The Fire Chronicle Page 15

  She ran a few feet into the forest and returned with an armful of fern fronds.

  “We’re going to make fancy hats! Then no one will see our bum hair!”

  Michael could scarcely believe what amazing ideas Emma was having tonight. First saying lovely over and over, and now the fancy-hats idea.

  They set to work, using Michael’s pocketknife to cut the fronds into five- and six-inch pieces, but they soon hit an obstacle, realizing they had no way of actually attaching the fronds. Then Michael got the idea of scooping up handfuls of moist, mud-like earth from the bases of the trees and using it to coat their heads.

  “It’ll be like glue! The fronds will just stick to it!”

  Emma was so pleased that she told Michael he was her favorite brother.

  “I’m your only brother,” Michael said.

  “I know! Isn’t it great? Now hurry up! I bet they’re gonna start dancing any second!”

  Not wasting any time, the children smeared the mud from just above their eyebrows, over the tops of their heads, all the way down to the base of their necks. Gooey helmets in place, they seized fistfuls of fern fronds and began slapping them, more or less willy-nilly, to any free patch of mud. In a few moments, Michael and Emma had more than two dozen floppy green fronds sticking out in all directions from the top, sides, front, and back of their heads.

  “How do I look?” Michael asked his sister.

  “You look great! How do I look?”

  “You look amazing! You should wear that hat all the time! Even when we’re not dancing!”

  “I was just thinking that!” Emma said, supremely pleased.

  “Are you ready?” Michael said.

  “Am I?! Let’s go!”

  “Hold on!” Michael pulled the blue-gray orb from inside his shirt so that it lay on his chest like a sort of decorative necklace. He had never been one for jewelry before, but he thought the glass marble gave him a certain flair. He saw Emma’s eyes go wide.

  “Oh, I want one!”

  “I’ll let you borrow it later. Come on!”

  And the children were about to plunge into the clearing when the song changed:

  We’ve brought you something special

  To remind you what you were.

  For deep below that nasty hide

  There’s a princess hiding still.

  Please come back, oh please come back,

  We really, really miss you.

  Please come back, oh please come back,

  Change your gold band for this one.…

  And the children saw four elves emerge from the trees, carrying something on a litter: an object draped in black cloth. The crowd sang louder and louder, and the elves all joined hands so they were dancing around the litter in a large, skipping circle.

  Sensing that something momentous—and potentially wonderful—was about to happen, the children hesitated at the edge of the trees.

  The four elves carried their burden to the center of the clearing and set it down. It was not easy to make out what was happening, what with the wavering torchlight and the elves moving around and around and blocking the view. Then two of the elves whipped away the black cloth, and Michael had a glimpse of something ghostly and white, and there was a flash of gold. The pitch and frenzy of the celebration increased tenfold, the singing filled the entire canyon, the dancing elves whirled about faster and faster, and Michael thought that if he didn’t go and dance right that very instant, he would never be happy again.

  “Michael!” Emma cried. “We have to—”

  “I know, I know!”

  And, with a quick fluffing to ensure their leafy headpieces appeared to best effect, the children jumped up. But they were destined never to join the dance, for just at that moment, a cry tore through the valley. It was the same savage, chilling, terrible shriek they had heard while descending the rocky staircase that afternoon. In an instant, the singing stopped, the torches went out, and the whole party of elves, along with the dunking booth, the wooden vanity, the picnic baskets, and the giant bicycle with the two different-sized wheels, vanished.

  It was dark and silent and the children stood alone in their fern-frond helmets at the border of the trees.

  Michael felt a heaviness enter his body. He no longer wanted to sing and dance. Indeed, he remembered he hated dancing. And what did he have on his head? He glanced at Emma, visible in the starlight, and saw a mass of mud and ferns matted into a tangled nest upon her head. A few of the fronds had begun an oozy slide down the side of her face.

  “Do I have a bunch of leaves and gunk stuck in my hair?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah,” Michael said, hoping that what he felt moving over his ear wasn’t a bug. “Do I?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wordlessly, the two children pulled off the fronds, wiping away, as much as was possible, the half-solid mud caking their hair. Neither asked the other how he or she looked.

  “Where’d all the elves go?” Emma said.

  Michael shrugged; he was far too irritated to care. He’d always known that elves were lazy and vain, but it turned out they also sang songs that made you want to dress up and rub mud all over your head and—and—

  They were just children, he thought. Just silly, stupid children!

  Looking out into the clearing, Michael saw that the elves had left behind the ghostly object they’d unloaded from the litter. Suddenly, he had to know what it was.

  “Wait here.”

  “What? Michael, no—”

  Emma tried to grab him, but Michael was already running in a low crouch across the clearing. Just as he reached the object, another harsh cry echoed down the valley. It was closer than the last. Whatever was making that noise was on the move.

  But even so, for a long moment, he simply stood there and stared. The object was the figure of an elf girl carved in clear ice. She looked to be about Michael’s age, and her crystalline hair tumbled down her back and she had been carved smiling and laughing. Even though Michael’s elf annoyance was at an all-time high, he had to admit that the elf girl was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He reached out and ran a finger along the elf girl’s arm and felt the coldness and slickness of ice starting to melt. A thin gold band, almost like a crown, had been placed on her head. Very carefully, Michael lifted it off. The ice girl was so lifelike that Michael half expected her to protest. She didn’t, of course, and Michael, glancing down at the circlet, saw it was actually dozens of fine gold bands all woven together.

  But what did it all mean? And who was she?

  Michael was woken out of his reverie by another of the awful shrieks. It was closer than ever. The thing was coming, and coming quickly.

  “Michael!”

  Emma was running toward him across the clearing. Without thinking, he slipped the golden circlet into his bag, and he had just started to yell at Emma to go back when there was a shout and Michael turned and saw Gabriel charging out of the trees from the other direction.

  “Get down!” the man shouted. “Down!”

  Then there was another cry, this time from almost directly overheard, and before Michael could look up, he was pushed roughly to the ground.

  “Stay down!” Gabriel commanded.

  Emma was still calling her brother’s name, and Michael, flat on his stomach, heard the sound of wing beats, and, looking past Gabriel, he watched as the monster swooped down out of the night sky and plucked his sister into the air.

  “Hey, wake up! Come on, wake up!”

  The small girl named Abigail, the one who’d helped her find clothes, was leaning over Kate and shaking her.

  “I’m awake,” Kate said groggily.

  All around her, throughout the old church, the day was starting. Children were making their beds, lighting fires in stoves, sweeping the stone floor. The air was so cold that Kate could see her breath before her.

  “Guess what just happened?” Abigail said.

  “It started snowing?” Kate yawned. She reached under her p
illow, where she’d placed her mother’s locket the night before, and slipped it into her pocket.

  “No. Well, yeah. It’s been snowing all night. But not that. Rafe was just here,” the girl was barely able to control her excitement, “and he said seeing as tonight’s New Year’s Eve and the big Separation and all, Miss Burke wants to have a party!”

  “Oh?” Kate glanced around; the boy Rafe was nowhere to be seen.

  “Last time we had a party, Scruggs did fireworks. This one, he made a goblin appear. Lots a’ kids got scared and screamed. Not me. Well, maybe me a little. If he does that again, I’m not gonna scream. Put your boots on, let’s go get breakfast. Wow, you move slow in the morning! Is that ’cause you’re so old?”

  Breakfast was served at two long tables in the basement. The fare was scrambled eggs, potatoes, and thick slices of fried bread. The head cook was a thirteen-year-old girl, who was assisted by an army of younger children, all of whom seemed to take their jobs very seriously. The talk at the tables was about the party that night, and what life was going to be like after the Separation.

  “So if the magic world is invisible,” asked a small boy whose hair stuck out in all directions, “does that mean we’re gonna be invisible too?”

  “No, dummy!” replied Abigail. “Just, like, certain streets and stuff are gonna be invisible!”

  “And are people really gonna forget there’re such things as wizards and dragons?” asked a girl further down the table.

  “They ain’t gonna forget! They’re just not gonna think they’re real!”

  “So if I’m invisible—” asked the small boy again.

  “You ain’t gonna be invisible!” Abigail insisted.

  “Maybe his brain’s gonna be invisible!” shouted another boy.

  “Yeah, it’s invisible already!” added a third.

  “Is not!” said the small boy, though he looked somewhat concerned and even reached up to touch his head.

  Kate listened, but didn’t join in. She was thinking about how she’d woken in the middle of the night to find the church silent and dark and Abigail, having snuck into her bed, curled up against her. Kate had put her arm around the girl, as she’d put her arm around Emma countless times, and she had been about to drift back to sleep when she’d noticed a shadow moving among the children. She’d realized it was Rafe, whom she had not seen since her interview with Henrietta Burke in the tower. He was going from bed to bed, touching a shoulder or a head, whispering to this or that child, letting them know he was there.

  Suddenly, there was a great banging of pots and pans, and Kate looked up from her reverie to see Jake and Beetles standing on a bench and calling for attention. Over the shouts of the other children, the two boys announced that they were on a special mission from Rafe, a mission—they took care to point out—that Rafe had not felt comfortable entrusting to the intelligence of anyone else (this occasioned much groaning and cries of “Yeah, yeah, go on!” and “You mean he couldn’t find anyone else stupid enough to do it!” and a few lobbed pieces of bread, which Beetles expertly caught and stuffed in his mouth).

  “—and we are here,” Beetles mumbled through the bread, “to read out the various duties that you scrubs will have to accomplish to get ready for the party!”

  This was greeted by cheers, at which both boys bowed, followed by more thrown bread and cries of “Read it! Go on! Read it!” And they proceeded to read a list of names and chores and who was responsible for what.

  “And you gotta do it double-quick!” Beetles said, swallowing the last of his bread.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, “so if any a’ you were thinking of sitting here and opening a shop—”

  After breakfast, Kate went upstairs to get her coat—she’d promised to help Abigail with her errands—and she’d turned down the long hall that led to the main body of the church when something lunged out of the shadows and grabbed her arm.

  “Why are you here?” demanded a raspy voice.

  It was the old magician, Scruggs. He was wrapped in his tattered brown cloak and was still wild-eyed and unwashed. Kate sensed that he’d been waiting for her.

  “I’m going to get my coat—”

  “No! Here!” His grip, already tight on her arm, became even tighter. “Why did you make the Atlas bring you here?”

  Kate felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. “You know?”

  The old man grinned. “That you’re the Keeper of the Atlas? Of course I know. It’s written on your face. At least for those with eyes to see. You’re here for the boy, aren’t you?”

  “I … don’t know what you’re talking about. What boy?”

  He shook her arm, hissing, “You’re here for the boy! You’re here for Rafe!”

  “What? No! I came here by accident! I just want to get home!”

  She tried to twist free her arm, but the man was too strong.

  “You’re telling the truth.” He seemed almost surprised. “So it wasn’t you at all. It was the Atlas.” And he murmured, “Deep, very deep …”

  “What’re you talking about?” Kate demanded.

  The man leaned closer. “You think it was chance you came here? To this time! To this place! It wasn’t you, yes! I see that. It was the Atlas! It has plans! Him, I’ve known about for years! Tried to tell Henrietta. She wouldn’t listen! But now you arrive. Things are finally becoming clear, yes. And of course it would happen now, with the Separation upon us.”

  “What’re you talking about? Who is Rafe?”

  “Tell me.” The old man leaned even closer. “Are you here to save us, or to destroy us?”

  Mastering her voice, Kate said, “I just want to go home.”

  The sound of a violin drifted down the hall. Kate went rigid.

  “What is it, girl? Don’t like the music?”

  Kate didn’t respond. The last time she’d heard a violin had been aboard the Countess’s boat, when it had heralded the arrival of the Dire Magnus. But that song had been manic, feverish, otherworldly. This tune was nothing like that. It was a slow, mournful song, and very real. It was coming from a room at the end of the hall.

  The old man gave a snort. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we? We’ll see, we’ll see.…”

  He released her arm and shuffled off down the hall. Kate waited there a moment longer, the music moving through her, unsettling her. Then she turned and hurried away.

  Outside, it was still snowing. More than a foot had fallen during the night, though most of the snow had been tramped down and pushed to the edges of the sidewalk. Kate’s breath plumed before her, and she burrowed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. Abigail did not seem bothered by the cold. She carried four or five empty canvas bags over her arm and was repeating aloud the things they had to get.

  They had just started off when there were cries of “Hey! Wait!” and Jake and Beetles came huffing up.

  “We’re coming with you!” Beetles said.

  “Did Rafe tell you to watch me?” Kate asked, sounding as annoyed as she felt.

  The boys looked at each other, then at her. “No.”

  “Uh-huh, you two are terrible liars.”

  “Well,” Beetles said, “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. But we ain’t gonna tell. Not even if you torture us.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “You can chop off our heads, cook ’em, eat ’em; we still won’t tell you!”

  “That’s right!” said his friend. “Ha!”

  “Oh, come on,” Kate said.

  It turned out to be fun having the boys along, and the four of them spent the morning going around the city from store to store, taking care of the items on Abigail’s list. Their first stop was a cheese shop, where Abigail bought two medium-sized blocks of cheese, ignoring the boys’ pleas to buy the massive wheel of cheese in the window, which was larger than any of them and would’ve had to be rolled back to the church like a wagon wheel.

  “Boys,” Abigail muttered to Kate. “That’s why I keep the money.”
>
  After that, they went to the pasty shop and ordered five dozen pasties of different sorts—ham and cheese, potato and herbs, cheese and potato and mushroom—and, after a great deal of begging, with Jake and Beetles finally agreeing to do all of Abigail’s chores for a week, she bought them each a sausage and onion and cheese pasty. “I would’ve gotten them pasties anyway,” Abigail confessed to Kate as they walked through the falling snow eating their hot turnovers, with the boys before them each extolling the virtues of his own pasty while peering into the other’s and pronouncing with great regret that his friend had been tricked and his pasty was filled with chopped-up rat butts. And they went to a chocolate shop, and the smell of the cooking chocolate made the air seem itself like a delicacy, and Abigail bought five pounds of chocolate to use for cocoa. The owner was a jovial fat man who gave the children steaming mugs of hot chocolate, and they sat on oak barrels in the front of his store, watching the snow fall past the window, the men and women hurrying by with their bundles and packages, the horse-drawn carriages clopping along the street, tossing up clumps of grayish-white slush. And they went to a pie shop, where Abigail placed an excitingly long and complicated order, which they would return for later that afternoon, and then it was on to a shop that sold varieties of cider, and the boys bemoaned the fact that they hadn’t been given the job of going to the sweetshop or the fireworks shop, as everyone knew they were the two best.

  “Pshaw!” Abigail sniffed. “You be glad you got what you got by coming with us! Left to yourselves, you’d’ve been peeling potatoes all day.”

  By noon, Abigail’s bags were stuffed to bursting and divided among them, and the boys were complaining that their feet hurt and they were hungry, and Abigail said they had one more stop, down in Chinatown, and they would get lunch there, and as she said it, the boys looked at her, exclaiming, “Wait, you’re getting firework makings for Scruggs, ain’t you?” And Abigail smiled and said, “Rafe gave me special orders ’fore I left,” and the boys whooped and led the way.