Jane and the Raven King (13 page)

W
here is it?” The Raven King’s voice was calm, and a moment after he spoke, Jane couldn’t remember the sound. She couldn’t see his face—only the outline of his body and dark cape.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I
will
hurt you if I have to, Jane. But first I will hurt your mother, father, and brother. Do you understand me? Think for a moment before you answer,” the Raven King said.

Michael said, “Leave us alone!”

The Raven King was closer. One moment, he stood near the wall; the next, he was behind her parents, an arm’s length from Michael and Jane. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching into her pocket. “I don’t know where it is. I can’t give it to you.” She took out the envelope and fumbled open the last paper.

Three Spells Inside,

One for Fire, One for Escape,

And One to Make the Evil One Break.

The last page said:
Bas ravel
.

“What is that?” the Raven King demanded.

Jane raised the paper and shouted, “
Bas ravel!
”

The paper brightened, as if it were a dirty window someone had wiped clean. On the paper, Jane saw a mountain made out of shiny black rock, dark clouds, and a brown sky. The paper was showing her a mountain in Hotland. Now the picture faded, and the paper and envelope crumbled like old leaves. The pieces fell away.
A mountain,
Jane thought.
How does that help me?

The Raven King said, “I will ask once more, child. Where is—?”

Jane and Michael ran into her bedroom, and when Michael opened the window, it smashed back down, just missing his fingers. The Raven King stood in the doorway. Jane knelt beside her bed, but before she could reach under the pillow, a desk lamp jumped and hit the side of her head.

Jane was shaking. “I don’t know where it is!”

“You’re lying!” the Raven King said. “What did you see?”

“Please,” she said.
Don’t cry,
she told herself. Jane felt helpless, like a cornered animal. She was breathing hard. “I don’t know!”

The room flickered like a scratched record, and Jane saw the shadow of a bird with a hooked, bloody beak. “Do not”—a bolt of black like the opposite of a flashlight beam shot at Michael, and he slumped to the floor—“lie to me.”

Jane lunged at her bed. There was Grandma Diana’s marble, right where she left it. She threw the marble at the wall, and it shattered like glass. The window flew open in a whirlwind of papers and books. A golden shape rushed through the window and hit the Raven King like a wrecking ball. He didn’t fall, but he was in the hall now, as if someone had shoved him out.

A woman’s voice said, “Be still, children.” Soft arms scooped up Jane and Michael and carried them through the open window and into the sky.

Panting, Jane watched the houses and treetops grow smaller until she could see blocky neighborhoods passing under her dangling feet. She craned her head. A woman with golden skin and a white cape carried them. They were flying. This was impossible. The woman was beautiful—not like a person but like a mountain or a river or the sun. Jane heard the regular thump of wings, like a heartbeat, and although it was only a woman carrying them, when she closed her eyes, Jane saw a golden eagle.

J
ane slept.

She woke to cold wind that burned her cheeks and tossed her hair. She was laying on a dark platform of tar, boxy air conditioning vents, and colossal antennae that looked like giant, blinking stalagmites—each as tall as an office building. Michael was asleep nearby. The golden woman stood at the edge of the platform, facing away, her cape fluttering in the wind. There were soft clouds around and above them.
But where are we?
Jane wondered.

As she approached the golden woman, something dropped in the pit of Jane’s stomach, as if she’d swallowed a rock. They were on the roof of an office building—no, not just any office building. Below, the ground was a grid of skyscrapers and roads, and there was water, like the ocean or a big lake, not far away. They were so high that she could see past the downtown buildings to miniature neighborhoods leading all the way to the horizon; they were so high that there were clouds below them—and smoke. Tiny puffs of soot-colored smoke rose here and there.

Although Jane had never thought of herself as being afraid of heights, just watching the golden woman standing on the ledge of the building—what seemed to be
miles
above the ground—made Jane’s legs wobble.

“Where are we?” Jane’s voice was swallowed by the wind.

“A safe place obviously,” the golden woman answered without turning. “I can hear anyone coming for miles.”

“But what are all those buildings down there?”

“Chicago.”

Chicago,
Jane thought.
This is the Willis Tower, the tallest building in America.

“Are there fires down there?” Jane asked. “Is something burning?”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t stand on the ledge,” Jane said.

The golden woman stepped away and said, “Call me Rachel.”

“Thank you for saving us.”

“You called me with the Wishing Stone, you know. Are you Diana Starlight’s daughter? You seem very young.”

“She was…she
is
my grandmother. You called that purple marble a Wishing Stone…?”

“It was the last bead from Justinia Lovelock’s necklace.”

Jane said, “Justinia who?”

Rachel sighed as if Jane were back in class, wasting time with easy questions. “A long time ago, I gave a girl a necklace with special beads so she could call for my help. Justinia was the first person to save us from the Dark One.”

“She was the first person to stop the Raven King? And you’re a Great Eagle, one of the twelve eagles that…” Jane tried to remember what Finn had told her “…that protected people and everything, right? So you’re
not
dead?”

“Not yet, no,” Rachel said.

“Are the other eagles still alive?”

“That’s complicated. I haven’t seen them in a long, long time—how’s that for an explanation?” Rachel crouched beside Michael. “Your brother is dying, you know.” Rachel lifted his shirt. There was a dark smear like a shadow growing in the center of his chest.

Jane’s heart was racing. “What is that?”

“The Dark One struck him. The poison will spread, and when it covers Michael, your brother will become a shadow like the others.”

A sansi,
Jane thought.
Michael will turn into one of them.
“What can we do?”

Rachel said, “The only way to stop the poison is to stop
him
.”

“And I need the Name of the World to do that,” Jane said. “What is it?” When Rachel didn’t answer, Jane said, “You won’t tell me? Then why are you here? What’s the point if you won’t help me?”

“You misunderstand, little girl. I’m not here to guide you or counsel you—think of me as a weapon to protect you. I
will
help you, but I can’t lead you,” Rachel said. “The Wishing Stone means that I will grant your wishes, but I can’t tell you what to do. That’s up to you, not me.”

“Like a genie or something?” Jane said. “Then I wish to have the Name of the World and kill the Raven King.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Jane. I’m strong, not all-powerful.”

“Is everyone frozen like my parents? How much longer can they live like that?”

“Not long,” Rachel said. “Civilization is forgetting itself. But
clearly not everyone is standing still—hence the smoke. Soon everything is going to get much worse. In another day, maybe two or three, the Dark One will win. You are part of a very small group that was not seduced by technology.”

I won’t panic,
Jane thought.
I need to think about what I have to do—there isn’t much time.
“So you can’t tell me anything,” she said. “But you can help me. Okay, my grandmother was the last person to use the Name of the World, right? When was that?”

“In 1945.”

Grandma Diana was my age back then,
Jane thought. “Can we go to London?” she asked Rachel. “How long will that take?”

“Yes, of course we can. As I fly, it will take several hours,” Rachel said.

But I can’t waste several hours,
Jane thought.
Michael is dying, everyone is in danger, and for all I know, the Raven King could be waiting for me at Grandma Diana’s apartment now. I wish Thomas
was
the champion,
and I didn’t have to do this. What if the Name of the World isn’t at Grandma Diana’s apartment anymore? And if she did still have the Name of the World there, why didn’t she bring it with her to America when she came to visit? She didn’t know the Raven King would show up, that’s why.

What if I’m wrong?

“We have to go,” Jane said. “I guess I don’t have a choice.” And in her best Grandma Diana voice, she said, “Take us across the pond, dear.”

B
efore reaching the Atlantic Ocean, they stopped in New York City to get food. Jane had never been to Manhattan before, but she had seen it enough times on television and in movies that she expected to see a massive metropolis. It should have looked like a grid of office buildings with a square slice of trees, Central Park, at the center. Now the city was buried under brown smoke that made Jane’s eyes water. She tasted hot cinders that burned the back of her throat.

As they dropped lower, the soupy air cleared, and Rachel brought them down on the sidewalk of a wide avenue of glass buildings with banks, clothing stores, and all-night convenience shops on their bottom floors. Everywhere there was broken glass, and bodies cluttered the sidewalk, as if there had been a stampede or a riot. The streets were jammed with yellow taxicabs, blue sedans, buses, and cars—all motionless and empty. Some of the cars were just burnt-out shells. Black smoke rose from sewer grates and open manholes. Fires raged inside nearby buildings. Jane heard a man screaming in the distance and a random popping sound, like firecrackers. The traffic lights at a nearby intersection changed from red to green; the red
Don’t Walk
hand turned into a white
Walk
person.

“Be quick,” Rachel said. “I’ll watch from that rooftop. Call my name when you’re ready.” She flew onto the roof of an office tower.

Michael said, “It looks like a war.” He pointed past the carnage. “Is that Times Square?”

A few blocks away, Jane saw the flashing lights and restaurants of Times Square, just like on television on New Year’s Eve. The intersections were crowded with crashed cars, and she saw more bodies. Jane spotted people walking through the square with long sticks—spears or rifles, maybe—in their hands.

“Yes,” Jane said. “I’ll be right back. Do you want roasted peanuts for the flight?”

Michael was already asleep again. His poison wound made him groggy and confused. When Jane checked under his shirt, the blackness had almost spread to the top of Michael’s stomach.

In a nearby convenience store, a balding man slouched behind the counter. His shirt was covered in blood. A woman was waiting to pay for sandwiches and soft drinks, which she’d placed on the checkout counter. She was staring at the static on a television above the door and holding a tiny pistol in her left hand. In her right hand, she held a dark blue smartphone just like the one Jane’s mother used to have.

The woman didn’t look down.
It’s all right,
Jane told herself as she stepped quietly past the woman to the refrigerators to get sodas and prepackaged sandwiches. There were bloody smears on one of the refrigerator doors.
The only way I can help them is to stop the Raven King,
Jane thought. When she had filled a paper bag with food, she turned for the exit. The woman was staring at her.

“Why won’t he call me back?” the woman said. She shook the
phone. “I can’t check my email.” She started to cry and tapped the gun against the side of her head.

Jane’s pulse was loud in her ears. “I’ll fix it,” she said. “Please, don’t do that.”

“I just want to hurt someone,” the woman said, and she cocked the gun.

“Rachel!”

The woman aimed the gun at Jane.

Jane shouted, “Wait—!”

The pistol clicked. It was empty.

Rachel was standing in the doorway behind the woman. “We have to go,” she said. “Right now.”

“That woman…”

Rachel grabbed Jane and picked up Michael, and they took off in a sharp rush of air that almost made Jane drop her bag of food. Below, the smoke thinned, and they flew fast over more houses and towers on their way to the ocean.

Rachel said, “You’re safe. Be quiet and try to rest.”

But Jane kept looking at the empty sky behind them. Soon they were rushing over water with sailboats and barges lolling on the low waves. The water darkened, the air got colder, and the land faded behind them. Jane drifted to sleep.

She dreamt of fire.

When she woke, Jane was hanging in Rachel’s arms, her sack of deli food clenched in one hand. They were still over the ocean, but there was land on the horizon.

Rachel said, “Jane? You were screaming.”

“I’m fine,” Jane said. “Is that England?”

“Almost,” Rachel said. “That’s Ireland. We’ll be there soon.”

“How is Michael?”

“Worse.”

What if I’m wrong?
Jane thought.
What if the Name of the World isn’t here and I brought us all the way across the ocean for nothing?

“I can beat the Raven King, right?” Jane said. “If I find the Name of the World, I can do it, can’t I?”

“You have to try,” Rachel said. “Sometimes you must fight even when you know you can’t win. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Jane said, but she thought to herself,
I’d call that answer a big
no.