30

FOR THE REST of February and into March the Fledgling League flew missions south to Riverdale to search for the Hellgate Club. Only one pair flew each night so we wouldn’t risk attracting the attention of the Darkling Elders or Dame Beckwith and the other teachers who didn’t know about the league. If we needed to communicate during the week, Eirwyn carried the message between Blythewood and Ravencliffe. Once a week we all met at the boathouse to report on our findings and, inevitably, share stories and gossip. The Darklings were fascinated to learn about the customs of Blythewood. Oriole was jealous that we got to study literature and history, Heron that we could choose to work if we liked.

“I’d like to study the law,” Heron confided.

“Raven was serving as a clockmaker’s apprentice,” I pointed out.

They all looked at each other awkwardly until Marlin explained that Raven was rather a maverick and used to getting away with things because he was the head Elder’s son.

“Many of us would like to lead a normal human life,” Heron said.

“I’d trade a ‘normal human life’ to be able to fly,” Cam said.

“I’d like to get inside one of your aeroplanes,” Buzz countered. “Just think how useful it would be to have a Darkling pilot. If the engine died the Darkling could bail out and save the passengers.”

“Perhaps it would have saved Miss Quimby,” Cam said wistfully. She’d been sad about her heroine’s death last summer when she was ejected from her plane for unknown reasons.

“At least your women are making some progress in gaining equal rights,” Oriole complained.

“Progress!” Mary shrieked. “We don’t have the vote and we have to marry whomever our fathers want us to.”

“That’s not actually true,” Heron pointed out. “I’ve been studying your laws . . .”

And so it would go on. We talked about politics, fashion (the craze for feathered hats was roundly denounced), philosophy, books, popular music, and our hopes and dreams for the future. Before dawn Dolores would give us our assignments for patrol and then we would skate back to Blythewood.

It was an unusually cold and long winter, the ice thick on the river all through March and well into April. When Sirena and I came back from our patrol I always stopped by the Rowan Circle to check on the changelings, but they remained frozen and silent.

“I say we crack one open,” Sirena suggested on one visit.

“We could kill it,” I protested.

“And Raven could die while we’re searching for this confounded house,” she pointed out. “They might be able to tell us where it is. Your de-warding spells certainly aren’t doing the trick.”

She was right. The de-warding spell had failed to reveal the Hellgate Club’s location and was very time consuming. It required that the de-warder walk around the perimeter of the house sprinkling a trail of salt and ash while reciting a long Latin spell. We’d encountered all sorts of obstacles, from guard dogs to thorny hedges and even one estate that was populated by free-roaming elephants that tried to stampede while Dolores was walking the perimeter. It had taken us six weeks to cover all the riverside mansions in Riverdale, Yonkers, and Westchester. Now that we’d gotten as far as Tarrytown, I wondered if we’d missed it.

“You’re right,” I surprised Sirena by saying. “I think we have to start over and try a new spell. I’ll check with Miss Sharp and Miss Corey to see if there’s a stronger one.”

When I went to the library the next day I found that the women had anticipated our problem. They had received a letter from Mr. Bellows saying his and Nathan’s search through Riverdale was proving equally fruitless and they suspected that the mansion was under an especially powerful ward.

“They did hear an odd rumor,” Miss Sharp said, reading from the letter. “Some of the river men have reported unusual activity on the river at night—tales of boats vanishing in the vicinity of Spuyten Duyvil.”

“Spuyten Duyvil?” I asked. “That’s a stop on the train, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s the southern-most neighborhood of Riverdale,” Miss Sharp said, “named for the creek that flows into the Hudson, which in turn—”

“Is named for the treacherous currents that occur where the creek enters the river,” Miss Corey continued. “In Dutch it means ‘spouting devil.’”

“A fitting name for the entrance to the Hellgate Club. It could be the whirlpool that swallowed the girls and Raven.”

“There are peculiar legends about the area,” Miss Sharp said. “In the seventeenth century a man died trying to swim across the river. A witness claimed that the devil, in the shape of a giant sea monster, seized the man and dragged him beneath the water.”

“Just as Raven was dragged under the water by the kraken,” I said, feeling suddenly chilled although I was standing by the fire. “And now Mr. Bellows says there are rumors of boats vanishing in that area?”

“Yes,” Miss Sharp said, looking back at the letter. “And yet, when Mr. Bellows checked with the river authority he found that no boats had been reported missing.”

“So perhaps the boats that are vanishing mean to go into the whirlpool,” I said.

“But that’s—” Miss Sharp began.

“Utterly possible,” Miss Corey finished for her, jumping to her feet and crossing to a shelf. “There was a case like it in the mountains of Romania.”

“Ah,” Miss Sharp said, “the Scholomance?”

“The what?” I asked. It was sometimes hard to follow Miss Sharp and Miss Corey when they started finishing each other’s sentences.

“It’s a legendary school of black magic in the Carpathian mountains,” Miss Corey said, plucking a book from a high shelf and flipping through it.

“Run by the devil,” Miss Sharp said, looking over Miss Corey’s shoulder. “There are only ever ten students at a time and they spend ten years there learning the black arts. At the end of ten years one of the students is claimed by the devil to do his bidding and guard the school, which—”

“Is in the middle of a lake,” Miss Corey said, slapping the book down on the table open to a page that showed an engraving of a ruined castle on a mountain lake. “It can only be reached through an underwater passage. The castle appears to be a ruin to anyone who tries to approach it by boat. In order to see it as it really is you must go through a whirlpool that is guarded by the tenth student and his dragon.”

“So the Hellgate Club could be any one of the mansions we’ve looked at, but we wouldn’t see it as it really is unless we go through the whirlpool?” I asked.

“Yes,” Miss Corey said. “Only you probably wouldn’t live through it if you didn’t control the monster.”

“Unless you were a good fighter,” I said. “Raven could have gotten through and been captured. He could be there now. All our girls might be there. We have to find a way to go through the whirlpool.”

“I know how.”

The small, shy voice came from the doorway of the library. A tiny figure was standing there, dripping water onto the parquet floor and covered in pine needles and wet leaves. For a moment I thought it was a forest sprite, but when she stepped forward I saw it was Etta.

“My dear!” Miss Sharp cried, jumping to her feet and drawing Etta to the fire. “What’s happened to you? Did you fall through the ice skating?”

“That’s just it,” Etta explained as she allowed herself to be draped in shawls. “I’ve been to the forest to see the changelings. They’ve finally thawed! And they know where Rue and the other girls are!”

Only when Etta had changed her clothes and drunk three cups of hot tea would Miss Sharp allow her to bring us to the woods.

“We can’t all go,” Etta explained. “They’re still recovering from being frozen all winter. They say it’s never happened to them before—they usually hibernate under rivers and streams before the first frost comes—and they’ll be frightened by a crowd. They want to see Ava and—”

“I’ll go,” Miss Sharp said firmly. “There should be one adult.”

“Yes,” Etta said meekly, “but it will need to be Miss Corey. They especially asked for her.”

“Me?” Miss Corey said, blanching so that her mottled freckles stood out lividly on her skin. “But they must know how I feel about them.”

Etta shrugged. “I said you might not like it, but they insisted.”

Miss Corey looked at Miss Sharp and then sighed. “Oh, very well. I’ve gotten used to Darklings; I suppose I can get used to changelings, too.”

“That’s the spirit, Lil!” Miss Sharp said, patting her friend on the back. “I’ll go get your galoshes. It will be muddy in the woods.”

It was, indeed, prodigiously muddy. The thaw had come as quickly as the frost had, dissolving the winter’s accumulation of ice in one wet swoop. Pools of slush stood on the lawn, and the trees dripped in the woods, the ground soggy and tender. Our feet sunk into the newly released earth and churned up mud. It smelled rich and loamy and sucked at our rubber boots with loud rude squelches and smacks that all but drowned out the song of a thousand birds celebrating the end of winter.

By the time we reached the Rowan Circle, we were daubed in mud head to foot, but we were nothing compared to the changelings. They appeared to be wholly sprung from the wet earth. They lounged in the circle, scantily clad in moss and long grasses, stretching their glossy limbs in the sun. As they moved, their skin changed from brown to green to the blue of the sky overhead, as if they were absorbing all the colors of the awakening forest. Lampsprites flitted through the clearing, casting their own warmth and radiance over the thawing changelings.

“They barely had bodies when I saw them earlier,” Etta whispered.

“Ah, we felt so cramped by a winter spent bodiless, we needed legs to stretch,” one said, approaching us. She—or he, I really couldn’t tell and I had a feeling neither could she/he—raised long arms to the sun and stretched like a cat. Then, in a flash of sunshine, the changeling was a cat—a tawny mountain lion arching its back—and as the creature passed into the shade, she/he became a green-limbed boy with elfin features and a mischievous glint in his dark green eyes. The changeling was as fluid as the water dripping from the trees and as mercurial as the spring sky. She/he was sheer possibility.

“Sheer,” the changeling whispered, apparently hearing my thoughts. “I like that name. Call me that while we talk today. It might keep me . . .” She/he laughed and rippled like a stream moving over rocks. “Stable long enough to tell you what I need to.”

“Thank you, Sheer,” Etta said, and then under her breath to me and Miss Corey, “We’d best follow along; they’re hard to understand while they’re in this changeable state.”

We each pronounced Sheer’s name and she—for she had decided for the moment at least to settle for a feminine air—grew more solid. She motioned for us to sit on some toppled tree trunks in the center of the circle. The other changelings gathered around us, their shapes changing as they moved. It made me dizzy to watch them, so I focused on Sheer, who sat on a log and crossed her long legs.

“Ah,” she sighed, “the sun feels so good on my flesh. How can you bear to go about so . . . covered?”

“Yes,” Miss Corey said impatiently, “we’ll consider becoming nudists when this is all over. In the meantime, Etta says you know where Rue is being kept. We think our girls are there, too. If you tell us where it is, we’ll go get them—”

“You’ll never get through without us,” Sheer said, with a shudder than made her skin ripple. “The only entrance to the house is through the water—through a hellgate.”

“Do you mean the whirlpool?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sheer said. “A hellgate is a whirlpool that a wizard may use as a doorway to a fortress.”

“Like the Isle of the Scholomance in Carpathia,” Miss Corey said.

“Yes,” Sheer agreed with another skin-rippling shudder. “That one was guarded by a dragon. This one is guarded by something far worse—a kraken.”

This time I was the one who shuddered. “I saw it in a vision I had of the Titanic sinking.”

“Yes, the Shadow Master found the monster in the North Atlantic and brought it here to guard the hellgate to his castle. That’s where he’s keeping Rue. We found her last winter, but before we could tell you, we were frozen. Rue would not come with us because she said she must stay with the other girls to protect them. She said their minds were being bent to do terrible things.” She shuddered again, this time so violently that she melted into the log where she sat.

“Sheer!” Etta called. “Stay with us. Did Rue tell you what the girls were being used to do?”

“No,” Sheer said, reassuming her shape. Her features had changed, though, to a face that looked familiar. I saw Etta pale as we both recognized Ruth’s face—or Rue’s, I supposed, as the changeling told the rest of the story in Rue’s voice.

“We are kept in a gilded palace like birds in a cage, made to dance all day and night, never to rest or eat or speak—only dance.”

“It’s Herr Hofmeister’s dancing school,” I said. “I knew it! But why—”

“We only know the steps, not where they are leading us,” Sheer said in Rue’s voice, and then in a voice that was neither Rue’s nor Sheer’s but a dozen girls all shrieking from one mouth that bulged as if all those girls were inside trying to get out. “You must stop us!”

For a moment I saw the faces of a dozen girls flit over the one changeling’s features. Among them I recognized Beatrice and Susannah and lastly Daisy, her face drawn and thin, her eyes sunken in their sockets. “Ava,” she whispered, “they are going to make us do a terrible thing, please—”

But by the time I had moved the few feet to where she sat, Daisy’s face had melted away and only the bland, mud-colored eyes of the changeling blinked up at me.

“We will take you, but you must know that the journey could kill you,” Sheer said. “Few survive the kraken.”

“Did Raven?” I asked.

Sheer shook her head. “I don’t know.”

I sank back down onto the damp log, which nearly crumbled beneath my now leaden weight. “I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll go, too,” Etta said.

Sheer shook her head. “Van Drood has put a spell on the gate to keep humans out—only a Darkling can get through—or a changeling.”

“Ava’s only half-Darkling,” Miss Corey said. “What if half isn’t enough?”

Sheer tilted her head and looked curiously at me. “We won’t know until we try.”

“That’s not good enough!” Miss Corey cried. “Ava, I can’t let you take the risk. We’ll get one of the Darklings to go.”

“I have to go,” I said, turning to Miss Corey. “The Darklings have already lost one of theirs. If the Darklings and the Order are ever to work together, they must see we’re willing to take equal risks.”

“That’s a fine speech,” Miss Corey said with a sniff. “But you’re going because of that boy.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “If Miss Sharp was there, wouldn’t you go?”

“That’s not . . . oh, Hell’s Bells, I suppose I would. But then I’m going with you.”

“But you can’t,” Etta began, “Sheer said—”

“I said only changelings or Darklings.” Sheer stretched her arm out to Miss Corey and placed her hand on her face, her fingers tracing the mottled marks there. Miss Corey flinched but remained still, so pale the marks stood out more lividly—a pattern that appeared on Sheer’s face.

“A changeling did this to me,” Miss Corey said, tilting her chin up and staring defiantly at her mirror image. “Does that give me the power to go through the Hellgate?”

“No, Lillian, that would not give you that power, but you can go through the gate. A changeling didn’t do this to you. You are a changeling.”