Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Read online

  Years later, the maligned Queen Euphoriana has grown bitter and hateful, until one day she falls in love at first sight with a traveler called Happenchance, played by Theobold. But everything she does to show her love for him goes tragically wrong. All the words that come from her mouth are in a bizarre language he can’t understand. A rose she offers him is covered in thorns that prick his fingers and make him bleed. She gives him the finest horse in her stables as a gift, and it immediately kicks him in the head (the horse was played by an actual horsewun actor, who Morrigan thought pulled off the stunt very convincingly). But somehow, against all odds, he falls in love with her too.

  Dame Chanda’s grief and frustration as Euphoriana were palpable, and even though Morrigan couldn’t understand a word that came out of the soprano’s mouth, there were moments when she found herself almost moved to tears.

  “I am but a lonely traveler,” sang Theobold as the wayfaring Happenchance. “And my weary heart is lost. But in you I find a love that I must win at any cost.”

  “Shludenverdis groll flambolicus, menk plim dooliandoo blub blub blub,” responded Dame Chanda’s Euphoriana. (Morrigan thought the last bit more closely resembled the sound a fish makes underwater than actual words.)

  It was their final duet before intermission, and the audience was enraptured. Morrigan could hear actual sobs coming from the front row. The combined voices of Dame Chanda and Theobold the moosewun rose dramatically, as did the orchestra, building to the Act One finale.

  Meanwhile, there was something of a kerfuffle happening behind the curtain, on the opposite side of the stage to where Morrigan was standing. She peered around the costumed players and painted scenery to see the horsewun actor whinnying madly, rearing back onto his hind legs and stomping his hooves on the ground. A good half-dozen stagehands were trying to calm him down.

  “To you I pledge my life, and to you I give my heart,” warbled Theobold from downstage, completely oblivious to what was happening behind the curtains.

  “Floonk merk-begerk crindinglis, wimbly ploodful humben pppfffflllfflflllt,” Dame Chanda sang in heartfelt response. (The last bit was just one long raspberry.)

  The horsewun shook his head wildly and let out a piercing bray, but it was drowned out by the music from the orchestra swelling to a crescendo. Morrigan felt her pulse quicken. Some of the ensemble had gathered behind her in the wings and were talking in hushed, worried voices.

  “What’s Victor playing at?” whispered a voice from behind her. “Is he trying to go back on?”

  “He’s not meant to be in this scene!”

  “That’s what they get for hiring a horsewun,” muttered an actor dressed as one of Euphoriana’s guards. “Amateur. I could have played that part.”

  The man playing the troubadour gave a derisive snort. “You need hooves to play that part, Stephen, you pillock—Oh, I say! What the devil’s got into him?”

  It happened so quickly that nobody could do anything to stop it. Morrigan watched in silent horror as the horsewun galloped furiously onto the stage, plowed right through the painted scenery, and ran Dame Chanda down.

  Queen Euphoriana’s onyx crown tumbled from her head as she fell to the floor with a sickening thud. There seemed to be some confusion about whether this was part of the performance, until the orchestra abruptly stopped playing and Theobold shouted, “Victor! What are you doing?” at his horsewun colleague now galloping madly in circles. Dame Chanda remained lifeless and still.

  Morrigan felt like her heart was pounding somewhere in her throat, but she squeezed her fists together and forced herself to call Wunder. This wouldn’t be like Christmas Eve on the train, when she stood frozen with Hawthorne and Baby Dave. It wouldn’t be like Golders Night, when she was again too slow to act and ended up simply running for her life. She wouldn’t stand by and do nothing this time, too shocked and too frightened to use whatever meager skills she possessed. There was no time to worry about being seen.

  “Morningtide’s child is merry and mild…”

  Wunder swarmed to her in an instant, the quickest it ever had. It gathered and gathered and gatheredgatheredgathered, as furiously fast as her own gathering panic. She took hold of the curtain, trying to steady herself somehow. It felt like she was standing in an ocean while waves of Wundrous energy crashed over her.

  “Victor—please, stop!” shouted the stage manager, rushing onto the stage with her arms outstretched. Victor let out a frightening, screeching sound.

  Morrigan swayed on the spot. “Eventide’s child is—NO!”

  The horsewun reared up on its hind legs, hooves towering above Dame Chanda, poised to land on her head.

  Morrigan had thought to breathe a short, sharp burst of fire in Victor’s direction—just enough to surprise him, maybe to buy a moment or two so that someone could get Dame Chanda out of harm’s way.

  But that wasn’t what happened. There was a short, sharp burst—that much worked, at least—but it didn’t stop there. With a sudden, terrifying whoosh, the curtain she was holding on to caught fire. It spread with alarming speed, like something alive and vengeful, and the theater filled with screams—first from backstage, and then from the audience, who had finally realized this was not part of the opera.

  Victor veered away from Dame Chanda at the last minute and, without missing a beat, began to run straight for the fire with a sudden fierce purpose.

  The curtain came down like a wall of flame, bringing the rigging down with it in a tremendous crash. This only made the horsewun wilder and angrier—more than angry, he was savage, filled with a furious, frenzied energy that he seemed unable to control. Even amid Morrigan’s own panic, she could still recognize panic in another. Victor was throwing his body around like there was something inside him trying to get out. She could see the whites of his eyes; he was frightened of what was happening to him.

  And then—there it was again. A dangerous flash of green light behind the horsewun’s eyes. Just like Juvela. Just like Brutilus. Before she even realized what she was doing, Morrigan had run out onto the stage after him.

  The horsewun leapt from the stage like a possessed show horse, and the audience—who were already streaming toward the exits, away from the fire—scrambled to move aside as he galloped at full speed up the center aisle of the theater. The exit doors were closed, but Victor was like a freight train and smashed straight through them, leaving screams and shards of splintered wood in his wake.

  Barely a second later the audience’s terror was renewed as a gigantic gray furball leapt from the box nearest the stage, jumped lightly over several rows of seats, and landed in the aisle. Barely losing a second of momentum, Fenestra barreled toward the broken doors and out of the opera house, in pursuit of the mad horsewun.

  Jupiter swung himself over the balcony and jumped down onto the stage (rather less gracefully than Fenestra, but without breaking a limb, at least), making a beeline for Dame Chanda and yelling instructions to the opera house staff.

  “Get that fire out, now—don’t you have more extinguishers? Well, get them!” He pointed at the stage manager. “You! Call for an ambulance. Get all these people out of the theater and into the lobby. But don’t let anyone leave! The Stink—I mean, the police will want eyewitness accounts. Chanda, no, don’t move—stay still. Everything’s fine.”

  The soprano stirred very slightly, mumbling and lifting a delicate hand to her head. Jupiter knelt beside her, looking up at Morrigan as he took off his velvet jacket and folded it into a pillow for Dame Chanda’s head.

  “You okay, Mog?” he asked.

  Morrigan looked from Jupiter to Dame Chanda to the burned-out remains of the wooden scenery onstage, covered in white extinguisher foam and still smoldering in places.

  She nodded, but she most certainly was not okay. None of this was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “WUNIMAL SHOCK AT NEVERMOOR OPERA HORSE!”

  Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.”

  Dame Chanda was prop
ped up on a daybed surrounded by cushions, blankets, and open newspapers, while clouds of golden smoke whorled around her. She ought to have been in her suite—the doctor had told her she mustn’t move from her bed for at least three days—but she’d grown bored by noon and insisted on being carried to the Smoking Parlor on her chaise longue like a queen in a litter. There were legions of devoted Deucalion staff who were only too happy to oblige, and the ensuing rush to be chosen for the honor nearly resulted in fisticuffs between one of the young groundskeepers and a sous chef.

  “What’s extraordinary?” asked Morrigan, jumping up for the fifth time to plump Dame Chanda’s cushions. “Is that one of your reviews?”

  “Reviews?” huffed the soprano. Even with a broken wrist and a bandage covering half her head, she looked every bit as regal as she had the night before, dressed as the elegant Euphoriana. “Reviews? What reviews? There isn’t a single review of The Maledictions anywhere. Not in the Sentinel, not in the Morning Post, not in the Looking Glass.” She held up the front page of Nevermoor’s trashiest tabloid.

  Morrigan frowned, trying to make sense of the headline. “They misspelled—”

  “Yes, they think they’re being funny,” Dame Chanda sniffed, tossing the offensive paper aside. “It’s all about the horsewun and his… whatever that was. Barely a word about my performance, or Theobold’s! And they didn’t even mention the De Flimsé costumes.”

  Morrigan picked up the discarded paper and began to read it, her frown deepening.

  WUNIMAL SHOCK AT NEVERMOOR

  OPERA HORSE!

  The superlative soprano Dame Chanda Kali was injured in a vicious and unprovoked attack by a rabid Wunimal on the opening night of Gustav Monastine’s opera The Maledictions yesterday. Onlookers at the scene talked of the terror they felt as the disgruntled equine cast member, Victor Oldershaw—playing the role of “Horse”—brutally trampled the leading lady during the first act finale.

  Many have speculated as to the motivation behind the attack.

  “He’s very ambitious, Victor,” said ensemble actor Stephen Rollins-Huntington. “Very driven, you know. I’m just saying, he’d do anything to get his teeth into a bigger part. No one’s quite sure how he got to play ‘Horse,’ to be honest—plenty of people have told me I’d have been a natural for it, and of course I’ve much more experience in the theater. What happened there, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Morrigan looked up from the paper. “Do the police think it was a deliberate thing, then? That the horsewun—Victor—that he meant to attack you?”

  “The police think no such thing, darling,” said Dame Chanda. “There isn’t a single word in there about what the police think. This is all about what the Looking Glass wants people to think. I contacted them this morning to give my version of events, but of course they weren’t interested. The Glass has never been renowned for its quality investigative journalism, but they are quite well known for slandering Wunimals every chance they get. Poor old Victor.”

  “Why don’t they like Wunimals?” Morrigan asked as she skimmed the article for a second time. “Jupiter said the same thing at Christmas, when I told him about De Flimsé on the Wunderground. He said, ‘The tabloids love a story about Wunimals behaving badly.’”

  Dame Chanda gave a deep sigh, then winced as she adjusted the bandage on her head. “Darling, you know better than anyone; people hate what they are afraid of, and they are most afraid of what they don’t understand. Wunimals are still something of an enigma, I suppose, and therefore some people see them as a threat. Especially—though of course, not exclusively—the older generations.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, of course for us youth”—Morrigan tried not to raise her eyebrows too high at that statement; Dame Chanda was at least twenty years her senior—“Wunimals have always been part of the landscape. It’s easy for us to forget that Wunimal rights are a fairly new thing—but it was only eight or nine Ages ago that it was legal to keep some Wunimals as pets.”

  This was news to Morrigan. “As pets. You mean, like… like pets? Like unnimals? With collars and leashes and—and cutesy nicknames?” She felt queasy even saying it.

  “Mm, and sometimes as witches’ familiars.” Dame Chanda’s face was grim. “Thankfully, we live in a fairer, more enlightened Age. Though some still wish we were in the dark.” She threw a dirty look at the Looking Glass. “Morrigan, my darling, I have a chill. Throw that worthless thing on the fire for me, won’t you?”

  Fenestra and Jupiter had both been gone when Morrigan woke up, and they still hadn’t appeared when Jack arrived home from boarding school at lunchtime.

  Jack wasn’t due home until the following weekend, but he said he’d seen the article in the Looking Glass and wanted to make sure Dame Chanda was all right. The ailing soprano declared him “the dearest, most thoughtful boy who ever lived,” and gave him the honor of refilling her teapot.

  “There seems to be some confusion about what happened last night,” Jack said to Morrigan later that afternoon. They were hanging around the lobby, playing card games and watching for Jupiter’s arrival. Morrigan was determined to interrogate her patron the second he walked in the door. “Some of the papers are reporting that there was a fire, and it startled the horsewun and he bolted from the theater, knocking Dame Chanda over. Others are saying someone lit the fire deliberately. Oh, and… do you have a nine?”

  “Go fish,” said Morrigan, chewing on the side of her mouth. Jack groaned as he added another card to his already loaded hand. “Those things all happened. Just… not in that order. Do you have a queen?”

  He curled his lip and tossed the card at her. “It was you, then? The fire?”

  “Yep.”

  Jack looked like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh. “You just… you just felt like setting fire to the Nevermoor Opera House, or…?”

  Morrigan rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “What happened?”

  Morrigan described Victor’s sudden attack and all that followed.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she said, “so I just… I don’t know, I thought I could frighten him or something.”

  “Mm. Because you’re so terrifying, yeah,” mused Jack.

  “Shut up.”

  He smirked. “Seven?”

  “Go fish. It was just supposed to be a little burst of fire, but… well, you know. Fire.”

  “It spreads, yeah,” he said. “Famous for it.”

  “Shut up. Ace?”

  “Go fish. Anyway, seems like it worked,” Jack pointed out. “It drove him away.”

  Morrigan winced, remembering how Victor had become so confused and agitated by the fire that he’d plowed right through the theater doors. “I guess so.”

  “It’s not a coincidence, though, is it?” Jack said darkly, leaning back in his chair again. “De Flimsé, Brutilus Brown, now this. It can’t be a coincidence. Something’s very wrong.”

  Morrigan couldn’t agree more. And she had a feeling that Jupiter was out there right now, trying to discover exactly what that something was.

  Fen returned to the Deucalion a little later, but Jupiter wasn’t with her and she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say where he’d gone. Morrigan and Jack pounced on the Magnificat the moment she sauntered into the lobby, and followed her all the way up the spiral staircase at a trot.

  “Where have you been all day?” Jack demanded.

  “Nunya Business Boulevard,” said Fenestra. “Lovely spot, wish I was there now.”

  “What happened after you left the opera house?” Morrigan asked. “Did you catch him, or not?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Where’s Dame Chanda?”

  “Smoking Parlor,” said Jack, popping up on her other side. “What does that mean, ‘in a manner of speaking’?”

  “Must you surround me?” Fen muttered, rolling her eyes. “It means I didn’t exactly have to catch him. I
chased the menace for blocks, nearly broke a leg trying to dodge all the chaos he left behind him. Two traffic accidents, three smashed-up shopfronts. Even when I finally cornered him down a dead-end alley, he tried to smash through the brick wall.”

  Morrigan winced. She saw flashes of Brutilus Brown. The mindless, violent aggravation, as if he simply wanted to destroy something. Destroy her.

  “Hurt himself badly too,” Fen continued as they entered the Smoking Parlor. “Blood everywhere. Then he got up and tried again. And again.”

  “What?” said Jack. “Why would he—”

  “That horsewun was out of his mind,” came a quiet voice from the daybed, and Frank’s head popped up from a pile of cushions. Dame Chanda had fallen asleep on the chaise. “We all saw it in the theater, anyone could tell. Completely off his rocker.”

  Fen clawed at the rug in front of the fire. “He ran into the wall four times. It’s like there was something inside him that just wanted to create havoc. Then he turned around and looked at me, and he just… gave up. Lay down on the ground.”

  “If a Magnificat cornered me in a dark alley,” said Jack, “I’d probably give up and lie down too.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that,” Fen said thoughtfully, curling up on the floor like a cinnamon roll. “He wasn’t afraid of me. I don’t think he’d even realized I was chasing him until that moment. He was just on a rampage. I think he’d have had a go at me too, except… he couldn’t. He’d used every ounce of whatever he had in him. All the life drained out of his eyes. Didn’t blink. Barely breathed.”

  “Like Juvela De Flimsé,” said Morrigan. “She was found lying half-buried in the snow. What happened then, Fen?”

  The Magnificat yawned widely, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth, and gave a sleepy shrug. “Stealth showed up and took him.”