The Death of Yorik Mortwell (7 page)

T
he Princess had established herself on a sort of throne, which she had cultivated from the low branches of a sycamore.

“Hmm,” she said. “A really horrible, nasty, tragic death, by the sound of things.”

“Does that mean he’ll wake as a ghost?” asked Yorik.

The Princess frowned. “I hope not. I’ve enough trouble with the ghost I’ve already got.”

“Saved me,” croaked Erde, almost angrily. She was huddled in the dirt.

“Yes,” sighed the Princess. “He did. Well,” she said to Yorik, “if that one does turn up, I don’t want you bringing it back
here
. I’ve finally got the place looking respectable.”

Yorik agreed that the glade looked lovely, especially in the nighttime. He was sitting on the grass in the middle of an absolute explosion of flowers, perfect green flora, and tall, thriving trees. Yorik wondered why the Princess was doing all of this in the middle of winter, but knew he could not ask. Only after he’d saved Erde had the Princess allowed him to return to the glade.

But he did have other questions.

“I don’t understand why Master Thomas could see me,” said Yorik. “None of the other living can.”

The Princess yawned. “Probably because you’re supposed to haunt him. He’s the one who murdered you, you know.”

Yorik had been pondering this. “I don’t think he did that on purpose. Killed me, I mean.”

“Let’s find out,” replied the Princess. She pointed her leafy twig.

A flickering, faded image appeared near the elm.
It was Master Thomas, bundled up in his white wool coat.
It’s an apple tree
, said the image.
Now start climbing
.

Yorik stood, startled. “Is that a ghost?”

“Sort of,” said the Princess, twirling her twig. “It’s a memory.”

Two flickering gray Dark Ones were hunched on the shoulders of the image. They spoke, sounding whispery and scratched.
The servant boy is very clever. He’ll find out what you did. Throw a rock. Throw a rock
.

They repeated this again and again. The image bent, chose a rock, and threw it. The Princess twitched the twig, and the image vanished.

“I’d find out what he did?” said Yorik, surprised. “What were they talking about?”

“I don’t know.” The Princess shrugged. “But it’s only human business, so it can’t be very important. I have other things to worry about.” She looked at Erde.

Yorik was worried about Erde too. She had dwindled since her encounter with the Dark Ones. She had stopped having conversations with ants, or
drawing in the dirt. She mostly huddled, slumped and motionless.

“Are you sick?” Yorik asked.

Erde nodded. “Sick,” she sniffled. A piece of mud fell from her mouth. Yorik noticed that the mud was drier than it had been. Erde was drying up, like the creek bed during a drought.

“Can’t you help her?” said Yorik to the Princess.

The Princess shook her head grimly. “I
could
,” she began, “but beastly Father—”

Yorik was done with hearing about beastly Father. “What does that have to do with it? The Dark Ones can’t come near you. You have loads of power.” The Princess’s eyelashes fluttered. “True. But my power is limited to this glade because of—”

“Beastly Father,” said Yorik.

The Princess gave Yorik a withering look. “Yes. The instant any bit of me left my glade, he would know. And Erde’s sickness comes from outside. It comes from
them
.”

All of Yorik’s attempts to repeat their word for the Dark Ones
—Yglhfm
—had only made the girls giggle nervously.

“I don’t understand,” said Yorik, “why they make her sick.”

The Princess and Erde exchanged searching looks.

“Tell him,” grunted Erde weakly.

“Are you sure?” said the Princess anxiously. “He’s only a human.”

Erde looked at Yorik. “Not a human.”

“It’s still a human,” objected the Princess. “Just a dead one, that’s all.”

Erde wearily rumbled, “Tell him.” She closed her dark brown eyes.

A wind blew through the glade. The trees and flowers stirred. Patterns flowed across the grass and across the surface of the pond. The light in the glade darkened.

“Very well,” said the Princess. “I will show you who Erde is.” And to Yorik’s surprise, when she said that, her voice did not sound high and haughty as it usually did, but deeper and richer. It stirred and echoed in his mind. Goose bumps rose on his arms.

The Princess stood and raised her leafy twig. Her glow deepened, and her gossamer dress grew black.

“Be honored, boy,” she said. “This knowledge is a gift rarely given to one of human birth.”

Suddenly the pale moon flickered and vanished. An instant later it reappeared.

Yorik was no longer on the Estate. No, he was, but the land had changed. The trees and flowers were gone, and a river flowed through the glade where the pond had been. But he could see the four hills of the Estate rising up around him, four brown hills dotted with scrub.

And he was alone.

Yorik stood and walked to the nearest of the four hills, then ascended for a better view.

Below, the river twisted and wound through the hills. Yorik knew there was no river on the Estate, only a small creek that flowed in a different place. He looked at it with interest, then was surprised to see a red lion rambling along the bank.

Yorik looked toward the Manor.

There was something there, not a manor, but some other kind of structure. It was high and arched, made of stones piled one on the other. It had a raw look that the Manor did not, as though
cobbled together by hand. The windows were made from colored glass.

Its front doors opened, and men came out, dressed in brown robes. They held spears.

They are hunting the red lion
, Yorik realized.

“Yes,” said the Princess’s rich, deep voice. The voice descended from the starry sky, and from the night shadows all around, but neither the red lion, as it padded dreamily along the rushing river, nor the men in robes with their spears raised seemed to notice. “All of this happened ten thousand human years ago.”

Yorik watched as the men spread out to encircle the red lion. Suddenly they rushed forward, hurling their spears. The red lion whirled around and roared a primal roar that shook the heavens.

Pale Moon Luna flickered out once more, and there was darkness.

“Wait, Your Highness!” said Yorik, anxious. “Did the lion escape?”

“You should ask Erde,” sang the voice of the invisible Princess. “She was there.”

“Erde was there? I didn’t see her.”

“Look closer, then, ghost. Erde is there always.”

The pale moon reappeared.

Yorik saw the four hills. It was winter. The river was broad and frozen. Luna’s white light glinted on the ice. The piled stones were gone, and in their place were solid huts built from wood and packed snow. Smoke rose from them. Though everything was cold and barren, the huts looked homey and warm.

“Do you see her?” asked the Princess.

Yorik turned in all directions, looking everywhere, but he saw only the hills, mist, and blown snow. “No.”

“You are not looking.”

“I am!” said Yorik.

“Further back, then,” came the Princess’s deep voice, like a rolling thunderstorm.

Dark, then light. This time there were no huts, no people. This time there were only tall trees covering the hills. There was no river, but a valley of ice that looked as permanent as a mountain. The hills were larger this time, and boulders jutted from them.

Yorik looked for Erde and did not see her.
I need a higher view
, he thought.

He found a jagged boulder on his hill and scrambled quickly to the top.

His gaze roamed over the ancient Estate.

“I see something,” he said suddenly.

“Yes,” rolled the voice of the Princess.

What he saw were the hills. But they were not hills. They were something else. They came up crookedly, the hills. Not hills. Knees, and shoulders. Boulders jutted up like bones and teeth, and the valley of ice like a mouth.

“It’s Erde,” breathed Yorik. “I see her.”

“She is the soil of winter and summer,” chanted the Princess’s faraway voice. “She is the land and the bones beneath it.”

Everywhere he looked now, Yorik saw Erde. He felt overwhelmed by her size and majesty.

“She is the Oldest!” he exclaimed. “She is the one who asked the hare to speak with me.” He felt humbled that these great beings would ask him for anything.

“Yes,” snapped the Princess’s voice, and this time it was right next to him and as sharp and haughty as it had ever been. In an eyeblink, Yorik was back
in the aviary glade, and the Princess was scowling at him, and Erde was huddled shivering in a tiny ball on the ground.

“Yes,” she said again. “And you can imagine how bad things have gotten if any of
us
are asking
you
for help.”

Yorik looked sadly at Erde. She was so small now. “What happened?”

“Yglhfm,”
moaned Erde in a sad voice.

The Princess’s twig slashed the air. “At first there was only one of them. It was there when you saw the hunt for the red lion. Back then it was only an infinitesimal shadow, and utterly beneath notice. But recently it somehow opened the way for others, and their numbers have swelled. And now, great Erde, poor Erde, is almost gone.”

Yorik and the Princess looked grievously at little, huddled Erde.

“I’ll stop them,” vowed Yorik.

“And how do you plan to do that, little ghost-boy?” laughed the Princess. “However will you do that?”

L
ord Ravenby laid his last child to rest in the Family crypt in a grief-struck ceremony. Over the three months that followed, Yorik explored every corner of the Estate, listening and watching. He explored the Manor too. He was careful to avoid Dark Ones. But once, early on, he was nearly caught.

It was an evening when Yorik had been investigating the bluebell patch on the Manor’s hanging terrace. Pushing through the flowers, Yorik felt a sudden, strange trembling, hardly perceptible at first. As the feeling grew, he found himself convinced
that this was all useless, that he was too weak to fight the
Yglhfm
, that he was only a mere ghost who fled from bells and candles.

The trembling became a flutter, and then a surge of panic that nearly overwhelmed him.

He had felt this surge before, he remembered—outside the mews, when he had confronted Dark Doris. He jerked his head up and spotted black voids gliding through the bluebells, coming closer.

“No,” he said through his teeth. “You can’t take me this way. Hatch!” he shouted. “Hatch!”—and then the hound was there, leaping onto the terrace and growling, and the voids fled.

After that, Yorik and Hatch always explored the Manor grounds together.

But Hatch could not enter the Manor itself. They tried once, when a door was left propped open. But a footman found Hatch in the hall and drove him away with curses and kicks.

Hatch whimpered when Yorik insisted on entering the Manor without him.

“I must, Hatch,” Yorik said soothingly, stroking the hound’s spirit ears. “I’ll be careful.”

Yorik always found the hound pacing nervously outside when he returned from within.

Inside the Manor, Yorik found that despite the hard work of the Kennelmaster and the hounds, more of the Dark Ones were somehow slipping through. Yorik learned to avoid bedrooms, where Dark Ones gathered at night, muttering into the ears of sleepers as though whispering into their dreams. And, despite his curiosity, he was forced to stay away from the grand sleeping chambers of Lord Ravenby, where the largest clusters of Dark Ones were found. He could only assume they were whispering into the dreams of the Lord of the Estate too, but in far greater numbers.

Yet he could not stay away from these chambers entirely, for it was there, more and more often, that he found Susan. She seemed to have graduated in the hierarchy of the Estate’s servants, for now it was she who brought Lord Ravenby’s tea at odd hours.

One night Yorik watched as she was stopped in the hallway by Lord Ravenby’s doctor, who had two Dark Ones on his shoulders.

“Here, girl,” ordered the doctor crisply, snapping
his fingers. Susan came obediently, and the doctor placed a vial on the tea tray. “This is sleep medicine, for your master’s insomnia. Put two drops in his tea, just before it’s served.” The doctor hurried away.

Susan watched him leave, then put two drops in a plant instead. The next day, the plant was dead. After that, Susan threw away anything the doctor gave her for Lord Ravenby.

Soon Lord Ravenby was calling for her at all hours. Yorik noticed the older servants watching her, shooting resentful looks. They often had Dark Ones on their shoulders. Accidents began to happen, such as a servant spilling hot water on her, scalding her.

And the Dark Ones began to pay more attention to Susan too.

One night as she was bringing tea, she was turned away by the butler. “But I was told Lord Ravenby is asking for me,” she protested. Nevertheless, she was forced to surrender the tray. As she left, Yorik noticed two Dark Ones following her. Yorik followed too, anxiously, keeping a safe distance.