On our way to the Manor, I fill in Del about Dad’s betrayal of my trust. But instead of sharing my indignation, Del’s just relieved to know the identity of the Manor’s secret benefactor. Bothered that she’s not feeling my pain, I change the topic and give her the rundown of my bizarre encounter with Gabriel and then, for good measure, show her the drawing of joyful Eydís swinging from her tree. Once again, Del’s not impressed. In my last bid to break through Del’s apparent Promise-resistant bubble, I show her the amulet that supposedly belonged to my mother. I wait for her to frown in suspicion at the amulet’s decoration of ravens circling the human heart, or at least at the fact that the damn thing came from some random dude and not from the lawyer who executed Mom’s will, but Del remains unperturbed. She even makes a pointed comment on how people in small towns are bored out of their minds and get megaweird without even noticing it.
In frustration, I decide not to share my grisly discovery of the blood vials in the Manor’s basement. Rolling my eyes, instead I ask Del politely if she’s being possessed by a body snatcher from the Boring Planet of Logic and Reason. In turn, she inquires whether I finally had my UFO Crash Moment and, if not, what was it that caused this one-eighty in my attitude toward the supernatural. I concede that she makes a good point. Ever since we came to Promise, I started seeing omens and clues everywhere. And I’m not sure what to make of this new me.
23
EYES LIKE YOURS
On our approach to the Manor, I experience a spike of déjà vu when I see Silverfish parked in front and a lone figure clad in a long, slinky red dress standing on the porch.
Once I’m out of the car and walking toward the visitor, my vision becomes blurry in the drizzling rain and some trick of perception makes the woman look like Mom. Long hair hanging around her face and shoulders … a faraway look … She came back. The woods have released her.
As I near her, the stranger’s hypnotic, ruby-red lips quirk in a maybe-smile. The exposed skin of her shoulders and arms shines bright, almost translucent, bluish veins showing through. It must be an optical illusion; human beings are not supposed to emit light.
When my eyes regain focus, I realize the woman doesn’t look like Mom at all. Her hair is black and cut short (why did I think it was long?), and her eyes are dark blue. She doesn’t look that much older than I am, except for her eyes. Del’s newly found skeptic self might laugh at me, but I think what’s staring at me from beyond the woman’s deep-blue irises is ancient. Beyond time.
Even aside from her unnerving eyes, she has the strangest face I’ve ever seen: well-shaped lips; a sharp, long nose; and chiseled elfish cheekbones made even edgier by her pixie-cut, shiny hair. No hint of makeup. But it is her lips—the shape of them—that triggers another weak half memory in me, a hint of recognition. In my vision, the woman is scowling at my mother, and her glower makes my skin crawl. The two of them—Mom and this stranger—are alike and yet the exact opposite of each other, their differences not obvious to the naked eye but visceral. Felt not seen.
Mesmerized by her electric presence, I keep staring at the visitor. And the longer I stare, the more I grow certain that something doesn’t make sense. If this is the same woman who visited my mother more than ten years ago, how come she looks so young?
Interrupting my thoughts, the woman offers her hand and, without thinking, I shake it. She emits warmth and certainty. Cautious, I let the words out. “You must be Elspeth. I met your father earlier today. He told me the two of you were close friends with my mother.” Those weren’t Gabriel’s exact words. He never said “friends,” but I want to observe Elspeth’s reaction to see what she really was to Mom.
She smiles. “Yes, I knew your mother very well. She meant a great deal to me. And to Gabriel. To a lot of … people.” Elspeth’s voice is clear and slightly accented. The latter adds to the puzzle that is Elspeth: Her father speaks in a perfect Midwestern brogue, so maybe Elspeth acquired her accent while living overseas? Or inherited it from her mother? I search for an explanation on her face, in the bold twist of her eyebrows, in the knowing turn of her lips, but she reveals no secrets. As a side note, I find it slightly odd when people refer to their parents by their first names, but that’s the least of my concerns here.
“I’m Del, by the way.” Disturbing our moment, Del offers Elspeth her hand. The woman shakes it slowly.
“Hello, Delphine Chauvet. I’m pleased to welcome you to our forgotten kingdom. We’re thrilled you decided to join Hayden on her little homecoming tour.” Elspeth sniggers at her own words before letting go of Del’s hand. “By the way, did you enjoy your reading at Angie’s? Have you met your tall dark stranger already?”
Del stares at her blankly. “How do you know about that?”
Elspeth’s eyes practically twinkle with joy. “News travels fast. It’s a small place and, you know, us small-town folk get bored out of our minds. Besides, we don’t get new blood very often around here, so your arrival has been noticed.”
Time for me to intervene before Del retaliates—I can tell she’s freaked out at last (and rightly so), biting her lower lip and hiding her hands in her pockets. It’s only a matter of time before she makes some smartass comment that’ll get us both in trouble. Normally I wouldn’t care, but a faint feeling lodged at the back of my skull tells me this Elspeth person’s not to be antagonized, that behind her cool facade hides a rattlesnake danger.
“Is it a family thing—the talking in riddles, I mean—or is it a Promise thing?” I ask Elspeth, drawing her attention back to me.
“Both, I think!” She laughs softly. “I brought you girls some food.” Elspeth walks to her car and extracts a handful of aluminium containers. She’s about to hand the food over to us when a lone raven caws overhead. Clutching the containers, Elspeth stands tall, abnormally still, and stares upward to where a white dot, luminous against the dark skies, is circling us.
“So many birds out here,” I blurt out. “We don’t get to see much wildlife in New York. I’ve never seen one, let alone two, white ravens over the course of two days before.” I might just be tired, but Elspeth’s presence makes my brain fuzzy, disoriented. I think of whales that lose themselves and get beached.
Snapping out of her reverie, Elspeth shoves the food into my hands. When Elspeth’s eyes fall on my face again, the skin on my back goes all pins-and-needles. When she speaks, her voice is heavier, more accented than before. “Those eyes of yours … In the days of old, folks would burn you at the stake, you know. Just for having eyes like that, they would. Hmm-hmm.” Spoken like she knows from experience. A memory of Mom saying the exact same thing to me—about my eyes and witch hunts, though not so creepily—makes my pulse spike.
I take a breath. Calm down. “Ah, thanks for the food?”
A pleasant smile forms on Elspeth’s lips. “I hope you like lasagna and potato bake. The only things I know how to cook.” A short laugh. When she smiles again, it’s the disembodied smile of the Cheshire cat, not connected to the rest of her face. “Why don’t you hand this over to your friend so we can have a little chat?”
Obedient, I nod and entrust the food to Del, both of us moving like marionettes, our limbs in the complete control of our puppeteer. When Del disappears into the house, I shake off my trance and meet Elspeth’s eyes. “Was that hypnosis?”
“Hypnosis? Don’t be ridiculous.” She shakes her head as if the mere suggestion of her hypnotizing us is offensive. “Just good old Niflheim compulsion. You have it, too, you know, you’ve just never used it on purpose, so it lies dormant, coming up to the surface when you least expect it.”
“Niflheim?” I repeat, the word settling nicely on my tongue, provoking a sensation of heat traveling through my body. Like that foreign tongue from my dreams. Vaguely, an audial memory resurfaces of my horseback army screaming their battle cry. For Niflheim! We’ll rise again!
Elspeth says, “Your mom and I, we went a long way back … since before you were born. Did she ever mention Niflheim
to you? Did she talk to you about your duty to your people?”
“And by ‘my people,’ you mean what exactly?”
Her face stretching in disappointed ways, Elspeth says, “Just as I thought. You know nothing. It was dangerous and reckless on Ella’s part.… Hayden, I’ll be blunt with you. Your mom and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but we did agree on one thing: that we’d combine our resources and our powers and keep trying until the day we succeed. That we’d keep at it for as long as it takes.”
“I don’t follow.”
I doubt she hears me at all; she’s too caught up in the importance of her cryptic message. “There’s something you have in the house,” she says, “something your mother left for me. Something she stole from me, actually. I want it back.”
As she speaks, I see the three vials of blood flash before my eyes. Elspeth must read it off my face, because her eyes ignite with mad fire. “You know what I’m talking about. You found it. Can I see it?”
Again there’s that pull, that enraging hold on my mind, signaling that I’m about to lose control and walk into the house so I can deliver the vials to Elspeth. I slow down my breathing and tense up, fighting Elspeth’s compulsion. If her intent taints my mind with tendrils of black smoke, I push back with the coils of my own fire, sparking like chromed steel under the sun. Compulsion, hypnosis—whatever this is, there are ways to resist it. “Why should I trust you?” I say when I regain control of my mind, earning only a slightly arched brow from Elspeth, like she’s not particularly surprised I’ve put up resistance. “If you two were as close as you claim, how come I don’t remember you at all?”
“Are you sure you don’t?” So quickly I don’t see her coming, Elspeth cups my chin with her left hand while her other hand’s ice-cold fingers touch my forehead. I’m being hurtled into deep space in a flimsy spacecraft. My heart rate accelerates.…
They say people who get struck by lightning describe the experience as being stung by a million wasps from the inside out; as being punched in the head with a heavy, blunt metal object; as burning inside out.
If Elspeth is lightning, I’ve become a tree split in half. When the first shock of contact begins to lift, I see it through the wall of pain that surrounds me: a series of unconnected images fleeting before my eyes, coalescing into a complete picture, a puzzle coming together piece by piece. I see Elspeth and Mom as two little girls, playing with wooden swords and shields in a field of rye. Then I see the older versions of Elspeth and Mom, riding battle horses side by side, grim determination painting their faces. Then it’s Elspeth and Mom tearing their way through a fog till they emerge on the other end of a vortex. They are weak but not beaten down. They wait, wait at the edge of a clearing in the woods. But the vortex is gone now. No one else is coming. Gabriel appears at their sides and the three of them leave the woods, swearing to return every night, together.
An angry caw sounds from above. Followed by another, the noise disturbing the images racing through my mind, distorting the completeness of my memory, or vision, or whatever it is.
With a jerk, Elspeth lets go of my chin as a bird collides with her head. Like in a dream, the world slows down as I watch Elspeth fight off the crazy bird’s attack. Elspeth’s regal stature is replaced by comical awkwardness, and I can’t help but (internally) laugh at the view. The bird—a white raven—loses interest as suddenly as it launched its assault, taking off in a flurry of wings and claws. Elspeth swears at it, but the bird’s already high up in the skies, moving fast.
Turning her attention back at me, Elspeth’s shaking her head, full of impatience and disapproval. “Gabriel gave you the amulet. Use it. We’ll talk again once you hear its message.”
After imparting her instructions, Elspeth gives one last glare to the skies, then gets into her car and leaves.
* * *
“Well, that was odd,” Del concludes once I join her inside the Manor. The containers full of Elspeth’s food offerings are piled on the kitchen table. While I was outside, Del brewed some fresh coffee. Now, nursing a large mug, Del studies me from her seat at the kitchen table. “That woman is something else.”
“Yeah. She is.” My tone echoes Del’s uncertainty. “I think I know her from before, from the time when I lived here. At least, it feels like I should know her.… She looks so familiar, but when I try to recall anything specific about her, my memory turns blank.”
Once again since coming to Promise, I’m not being completely truthful with Del. After all, I did have that disturbing dream-memory of Elspeth waiting for Mom by the Manor’s porch, both of their faces becoming way too intense for their encounter to be meaningless. And then there’s the tiny little detail of Elspeth touching my face just moments ago and … what? Transmitting something directly into my mind? Was it meant to be a memory? I flinch internally as I replay the deranged white bird swooping down and going for Elspeth’s face, as if to prevent the woman from touching me. What the hell is happening? And am I seriously going to entertain the idea that Elspeth has some otherworldly power? Doing that would be embracing everything I’ve spent my life avoiding.
Despite some intensifying queasiness following my weird standoff with Elspeth, I go through what happened, piece by piece: the visceral imagery of Elspeth and my mother as kids, then as teens riding those beastly horses I keep seeing in my dreams … and then the grand finale of the two women tearing their way through … what?
I must be going nuts. Del’s presence in the kitchen is the only thing stopping me from grabbing the blood vials and the amulet right now and running into the woods to test a certain out-of-this-world hypothesis.
“Maybe Elspeth’s a witch and she put a spell on you,” Del offers, her tone teasing. I look up at her sharply, but her shrugging shoulders tell me she’s joking. Whatever happened to us seems to have worn off by now, and she’s back to her nonchalant ways. Too quickly, if you ask me.
“Maybe you’re right,” I admit, studying her face for any signs of a freakout but finding none. “Though she did know your name and that you went to Angie’s.”
“Yeah, right.” Del takes a large sip of her coffee. “Like Elspeth said herself, this town is small and everyone’s superbored and they talk.”
“I hope you’re right,” I say.
“What’s the alternative?” Del shrugs. “I mean, you come to this town that used to be your home and find that almost everyone here is pretty much a weirdo. Some chick who says she was your mom’s friend stalks you while her dad gives you some trinket that may or may not have belonged to your mom. Fine, but you know what? They can’t actually force you to do anything you don’t want to do, so I say just relax and take these things at face value. You can write a book about it when we go back to New York.”
I stare at her in mild shock. “Who are you? And what did you do to my friend?”
She laughs it off. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
I pull the metal foil off one of the containers to reveal red sauce and pasta goodness, while Del discovers something resembling a potato bake in the other container. I pick up two plates and fill them up. My disturbing physical reaction to Elspeth’s presence has mostly subsided by now, but I still quiver at the sight of the food. Even so, despite all my suspicions about Elspeth, I really don’t think she’d try to poison us.
Or would she?
… When, exactly, did I become this paranoid person?
We remain silent as we pick through our food.
Del’s first to speak. “So about tomorrow. I’m pretty sure Santiago will come by the Manor, maybe even with your broody boyfriend in tow. In any case, we should both be ready, but not, like, sitting-around-the-house-waiting-for-them-to-come ready—casually ready, you know. Also, I need to know if you’ve got anything nice to wear. If not, we should probably go check out some of those local shops, because my clothes won’t fit you.”
“Come again?” I set down my fork in quiet alarm. It doesn’t even reach my mind straightaway what she’s talking abo
ut. With everything that happened to us today, the question of whether Shannon likes me has suddenly become the least of my concerns. Well, at least I’d like to think so. I say, “This better not be another attempt at a makeover.”
“All I’m asking is if you brought some nice things with you. You know, not the usual practical stuff you like so much.” She makes practical sound like an insult.
“You want me to wear nice things tomorrow evening in case Santiago comes by the house and brings Shannon with him?”
“Oh, honey, no, not in case Santiago comes. I know he’s coming here. That’s a guarantee. I’m just saying this so you’re ready in case Shannon gets over whatever Hayden-related chip he’s got on his shoulder and comes along, too.”
“You think Shannon’s got something against me? Like a grudge?”
“That much is obvious. Or it’s just sexual frustration. Or both. Probably both.”
“How would you even know? You were barely there in the tent long enough to—Ah, never mind! Doesn’t matter. I really don’t care what Shannon thinks of me. And whether or not he’s coming over tomorrow, or the next day, or…”
“Keep saying that and maybe—maybe—you’ll believe it.” Del sniggers, much to my annoyance. Our casual banter works like magic to exorcise most of the suspicions from my head, but still, a thin, dark shadow remains.
I say, “To show you how little I care, I won’t wash my hair tomorrow and I’ll wear my running gear all day.”
“Now that’s just nasty.” Del starts to laugh harder, and I can’t help but laugh, too, and together we’re so loud, it feels like the Manor is shaking on its foundation, laughing with us.
24
THE UFO CRASH MOMENT
After Del disappears upstairs to work on her group project, I retrieve the raven amulet from my pocket and let it swing before my eyes in a hypnotic pendulum motion. Gabriel’s instructions are clear in my head, while the memory of Elspeth’s cold fingers gripping my face gives me shivers. And then, of course, there are the blood vials.
What the Woods Keep Page 14