Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

  “Oh,” Helen said, abashed. Then recovering, she quipped, “Well, high time. I’ll help you practice in exchange for all the work you’ll be doing to get us through finals . . . and . . . er . . . thank you, Daisy. I can’t imagine what we’d do without you.”

  Daisy beamed, dropped her ledger, then had to reorganize her colored flags.

  Helen was right. We wouldn’t have been able to get through finals without Daisy’s help—or without Beatrice, Dolores, and Cam pitching in. Other girls helped, too—Alfreda Driscoll taught us a spell to help with memorization. Andalusia Beaumont lent me her lucky arrow for the practical, which I chose to take even though I’d been excused and even though my shoulders still ached when I drew the bow.

  At first I thought they were all helping because of Helen losing her father, but I soon learned that my role during the Night of Shadows had spread throughout the school and I had become—at least according to Helen and Daisy—a Blythewood legend. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Some of Blythewood’s legends didn’t turn out so well.

  Judicus van Drood, for instance.

  I wanted to talk to Dame Beckwith about the identity of the Shadow Master, but she had gone to Europe with Louisa and Nathan and wouldn’t be back until the Fall term. By then perhaps I’d know more about what had happened to Judicus van Drood. If he had really perished on the Titanic perhaps there was no need to tell her that her old friend and colleague had been taken over by the tenebrae. Or if I did have to tell her, at least it would come after Louisa was better.

  On the day the exam results were posted and we learned we had all passed, Miss Sharp threw a celebratory tea party in the Great Hall for the whole school, helped by her aunts, who were a bit at loose ends since Nathan and Louisa had left for Europe. There were cucumber sandwiches, bread and butter, scones with clotted cream and fresh raspberries, Victoria sponge cake, and iced cakes topped with sugared violets. It lived up to the most elaborate feasts in Mrs. Moore’s girls’-school books.

  But none of Mrs. Moore’s feasts culminated in the strange spectacle we were treated to after tea. Euphorbia Frost stood up to make an announcement. I hadn’t seen her since I’d come back, and I noticed right away how changed she was. She’d lost weight during her illness, and although her figure was still ample, she no longer looked stout. Color had returned to her face and she had stopped dying her hair that awful eggplant color. It had come in a soft, silvery gray that better suited her violet eyes.

  “I have been consulting with my esteemed mentor, the eminent Sir Miles Malmsbury, since his return from the field, and he has convinced me that the practice of keeping specimens of the lychnobia is inhumane . . .”

  “Do you think?” I heard Daisy mutter under her breath.

  “And contradicts the burial habits of the lychnobious people. And so, today, Sir Malmsbury and I will return the lampsprites to their proper burial ground. If you would care to join us . . .”

  Gillie had rigged up a pony cart with ribbons and flowers, which he led to the edge of the Blythe Wood. I peeked inside and saw that the sprites’ bodies were laid out on white linen, the pins removed from their breasts. It was a sad sight, but when we reached the edge of the woods, a breeze stirred over their bodies and they began to disintegrate. The breeze quickened into a gust that picked up the sprite dust and carried it into the air. We all looked up to see a conflagration spreading across the sky. Some of the dust fell on our upturned faces. I felt the chill of their passing, but I warmed when I heard their song.

  Remember us, they sang, remember us.

  I looked around at my friends and teachers and saw tear-stained faces streaked with sprite dust. Would remembering the lampsprites change how they thought of the fairies? Would they ever accept that the Darklings weren’t evil if I didn’t find the book that proved it? I wasn’t sure—but I knew we had all changed this year and that Blythewood would never be the same.

  When the last of the sprite dust had vanished into the air, the crowd turned and headed back to the castle, all except Gillie, who stood gazing into the woods, his moss-green eyes the same color as the shadows beneath the trees. I noticed he had a sprite feather tucked behind his ear.

  “That’s where you come from, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He took so long to answer that I grew afraid that I’d offended him, but when he did speak at last his voice was gentle. “Aye lass, that is where I’m from, but your true home is with the ones ye love and I’ve come to care for the creatures on both sides of the woods.”

  “Do they know?” I asked, afraid for him.

  “The Dame knows.”

  “But how can she teach that all the creatures of Faerie are evil if she knows you’re not?”

  Gillie smiled. “Folks can hold two opposite ideas in their heads at the same time, lass. Don’t forget that. And don’t stray too long in the woods . . .” He winked at me. “I’ll only be able to cover for you for a little while.” Then he turned to go, whistling the same tune that the lampsprites had sung: Remember me, remember me.

  When he was halfway across the lawn I slipped into the woods.

  The trees on the edge of the forest were charred from the fire, but once I got past them I was enveloped in a deep green sea with flashes of sunlight flitting through the depths like tropical fish. As I went deeper into the woods I noticed that the flashes of sunlight had wings, and the birds, which had gone quiet when I first entered the woods, were now calling to each other. Were they warning their flocks that a hunter had entered the woods—or were they sending a message to him?

  Since Miss Corey had told me about Raven flying through the fire to save me—and flying back again through it—I had hardly dared hope he had survived. And while I’d told myself that I had stayed out of the woods so far because of the patrols, the truth was that I’d been afraid to learn that he hadn’t.

  I found the tree that held Raven’s nest. I looked up, but the canopy of green leaves was too thick for me to make out his nest. I stood still and listened to the birdsong. It was sweet and sad and reminded me of a funeral dirge. Where did Darklings go when they died if they couldn’t go to Faerie? I wondered. Surely not into the shadows . . .

  I felt the sting of tears on my face and lifted my hand to wipe them off, but before my hand reached my face something else brushed them away—a sweep of wings that cloaked my back. I spun around, so fast the woods spun with me in a whirl of green, and found him standing there, his dark eyes the only steady beacons in a spinning world.

  I rushed into his arms, desperate to know he was real. As he folded his arms and wings around me, I pressed myself to his chest. I could feel the heat of his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt. Yes! He was real, he was alive! But then I realized his skin wasn’t just warm, it was on fire.

  I stepped back and gingerly touched the collar of his shirt. His skin beneath was red and scarred. Looking up I saw that he was wincing against the pain of my touch.

  “You were hurt!” I gasped.

  Raven shrugged. I noticed now that he held one of his wings stiffly. “You were hurt, too, in saving us. How are your hands?”

  I held them out for him to see. He took them both in his and I was glad he was looking down at them so he couldn’t see the blush that had risen to my cheeks. I noticed how small my hands looked in his, like doves cupped in a nest. They fluttered like doves, too, until he covered them both between his two hands and looked up into my eyes. “I’m glad you did not suffer any worse injuries,” he said so formally I almost laughed.

  “My shoulder blades still hurt sometimes,” I said, unnerved by the force of his gaze.

  His brows drew together. “Your shoulder blades? I didn’t see the fire reach your back.”

  I shrugged, embarrassed to seem as if I had been complaining. “It’s nothing,” I began, but he was already turning me around, his hands on my shoulders. I could feel his breath on the nape o
f my neck and, through the thin fabric of my shirtwaist, his hands running down my back.

  His touch seemed to waken something inside me—a stirring that began in my chest and fluttered across my back. My skin felt prickly, as if it were stretched too tight across my bones. My heart beat so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest. After a moment he turned me back to face him. He was very close, his face hovering over mine, his lips only inches away. I felt myself leaning in toward him, but he stopped me by laying a hand on my chest.

  “Ava, there’s something you must know. It’s about . . . your father.”

  My mouth went dry. I thought about the charts I’d found in the dungeons and the shadow play I’d been shown by the candelabellum and all that van Drood had told me about his courtship of my mother. Van Drood thought she loved him, and even my mother had said she had cared for him once. I didn’t know much about how these matters, but I had begun to suspect that van Drood and my mother might have been . . . intimate before my mother broke things off.

  “I’m that monster’s child, aren’t I?” I said with a horrible sinking in my chest.

  Raven flinched as though I’d struck him. He clenched his jaw as if against some terrible pain. “What monster?”

  “Van Drood. He loved my mother. She refused to marry him, but she must have loved him once and . . . been with him. That’s why she ran away. She saw what he was becoming and didn’t want to raise me with him. But that’s why he was looking for me.” I felt my chin wobbling, but I bit the inside of my cheek and forced myself to look Raven in the eyes. “That’s why you’ve stayed away, isn’t it?”

  Raven gave me a long, level look.

  “Do you think I would forsake you because of something like that?”

  I felt a quiver of relief, but also a sinking in my heart. “So it’s true.”

  “Where did you get this idea?” Raven asked.

  “I saw it in the candelabellum.”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” he commanded in an oddly stern voice.

  I told him about the scene of van Drood and my mother in the garden and her running toward the woods, the crows chasing her, the wings dissolving into larger wings, and then vanishing. “Because she was swallowed up by the shadows,” I said at last. “I’m afraid they were always inside her from then on.”

  “And this is what she told you when you saw her in Faerie?”

  “No,” I replied. “There wasn’t time.”

  “Ava,” Raven said, gripping both my shoulders in his hands. “What you saw in the candelabellum wasn’t complete. When your mother disappeared in the woods she wasn’t swallowed by the shadows. She was fleeing to her lover.”

  “Van Drood said she loved someone else, but I thought it was just his jealousy.”

  “No, she did love someone very much, someone she couldn’t stay with.”

  “So van Drood’s not my father!” I cried, so relieved I felt tears pour down my face. “The young van Drood looked so familiar to me.”

  “Yes, he would look familiar to you, because you know his son.”

  “His son? Who . . . ?”

  But then I saw it—the way Dame Beckwith had looked at van Drood in the vision I had seen in the candelabellum and the way her face had changed when she heard his voice coming out of Sarah’s mouth. She hadn’t wanted to believe that the shadow creature was speaking with his voice because she had once been in love with him.

  “Nathan is van Drood’s son?”

  “Yes. That’s why I was afraid of you getting too close to him. He’s half submersed in the shadows already.”

  “No!” I cried. “Just because Nathan is a monster’s son doesn’t make him a monster.” I remembered what my mother had said, that I was the only one who could save Nathan from the shadows. I looked into Raven’s eyes. He still gripped my shoulders, still stared at me.

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” he said. “It will make it easier for you. . . . You see, the man your mother loved . . . well, he wasn’t a man.”

  “What . . . ?” But I was seeing the shadow play again, watching the swirl of wings. I could hear them in my head, almost drowning out Raven’s words, but not quite.

  “Those pains you feel in your shoulder blades are fledgling pains. We all feel them when our wings are emerging . . . You see, Ava, your father was a Darkling . . .” His voice faltered at the look on my face.

  “No!” I cried, unable to disguise the horror in my voice.

  “Is that so horrible?” he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion. “That you are becoming like me? Do you think I’m a monster?”

  “Of course not . . . it’s just I—I . . .” I stammered to a halt, searching for the right words, but before I could find them I heard Helen’s and Daisy’s voices calling my name. I turned and shouted to them that I would be there in a moment and when I turned back Raven was gone. I hadn’t even heard his wings. For a moment I wondered if I’d imagined his appearance. Perhaps it had all been a dream and I wasn’t turning into a Darkling after all. But when I turned back toward Helen and Daisy I felt the ache in my shoulder blades again and I knew it was true.

  I walked out of the woods and found Helen and Daisy on the lawn standing a few feet from the edge of the woods.

  “Daisy was worried, so we came looking for you,” Helen said. Daisy opened her mouth to object but one look at Helen’s drawn and anxious face made her close it again. “Yes, I was worried,” Daisy said. “And Helen agreed to come look for you.” She reached out her hand and took mine. “Come along or you’ll be late for the farewell dinner.”

  Helen hooked her arm in mine and we all turned to walk back to Blythewood as the bells began to ring the dinner hour. They rang us all the way home and then, when they were done, the seventh bell rang from beneath the river, its tone clear and sweet in the spring air, only instead of saying Remember me, remember me, it tolled a different tune now. You’re not alone, you’re not alone.

  Acknowledgments

  I HAVE AN entire Order of farbrente maydlakh to thank for the creation of this book. First, my daughter Maggie’s webcomic Penny Dreadful (PennyDreadfulComics.com) inspired the 1911 setting. My stepdaughter Nora was an invaluable source of historical detail, calling in her cohorts Barry Goldberg and Ben Hellwege to suggest sources for the period. Thanks to Dr. Richard LaFleur for his Latin consultation. Maggie’s friend Sarah Alpert listened to many hours of world-building, gave invaluable suggestions on the manuscript, and invented Featherbell. My intrepid editor, Kendra Levin, saw me through many revisions and tirelessly pinned down the taxonomic hierarchies of Darkling and fairy.

  Thanks, too, to Danielle Delaney, Nancy Brennan, and Janet Pascal at Penguin. My agent, Robin Rue, and her assistant Beth Miller, at Writers House, were fiery in their advocacy for this book.

  Thanks to Wendy Gold, Gary Feinberg, Juliet Harrison, and Scott Silverman for reading early drafts.

  And, as always, I couldn’t do any of this without the faith and love of my husband, Lee.