Chantress Read online

  Child. The word suddenly seared like a burn. “I’m not a child,” I snapped. “I’m fifteen. Sixteen this winter. That’s old enough to hear the truth.”

  “If you’re not a child, then stop fussing like one,” Norrie said, unimpressed. “We’ve no time to waste. It’s only an hour before sunset, and I need to gather the seaweed. While I’m gone, I expect you to look after the house.” Her face sharpened with worry. “And don’t you dare go outside. If you do, you could land both of us in terrible trouble.”

  These obscure warnings were driving me mad. “What kind of terrible trouble?” When she didn’t answer, I said, more insistently, “You know I would never hurt you—”

  “Not on your own, no.” Norrie shook her head. “But you didn’t even know you were humming, child. What else might you do if the singing got hold of you? Have you thought of that?”

  I hadn’t, not until then. But as she spoke, I remembered how those wild notes had pierced me to the core, and how desperately I’d longed to sing them back.

  What else might I do? The truth was, I didn’t quite know. Not for certain, not anymore. It was as if everything I knew about myself were no longer rock, but shifting sand. I looked at the battered door behind Norrie, suddenly glad that it stood between me and the wind.

  “Very well,” I said. “You go. I’ll stay.”

  “Good girl.” Norrie wrapped herself in her cloak. “Mind you prepare the hearth exactly as I’ve told you. And whatever you do, keep your stone close and don’t open the door. There’s great danger at hand.”

  “What kind of danger?” I asked again in frustration. “Why won’t you tell me?”

  But Norrie offered no explanations before she clumped out the door.

  † † †

  After Norrie left, I stared at the black hearth. With the afternoon almost over and the fire in cinders, the room was cold as death, and nearly as dark. I shivered in spite of myself. Why had I heard the singing when Norrie hadn’t? And what was I to do about the fact that some contrary part of me was still longing to hear it again, even if it might lead to disaster?

  Well, the answer to the last question was clear enough. For seven years now, Norrie had been instructing me in the rituals of Allhallows’ Eve. To keep myself safe, I needed only to follow her instructions to the letter.

  Moving sure and fast, I took up the poker and scattered the last embers of the fire. After that, I covered the hearth with lavender and rue and rosemary, herbs of protection that Norrie had picked that morning from our garden. By Norrie’s own edict, the new fire could not be lit until the sun set, so there was nothing more to be done there.

  I moved on to the sweeping, making quick work of the task. Now and again, however, I stopped to gaze through the kitchen’s hatched windowpane, taking care not to disturb Norrie’s potted bay tree on the sill. The tiny tree was Norrie’s most cherished plant, the only one she never allowed me to touch. A single shiny leaf was enough to shield a person from every kind of wickedness, or so she always said.

  Craning my head around the glossy leaves, I saw no sign of Norrie. Of course, it took a while to get down to the cove and back, and Norrie was not exactly fleet-footed. But the wind was rising, and the way it shook the windows made me uneasy. Was Norrie as invulnerable as she believed herself to be?

  To quiet my mind and combat the shadows, I lit a bayberry candle.

  Rattle went the window, and rattle again. I put the broom back in the corner and set the candlestick on the table that hulked in the middle of the room.

  Rattle, rattle . . . SMASH!

  I whirled around. The wind had battered the window open, and the shattered pane hung crookedly from its hinges. Beneath it lay Norrie’s bay tree, a mass of shards and broken leaves.

  I stooped down in dismay. Was it chance that it had fallen? Or was it an omen—for Norrie, for me, for us both?

  There was no time to contemplate the question, for the window was hanging open and the wind was rushing through. Heart racing, I stuffed it shut with the thick woolen blanket I’d brought out for Norrie. It sealed the wind out, but at a cost: The room became still darker.

  I turned back in distress to the scattered debris of the bay tree itself. I scooped up some fragments of clay pot, then stopped as something odd caught my eye. Matted in the tangle of roots was a small, flat box.

  I teased it away and took it over to the candle. Slender and no larger than my hand, it shone like silver in spots. Most of it, however, was a rusty black, and the corners were eaten away. I tugged at the lid till it popped off.

  Inside the box was a letter. Folded into a packet, badly spotted and water-stained, it bore a single line above its seal:

  For my daughter, Lucy, in case I do not return . . .

  For a moment, I was so bewildered I could neither move nor breathe. A letter for me? From my mother? After all this time?

  Norrie had always told me that nothing remained of my mother—that her possessions had been lost in the shipwreck. And yet here, tangled in Norrie’s plant, was this letter.

  Norrie must have known about it. Indeed, she must have hidden it herself. Which meant Norrie had lied to me.

  A flame of anger shot through me, and my hands tightened on the letter. How could Norrie have kept it from me?

  I scanned the line of handwriting again: . . . in case I do not return . . .

  But that made no sense. It wasn’t as if my mother had planned to leave me. My mother had drowned.

  Or had Norrie lied about that, too?

  Fingers trembling, I broke the seal and flattened out the letter. Entire pages were blotted out by water damage, and the remaining handwriting was so small and faded that it would have been difficult for me to read even in daylight. By candlelight, I could decipher only a few complete sentences at the very start of the letter:

  My dearest daughter, I sang you here for your safety.

  I stopped and read the phrase again: Sang you here? What did she mean?

  I will do everything in my power to return for you within a few days, at most a few weeks, but nothing is certain, and I know that if you are reading this, it is because I have failed. The very idea of this pains me almost beyond bearing. My only comfort is that Norrie will look after you, and that when you reach your fifteenth birthday, she will give you this letter . . . .

  But she did not, I thought. She did not. She hid it from me instead. And now the letter is almost unreadable. All I could make out on the rest of that page were a few words near the bottom: singing . . . careful . . . stone . . . Chantress . . . Allhallows . . . magic . . .

  Magic?

  On the next page, only a single phrase was legible, but it took my breath away: . . . when you sing, it will bring you home.

  Home. I thought with longing of England, of the small cottage by the sea where we had lived, and of the castle keep and the River Thames and the other places I remembered mostly in dreams. And then I wondered: Sing what?

  Frustrated, I leaned closer to the candle, trying to shape stains into words, until the edges of the parchment nearly caught fire. I pulled back sharply, but not before I saw a word after stone that looked like off.

  Take the stone off?

  I reached for the pendant swinging against my skin. Was this the stone my mother had meant?

  The winds outside the cottage were gathering strength, but I hardly heard them. I folded my mother’s letter, tucked it into my sleeve, and peered down at my stone. It looked just as it always did: a dense, brick-red disc about the size of a walnut. Heavy as granite, it was as bumpy and plain as could be. There was nothing magical about it whatsoever. But perhaps it only revealed its powers once it was off its chain.

  Never take that stone off, Norrie had told me. It’s meant to protect you.

  But then Norrie had lied about my mother. Who was to say she hadn’t lied about this?

  There was only one way to find out. Yet my hand slowed as I reached for the pendant. Almost as long as I could remember, I had been f
ollowing Norrie’s rules. The thought of breaking them—deliberately, perhaps irrevocably—made my heart pound.

  The wind howled at the cracks in the window, making the candle dance. I thought I caught the whisper of a tune.

  This is it. This is your chance to go home. Be bold, and take it.

  I grasped the chain and pulled it over my head.

  The moment the stone was off, the songs came for me—hundreds of them, humming like bees, flickering like firelight, crossing like shadows. And the strongest one was the wild tune I’d heard in the garden. This time, however, it went on and on. It spoke of the sea and of home and of times long past. It tugged at my heart and my throat and my lips. Sing me, it said.

  And I did.

  I had no idea what the words were, or what phrase came next. But I did not care. A dizzying sense of freedom flooded over me. All I wanted to do was give voice to the notes that came to me, one after another, in an endless stream of sound. We climbed together, strong and sure, rising ever higher. I felt as if I were flying.

  Sing and the darkness will find you.

  Norrie’s warning rang out in my mind. But it seemed to come from somewhere far away, somewhere very much farther than the music itself.

  I hardly even noticed when Norrie herself banged the door open. With a horrified cry, she bounded forward and clutched my wrist, the net of seaweed dripping in her hand.

  “Lucy! No!”

  But already the wind was rising. It swirled through the room, midnight black, and caught us both in its grasp. As the candle went out, the song rose to a shriek, and everything around us vanished.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHANTRESS BLOOD

  After the wind seized us, I could see nothing whatsoever. Not the candle, not the room, not even my own bare hands. Worse still, I touched only emptiness. There was no floor beneath me, no table, no walls. From the pressure around my wrist, I guessed Norrie was still with me, yet I could not see or hear her.

  I nearly broke off singing then, but the song had a powerful grasp, and it refused to leave me so easily. It filled my throat and opened my lips and insisted on being sung. In that terrible void, it was all I had left, so I clung to it, taking each note as it came, giving each its full measure. And with each note I sang, I allowed myself to trust the song a little more—to believe that I was indeed leaving the island and going home.

  Just as my confidence soared, the song fractured, splitting into harmonies I did not understand.

  Which line to follow? I hesitated. Only a moment, only a beat. But thick and strong as rope, the music coiled around me and pulled Norrie away.

  I screamed, and the darkness closed in like a shroud on my face. Above me, I saw a gray arch, like the curve of a cresting wave. Was I about to drown?

  But no, it was growing light now, and the wave above me was solid, was still, was . . .

  Stone.

  Above my head, the golden-gray vaulting soared, its interlocking arches meeting in exquisite geometry. And as the last of the darkness lifted, I saw to my astonishment that I was standing in a long and elegant room, facing crimson draperies that hung like drooping sails. Near me, a vast hearth glowed, its flames reflected in glass cases that lined the rest of the room. In those cases were books by the thousands. Books in chains. Books glowing with gilt. Books blackened with age. Books upon books upon books. And not a soul in sight to read them.

  My throat convulsed. I had worked magic. I had sung myself off the island. That alone dumbfounded me. But where was I? This was not the small cottage I remembered, or any other place I knew.

  More dreadful question still—where was Norrie? For there was no sign of her anywhere.

  What have I done?

  It was no use telling myself it was Norrie’s own fault for keeping secrets. I was the one who’d chosen to sing, and now Norrie was lost. That was the plain truth of it. For all I knew, my magic had killed her.

  She lives. It was the merest breath of a song in my ears. I strained to hear the rest, but the notes told me only that Norrie was alive—somewhere.

  Oh, Norrie, how could I have lost you?

  My hand tightened around my necklace, still twined around my fingers. I could reproach myself all day, but that wouldn’t help Norrie one whit. I must act instead. I must find her. But how? With more singing?

  I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for that, given what my first song had brought about. And in any case, I couldn’t hear the music anymore, not properly. It was fading so quickly that the soft notes were half swallowed up by the beating of my own heart.

  My bewilderment only grew as I caught sight of the necklace still dangling from my fingers. In place of the dull ochre pendant I’d expected to see, a ruby sparkled. It glowed against my skin like a small red-hot sun.

  I stared at it in dismay, then ran my fingers over it. To the touch, it was still my stone, the same size and shape and weight, with bevels and bumps in precisely the same places. But if it was my stone, why and how had it changed? And what was I to do with it?

  Keep it around your neck, child. With Norrie’s constant admonition ringing in my memory, I looped the necklace back in place. I couldn’t tell if it was protecting me, but its familiar weight was comforting.

  As I tucked the stone into my bodice, something rustled in my sleeve: my mother’s letter, tucked there in haste and forgotten until now. After glancing around to make sure the library truly was empty, I hastened to the fire. Perhaps the letter had changed along with my stone, and now it would give me the guidance I needed.

  Even in the bright firelight, however, the letter was no more legible than before. Discouraged, I tucked it back into my sleeve for safekeeping. Only then did I become aware that the last faint music had dwindled into nothing.

  Unnerved by the silence, I looked around hesitantly. At the far end of the room, a massive door stood slightly ajar—apparently the only way out. But when I walked toward it, chill air wafted over me, smelling of damp and sawdust and something disturbing that I couldn’t put a name to. I took a step back and turned toward the nearest bookcase. Perhaps before leaving I was meant to find something here: a guide to magic, perhaps, or another letter from my mother, or a map. Anything, really, that might help me feel a little less lost.

  I pulled out the first book that came to hand, a thick volume that was out of line with the others. Bound in red and black leather, it was titled Id. Chan.

  Looking for more clues, I leaned toward the hearth light and read the title page:

  ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF CHANTRESSES,

  THEIR PHYSICAL MARKS AND CHARACTERISTICS;

  BEING ALSO A GUIDE TO THEIR HABITS, TERRITORIES, AND POWERS,

  HUMBLY SUBMITTED TO THE LORD PROTECTOR,

  BY AN ARDENT SCHOLAR

  AND DEVOTED FRIEND

  Chantress. My mother had used that word in her letter. I pulled the book closer and rifled the pages. Was there anything here that might help me?

  I was still scanning the Table of Contents when I heard a clank some distance behind me.

  In a flash, I slipped the book back into place.

  Where could I hide? The polished tables and cane chairs by the hearth were too bare and open to offer any refuge. And every other square inch of the library was devoted to books . . .

  . . . except the draperies.

  I bounded to the left-hand bay and parted the yards of flowing velvet. Behind them, a high window sat deep in the stone wall. So bubbled and skewed were its panes, however, that I could see very little through them—only a blurry twilight sky and a high, crenellated wall. Was I in a castle, then, or some grand manor house?

  Well, wherever I was, I must take care not to be seen. I crouched under the window and rearranged the draperies. Leaving a tiny slit at eye level, I settled myself—and only just in time, because a panel by the fireplace swung open. A tall boy in dark clothes stepped through it and stole into the room.

  At first, I guessed him to be somewhere around my own age, but then I was
n’t so certain. Was he a year or two older, perhaps? It had been so long since I had seen anyone but Norrie, and there was an intensity about this boy that made him hard to pin down.

  He padded along the line of shelves toward my own hiding place, till he was so close that I could see the fierce light in his eyes. Crossing to the other side of the room, he scanned the cases, then knelt and removed a moss-green volume. Taking a quick look behind him, he tucked it into his coat. Was he stealing it?

  Voices rang out in the hall. The thief—if that’s what he was—went still.

  “Funny sort of place to meet, a library,” a man in the hall complained. “And a library about magic, at that.”

  “Keep quiet, Giles!” a cross voice replied. “D’you want the whole world to hear you?”

  The boy made a run for it, but he was too far from the hidden panel to reach it easily. Instead, he veered toward the draperies closest to him, some distance from mine. He vanished from my sight as the massive library door swung open.

  I shrank back against the wall, then wished I hadn’t, for I could no longer see anything. But it was too late now to adjust the curtains, for the men were coming into the room.

  “Ravendon House is one of the greatest establishments in London, indeed in any city in England,” the cross man was saying. “And one of the largest and oldest as well. You must understand, Giles: It’s an honor to be invited here.”

  I heard the word London with some relief. At least I was in my home country—if not in any house I remembered.

  “I wouldn’t take the place on a silver plate, myself,” Giles answered. “It’s a cursed, drafty old warren. And say what you will, this library is a deuced odd place to meet.”

  “It’s not for you to question Lord Scargrave’s judgment. Not if you’re the King’s man.”

  “Of course I’m the King’s man,” Giles harrumphed. “None truer, ’pon my word. I’d not turn spy for him otherwise. Informing on family, on friends—it’s not a gentlemanly thing to do, eh?”