Ray dropped his hands and fell backward.
Jolie was still holding him around the waist, panting and trembling. Ray rolled over. He rose up weakly on his elbows and clutched the toby. It was still now. He listened to the sounds of the forest returning—wind in the treetops, birds calling.
Ray looked over at Jolie. She lay, winded, on her back. “What about Sally?” she murmured.
“The waterfall,” Ray said. “She might be back behind it.”
Stumbling with exhaustion, they made their way to the pool. Ray picked up the Incunabula and placed it along with the rest of Sally’s belongings in her rucksack.
Jolie pointed. “Up those boulders. There seems to be a way behind the waterfall.”
Ray followed her up the ice-slick rock. Although the spray dampened his clothes, he managed to avoid the powerful stream of falling water by staying close to the bluff and ducking beneath an overhang of ice still left by the Hoarhound’s prison. Once he and Jolie were behind the fall, he looked around at the shallow cave.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“I thought they might have been trapped by the Hound’s ice,” Jolie said. She knelt and touched her fingers to the ground. “It is all rock. There are no prints. No sign of whether they came this way.”
Ray slipped Sally’s bag from his shoulder. “But she left her belongings. At least part of them. And the Incunabula among them. She wouldn’t have done that unless she was attacked suddenly. Maybe she and Quorl ran away somewhere.”
“Then why would the Hound have come up here? It trapped itself accidentally behind the fall. It would not have come into this cave unless there was a reason.”
“So why aren’t they still in the cave?” Ray asked.
They looked at each other, and Jolie nodded. “The Gloaming.”
“Yes,” Ray said. “They crossed through this cave.”
“How can we follow them?” Jolie asked.
“We can’t! I don’t know how.”
“But you can, Ray.” Jolie stepped closer to him, looking him fiercely in the eye. “You are a Rambler. You can cross.”
“I can barely take crow form—”
“You have to believe you can.” She pointed back toward the waterfall and the spruce forest on the other side of it. “Look at what you did to the Gog’s Hound. How do you think you did that?”
“The toby,” Ray said uncertainly. “Or maybe something from this wilderness.”
“No,” Jolie said sharply. “Do you not see? You did that. You! And you can cross. How did your father reach the Gloaming?”
“By taking animal form,” Ray said.
“And Little Bill brought John Henry into the Gloaming to destroy the first Machine. You can carry me across too. Through this cave. I know you can.”
Ray took the toby from around his neck and knelt to open it up. He took out B’hoy’s feathers. Nine black feathers. A momentary ache filled his chest as he longed for his friend the crow. He couldn’t bring himself to say so, but he did not think Jolie was right. It was the toby that gave him his powers. So maybe his old friend’s feathers could guide him across.
He put the toby back over his neck and nodded to Jolie. “Okay.”
Ray took a deep breath and gazed down at B’hoy’s feathers. Then he closed his eyes and let the darkness surround him. He concentrated on the mountain above them, the roar of the waterfall behind them, the wilderness surrounding them.
He took a step forward and then another and let his body grow light. He flapped his arms and felt feathers catch the air and lift him. He opened his eyes and saw the waterfall before him. He rose up on beating wings and turned before he reached the wall of water. Soaring around in an arc, he saw Jolie watching him with awe. She laughed and turned to face the back of the cave. “I am ready,” she called.
He whooshed down and caught her shoulder with his talons. Jolie disappeared.
He flew forward, feeling her within his grasp but with no weight to hold him down.
Light flashed as he soared into the rock. The cave was gone. The noise of the falls had disappeared. He saw faint branches and leaves and a vast distance below. A deafening groaning surrounded him, the sound of an enormous tree swaying. Ray flapped hard against the wild winds, struggling to follow the branch until lights flashed once more.
He flew out into a cavern. A great wolf—the rougarou Quorl, Ray realized, although he had not seen him before—looked up with alarm and leaped to his feet. Ray drifted over him and saw Sally run to Quorl. Away from the two, over by a dark lake, stood a man with a tangled beard, dressed in little more than rags. He watched Ray’s flight with a bright smile. He looked older and stranger than the man from his childhood, but Ray knew this man. It was his father.
Ray descended between his father and Sally and Quorl. He opened his talons, and Jolie reappeared. As his feet met stone, he collapsed. Jolie tumbled and knelt, half dazed, at his side. Ray looked at his hands—for a fraction of a moment they were wings. Then they were fingers, the black receding into pink.
Sally ran to his side and took him around the neck. “Ray!” she cried. “I thought I would never see you!”
Dizzy with emotion and the effort of crossing, Ray squeezed Sally. “You found him, Sally. You did it. You found Father.”
A FEVERISH SHAKING RACKED RAY. SALLY PUT HER HAND TO her brother’s damp brow. “What’s wrong, Ray? Are you sick?”
“No,” he said. “It will pass. It’s from crossing … from taking crow form. It happened before, but it was worse the last time. Is there something to drink?”
Sally said, “We’ve nothing to drink.”
“Here, Ray,” Jolie said. She tipped the waterskin to Ray’s mouth.
Sally watched Jolie anxiously, her lips trembling to find words. After Jolie took the waterskin back, she glanced up at Sally.
Sally stammered, “Jolie … we … Quorl didn’t mean to bring the avalanche down on you. It … it was all just a terrible accident!”
Jolie nodded to the rougarou. “I know. There are no ill feelings between us. All is forgiven. Think no more on it.”
Ray felt his strength returning. He shifted, turning to look for Li’l Bill. “Father?” he called.
Li’l Bill was coming from the lake and stopped when he was still several yards away. “Ray? You are … so grown. I only remember the little boy. The one who took the lodestone, and now …” He looked from Ray over to Jolie and back. “And you, Jolie …” He gave a frail smile, a knot drawn between his brows.
Ray did not know what to do, but Jolie rushed up to him and hugged Li’l Bill. He awkwardly patted her back with his one hand, but a rush of emotion showed on his face. “Children, my mind has been clouded with darkness for so long. But now, with you all here, with the Toninyan returned, I feel it clearing.”
“The Toninyan?” Ray asked, confused.
Li’l Bill nodded toward the lake. “The lodestone I gave you. The one that is now in my rabbit’s paw. I can see that we have much to share. We ought to sit together and talk. Come.”
As they gathered in the lantern light, Ray told about Omphalosa and the pursuit of the steamcoach, his discovery of the agents’ aim and meeting up with Jolie. “I didn’t know,” Sally said. “If they had caught us …”
“They did not, thanks to your brother,” Jolie said.
Sally looked stricken with guilt until Ray said, “It’s okay, Sal. Tell us what happened to you.” Sally recounted her journey before ever leaving Shuckstack, and Ray and Jolie were shocked to hear that she had returned Nel’s leg and his Rambler powers. “Then you can save Father! You can take the rabbit’s foot—”
“Hush now,” Li’l Bill said kindly. “Let your sister finish. She’s the one that ought to explain why she can’t.”
Ray’s heart sank at those words, but he listened patiently. As Sally continued, he looked at his father, noticing how odd he looked, how ghostly he had become. At first he thought it was simply the Gloaming, since everything here h
ad taken on a strange quality. But he realized, while Sally and Quorl and Jolie and even the rock of the cavern looked more richly colored, his father seemed as bleached as something from the wastelands he and Jolie had crossed.
Ray’s attention was jerked back to Sally as she told about Mother Salagi’s counsel and their discovery. “So this spike must be driven into the Machine?” Ray asked.
“Into its heart,” Sally said. “That’s what Mother Salagi and the seers said. Father’s paw is the ‘light to pierce the Dark,’ and it has to be driven into the Machine’s heart with the Nine Pound Hammer.”
“Where is John’s hammer now?” Li’l Bill asked.
“The handle was broken,” Jolie said. “But Conker fixed it, with a branch from the Wolf Tree.”
“Conker.” Li’l Bill gave a sad smile. “John’s son. I can hardly believe it. I remember when he was born. And now you dear ones have inherited our fight. It pains me that you all have to do so. If only John and I had known what was needed. If only we had destroyed the Magog the first time.”
“All things happen for a reason,” Quorl said. “You did not have the means to make the spike then. It is your powers placed into the golden foot that have made the weapon to destroy the Machine. It is through your sacrifice that this is possible, Bill.”
He nodded grimly. “Yes. We are the wiser. But wisdom ain’t going to assure success. The dangers have multiplied since John’s death. And now Grevol is placing his new Machine at the very roots of the Great Tree. He’s killing it. And with it the Gloaming.”
Ray asked, “But if we destroy the Machine, the Tree will be healed, won’t it?”
Sally looked anxiously from her father to Quorl.
Li’l Bill’s gaze lingered on his hand and the scarred wrist where his other hand was missing. “No,” he replied. “Terrible choices lie ahead, children. Impossible obstacles. Darkness. Darkness is covering everything. The enemies must be stopped. The only one to stop the Magog and its servant is the one who has mastery over his own Darkness. You see? It must be the one who can stand against his own black clockworks.”
Ray suddenly remembered that Redfeather’s teacher, Water Spider, had said something similar to Ray before they had set off to Omphalosa. But before he could remember exactly what, Li’l Bill continued, “Unfortunately even if these enemies are destroyed, the Great Tree will still die. It has been corrupted at its roots. I saw it, and I only barely escaped. The Great Tree will fall, and humanity will fall with it, as some other evil will rise to take possession over us all.”
“But the Tree can be saved,” Quorl said, rising up on his front paws. “You said before that you knew how to heal the Tree. You said the sirens could—”
“Sirens?” Jolie said.
Li’l Bill’s face was pinched with pain, and he didn’t look up.
“It is your voice I have been hearing, Little Bill?” Jolie said.
He nodded. “The waters have a powerful connection between our world and the world of the Gloaming. I used the lake over yonder to summon the sirens.” He looked up at last at Jolie. Ray thought he saw fear welling in his father’s gray eyes. “I never imagined it would be you, Jolie.”
“My sisters heard your call too,” Jolie said. “They followed it and journeyed up the rivers until they met a Darkness. They could pass no farther and returned. Now they are ill. The Darkness has sickened them, as it did the people of Omphalosa.”
“No,” Li’l Bill said. “I didn’t mean … not for them …”
Jolie put a hand to his arm. “Fear not. My sister Cleoma brought waters from a siren well, with the hope that it would cure them.”
“And cure them it must,” Li’l Bill said. “For if they fall to the Darkness, they’ll become servants to the Gog. They would be drawn to him, needing the Darkness for their survival. Your sisters would be under his charge. And with them, his means of controlling mankind will be unstoppable.”
“What must be done?” Quorl asked. “How can the sirens heal the Great Tree?”
Li’l Bill looked at Jolie. “Only one of your sisters can save those that suffer at the Gog’s dark mechanization. Just as the waters Cleoma is bringing to the Terrebonne can save your sisters from the Darkness, it is the waters of a siren well that are needed to heal the Great Tree.”
“I know where Élodie’s Spring lies!” Jolie said urgently. “It is a great distance, but we could go there to take waters—”
Li’l Bill shook his head slowly. “A spring must be formed that touches the Great Tree where it is being corrupted. The spring can be in our world as a siren well that draws its powers from the Gloaming. The waters will cross. But it must be made where the Gog has carried his Machine across to the Gloaming. Only such a spring will have the power to save us.” Li’l Bill grew silent, his ghostly eyes lingering sadly on Jolie.
To anyone else her expression might have seemed impassive, but Ray could tell Jolie was deeply stricken by his father’s words, and he wasn’t sure why.
“What is it?” he asked. “I don’t understand. What are you saying, Father?”
Li’l Bill turned to Ray. “There is only one way to bring forth this siren spring.”
Jolie said, “My mother, Élodie, died out of her love for my father. Her place of death became the healing well that brought Conker back. To make a spring, a siren must give up her life for those she loves.”
“But it does not have to be you!” Ray said. “Another siren. Another might choose to sacrifice her life to save the Great Tree, to save us all. It doesn’t have to be you, Jolie!”
Jolie nodded, but whether she agreed with Ray or was quietly dismissing this possibility, he could not tell.
“The means of drawing forth this spring does not have to be decided now,” Quorl said. “For it would be without purpose if the Machine is not also destroyed.”
“Quorl is right,” Li’l Bill said. “You all have a role, and it will take more than courage and a good heart to face all that is to come. There is little left that I can do to help you. But there has been one thing, thanks to Sally. Come and see.”
They rose and followed Li’l Bill over to the lake, where a pair of tongs lay at the water’s edge. The lake’s surface was so smooth and black, it could have been polished stone. And it looked to Ray almost like a magic trick as his father dipped his hand in.
Li’l Bill reached around for something, saying, “Yes, it has cooled.”
“What is it?” Ray asked.
As Li’l Bill brought it out, Ray and the others had to avert their eyes momentarily from the bright golden beam. “The light that pierces the Dark,” Li’l Bill said.
Ray’s eyes adjusted to the brilliance and he saw it was a shaft of gold, long and thin and drawing to a sharp point like a spearhead. He could feel the presence, the familiar power in the object. “This was the rabbit’s foot, wasn’t it?” he said.
“And now it is the spike that can destroy the Machine,” Li’l Bill said. “It’s a terrible burden to have to give you, son. You have learned to take animal form. You can cross. So it is up to you to bring Conker into the Gloaming. You will have to hold the spike when Conker drives it into the Machine.”
“I’m not afraid, Father,” Ray said, although this was not entirely true. There were too many things to worry him to even hope that he could actually help destroy the Machine. “But Conker and the others are in Chicago. That’s halfway across the country. We don’t have horses anymore. How will we ever get to them?”
“We will have to cross onto the Great Tree,” Li’l Bill said.
“The branches that make the path back to the trunk are too brittle,” Quorl said. “It is impossible.”
“No. Not impossible,” Li’l Bill said. “I found a path that led me here. We cannot reach Chicago on the Tree. Those branches would break. But we are in a region of the Gloaming far from the dying portions. I think I could get us as far as the trunk, with your help, Quorl.”
“And from the trunk we could climb dow
n to where your pack guards the Wolf Tree’s base,” Jolie said.
“That’s still far to Chicago,” Ray said.
“I think it’s the best I can do,” Li’l Bill said. He looked at Quorl. “Can we do it?”
The rougarou lowered his scarred snout and gave a low growl. “We will have to be careful. It will be a dangerous journey.”
Li’l Bill led them back up to the tunnel, and after walking for some time in the dark, he said, “We should cross.”
Quorl said, “Hold on to my back.”
“Ray,” his father said. “You should practice carrying someone across. Can you do it again? Are you too weak still?”
“No, I can try,” Ray answered. He took out B’hoy’s feathers from the toby and found he could much more easily reach the state of mind to take crow form. As Quorl walked forward with Sally and Li’l Bill holding the fur at his shoulder, he disappeared in a bright burst. Ray circled and grasped Jolie’s shoulder with his talons.
They were on the enormous limb once more. Ray released Jolie and returned to his form, weak and a little dizzy but able to walk with Sally holding his hand. The limb was as wide as the roof of a house. Despite its size, the bough swayed, and at times they slowed as they heard deep, disquieting cracking through the howling wind.
Quorl and Li’l Bill stopped on occasion to anxiously discuss the route at precarious points, but each time, the limbs held true. Walking behind Jolie in the dark, Ray felt Sally squeeze his hand.
“Are you feeling okay?” she whispered.
He still felt weakened and a little nauseous, but he said, “I’m all right.”
“Are you angry with me?” Sally asked in a barely audible voice.
“Why would I be?” he answered.
“You told me to keep the rabbit’s foot safe at Shuckstack.”
“If you had done what I asked,” he said, “I’m not sure we ever would have found Father, and we wouldn’t have the spike. You found him, Sally. You’ve done a great thing.”
She put her hands around his waist and hugged him tightly as they walked.
“Is there something else troubling you?” he whispered.
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