The Death of Yorik Mortwell (9 page)

Lord Ravenby ran his hand along the barrel of the mammoth rifle. “Shoot the hounds.” He shook his head. “I’ll consider it.” He turned away from the fireplace.

The Dark Ones on the captain’s shoulders
continued hissing. “There is no longer any reason to ground the
Indomitable
,” the captain said angrily. “She’s ready for flight.”

“The mechanical problems—all repaired?”

Dark whispering. “Yes,” said the captain.

Yorik could see that the captain was lying. When Lord Ravenby responded, “Very well, I will leave tomorrow night,” Thomas gripped Yorik’s arm in terror.

The captain stormed out. Lord Ravenby hesitated, then took the mammoth rifle down from the mantel and placed it across his desk before returning to his papers.

Yorik pulled Thomas into the next room. “Come on,” he said to Thomas. “You’ve seen him. Now I must get you to the Princess.”

Thomas shook his body no.

“But you have to!” said Yorik.

His eyes rolling, Thomas shook and refused.

“Don’t you understand?” said Yorik. “There is nothing you can do for your father. And the Princess can’t protect you outside the glade. Do you want to end up like Doris? Consumed by the Dark Ones?”

Thomas tried to make a shrug—
I don’t care
. He would not look Yorik in the eye.

“Very well,” Yorik said testily. He reached into his pocket and produced two small, dryish mud-balls. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at Thomas. “These are the last two that Erde was able to make. Stay hidden, but if any Dark Ones find you, hit them with these.”

Looking dubious, Thomas accepted the mud-balls.

Yorik turned and faded through the wall, then raced for the aviary glade.

M
ore of the Dark Ones had gathered around the glade. Yorik had to run in a wide circle before he found an opening in their lines.

At first he could not find the Princess. She was not with the partridges roosting in trees. Nor was she near the elm, nor walking by the pond, nor sitting on her sycamore throne. She was not in the clearing, where the remains of last autumn’s snares had long vanished.

Finally Yorik discovered her beneath a spreading cherry bough. In this quiet place, the Princess had
parted the long grasses to form a cradle. Erde lay within. The Princess knelt beside the withered brown girl, gently tapping her leafy twig and making little clouds of misty water that settled over Erde’s dry form.

Yorik knelt beside the cradle. Erde was so small now, curled into a ball no larger than one of her old mud-balls. She wasn’t speaking, and her eyes were closed.

“Is that helping?” Yorik asked, nodding at the mist.

“No,” said the Princess miserably. She stood abruptly, waving the twig across the grass stains on her gossamer dress. The stains vanished. “So where’s the other ghost-boy?” she asked. “He must have appeared by now.”

“He did,” said Yorik. He explained about Thomas.

“Too bad,” murmured the Princess. “I could have used another servant.”

Yorik could tell she was trying to resume her old imperious manner. But her heart was no longer in it. Even as the aviary glade burst with life, the Estate darkened, and Erde crumbled.

Yorik stood too. “Poor Thomas,” he said, looking down at Erde. “He can’t do anything to help his father.”

“If he’s so useless,” snapped the Princess, “then what did you want him so badly for?”

“I only wanted to bring him here, for protection. But now I’m not sure how I would have gotten him in. A lot of Dark Ones are surrounding your glade now, you know.”

The Princess laughed darkly. “I wish a few of them would drift a little closer, but they know better, don’t they?” This idea seemed to perk her up.

Yorik continued. “And there are more of them everywhere, all the time. It’s getting harder for me to move around the Estate.”

The Princess’s dismal mood returned. “What does it matter?” she said. “Did you really think you’d find a way to defeat the
Yglhfm
? In all these nights of prowling everywhere with those dogs, you haven’t, have you?”

“No,” said Yorik, crestfallen. “Not yet. But I have learned something. The Dark Ones are focused
on the Ravenbys. First Thomas, then his father. There must be a reason for that.” As he said it, he remembered the words of the topiary hare:
Is not the fate of one bound to the fate of all?

The Princess snorted. “You would think that. Humans think everything involves them.”

“But—”

“But nothing. Don’t you realize you are dealing with an ancient evil far more powerful than a few humans? Not to mention you, a stubborn little ghost-boy, not even one year old!”

Yorik turned away. “At least I’m trying.”

The Princess’s voice turned to icicles and venom. “Beware, ghost. I can banish you from my glade. You can spend your days among the
Yglhfm
if you like. You know very well I—”

“—can’t leave the glade because of beastly Father,” finished Yorik. “I know.” He turned to her. The Princess’s leafy twig was sparking as though it were angry too. He pointed. “What if you let me use that? I could take it with me and use its power against them.”

The Princess shook her head. “Can’t. It doesn’t
have any power except the little I put into it. And it’s part of me. It can’t leave either.”

“Right,” said Yorik. “Just like Thomas can’t leave his father.”

The Princess sighed. Her glowing face looked weary, as Yorik had never seen it before.

“You know, ghost-boy,” she said, “you see so many things, you think you see everything. But you don’t. There are things you fail to see that are right in front of you, and you shouldn’t even need ghost eyes to see them.”

“Like what?” ventured Yorik cautiously.

“Like your little murderer friend. Do you think he’s staying with his father because he’s stupid? Do you think he doesn’t fear the
Yglhfm
?”

“Why, then? Why would he stay?”

The Princess sank slowly into the grass, her gossamer dress billowing. Her glow dimmed. “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “it was something he did. Something terrible. And he feels responsible for everything bad that has happened since. He won’t leave his father because he doesn’t believe he deserves to be fixed. And so
he stays there, among the
Yglhfm
, in the dark.”

“My murder,” said Yorik. “He feels responsible for my murder. But I’ve forgiven him for that.”

“I mean something really, really bad,” said the Princess distantly. “An unforgivable sin.”

“Your Highness, I—” Yorik stopped. The Princess was not listening, nor was she looking at him. She was sitting in the grass with downcast eyes, her face shadowed, her fingers fidgeting with her leafy twig.

Her voice was so quiet now that Yorik could hardly hear her. “Sometimes you do something,” she whispered. “Something so awful you can never atone for the crime. Even if you want more than anything to help someone you love … there is nothing you can do.”

Yorik understood now that the Princess was no longer talking about Thomas.

He looked up at the stars, thinking. These nights, the sky above most of the Estate was covered with writhing flame-blue clouds. Only here, above the aviary glade, could the stars still be seen. He watched them blink and shimmer.

He looked back at the girl sitting in the grass, her head with its laurel crown cast down, her glittering hair spilling around her. “What could you …” He hesitated. “What could someone have done, for their sin to be unforgivable?”

The Princess’s glow vanished. The aviary glade grew dark.

Then the Princess drifted up from where she sat, rising through the cherry boughs.

Yorik climbed swiftly, following her. In his ghost form, he could climb forever and never fall. At the very top of the tree he found her sitting as before, now on the very tip of the highest branch. Yorik crouched near her, balancing on a branch no wider than his finger.

The Princess raised her arm and pointed with her leafy twig. The twig moved along the sky, across the length of the bright Milky Way, the river of stars. The white Way glowed ever brighter as the twig traced its path.

“A girl was once given charge of a river,” came the Princess’s hushed voice, soft and sad. “A bright, clear, shining river.”

As Yorik watched, the leafy twig twisted. In the river there appeared swift black shapes, dipping and rushing in the flow, free and happy in their swimming.

“What are those?” he asked.

“They are dolphins,” said the Princess. “They asked the girl to come and play with them, and swim in the waters.”

“Did she?”

“At first,” she said. “The girl would come to the river’s edge each morning and call to them, and they would come to her and she would swim with them, up and down the river’s length, from its source in mountain springs to its end, where sea winds blew over salt waters.”

Yorik watched the white Way glitter and gleam. It filled with more of the dark swimmers, and the stars around them seemed to dance.

The Princess went on. “All was well, in the beginning. But in time, the girl grew bored. She became angry with her father for giving her only this river, when she thought she deserved so much more. And so she left it behind, and went to other
places she thought more worthy of her. She ignored the shining river.”

The stars that had seemed to dance slowed and then stopped. The happy swimming of the dark shapes changed too, becoming frantic and crowded. Something was terribly wrong, and despite himself,

Yorik felt afraid. He almost did not want the Princess to continue. At last he spoke. “Go on.”

“A long time passed,” whispered the Princess. “Then one day, the girl remembered her river. And she returned.”

She twitched her twig in a sudden slash, and the bright, clear river darkened. The swimmers disappeared.

“She had been gone for many years. In her absence, the river had become black and poisonous. When she saw what had happened, she raced to the river’s edge and called to the dolphins as she always had … but this time they did not answer. They were all long dead. There were none of them left.”

Yorik felt as though his heart would break. “Princess …,” he said.

The girl moved her twig, and the night sky
became itself again. She sank back through the boughs, Yorik following. He knelt next to her as she huddled on the ground.

“Now you know,” she said, her voice breaking. “Now you know why Father banished me to this glade, and why I may never leave.”

“But, Princess,” said Yorik. “Look at all you have done. Your glade is so beautiful, and you’ve sheltered Erde here, and you protected the birds, and you fixed me when I was broken, and—”

The Princess’s voice was harsh and ruthless. “It doesn’t matter. They’re dead, all dead forever, and it’s my fault. It is an unforgivable sin. I deserved to be punished. Father was right.”

“Princess …,” said Yorik. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” screamed the Princess. Bolts of lightning shot from her twig, and Yorik was hurled backward. The pheasants, disturbed from their roosts, flew muttering down from their trees.

The Princess sat with her face in her lap, crying brokenly. Beyond was the grassy cradle where Erde lay helpless and dying.

The Princess had done something terrible, and so had Thomas. Yorik remembered the flickering image the Princess had shown him, of the Dark Ones whispering to Thomas in the glade before he threw the rocks—
he’ll find out what you did
.

He’ll find out what you did
. Whatever Thomas had done, it had happened before Yorik’s murder.

Yorik had to find out what it was.

Y
orik found Thomas hiding in the corridor outside his father’s study, where the Matron, with two Dark Ones on her shoulders, was confronting Susan.

“Girl, what are you doing with that?” the Matron snarled, pointing at the supper tray Susan carried. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I made Lord Ravenby eat something,” retorted Susan. “He is ill, and no one else has brought him any food.”

The Matron laughed. “Do as you like. But you
shouldn’t stay here, you know. You should flee the Estate with the others. Wicked ways are afoot.”