Hawthorn (9 page)

I ran out before Helen could stop me, a laugh burbling from my lips, the first shred of happiness I'd felt since . . . well, if you counted the time we'd been gone, a decade.

That happiness lasted as I raced up the stairs of the North Wing. Yes, there were dangers looming all around me—shadow crows watching the castle, a war on the horizon—but my friends and teachers were alive! Blythewood was intact! I knew that working together we would find a way to avert disaster. I had been given a second chance to save the world I loved—and a second chance to fix things with the boy I loved. A boy who had proved his love by waiting for me through
eternity
. Was any girl ever so lucky?

My exuberance was tempered when I reached the fourth floor and stopped, breathless, outside the open door to the infirmary. Raven was lying on a narrow cot beside a window, the shutter cracked open so that a wedge of sunlight fell across his face. It bleached his skin the same white as the sheet pulled high over his bare chest. His still, unmoving chest. I was seized with the fear that Marlin had been wrong—Raven wasn't better; he was dead.

“He's resting.” Wren stood up as I came into the room. “His heartbeat slowed when he was standing inside the door. It will be a little while before it catches up with regular time.”

I clutched my own chest, unsure
my
racing heart would ever slow down. “But he's going to be all right?”

Wren smiled and put her arm around me. She had the same crease in her left cheek when she smiled as Raven, only hers was deeper. All the lines on her face had grown deeper since the last time I'd seen her. Nine months wasn't that long in a Darkling's
time span, but the time spent watching her son search for me had aged her ten years. “He'll survive, but . . .” her smile faded. “I would not like to see that heart broken again.”

I gulped, my mouth suddenly dry, and began to assure her that I had no intention of doing that, but Raven's voice broke in.

“Stop scaring Ava, Mother. She'll run back to Faerie.”

“I'm not running anywhere!” I cried, stepping toward the bed. Wren's arm slipped off my shoulders. She gave my arm a final squeeze before she retreated from the room. I sat down on the edge of the bed gingerly, afraid to jar him.

“I'm not made of glass,” he said, moving over to make room for me—and trying to hide the wince of pain from the effort. I settled myself closer and straightened the rumpled covers over his chest, my hand lingering on his warm skin.
Alive, alive!
my heart sang. He might still look like a marble statue, but he was alive. Then, embarrassed that I was actually stroking his bare chest, I moved my hand away. He snatched it in his and pressed it against his chest above his heart.

“You'll have to wait a second but . . . ah, there, feel it beat? I think it's beating faster now that you're here.”

I blushed, my own heart skittering out a dozen beats to his one steady thump. “I think I can wait a few seconds, after you waited an eternity for me.”

“Eh.” He shrugged, a smile quirking his lips. “It went fast. I spent it thinking about what an idiot I'd been.”

“You? What are you talking about? I was the idiot. It's just that you took me by surprise and all the girls had been talking about going to college—”

“You
should
go to college,” he cut in. “And do all the things you want to do—have adventures, see the world—so you can choose which world you want to live in. I should never have rushed you. I've learned some patience since.”

“I don't want to see the world and have adventures,” I said, my eyes stinging. “I only want you.” Then to prove it I leaned down and kissed him. His lips met mine with a rush of heat that burned straight through my skin. He gathered me into his arms—those arms that had held back time for me. We had kissed before but this felt different. He felt different. Older. Sometime in the eternity he'd stood inside that door he'd stopped being a boy and become a man. He was pressing me against his chest with so much force I thought he might crush us both. I wanted to be crushed together, made one, to crawl back into that crack between the worlds for eternity—

Then his heart pounded and time began again. He pushed me back a few inches and looked into my eyes. “That was worth waiting an eternity for,” he said. “I can wait a little longer. My mother and I heard a bit of what you all were saying downstairs. Your world needs you right now. It needs the Darklings, too. Marlin has gone back to Ravencliffe to speak with the Elders. We'll need to join forces to stop this war and defeat Drood. You'll need to go to Scotland and find that vessel.”

“Can't you go with me?” I asked, wishing my voice didn't sound so childish.

He smiled and stroked my hair, but his touch felt different now. As if he were holding himself back.

“I
will
go with you. We can keep the shadows from following
you and make sure you and your friends are safe. But you have to be with them now. After, if we can stop what's coming . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes slanted toward the window. A crow had landed on the ledge, blocking out the light.

I sprung to my feet and rapped my hand against the glass pane to scare it off. It cawed and smoke poured out of its gullet. I hit the glass again and it flapped its wings, rising slowly into the air. I turned back to Raven to assure him that whatever we had to do I'd be ready for him at the end, but his eyes, following the crow's flight, were distant. As if he'd gone someplace I couldn't follow.

I LEFT RAVEN
to rest, passing Wren in the hallway coming back with a basin of water, bundles of herbs, and towels.

“You should bathe and rest, too,” she told me. Her smile was kind, but it made me feel like a child being sent to bed. I didn't need to rest, I grumbled all the way back to my room in the South Wing. But apparently I did need to bathe, as I gathered from the wrinkled noses of my roommates when I reached my room. I let Helen and Daisy herd me into the hall bathroom, where they unceremoniously stripped off my muddy clothes and dunked me into a tub. I probably would have drowned left to myself, but I was scrubbed and then bundled in a Turkish robe and trundled off to bed like a truculent infant—which is how I slept into the next day.

The sun was already low over the mountains in the west when I woke up. My hair, when I checked in the mirror, was sticking out sideways because I'd slept on it wet and my face was scored with creases from my bedclothes.

“Oh good, you're up,” Helen said brightly, bustling into the room with a tray.
She
looked rested and neatly coiffed, her blonde hair done up in a becoming Gibson Girl pouf, her white
shirtwaist tucked neatly into her skirt, her cheeks and nose rosy.

“Raven—” I began.

“Is fine,” she said, putting the tray on the bed and plopping down next to it. “Wren and Marlin took him back to Ravencliffe this morning but he'll be at Violet House this afternoon for the meeting. That was impish of you, by the by, to say that about Marlin's message. You don't think I'd actually tell him he'd been an idiot when clearly I was the idiot.” She smiled brightly as she poured my tea.

“Then you've patched things up with him?” I asked.

“Yes. I told him I'd just been nervous about all the responsibility of being a Diana—do you know they got Gerta Haybrook and Lucy Worthington to replace us?”

Ignoring Helen's attempt to change the subject, I said, “But I thought the reason you argued with Marlin was that something happened between you and Nathan over the summer.”

“Whyever would you think that?” Helen asked, blinking her bright blue eyes at me—only they weren't quite as bright as usual.

“Because you were swiping at him at every opportunity.”

“That was because he acted a perfect cad all summer, pretending to be fond of me when clearly if he cared a fig for either of us he wouldn't have run off to Scotland while we were still missing.”

“But that happened
after
 . . .” I began, but then I realized that Helen was trying to distract me and her eyes
were
bloodshot. And her nose was distinctly red. She'd been crying. “Helen, if it's Nathan you love it's not fair to Marlin to pretend otherwise.”

“I'd be a fool to be in love with Nathan Beckwith!” Helen
got up so abruptly that the plates shivered on the tray. “And I'm not a fool. Why are
you
so interested anyway? Are you in love with Nathan?”

“Of course not!” I said, putting down my teacup. Tea sloshed over the rim into the saucer. “I love Raven.”

“Then why did you turn him down when he asked you to marry him?”

“Raven asked Ava to marry him?”

We both turned to find Daisy standing in the doorway.

“Yes, but . . .” I thought back to last night, my face going hot as I remembered the intensity of our kiss. But then I searched through the rest of our conversation for any mention of getting married. All he had said, though, was that we could wait. “But he changed his mind while I was gone. Now if you'll excuse me, I should get dressed. Are we all meeting? Or have I managed to miss that, too?”

“We're meeting at Violet House at four o'clock,” Daisy replied. “The aunts are making tea.”

“Of course they are.” I was glad that some things hadn't changed while I was away, but even the prospect of tea at Violet House couldn't quite make up for my suspicion that I'd somehow missed my chance with Raven—and that it might be a long while before I had another.

Dame Beckwith, Miss Sharp, Miss Corey, and Mr. Bellows were already in the carriage when we got to the drive. “We won't all fit,” I told Daisy and Helen. “You two sit inside and I'll ride up front with Gillie.”

I was climbing up onto the driver's box before they could protest. I didn't want to endure any more questions about Raven—and I knew that Gillie would be a restful companion.

I'd forgotten about the crows.

As we drove toward River Road I heard a rustle of wings above us in the trees. I looked up and saw that the sycamores were black with crows, so many on each branch that they jostled each other for room.

“Won't they follow us to . . . where we're going?” I whispered, too afraid that they'd understand if I said
Violet House
.

“Not if these lads have any say in the matter.” Gillie jerked his chin up to the sky above the tree line. The sky there was black, as though a storm were approaching, even though the day was fine and sunny. As it moved closer I saw that it was a storm with wings.

“Darklings, hundreds of them! I didn't know . . .”

“That there were that many at Ravencliffe? There weren't. They've been gathering, bringing reports of shadow activity from all over the world, looking for a way to help. Watch.”

The Darklings swept down toward the trees, startling the shadow crows into flight and then herding them toward the river. Gillie clucked his tongue and urged the horses into a fast trot. As we swung onto River Road I watched the mass of shadow crows and Darklings casting a shadow over the river, a shadow shaped like the zeppelin I'd seen in the future. I shivered at the memory and Gillie patted my hand.

“Don't worry about those lads, they know what they're about. We're lucky to have them. Without the Darklings, the
castle would have been overrun by those foul creatures months ago. And we have you to thank for bringing the Darklings and Order together.”

“Oh, I don't know that I can really take credit for that, but Gillie,” I said quickly before he could argue with me, “there's something I want to ask you. When Raven came and gave you that box, he told you something about the watch inside.”

“I didna tell you that,” Gillie objected.

“No, not yesterday, but in ten years you will, only you won't remember exactly what he said. So I was wondering, since it was only the day before yesterday, if you remember what he said.”

We'd come to the turn that led into the town of Rhinebeck. Gillie had to slow down the horses, which he did with a lot more
whoas
and
softly theres
than he usually required to direct the well-trained, docile horses. At last when we were trotting along Main Street he answered me.

“He said that if a person had this special watch he could not only stop time, he could go back and change his worst mistakes. ‘A watch that could give you a second chance,' he said.” Gillie looked at me. “I wondered what mistake he wanted to change.”

“I do, too,” I said.

For the rest of the drive to Violet House I wondered if the mistake Raven had wanted to go back and change was asking me to marry him. Only he hadn't been able to go back far enough. As I stepped from the carriage onto the stone mounting block in front of Violet House I wondered if we had gone back far enough to change the future.

Miss Sharp's uncle Taddie met us at the door with a broken flowerpot full of violets and a poem.

Whitehorn and Elfwood

Say the bells of Blythewood.

The girls who went astray

Have come back another day!

“He's been practicing that all morning,” Miss Harriet said with an indulgent look for her brother. “Put that broken pot down, Taddie, and give the girls the posies you made for them.”

Taddie produced two bouquets from the deep pockets of his rumpled jacket without putting down the broken flowerpot.

“Thank you, Uncle Taddie,” I said, inhaling the sweet perfume of the violets. “We're happy we found our way back.”

I remembered that Uncle Taddie himself had gotten lost in the Blythe Wood when he was young and that he'd never quite been the same. It was the general opinion of the Order that he'd lost his wits, but when Raven came to board at Violet House he'd discovered that Taddie knew a lot about his father's clocks that proved helpful to the Order—and this had improved Taddie's state of mind. As we stepped into the lavender-and- yellow-tiled foyer, all the clocks in the house began to chime in unison. Although they each played a different tune, the melodies combined to produce a harmonious sound that made me feel safe—and for good reason. Thaddeus Sharp, Sr., had designed them for just that purpose.

As we entered the conservatory, a slight young woman in a yellow dress came in from the kitchen carrying a tray of cakes and sandwiches. It took me a second to recognize Etta Blum. She'd changed from the frightened little girl I'd first met at the Triangle factory to a poised Blythewood girl.

“Etta!” I cried. “I didn't know you were here. I thought all the fledglings had left for summer vacation.”

“They have,” Etta said, putting down the tray to give me a hug, “but Miss Hattie and Miss Emmy asked if I wanted to spend the summer here with Ruth.”

As she spoke her sister came in from the kitchen laughing at something Raven had just said. She greeted me with a smile but also a winsome look in Raven's direction. I was pretty sure she had a crush on Raven, and I could imagine that in the year Helen and I had been gone she might have entertained notions of consoling him for my loss. But then she gave me an enthusiastic hug and I felt guilty for suspecting her of wanting me gone.

Raven was looking at me uncomfortably, though, but that might have been because his parents were sitting stiffly on a wicker settee shaded by a huge aspidistra. He was dressed in a smart pinstriped suit, his hair combed neatly back, a gold watch fob sparkling from the button of his waistcoat. Raven himself looked more like a prosperous young watchmaker than a Darkling, but the two creatures rising from the wicker settee would never pass for human.

“You remember my parents,” he said, a tight uncomfortable smile on his face. “Merlinus and Wren.”

I nodded, looking up at the tall silver-haired man and woman on either side of Raven.

“Merlinus and I are happy that you have been restored from Faerie,” Wren said formally as if we hadn't just seen each other yesterday. I had the feeling that she was making the speech for Merlinus's benefit.

“We'd have never gotten back without Raven,” I said.

“No, you wouldn't have,” Merlinus said without smiling. “No other Darkling would have dared hold open the door for so long. It's strictly forbidden.”

“And terribly dangerous,” Wren said with a reproving look at Raven. “He could have been killed.”

“I-I never meant for him . . .” I stammered nervously. No wonder Raven looked so uncomfortable. He'd broken Darkling law and risked his life for me. His parents must hate me.