Blythewood (39 page)

At noon Gillie whistled the falcons up to the rooftop mews.
We watched from the library window. They came flying to him
from across the lawn, their shrill cries rending the air. The Dianas came in their wake, trailing behind their birds as if they
were tethered to them and not the reverse. “Dame Beckwith
will tell ye that the falcon is trained to its mistress,” Gillie once
told me, “but it’s just as true that the girl is trained to her bird.
The falconer becomes a little bit a falcon, just as the hunter becomes the thing he hunts.”

But here at Blythewood we hunted fairies. Did that mean
we each became a little bit fay?
I didn’t have time to ponder the question now. Miss Sharp
gave me and Helen the signal to follow her and Mr. Bellows. We
each had a pack basket strapped to our backs. Our story, should
anyone challenge us, was that we were going to the gardens to
collect flowers and herbs that had appeared in Shakespeare’s
plays.
Luckily, most of the girls had retreated to the house for
lunch. The day that had begun so warm had grown chill. Only
Charlotte Falconrath stood on the lawn, her small kestrel
perched on her gloved hand. Daisy was already approaching
her. We could hear her voice through the still air exclaiming
at how pretty “the birdy” was and Charlotte’s bored patrician
drawl responding that it was a hunting animal, not a pet, and
that he’d bite Daisy’s fingers off if she weren’t careful.
“More likely that Charlotte will bite Daisy’s fingers off,”
Helen remarked as we crossed between the greenhouse and
the mews. “I can’t say I envy Daisy her job. I’d rather converse
with fairies and demons than Charlotte Falconrath. Although I
think
I
ought to be the one to go with Mr. Bellows. We two are
the best archers and can go on ahead to clear the way for you
and Miss Sharp.”
“Why, Helen, I thought Daisy was the one with the crush
on Mr. Bellows!”
Helen scowled. “She is. Do you think I’d give a fig for a
schoolteacher
?”
“He’s not just a teacher, he’s a knight of the Order,” I objected, not sure why I felt offended on Mr. Bellows’s behalf.
“That’s all well and good, but he still only makes less in a
year than my dress allowance. No, I simply think we’ll make
better time and find Nathan sooner if I go on ahead.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding at last, “you want to be the one
to save Nathan. And what’s Nathan’s yearly income? He
is
the
son of a schoolteacher, after all.”
Helen looked at me aghast. “The Beckwiths are one of the
wealthiest and most prominent families in New York. If I have to
be stuck in this uncivilized wilderness I might as well set my cap
at the only eligible bachelor in the place. It’s better than ending
up with the ancient van Groom my mother has in mind for me.”
I thought of the charts and files in the Special Collections
Room—of the page still crumpled in my pocket—and wondered how much choice Helen would have about whom she
married. Perhaps I should try to warn her. “Do you really think
that Nathan, with his proclivity to loitering in taverns and opium dens, is marriageable material?” I began, but one glance at
Helen stopped me. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes burning,
her hair slipping out of its pins. She wasn’t fretting over Nathan
because of his income, but because she genuinely cared for him.
“Very well,” I said. “If they don’t object, you go with Mr.
Bellows and I’ll go with Miss Sharp. There—he’s signaling for
me now.”
Our teachers had reached the edge of the woods. Miss
Sharp was standing watching the lawn a few feet away from
where Mr. Bellows was peering into the trees. I pushed Helen
forward and went directly to Miss Sharp. By the time I reached
her, Mr. Bellows and Helen had already vanished beyond the
tree line.
“What happened?” Miss Sharp asked. “Why didn’t you go
with Rupert?”
“Helen wanted to,” I said simply.
Miss Sharp rolled her eyes. “Another of Rupert’s conquests,
eh? Didn’t you want to contend for the honor?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I’d just as soon go with you. There’s
something I wanted to ask you.”
“Of course,” she said briskly. “But you’ll have to do it as we
walk—and keep your voice low. The Bells know what’s watching us from in there.” She slid her eyes toward the tree line and
I saw for the first time that she was frightened, which made
me
frightened. I’d already been in the woods twice, but as we
passed from the sunlit lawn into the thick dark shadows beneath the trees I felt a tingling on my skin that was different
from anything I’d felt before—a pulse of magic.
“Why does the magic feel stronger now?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, brows furrowed.
“You feel it?”
“How could I not? It’s like I’m standing in a bath of fizzy
water.”
“Interesting,” she replied, turning back to the path to follow the sound of Helen’s and Mr. Bellows’s bells. “Not all the
girls at Blythewood do, you know. No matter how much we
train you, we can’t teach you to feel magic. There has to be a
little bit of it in you. I suspected you had it at your interview
when you saw the board members turn into crows.”
“You
knew
about that?” I asked, surprised. I’d never mentioned to anyone what I’d seen and nowhere in my classes had
anyone mentioned that we would be learning how to turn into
birds.
“I wasn’t supposed to but I saw it out of the corner of my
eye. The higher ranks of the Order are able to transform themselves into the creatures we hunt, but it’s not something we’re
supposed to tell the students. The Order has grown up alongside the fay. Would it be surprising that we have each grown a
little like each other?”
“The hunter must become the thing she hunts,” I quoted.
“Precisely,” she replied. “Only that frightens some of us.”
“Like Miss Corey?”
She sighed, a sound like a mourning dove’s coo. If Miss
Sharp turned into a bird, I thought, that’s what she would become. “Lillian’s family history is complicated. The Coreys have
been fay and demon hunters for centuries. She was raised to
hate and mistrust all the creatures of Faerie equally.”
“Weren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, aren’t all the members of
the Order?”
“I was raised by my grandfather, and he was different. He
thought that some of the creatures of the woods might not be
evil.”
“Then there’s a chance that what Raven told me is true?”
Miss Sharp stopped and turned to me at the edge of a small
clearing where a tree had fallen, making a hole in the canopy
through which vertical bands of sunlight stood like glowing
pillars. In her white dress and with her golden hair she looked
like a Grecian goddess against that backdrop.
“You want to believe that, don’t you? This creature . . .”
“Raven.”
“This
Raven
was kind to you?”
“Yes!” I cried a bit too fervidly. “He rescued me from the
fire at the factory. He saved me on the winter solstice and did
nothing to hurt me. He wants to be a clockmaker and live an
ordinary life.”
Miss Sharp laughed. “Ah, an ordinary life. I’m not sure I
know anymore what that would look like.” She smiled sadly.
“But if you feel he is good I am willing to give him the benefit
of the doubt. Sometimes I think we of the Order have been too
quick to condemn what we don’t understand just because it is
different. My own experience has encouraged me to be more
tolerant.”
She squeezed my hand, her smile widening. A band of sunlight touched the back of her head, turning her hair the blazing
gold of an angel’s halo. A tightness in my chest relaxed and I felt
sure that if Vionetta Sharp could come to believe that the Darklings were redeemable, then they
would
be redeemed.
I smiled back at her. Satisfied, she turned, stepped into a bar
of sunlight, and vanished.

I STOOD PERFECTLY still, staring into the mote-filled sunlight, sure that if I didn’t move Vionetta Sharp would reappear.
I called her name—first
Miss Sharp
and then
Vionetta
. In the
silence I heard doves cooing and then the faint chime of a bell.

Bells!
That was what I was supposed to do! I lifted my hand
and shook my wrist in the pattern she’d taught us. Then I listened. The woods, which had been buzzing with birdsong a
few moments ago, had gone strangely silent as if all the smaller
creatures had fled in the wake of a raptor’s shadow. Then, faintly, I heard an answering chime coming from the center of the
clearing, which was empty of everything but sunlight that filled
the circle now like water filling a well. I was inches from the
edge of the light. If I took one step I would fall into it—and into
Faerie. I might find Miss Sharp, but then who would find me?

I sounded the chime again—for Miss Sharp, but also for
Mr. Bellows and Helen. They’d been only a few yards ahead of
us. Shouldn’t they hear the bells and come back?

Unless they had fallen into Faerie, too.
In which case I was their only tether to this world. I rang
the bell again and heard a faint echo of its chime coming from
inside the empty well of sunlight—fainter than before. Miss
Sharp was straying farther away. I had to find her. I ventured
one toe into the sunlight . . . but something yanked me back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” It was Raven, his wings
stirring up the air into a whirlwind of sun motes and feathers.
“You’ll be gone for a hundred years!”
“What happened?” I demanded. “Where’s Nathan?”
“The fool insisted I open the door to Faerie for him, so I did.”
“Couldn’t you do anything to stop him?”
Raven stared at me. “He had me completely at his mercy
with that blade of his. Should I have let him kill me?”
“No! Only now Miss Sharp’s gone into Faerie, too. I saw
her vanish in there but I can still hear her bell.”
I shook my wrist and the bells jangled in a crazy rhythm.
An even more frenzied peal sounded from the empty glade.
Raven snorted. “Did they teach you that at your school? Don’t
they know that fairies will echo any sound you give them—like
mockingbirds. Listen.” He whistled a complicated tune. After a
moment the sound came back. “Do you think your teacher did
that?” he asked.
My eyes filled with tears. “But I know she went in there. I
have to follow her!”
Raven stared at me. His wings beat slower and I felt my
heartbeat slowing with them, the air stirring against my face
gentle as a caress.
“No! You can’t stop me! Let me go!” I cried, even though he
wasn’t holding me back or even touching me.
He sighed. “There is one way. As long as I hold the door
open you can come back into
this
time.”
“You can do that for me?”
His eyes skidded away from mine, but he nodded. “You
have to be quick. Find your friends and come straight back. You
mustn’t eat anything, or play any games—”
“Or kiss anyone, yes, I know the rules. I promise I’ll come
back.”
He nodded again, still not meeting my eyes. His face was
taut, jaw clenched. “Stand back,” he barked. “When I’ve opened
the door you can slip underneath my wings.”
I moved to the side. Raven stepped to the edge of the light.
He closed his eyes, bowed his head, his lips moving in some silent prayer. Where the light from the glade touched his skin it
shimmered into an iridescent glow. He winced, then flexed his
wings so suddenly I stumbled backward. When I regained my
balance, I saw him silhouetted against the blazing light, black
wings stretched wider than I’d ever seen them, each feather tip
limned in fire. His wings weren’t black at all, I realized now—
they held every color in the rainbow. I was so mesmerized by
their beauty that for a moment I couldn’t move. Then I heard
someone scream from inside the glade. I ducked underneath
Raven’s wing and plunged into the light.

It was like stepping through a waterfall. I emerged feeling clean
and shining, like I’d been scoured and polished. I looked down
at my skin and saw that it was glowing. I turned around to look
back at Raven. His eyes were closed tightly, as if he were concentrating to keep the door open. Not wanting to disturb his concentration, I turned back to look for Miss Sharp and Nathan.

I was standing at the edge of a grassy meadow that sloped
down to a riverbank lined with green willows. Wildflowers of
every imaginable color dotted the grass. White and pink blossoms floated from flowering trees through the air. I stepped
toward one of the trees and saw that there were ripe apples
amongst the pink blooms. How could it be, I wondered, that
the tree bore flowers and fruit at the same time? It was as if it
were spring and fall and summer all at the same time. Then I
remembered what Raven had said about the timelessness of Faerie. Looking down at the ground, I saw spring violets growing
beside late-summer goldenrod, all glowing in the golden light
that flowed around me like honey.

I looked up into the lavender sky but could find no sun. The
honey-colored light bathed everything evenly. It wasn’t just that
time was different here; there was no time at all—or
all
time
all
the time. Spring, summer, fall—even winter, I noticed, as I
looked into the surrounding pine trees and saw icicles hanging
from their boughs—were all happening at once, as were all the
times of the day. The grass was wet with morning dew, the sky
as bright as noon, the edges of the meadow shadowy with dusk,
the woods dark as night. All of time was here at my fingertips,
for me to pluck as easily as I might pluck the red-and-gold apple
from the tree.

I
did
pluck it, my thought turning into action as swiftly as
a hummingbird’s wings. The apple was in my hand, firm and
round, so fragrant it made my mouth water . . . I could almost
taste it already . . . perhaps I had tasted it already. Time meant
nothing here. I had already done everything I ever would and
everything I ever had. If I bit into the apple I would be merging
with all time. I could move within it freely. Perhaps I could even
go back and undo what I had done. Perhaps I could go back to
the day of the fire. I could warn the girls not to go to work that
day. Or I could go back even further, to the day my mother died.
I could stay home with her and fight the
tenebrae
with the bells
inside my head. . . .