I said. “Nathan saw Louisa in Faerie on the solstice. That’s why he’s taken Raven. He’s going to make him open the door to Faerie and let him in.”

  “Can a Darkling do that?” Miss Sharp asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “They can open the door but not go through it. And they can’t help anyone out. If Nathan goes to Faerie . . .”

  Mr. Bellows finished the thought for me. “He might not return for a hundred years.”

  Miss Sharp insisted that we gird ourselves for the expedition rather than rushing in willy-nilly. She sent Miss Corey to the mews to prolong the imping of the birds to give us more time.

  “You have a way with Gillie,” she said, attempting, I thought, to put their quarrel behind them. But Miss Corey only seemed offended anew to be shunted off on a secondary errand while we armed ourselves for a mission into the woods.

  “Miss Swift won’t have taught you expedition protocol yet, so we’ll have to cover this quickly. The most important thing to remember is bell, spell, and bow. Strap these bells around your wrists. You can use them to ward off the lesser fairies, and we can track each other by the sound of the bells. If you fall into Faerie, follow the sound of the bells out.” She demonstrated two separate ringing patterns for warding off fairies and for signaling to someone trapped in Faerie.

  “So it is possible to go into Faerie and come right out again without spending a hundred years there?” I asked.

  “The hundred-year phenomenon—or Rip van Winkle effect—is rarer than people think,” Mr. Bellows replied, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his chin. “Time is different in Faerie, but if you carry a reliable timepiece . . .” He took out of his vest pocket a gold pocket watch inscribed with the Bell and Feather insignia, “you can find your way out.”

  “Will this do?” I asked, taking out the repeater.

  Miss Sharp’s eyes widened at the sight of the watch. “That’s one of my grandfather’s watches,” she said. “Yes, it should work most admirably. But you must also remember not to eat anything there or play any games.”

  “It was the game of nine pins that did old Rip in,” Mr. Bellows commented.

  “Dancing is also to be avoided,” Miss Sharp added. “That’s what beguiled Oisin into his two-hundred-year stay. It’s understandable. The music there is divine.”

  I saw Daisy staring open-mouthed at our instructors. I, too, was surprised. “You sound as if you’ve . . . gone there,” Helen said.

  Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows regarded each other guiltily. “You’re not supposed to know about it until the senior-year field trip,” Miss Sharp said. “Everyone at Blythewood has to go once to Faerie before they graduate. It’s required for induction into the Order. We’re carefully prepared and trained to get each other out. If Nathan hasn’t eaten anything, or danced, or played any games . . .”

  “Or kissed anyone,” Mr. Bellows added with a rueful smile. “The natives can be quite . . . flirtatious.”

  “Why, Rupert!” Miss Sharp exclaimed with a mischievous smile. “Did someone flirt with you on your journey?”

  “A siren,” he answered, blushing. “She employed all her feminine and fay wiles, but I resisted by conjugating Latin verbs. The magic of Faerie, you see, is incompatible with logic. If you concentrate on something logical—and dull—you can’t be seduced. Besides, fairies hate Latin.”

  “I can see why,” Helen, whose least favorite class was Latin, remarked. “I don’t think conjugations will work for me.”

  “Try reciting the Social Register,” Daisy suggested. “You’ll bore them to death.”

  “I suggest you both use the spell against enchantment you learned in Miss Calendar’s class. Defendite me artes magicas.” She made us repeat it three times. “Excellent,” she said. “And if that doesn’t work, shoot the creature with these.” She gave us each a quiver full of iron-tipped arrows. “We’ll pair up teacher and student. I’ll go with Helen, as she’s such an excellent archer and I’m not. Ava, you’ll go with Rupert.”

  “What about me?” Daisy asked, clearly unhappy not to be paired up with Rupert Bellows.

  “After you’ve distracted Charlotte Falconrath, you can meet up with Lillian. Together you can watch the woods for our return. If we’re not back by the time Dame Beckwith returns from the city, you should tell her where we’ve gone.” She gave me an apologetic look. “There will be no choice then. Dame Beckwith will send in the Hunt and flush the woods of the Darklings.”

  At noon Gillie whistled the falcons up to the rooftop mews. We watched from the library window. They came flying to him from across the lawn, their shrill cries rending the air. The Dianas came in their wake, trailing behind their birds as if they were tethered to them and not the reverse. “Dame Beckwith will tell ye that the falcon is trained to its mistress,” Gillie once told me, “but it’s just as true that the girl is trained to her bird. The falconer becomes a little bit a falcon, just as the hunter becomes the thing he hunts.”

  But here at Blythewood we hunted fairies. Did that mean we each became a little bit fay?

  I didn’t have time to ponder the question now. Miss Sharp gave Helen and me the signal to follow her and Mr. Bellows. We each had a pack basket strapped to our backs. Our story, should anyone challenge us, was that we were going to the gardens to collect flowers and herbs that had appeared in Shakespeare’s plays.

  Luckily, most of the girls had retreated to the house for lunch. The day that had begun so warm had grown chill. Only Charlotte Falconrath stood on the lawn, her small kestrel perched on her gloved hand. Daisy was already approaching her. We could hear her voice through the still air exclaiming at how pretty “the birdy” was and Charlotte’s bored patrician drawl responding that it was a hunting animal, not a pet, and that he’d bite Daisy’s fingers off if she weren’t careful.

  “More likely that Charlotte will bite Daisy’s fingers off,” Helen remarked as we crossed between the greenhouse and the mews. “I can’t say I envy Daisy her job. I’d rather converse with fairies and demons than Charlotte Falconrath. Although I think I ought to be the one to go with Mr. Bellows. We two are the best archers and can go on ahead to clear the way for you and Miss Sharp.”

  “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 more 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.

  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.