The Waking Forest, Page 20

  “Wait,” Dad says. “Rhea, wait. If you do that, then won’t you fall into a coma too?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admit, my heart tripping over itself in my chest. I’m willing to do this, of course, but still there is a part of me that wishes I didn’t have to, that there was another way. “But donation isn’t the same as depletion. Her magic was taken from her, whereas mine would be given freely.”

  Dad stares at me. “How much magic are you planning to give her?”

  I shrug, trying to hide my anxiety. “A lot? At least enough to jump-start her second heart.”

  “We shouldn’t wake Mom at your expense,” Raisa says. “She wouldn’t want that. Can’t we strap her to Shay’s back to take her with us and then figure out what to do later? I mean, we kind of need your magic right now. In you.”

  “No. I have to—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  We turn. The sun is gone now, and except for the stars and the seven moons, the sky is black. But still I can see her there, a little removed from the rest of us, eyes downcast and small sprigs of gold hair escaping from her bun and curling around her face.

  Rose.

  Her magic—it’s different from mine. I feel it at once, plunge my hands into it, cup it in my palms and let it drip through my fingers: sloshing and saturated, her magic is like slogging down a wintery sidewalk in boots and a dress while the wetness gradually spreads through your tights, creeps up your calves and the backs of your knees, your thighs. Uncomfortable, soggy. It doesn’t sit well inside her.

  “I’ll do it,” she repeats when no one says anything. “I’ll give Mom my magic. All of it.”

  Everyone starts talking at once. Only I am quiet.

  “Rose, you’re here! We—”

  “No, no. Rhea will—”

  “Wow, look, the mirror is empty!”

  “Let’s just—”

  “Can’t we—”

  “But if—”

  “If each of you give half—”

  “Mom wouldn’t—”

  “Stop!” Rose cries. “Please. It should be me. I hate my magic—I’ve always hated it. It makes me so sick whenever I use it. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. But Mom does. And if it makes her sick too, then when she’s strong enough again, she can donate it to someone else, someone who won’t get sick from it.” She drops her hands and walks over to me. “Rhea, do the spell. I’m ready.”

  “I’m telling you, Rose,” I say. “It’s not your magic that’s hurting you. This isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “Rhea, come on,” she pleads. “You know. You must know how this magic hurts me.”

  “But—”

  “We have to get out of here,” Raisa interrupts, her gaze on the darkness swelling through the sky. “Like, now.”

  I turn to Rose. “You say your magic hurts you. But what if this spell hurts you more?”

  “I’m prepared to accept whatever comes. I want to do what’s right. And I know she’s not really my mother, but I love her too.” She smiles. “I can do this, Ree. I came out of my mirror, didn’t I?”

  Seconds go by, fluttering past, and panic prickles my chest so that I can’t breathe or sigh or cry or think. Or scream.

  “Okay.” I need to calm down, to think clearly. I have to open the casket. But there’s no hinge. And that’s because—of course. Because it’s magic. I place my hands on the glass, as much bracing myself as preparing to invoke the spell.

  Rose puts her hands beside mine.

  “Fofalda,” we intone. Not precisely in sync, but close enough. “Fofalda, ze.”

  At once the glass vanishes. The others watch in mute wonder as I gently but quickly prod one of my mother’s hands out from underneath her cheek, then lift her limp arm until her wrist is on top of Rose’s, my hands holding theirs together, one of mine on top, and the other below. I breathe in and in and in.

  And then: “Alenia se dricraf awell.”

  Immediately the spell manifests, a mixed-up midnight star-swoop, a planetary parade of whiplashed light, concussed constellations, knock-kneed nebulae, and two girls wearing tiaras of tangled starlight, loops of asteroids around our necks. It’s like the whole universe is surging through us. It pours out of Rose, through my fingers, and into our mother.

  Let the magic flow.

  Rose closes her eyes, while Mom’s slowly, slowly start to open.

  When the last drips of magic have been funneled from one to the other, I let go of their hands. Rose’s cheeks are blanched. When I ask if she’s okay, she says, “I don’t know. I think—I think I’ll be okay, though.”

  She doesn’t look okay, or at least not her best, but since she’s still speaking and breathing and her heart is still beating, I take that as a good sign. Once I’m certain that she’s really all right, that she won’t faint or throw up or worse—every one of us presses closer to the coffin, human and maculae and nymph and gorgon and manticore. We look anxiously at Mom, who has rolled onto her back, blinking and breathing and utterly silent. Dad crouches down and takes her hand, presses a kiss to her brightening cheek.

  I say, “Mom? Are you awake?”

  Her eyes swivel to me, shiny and lucid, but before she can part her lips to speak, someone else speaks instead: “Rhea Ravenna, come to me.”

  Dad’s head snaps up. “What was that?”

  This time, we all heard it.

  Renata twines her arms around her waist and hunches over, as if the voice has cut her, slicing her in the stomach. “Who was that?”

  Raisa brings a hand to her makeshift mask, ready in a moment to lift it up and turn the intruder to shadow if she has to. Shay’s dirty mane bristles.

  “We have to go,” I say, and without protest Dad hooks his arms underneath Mom and lifts her to his chest. Groggy, muddled, she wraps her arms around his neck. I wave for them to follow and say, “Come on.”

  We sprint toward the door on the north side of the roof, the only exit. Raisa gets there a second before I do, but we all stop as she jerks the door open.

  Something is different now; something is wrong.

  There is nothing but empty blackness beyond.

  Darkness. Laughing. The darkness itself is laughing.

  Or.

  Someone is laughing in the darkness.

  I don’t know which is worse.

  I step farther into the hallway, but there is nothing to see. Nothing to hear, except the soft laughter. Or is it merely breathing? Or weeping? Or nothing, nothing at all. The others follow me. Do they hear it, feel it, too?

  “Litus,” I say, to no effect. “Alita, please. Alita.”

  I try a different luminosity spell, but it doesn’t work. I drop my hands, blinking fast. “This isn’t ordinary darkness.”

  “We will just have to manage without sight, then,” Shay says. “We have other senses, other strengths to guide us.”

  “At least I don’t need this mask anymore,” Raisa says, pulling the fabric off her eyes, careful not to look at us directly until we are completely submerged in the shadows. “Come on, Ree. Let’s go.”

  Gulping, inhaling, as if I’m about to plunge into a pond and not into silent sightlessness, I take a step, and then I run down the stairs. My family trips after me, and only the stamping of our feet smothers the cold, rough laughter. I long for my attic, for my Darkness, because this is someone else’s Darkness, and I’d rather be eaten alive by my own fright than by this new terror that laughs but does not grin.

  We finally stagger to the bottom, pile into the hallway, and press close together. I startle at the sound of Gabrielle’s voice.

  “Witch? What’s going on?” she says, her breathing uneven. “I went to the dungeons, but—they were empty.”

  “Empty? Are you sure?”

  “I got a good look before everything
went dark. No one was there.”

  I chew the inside of my cheek, thinking. I hoped he would be in the dungeons, but maybe that was only wishful thinking. Because if I really think about it, what comes to mind are the staircase and the door from my dream. If I find that door and open it, will Varon be behind it, waiting for me like he waited in the attic? I picture him, remembering the first time I met him—in this world, not in the attic. He found me, told me he knew I had magic, and I led him to the north wing of the castle, where I’d been told never to go.

  Where I’d been told.

  Never.

  To go.

  And who had told me that? The king.

  I put my hand on the wall both to steady my nerves and so I won’t lose my way. Addressing my family, I say, “Exit the castle and join the others. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Where are you going?” Dad says, and the air around me flutters as someone reaches for me. “We are not splitting up.”

  “I have to. I’m sorry; I have to.” I must find the staircase and Varon, I think, and am already walking down the hallway, feeling along the wall. I’m guided by the laughter that sounds more and more like howling, like weeping, as I hurry along. I shout back over my shoulder, “There’s one more thing I have to do.”

  “I’ll come with you!” Rose already sounds far away, and her footsteps falter as if someone grips her wrist and yanks her back. “No. Let go, Ray—I mean, Ren—I mean, whoever you are. Wait for me, Rhea!”

  “No!” My voice echoes, and I wish everyone would be quiet so that I can follow the sound of this new, unknown darkness. “I’ll be all right. I promise!”

  Except.

  I can’t really promise that. I can’t, because I don’t know. I don’t know if I will be all right.

  I skitter and slip on the glossy floors, and I close my eyes even though it makes no difference if they are open or shut. It’s difficult to leave my family behind, especially because I’ve just found them, but I sprint across the castle until I can no longer hear their reverberating protests. There is a door in this darkness, and I need to know what’s behind it.

  Jamming my feeler-fingers against doorknobs and sconces as I pass room after room, rounding corners, listening for the source of the magic that created this spell. Created by an Immacula, I assume, the very one I seek, forced to cast it by the one who seeks me now as well.

  Thoughts push their way into my mind, thoughts of my grandfather holding Varon against his will, forcing him to create this darkness, to be smothered by it, tortured—no. I have to believe that Varon is okay, that there is still time to save him, that the king is only using him as another tool to bait me.

  “Rhea Ravenna, come to me…”

  Finally the wall gives way to a set of double doors, and I intone an unlocking spell as I push against them. A brief swirl of silver cuts through the gloom as they unlock and glide silently aside.

  And then I am in the old stone north wing of the castle, and I sense, rather than know, that there’s a thick glamour hiding this place, and has been for a long time, so that no one would know about it. A glamour the king took no steps to strengthen even after Varon and I were able to see through it.

  But why is this wing kept in shadow?

  The thought sends chills down my spine, and I press on.

  It takes me only a minute to run down the corridor. A steep staircase is at its end. Though my lungs seize, I never slow, climbing up and up and around and around. The tower is short, only a story-and-a-half high, and the ocean laps at its northern wall, splashing halfway up the outer stones at high tide. When I reach the top, I pause to catch my breath, the doorway from my dream-not-dream rising before me, shimmering around the edges. It’s almost a relief, seeing it there, knowing for certain it’s real. But my relief is soon dampened; it is not enough to find the door. I have to open it.

  To my right is a glassless window, a narrow, arched slit in the stone, and through it I get a glimpse of the stars doing their best to burn through the darkness stretched like a pulled muscle from horizon to horizon.

  The stars say, This is it.

  The moons chime, Mind your magic.

  Together they tell me, It is okay to be afraid.

  I reach out, ready with a spell, but the door isn’t locked. Maybe it never was, and I was just too wary to open it, too frightened of what I might find.

  I’m frightened now too, but I do it anyway. The door swings heavily, a screech of rotted wood and iron hinges. When I step across the threshold, the door slams shut behind me. I jump.

  “Hello?” I whisper, shivering in the cold and the stillness and the silence. An odor rises, nearly unbearable, like stale rain on an overturned grave. Even the ocean is quiet, listening. “Grandfather? Varon, are you here?”

  Not even the stars can break through the heavy darkness. Holding my hands out in front of me, I take a step forward. And then another and another. I keep walking until I finally hit something with my toe, slamming my foot hard against what I think is stone. I lower my hands, reaching, and my fingers brush something that feels like skin.

  Like a mouth.

  Moving.

  “Rhea Ravenna,” says the king’s reverberating voice as I recoil, stumbling back with a cry. It has always been him, murmuring and mocking me with my name, the surname that we share. But it’s louder now, clearer. Coming from right in front of me.

  I move quickly in what I think is the direction from which I came, but I soon collide foot-first with another hard object, and another beyond that, and each time I reach my hands up, I feel something different: matted hair, a wrinkled cheek, a smooth and pointed knuckle. Finally I cross my arms over my chest, squeezing my eyes closed and backing up, backing away.

  What is this place? I want to shout, but all I manage is a whisper. “Where am I?”

  “I will show you,” comes the reply. “But you must promise not to scream.”

  I almost laugh. Almost. “I can’t promise that.”

  “Well, then, something must be done.”

  Another voice comes from somewhere very near, and this one is familiar even strained with desperation, a cracked masterpiece. “My sky, I—”

  His voice cuts off, and my breath with it as a hand wraps around my throat from behind me, forcing my head back. Warm flesh and ironbound wrists, magic like the snap of a pulled wishbone. I would know him anywhere, my Darkness, my Fox Who Is No Fox. He has his other arm around my waist, immobilizing my arms, crushing me against him, spine to sternum, and I want to ask why he is doing this, but I can’t speak, I can’t scream, I can’t—

  “I am so sorry,” he says. His teeth grind with effort, whether to hurt me or not, I can’t be sure.

  “Do not choke her,” commands the king. “Just hold her.”

  Varon’s hand relaxes only slightly, his fingertips pressed over my pulse at the side of my throat. I gasp and blink. My neck is stretched back so far that I fear my skin might split.

  The darkness begins to lift, gathering like a storm cloud, high, higher, highest above our heads, and suddenly I can see everything.

  Everything.

  Everything.

  The room in front of me is wide but shallow, with no walls and no roof save for the Gothic arches connecting overhead like steepled fingers, supported by columns made from the vertebrae of impossibly enormous beasts. A chandelier of sickly white antlers hangs from the center of the arches, the bones giving off a faint blue glow.

  But none of this is enough to startle me, even though it is disconcertingly reminiscent of my castle in the Woods, as if the king had peered into my dreams and designed this place specifically for me. No, what makes me want to scream is a row of thrones carved out of giant teeth, arranged around the room in a half circle like the steep curve of a jaw. And in every throne sits a body, all in varying states of decay: some with the
ir eyes open as if they’ve only just awoken from a deep sleep, others with their skin scraped away in places to reveal the bone beneath. But all with their heads bowed, all with a fist-size hole in their chests, crusted with old blood. Wrinkled cheeks, maggots in their hair. Knees pressed together, hands clasped, blue-violet lips parted as if begging for one last breath.

  It takes me a moment to realize that of all the bodies before me, one isn’t dead, the man in the center of the crescent. His flesh is wrinkled as if he’s had all the water sucked out of him, and the veins of his hands bulge as he grips the edges of the tooth. His chest rises and falls, quickly and shallowly. His head is adorned with a gold crown, and the scarlet cloak wrapped around his shoulders sweeps down to the floor. His eyes, a pale, shivery blue, lock onto mine and stay there. Only his mouth moves as he speaks.

  “Rhea Ravenna. Blood of my blood, my littlest crown jewel. Here you are, at last.”

  I try to speak, but still I can’t.

  “Do you know what it is like to be the ruler of a land wherein half your subjects wield more power than you?” the king rasps, indifferent to my disgust. “When they could cut you deeper than any knife with just one word, when they could humiliate you, laugh at your weaknesses and spit in the face of your laws? Do you know what it is like for a king to kneel to others? No, you do not. You were born with magic, and so you will never know. But I knew, once.”

  “Wh-what are you t-talking about?” I gasp as Varon’s hold on me loosens, but not completely. I wriggle against him, trying to get free, but he won’t let go—and I don’t understand why. Is it possible that he’s on the king’s side?

  But then, why would he have come to me in the Witch’s Woods, night after night after night, telling me stories and wishing for a kiss to break my spell, only to turn me over to the king? Why would he follow me into the darkness in the attic, only to betray me now? It would have been easy to let me stay asleep, forever and ever and ever.

  The king blinks once, slowly. “Magic comes from the heart, you know—the second heart, the hidden one. Magic is in the blood. Drain a man of his blood, and you drain him of his magic also.” A pause, a dragging inhale. “Drink the blood of a man, and you drink his magic also.”