Lava Red Feather Blue

by Molly Ringle

  At the bottom of the box lay a little glass bottle containing a transparent violet-blue liquid, stopped up with a cork. Merrick held it to the sunlight, squinted, and, despite his professional curiosity about what might be a perfume, decided to be smart and not open it and sniff it.

  These, not the journal, were surely the real treasures. Finding a shocking historical document might gain him some renown, if he chose to share it. But a box full of magical charms created by Rosamund Highvalley? Those he was keeping. No way would he hand them over to the passel of crooks in the government offices in Dasdemir.

  He set the bottle down and returned to the book. The last drawing in its pages was something he recognized: the immovable bed, in the Canopy Bedroom. Next to it, she had written the words To Lava Flower and a sketch of a flower.

  The flower sketch appeared to match the wooden bead from the box. It was a bit larger than an Eidolonian cent, had a hole in its center, and was carved into the five-pointed shape of a lava flower, a native flowering succulent that grew in lava beds.

  Lava Flower, not Lava Flow, but …

  Maybe she was referencing the Lava Flow charm, which would be a useful thing to bring along when facing the risk of fae enchantment. Calling it “lava flower” could have been a play on words. And perhaps the charm wasn’t this bead, but the bead was the key to unlock its hiding place—which could be in the immovable bed. Merrick could find it and use it to cure his father.

  His hands tingled with the desire to rush to the Canopy Bedroom and start searching.

  But he had work to do in the perfume lab with Cassidy. His exploration would have to wait.

  After setting everything back in the box, he carried it to the house. He trotted up the stone steps to the tall front door, shouldered it open, and threw his weight against it to shut it once inside. The whump resounded upward into the rotunda. Highvalley House was a huge round building, three stories of red and black volcanic stone topped with a dome. Its style was allegedly inspired by Radcliffe Camera at Oxford University, though Rosamund had intended it from the start as her countryside residence rather than a collegiate library.

  Merrick strode out across the light-and-dark-brown checkered tiles. Wisps of dog, cat, and rabbit hair swirled in the corners. Cobwebs laced themselves between the tops of the pillars holding up the second and third floors, and the glass dome had become spotted and grimy. Merrick supposed Rosamund had kept the place cleaner than they did, requiring nothing but a flick of the wrist and a burst of magic. None of the Highvalleys after her had possessed quite that much power. Nor had they retained their status as nobility—he and Cassidy, despite owning Highvalley House, had only meager savings and the modest income from Mirage Isle Perfumes, and no connection to the palace anymore.

  A scampering of claws echoed through the hall. Jasmine, their corgi, shot out of the kitchen and skidded over to circle Merrick’s ankles, yodeling in delight.

  “Shh.” Merrick bent to pet her between the ears. “Jaz. Hush it up.”

  “Merrick?” Cassidy stuck their head out of the door to the perfume lab, on the north side of the ground floor. “Where have you been? I’m doing all the work here.”

  He used Jasmine as a shield to hide the box, which he set on the floor next to her. “Sorry. I was in the garden. You’re right, that gargoyle’s broken. You could probably repair it if you want.”

  “Ugh.” Cassidy waved a white strip of paper under their nose, probably sprayed with one of their Water Festival scents. “It was hideous. Not sure it’s worth it.”

  “True. Well, I’ll be in soon.” He waited until Cassidy vanished back into the lab, then he grabbed the box and bolted up the stairs.

  He’d show Cassidy the box eventually. But they’d only talk him out of using anything in it. He just wanted to investigate a little first.

  No harm in that, surely?

  CHAPTER 5

  BY ELEVEN O’CLOCK, CASSIDY AND ELEMI HAD gone to bed in their rooms on the second floor. Merrick’s room was on the third floor, same as the Canopy Bedroom. Using the flashlight on his phone, he crept along the curving balcony above the entrance hall. The lava-flower bead, threaded onto a red string, was tied around his wrist so he wouldn’t drop it under a piece of furniture. Barefoot, he kept to the rug runner that topped the polished stone floor to deaden his footsteps. Their Flemish giant rabbit, Hydrangea, who usually slept on a blanket in Merrick’s room, followed a few steps behind, occasionally pausing to nibble the rug. She limped a little, one of her front paws still bandaged from a scuffle yesterday with the cat, but kept up with him easily.

  Dew misted the skylights in the library; starlight filtered through in a fuzzy glow. He continued past the bookcases and on to the Canopy Bedroom, almost stepping on Hydrangea when she hopped in his way. She jumped aside, affronted, ears twitching, then was diverted by a magazine on the floor, which she began chewing. Merrick turned the brass doorknob and entered the bedroom.

  His flashlight splashed along the faded colors of the Turkish rug. He considered switching on the overhead light, then, with a glance at the window, opted against it, in case Cassidy woke up and looked outside and wondered why a light from the house was shining on the trees. He picked his way between a rocking chair, a trunk, and a settee, all banished from other rooms, and reached the bed.

  The entire bed frame, including posts, canopy, and lion’s-paw feet, could not be moved, taken apart, chipped, dented, or even painted over. It imperviously resisted all such attempts. Its posts were decorated with carved figures with closed eyes and swords held pointed down their bodies. Cassidy and Merrick’s grandmother had set a mattress on the bed frame with a sheet tucked over it to make it look less abandoned, and there it had stayed.

  She had died seven years ago. By then Cassidy, Elemi, and Merrick lived here too and had converted the ground floor parlor into a perfume lab, with her blessing. Whatever this piece of furniture concealed, it likely wouldn’t live up to the tales his grandmother had spun about the house’s hidden magic.

  A pang touched his heart. He imagined her voice urging him on: Well, see what you can find! Show me!

  On his knees on the mattress, he examined the wooden headboard by flashlight. It stood almost six feet high, coming to a rounded point in the middle, its edge carved into curls. He couldn’t find any whorl in the carvings that looked like a lava flower, nor anything that seemed to be a keyhole of sorts, assuming this bead was meant to be a key. He pivoted the light toward a bedpost. His other hand settled on the headboard. The bead, on its string, clicked against the wood.

  A crack resounded through the room, a jolt that started at his fingers and slammed through his whole body, like someone had struck the headboard with a giant hammer. Merrick jerked his hand away. The bead and the bed both seemed undamaged, as did his hand, aside from tingling a little.

  Then he lifted his gaze, blinked, and refocused.

  The headboard was shimmering, disappearing. The posts, canopy, and mattress remained; only the headboard had turned into … a window? A portal? The shimmer was clearing, revealing a tangle of foliage, with a starlit space beyond.

  The hairs lifted on his arms. He leaned closer. He couldn’t see through the vines, aside from those gray fragments of air. Nothing moved, and all he heard from within was the faint rustle of leaves. He smelled fresh greenery and old stone.

  He had heard of portals, but never seen one. Only the fae could create or control them, along with one or two legendarily talented witches in times past, who had worked for the government or royal family.

  One being Rosamund Highvalley.

  Merrick reached through the space where the headboard used to be, breathing shallow and fast. This was probably very stupid; something could bite his fingers off, or seize him and drag him in, or …

  Cool air bathed his hand. His arm felt squeezed or stretched at the threshold, exactly the way people described the bodily effect of moving through a portal. He let his fingers brush the leaves, then yanked his hand b
ack and waited. No spell overtook him, and all he found on his fingers was a trace of dust.

  Wiping it off on the sheet, he frowned. With the headboard gone, how would he close the portal if he wanted to? He could hardly leave it like this. He touched the flower-bead to one of the bedposts, and the portal vanished, sealing itself back up into headboard shape. Feeling its loss like a pang, he immediately touched it again with the bead.

  It reopened gamely. He stared at the curtain of leaves. They fluttered a little with the gust created by the portal opening, then fell still.

  He slid a hand into the tangle of vines. They resisted, tendrils catching and tearing. He went in with both hands. The rustling sounds echoed beyond, as if it were a cave. Where was this place? Somewhere within the fae realm? If so, he hoped to the powers above that he wasn’t attracting the attention of something monstrous that lived in it.

  For a moment he thought uneasily of the spookier varieties of fae. Whitefingers, who lurked in birch forests and could cause insanity or death with one touch of their long bone-white fingers. Kelpies, who came surging out of lakes and streams to devour people. Fair feasters, who enchanted humans into falling in love with them, then slowly killed them by feeding upon their blood over the course of days or months.

  He made himself stop thinking of those.

  He’d begun leaning on the vines while trying to part them, teetering on his knees on the head of the mattress. Then a thick vine gave way, dropping out from under his elbow. Merrick went toppling into the portal.

  He landed on flat stone with a grunt, a few feet below. In panic he leaped back up to make sure the portal hadn’t closed behind him, but no, there the spare bedroom waited, beyond the vines. He reached through to touch the mattress, to reassure himself. Then he turned around.

  With a shout of terror, he scrambled back against the wall.

  Stone walls enclosed the room. The floor was a mosaic of colored tiles. A seven-sided glass window in the high ceiling let in the diffused light from the night sky. On the stone bier a few paces away lay the body of a young man, formally dressed, one hand on his chest, the other on the iron sword at his side.

  But not a dead body. Not exactly.

  He recognized this place, this sleeper. Any Eidolonian would.

  This was Prince Larkin’s Bower, in the heart of the palace, honored and guarded at all hours, no one allowed to enter its sanctity since it was sealed up in 1799.

  And Merrick was inside it.

  CHAPTER 6

  ALL THIS TIME, IN THEIR SPARE ROOM, A PORTAL had existed, linking up Highvalley House, on the east coast of the peninsula, with Floriana Palace in Dasdemir, fifty-some miles away on the west coast.

  Merrick threw a glance at the glass door where tourists came to look in on the sleeping prince and leave their flowers and sweet-dream charms. It was nearly midnight; the bower would be closed to the public. But wasn’t it guarded around the clock? Surely the guards would see him.

  All he could see in the door was a dark reflection of the bier. One-way glass? That couldn’t have existed in 1799, but maybe Rosamund had designed it magically.

  After he stood frozen for half a minute, curiosity overtook him. He tiptoed toward the door. As he got nearer, he discerned regular vertical folds through the glass, and huffed a silent laugh. Curtains. He remembered now. The palace guard drew a red velvet drape over the glass at night; it was part of the protocol, the way flags had to be taken down at night in some countries. The drape had been tied back at the side of the door during his field trip in high school.

  The guards outside couldn’t see him without opening the curtain, and as nothing had happened inside Larkin’s Bower for over two centuries, they would have no reason to look. As long as Merrick stayed quiet, he ought to be safe.

  He swiveled and approached the sleeping prince as cautiously as he had approached the door.

  There was likely no Lava Flow charm hidden here after all. Rather, Rosamund must have created the portal for the last step of her ambitious plan, wherein she would release the prince after dealing with the problem of Ula Kana, then appear with him triumphantly, a grand public surprise to restore her damaged honor. Her plan had fallen into oblivion, however, because although she obviously had the magic ready to release Larkin, she never had been able to arrange an alternate prison for Ula Kana and had subsequently disappeared. Thus Larkin had been abandoned.

  Merrick drew near enough to touch the prince, though he didn’t dare.

  The bier was draped with an Eidolonian flag in the national colors of lava red and kiryo-feather blue. The island’s native kiryo bird, small but clever and musical, had been chosen as a symbol of the vulnerable but artistic humans who had settled here; while the lava represented the unstoppable earth-deep forces of the fae.

  Larkin wore clothes in the same shades. Small jewels glinted all over him: in his earlobes, the medals and pins on his sash, the rings on his fingers, and the hilt and scabbard of his sword. He was dressed in the eighteenth-century version of Eidolonian “tatters,” or ceremonial wear: long jacket, tunic, knee-length breeches, cape, and sashes around waist and chest, all with artfully tattered hems, meant to flutter as one moved. Symbolic of the island’s winds, waves, and volcanic flames, tatters also paid homage to the fae’s gossamer garments.

  Larkin’s russet hair lay smooth below him, down to the middle of his back, some of it gathered in a topknot held with a circlet of gold and jewels, their shine dimmed with dust. Dust lay thick on his eyelashes too, and the ridges of his lips. You couldn’t really tell how much dust there was from outside the glass.

  A long-forgotten memory returned to him. Before a field trip to the palace at age fourteen, Merrick had seen only artists’ portraits of Prince Larkin, such as the one in their textbook, because photos of the bower always came out blurry. Magic often had that effect on photography. In the portraits, Larkin was posed with one foot forward like a dancer, and had close-set eyes, too much forehead, orange hair with an unlikely amount of wave and gloss, and lace spilling out the front of his vest. Merrick, along with many classmates, had made fun of him.

  Then they had come here and seen him in person, and Merrick had fallen quiet, because the prince didn’t really look like that. He looked like a real person, with the normal amount of forehead, deep red hair that people said was a throwback to his redheaded Turkish ancestor Orhan Dasdemir, and very nice eyes, to judge from their thick brows and lashes. He was beautiful. Merrick had become fascinated with him, and felt oddly moved to see him lying there, untouchable. Not dead, but forever enchanted.

  When one of his friends had noticed him staring, nudged him, and said, “Bet you want to kiss him and wake him up, Highvalley,” Merrick elbowed him hard enough that the friend yelled in pain and they both got dragged out of the group by their teacher and sent to wait by a pillar.

  Larkin’s hand, upon his chest, bore a jagged white line edged with brown, slashing from knuckles to wrist. Merrick remembered the story, reinforced by one of the informational plaques outside the bower.

  When Ula Kana’s forces attacked the palace during the Upheaval of Dasdemir, Prince Larkin helped fight them off as long as he could, then jumped through a glass windowpane to escape the fire, sustaining cuts and broken bones. After the attack, the court exo-witches offered to heal his scars completely, but Prince Larkin declined, saying, “I would not go unmarked when so many lost their lives.”

  It would never occur to Merrick to be as noble and self-sacrificing as that. He didn’t even feel comfortable imagining being that kind of person. But he was certain that kind of person should not have to lie here unwillingly under a spell forever, with dust in his eyelashes.

  Merrick bent and softly blew a puff of air across the prince’s face. Dust motes swirled up and scattered into Larkin’s hair.

  Touching him seemed somehow taboo, not to mention he had no idea how Rosamund had intended to wake Larkin. Her journal hadn’t explained. Some spell, surely, or one of those magic-imbued c
harms from the box. But she had been that rarest of types, a triple-witch, with all three kinds of magic—exo, endo, and matter—whereas Merrick was just an endo-witch and couldn’t affect someone else. He doubted he could do a thing to change the sleeping spell, especially since it was bolstered by fae magic.

  From the pocket of his pajama pants he took a handkerchief, a square cut from an old T-shirt, and reached out with a trembling hand to wipe the dust from the prince’s forehead. A layer of it came away, a gray line of fuzz on the cloth. Larkin’s skin underneath looked perfectly healthy, like he truly was just sleeping, though he didn’t appear to breathe.

  Was it true he was warm? The professors of magic, at Ormaney University, claimed Rosamund had suspended him perfectly, between heartbeats and breaths, nothing damaged or changed in all this time, not even his body temperature. The energy had to come from somewhere, students had argued, and theories had flown back and forth about how it came from the jewels he wore, from the earth, from the flowering vines, from the sun and moon through the skylight, from all of those maybe.

  Merrick delicately wiped the dust from Larkin’s eyelashes, then hesitated. He turned his hand, still holding the handkerchief, and let his bare knuckle touch Larkin’s cheek.

  Sweet Spirit. He was warm.

  Merrick took a deep breath, finding himself bizarrely relieved, as if it would have saddened him to learn that in truth this was just a well-preserved dead prince rather than a sleeping one; as if it could have made any difference in his life. Knowing Larkin was alive, however, made it all the more important that the man shouldn’t lie here gathering dust.

  “For what my family did to you,” he murmured as he began wiping off more of the prince’s face, “the least I can do is clean you up.”