In a Dark Land

by Christina Soontornvat

  When Izzy finished, Marian drew off her cap and wiped her brow. “I should’ve got here sooner.”

  “I don’t know if you could have stopped Rine. The only one who could was Peter.”

  Marian shook her head sadly. “No, I couldn’t have stopped him. But I could’ve carried out my part of the plan faster.”

  “What is your part of the plan?” asked Izzy. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  Marian leaned out the doorway like someone could be listening.

  “Don’t worry,” said Izzy. “All the servants left. We’re all alone in the castle. Tom’s the only one still with us, and he’s up in his ship.”

  “Humph, that doesn’t mean nobody’s watching you. How do you think Rine found out you were here in the first place? He must have had somebody spying from inside.” Marian pulled the curtains over the sink shut. She carried the steaming kettle from the stove to the table and sat down between Izzy and Hen. “Peter didn’t tell you anything about what I’ve been doing?”

  Izzy shook her head. “He told me you were living in the country, working.”

  Hen’s eyebrows bobbed up and down. “Oh, she’s been working all right. Show her, Marian.”

  Marian set her teacup down on the table. She held one hand over the cup, letting the steam drift up between her fingers. She stared at the cup with her lips pressed tight. Her mouth twitched, holding in unspoken words.

  Then she tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. She clucked her tongue like she was calling a reluctant puppy dog.

  Izzy watched the old woman’s face wrinkle in concentration. When Izzy looked back at the cup, she gasped.

  “It’s gone! You made it disappear!”

  Marian smiled. “Not gone. Watch.” She lifted the kettle and started to pour.

  Water streamed out of the kettle and disappeared, vanishing right into the air. Izzy leaned forward. When she looked down from above, she could see the perfect circle of the surface of the tea. But if the cup was in the way, everything inside was invisible.

  “That,” said Izzy, “is seriously—”

  “Amazing.”

  They turned to find Dree watching them from the kitchen doorway. Marian waved at her to join them. Dree’s eyes stayed fixed on the cup as she sat down next to Izzy.

  Hen’s chair rocked back and forth as she wiggled on her seat. “She can do it to big things too! I rode all the way here from the Edgewood in an invisible wagon!”

  “The horses wouldn’t sit still for me, so I had to cover them with bed sheets and do the spell on the fabric,” said Marian. She lifted the invisible cup to her lips and slurped. “It’s an interesting spell. You ask the light to go straight through a thing instead of bouncing off the sides. Took me a long time to get it right. I learned you gotta be real polite when you ask light to do anything.”

  Reflection, refraction, transmission. Izzy’s science class had been studying those exact concepts at the end of the year. She would never have guessed someone could control them. Izzy had always wondered why only humans could do witchcraft and not fairies. After all, she’d seen fairies do some pretty incredible stuff—like Change from one creature into another. But now she was beginning to understand. There was something decidedly unfairy about the magic she’d just witnessed.

  “Can you make the cup visible again?” asked Dree.

  Marian waved her hand over the table as she nodded down at the teacup. It reappeared, just as before.

  “Isn’t she awesome?” said Hen.

  Marian leaned back in her chair. “Peter’s plan was to have me use this spell to transport all the Changelings to the Edgewood in secret. We were going to hide you all in Netherbee Hall while he Exchanged you one at a time.”

  “Netherbee Hall!” said Izzy. The last time she’d been in the old, crumbling house, she’d been nearly suffocated by enchanted cobwebs.

  “I’ve been living there,” said Marian. She winked. “Don’t worry. I cleaned it up. And I put this same cloaking spell on the entire house. You’d never find it even if you had a map.” She frowned. “’Course, that was before Peter discovered that Rine was controlling the Unglers. My spell can hide Changelings from sight, but it can’t help when it comes to those nasty beasts. If only I could’ve learned this spell sooner!”

  Marian cracked her knuckles one after the other. “I found the spell months ago in an old book in one of the rooms at Netherbee. But it’s taken me all this time just to be able to read the thing. Casting spells takes a lot of concentration, and even though I lived with humans most of my life, it still doesn’t come natural.”

  “It’s amazing you can do it at all,” said Izzy. “We could still use your spell to get out of Avhalon in secret. But then what? The Changelings can’t be Exchanged without Peter. And he destroyed his flute.”

  “Don’t you want to hear my story now?” asked Hen.

  Izzy squeezed her sister’s hand. “Sorry. Yes, I want to hear everything.”

  Hen reached down and pulled her backpack up onto the table. “By the way, I knew you weren’t at a sidekick facility.”

  “Psychiatric,” Izzy corrected.

  “Whatever. I knew something funny was going on. There were too many exclamation points in your letters.”

  “And that’s what tipped you off?” asked Izzy.

  “That and I was getting cookies in the mail from Mom and Dad every other day. You know Mom. She hates us to have anything with sugar in it.”

  “Your little sister’s a sharp one,” said Dree.

  Hen smiled and pushed back her shoulders. “I just had this feeling you’d gone looking for Faerie and that you’d found it without me.” Hen’s chin wrinkled up, but to her credit, she didn’t whine about being left behind. They were long past that, and she knew it. “Then I got this package special delivery yesterday morning. When I opened it, I knew something was really wrong.”

  Hen unzipped her backpack and pulled out a lumpy package wrapped in brown paper. Fifty dollars’ worth of stamps covered the wrapping. Whoever sent the package had wanted to make sure it arrived.

  Hen reached inside. Dree gasped as Hen pulled out Peter’s flute. The instrument gleamed in the dim light of the kitchen.

  “I knew Peter wouldn’t be apart from this unless things were bad,” said Hen, holding the flute on both open palms. “So I packed up and snuck out of camp while my cabin was at the yarn craft station. I went into the woods thinking Peter would be waiting for me, but no one was there.”

  “So how did you find your way into Faerie?” asked Izzy. “Did you play the flute?”

  Hen lifted the flute to her lips, which was a bit of a shock. It seemed wrong to see anyone play it besides Peter. She blew gently, and it made a hoarse whistle.

  “That’s the best I can do. But it was weird. Just holding it, I could tell where to go. Like I could see things in a different way than I could before. I found this pathway, this underground passage with stone walls.”

  “That’s exactly how Peter brought me here,” said Izzy.

  “And I just kind of went down the halls, wherever I felt I should go,” continued Hen. “I figured I was going the right way, because these lights kept coming on as I was walking.”

  Marian nodded. “That flute’s a very old magical object. It only works for one master, and it has to be given freely from one master to another. It was given to Peter. And now it seems that Peter’s given it to you.”

  “But why me?” asked Hen, looking down at the flute and turning it back and forth.

  “He had his reasons,” said Marian. “It’s something to take seriously.”

  “Very seriously,” said Izzy. She suddenly worried about Hen having something that Peter had misused. She told them a condensed version of what had unfolded with Rine and the witch with the dark curls.

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Hen.
“I can’t even get this thing to play a note. I don’t think I could hurt anyone with it.”

  “So we have the flute,” said Dree. “But we can’t use it. And we can’t just sit here waiting for Rine to come and pluck us up. We’ve got to go back into hiding.”

  “Selden probably doesn’t like that plan, does he?” asked Izzy.

  “Actually, he’s taking Peter’s charge pretty seriously,” said Dree. “I think he’d do what’s best for everyone, even if it’s not what he wants.”

  Izzy cast her eyes down at the table. “Oh. Gotcha.”

  Dree leaned in closer. “Why?” she said suspiciously. “Please don’t tell me you want to stay here and get into a witch fight.”

  “No, of course not,” said Izzy. “I don’t want to see Rine ever again if I can help it.”

  “What do you think should be done, Izzy?” asked Marian.

  Izzy picked at the edge of the table. She’d been thinking of something all morning, but now she was afraid it sounded completely crazy. She took a deep breath and told them what Peter had said to her in the courtyard, about how finding out the truth of who she really was could somehow help all the Changelings.

  “It was the last thing he told me before he left,” said Izzy. “It’s hard to explain, but the way he said it, it sounded important.”

  “But how could you find out something like that if Peter didn’t even know himself?” asked Hen.

  “He told us about this lake,” said Izzy. “The creatures who live at the bottom of it will answer any question you ask.”

  “Lake Umbra!” said Dree. “That’s at the foot of the Norlorn Mountains.” She leaned close to Izzy, wide-eyed, and tapped her forehead. “Also known as the Witchlands.”

  “I know, I know,” said Izzy. “I wouldn’t even think about it normally. But seeing that spell of Marian’s…” She nodded at the now-visible teacup. “If you could do it to Tom’s airship—”

  “She could! She could! I know it!” Hen bounced so high in her chair that it nearly toppled over.

  “We could zip there, ask a question, and get back without anyone seeing us,” said Izzy. “And we’d be so high up, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Unglers.”

  Dree crossed her arms over her chest. “Perfect. Selden’s finally being reasonable, and now you’ve gone and lost your mind. Marian, you can’t seriously do what she’s asking. Can you?”

  Marian poured another cup of tea. The steam drifted around her face, mingling with her white hair. “If Peter thought it was important, then it probably is. He wouldn’t suggest putting you children in danger unless it was for a very good reason. Besides, there’s an old fairy saying that I always thought was very wise.” She smiled at Izzy. “Go with your gut.”

  Izzy shut her eyes. Her gut, her heart, her brain, every part of her was asking the same thing.

  Who are you, Izzy? Who are you really?

  She opened her eyes and nodded at Marian.

  The old woman stood up and pushed her chair in. “Well, we’ve got to find Tom. Sounds like I have a ship to vanish.”

  16

  To the Norlorns

  The caravan loaded up early the next morning, before the sun came up, before Lufkin was awake, and before they could give themselves a chance to change their minds. Horses hidden beneath their invisible blankets stamped and huffed on the bridge. The older Changelings helped Hale load all the younger ones into the invisible coaches Marian brought with her from the Edgewood.

  Olligan kicked at an invisible wagon wheel. “Selden, why do I have to go in this dumb wagon full of babies? I’d rather go with you.”

  Selden ruffled Ollie’s curls. “You’ve got to be the lookout for Marian. That’s a really important job. Plus, someone’s got to keep Dree from ruining every bit of fun along the way.”

  Dree raised one eyebrow but didn’t return his teasing. She’d been strangely quiet ever since their conversation in the kitchen the day before. But when Izzy asked her about it, she had changed the subject.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Izzy asked Dree once more. “You wouldn’t add any more weight to Tom’s ship.”

  “Marian might need a flyer,” said Dree as she handed a very sleepy-looking Yash to Hale through the carriage window. “Besides, Hiron’s a much better choice to go with you. If for some reason you get in trouble in the air, you’ll want a gigantic eagle on your side.”

  Izzy nodded, though she would have much rather had Dree along for company than stodgy Hiron.

  Dree hugged Izzy tight. “Be really careful. And don’t let Selden talk you into doing anything stupid.”

  “I heard that!” called Selden from the back of the caravan.

  “I meant for you to,” said Dree. Then she Changed into a butterfly and flitted onto Marian’s shoulder.

  Never one for sentimental goodbyes, Marian nodded once, then clucked to the horses, and they were off across the bridge. Anyone watching would have seen an old woman walking alone along the City Road, with a white butterfly fluttering along behind.

  • • •

  The Muscadine set off, sailing north over the apple orchard as the sun rose. Lug, Selden, Hen, and Izzy rode in the basket with Tom, with Hiron flying ahead. Izzy had been dead set against Hen coming, but her little sister threatened to tie herself to the ship if Izzy tried to leave her behind again. And Tom reasoned that it could help things with the Fen Whelps to show them Peter’s flute as proof of how important their question was. “Anything that persuades them not to chew you up is a good idea if you ask me,” he’d said.

  Izzy watched Selden, curled around one of the Muscadine’s invisible cables, the wind riffling through his stoat fur. He leaned far out over the rim of the basket, like a figurehead on a sailing ship.

  “You realize if anyone looks up at us, they’re going to see a floating weasel coasting through the air?” she said.

  “Stoat,” corrected Selden. “And don’t ruin this for me. It’s as close as I’ll ever come to flying. Besides, I don’t think there are many fairies down there to see me. Come take a look.”

  Izzy glanced at Tom Diffley for permission.

  He nodded to her. “It’s all right, I fixed the balance problem.” He pointed out the sacks of flour he had taken from the kitchen and tied down along the perimeter of the basket. “Makes us heavier, but we can ditch weight later on if we have to.”

  Izzy joined Selden at the rim of the basket. She had to feel around with her hands before she finally found a cable to hold onto. Marian had cast her vanishing spell over the Muscadine’s balloons, including all the ropes and rigging. The underside of the basket was cloaked too so they’d be invisible to anyone on the ground looking up. Marian had left the inside of the basket visible, but that was it.

  “We’re already over the Avhal Mountains,” said Selden, pointing below. A gust of air blew Izzy’s hair back as she leaned over the side. Dark prickles of pine trees jutted up from the ground below.

  “See that forest?” said Selden. “That’s the Needled Larsh. The ground underneath is soggy and full of pits of tacky mud. If we didn’t have Tom taking us in his ship, it would take months to get across it.”

  “Gosh, we’re going fast, aren’t we?” said Izzy.

  “That’s because I’ve got a top-notch copilot,” called Tom from his seat at the controls. He patted Hen on the shoulder.

  Hen gave a short nod. “Just doing my job.” She stared intently at a bank of square dials on the panel in front of her and clutched the handles of the steering frame. Izzy smiled as she watched Tom coach her little sister on maneuvers. Hen was in heaven.

  “There, you’ve got it now,” said Tom, pumping more air into the invisible balloons above. “At this rate, we’ll be into the Norlorns in no time. I’m gonna try to get us to Demon’s Dome by dusk. Otherwise, we’ll have to land and spend the night s
omewhere nearby, which I’d rather not do, to tell the truth.”

  “Demon’s Dome?” asked Izzy. “What about Lake Umbra?”

  “The lake’s right at the base of Demon’s Dome,” said Selden. “The story goes that a thousand years ago, the fairies who lived in the mountains captured a demon king and buried him alive. They say Lake Umbra is filled with his blood, which is still leeching out of his heart.”

  “Can we skip over the talk about blood and leeching?” said Tom with a shudder.

  “I’m with you,” said Lug. “I’m not going near that cursed lake. The only reason I agreed to this is because we’re doing a flyover and won’t have to land anywhere near it.”

  Hiron, in his crane form, gracefully winged in alongside the ship. “Izzy, are you ready to get some practice in?”

  Izzy’s stomach flipped over on itself. “What, flying practice? Now?”

  Hiron banked his wings one way, then the other. If Izzy didn’t know him better, she’d have said he was grinning. “Come on. The conditions are perfect!”

  “No way! We’re up so high!”

  “It’s actually easier the higher up you are,” said Hiron. “As long as there’s air flowing over your wings, it’ll lift you up. And if you do fall…”

  With one beat of his wings, Hiron Changed into an eagle with a wingspan the length of the ship. “…I’ll be there to catch you!”

  “Go on,” said Selden. “You did a blackbird the night of the Solstice. Surely you can do it again.”

  “If you don’t want to go, can I?” asked Hen. “I want Hiron to fly me all around!”

  Izzy looked at the ground, which was very, very far down. She thought back to that night of the Solstice, trying to remember the impossible feeling of soaring over the city on her own wings.

  Instead, she remembered Rine’s cold voice in her ear. A pathetic excuse for a Changeling.

  “No,” she said, curling her fingers tight around the basket. “Sorry, I’m just not ready.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Hiron, banking away from the ship.