15

“YOU’LL LEARN HOW to adjust to changes in air pressure,” Raven reassured me several times on the flight back across the river. He’d caught me well before I would have hit the canyon floor, so all I’d suffered was a blow to my pride in front of the other fledglings, who were mostly generous in their reactions.

“That always happens to me when I hit an air pocket,” Marlin said as he flew by us on our way back. “But you were really soaring there for a moment.”

“Your wings are so beautiful!” Oriole told me. “I’ve never seen a phoenix’s wings before!”

“Yes, that was an excellent first attempt,” Sirena said a bit more primly. “Best hurry, Raven, the elders won’t like it if they find out we’ve been gunking.”

“Gunking” was what the fledglings called diving off the Shawangunks. And apparently I wasn’t the only one who had a curfew. I’d thought that Raven in his nest—or at Violet House—was completely independent, but it turned out that the elders kept close tabs on the younger Darklings.

“Does that mean they know about me?” I asked, feeling suddenly shy as Raven let me down on the edge of the woods.

“Not yet. I’m looking for the best time to tell my parents about you. They’ll have objections, but I know they’ll love you when they meet you.” Then he swept his wing over me so we were hidden from view, kissed me quickly on the lips, and was gone in a flurry of wings.

I stood for a moment, trying to catch my breath. Raven had never mentioned parents! And he wanted me to meet them? Then I heard the matin bells ringing and I bolted across the lawn, my cloak flying out behind me and my stocking feet slipping on the wet grass. Where had I lost my slippers? And was that a tear in my stockings? And what did Raven mean about objections?

I reached the side door breathless and giddy. Thank the Bells it wasn’t locked! I swung the door open . . . and found Helen and Daisy sitting on the bottom step of the back stairs glaring at me.

“Well, it’s about time!” Helen cried jumping to her feet. “Daisy’s been half out of her mind over your whereabouts.”

“So were you—” Daisy began, but then she just stopped and hugged me. “Thank the Bells you’re all right. What happened to you? You’re . . .” Daisy took a step back and looked at me, her eyes going wide. “You look like you’ve been . . .”

If she had said flying I might have burst into hysterics. Instead a voice from behind us piped up.

“She was searching through the forest for me.”

I turned and found Etta standing in the doorway. She was in an even more startling state of disarray than I was. Her hair was loose and braided with a hundred flowers and feathers. Her nightgown was torn and grass-stained, her bare feet covered with mud.

“Etta, where have you been?” Daisy asked. “We thought you were with Ava when you both disappeared at the same time.”

“I was with the fairies,” she told them, and then added, “Ava came to bring me back.”

“The fairies?” Helen and Daisy both repeated together. I kept my mouth shut. Etta clearly meant to keep my secret. And Helen and Daisy were too upset over Etta’s state of disarray to question me. We had to sneak her upstairs to the washroom, get her in a tub, pick the flowers and feathers out of her hair, and convince her that it wasn’t wise to tell everyone about her adventure with the fairies.

“But they’re so lovely,” Etta crooned, hugging her grass-stained knees to her chest as Helen poured water over her head. “I don’t know why we can’t all be friends.”

“Are you suggesting that we befriend goblins and trows and ice giants?” Helen snapped, dragging a hairbrush through Etta’s tangled hair with unnecessary force.

“They explained that the goblins are really just a bit . . . simple. They only attack if they feel threatened or very hungry. The trows and ice giants are usually quite harmless, but someone’s been making them behave worse than usual.”

“Van Drood,” I said, unbraiding a marsh reed from Etta’s hair.

“Yes,” Etta concurred, sniffing one of the violets that had fallen into the bath. “The fairies told me that the Shadow Master has been sending tenebrae into the Blythe Wood to possess the more vulnerable creatures, the simpleminded ones like the goblins and trows, and making them stir up trouble so the Order will fight against all fairies.”

“But why?” Helen asked.

“So we fight each other instead of the tenebrae,” Daisy answered. “That’s what Featherbell told me, too.”

“Yes,” Etta said. “The lampsprites were on the verge of attacking the school last year because of the horrible way they’ve been treated by the Order, but when Daisy saved Featherbell they decided we must not all be bad.”

“You mean Daisy prevented a war?” Helen asked.

“Oh yes! Daisy is a hero among the lychnobious people.” Etta splashed excitedly. “And the lampsprites have been spreading the word among the other fairies—the marsh boggles and brownies, the pookas and cluricaunes—that the Order should be trusted. They want to forge a bond among the Order and the fairies and the Darklings—”

“The Darklings?” Helen cried. “The Order will never go for that. There’s too much bad history between us.”

“All lies spread by the Shadow Masters to keep us enemies,” I said, holding a towel for Etta as she got out of the tub. “If only I could find the book Raven told me about—A Darkness of Angels—maybe I could convince Dame Beckwith that the Darklings aren’t our enemies.”

“That book is at the bottom of the ocean,” Helen snapped. “That is, if it ever existed at all. You’ll never convince Dame Beckwith that the Darklings aren’t evil—and if you try they’ll just think you’ve been mesmerized.” Helen gave me a searching look. “And if you disappear again, Daisy and I will be forced to go to Dame Beckwith and have her send out the Hunt.”

“But that’s what van Drood wants,” I objected.

“Well then,” Helen sniffed, “you’ll both just have to be extra careful not to give us any reason to worry.”

We managed to keep Etta’s and my disappearance a secret, but it proved to be an ongoing chore to make sure Etta didn’t wander off into the woods again.

“I hear them calling to me, Avaleh,” she complained one day when I’d caught her wandering off the archery field to the edge of the woods. “Don’t you?”

And in fact, I did. With my new Darkling ears I heard the fairies’ voices piping in the hush of the afternoon woods or at dusk in the wind off the river. They were calling for Etta, the fianais. Listening to them, I learned that Etta’s nature made her not just a witness who could identify fairies, but a witness to all that happened to the fairies. They wanted to tell her their stories. That’s why they called for her and that was why she wanted to go to them. It was in her nature.

We were very busy between watching out for Etta and keeping up with our own studies. I had found the first-year curriculum at Blythewood challenging, but the work our teachers expected of us in the second year seemed twice as hard.

Miles Malmsbury, who had taken over the science classes for Professor Jager, and who seemed a pleasant, jovial fellow at first, turned out to be a ruthless taskmaster. He made us memorize every known species and phylum of fairy, and their languages and customs.

“In the field,” he lectured, “your life and the lives of your cohorts might depend on being able to communicate with the aborigines. A thorough grounding in the flora and fauna of Faerie is also an absolute must. Please memorize the first one hundred pages in my new book—a work in progress presently being typed by my dear wife, Euphorbia, entitled A Field Guide to the Lychnobious Peoples: An Everyman’s Journey to Faerie and Back.”

“It’s one thousand pages,” Helen hissed when the typescript manuscripts were passed out.

“Just be glad you haven’t been recruited to help Miss Frost with the appendices, footnotes, bibliography, and index,” Beatrice whispered back. “Dolores volunteered us.” Beatrice glared at her sister, who was smiling serenely at Professor Malmsbury. As Dolores never talked I wondered how she had volunteered, but from the look on her face I didn’t wonder why. Clearly she had taken a fancy to Professor Malmsbury.

As if we didn’t have enough work, Mr. Bellows assigned us a sixty-page term paper on the progress of military tactics over the last five hundred years.

“This isn’t even about magic anymore,” Helen complained.

“But it is,” Nathan insisted. “If you look at warfare over the centuries, you can see the hand of a malevolent force. Each time mankind has mastered one form of warfare, a new technique evolves—from the longbow to gunpowder—that results in even more slaughter. If we can predict what the next innovation will be, we can get a jump on the competition.”

“You make it sound like a game,” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t it be better not to have any more wars?”

“Never happen,” Nathan replied. “Red in tooth and claw—that’s what we men are.”

He said it almost proudly. Was that true? I wondered. Were humans naturally bloodthirsty, or were the tenebrae to blame for the evil men visited on themselves?

I decided I would ask Raven about it on our next night flight to the Shawangunks. We took them whenever I could slip away—usually when Helen and Daisy passed out early over their books. I’d gotten better at short flights, but I still didn’t trust myself flying over the river—or at least that’s what I told myself stretched out on Raven’s back, sheltered in between his wings, the heat of his body keeping me warm as the nights grew cooler. When we neared the ridge I would spread out my wings and, when I felt the warm currents of air that flowed in the canyon, launch myself off his back. We’d fly side by side, wing tip to wing tip. If I caught an air pocket and dropped, Raven would always be there to steady me. It was like dancing with a partner who guides you across the floor with the slightest shift of his weight or touch of his hand. I could feel the change in the air as he moved beside me, the warm currents his body moved touching every inch of my body.

Ghosting, I learned the fledglings called it one night when we were sitting around the fire and Sirena remarked that if Raven kept ghosting me I’d never learn to fly on my own.

“She’ll learn when she’s ready,” Raven had replied curtly.

“Aw, if you want someone to ghost with you, Sirena, you only have to ask,” Marlin interjected, bumping into Sirena and then tumbling off the cliff face in an awkward triple somersault that ended in a painful-looking belly flop. Everyone’s attention was drawn away from me.

Later, Oriole told me not to mind what Sirena had said.

“She’s just jealous. Only pair-bonds ghost each other.”

I’d blushed and stammered something about Raven only trying to help me because I was so hopeless at flying, but Oriole just laughed and soared off.

Pair-bond. I wondered if that was a bit like being engaged. But I didn’t have a ring like Alfreda Driscoll or Wallis Rutherford, and I still hadn’t met Raven’s parents. What if their objections had convinced Raven that we could never marry? Did Darklings marry? I didn’t care about getting a ring or the orange blossoms and trousseau that went with a society wedding. I just wanted to be with Raven forever. But did he want that? How could I ask him?

So instead, when we tucked into our niche, shoulder to shoulder, with Raven’s wings mantled over us for warmth, I asked him there whether he thought the evil that men did came from themselves or the tenebrae.

“It’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg question,” he replied.

“You would bring it back to birds,” I teased.

He smiled, but a little sadly. “I’m afraid it comes back to humans. The story our elders tell us is that when humans first appeared on the scene, the fairies watched them carefully to see what sort of creatures they would become. They saw much good in them, but also much bad. They were violent and bloodthirsty, prone to clubbing each other over the head and stealing each other’s women and food.”

“Oh, so it was the male humans who behaved badly.”

“No doubt, but the women weren’t much better. Some of the fairies wanted to destroy the whole human race, but others argued that destroying them would make the fairies as bad as the humans—in fact, it was argued that the influence of the humans was already making the fairies more violent. At last, the fairies decided that if only they could extract the evil from mankind there would be hope for the race. They performed a rite that drew the evil out of all humans, and they trapped that evil in three huge vessels and hid the vessels in three secret places deep in the earth.”

“Were things better then?”

“For a while. Humans created peaceful settlements during this period, but there were humans who felt that they were missing something. Stories about the vessels and their hiding places circulated around the world, some purporting that the vessels contained great knowledge.”

“Like Pandora’s box,” I said. “Or the mirror in ‘The Snow Queen.’”

“Yes, those stories are remnants of the stories about the vessels. At last one of the vessels was found and broken. When it broke, all the evil inside escaped in the form of shadows—the tenebrae. They latched on to the man who had discovered the vessel and possessed him. He became the first Shadow Master. He wielded the tenebrae and drove them to possess others to do his bidding and spread evil in the world. The first thing they did was to search out the second vessel and release those tenebrae. Since then evil has been rampant.”

“What about the third vessel?” I asked.

“It’s never been found. The shadow master has been looking for it. If he found it and released the rest of the shadows, the world would descend into irredeemable darkness. Already the Darklings are barely able to maintain the balance between good and evil. As the world gets more and more crowded with humans it becomes harder and harder for us to exist in it. How many more places like this, for instance, are there for young fledglings to spread their wings?”

He tilted his chin out toward the open air where Oriole and Marlin were spinning parabolas against a pink sky. Dawn came so quickly on these nights!

I nestled deeper into Raven’s arms, chilled by the story he had told me. “If the Order and Darklings could join forces, the Order could protect the Darklings.”

“I’m afraid any hope of that died when your Mr. Farnsworth sank to the bottom of the ocean with A Darkness of Angels.”

“We don’t know he drowned,” I protested, although as the weeks went by without any word from Agnes, I had less and less hope that he was still alive. “And there might be another way to convince the Order that the Darklings aren’t evil. I could speak to Dame Beckwith—”

“It’s too dangerous,” he said quickly. “You think Dame Beckwith and your teachers are your friends, but so did the Indians who lived here and the others the Order has betrayed. They’ll kill you if they find out what you are.”

He stroked my wings protectively, and I felt a shivery sensation deep inside.

“You mustn’t take the risk until . . .” he said hoarsely, his hand traveling from my wings to my face, his touch as feathery and light as the touch of his wings, one of which was cupped around my back and drawing me toward him. I scooted closer, my own wings stretching out and intertwining with his, until we were both entirely fitted within the mantle of our joined wings. It was like being inside a nest. The pink light of dawn shone through our feathers, making the space between us glow, turning his skin gold and his lips rose-petal pink.

When our lips touched I felt his wings fluttering against mine, as fast and light as a hummingbird’s wings.

“Until what?” I whispered.

“Until you’re ready to leave them and come to me.”