Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (17 page)

“But you’re not nothing,” Etta said, smiling. “Rue has shown me that. She’s a person in her own right. We must find her—and no one is better able to find her than you, her sisters. You can move through the city crowds unseen and unheard, you can hear every whisper and read every thought. Somewhere in those multitudes someone will know where the girls from the Hellgate Club have been moved.”

The changelings were bubbling now with excitement. One surged forward from the mass and assumed a roughly human shape. “We can do that,” it said. “But once we find our sister and the others, what will we do?”

“All you have to do is send a message. The lampsprites have volunteered to be our messengers.”

She held out her hand, and a light drifted down from one of the trees and alit on her open palm. The light resolved into a tiny winged figure that I recognized as Featherbell, the lampsprite Daisy had befriended last year. She brushed her wings against Etta’s face, dusting her cheeks with iridescent powder. That was how they communicated with humans.

“Featherbell says that she and her friends will accompany you to the city to look for Rue and the other girls. They will carry any message you have for us and let us know if you are in any danger.”

“The light-things have never helped us before,” the changeling said. “And we don’t know how to speak to them.”

Featherbell chatted animatedly to Etta. Since I hadn’t been touched by her wings I couldn’t understand her, nor could the changelings. They shifted restlessly around the circle, splashing and sloshing, their forms merging with each other.

“Their types of magic are opposite,” Raven whispered in my ear. “That’s why they’ve never had anything to do with each other before. I’m not sure Etta’s plan will work.”

But even as he spoke a dozen lights were drifting down from the trees. A conflagration of lampsprites fluttered around the glade, each one brushing past Etta, touching their wings to her face and then looping around the circle, swooping and gliding like mad barn swallows, each one leaving a trail of bright streamers, like kite tails, which braided together into a multicolored skein. It made me dizzy to watch. I blinked . . . and saw that the changelings were moving, too, their watery shapes dancing around the circle like girls around a maypole—girls in bright dresses. The changelings were no longer made of colorless water; the lampsprites had imbued them with their own colors.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Raven whispered. “Changelings always take the features and memories of their hosts. I’ve never seen any creatures freely give of themselves to the changelings before.”

I thought of what Omar had said about alliances being formed and felt a defiant thrill. Van Drood might be amassing the shadows, but if we could harness light and water together like this, we could stand against him. And if the changelings and lampsprites could form such an unlikely bond, why not the Darklings and the Order?

Perhaps Raven was thinking the same thing. He squeezed my hand, his dark eyes shining in the reflected glow of the fiery dance below us. The changelings and lampsprites had come to a standstill. Each changeling had assumed a shape and color now. One pirouetted, its amorphous shape gaining definition, as a blob of clay becomes a pot when it’s turned on a wheel. The shape was now distinctly female.

“Let us do what Etta has asked,” the female changeling said.

“Let let let us us us!” the multitude excitedly echoed back. But they were no longer a faceless multitude. The circle was now ringed with a dozen Ettas.

“No one has ever entrusted the changelings with a mission before,” Raven said. “Etta is their new hero.”

“That’s all very well and good,” Helen said, raising her voice so Etta could hear her. “But she’ll also be in trouble if she doesn’t get back to the dorm now!”

A dozen Ettas lifted their heads to look at Helen. When the real Etta laughed the laugh rippled through the circle, the lampsprites flocking around Etta like a rainbow cloak. I had a feeling that neither the changelings nor the lampsprites would ever let Etta fall into any trouble.

19

ETTA, HELEN, AND
I made our way back through the forest by foot, following a path that the Blythe Wood opened for us, while Raven and Marlin flew overhead. I’d only been able to say a hurried farewell to Raven, but he’d squeezed my hand again and asked if I’d read his note. I told him I hadn’t had time to, and he looked hurt and left hurriedly. I opened the note as we walked. “Don’t go in the woods tonight,” was all it said.
Well, that wasn’t very helpful,
I thought, as the clear moonlit sky above us opened up and let down a torrent of rain.

“It’s the changelings,” Etta told us, smiling through the downpour. “They move through water when they’re unhosted. The rain will take them to the river and the river will take them down to the city to look for Rue. The lampsprites will fly with them.”

“Couldn’t they have caught the morning train from Rhinecliff?” Helen asked, regarding her mud-soaked boots ruefully.

Etta’s response was to hug Helen and thank her for coming to find her. Helen gruffly told her to quit the
sentimental bosh
and get back to the dorm or we’d all catch our deaths of cold. But I noticed that she was smiling when Etta turned away to hurry along the path—and still was when we got to the edge of the woods where Nathan and Mr. Bellows were waiting for us.

“Thank the Bells,” Mr. Bellows said, tearing at his already rumpled hair. “I thought the wood had devoured you.”

“What took so long?” Nathan demanded.

“
We
were rescuing Etta,” Helen replied haughtily, “while you gentlemen were being led on a merry chase by a bunch of trees.”

I waited to see if she would mention Raven and Marlin coming to our aid, but instead she looked around and asked, “Where’s Daisy?”

“She’s back in the library with Vi and Lillian—she was so upset that we thought it best she stay there.”

“Oh,” Helen said, looking more miffed than relieved. “She must be worried about us and sorry we had that silly fight. But you would think she’d have come looking for us.”

Nathan and Mr. Bellows looked at each other and shrugged, as if to say they weren’t about to enter into the internal workings of girls’ friendships. Then they both turned to walk back to the castle, with Etta between them excitedly explaining the plan she had initiated with the changelings and lampsprites. When we reached the library Miss Sharp and Daisy already knew about the plan from Miss Corey. Helen looked uneasy for the first time since we’d left the Rowan Circle.

“Did she tell you anything else?”

Miss Sharp looked at her quizzically and shook her head. “She only spoke of the changelings—and then once you were safe she went into a deep trance. Is there something else we should know, Helen?”

“Yes, Helen,” Daisy said. “Is there anything else? We all know how much you despise keeping secrets.”

I stared at Daisy. Although her eyes were pink from crying, she hadn’t gotten up to greet us. Was she really still angry with us? And would Helen, in her pique, reveal our encounter with the Darklings? But Helen only shook her head. “Of course the experience of seeing the changelings and lampsprites communicate is not possible to convey. You had to be there.”

Daisy turned pale and bit her lip. “It was clever of Etta to think of including the lampsprites.” Then she busied herself pouring tea for us all while Miss Sharp built up the fire.

We sat around it talking through the night, filling our teachers and Nathan in on everything Omar and Kid Marvel had told us. It was clear that the news weighed heavily on Nathan. I had thought that rescuing Ruth from the Hellgate Club had done something toward relieving his grief over his sister Louisa’s condition, but now I saw that the situation was an uncomfortable reminder of his limitations. He had rescued Louisa from Faerie, but part of her still lingered there; he had rescued Ruth from the Hellgate Club, but her changeling self had been lost, and now all those other girls were gone, too. I wondered if finding Rue and the others would dispel the shadows from his soul. Or would there always be one more girl he couldn’t save to haunt him?

“I’m glad the changelings are looking for Rue and the other girls,” Miss Sharp said, “but I’m afraid it’s not enough. We have to go to the Council. We should have gone to them right away.”

“I’ll go to Dame Beckwith and tell her it was my idea to keep the whole thing secret,” Mr. Bellows offered gallantly.

“We’ll
all
go to Dame Beckwith,” Miss Sharp said.

“Us too?” Daisy asked, wringing her hands. “Do you think they’ll expel us?”

“I meant Mr. Bellows, Miss Corey, and me,” she said, laying a hand on her friend’s shoulder. Even in her trance, Miss Corey stirred at her touch. “As for you three . . .” She blinked at us in the early-morning light as though she’d just remembered something. “Don’t you have midterms today?”

We could have gone to Dame Beckwith and asked to be excused from midterms, but none of us wanted to be around when she found out the secret we’d been keeping from her. Instead we sat through our exams. When I looked up from my own paper I saw Nathan, Helen, and Daisy hard at work at theirs. Daisy looked grim and determined, as though she had decided to best us all by getting the highest grade. Helen looked energized and fresh. Even Nathan looked serious. When had
that
happened? I wondered, lowering my eyes to the blank page in front of me. Last year Nathan had been the one in danger of failing; this year it was me. Perhaps if I hadn’t been up all night I would have managed to summon a few random facts to put down, but I had to admit there were few enough of those facts rattling around in a head full of lost girls and menacing shadows, midnight flights and feathery kisses. I wasn’t all that surprised to be called in to Dame Beckwith’s office the week after exams.

I approached her office with dragging steps, sure that I was about to be asked to leave. I had seriously considered not coming back to Blythewood this year. I had told Helen and Daisy that I didn’t care about failing my exams. Raven had told me he wanted me to come to him when I was ready. So why was I so afraid of being asked to leave?

Was it because I wasn’t sure Raven would have me . . . or because I wasn’t ready to go to him yet?

Well, you should have thought of that before you botched your exams,
I chided myself as I lifted a heavy hand to knock on Dame Beckwith’s door.

“You musn’t blame yourself!”

The words would have been reassuring had they been directed at me, but as they came from behind the closed door, they clearly weren’t. Besides, I recognized the voice as that of Miss Frost, who would have been the first to tell me that my problems were my own fault—and to point out that it was rude to be eavesdropping on a private conversation. I lifted my hand again just as Dame Beckwith replied, “Who else should I blame? Jude?”

My hand froze.
Jude?
Could she possibly mean Judicus van Drood? I lowered my hand and opened my inner ear to listen.

“Well, yes,” Miss Frost replied, “Judicus van Drood
chose
to become a monster.”

“Do any of us make that choice, Euphorbia? I saw what was happening to him. I saw that he loved Evangeline”—my heart quickened at the sound of my mother’s name—“but I forbade him to speak to her.”

“Of course you did!” Miss Frost cried. “She was his student. It would have been most improper! You directed him to the correct procedure—to apply to the Council for approval of the match when she came of age. And they did approve—”

“Until he lost his fortune. And by that time Evangeline was in love with another.”

I waited, scarcely daring to breathe, to see if Dame Beckwith would reveal the identity of my father. Did she know who he was? But if she had known he was a Darkling, she would never have allowed me at Blythewood.

“He’s not the only one to ever lose a beloved. When I lost Miles—”

“You spent the next twenty years overindulging in drink,” Dame Beckwith snapped. “And allowed the
tenebrae
to possess a student right under your nose.” The silence that followed made it clear how mortified Miss Frost must be from the remark. When Dame Beckwith spoke next her voice was gentler.

“Your loss weakened you, Euphorbia, just as Jude’s weakened him. It made you vulnerable to the shadows, just as it made him.”

“It was because I was jealous of other people’s happiness,” Miss Frost said. “I see that now that I have him back. Surely you understand.”

Dame Beckwith sighed.

“Yes. I think for a time I, too, was preyed on by the shadows. I was happy to go along with the Council’s decision to delay Jude’s betrothal to Evangeline, and I was happy when they revoked their permission to wed. I allowed myself to believe he’d forget Evangeline, that we could be together. Me, a married woman!”

“Your marriage to Daniel Beckwith was not exactly a love match.”

“No.” Dame Beckwith laughed ruefully. “It certainly wasn’t. But at least he allowed the world to believe Nathan was his child, despite knowing otherwise. And after Nathan was born I understood that I must renounce Jude. I saw what he’d become. I tried to save him, but the shadows had already taken over. And now—to think that he’s luring young women to their ruin! I feel as if I am personally responsible for the fates of those poor women!”

“You must not think that, India. You have our own girls to consider. How did the council react when you told them about the Hellgate Club?”

“Not well. They accused me of not having control over my own teachers and students, and they expressed a concern that Blythewood girls have grown too aggressive. They’re afraid our girls have turned into bluestockings like the British suffragettes, tossing bricks through windows and planting bombs. What do they expect? They train us to kill and then expect us to be equally comfortable pouring tea and beheading goblins.”

“Well,” Euphorbia said, “a few additional decorum lessons won’t hurt the girls.”

Dame Beckwith was silent for a moment. When she spoke, it was lower, and I had to strain to hear. “They said if we didn’t demonstrate that our girls were being trained in the feminine arts they will close down the school.”

“They wouldn’t!”

“I believe they would . . . Oh dear, please don’t weep, Euphorbia.”

“But where would Miles and I go if the school closed?” Miss Frost said in a quavering voice.

“We’ll just have to do our best to make sure it doesn’t. Now, please compose yourself. Haven’t you a class at this hour?”

The sound of Miss Frost’s petticoats rustling gave me ample warning that she was approaching the door. I quickly scurried around the corner and waited until she passed by, so busy sniffling that she didn’t notice me. I felt like crying myself. Could the Council truly be thinking of closing Blythewood? I couldn’t be kicked out now! I had to find a way to save the school.

I paused, once again, on the threshold of Dame Beckwith’s office. Miss Frost had left the door partially open. Dame Beckwith was sitting behind her desk, her chair angled so she could look out the window that faced the lawn, the gardens, and the Blythe Wood, but the windows were fogged and obscured by the rain that had been coming down since All Hallows’ Eve. As I watched I saw her lift a hand to wipe her eyes.

It had been shocking to hear Dame Beckwith talk about her love for Judicus van Drood, shocking to hear her talk about the Council trying to close Blythewood, but all of that was nothing to seeing strong, indomitable Dame Beckwith reduced to tears. I almost fled, but she must have heard me.

“Oh, Avaline,” she said, turning from the window and squaring her shoulders. “Come in. I was just wondering what this rain would do to the lacrosse field.”

It was such a mundane concern that I almost laughed, but then I realized this was how Dame Beckwith was able to face all those problems and go on. Just as she had gone on after she lost her beloved to the shadows and her daughter to Faerie.

“I know you have a lot on your mind,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “If there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

“As a matter of fact, I have a job for you.”

“Anything,” I told her, thinking I’d be happy to slaughter goblins or comb the streets of New York City looking for the Hellgate Club.