Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (27 page)

I went downstairs, checking first on the fourth floor to see that the remaining nestlings were all right. Cam and Myrtilene had them all crowded into one room, wrapped in shawls and sipping hot cocoa. Then I went down to the library, where I found Helen, Miss Corey, and Miss Sharp.

Unable to face going to our room without Daisy, we sat the rest of the night in the library, sitting by the window, watching the fog lighten to a pearly gray. My eyes were beginning to droop when Helen grabbed my hand. I startled awake and saw a figure appearing out of the fog—a winged figure, black against the gray, one wing dragging along the icy lawn.

I jumped up and ran out the door, my feet slipping on the ice. I heard Helen running behind me and calling my name, but I didn’t listen to her. I just had to reach him.

It wasn’t Raven; it was Marlin. I skidded to a halt. Helen rushed past me and caught Marlin’s arm as he fell to one knee. His face was as gray as the fog. Blood dripped on the ice from his broken wing.

“What happened?” I cried, taking his other arm.

“We followed them down the river nearly to the city. We had just caught up with them . . . there’s a spot where a creek feeds into the river. The currents are tricky there. The ice began to break up. The sleighs . . . they just vanished! We tried to follow them but the ice suddenly . . .
exploded
! It was like a volcano erupting. The water was churning in a whirlpool, the force so strong that it would have sucked us all into it. Raven shouted for us to get back . . . and then . . .” Marlin shuddered, unable to speak for a moment. Helen stroked his arm. I wanted to shake him.

“And then?” I prompted. “What happened to Raven?”

“It grabbed him.”

“
It?
”

“The . . . monster in the whirlpool. It was huge, with dozens of tentacles. They wrapped around Raven. I attacked it, stabbed it, but it wouldn’t let go. I saw its mouth . . . a giant maw full of razor-sharp teeth . . .” He shuddered and I shook, recalling the kraken from my nightmare.

“It struck me, broke my wing, then tossed me onto the riverbank. I couldn’t move. I watched while . . .”

“What?” I screamed. “What did it do to Raven?”

“It dragged him under the ice.”

29

THE PARENTS OF
the remaining girls sent sleighs for them the day after the party. They left in a dead hush, with none of the shouts and cheerful farewells of last year’s end-of-term leave-taking. Dame Beckwith stood on the steps to speak with the drivers and the few parents who came themselves, but most would not even look at her—except for Mr. Driscoll, who shouted at her for a full fifteen minutes and then turned away in disgust.

“They invited those men,” I complained to Helen as we stood at the second-floor-landing window watching the exodus. “How can they blame Dame Beckwith for what happened?”

“Because otherwise they’d have to blame themselves,” Helen replied. Then she turned away and went to the infirmary, where Marlin lay, bandaged and ashen faced. I went down to see off the last sleigh, which Nathan and Mr. Bellows were taking back to the city to look for the girls. As I approached I saw that a white bird was perched on Mr. Bellows’ shoulder. Her wings looked ragged, as if some creature had pecked at it, but I recognized her as the female gyrfalcon, Eirwyn.

“She’s the only one that came back,” Mr. Bellows explained, smoothing the gyr’s feathers. “She showed up at your grandmother’s house last night pursued by shadow crows. Agnes sent her back with a message from Sam Greenfeder. He says his inquiries have led him to a property in the Bronx, which is also where the sleigh left the river.”

“We’ll search every house in the Bronx for the girls . . . and Raven,” Nathan said through gritted teeth. “He might have been taken by them when he came out of the maelstrom.”

I nodded. We both knew it was unlikely that Raven had survived, but it was kind of Nathan to pretend that he might be alive. Especially since he looked half-frozen himself. His face had taken on that shadowed look again, the brief flush of happiness I’d seen yesterday wiped clean by the night’s events. I knew that our girls being taken had prodded the open wound of what had happened to Louisa.

“Don’t you get lost, too,” I said.

“We won’t,” Mr. Bellows said with a wistful look at Miss Sharp, who had come with Miss Corey to see him off. “You take care of her,” he said to Miss Corey. As he turned to jump on the sleigh runner, his red scarf fluttering in the breeze, Eirwyn leapt onto my shoulder, emitting a plaintive cry. I didn’t need to understand bird language to know she was lamenting her lost companions.

When the last sleigh bell faded in the distance, the castle was left in a pall of silence. Miss Sharp and Miss Corey headed to the library, where they planned to comb through the books for any mention of a hellgate. I brought Eirwyn to the infirmary, where Dame Beckwith was sitting beside Gillie’s bed. The gryfalcon instantly flew to the iron bedstead and perched above Gillie’s head, mantling her feathers as if to protect him, even though it was too late. Gillie lay as though dead, his skin a sickly green, the color of pond scum. When I told Dame Beckwith that Nathan and Mr. Bellows had gone to the city to look for the girls, she paled.

“Am I to lose my son, too?” she asked, looking down at poor Gillie. “The only one who could find our lost girls lies here dying because of me. Mr. Driscoll was right—I was a fool for letting those men near our girls.”

“But Mr. Driscoll was one of the Council who invited those men to Blythewood!”

“He says he and others were bewitched, but that the bells of Blythewood should have rung out against their evil intent—just as they should have rung out against Herr Hofmeister.”

“I think,” I said slowly, putting together what I’d seen last night, “that van Drood has found a way past our defenses. He controls his puppets from afar. They get past our wards and bells because the puppets are empty of ill intent until he activates them.”

“Jude always said our defenses were weak,” she said ruefully.

“But it’s
his
weakness that he can’t show himself here in the flesh. And he can only control those who are weak. He has to find a way in—a vulnerability to prey on. He can’t control us if we stay strong.”

Dame Beckwith’s eyes flashed, and I was afraid I’d insulted her. Who was I to lecture her about strength? But then she squared her mouth and replied, “Yes, you’re right, Ava. We must stay strong for those who depend on us.”

I left her and Helen sitting by their patients. Eirwyn came with me, perching on my shoulder as I climbed up to the bell tower. From the top of the tower I could see in all directions: north to the Blythe Wood, east to River Road, west to the Catskills, and south along the frozen river that led to the city. All approaches to the castle lay frozen and wrecked, and standing at its summit, I felt as though I were stranded on an iceberg in an arctic sea, watching the horizon for rescue.

I stood there each day with Eirwyn until my lips turned blue from the cold and I could no longer feel my fingers and toes. I told myself we were waiting for the other hawks and Blodeuwedd to come back, but only when I was close to the sky did I feel close to Raven. I remembered what he’d said to me that night in the woods—that when I’d been in my trance he’d felt like a part of himself was missing. That’s how I felt now, as if the very wind that touched my face was empty because he did not ride upon it.

At night we flew down the river together, both looking for our missing mates. I followed Eirwyn, surer of her instincts than mine, as she swept low over the great houses beside the river, but she always came back alone, crying her bereft cry.

When the new term started, only a dozen or so girls came back. Unsurprisingly most of the parents withdrew their daughters from the school. Luckily, my grandmother was not one of them. She remained staunch in her defense of Dame Beckwith and intended to speak in her defense when the Council met to decide whether she should be relieved of her duties and whether the school should be closed.

Dame Beckwith valiantly tried to keep the school going as though nothing had happened. We had classes even though there were only a handful of girls in each class and two of the teachers, Miss Swift and Mr. Peale, had “taken sabbaticals.”

“Cowards!” Miss Corey remarked one night in early February when we were all gathered in the library. “Like rats fleeing a sinking ship. I hear Martin has applied to teach at Hawthorn and Matilda has applied to Miss Porter’s—a
civilian
school!”

“They’re scared,” Miss Sharp said. “No one knows whom to trust anymore. The whole structure of the Order has been compromised.”

“At least we know we can trust each other,” Miss Corey replied, laying her hand on Miss Sharp’s shoulder. “And we know that Nathan, Mr. Bellows, Mr. Greenfeder, and Agnes are doing everything they can to find the girls.”

“Don’t forget Omar and Kid Marvel,” I said.

“And the Darklings,” Helen added. “Sparrow came to visit Marlin the other night and told him they’re looking for Raven and our girls. In fact, Marlin and I have been talking and we have an idea.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing all those hours in the infirmary?” Miss Sharp asked teasingly.

Helen blushed. “I’m not the only one who was affected by the generosity of the Darklings who came to rescue us on the night of the winter dance—or the only one touched by their valor or”—here she looked pointedly at me—“who wants to honor those who sacrificed themselves for our safety. I’ve been talking with some of the girls as well, and we all think it’s time we did something other than sit around waiting.”

I wanted to say that Eirwyn and I were not just sitting around, but I couldn’t tell her that.

“What do you suggest?” Miss Sharp asked, no longer teasing.

“We want to form a group of Darklings and Blythewood girls.”

“I’ve already spoken to Master Quill about the same idea,” Miss Corey said. “But I’m not sure it’ll work.”

“You’ve been in touch with him?” I asked, surprised. I had seen her skating on the river once or twice, but hadn’t realized she was going to Ravencliffe.

“Yes, I’ve been back to the library several times to read more of
A Darkness of Angels
. Falco asks for you, by the way,” she said, with a pointed look to show me she hadn’t given my secret away.

“I don’t think Merlinus wants me there,” I said. “Not after what happened to Raven.”

“No,” Miss Corey admitted. “He blames the Order for his only son going missing. That’s why I don’t know if your idea of forming a collaboration with the Darklings will succeed.”

“That’s how the Elders think,” Helen replied sharply, “but not how the fledglings feel. Marlin thinks they would be open to forming an association with us.”

“Oh,” Miss Sharp said, her blue eyes lively. “They must really have enjoyed dancing with our girls.”

“Must you make everything a romance?” Miss Corey chided, but with a smile.

“It’s not just the boy fledglings,” Helen said, leaning forward in her chair and looking earnest. “Oriole and Sirena and a few other girl Darklings want to join, too. In fact, they complain that their Elders don’t take girls seriously enough and they’d like to go to a school like Blythewood.”

“I don’t know if Dame Beckwith would endorse that,” Miss Sharp said. “Or any of this. She’s in enough trouble with the Council as it is.”

“So we don’t tell her,” Helen replied, leaning back in her chair. “She has enough to worry about. It’s time we did something. And you,” she said, turning on me, “you need to spend time with people and not stand all day on the bell tower with that bird.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that it was easy for her to say—she hadn’t lost
her
beloved—but then I closed my mouth. She was right. Standing all day like a captain’s wife pacing her widow’s walk—or even flying along the river with Eirwyn—wasn’t going to bring back Raven or Daisy or the other girls.

“I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “If the Elders and the Council are both so out of touch, then it’s time we young people joined forces.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Helen said, smiling. “Because Marlin says you’re the perfect one to lead us.”

So on a frosty night in February I led a group of Blythewood girls on a skating expedition to the Ravencliffe boathouse. We took pains to sneak out, but without a full force of Dianas on patrol and with Gillie still in the infirmary, it was remarkably easy to evade our teachers’ notice.

There were seven of us, including Helen and me, Etta, Cam, Mary, Dolores Jager, who hadn’t spoken again since the night Beatrice was taken, and, shockingly, Myrtilene Montmorency, who’d shown up at the school a week ago saying she was bored at home and was coming back to school no matter what Daddy said about it.

“Are we sure she’s not a spy?” I asked Helen when we set off.

“I don’t think we can be sure about anything, but I saw her dancing with a Darkling that night.”

“Oh,” I said. “I hope all these girls realize this is serious business and not an excuse to flirt with boys.”

“Don’t be such an old maid,” Helen sniffed, and then, seeing my appalled look, added more gently, “We’ll find him. He was swinging at that kraken when he went under the ice. Marlin says Raven wouldn’t give up when he has so much to live for.”

“He said that?” I asked, feeling the blood heat my face despite the freezing night.

“Yes,” Helen said, linking her arm in mine. “Now come on. It’s a lovely night for a moonlight skating party.”

It was indeed beautiful on the frozen river. The ice was no longer clear as it had been that first morning I skated to Ravencliffe, but a frosted white that glowed with an opalescent sheen in the light of the full moon. The only sound was the scrape of our skates, the creak of the ice shifting beneath our feet, and the shrill whistle of Eirwyn flying above us. But when I opened up my Darkling ear I could hear the river running below the ice, like a live electric wire connecting us to the sea, and to the lost girls and Raven—if he were still alive.

The boathouse was a ramshackle affair of rotting clapboard and pebbledash. As we approached, Helen startled me by whistling the refrain from a popular song called “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” I thought it an odd choice for Helen, but then I heard an answering refrain from the shore and realized it was an arranged signal.

“They’re here,” Helen said, and then she skated faster, singing the refrain of the syrupy romantic song under her breath.