Ravencliffe (Blythewood series)

by Carol Goodman

  Then we were flying over the lifeboats full of terrified, wide-eyed survivors. I saw Agnes and my grandmother with their arms around Mrs. van Beek as she wept for her husband. And I saw van Drood crouched in the hull of another boat, his cloak drawn low over his head, the portmanteau clutched to his chest. As we flew over him, he tore open the portmanteau, took out the book and rifled through the pages. When he saw that he’d been tricked, he roared, and out of his open mouth poured smoke, and the smoke turned into a murder of crows that followed us.

  We flew faster, pursued by the shadow crows, through the cold dark night. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep up the pace, or what we were flying toward . . . and then I made out in the distance the light of a ship steaming toward the wreckage of the Titanic. It was the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic. We flew toward it with the murderous crows at our heels. They came so close I could smell their burnt breath and feel their sharp beaks pecking at my skin. One tore into the Darkling’s shirt, scrabbling at the unbound book, and ripped a page away. The Darkling kicked at it savagely and plunged down toward the Carpathia. He lit down just long enough to lay Mr. Farnsworth on the deck. “He will be all right here,” he told me, “but I must lead away the shadow crows. As for you—” He touched my face so lightly and quickly it was a like a feather brushing against my skin, and bent his sad eyes down at me. “It’s time for you to wake up.”

  “But—” Before I could protest I was no longer on the deck of the Carpathia, but back in Mr. Farnsworth’s room at the Sailors’ Home. I was safe and warm, but I wanted to be back on the freezing sea. I stared at the faces of the four people in the room, even Mr. Farnsworth, who had regained the spark of reason in his eyes, my eyes filling with tears. “I saw him,” I said. “I saw a Darkling take the book.” What I didn’t tell them—couldn’t tell them—was that the Darkling who had taken the book was my father.

  22

  EVEN IF I had told them, I wouldn’t have been able to explain how I knew. I just knew. The way he looked at me, how he called me dearling—the same thing my mother called me in just the same tone of voice—his eyes, which were familiar because they were so much like my own eyes.

  “He saved Mr. Farnsworth,” I said instead. “And took the book. He was trying to lead van Drood’s crows away. But I don’t know if he survived.” Could I have been given that vision of my father because I would never see him again alive?

  “But he had the book?” Agnes asked.

  “Yes.” It was Mr. Farnsworth who answered. Omar had been right that recovering his memories would help cure him. His vagueness and confusion seemed to have fallen away. His eyes were clear and sharp. “I gave the book to the Darkling. I knew he would keep it safe from van Drood, only—”

  “Where is he keeping it?” Agnes asked the question for all of us. “If this Darkling did indeed escape with the book, and it contains the secret of healing the rift between the Darklings and the Order, then why hasn’t he brought it to anyone in the Order?”

  She was looking to me for an answer. I didn’t have one, but I had an idea who might.

  Agnes and Sam took me in a cab to Grand Central Station. On the way Sam told me all that he had discovered about the financial ruin of the van Beeks.

  “Mr. van Beek had invested heavily in the Titanic itself,” he told me. “He was sure it was a safe bet because the ship was supposed to be unsinkable.”

  He paused, and we were all silent in the cab, absorbing the awful irony. “Did you find out who talked him into the investment?” I asked.

  “Yes, a Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot of the First National Investment Firm. But we can’t pin the blame of the Order’s present financial blunders on Mr. Arbuthnot. I’m afraid he died right alongside Mr. van Beek.”

  “Oh! How awful! I suppose he couldn’t have been deliberately trying to ruin Mr. van Beek then.”

  “No, but I did discover that one of the largest shareholders in First National is Judicus van Drood. What I’m beginning to suspect is that van Drood uses hapless minions to do his dirty work.”

  “He no doubt controls them with the tenebrae,” Agnes said.

  “The way he controlled Sarah Lehman,” I said with a shudder, remembering Sarah at the end, smoke writhing out of her mouth even before she burst into flames.

  “Yes,” Agnes said. “And after they’ve done his bidding he disposes of them and moves on to his next victim. It will make it difficult to make a connection between Mr. van Beek’s financial ruin and the Order’s present investment scheme.”

  “But not impossible,” Sam said, lifting an admonitory finger. “The thing to look for is the underlying pattern. An investment in one huge project that—should it fail—will ruin the Order. I’ll get on it right away.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” I said, squeezing his hand. We’d reached the station, and the cab was having difficulty jockeying in the crowded queue to drop passengers off. It was raining again, and Agnes insisted he get me close to the covered entrance. “And thank you for finding Mr. Farnsworth. I’m so relieved he didn’t die on the Titanic. I felt so responsible since I was the one who asked him to bring the book . . .”

  My voice faltered as I realized that while I might not be responsible for Mr. Farnsworth’s death, I was responsible for the deaths of all those who had died on that ill-fated ship. I saw Agnes’s face crease with concern, but before she could waste her breath reassuring me I stepped out of the cab into the driving rain, which felt as frigid and pitiless as the North Atlantic.

  I felt cold all the way back to Blythewood, huddled in my window seat watching the rain fall into the Hudson, its dark gray water a reminder of the icy chill of the Atlantic. I barely looked up when Myrtilene, Mary, and Susannah got on a few stops into the ride, humming Viennese waltz tunes. I’d been blessedly free of Die Puppenfee for several hours. How had I ever thought I liked it? The sound of it made me feel sick now. I pretended to fall asleep after they joined me so I wouldn’t have to engage in their chatter. I soon slipped into a deep doze and dreamed myself back to the wreckage of the Titanic and that icy sea. All around me I could hear the cries of the drowning and then the beat of wings above me. Looking up, I saw my father’s face.

  “I’ve come for you, dearling,” he said, taking me in his arms. We rose above the icy water, but its chill didn’t leave me. Looking down I saw why. My body still lay on the floating plank. As I watched, it sank into the sea—

  I startled awake on the train, the conductor’s call of “Rhinecliff!” mingling in my ears with the cries of the drowning. Myrtilene, Susannah, and Mary were all staring at me.

  “Are you all right?” Mary asked. “You look like you’ve caught a chill. You don’t want to get sick before the big dance.”

  “Blast the dance!” I cried, getting shakily to my feet. I was chilled. I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again. I stepped off the train into a cold wet wind blowing off the river and hurried up the steps with Mary and Susannah twittering behind me.

  “Ava!” Susannah called. “Gillie’s over here. Where are you going?”

  “Into town,” I called over my shoulder.

  The tromp into Rhinebeck was a good mile and a half, but I couldn’t bear the idea of being shut up with those girls going on about the dance and humming those grating waltzes. I walked through the rain all the way to Main Street, turned left, and then right on Livingston Street and up three blocks to Violet House. When Ruth opened the door, she gasped. I must have looked like a drowned woman who’d dragged herself up from the sea. At least that’s what I felt like.

  “Ava! You’re soaked clean through! Come on in by the fire.”

  She dragged me through the foyer, where I left puddles of water, and into the conservatory, where a cheery fire crackled in the grate and a tea tray was laid out on the table.

  “I-I-I n-need R-r-ray—” I stuttered through chattering teeth.

&nb
sp; “Mr. Corbin?” Ruth asked. “I’ll go get him. Sit down by the fire and put this over you.” She draped me in an Indian shawl and disappeared. The aunts appeared in her stead, twittering and tsking over me like birds pecking at crumbs.

  I heard Raven’s voice saying my name when he entered the room. I tried to get up, but my legs had gone numb. Then he was at my side.

  “What happened?” he demanded, his voice harsh as a crow’s caw.

  “I—I s-saw . . .” My lips couldn’t form the words.

  Raven turned to Emmaline and Hattie, who loomed over us (even tiny Hattie looked miles tall standing over me, as if I were at the bottom of the sea looking up) wringing their hands. “Leave me alone with her,” he barked.

  The aunts stared and gaped, but they fluttered obediently away. I heard the door click behind them and then Raven was taking off his jacket. I thought he was going to put it over me, but instead he drew me into his lap and encircled me with his wings. I tried to tell him that it was too dangerous—anyone could come in and find us like this—but I was shaking too hard to speak. As his feathers touched my skin, warmth came back into my body, dispelling the awful cold in great shuddering waves. I nestled deeper into his arms, clinging to him as if the waves might pull me away, but he held onto me.

  “I’ve got you,” he said again and again. “I’ve got you.”

  When the worst of the convulsions were over, he turned my face up to his and asked again what had happened. I told him about entering the vision with Mr. Farnsworth and all that I had witnessed on the Titanic. Then I told him about my father coming for me and carrying me out of the icy water. When I got to that part he looked grave.

  “I’m afraid a bit of your soul was trapped in the whirlpool,” he said. “Your father saved you, but . . .”

  “Not soon enough?” I finished for him. “Are you saying I’ve lost part of my soul? Will I ever get it back?”

  “I—I don’t know. It’s dangerous for Darklings to vision travel. If your father hadn’t been there you might have been lost entirely.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Raven. “You don’t seem surprised that I saw my father. Did you know he was on the Titanic?” Raven looked away. “Do you know where he is now?”

  He sighed and looked back at me. “I’m sorry. I should have told you earlier, but the Elders forbid us to talk about him. He was banished many years ago.”

  “It was because of my mother, wasn’t it?”

  Raven nodded and stroked my damp hair back from my brow. “We’re not allowed to love human women—it’s how we were cursed in the first place. Anyone breaking that rule is banished from the flock. There’s talk of a community of exiles in Europe, but no one knows if that’s just a myth. Perhaps your father was traveling with the Titanic when it sank and he tried to save the souls of the dying passengers.”

  “He saved Mr. Farnsworth,” I said, a defiant touch of pride stealing into my voice. “And he saved the book. We have to find him. Would these Elders of yours know where he is?”

  “They might, but they won’t like being asked.”

  “Too bad,” I said, shivering again. The cold was stealing back. “Will you bring me to them?”

  Raven wrapped his wings more tightly around me. “Yes,” he said, “but not until you’re well. You’ll need all your strength to face them.”

  I tried to tell him I was well enough to face them right now, but before I could make my argument I fell back into the darkness—and into that icy sea—again. I dimly sensed being moved from Violet House and riding to Blythewood in Gillie’s trap, wrapped in blankets and an old moth-eaten fur rug. Nothing seemed to keep me warm as Raven’s wings had. Where had he gone? I wondered. Why would he leave me?

  When Dame Beckwith saw me she sent me straight to bed with a cup of tea and a hot water bottle. I fell into a deep sleep—and into the deep, icy sea. I could hear the screams of the drowning and see the great ship Titanic sliding into the water, sucking everything down with it, pulling me under. The force yanked me straight into the frigid water. As I sank I saw I was surrounded by the other passengers, their faces distended in horror as they were sucked down into the maelstrom. I looked down and saw the whirling water beneath me, a black pit like an open mouth . . .

  It was an open mouth. It had rows of razor-sharp teeth that turned like a grindstone. That’s what waited beneath us . . . beneath me. It was wrapping its tentacles around my legs, sniffing at me because it smelled something on me it liked. It was pulling me down into its ravenous mouth—

  I awoke screaming, flailing at the bedclothes twined around me like tentacles. Dimly I heard Helen’s and Daisy’s voices trying to soothe me, then Helen telling Daisy to run and get Dame Beckwith. “She’s burning up,” I heard her say. I tried to explain that, no, I’d burned up once before and survived it, but now I was freezing to death. Van Drood had been right: there was darkness inside me. The kraken smelled it and wanted more. It wouldn’t be satisfied until it ate me whole. They had to keep me awake, I explained to a wide-eyed, pale Helen, or else the kraken would eat me.

  “She’s delirious,” I heard Helen tell Dame Beckwith when she arrived. “She must have caught a chill in the city in all this damnable rain. I should have gone with her.”

  “I should have gone with her!” Daisy said. “It’s all because of this silly argument we’ve been having.”

  “Well, now that you mention it—”

  I lost consciousness while Helen and Daisy bickered, and I fell back into the sea, where I wrestled with the kraken’s many tentacles. When I awoke again I was in a clean white room. For a moment I was afraid I was back in the Bellevue Pavilion for the Insane, but the faces that floated over me like balloons were familiar—Miss Sharp, Dame Beckwith, Miss Corey, Helen, Daisy. They told me I was in the infirmary, that I had caught a fever but I was going to be all right. I tried to tell them they were wrong. I’d been eaten by the kraken, I’d lost my soul, I would never be all right again. I asked Helen to find Raven—at least his wings would keep me warm—and I heard her promise that she would look for him before I fell back into the sea and the arms of the kraken.

  The creature was fighting me for my soul. That’s what it did with prey. I saw the other drowned passengers struggling in its tentacles, and then finally going limp and letting themselves be eaten. I saw one woman climb right into the maw, plunging into the circle of teeth with a kind of wild, manic glee, as if glad to finally win an end to her struggles.

  And why not? a sly voice inside my head asked—van Drood’s voice. Why keep struggling, Ava? Your own father abandoned you when you were a baby, and now he’s done it again—he’s left a piece of your soul stuck in the kraken’s teeth like a stray bit of spinach. And your Darkling boyfriend—where’s he? Even your friends would rather bicker and fight than take care of you. Your father cared more about saving that book than you. Your boyfriend’s too afraid of the wrath of his Elders to come for you. And if they don’t care enough to save you, why should you keep struggling? This is where you belong, Ava, in the darkness, with me, warm inside the kraken’s belly.

  I came close, several times, to giving in, but then I would startle awake and find Helen or Daisy or Miss Sharp holding my hand.

  “Hang on, Ava,” they would say. “Just hang on.”

  And so I did. But each time I struggled with the kraken I grew a little weaker and I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave myself to those snapping teeth.

  It was a snapping sound that woke me. A sharp crack like gunfire; then another.

  I woke in the infirmary and stared at the moonlit room. Helen was snoring in the chair beside the bed, so worn out by keeping vigil that the sound hadn’t woken her.

  There it was again—a series of sharp cracks. Was Blythewood under attack? The sounds were coming from outside the window. I struggled to sit up to see better, failed, and settled on sliding off the bed and crawli
ng to the window. But when I finally dragged myself across the floor and clawed my way up to the windowsill and looked outside, I saw a magically peaceful scene.

  The rain that had been falling steadily for weeks had turned to ice. Every blade of grass on the lawn, the urns and statues, the shrubs in the garden, and every branch and twig in the Blythe Wood was coated with a sheath of ice that glimmered like opals in the light of a full newly risen moon. The cracks came from branches snapping off as they succumbed to the weight of the ice. What did it mean? Had the changelings completed their search for Rue? Had they found her? Or given up? Or been stopped by van Drood?

  I heard a great volley of crackling explosions—like firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July. Something was coming through the woods, crashing through the upper branches, scattering icicles like shards of crystal from a shattered chandelier. It burst from the woods and flew across the lawn, its great winged shadow etched on the white ice like an ebony cameo laid over ivory, straight toward me.

  I fell back from the window as he landed—and then he was beside me. For a moment I didn’t recognize him. His hair and wings were rimmed with ice, turning them white. Even his eyebrows were hoary with frost. He looked like a winged ice demon, but when he took me in his arms I knew it was Raven.

  “What—? How—? Where have you been?” I finally managed. Even though his wings were limned with ice, they were bringing warmth back into my body.

  “To find your father, of course,” he replied. “He’s with the Elders now. I’m taking you to them.”

  23

  RAVEN BUNDLED ME into my coat and boots before we left, buttoning my buttons and tying my laces as if I were a child. I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself; my fingers felt weak and clumsy.

  “When I saw how sick you were I knew I had to find your father. Only the Darkling who rescued you from the water could restore the bit of soul you lost,” he told me as he gathered me in his arms and launched us into the air. It was too difficult to talk while we were flying, so I snuggled into his arms, soaking up his warmth and watching the frozen woods beneath us. We flew north over the Blythe Wood. Looking down, I was shocked at the damage the ice storm had caused in the wood. The weight of ice had felled hundreds of branches and even whole trees. The entire forest looked like some enormous beast had ravaged through it.