The Trials of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  “What happens if I close my eyes?”

  “You miss the fun.”

  Morrigan had barely managed to check her seat belt when the arachnipod suddenly reared back, throwing her against the chair. Two great spindly metallic legs latched onto the eaves of Town Hall, and the pod heaved itself upward, lurching higher and higher toward the black, fathomless façade of the Skyfaced Clock.

  “It’s not ideal, but as an improvised emergency gateway it’s not my worst idea ever.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. “Gateway to where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Morrigan looked back through the glass dome. The ground swam yards below, and worse than that—the huge black-smoke hunters had dismounted and were climbing the tower.

  “They’re behind us!” cried Morrigan.

  Jupiter grimaced but didn’t look back. “Not for long. The Hunt can’t follow where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?”

  They arrived at the top of the tower as the fireworks display reached its dramatic climax, explosions of red and gold and blue and purple lighting up the night sky.

  “We’re going home, Morrigan Crow.”

  The arachnipod put one spindly leg right through the clock. The glass didn’t break—it didn’t even crack. Another leg went through, gently rippling the clockface like a pebble on the surface of a deep black lake. Morrigan stared, openmouthed. One more impossible thing in a night of impossible things.

  She turned back. The huntsmen were so close their breath could have fogged up Octavia’s glass dome. They reached out their skeletal arms as if to grab Morrigan through the back window and pull her downward to her death. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut—but she couldn’t look away.

  With one final heave, the arachnipod pitched forward and tumbled through the clockface, spinning over and over, throwing Morrigan into the unknown.

  The sound of exploding firecrackers disappeared. The world had gone silent.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WELCOME TO NEVERMOOR

  Spring of One

  They landed with a thud. Outside the arachnipod, a thick white mist enveloped them. All was quiet and still, as if the chaos of Jackalfax’s town square had simply ceased to exist. Morrigan felt sick.

  Was this, finally, her death? Had they died and crossed over to the Better Place? Taking stock of how she felt, Morrigan thought this was unlikely. Her ears were ringing, she was nauseated, and the cut in her palm still throbbed, crusted in a smear of blood. She peered out the window into the fog. There was no Divine Thing waiting with open arms, no choir of angelkind to greet them. Wherever they were, it wasn’t the Better Place.

  But it definitely isn’t Jackalfax, Morrigan thought.

  She heard a soft groan and turned to see Jupiter pushing himself up out of the pilot’s seat with a pained grimace. “Sorry. Not as smooth as I’d hoped. You all right?”

  “I think so.” Morrigan took a deep, calming breath and looked around, trying to shake the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow from her brain. “Where are we? What’s all this fog?”

  Jupiter rolled his eyes. “Dramatic, isn’t it? Border control,” he said apologetically, as if that explained everything.

  Morrigan opened her mouth to ask what he meant but was interrupted by a buzzing, crackling sound that reverberated inside Octavia’s walls.

  “State your name and affiliation,” boomed an official-sounding voice, amplified through a speaker that Morrigan couldn’t see. It seemed to come from everywhere.

  Jupiter picked up a small silver device from the control deck and spoke into it. “Yes, hello! Captain Jupiter North of the Wundrous Society, the League of Explorers, and the Federation of Nevermoorian Hoteliers, and Miss Morrigan Crow of… no affiliation. Yet.” He winked at Morrigan, and she gave him a small, nervous smile in return.

  A mechanical whirring sounded around them. Outside the window a giant eye—bigger than Jupiter’s whole head—emerged from the white fog on a long mechanical arm. It blinked in at them, looking left to right, up and down, examining everything inside.

  “You’ve entered from the Seventh Pocket of the Free State through the Mount Florien gateway, is that correct?” bellowed the disembodied voice. Morrigan flinched.

  “Correct,” Jupiter said into his little silver microphone.

  “Did you have permission to travel to the Seventh Pocket?”

  “I did, yes. Scholastic diplomacy visa,” said Jupiter. He cleared his throat and flashed a look of warning at Morrigan. “And Miss Crow is a resident of Barclaytown in the Seventh Pocket.”

  Miss Crow has never heard of Barclaytown in the Seventh Pocket, thought Morrigan.

  She watched Jupiter with fascination and mounting anxiety. Mount Florien gateway? Scholastic diplomacy visa? It was all nonsense. Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears, loud enough to fill the arachnipod. But Jupiter was unruffled. He answered the border guard’s questions with gracious calm, merrily lying through his teeth.

  “Does she have permission to enter the First Pocket?”

  “Of course,” Jupiter said smoothly. “Educational residency visa.”

  “Present your papers.”

  “Papers?” Jupiter’s confidence faltered. “Right, course. Papers. Forgot about… papers.… Hang on, I’m sure I’ve got… something.…”

  Morrigan held her breath as Jupiter fumbled through different compartments on the control deck, finally producing an empty chocolate bar wrapper and a used tissue. Smiling placidly at Morrigan, he pressed them up against the glass for the giant eye to examine. Like an actual madman.

  The moment stretched out in silence, and Morrigan braced herself for sirens, klaxons, armed guards breaking down the arachnipod’s doors.…

  The microphone crackled and buzzed. The voice on the other end heaved a long-suffering sigh and whispered, “Honestly, you’re not even trying.…”

  “Sorry, it’s all I could find!” whispered Jupiter in return, looking into the giant eye and shrugging contritely.

  Finally, the voice boomed, “You may proceed.”

  “Marvelous,” said Jupiter, strapping himself into the old leather seat again. Morrigan let out the breath she’d been holding. “Cheers, Phil.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” There was a muffled sound from the speakers and a squeal of feedback, as though the microphone had been dropped, and then the voice whispered, “North, I’ve told you not to use my first name while I’m on duty.”

  “Sorry. Give Maisie my love.”

  “Drop round for dinner next week, you can give it to her yourself.”

  “Will do. Ra-ra!” Jupiter clipped the silver microphone back in its stand and turned to Morrigan.

  “Welcome to Nevermoor.”

  The mist cleared, revealing an enormous stone archway with silvery gates that shimmered like heat from a stovetop.

  Nevermoor. Morrigan rolled the word around in her mind. She’d seen it only once before, in her bid letter from the Wundrous Society. It had meant nothing to her at the time, just a nonsense word.

  “Nevermoor,” she whispered to herself.

  She liked the way it sounded. Like a secret, a word that somehow belonged only to her.

  Jupiter put Octavia into gear as he read from a screen displaying notices. “‘Local time 6:13 a.m. on the first day of Morningtide, Spring of One, Third Age of the Aristocrats. Weather: chilly but clear skies. Overall city mood: optimistic, sleepy, slightly drunk.’”

  The gates groaned open and the arachnipod shuddered to life. Morrigan breathed deeply as they entered the city. Having never been outside the town of Jackalfax, she was unprepared for what lay beyond the gates.

  In Jackalfax, everything had been neat and orderly and… normal. Homes sat side by side in uniform rows—identical brick houses on straight, clean streets, one after the other. After the first neighborhood in Jackalfax had been built one hundred and fifty years earlier, subsequent boroughs were all built in, if not precisely the same
style, similar enough that if one were looking at Jackalfax from above, one might guess the entire town was designed by a sole miserable architect who hated her life.

  Nevermoor was no Jackalfax.

  “We’re in the south,” said Jupiter, pointing at a map of Nevermoor on the screen of his control panel. The arachnipod scuttled low through the darkened, mostly quiet streets, dodging the odd pedestrian here and there.

  Evidence of the night’s Eventide celebrations was strewn about the darkened streets. Balloons and streamers littered front yards and lampposts, and early-morning street sweepers collected discarded bottles in huge metal bins. Some people were still out celebrating in the bluish predawn light, including a group of young men crooning the poignant Morningtide Refrain as they stumbled out of a pub.

  “Oh beeeeeee not weeeary, frieeeend of mine

  “While saaaaailing o’er the tiiiiides of time—Pete, you’re flat, that’s—no, stop singing, you’re flat—

  “The New Age greeeets us at the shore

  “Just liiiike the Olden Age before—no it goes—it goes down at the end, not up—”

  Octavia sped through cobbled lanes, narrow alleys, and sweeping boulevards, some neat and old-fashioned and others flamboyantly hectic. They floated through a borough called Ogden-on-Juro that looked like it was sinking. The streets there were made of water, and people rowed little boats through swirling mists that rose around them.

  Everywhere Morrigan looked there were rolling green parks and tiny church gardens, cemeteries and courtyards and fountains and statues, illuminated by warm yellow gaslights and the occasional rogue firework.

  She was up out of her seat, moving from window to window, pressing her face to the glass as she tried to take it all in. She wished she had a camera. She wished she could jump out of the arachnipod and run through the streets!

  “Check that screen for me,” said Jupiter, gesturing with his head as he steered Octavia through a mess of backstreets. “What time is sunrise?”

  “It says… six thirty-six.”

  “We’re running late. Show me some speed, Occy,” Jupiter muttered, and the arachnipod’s engine roared.

  “Where are we?” asked Morrigan.

  Jupiter laughed. “Have you been asleep? We’re in Nevermoor, dear heart.”

  “Yes, but where is Nevermoor?”

  “In the Free State.”

  Morrigan frowned. “Which one’s the Free State?” There were four states that made up the Republic: Southlight, Prosper, Far East Sang, and of course Great Wolfacre, outside of which Morrigan had never before ventured.

  “This one,” he said, steering Octavia into a side street. “The Free State is the free state. The one that’s actually free. State number five, the one your tutors never taught you about, because they didn’t know about it themselves. We’re not technically part of the Republic.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “You can’t get in without an invitation.”

  “Is that why the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow stopped at the clock tower?” she asked, returning to the passenger seat. “Because they didn’t have an invitation?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Basically.”

  She watched his face closely. “Could… could they follow us here?”

  “You’re safe, Morrigan.” He kept his gaze on the road. “I promise.”

  Morrigan’s excitement faltered. She’d just seen him lie so skillfully to the border guard, and it wasn’t lost on her that he hadn’t properly answered her question. But very little about this strange night made sense. A tornado of questions swirled in her head, and all she could do was try to grab at them as they flew by.

  “How—I mean…” Morrigan blinked. “I don’t understand. I was supposed to die on Eventide.”

  “No. To be precise, you were supposed to die at midnight on Eventide.” He slammed his foot on the brakes, waited for a cat to cross the road, then hit the accelerator hard. Morrigan clutched the sides of her chair, her fingers turning white. “But there was no midnight on Eventide. Not for you. Nevermoor is about nine hours ahead of Jackalfax. So you skipped right past midnight—out of one time zone and into another. You cheated death. Well done. Hungry?”

  Morrigan shook her head. “The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow—why were they chasing us?”

  “They weren’t chasing us, they were chasing you. And they weren’t chasing you. They were hunting you. They hunt all the cursed children. That’s how cursed children die. Good grief, I’m famished. Wish we had time to stop for breakfast.”

  Morrigan’s mouth had gone dry. “They hunt children?”

  “They hunt cursed children. I suppose you could call them specialists.”

  “But why?” The tornado in her head gained speed. “And who sends them? And if the curse says I’m supposed to die at midnight—”

  “I could murder a bacon sandwich.”

  “—then why did they come early?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.” Jupiter’s voice was light, but his face was troubled. He switched gears to navigate through a narrow cobbled street. “Perhaps they had a party to get to. Must be rubbish having to work on Eventide.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Jupiter as they locked Octavia up in a private parking garage. He pulled a chain next to the vast rolling door and it descended. The air was frosty, turning their breath to clouds of steam. “Nevermoor. If it’s so great, why haven’t you heard of it? Truth is, Morrigan, this is the best place—the best place—in all the Unnamed Realm.”

  He paused to slip out of his tailored blue overcoat and drape it around Morrigan’s shoulders. It was much too long for her, and her arms didn’t quite reach the end of the sleeves, but she hugged it close, reveling in its warmth. Jupiter ran one hand through his wilting coppery updo and, taking Morrigan’s hand with the other, led her along the chilly streets as the sky began to lighten.

  “We’ve got great architecture,” he continued. “Lovely restaurants. Reasonably reliable public transportation. The climate’s great—cold in winter, not-cold in not-winter. Much as you’d expect. Oh, and the beaches! The beaches.” He looked thoughtful. “The beaches are lousy, actually, but you can’t have everything.”

  Morrigan was struggling to keep up, not just with Jupiter’s rapid-fire monologue but also with his long, skinny legs, which were half skipping, half running down a street signposted HUMDINGER AVENUE.

  “Sorry,” she panted, half hobbling and half limping from the cramp that was beginning to seize her calf. “Could we… slow… down a bit?”

  “Can’t. It’s almost time.”

  “Time… for what?”

  “You’ll see. Where was I? Beaches: lousy. But if you want entertainment, we’ve got the Trollosseum. You’ll love that. If you love violence. Troll fights every Saturday, centaur roller derby Tuesday nights, zombie paintball every second Friday, unicorn jousting at Christmas, and a dragonriding tournament in June.”

  Morrigan’s head was spinning. She’d heard stories about a small centaur population in Far East Sang, and she knew there were dragons in the wild, but they were incredibly dangerous—who would think of riding one? And trolls, zombies? Unicorns? It was hard to tell whether Jupiter was serious.

  They turned into a street called Caddisfly Alley, flat-out sprinting now down the twisting, mazelike backstreet. Morrigan thought it would never end, but at last they stopped outside a curved wooden door with a small sign reading HOTEL DEUCALION in faded gold lettering.

  “You… live in… a hotel?” Morrigan puffed.

  But Jupiter didn’t hear her. He was fumbling with a brass ring of keys when the door flew open and Morrigan nearly fell over backward.

  Looming in the doorway was a cat. Not just a cat. A giant cat. The biggest, scariest, toothiest, shaggiest cat she’d ever seen in her life. It sat back on its haunches and still struggled to fit in the frame. Its face was squashed and wrinkled as though it’d run into a wall, and it snuffled and fuffed just like a huge prehistoric version of the kitchen cats at Crow
Manor.

  If she’d been shocked by its appearance, that was nothing to how Morrigan felt when it turned its enormous gray head toward Jupiter and spoke.

  “I see you’ve brought my breakfast.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MORNINGTIDE

  Morrigan held her breath as the cat’s fist-sized amber eyes scanned her up and down. Finally, it turned and slunk back inside. Morrigan tried to retreat but Jupiter nudged her through the doorway. She looked up at him, panicked. Was it a trick? Had he saved her from the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow only to feed her to his giant cat?

  “Very funny,” Jupiter said to the animal’s hulking backside as it led them down a long, narrow, dimly lit hallway. “I hope you’ve got my breakfast on, you matted old brute. How long have we got?”

  “Six and a half minutes,” the cat called back to him. “You’re cutting it stupidly fine as usual. Do take those disgusting boots off before you go walking mud across the lobby, won’t you?”

  Jupiter held one hand on Morrigan’s shoulder, steering her straight ahead. Gas lanterns in sconces on the wall were turned low. It was hard to see much, but the carpet looked shabby and worn and the wallpaper peeled in places. There was a faint smell of damp. They reached a steep wooden staircase and began to climb.

  “This is the service entrance. Ghastly, I know—needs some fixing up,” said Jupiter, and Morrigan realized with a start that he was speaking to her. How did he know what she was thinking? “Any messages, Fen?”

  The cat turned to look at him as they reached a set of glossy black double doors at the top of the landing, and Morrigan could have sworn it rolled its eyes. “How should I know? I’m not your secretary. I said take off those boots.” With a thrust of its big gray head, the cat pushed open the door and they stepped into the most magnificent room Morrigan had ever seen.

  The lobby of the Hotel Deucalion was cavernous and bright—which came as a surprise after the dim, threadbare service entrance (although, as surprises go, it wasn’t quite in the same league as being greeted at the door by a large talking cat). The floor was made of checkerboard black-and-white marble, and from the ceiling hung an enormous rose-colored chandelier in the shape of a sailing ship, dripping with crystals and bursting with warm light. There were potted trees and elegant furniture all around. A grand staircase curved around the walls, up and up to thirteen floors (Morrigan counted them) in a dizzying spiral.