Spirit Prophecy

by E. E. Holmes

  17

  KNOCKING

  MARION, IT SEEMED, DIDN’T WANT THE OTHER APPRENTICES to know about our adventure, because I received not a gawk or a glare from any of the other girls the next day. I could not have cared less either way. I had far too much on my mind to give even the slightest of damns what Peyton or anyone else thought of my behavior. There were much bigger, more dangerous problems to deal with now.

  When Savvy saw us at breakfast the next day, I decided to fill her in. She was a part of this now, whether she wanted to be or not, because Neil had seen her with me. I decided she had to know the details, so that she didn’t try to go sneaking out on her own again.

  She listened to everything I had to say with an uncharacteristically serious look on her face, and when I was finished, she said, “Damn, Jess. If I knew you were going to be this much trouble, I’d have jumped in someone else’s shower that first day.”

  “I’m sorry, Sav,” I said. “I had no idea any of this was going to —”

  She held up a hand. “I know that. Stop apologizing. You’re my mate, and if it weren’t for you and your sister, I’d have never lasted here as long as I have. Mates stick together, whatever, you got me? Now is there anything I can do to help?”

  I blew out a long, slow breath. “I don’t think so. Well, yeah, you can stop sneaking out while Neil is still out there looking for us. Just lay low here and keep safe.”

  Savvy rolled her eyes. “Suppose I’ll have to. I don’t fancy another run in with that car. I don’t think we’d be lucky enough to walk away from it twice. Anyway, plenty here to keep us busy.” She handed me a slip of paper in Marion’s handwriting. “That’s your punishment. Two weeks of cleaning and restoring the artwork every night with Fiona. That ought to be a barrel of laughs.”

  I groaned. “I barely survive one class a week with that woman. Every night for two weeks? That’s going to be a nightmare. When am I going to get my work done?”

  “No idea, but if you figure it out, let me know, will you? I’ll be trapped in the library, filing and stacking books,” Savvy said.

  Savvy could whine and moan all she liked, but I had no doubt my punishment was worse than hers, and that Marion had taken great pleasure in ensuring it was cruel and unusual.

  “I was just thinking, if this Necromancer guy is trying to kill you, it doesn’t look good for your professor mate, does it?”

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

  §

  That afternoon, on my way to my first torture session with Fiona, I spotted Finn on the grounds. He was standing shin-deep in a hole in the ground, heaving large shovelfuls of earth onto a pile in the grass nearby. Just behind him was one of Fairhaven’s beautiful fountains, this one depicting a woman in Grecian robes carrying a pitcher of water on her shoulder. Coming to a spur-of-the-moment decision, I walked toward him until I stood on the very edge of the ditch. I waited for him to notice me, but he didn’t look up, so I cleared my throat.

  “Hi,” I said tentatively.

  He said nothing with the exception of a grunt that could have been directed at me, but could also have been a direct result of the physical exertion of digging.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Tired,” he said, wiping his shining forehead and smearing it with dirt in the process.

  “No, I mean, after the accident. Were you hurt?”

  “Mild concussion, a sprained ankle, and a few stitches. It should have been a lot worse,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. His head snapped up and he glared at me, so I clarified. “I mean, it’s good that you weren’t badly injured. I was really worried there for a few minutes, before I got you out of the car.”

  He shrugged, as though he didn’t want to dwell on the memory. I looked down at his callused, work-blackened hands. I must have imagined how soft his touch had been on my cheek. Those hands couldn’t possibly have been so gentle.

  “I’m fine, too. Not even any stitches,” I said after a few moments of ringing silence.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You know?”

  “I went to Mrs. Mistlemoore in the infirmary for a full report on your injuries,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “It was the most direct means of ascertaining your physical condition,” he said, stiffly.

  I just nodded. It did not escape me that it was also the best way to get the information without having to interact with me.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said as he heaved a shovelful of dirt onto the growing pile. “I’m digging. If you’re wondering where to find me for the foreseeable future, I’ll be right here —digging.”

  “Is this your punishment for the car?”

  “No, this is my punishment for leaving the premises without alerting a superior to my decision. Those,” he pointed to a wheelbarrow full of large square stones, “are my punishment for the car.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I…did you get in a lot of trouble?”

  He looked at me, and then pointedly at the wheelbarrow. “There are six more of those behind the shed when I’ve finished with these. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that I am in a lot of trouble.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Save it.”

  “Save it for what?” I asked.

  “For someone who gives a damn,” he said. He raked a filthy arm across his face, depositing much more dirt than he wiped away. “I tried that, and it’s only ever turned around and bitten me in the ass, so I’m done.”

  “But I think you do give a damn,” I said quietly.

  He didn’t answer, and merely continued to dig.

  “Just stop that for a minute and listen to me, would you?” I said, wrenching the shovel from his grip and tossing it to the ground, where it clattered loudly on the gravel walk.

  “Give that back to me.”

  “No.”

  “Give it to me before someone sees that I’m not working anymore and I wind up with another ditch to dig.”

  “Not until you stop and listen to what I have to say.”

  He glared at me, and for a moment I thought he might lash out, but instead he shook his head and sat, grudgingly, on the fountain’s edge, looking out over the lawns.

  “I know that you didn’t have to lie to them. I know you had no good reason to do what I asked you to do, because I didn’t give you one. So why did you do it?”

  He still wouldn’t look at me, but instead just stared intently at his fingernails as he picked, picked, picked at the dirt from under them.

  “I don’t know. I still don’t really know. I was going to tell them everything, and then I just … didn’t. I still can’t explain it to myself, and now I wish I hadn’t done it.”

  “I kept telling you that you needed to trust me, but I had no right to ask that of you. Trust has to be earned, and I haven’t been nearly honest enough with you to earn it.”

  He stopped picking at his nails and sat very still. I took this as a hopeful sign that he wasn’t completely ignoring me and went on.

  “I know we haven’t gotten along. I don’t know why we can’t just suck it up and coexist. Maybe we’re both too stubborn to depend on someone. I know I am. I hate depending on people, probably because I could only depend on myself for most of my life. Self-reliance is kind of my thing. And now I’m here, trying to figure out what the hell is happening with my life, and almost everyone is awful to us, and all I want to do is go home.”

  I chanced a glance at his face, but he still wasn’t looking at me. I still couldn’t tell for sure if he was listening. I looked away again, watching the water bubbling from the woman’s pitcher, tumbling over itself in a rush to reach the pool below.

  “I’m trying my best, but it’s hard to commit to something that tore apart my family and ruined my life. I’m trying to buy into the idea that this is my duty, but I can’t help feeling like the Durupinen owe a he
ll of a lot more to me than I owe to them. So in the end, I’m not here for the clan or the Council or whatever other bullshit. I’m here for the spirits, because I’ve seen what can happen to them if we aren’t here to help. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all of this,” I said with a bitter laugh. “You grew up in the middle of all this Durupinen stuff; it probably just feels like second nature to you.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, I grew up in the middle of it, all right — every minute of every day. Believe me, that comes with its own set of problems.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. But still, you lied to them. You could have told them about the guy who was chasing us, but you didn’t. I can’t imagine what reason of your own you would have to do that, so I can only assume you did it because I asked you to.”

  He looked away, unwilling, I supposed, to acknowledge this.

  “I just needed to say thank you for that. Thank you.”

  “You still aren’t going to tell me why I lied for you?”

  I took a deep breath. “No, I’m not. But it’s not because I don’t trust you. That may have been true before, but it’s not true now.”

  He frowned at me. “So why then?”

  “Because I don’t know the truth yet, not all of it. I have some more digging to do before I really know what’s going on,” I said.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” he asked, with just the merest hint of an upward tilt to his lips.

  It took me a moment to realize what he meant, but when I did, I burst out laughing. “No! No, I’m sorry, that was totally unintentional wordplay, I promise.”

  “Do you also promise that this ‘digging’ won’t put you into another situation like yesterday?” he asked, serious again before I could even register the change a smile made to his features; it was so very foreign to my perception of him.

  “I can’t promise that,” I said. “But I do promise that I won’t disappear again, not on purpose anyway. And if I find the answers I’m looking for, and I can confirm them, then I will tell you everything.”

  He looked momentarily stunned. “You will?”

  I smiled at his shock. “Yes, I will. We’re going to be stuck with each other for a good long time. We might as well make the best of it, and I think a little bit of trust is a good place to start.”

  He wasn’t happy, I could see that. But the nod he gave me, devoid of satisfaction, was at least accepting. He stood up, and I handed him his shovel. He took it without a word and went back to his work. I left him to it.

  §

  Three nights in a row of cleaning microscopic grime off of paintings with Fiona gave me a lot of time to think, but I still couldn’t make up my mind to tell any of the other Durupinen about Neil. It wasn’t that I felt I couldn’t trust anyone; I was fairly sure that Celeste or Siobhán would want to do everything they could to help me. But I was also fairly sure that their idea of help would be to bring the information straight to the Council, and I wasn’t prepared for that. Hannah didn’t push it. She seemed to think that, as long as we stayed safely tucked away in Fairhaven, surrounded by Caomhnóir, there was no immediate danger. And as I watched them, pacing the perimeters and practicing their martial arts on the grass, I had to admit she was probably right.

  I arrived back to the room Wednesday night, my eyes aching and tired, and made myself a cup of tea. Mackie and Hannah were bent over the night’s ream of Ancient Languages homework in front of the fire. I’d just settled into the chair beside them when Savvy burst into the room like a whirlwind, a triumphant expression on her face. I jumped so badly at her sudden appearance that I spilled hot tea all over myself.

  “Damn it, Sav, you have GOT to stop doing that!”

  Savvy ignored me and strutted into the middle of the room. “What is the one thing you’ve been wondering about for ages?” she asked.

  “Why you always have to scare the crap out of us every time you enter a room?” I muttered, shrugging out of my tea-soaked sweater and crossing to the closet for a dry one.

  “Go on. What’s the one thing that’s been driving you absolutely bollocking crazy?”

  “Just tell us what you’re on about or sod off,” Mackie grumbled, crumpling up another sheet of paper and chucking it into the fire. “Hannah, can you please show me how to do these conditional tenses again?”

  “Sure.” Hannah slid closer to Mackie, pulling a pencil from somewhere in her hair like a magician doing a sleight of hand.

  “Oi!” Savvy shouted, stamping her foot. “I’m trying to tell you I found out something important! Is someone going to ask me what it is, or not?”

  “Aren’t you just going to tell us anyway?” I asked.

  Savvy sighed the sigh of the long-suffering and walked into the middle of the room. She extracted an enormous leather-bound book from her satchel and dropped it with a resounding thunk onto the floor between us. It generated such an impressive cloud of dust that I expected, when we had all finished coughing and blinking, that it would have disintegrated entirely.

  “What is that?” I choked out.

  “Do you remember that first week here, when Peyton brought your mother up in Siobhán’s class?”

  “Yes,” Hannah and I said together. Not that we needed reminding.

  “Well, she made that snarky comment about Bindings, and Siobhán said that there was more than one kind of Binding, and many different circumstances in which they could be used. I read it in my notes last night—yes, I take notes on occasion —and it got me thinking about the Silent Child.”

  I stopped blotting my sweater and looked up at Savvy. All of the worry about Neil and the Necromancers had driven the Silent Child to the perimeters of my mind in recent days. “What about her?”

  Finally getting the undivided attention she was hoping for, Sav flung herself to the floor beside the book and went on. “Well, I started thinking, didn’t I? I mean, what if Bindings could be used in reverse, right? What if, instead of putting the Binding on herself, to keep the ghosts away from her, a Durupinen could put a Binding on a particular ghost, to keep it from communicating?”

  Even Mackie looked up from her work. “That sort of seems like the opposite of what we’re meant to do. I mean, we’re here for them to communicate with, aren’t we? Could we do that?”

  “That was the question!” Savvy said. “So after class I went to the library—”

  “Right, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Mackie said, hands raised. “Can we all just appreciate, for a brief moment, that Savvy not only knows where the library is, but entered said chamber voluntarily.”

  “Will wonders never cease,” Savvy said with a dazzling grin and a wink.

  “Of course I bloody well know where it is! Spent the last few nights of my life in there alphabetizing them little catalogue cards, haven’t I? And I didn’t go there voluntarily, I’ve still got detention hours to do. Anyway, after no small amount of searching, I tracked down this book.” She slapped the cover of the monstrous book and another mushroom cloud of dust blossomed from it. “And it told me everything I needed to know. I have officially solved the mystery of The Silent Child.” She looked around as though waiting for applause.

  “Well, get on with it!” Mackie shouted. “What’ve you found out?”

  “It’s here, listen,” Savvy said, and flipped forward into the middle of the book where she had marked a page with a torn Cadbury wrapper. “In the common course of dealings with the spirit world, the occasion may arise when a spirit who will not cross must be silenced. This is only to be expected, as spirits are often trapped in great turmoil, and cannot or will not channel their energy in a positive manner. The silencing of such a spirit may only be done in good faith, if the spirit is using its presence among the living to torment or otherwise inflict mental harm upon them. It must be borne in mind, however, that for a spirit to be silenced will cause him great distress, and should therefore be done only as a last resort, and only for the time it may take to discover another means of banishing the spirit
from the presence of the living with whom he is in conflict. If, and only if, these conditions are met, the Caging may be performed.

  “The Caging will sever the direct connection between the spirit and the living world. Although the spirit will still be of the living world, it will no longer be heard, and all attempts to communicate will be lost in silence and echo, unable to penetrate the boundaries of the Caging.”

  Hannah’s eyes were round with horror. “That’s…terrible. We shouldn’t be able to do something like that. They come to us for help and we just…trap them?”

  Mackie nodded grimly. “It does sound rather wrong. But it does say that it should only be done in emergencies, doesn’t it? Like if a spirit is tormenting someone and we can’t get it to stop.”

  “I…I guess…” Hannah said, and a shiver rocked her frail shoulders.

  “So this is it, isn’t it?” Savvy asked. “This is what happened to the Silent Child. Someone’s gone and performed a Caging on her and that’s why she can’t talk to you.”

  “It sounds right from the description,” I said. “But it can’t be! Fiona said the Silent Child has been here for centuries. This Caging thing is only meant to be done for a short time, until you can find another solution to the problem.”

  Savvy shrugged, a little too unconcernedly for my taste. “Maybe they couldn’t find another solution to the problem. Maybe they never found a way to get rid of her, so they left her Caged.”

  “No way,” Hannah said at once. “Someone would have realized and let her out, surely.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, hopping up and starting to pace. “Fiona was really surprised when I told her that the Silent Child had attacked me, remember? She’s never spoken to anyone before that Fiona knew of; that’s how she got her name.”

  “And there are hundreds of ghosts here,” Mackie chimed in. “There always have been. It’s like they’re part of the landscape now. We hardly take notice of most of them. I’ve never stopped to wonder why a single one of them is here, have you? I just sort of took them for granted. We all do, don’t we?”