Thornghost (24 page)

T
his time they left Jewelgard by the main road. Even covered with weeds and crumbled leaves, it was smoother than the paths, and before they knew it, they had reached the end of the garden. Niklas turned to look one last time at the silver-dipped terraces, at the black mirror of the fjord and the moon that hung between the two cliffs at the opposite end of the valley. The lighthouse that was no longer the Nighthouse flashed with the pulse of the Rosa Torquata.

“I wonder if they'll be able to repair the castle after the trolls,” Niklas said.

“The mending has begun already,” Secret said. “Notice the air?”

Suddenly Niklas knew what had felt so different in the Falcon Circle and all the way up here. It wasn't
just the smell. The creeping Nightmare horror was gone, pushed outside of the border, where it belonged.

“I guess that this realm is no longer Broken, then.” Niklas said.

“Not so cheesy,” Secret muttered. But Niklas still caught her smiling when she thought he wasn't looking.

• • •

N
ightmare territory though it was, the canyon lay peaceful and still. Niklas didn't have much hope of finding Sebastifer there, but he still poked his head inside the cottage. Filled with dust-specked moonlight, it felt even more abandoned than before. Someone had taken all the Erika figurines from the windowsills. “Safe travels, wherever you're going,” Niklas said into the cottage. “You were the best dog anyone could wish for.” The quilt and the empty sills did not reply.

The last time they saw the gate, dark vine had filled the crack in the canyon wall. But now the dark vine was gone, as were the vicious thorns, and the tunnel had opened. Flickers of the Rosa Torquata seemed to beckon them inside.

“Come on. Let's go home.” Niklas glanced up at the starry sky one final time, then climbed into the tunnel.

“Hello?” he called. “Rosa Torquata? Can you hear me?” He brought out the old, withered rose twig from his satchel. “I have the key.”

Neither the old nor the nasty voice answered. Instead Niklas heard a quiet voice behind him.

“Cub.”

Secret stood outside the archway. Niklas turned back and stopped on the threshold. A few spindly vines, gentle and thorn-less, shot across the opening, as if to warn him: Don't step outside. “What's going on?”

“I can't go.” Secret took a step back.

“What do you mean?” The words came out louder than Niklas meant. “We have to go home! We have to save Summerhill!”

Secret leaned forward and put her paw through the gate. Immediately her fur started smoldering. Fine tendrils of smoke curled out between her claws. She jerked back and licked the sparks. “This is the reason for Rafsa's scars. She burns when she comes this way, even if she is covered in runes to make it through.”

The smell of scorched hair stung Niklas's nose, but still he didn't understand. “But we came here together. The Rosa let us through!”

“It let you through because you had a Twistrose key. It let me through for a different reason.” Secret sat down in the black sand, just as she had when they first arrived. “Idun explained it to me. I can't go back, because I don't belong in the other world anymore.”

“Because you're . . .” Niklas swallowed and swallowed.
I feel strange,
Secret had said when they entered the tunnel
the first time. Because she was dying, because of him. “I didn't know,” he whispered.

“If you had known, do you think it would have stopped me from coming with you? It won't do to be a coward.” Her yellow eyes were liquid. “Which is why you have to go now. Hurry.”

“I can't . . .” Niklas's palms felt clammy. He gripped his medallion. “I can't face Rafsa by myself.”

“Yes, you can. That troll witch has nothing on your courage. Not now when you know how to use it.” The feeling that streamed through the medallion was sad, but also proud. “You will do what has to be done. You will save Summerhill. I will stay here.”

“Well, I'm not going to leave you. You're . . .” Niklas faltered. He didn't know how to tell her that she was his only friend now, and that if he had to go back without her, he would be alone again. And every wonderful thing that had somehow found its way into his life would be gone, just gone. Instead he said, “You'll be alone in Nightmare territory.”

Secret snorted. “Not exactly. Kepler has been following us since we left the feast. He's hiding in the vegetable patch.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Poor guy doesn't know how to sneak. I think I'll have to teach him.”

Niklas bit his lip. Of course there was no need for Secret to say good-bye to Kepler, because Kepler wouldn't be the one to lose her.

Secret lifted her huge, white paw, holding it up to the invisible border that would separate them forever. Niklas reached outside and held it tight. He had no idea how to let go.

“Don't be sad, cub.” Secret pushed her forehead against his hand. It was the most cat-like sign of love she had ever given him. “There is something else I have to tell you. The Greenhood let slip a little secret from the Book of Twistrose.” She tried a smile. “A name. I don't think you're supposed to know, but as you say, who cares about stupid rules?”

She whispered it to him, and it was the only reason Niklas found the courage to turn his back and go through the tunnel.

T
he Rosa Torquata had pulled back from Secret's winter cave, leaving her ledge and the small pool to darkness. Niklas used his hands to find his way through the old avalanche. His nose, too, because the troll stench wafted out from the entrance to the troll caves. But he couldn't hear anything, neither footsteps nor howls. Breathing as shallowly as possible, he chose the smelly tunnel. Fresh torches burned in all the sconces. Rafsa had been here not long ago.

For this fight, Niklas would be alone and without weapons. Except there was one place where he might be able to find some bane, even if it happened to be in gravy form. But when he reached the kitchen, he found it scoured clean. Every last spoonful of bane-poisoned stew had been scraped out of the kettle. Rafsa was nothing if not thorough.

Still no sound broke the silence in the troll nest. Niklas pushed farther in, past the tunnel where he had been caged and kept, and into the great hall.

The six trolls that died from the stew stood gathered near the door. They had turned back to stone, with crumbling holes in the middle where the bane had done its work. One had an ear-like lump where his neck would be. Niklas stepped around him.

“Oh no,” he said, forgetting for a moment that Secret wasn't there to hear it.

The hall flickered with torchlight. Jagged shadows danced on the walls. The giant stalactites that Rafsa had so carefully bound and carved with
awake
runes had all cracked open, leaving piles of rubble beneath each. The sleeping trolls within were nowhere to be seen.

Wherever Rafsa had gone, she had brought her army.

• • •

A
s soon as he emerged into the moonlit night, he knew he would not be crossing Sorrowdeep by boat. The little vessel lay in pieces on the pebbly beach, crushed by a boulder that had broken loose from the mountain wall. He had no choice but to swim. Niklas squinted across the pond. The water lilies had withered. He could almost sense the taint brimming beneath the mirror calm of the surface.

In the distance a sound went up: a sharp, unbroken
keening that rose and fell like a siren. Niklas knew it, because he had heard it a thousand times. Deep in the valley, at the Summerhill border, the screaming stone wailed, even if there was not a breath of wind. He had no doubt that Rafsa made it so.

He had to go home.

He cleared his throat and took a step forward. Some pebbles rolled off the beach into the water. The ripples crept across the pond, and in return he thought he heard a soft hiss. Was there a word in that hiss? Did it call his name?

Niklas's stomach filled with cold. In his dream, his mother never made it to Sorrowdeep. But he had always believed that if the terror hadn't woken him up, this is where the nightmare would end. His hand found the medallion. A warm pulse surged through his fingers at Secret's response.
Worry.
He gripped the medallion hard.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” He waited. Nothing.

Goose bumps spread all over Niklas's body as he pulled off his boots and dropped his satchel on the beach. He put the Sebastifer figurine in his pocket and tightened the string of the medallion around his neck.

He took another step forward, into the water. Mud oozed up around the stones under his toes. His mother had stood like this on the opposite shore, feet in the water.

Maybe she was down there. Or not her, but a Nightmare version of her, made out of tainted water. Maybe
her eyes were black and desperate. He tried to keep the shivers out of his voice. “I need to swim across now. The trolls are going to break the border. I have to stop them.”

No one answered.

Sorrowdeep felt cold and silky when he slid into it. A hushed splash sounded every time he kicked his legs. He alone disturbed the water, and in the moonlight it must make him very visible from below. Niklas didn't look down. He kept his eyes trained on the finger of rock on the other side.

Something brushed against his leg.

He thrashed and kicked, whipping around to catch sight of the thing that had touched him. He saw nothing but murky depths, but there was an icy current in the water. It made his arms and legs heavy, like added gravity. He struggled on. His breath came in hurried gasps, and his strokes felt cramped and useless. He made it only halfway before the coldness pulled him down.

When he went under, the moonlight broke into green shards. Hairy lichen drifted up from the bottom. His clothes billowed up as he sank. He couldn't feel his limbs anymore, didn't even know if they tried to swim. His thoughts raced like crazy.

Far below he glimpsed the half-eaten hull of a boat, cradling a rusty square.

The mink cage.

He couldn't see any bones. Only an algae-covered door
that came closer and closer as he dropped toward the bottom.

His chest ached, but the surface seemed so distant now, a glass window to a lost world. Secret's medallion floated up in front of his face, covered in pearls of air. He couldn't lift his arm to catch it. Instead his hand brushed against his pocket and the Sebastifer figurine.

Suddenly he heard the old dog's words, clear as a bell.

That cage carried all her guilt and sadness. You should have seen her that summer, Niklas. All those nightmares. Her head became a cage, too.

This was not just his nightmare. It was also his mother's.

The cage had turned into a keeper of her guilt, a weight of sadness that dragged him down to trap him.
It wasn't her fault,
Uncle Anders had said. He was wrong. It
was
her fault. But she only wanted to help. She had never meant for anyone to die, just like Niklas never meant for Rag to die. Or Secret.

He looked down.

The cage door had opened.

Beside it, his mother hung in the water, tied to the cage with a length of chain. Her nightgown and curls wafted like silver sheets. She had taken the form of her twelve-year-old self, the Erika who had almost drowned here. The one whose statue hid in the chapel crypt with a hollow heart. The one who was too afraid to cross the water.

The Thornghost.

She stared up at him with black eyes.

All this time, Niklas had been so frightened of the dreams and the grave and the secrets, of being left all alone, of having failed her the day she died. But he knew her now. He understood why everything had happened, even why she had tried to erase herself from his life.

He wasn't scared of her anymore. The fear had gone away, and the place it had taken up ached like an old scar that only bothered you when you scratched it. It didn't hurt anymore.

He stretched his arm toward her.

He moved in the water. Not toward the cage, but toward the light above. The current was weakening. Suddenly his body came to life. He needed air. Now.

He kicked his legs. They tingled as the cage let him go. Up and up he swam, until he broke the surface, gasping and coughing. When he got his breath under control, he almost couldn't tread the water anymore. He had to make for land.

As soon as he reached the other side, Niklas looked both in the water and above the water. He scrambled up on the finger rock to see better, leaning out to catch a glimpse of her gown. Sorrowdeep glimmered where water dripped from his hair and body, but of his mother there was no sign.

“I met Sebastifer. He knows why you didn't come.”
Niklas paused. He had no idea if she could hear him. “He's sorry. He forgives you.”

No whisper, no words, only the distant wailing of the screaming stone far below. Niklas had to go. With shaking fingers he eased the Sebastifer figurine out of his pocket and held it over the pond. “I forgive you, too.”

He opened his hand and let go.