Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (12 page)

We proceeded down the wide stairs, lit only by the lamps the Dianas carried. Although I knew what the initiation consisted of, I found myself awed by the solemnity of the procession. In the flickering lamplight, the portraits of teachers and illustrious alumnae on the walls looked down upon us gravely, as if enjoining us to live up to the Blythewood tradition. In the Great Hall the stained-glass windows depicting women archers seemed to be standing guard against the darkness pressing in on the castle. But then we were passing through the wide-open doors and out into that darkness.

Our lamps cast insubstantial pools of light in the wide expanse of fog-shrouded lawn, the beams carving strange shapes out of the fog, and then shrinking to pinpoints when we passed into the forest. The nestlings, who had been whispering among themselves, went silent as we entered the woods. I opened up my inner ear and listened.

At first I heard nothing. All the forest sounds I had heard today—the sift of leaves, creak of branches, and stir of the wild things that lived there—had vanished. It was as if the wood knew it was being invaded and had gone to ground like a frightened hare. Or like an owl who stalks its prey on muffled wings. The Blythe Wood was listening to us, watching us, waiting . . .

I stopped and let the last girls go on ahead. Into that silence fell the sound of wings swooping down from a great height, heading straight toward me. It took every ounce of nerve in my body not to bolt, but I stayed still until those wings descended and swooped me up into the night.

14

AFTER WEEKS OF
longing to fly, it felt wonderful to be winging into the sky, even if the wings that carried me were not my own. The flutter in my chest, though,
was
my own—my heart beating against my ribcage. I wondered if Raven could feel it where he held me pressed against his chest. I could feel his heart keeping time to the pulse of his wings.

We rose for so long I thought he was taking me to the moon, but when we at last touched down on a swaying pine branch and I smelled tea and violets I knew exactly where we were.

“Your lair!” I said happily. “I was afraid you’d abandoned it when you went to live at Violet House.”

His lip quirked into a smile. “I prefer to think of it as my nest,” he replied, lifting a pine branch out of the way so I could pass into the snug tree house. “And of course I haven’t abandoned it. A Darkling might pass among humans, but sooner or later he—or she—must spread his wings and fly.”

When he laid his hand on my back to guide me into the nest I felt the warmth of his hand through my cloak and thin nightgown—

And right through to my bare skin! I wasn’t wearing a corset underneath my nightgown. I suddenly felt very aware of him, standing close to me in the snug space, his breath hot against my cheeks, his hand resting between my shoulder blades. My wings stirred and I automatically tensed my back muscles to keep them from unfurling. He flinched his hand away suddenly.

I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t tensed because I was nervous around him, but he’d already turned away to light a lamp and the little gas stove he used to boil water. I looked around, taking deep breaths to steady my heart. The nest was actually a small round room with a smooth plank floor and woven branches for walls. Violets grew in moss pockets tucked among the branches. There were pots and teacups and bits of clock mechanisms on the cleverly fitted shelves—but more of the latter than when last I’d visited.

“I see you’re still working on Thaddeus Sharp’s clocks,” I said when I trusted myself to talk again.

“Yes. I believe that he was working out a system to control the
tenebrae
,” he answered, putting the kettle on the stove. Was his hand shaking? Was he as nervous around me as I was around him?

“Control them?” I asked, trying to concentrate.

“Thaddeus realized that certain patterns of sound waves could repel the
tenebrae
.”

“The way the automaton repeater that Miss Emmie gave me repelled van Drood?” I asked, thinking I sounded very normal, as if my heart weren’t fluttering like a hummingbird’s.

“Exactly,” Raven said, pouring boiling water into the teapot, swishing it around, and dumping it out an open window. “Thaddeus designed the clocks at Violet House to cast a protective net over his home so that it would be safe from the
tenebrae
. I’m trying to figure out if his system can be used to cast a wider protective net. Thaddeus couldn’t—so he designed the repeater for Miss Emmaline when he realized that if a chime child could control the bells inside her own head she need never fear the
tenebrae
. Even a Shadow Master would be powerless against her.”

Raven looked up and caught me watching his hands as he measured tea into the pot. He blushed and looked down again. “That’s why you are so potentially dangerous to van Drood and why he so desperately wants you in his control. Which is why I warned you to stay away from him—and yet you deliberately put yourself in danger by going to the Hellgate Club.” His voice was suddenly angry, taking me by surprise.

“How do you know about that?” I asked. “Have you been following me?”

It came out sounding more snappish than I’d intended. Truthfully, I didn’t really mind the idea of Raven keeping an eye on me—but I didn’t like him lecturing me on what I should and shouldn’t do.

“Not anymore,” he said, pouring more hot water into the teapot. “You didn’t seem to like the idea when I mentioned it at the ball.”

The reference to the ball brought back to mind how it had felt being whisked around the dance floor in Raven’s arms.
Funny
, I thought. The dress I’d worn that night was flimsier than my nightgown, but I felt more exposed now. I was about to tell him that I didn’t really mind, when he added, “I know about your visit to the Hellgate Club from Ruth.”

“Oh,” I said dumbly, “of course. She’s at Violet House with you. I didn’t realize . . . I mean . . . I didn’t know you’d become . . . um . . . that she would feel comfortable . . .”

“She was shy around me at first,” he said, giving the tea a vigorous stir. “Perfectly understandable given what she’d been through. But then when I explained what I was—”

“You told her you’re a Darkling?” I squawked.

“I thought it would help Ruth if she had someone she could talk to about what she’d been through.” He handed me a cup of tea with milk and sugar already added. I was tempted to tell him I didn’t take it with sugar, but he continued. “Sirena helped explain.”

“Oh, so she’s met Sirena. I see.” I lifted my teacup and took a sip that scalded my tongue.

“Sirena’s very compassionate. Ruth told us both about how you and your friends rescued her.” He looked up from his own teacup. “It was very—”

“Foolish?” I asked, defensively.

“That too, but I was going to say brave. If you hadn’t found Kid Marvel and Omar at Coney Island and tracked Ruth down to the Hellgate Club, she’d still be there. I should have thought of talking to some of the fairies with underworld connections.”

“You can’t think of everything,” I said, willing to be conciliatory now that Raven was praising me. “I just ran into Mr. Marvel, actually, and he came up with the plan to get Ruth out—the ‘con’ as he called it. And everyone played his or her part. You should have seen Miss Sharp play an angry wife—”

“Yes, and I heard Nathan did an excellent job impersonating a client, although perhaps that didn’t require such a lot of acting.”

I opened my mouth to defend Nathan, but Raven was going on. “You all put on an impressive show. Too bad you spoiled it by sacrificing one innocent girl for another.”

“You mean the changeling? But she insisted!”

“And that makes it all right? If one of your friends—Helen or Daisy—
insisted
on going to live in a brothel, would you let her?”

The blood rushed to my face. “But Ruth said it wasn’t like that there . . . and the changeling said that if she was able to do something that protected Ruth and Etta she would know that she belonged s-somewhere . . .” I stammered to a halt, choking on the words, tears stinging my eyes. Had Raven summoned me here just to chastise me? Did he no longer care for me at all? Clearly he didn’t think me as “compassionate” as Sirena.

“Changelings are very sensitive creatures. They spend their lives waiting for just the right opportunity to merge with a host and be of use in that host’s life. But that doesn’t mean you should have let her sacrifice herself.”

I stared at Raven, aghast. It wasn’t fair. I had done little else for weeks but worry about the girls in the Hellgate Club. At night I dreamed about the things I had seen in Molly’s head. I had tried to argue with the changeling. “What should I have done?” I asked at last. “If the changeling hadn’t gone back, Ruth would have.”

Raven whistled under his breath, a sound like a bird calling to its mate. “That’s true. It’s just . . . it’s so easy for your kind to treat the fairies like something less than human. I thought you were different.”

“What do you mean ‘your kind’?” I demanded. “What kind am I? When the Order discovers what I am they’ll cast me out. And then where will I go? Will
your
kind take me in? What if I can’t fly? What if I’m just a half-breed freak with stunted wings? Of course I let the changeling convince me to let her go back to the Hellgate Club. I believed her when she said she would prefer to die rather than not belong anywhere.”

Raven was staring at me as though I had sprouted horns. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Not belonging?”

I nodded, unable to speak. Raven whistled under his breath again and turned away from me. My heart was pounding and I was tingling all over, as if every nerve ending in my body was on fire. I’d poured out my heart to him—my deepest fears—and now he was rummaging among his shelves, rearranging some picture frames. When he was done he turned back to me, gave me a baleful glance, and grabbed my hand.

“Stand here,” he said gruffly.

He yanked me in front of the shelf and then stepped aside. I stood blinking into my own startled eyes. He’d set up a mirror on the shelf, angled so I could see myself from head to toe—and from wing tip to wing tip. In the heat of my speech my wings had ripped through the back of my nightgown and swept away my cloak. Fully extended, they spanned the width of Raven’s nest. They weren’t black, though; they were a fiery red-gold, the color of my hair.

“You are, indeed, a rarity,” Raven said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You were caught in the fire just as you were beginning to fledge, and so you became a phoenix, a creature revered by the Darklings. You certainly don’t have to worry about being able to fly. Your wings . . .”

He took in the expanse of my wings, his eyes reflecting their red-gold, his skin basking in their glow. I, too, felt myself glowing, as if a flame had been kindled by his eyes.

“. . . are aeronautically sound.”

I snorted at the dry language and he, startled, laughed too.

“You sound like Cam with her flight manuals,” I said relieved to see him laughing. “But if they’re so sound, why can’t I fly?”

“Have you tried?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.

He grinned. “Then I think it’s time for your first lesson.”

Raven flew me across the river. I rode on his back so I could “feel the wind” in my wings. I closed my eyes. We were moving through a ribbon of air that was warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, gliding along it as though carried by a warm current in the ocean. When I opened my eyes I saw we had crossed the river and were soaring over a terrain of terraced cliffs and deep forest. The bare rock ridges stood out in the moonlight. Above them winged creatures soared, gliding and dipping into the canyons below. I thought they were hawks at first, but as we got closer I realized they were Darklings. I stiffened and drew in my wings.

“It’s all right,” Raven called. “We fledglings come here to stretch our wings. This range is called the Shawangunks, an Indian name that means smoky air. We think they named it that because of glimpsing Darklings flying here at night.”

“I thought you said our wings cloak us from human sight.” It felt funny to say
our
.

“From most humans,” he replied. “There are always a few—like Etta, or members of the Order who have been trained to spot magical creatures—who can see beyond the veil of the mortal world. Many of the Indians who lived here were able to see us. In fact, when your Order first settled here they used the Indians to learn about indigenous magical creatures—then stood by while the Indians were massacred or driven west.”

“That’s horrible!” I gasped. But I wasn’t entirely surprised.

“But I didn’t bring you out here to lecture you on the Order’s history. I brought you out here to fly. These cliffs make great thermals.”

I watched a Darkling gliding over a ridge suddenly plunge downward and then, just before he would have crashed on the rocks, somersault in the air. Another Darkling followed and performed a double somersault. I laughed out loud.

“Show-offs,” Raven said. “A lot of the fledglings come out here to practice their stunts. I thought it would be a good place for you to test your wings.”

“Oh, I could never fly in front of them!” I cried. “I’d be too embarrassed.”

“They aren’t. Look.”

A gawky boy, all clumsy long limbs and tangled brown hair, took a swan dive off one of the ridges. He tried to perform the same elegant maneuver as the two before him, but instead he flipped sideways, careened into the cliff, and skidded down the rock face.

“Is he all right?”

“Marlin? He’s lost so many tail feathers since he fledged, the other fledges call him ‘Baldy.’ Watch Sirena, though, she has a great spin.”

Sirena was here? I looked to the ridge and recognized the lithe, athletic Darkling whom I’d seen dive fearlessly into the East River. Her abundant dark hair whipped around her finely carved face. She stretched her arms above her head, stood on tiptoe, and then sailed gracefully down to the next ridge on glossy blue-black wings, where she skimmed close to the edge and then dropped down another ten feet and alit on a narrow rock abutment.

“So graceful!” I sighed wistfully. “I’ll never be able to do that.”

“Sirena was scraping rock same as Marlin a few months ago. She’s just been practicing more. Here.” We’d arrived at the cliff, but instead of landing on the ridge we touched down on a narrow ledge a bit below the top, a small niche carved into the rock face. “Why don’t we just watch for a while,” he said, giving me his hand to steady me as I slid off his back. “You don’t have to try it tonight if you’re not ready.”

I sat down and Raven squeezed in beside me. The niche was just big enough for the two of us if we tucked in our wings. I wrapped my arms around my knees, tenting my nightgown over my legs, and shivered.