Blythewood (40 page)

“It doesn’t work like that.”
I looked up from the apple into my mother’s face.
I dropped the apple. It rolled over the grass toward my

mother and cracked open at her feet. She knelt, picked it up, and
held it out for me to see. Inside, the pulp was black with rot. The
sweet, sickly odor of decay rose into the air between us.

“You can no more go back and make me live than you can
make this apple whole again. But”—she tossed the apple away
and stepped closer to me—“I can enjoy your company for a few
moments.” She held out her arms and I rushed into them.

She was real—solid and warm, indeed, more solid than I remembered her from her last months when she’d grown so fragile. When I buried my face in her neck and inhaled she smelled
like violets and rosewater, not laudanum.

“Yes, it
is
really me, my dearling Avie.” She stroked my hair
and then tucked a strand behind my ear, the touch so familiar I
burst into tears.

“Don’t cry, dearling, I’m all right now.” She held me at
arm’s length to look at me. “To see you looking so well is all I
need for an eternity of peace. I was afraid the shadows would
find you . . .”

Her face, which had looked so radiant and peaceful a moment ago, darkened, and the light around us dimmed as well.
“Oh no, Avie dearling, it was I who led them to you! I had sunk
so deep in my own fear and despair that I’d become easy prey.
When I saw Judicus on your birthday I was frightened they
would take you from me.”

“You knew him, didn’t you? Judicus van Drood. You were
engaged to him.”
A shadow of pain crossed her face—even here where there
were no shadows. “Yes, the Order arranged the match. At first I
didn’t mind. I cared for him . . . but then he changed. Or maybe
I
changed and it was my fault that he became lost in the shadows. I ran away when I should have faced him . . . and then I
lost myself in the shadows. I’m sorry for that, dearling. I should
have been braver, but sometimes the hardest thing to do is to
remain yourself. When the
tenebrae
came for me I knew that if
I let them in they would destroy us both. I did the only thing I
could to defeat them.”
“You drank the laudanum before they could get inside you?”
Her eyes widened and gleamed. “No, dearling, I let them in
and
then
I drank the laudanum. It was the only way to destroy
them so they wouldn’t get you. I would never have willingly left
you otherwise.” She stroked my hair back behind my ear and
cupped my face with her hand. I felt the hard calluses on her
fingertips from years of sewing and trimming hats to feed and
shelter us. All other signs of age and care had fallen from her
face, but not those signs of wear.
As if she’d heard my thought she held her hands out, palms
up, between us. “Here in Faerie we keep the marks we’re proud
of. I am proud of these calluses I got working to keep you safe.
But I’m not proud of the fears I let prey on me, so I’ve let those
go. Remember that, Avie, remember the strong things I did and
forgive the weak ones. . . . Oh, there’s so much I have to say to
you, but there’s no time!”
“I thought there was all the time in the world in Faerie,” I
said, surprised to feel a smile on my lips.
She returned the smile, but sadly. “Yes, we in Faerie have
all the time in the world, but your friends don’t.” She took my
hand and pulled me down the hill. “Vionetta has been trying
to get Nathan to leave with her, but . . . well, you can see why he
won’t.”
Below us on the banks of a river that looked much like the
Hudson, Vionetta Sharp stood above two figures sitting on
the rocks. I recognized one as Nathan and the other as the girl
whom I’d seen before in Faerie.
“Louisa! He’s found her!”
“Yes, but it’s too late for Louisa to leave. Look . . .”
The girl was hunched over, looking intently at something
laid out on the flat rock where she sat. I moved closer and saw that
she was staring at a line of playing cards. She turned one over and
let out a little yelp. “The queen of hearts! Exactly what I needed.”
“Patience?” I asked. “She’s playing patience?”
“Not just patience,” Nathan said. “La Nivernaise. She’s
working through all the solitary card games in
Lady Cadogan’s
Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience
. Klondike, fortress,
General Sedgewick, La Belle Lucie . . .”
“Light and shade is next,” Louisa said. “That’s a really hard
one. But I’ve gotten very good at it.”
“She ought to have,” Nathan said. “She’s been playing for
seven months.”
“Isn’t there any way to make her stop?” I asked, sitting
down next to Nathan.
“Not that I know of,” Miss Sharp said. “Playing the game
has bound her into the fabric of Faerie. If she breaks those
bonds . . . well, it might break something inside her mind.”
“Anything is better than
this
!” Nathan cried. “I can’t just
leave her here playing cards for all eternity.”
“There might be a way.”
The voice came from behind us. I turned and found a tall
middle-aged man in a pith helmet and tattered, brightly hued
rags. He looked familiar.
“Sir Miles Malmsbury?” I asked tentatively. Although he
looked like the photograph in Miss Frost’s classroom, that man
had had trim muttonchops and wore a neatly pressed khaki
safari jacket and trousers.
This
man had a full-grown beard
and long straggly hair braided into a long queue. His jacket
appeared to have once been a khaki safari jacket but was covered with tiny brightly colored feathers. But the biggest change
was in his eyes. The man in the photograph had looked out at
the world with a haughty, superior expression.
This
man’s eyes
were humbled, and more than a little bit mad.
“At your service,” he said, saluting and attempting to click
his heels even though he was barefoot. “I assume from your
Bell and Feather insignias that you are members of the Order.
May I ask who is in charge of this expedition?”
Nathan and I stared at each other, but Miss Sharp stepped
forward and returned Sir Malmsbury’s salute. “That would
be me, sir. Vionetta Sharp. I teach English literature at Blythewood.”
“Ah, Blythewood . . . ” he said with a misty look in his eyes.
“I had a most promising student at Blythewood . . . but no matter . . . we don’t have much time. I observed the boy enter Faerie
and engage with the girls. He hasn’t taken part in her game or
eaten anything, so he may leave.”
“I won’t go without Louisa,” Nathan growled.
“So I understood. Admirable of you, son. I myself would
never abandon a team member in the field. Luckily, I have been
carefully observing the customs of the country during my . . .
er . . . sojourn here in Faerie.” He took out a worn notebook from
his canvas bag. “With the help of the lychnobious people, who
have been most kind considering my past unfortunate treatment of them, I have learned that the feathers of the
lychnobia
protect the unwary traveler from becoming trapped in Faerie. I
gave this young lady a feather as soon as she arrived.”
We all looked down at Louisa and saw that she was wearing
a necklace of brightly colored feathers.
“So she can leave?” Nathan asked.
“Yes,” Sir Malmsbury replied. “However, I cannot vouch
for the time shift that may have occurred during her—or
your—stay here. The
lychnobia
have a poor sense of time.”
A lampsprite landed on Sir Malmsbury’s shoulder, flicked
its wing across his face, and chattered angrily.
“Excuse me,” Sir Malmsbury said, looking quite abashed,
“I was guilty once again of a hominid-centrist judgment. The
lampsprite’s sense of time is
different
from ours.”
“But that’s all right!” I cried. “Raven is holding open the
door for us. He said that we’ll be able to return to our time as
long as a Darkling holds open the door.”
“A Darkling is holding the door open for you?” Sir Malmsbury asked in awed tones. “Why, then, this is
my
chance to go
back! We must all go at once!”
Nathan grabbed Louisa’s hand and tried to pull her up, but
she screamed and clutched the cards to her chest.
“I know something that might help,” my mother said. She
knelt down beside Louisa and gently laid her hands over Louisa’s. Louisa looked up, her eyes vague and clouded. “There’s another game we used to play at Blythewood,” she said to Louisa.
“Perhaps you remember it? It’s called flush and trophies.”
A flicker of recognition passed over the girl’s face. “Oh yes,
we played it after dinner in the Commons Room . . . only I don’t
recall the rules . . .”
“But I do,” my mother said with the same gentle smile she’d
given me when I was frustrated that I’d forgotten a tense in Latin or a stitch for trimming a hat.
“And so do I,” Vionetta said, sitting down next to Louisa
and reaching for the cards laid out on the rock. Louisa flinched
when Vionetta swept the cards up into a pile, but Nathan quickly diverted her.
“Flush and trophies! My favorite!” Nathan said with false
enthusiasm; I was quite sure he loathed the game. “We all four
can play.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to play any games in Faerie,” I whispered into Miss Sharp’s ear as I sat down.
“All except this one,” she replied as my mother dealt out the
whole deck to Louisa, Nathan, Miss Sharp and me. “Flush and
trophies was designed to break the spell of Faerie.”
“The game is quite simple,” my mother was explaining
to Louisa. “The object is to get all of one suit—hearts, clubs,
spades, or diamonds. The trick is figuring out which suit your
opponent is trying for—to flush them out, so to speak—and
keep them from getting all of their suit before you can claim
the trophy. Each turn you discard a card. If anyone has the same
card in a different suit they can trade it for you. Vionetta, you’re
north. You go first.”
Miss Sharp laid out a two of clubs. I had a two of hearts, but
I’d already noticed that I had more hearts than any other suit so
I didn’t offer to trade. Louisa would have beat me to it anyway.
She slapped down a two of spades.
“She’s looking for clubs,” my mother whispered in my ear.
“All we have to do now is keep feeding them to her.”
Nathan obligingly laid down a queen of clubs next. Louisa
made a face. She must not have any queens. It was my turn next.
I laid down a jack of clubs. Louisa immediately reached for it,
but Miss Sharp deftly knocked the card off the rock. It fluttered
over the grass like a butterfly. Louisa sprung to her feet and
went after it. Nathan and Miss Sharp got up and followed her,
cards in hand. I followed with my mother and Sir Malmsbury.
The rest was simple. All we had to do was keep laying out clubs
and tossing them closer to the place where Raven was holding
open the door.
“But you’re not playing!” I said to my mother as we got
closer. “Can’t we use the game to free you, too?”
My mother regarded me sadly. She brushed back a
lock of my hair and cupped my face with her hand. “Avie,
dearling, I died in your world. A Darkling carried me here to
Faerie because I wanted to come here instead of the mortal
afterworld. But I can never go back to your world.”
“Of course you wanted to come here,” I said. “It’s so beautiful! Can’t I stay here with you? There’s nothing for me back
there.”
A faint smile fluttered over her lips. “Nothing? Look . . .”
Nathan and Louisa had reached Raven, who still stood like
a marble statue holding open the door to our world—only the
marble was streaked with veins of fire now. He looked like the
lampsprite had just before it exploded. His eyes were still shut,
his jaw clenched, the muscles in his arms and chest straining
like Atlas holding up the world. “It looks as if the light is crushing him!”
“It is,” my mother replied. “A Darkling can only hold the
door between worlds open for so long before he’s crushed between them. This one must care for you greatly to do this for
you, Ava.”
“Then Ava was telling the truth, Evangeline?” Miss Sharp
asked my mother. “The Darklings aren’t evil?”
My mother shook her head sadly, her eyes still on Raven.
“The Darklings are cursed, but no, not evil. You can trust them,
especially this one. But he’s not the only one who cares for you.”
She nodded her head toward Nathan, who was holding
Louisa’s hand with one of his and an ace of clubs in the other.
All he had to do now was lead her under Raven’s wings back
into our world, but he had turned and was looking back at me.
The light behind him turned his fair hair into a golden halo. He
looked more like one of the Botticelli angels than dark-haired
Raven, but the light also threw his face in shadow. The
tenebrae
still lurked under his skin.
“Nathan doesn’t care for me,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. But what I am sure of is that
without you the shadows will claim him forever. So unless you
care nothing for him . . .”
I shook my head, my body denying the statement before my
mind knew what I felt. “I can’t be the only one who can help
him.”
“Avie, all the years the shadows preyed on me, the one thing
that kept them from claiming me was you. I had only to think of
you and I was able to fight them off—until the end when I knew
I had to sacrifice myself to save you. The only thing that gave
me solace as I died was that you would be strong enough to go
on without me . . .”
I began to object but she held up a hand to silence me. “You
have no idea how strong you are, Avie. You’re a chime child . . .
and so much more! With training you, and you alone, will
be able to banish the shadows—from Nathan and from your
world.”
I looked away from my mother to the two men who stood
on the threshold of my world. One light, one dark . . . I wasn’t
sure which was which, only that both would perish if I didn’t
go back.
I turned to my mother. I could see by her face that she already knew what my decision was.
“Will you be all right here?” I asked.
“I will be now. Now that I have seen that you are,” she replied, wiping the tears from my face. Then, before I could
change my mind, I turned and ducked under Raven’s wing.

AS SOON AS we had all passed through, Raven collapsed on
the ground, his wings crumpling around him like charred paper. When I touched them my hands came away black. His face
was gray as ash, soot-black lashes fluttering over sightless eyes.