Blythewood (38 page)

I’m not sure how long I sat there. Dimly I remembered that
somewhere up above me Nathan was dragging Raven into the
woods, but that seemed like another story that the shadows
were playing.

It
was
another shadow story. The reason the man in the
story looked so familiar was that he reminded me of Nathan.
The way he retreated into the library and hid behind his books.
The way he snuck down into the candelabellum chamber and
watched the shadows . . .

Of course. That’s what Nathan had been doing. He had access to the dungeons. He wouldn’t have been able to resist the
lure of the candelabellum, especially if he thought it could tell
him how to find Louisa. But the stories the candelabellum told
weren’t entirely reliable. They were made of light and shadow,
and so the story changed depending on what you focused on—
the light
or
the shadow. Nathan had been lured into the shadows, into believing that Raven held the key to finding Louisa. It
wasn’t just Raven who would be destroyed if I didn’t find them.
Nathan, too, was in danger of being swallowed by the shadows,
just as Judicus van Drood had been.

I got to my feet and crossed the darkness to the door. When
I opened it, light poured in through the corridor beyond, which
meant that the trapdoor to the library was open. I breathed a
sigh of relief and turned to close the door to the candelabellum
chamber. As I closed the door I heard the faint tinkle of bells—
a last remnant of the song my mother used to sing to me, calling
to mind the story I’d just watched. A story made up of light and
darkness. Which had I focused on?

It was a poem that celebrated the unusual, the marred, the
imperfect—things neither light nor dark, but somewhere in between. It seemed a fitting anthem to my return from the dark
into the light.

I reached the top step at the last line of the poem. Miss
Sharp and Miss Corey sat at table, a tray with teacups and
scones to one side. Both their heads, one gold, one russet, were
bent over the same book. Miss Corey was not wearing her hat
and veil. Without it I could see the dappled pattern that spread
across her face. Miss Corey’s face was as mottled as the brindled, freckled things the poem celebrated. She looked like an
exotic creature, as strange in her way as the fairies that populated Blythe Wood, but also quite lovely, which must be why Miss
Sharp was reading a poem that celebrated such “counter, original, spare, strange beauty.” Miss Corey was certainly looking
at her with gratitude—so intently that she didn’t see me. But
when Miss Sharp looked up from the page, she startled, her
eyes widening.

“My bells! What’s happened to you, Ava? You look like
you’ve been . . .”
“In a fire,” Miss Corey finished, closing the book Miss
Sharp had been reading from with a decisive snap as if she could
erase what we had heard by closing the book on the poem.
“Your face is covered with soot.” Her eyes grew even wider.
“And there are feathers in your hair!”
I patted my hair and plucked out a black feather—one of
Raven’s from when we kissed. I blushed at the memory of it.
“You’ve been with a Darkling,” Miss Corey said.
“Yes,” I admitted, “but I can explain. He’s not evil. He’s been

explaining things to me since we met on the winter solstice—”
“You’ve been seeing him since then?” Miss Corey hissed.
The blood that had suffused her cheeks a moment ago had
drained away now, the strawberry-colored stains on her face
standing out vividly against the white. Her eyes slid away from
mine when I looked at her. Was that how it was going to be from
now on? Would my reputation be so besmirched by my association with a Darkling that all my friends would turn from me? I
didn’t have time to worry about that.
“This is not the point!” I cried. “Nathan has taken him to
the woods.”
“Nathan has taken him?” Miss Sharp asked. “Don’t you
mean the other way around?”
“No, she doesn’t.” The voice came from the doorway, where
Helen and Daisy stood. “We saw Nathan leading a Darkling
into the woods,” Daisy went on. “He had Mr. Bellows’s dagger
in his hand.”
“Are you sure Nathan was in control and not the Darkling?”
Miss Corey asked. “They’re devious creatures—ruthless, cunning, and inhuman.”
Miss Sharp winced at the harshness of the last word. “Really, Lil, I thought you were more tolerant. You sound like the
social Darwinists.”
“We’re not talking about different sorts of people, Vi. You
have no idea what these monsters are like. One of them killed
my grandmother.”
“Are you sure?” I interrupted. I hated to see two of my favorite teachers arguing. “Raven says that the
tenebrae
can disguise themselves as anything. Maybe it was one of them that
killed your grandmother.”
“Or maybe you’ve been mesmerized by the demon. When
they found my grandmother she’d been ripped to shreds by one
of the creatures, but she died begging my grandfather to open
the window so she could see him one last time.”
“Like Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
,” Daisy murmured, “begging Heathcliff to open the windows so she can smell the heather on the moors.”
“Life is not a romantic novel,” Miss Corey said, wheeling
on Daisy. Then turning back to me, “And the Darklings aren’t
misunderstood romantic heroes. Life is a lot crueler than you
can possibly imagine. You might as well learn that now.”
“What a terrible thing to say, Lillian!” Miss Sharp said,
her eyes blazing. “You’re the last person I would have thought
would be cruel because someone was different.”
All the color had drained out of Miss Corey’s face, leaving
only the dark mottling of her skin, which now looked like an
angry rash instead of the beautiful “dappled things” praised in
the poem. “Perhaps I’m just trying to protect her from nightmares,” she said.
“Protect whom from what nightmares?”
The question came from the doorway. Mr. Bellows stood
there, an apple in one hand, a book in the other. He looked innocently from Miss Corey to Miss Sharp and then to me, taking in my bedraggled state. “Ava certainly looks like she’s taken
a fright.”
“Ava’s been with a Darkling and Nathan is missing,” Miss
Sharp said quickly, waving him into the room and shutting
the door behind him. “We’re trying to decide what to do. Ava
claims that Nathan took the Darkling.”
“Whyever would Nathan do such a thing?” Mr. Bellows
asked. “And how could he control a Darkling? I’m quite sure we
haven’t covered that in the syllabus.”
“He has your dagger!” I cried impatiently. “He’s been practicing shadow magic with it. I’m afraid Nathan’s been taken
over by the tenebrae.”
“Then we must find him immediately,” Mr. Bellows said,
his face pale.
“We’ll have to tell Dame Beckwith . . . ” Miss Sharp began,
but Mr. Bellows shook his head.
“She’s not here. Gillie drove her to Rhinecliff this morning
after breakfast to take the train to the city for an emergency
meeting of the Bell & Feather. She won’t be back until tonight.
And then imagine her horror on hearing that her son is lost in
the same woods where her daughter disappeared. She’ll send in
the Hunt to flush out any Darklings in the woods—”
“We can’t let her do that!” I interrupted. “Raven helped
me. I can’t be the reason he and his kind are hunted down and
killed!”
“If we begin the search ourselves
now
we might find Nathan before Dame Beckwith returns.”
“And how do you plan to get past the Dianas and their
hawks?” Miss Corey demanded.
“Wasn’t Gillie going to hold a workshop on imping the falcons’ tail feathers today?” Mr. Bellows asked. “The Dianas will
be in the mews with their birds all afternoon.”
“They leave one on duty,” Miss Corey objected.
“But today it’s Charlotte Falconrath,” Mr. Bellow’s replied.
“And she’s . . . well . . .”
“A ninny,” Helen put in. “One of us could easily distract her
while the rest of us sneak into the woods. I suggest Daisy do it.
No one would suspect Daisy of subterfuge.”
“The rest of us?” Miss Corey repeated. “You don’t think
you’re
going, Helen? We can’t afford to lose another student in
the woods.”
“I have to go to watch over Ava so she doesn’t run off with
her Darkling paramour.”
“My what . . . ?” I began to object to Helen calling Raven my
paramour, but Miss Corey had raised another objection.
“Why must we bring Ava?”
Helen let out an exasperated sigh. “Because Ava’s been
meeting the Darkling since Christmas. She’ll know where to
find him.”
I stared at Helen aghast.
“What?” she said. “Did you think I’m blind? You do know
where he lives, don’t you?”
I didn’t think it was the right time to say he was presently
living at Violet House. Besides, I knew where they were going. I
pushed past Helen to get to the window seat, where Nathan had
stacked his books. I picked up the top one.
To Elfland and Back
by Thomas the Rhymer. The book below it was entitled
Oisin’s
Travels to Faerie.
I quickly sifted through the rest of the books.
Most were books about travel to Faerie, but there was also one
on using shadow magic.
“They’re almost all about traveling to Faerie,” I said. “Nathan
must have glimpsed Louisa in Faerie on the solstice. That’s
why he’s taken Raven. He’s going to make him open the door
to Faerie and let him in.”
“Can a Darkling do that?” Miss Sharp asked.
“Yes,” I said. “They can open the door but not go through
it. And they can’t help anyone out. If Nathan goes to Faerie . . .”
Mr. Bellows finished the thought for me. “He might not return for a hundred years.”

Miss Sharp insisted that we gird ourselves for the expedition
rather than rushing in willy-nilly. She sent Miss Corey to the
mews to prolong the imping of the birds to give us more time.

“You have a way with Gillie,” she said, attempting, I
thought, to put their quarrel behind them. But Miss Corey only
seemed offended anew to be shunted off on a secondary errand
while we armed ourselves for a mission into the woods.

“Miss Swift won’t have taught you expedition protocol yet,
so we’ll have to cover this quickly. The most important thing to
remember is bell, spell and bow. Strap these bells around your
wrists. You can use them to ward off the lesser fairies, and we
can track each other by the sound of the bells. If you fall into Faerie, follow the sound of the bells
out
.” She demonstrated two
separate ringing patterns for warding off fairies and for signaling to someone trapped in Faerie.

“So it is possible to go into Faerie and come right out again
without spending a hundred years there?” I asked.
“The hundred-year phenomenon—or Rip van Winkle effect—is rarer than people think,” Mr. Bellows replied, leaning
back in his chair and rubbing his chin. “Time is different in Faerie, but if you carry a reliable timepiece  .  .  .” He took out of
his vest pocket a gold pocket watch inscribed with the Bell and
Feather insignia, “you can find your way out.”
“Will this do?” I asked, taking out the repeater.
Miss Sharp’s eyes widened at the sight of the watch. “That’s
one of my grandfather’s watches,” she said. “Yes, it should work
most
admirably. But you must also remember not to eat anything there or play any games.”
“It was the game of nine pins that did old Rip in,” Mr. Bellows commented.
“Dancing is also to be avoided,” Miss Sharp added. “That’s
what beguiled Oisin into his two-hundred-year stay. It’s understandable. The music there is divine.”
I saw Daisy staring open-mouthed at our instructors. I,
too, was surprised. “You sound as if you’ve  .  .  .
gone there
,”
Helen said.
Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows regarded each other guiltily.
“You’re not supposed to know about it until the senior-year
field trip,” Miss Sharp said. “Everyone at Blythewood has to go
once to Faerie before they graduate. It’s required for induction
into the Order. We’re carefully prepared and trained to get each
other out. If Nathan hasn’t eaten anything, or danced, or played
any games . . .”
“Or kissed anyone,” Mr. Bellows added with a rueful smile.
“The natives can be quite . . .
flirtatious
.”
“Why, Rupert!” Miss Sharp exclaimed with a mischievous
smile. “Did someone flirt with you on your journey?”
“A siren,” he answered, blushing. “She employed all her
feminine and fay wiles, but I resisted by conjugating Latin
verbs. The magic of Faerie, you see, is incompatible with logic.
If you concentrate on something logical—and dull—you can’t
be seduced. Besides, fairies
hate
Latin.”
“I can see why,” Helen, whose least favorite class was Latin,
remarked. “I don’t think conjugations will work for me.”
“Try reciting the Social Register,” Daisy suggested. “You’ll
bore them to death.”
“I suggest you both use the spell against enchantment you
learned in Miss Calendar’s class.
Defendite me artes magicas.
”
She made us repeat it three times. “Excellent,” she said. “And if
that doesn’t work, shoot the creature with these.” She gave us
each a quiver full of iron-tipped arrows. “We’ll pair up teacher
and student. I’ll go with Helen, as she’s such an excellent archer
and I’m not. Ava, you’ll go with Rupert.”
“What about me?” Daisy asked, clearly unhappy not to be
paired up with Rupert Bellows.
“After you’ve distracted Charlotte Falconrath, you can
meet up with Lillian. Together you can watch the woods for
our return. If we’re not back by the time Dame Beckwith returns from the city, you should tell her where we’ve gone.” She
gave me an apologetic look. “There will be no choice then.
Dame Beckwith will send in the Hunt and flush the woods of
the Darklings.”