Once he turned his attention to believing me, Ben poked holes in all of my ideas. What if this? What if that? he asked again and again. I put my head on the table and thought, If only he’d been around to destroy my plans before I lost Lukas and so perfectly readied Will for Gabriel’s magic.
By the time the sun had set enough that it was difficult to tell the crows from the shadows up in the rafters, I was thoroughly frustrated and said, “But I have to try something!”
Ben tapped his finger on my worktable and shook his head. “Being patient is sometimes the best offense. You have to make sure your intelligence is the best, and that you know as much as you can about what’s around the next corner.”
“The longer Gabriel has Will, the harder it may be to get him out.”
His eyes narrowed again like he was peering into the sun, an expression I was learning to interpret as Ben weighing options that he didn’t like. “Better it be harder than we screw it up.”
That was true, and stabbed at my guilt. I nodded and took a deep breath.
“I won’t give up, Mab,” he said, almost gently. “And I think you’re as stubborn as anybody.”
“I should go back up to the house, before Gabriel comes looking for me.”
Ben sighed through his teeth. “Back into the cage for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded and said, “I’m gonna go … outside for a second.”
I watched him, hoping he was enjoying enough wide-open freedom that sleeping in the cage wouldn’t make him angry again by the time morning came.
While Ben was outside, I dragged the plastic bin with all the remains of my homunculus away from the wall and dumped it out. I spent a few moments arranging it, setting up some old sketches of regeneration runes and my notes from last month when I’d begun to create the doll—in case Gabriel came down when I wasn’t here, he’d have evidence of what I was supposed to be doing.
The crows hopped around me and the remains, nudging at them with their beaks and claws. I said, “Stay here with Ben, keep him company. I know even your strange presence will be good for him—so he doesn’t feel alone.”
Two crows angled their heads up at me, questioning.
“I’ll be fine.” I offered a smile.
“Are you talking to them?” Ben asked from behind me.
Turning, I said, “Of course, and you can, too.”
“Hmm.” He frowned, and reluctantly climbed back into his cage.
After I re-formed it around him I promised to bring food and more water at dawn. He held on to the cage as he had earlier that afternoon, but loosely, and leaned his forehead against one of the bars. “Be careful,” he said.
It felt like he was only protecting an asset, but I smiled just a little before I left him.
The forest was all purple and midnight shadows as I walked up the hill. I skimmed my hands along tree trunks, reached up to cup leaves and say hello. We whispered to each other, me and the trees and the wind, and I tried to imagine it was all as it should be for a moment: all of us connected because I was the Deacon and this was my land. I knew the roots, and I knew the patterns here, but where I should have been joyously diving my energy into the earth and drawing back out rejuvenation, instead my thoughts were sorrowful. I wished to reach in and find Lukas’s spirit, surround him with myself and promise he would be free, but Gabriel would know. Gabriel would sense it the moment I neared the garden, and I did not want him to shield Lukas, to cut the boy off completely from the rest of the world.
I paused, wound my hand around a thin birch branch. How was Lukas receiving sustenance? Gabriel would have to answer that, or I’d poison everything he ate, lay sleeping traps in all the corners of the house, until I managed to knock him out and dig Lukas free. And then I’d either have to leave Will to Gabriel while I ran with Lukas, or—or—I didn’t know.
The birch branch snapped, and the force shocked up my arm. Biting my lip, I moved on through the darkness, and with every step my heart told me that Will would say I should save Lukas. That I should let Will go, if I could free everyone else. He’d never let me choose him.
I didn’t want to choose at all.
There had to be a way to free Lukas and Will both, to best Gabriel at his own twisted game. Gabriel had taken it all from me in one move, and I would take it all back from him the same way. This was my land. My responsibility.
I broke out of the forest in a burst of energy, and there he was: Gabriel, standing in Will’s body, directly over Arthur’s grave.
Only dim white stars and the lamps from the parlor lent any light to the yard, but as I approached, I saw the glint of tears on his cheeks. He saw me, and one half of his mouth quirked up. “Amused, Mab?” His voice was hollow.
Standing beside him, I kept my eyes on the roots of Granny’s linden tree. “Never here. The two people I love most in the world rest in this earth.”
“Two?” He made no motion to hide his tears or wipe them away. Nor did he look at me.
“Arthur, of course, and Granny Lyn.”
“Together even in death,” he said with a bitter cast to his frown.
I cupped my hands around my elbows, shivered as an unusually cool breeze slipped down around us. “You could always join them.”
Gabriel smiled.
“He wouldn’t approve of what you’ve done,” I said. “If you love him so much, you’re disappointing him.”
“What makes you think that? Arthur knew me in a half dozen different bodies, and loved all of them.”
The thought was a snake curling around my heart. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you will.” He shrugged, a careless, lazy gesture that did not suit Will’s shoulders. “I loved him, and Evie took that away.”
“I love Will, and you’ve taken him from me.” I said it breathlessly, and fixed my eyes on one knot halfway up the linden’s trunk. My knees weakened and I felt myself trembling as I thought about what I’d just said, and about how close he was, how near to my bare arm Will’s arm was, how easy it would be to lean in and touch it.
But Will was not here.
Gabriel sighed sorrowfully. “Mourn him, Mab, because he is gone. There is not a whisper of him in my mind. The boy did not even hold on for a single day. Save your love for a worthier man.”
“No.” I stepped away from him, hugging myself. I wanted blood covering my hands. I wanted to tear into Will’s chest and hold his heart until I found him.
“Eh. As you will.” Gabriel knelt and put his hands against the grass. “Do you have any bits of him left, Mab? Of Arthur? Or is he all transformed into the world?”
I dragged myself away from hurting, shut my eyes tightly. “Tell me how you are keeping Lukas well, and I will give you an answer.”
“Bargaining now, are we?” Gabriel looked up at me with Will’s red eyes.
I waited.
Standing very near to me, Gabriel murmured, “I keep him well alive, as I kept myself alive. Energy from the sunlight and rain, through the roses. His body will live for months like this. I know.”
“You’re certain.”
“I give you my word. I need him that way, or what kind of familiar would he be?”
Eyes shut, I nodded. “I’ll give you what I have.”
Granny had been gone for six months when Arthur came out of the Pink House just after dawn and found me eating a breakfast of almonds and dried apricots with the crows under her linden tree. He was naked except for a pair of drawstring pants, with his hair down about his face and the thin blood tattoos encircling his wrists just like mine, bright with fresh magic. He knelt beside me, and I offered him my handful of almonds, which we shared in silence.
In the quiet morning, we listened to the wind whisper through the forest, to the early songs of bluebirds and chickadees. After I’d flung the last of the nuts up for the crows, Arthur slipped his hand beneath mine. “I’m leaving, Mab,” he said softly and simply.
I knew he meant more than a dr
ive to the ocean. This had been coming, building up in his every action and expression, for weeks. Without looking at him, but squeezing his hand, I asked, “Why?”
With his free hand, he smoothed the wild curls back from my face. “I’ve made all my mistakes, and lived all my consequences. I’ve loved and lost, and felt the long pain of betrayal. And I finally have you, who will make different mistakes, who will be beautiful.”
“I don’t want you to go.” A great emptiness opened up beneath me, and we sat at the edge of it, just Arthur and I.
“I’ll always be a part of the land, a part of you.”
“She wouldn’t want you to stop living.”
“Ah, Evelyn. Yes, she would want me to listen to my heart.”
I tugged my hand out of his. “I don’t believe your heart is telling you to leave me.”
Arthur’s voice shifted, became hollow. “All the people I’ve loved in three hundred years are dead. All my long family, gone. Vanished forgotten into the world, or died, or killed each other.”
“I’m here! You love me.”
“I do.”
“I’m not ready.” I clutched at him again, at both his hands. The crows flapped their wings angrily as my emotions translated.
“You are.”
“Arthur!” Tears smeared my vision until he was only a point of light in the shaded morning. I dashed them away.
“I am tired, little queen.”
A sigh rattled out of me and I shut my eyes.
“It is time for me to be with all of them again,” he said, spreading a hand to indicate the earth. “The blood is yours now, Mab, all the beauty of the world. Take it.”
He kissed me gently on the lips and on the forehead. He pulled me to my feet and added, “And please destroy those roses, for your granny’s sake.”
I wished now that I’d asked more, pressed for answers—why didn’t he destroy them himself? What did they have to do with Granny Lyn? Could he truly not have known about Gabriel? But in that moment, I’d been losing my Arthur, and nothing else mattered.
For him, I had spilled blood into my palms. Arthur spread out near the linden tree and let go of all his long life. I pressed handprints into his chest, and whispered his name as my blood darkened against his skin. From those two points, death spread across his body. The flesh sank into his bones, and his bones turned to dust. They sank into the earth, and tiny violets sprang up, facing the sun.
The final spark of his power made the wind howl, shaking the circle of oaks, and I felt it burn inside me. I bent to the earth and kissed it; I lay down and felt the hill tremble. The earthquake ripped outward, marking Arthur’s passing like the world itself cried.
Nine days later, the violets had begun to wither, and so I gathered all of them into my skirt and carried them into the house.
A quarter of the flowers I baked in the oven, gently, to preserve as much color and scent as possible, later to be crushed into powder for spells. The second quarter I boiled, throwing in ginger and a vanilla bean. Drops of the mixture went into all manner of tonics. Lotions and soaps, too.
A third quarter I put into a basket and took onto the roof that night, where Arthur and I used to watch the stars. I cradled the basket in one arm, and with my other hand lifted out handfuls of violets. I offered them to the wind and they were snatched away, tossed up in curlicues, just specks of pale purple against the infinite sky.
The last of the violets I kept.
I pressed them between the pages of books in the parlor: The Complete Works of Walt Whitman, Paradise Lost, Beloved, and A Wizard of Earthsea, because they’d been Arthur’s favorites. He’d read them out loud to me when I was a girl, sitting on the edge of my bed, making different voices for all the characters and pausing to explain how Ged’s magic was or wasn’t like ours. Mostly while he read I imagined other things, and always fell asleep quickly, eager to escape to my own dreams. But I’d never asked him to go. I drifted away best to the rhythm of his voice, no matter what words he spoke.
It was into the parlor that I took Gabriel. I pulled down Paradise Lost because it seemed the most appropriate, and held it out.
He took it in Will’s hands, brushing a finger along the embossed title with more reverence than I’d seen anyone show a book. With a little sigh, he opened it up, and the pages parted with a quiet creaking. Three violets, flattened and pale, stared up from the poem. Gabriel lifted the page to his face and breathed in.
“There is nothing of him here,” Gabriel said, closing the book. “All the magic is gone.”
All the magic is gone.
I stared at Gabriel as he pressed Paradise Lost to his chest like it was the most precious thing.
I stared, because I suddenly knew how to destroy him.
FIFTY-SEVEN
MAB
The next morning I went to the barn armed with water, cold chicken, and bread, as well as a pile of clothes to offer Ben. My plan had rolled through my head all night; I’d examined it from all sides, pulling it this way and that until the first rays of sunlight slipped through my window. But the more certain I became, the more sure I was that this was the path, the more a tiny part of my heart hoped that Ben might find a flaw.
I nudged open the barn door with my hip. “Ben?” I called as my eyes adjusted to the dimness.
His answer was quiet and strung with tension. “They’re up to something.” He stood up at the front of the cage, hands encircling two of the roots loosely.
I put the plate of food and pile of clothes down atop a crate and followed his gaze.
Five of the crows waited on the worktable, watching me with their heads cocked at the exact same angle. Four hopped anxiously on the ground beside the earthen remains of my homunculus.
“What are you doing?” I crouched beside them.
All nine gave an agitated squawk.
One of them on the table scratched the wood with his claw. I glanced up. He stood beside the can of pencils and blood-letters. Delicately, he tapped the tip of a lancet with his beak. “Blood? You want blood?”
As I stood, Ben said, “They stood around that dirt all night.”
The crow carefully bit the lancet and drew it out of the cup. He flew to my shoulder and landed as gracefully as he could. His claws punctured my skin, bringing familiar pain and causing blood to trickle down my arm. I held out a hand, and the crow dropped the lancet into it. It was a steel medical lancet, plain and sharp.
As I contemplated the blood-letter, all nine crows met on the ground, surrounding the pile of dirt that had been my doll. The one who pushed off my shoulder landed in the center before turning to me and holding his wings out wide; exactly the pose of the crow I’d pinned to the doll’s chest with the antler.
“You want me to stab you,” I whispered, feeling for a moment as if my heart stopped pumping and the world stopped turning.
None of the crows moved. There were only nine of them, and in the past two weeks they hadn’t added again to their number. How could I kill another one now? When they dwindled so?
Behind me, Ben shook his cage. “Think about this.”
But I suspected the crows already had, all night even, and just as I’d given Ben my trust by opening the cage, I needed to prove to the crows the same. So I knelt, pinching the lancet in my fingers, until the blood from my shoulder slipped all the way down and smeared into the metal. “As you wish,” I said.
The crow’s wings shook, and I could hear the roar of blood in my ears. I didn’t know what they were doing or why they were asking this of me, but I trusted them, and did not hesitate as I jabbed the lancet into the crow’s breast.
All nine cried out as one.
I pulled out the lancet and backed away as the crows leapt together. They brushed their wings across the bleeding chest of their fellow, dipped beaks into it until they were a teeming mass of black feathers, making small sounds of anguish, little barks and purrs, and then they all cried out again. A shiver stole down my back, lifting the hairs along my arm
s.
The crows seethed together, and I wasn’t certain what I was seeing, until they weren’t nine crows any longer but a single large body covered in feathers and wings and beaks and claws.
My hands pressed against my mouth, and I heard Ben’s strangled grunt. The crows were transforming! I smeared my bloody shoulder and flicked tiny drops of my powerful blood over them in benediction. I said, “Take my power, friends, become what you dream, bone to bone, feather to flesh.”
The body of feathers rolled like boiling water, and behind me Ben whispered a stream of the worst words I’d ever heard.
And then a man’s body lay there, dark as the bones of the earth, with feathers for hair and fingernails as black as a crow’s claw. Not fully human, but with arms and legs, lips, rounded ears, Adam’s apple, chest and shoulders, hips, and everything in between.
I fell to my knees at his head, my hand hovering just over the delicate-looking feathers that sprouted from his temple. “Reese?”
His eyes snapped open, bright blue turquoise like the stones I’d chosen for my homunculus, and a hand grasped at mine.
WILL
The image-memory looped in the back of my mind like a scratchy old radio signal or SOS.
The air under my wings was thick with summer. Her hair shone like a piece of the sun had broken off and fallen to earth. The crow part of me forgot everything else for a moment and zeroed in on it. Shining. Glowing. I fanned out and surrounded her with all my bodies. Landed in the tree at the top of her tower. She turned up her face and spoke. I opened all my mouths and spoke back.
When she offered me a strand of that hair, I was hers.
I was hers I was hers I was hers.
My body hurt all over. Hit by a car and left on the side of the road hurt. I should’ve been used to it.
The last thing I remembered clearly was the quiet in Mab’s bedroom. Only then I’d seen my body on the floor, crumpled up to be tossed out with the trash.
I was hers.
Images flashed one after another: the ground far below, a graveyard, Mab looking up into the branches of a tree, me kissing her—only not me—a white farmhouse with a tree out front, a teal truck, the graveyard again. On and on until I was dizzy with them. A girl with blue eyeliner, an old man in a baseball cap, my body—my body—my body with bloodred tattoos I knew from my dreams. Mab’s yellow hair. Pulling me down.
The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) Page 28