Page 30 of House of Furies
More’s the pity. I would have relished the opportunity to make their drinks bitter with spittle.
When I reached the landing, I paused, considering where I might read Mr. Morningside’s book in peace. It was burning a hole in my skirts, begging to be studied, if only to shed some small insight into his personality and motives, and how the book in the attic could be overthrown. But now I was certain the shadow monsters didn’t want me to have it—that made it more valuable, of course, but also more dangerous. Reading the book inside the house was out of the question.
I headed back outside for the second time that day, finding that the weather had remained chilly but not intolerable, with a heavy bank of clouds rolling in to sit like a dark thought over the manse. The rag and bucket I left in the small overhang near the door to the kitchens. Other tools and supplies were kept there on ladders leaned against the wall to form makeshiftshelves. I poured out the bucket and squeezed the rag, leaving them both for some far more devoted worker to find.
Inside, I could hear Mrs. Haylam cooking supper, pots and pans clanging away. The yard between the door and the barns was empty, and I bundled my skirts and the book into my hands and picked my way quickly toward the low, dark building. The wind rose as I did, and the familiar heaviness of the atmosphere shifting before a storm made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Those clouds above me were no longer just a thought but a genuine threat.
The smell of hay and horses wafted toward me as I gained the barn. It was a sturdy, handsome building made of thick timbers. All of it had been painted a rich black-brown, and it looked newer and in better repair than Coldthistle itself. I peered inside one of the open doors, anxious for any sign of Chijioke or the others. But I was alone. Well, alone but for the five horses in their stalls. A few ears turned toward me with interest, but the beasts didn’t seem to mind the intrusion.
I had always loved the coziness of barns, and used more than one as shelter when I ran away from Pitney. This one, too, felt almost homey, and I raced between the horse stalls to a rope dangling from the ceiling near the far wall. An open archway there led to the coach storage and Chijioke’s workshop. I grabbed the rope and pulled, grunting from the effort of it, then scampered up the makeshift stairs that appeared from the ceiling.
The hayloft was exactly as I’d hoped—empty, warm, and quiet. I pulled up the stairs behind me and settled onto a mounded lump of hay. There were only two windows in the loft, one that looked toward the house, another with a view of the fields next door. I chose the one with more light to read by, watching more rain-bloated clouds roll in over the pasture.
Mr. Morningside’s book had not found gentle treatment in that library. Water-damaged and yellowed, the pages felt brittle enough to crumble in my fingers. Gently, I cracked the weathered cover, finding an inscription written in an elegant hand, one I assumed belonged to Morningside.
Spicer,
This had better make us even, you miserable bastard. I know I owe you for that cock-up in Hungary, but this is getting out of hand. Szilvássy wasn’t even my man, he was yours, but I admit mistakes were made on both sides. It should be in the past, as all things inevitably are. Even you cannot hold a grudge this long.
At any rate, read this or don’t, but don’t say I never did anything for you. Sparrow can find her own copy; she despises me anyway.
Yours in perpetuity (ha!),
Henry
I read the inscription three times. The second time because it was hard to imagine the Mr. Morningside I had met admittinghe was wrong about anything. The third time because I at last noticed the little date dashed off under his signature.
December, 1799
Either the date was wrong, or Morningside was far older than my estimations. A six-year-old boy could not have written a complete book and made out an inscription in it. Even a seven-, eight-, or nine-year-old was silly to consider. By generous calculations, a person would need to be at least fifteen to manage a book of this length and apparent complexity, which would put him currently around six and twenty. That couldn’t be. He hardly looked a day older than Lee or myself!
But his backward feet couldn’t be, either. Nor could little girls who murder or books that lure and trap or walking, talking shadow creatures. None of it was possible, and yet...
And yet...
Reasonable, earthly thinking must be set aside, I decided. Mr. Morningside could be a youth, or an elder, or anything in between. Poppy had called him a grumpy old man. Either he had somehow located the Fountain of Youth, or there was more here that I did not yet understand. The book, naturally, might lend a few ideas. And so I began to read. The introduction spoke of world travels, of schooners and wagon rides, horseback adventures spanning months, dangerous climbs up previously unconquered mountains, and dozens of references to explorers and chroniclers I did not recognize.
It told me little. He had traveled far and wide, though I couldnot venture a guess at how, considering his unusual feet. That was not so surprising—he was a young (or not) man of surprising fortune and a collection of exotic birds. World explorer did not run counter to that particular persona.
Chapter 1: In Which I Meet a Child of the Dark Fae and Make an Impassioned Plea
Nowwe were getting somewhere.
Chapter Eighteen
In Which I Meet a Child of the Dark Fae
and Make an Impassioned Plea
My most recent travels in Ireland left me with one conclusion: the Fae do not choose their victims at random, and the Dark Fae are even more particular.
While traveling to Derry, I made a brief stopover at the Crosskeys Inn, and met there a young woman, perhaps onlyfifteen years of age, begging outside in the cold rain. I invited her in to dine with me, to her great surprise, but by and by she joined me, eating what can only be described as a remarkable amount of chicken liver pie. Over this harrowing feast and several pints of good stout ale, I invited her to tell me how she came to be a beggar in these parts. She reacted with hesitation at first, and that is perhaps my own fault; all this while I had been studying her closely, for the woman—we may call her Edna—possessed all the markers one expected from a Dark Fae descendant.
The very black hair and similarly black eyes, the paleness, the thin stature and sunken cheeks... All of these features I had sketched before when encountering what the Irish merely dubbed “Changelings.”
“My mother, she had me young and without a man” was Edna’s explanation.
“You mean unwed,” I replied.
