The Madness of Crows: Part Ten

THE TRUE WORLD RETURNED in a blink. She stood in the twilit yard of MoonGlass mansion. A car sped past on the road and she was holding the hand of a girl whose head was bowed, her face obscured by the dark wings of her hair.
    Then Tess raised her head. Annie flung her arms around her and almost screamed with relief. Instead, quietly, she said, "You're real, right? Not a trick--"
    She coughed, felt something like feathers in her throat, as Tess whispered, "Annie?  I'm real. What's wrong--"
    Annie reeled back in a panic. She felt wings beating within her ribcage, against her heart, a rush of violence through her lungs that sent her to her knees. She tried to scream as feathers filled her mouth. She had been tricked -- she was still in the Borderlands.
    The monster came bloodily up out of her throat, her mouth, with the rustle of wings...

    Annie opened her eyes to the sound of traffic. She lay in the dewy, cold grass and she could smell car exhaust, and iron, and tainted air. She inhaled, swallowed blood, sobbed once.
    "Annie? Annie?" Tess was gazing down at her. If it weren't for the blood, Annie would have thought it had been a bad dream.
   "Okay," she croaked. "I'm okay."
    "You're not okay." Tess crouched beside her. There was a levelness to her voice and gaze that told Annie all of the harm had been undone; Tess wouldn't need medication anymore. "How did you do it?"
    Annie followed Tess's gaze to the body sprawled a few feet away. No longer a scrap of avian spirit, the king of crows lay naked and unconscious in the grass. Annie sat up and shivered, tasted blood. She'd brought something into the world that had no more defenses or survival skills than a newborn god. "It wasn't me. It was him."
    Tess helped her to stand and they cautiously approached the unconscious boy whose resemblance to Tess was perfect. Annie knelt beside him, reacehed out with a shaking hand to touch warm skin.
    His eyes opened. They weren't immortal silver. They were the gray innocence of a human boy's.
    And madness was born into the world on the wings of a--
    "Blackbird," Annie murmured and, by naming him, took away his power. "Dubhean. Devon. Welcome to the world."
    As Tess's brother drew his first breath, the absoluteness of the world fractured, just a bit. And Annie didn't think that was such a bad thing.

                                                                        the end

   

The Madness of Crows: Part Nine

ANNIE STEPPED INTO THE HOUSE OF THE CROW, blinked as light from a red glass chandelier stranded over her. The walls of the room were hung with paintings of raven-like figures: a young woman, fierce and tattooed; a knight in ebony armor; a black man in a white suit, holding a skull-topped cane. Feeling as if she might forget to take her next breath, Annie whispered, "Where is she?"
    "Look behind you."
    Annie turned and saw a boy in white armor, his long hair the color of frost, his face innocent. She recognized him from Tess's stories -- the Duke of Doves, who said, "He sent me to tell you this: She is where she belongs."
    "No she isn't."
    "Should it be the world above and madness? Or Atenoux and life as--"
    "A shadow?" Annie raised her head and looked around for the Fata she'd come to confront. She shouted to the unseen, "I was wrong. You are not the Bran Corax. You were human once. You died. You infected your own mother and sister because you didn't want to leave."
    He came from the shadows, Tess's twin, his hair threads of ink falling to the shoulders of black glass armor formed into the images of birds. The light honeyed his skin. His eyes were silver with slitted pupils. A tattoo in the shape of a crow stained one side of his face.
    Annie realized it wasn't just the Borderlands that she was dealing with. Carefully, she said, "You are dead."
    "I live." He smiled and the ghost light glinted in his eyes.
    "You were stillborn. And you've become a parasite to your own family."
    "Speak respectfully in my house." Massive wings rustled somewhere. stirring dust and the bones of birds.
    Annie kept her voice low, steady, "'He is an iron flower, a tendriled spike. He is the smoke of altars and autumn leaves. He is winter air on stone.'"
    He flinched as if the words had hurt him. "You cannot name me."
    A wise person had once told Annie: They find their kings and queens among mortals. They need mortal blood to be real. They needed Tess so that they might bleed and breathe. The king of crows had been born a scrap of flesh, his spirit raging at the world he'd been denied. She reached out, grabbed his cold hand. "Give her back. If you love her, don't condemn her to this--"
    His eyes went black.
    Annie stumbled as a veil of silence and darkness fell over her and the hand in hers -- she didn't let go -- became icy. She wondered if she'd made a mistake. It would be easy to become lost in their world...
    She continued to grip his cold hand because she couldn't leave Tess in this dreaming tomb.
    The darkness vanished in red light and the king of crows was gazing down at their twined fingers as if he'd never been touched before. She whispered, "You're neither here nor there, are you? Them or us?"
    He said, "I have no name."
    "I'll give you one." And she spoke it.
    Atenoux fractured.

The Madness of Crows: Part Eight

THE CAILLEACH OIDCHE'S FACE was a Kabuki mask, white-skinned and red-lipped, the white hair that spilled over her shoulders streaked with brunette. Her eyes were not gold, but the silver of the otherworld.
    Annie stepped back from the cold hate she saw in the owl girl's expression,, even knowing it wasn't directed at her, but another. She breathed out, "I'm sorry about Nathan Clare, the boy who lived here, about what happened to him. I know he was Jack's friend. And Jack..."
    The Cailleach Oidche bowed her head. "It was the Wolves killed my Nathan, little rabbit. Now listen carefully to what I tell you. First, armor yourself with things from loved ones..."

Go to his place of power. You must confront him in his domain. If you are drawn Between, touch one of your talismans. You mustn't stay long, or you will be lost. Your girl will be disguised but in plain view. Touch her and speak her name.

The children of nothing and night had wanted Annie to feel helpless.
    In her room cluttered with second-hand books, earth-scented candles, wind chimes, sunflowers, and crosses of iron, silver, and oak, Annie prepared for battle. She chose a T-shirt painted with a silver unicorn, a gift from her friend Sylvie Whitethorn. The jeans sewn with pearl buttons up the sides had belonged to her sister, Angyll. She fastened Tess's chain of plastic daisies around her left ankle. Around one wrist, she knotted a bracelet of silver charms given to her by a girl named Finn, who'd had her own encounters with the others and who was now like an older sister.
    The Fata, the loas, the spirits found power in mortal poetry, so words would be Annie' s weapons.

It was called MoonGlass and it was one of several abandoned mansions on the Hudson, a collection of fairy-tale towers and stained-glass windows with lunar themes. A moon face smiled above the doors. The gates before the tangled lawn were made of bronze, not the iron that would have kept Them out. MoonGlass was one of the places used by Them, the perfect setting for the world Tess had imagined, and Annie could think of no other place in which Tess's particular Fata would nest.
    "Atenoux." In Celtic, Atenoux meant 'returning night'.
    As she moved up the path toward the house, she tugged a tiny, wooden box from one pocket of her coat. The Cailleach Oidche had given her something to help her into the Borderlands. She took from the box a mushroom the color of new snow and placed it on her tongue.
    The true world melted. Weird shadows slanted across the trees to either side. She heard a sound like the tick-tocking of a gargantuan clock. The evening was painted with purple, the air tainted with the fragrances of an alien land.
    She flinched as a massive beast seemed to emerge from the night -- the statue of a horse, its black marble hide reflecting the red sky. Beyond it, the doors of the house were open, revealing a lamplit hall with a chessboard floor. As Annie moved up the stairs, she saw who waited for her within.
    Seated in a red chair was Nadine, and she was flanked by her Magpie Knights, their ivory blondeness radiant.
    "Come over the threshold," Nadine called, "Annie Weaver."

The Madness of Crows: Part Seven

ABSALOM ASKEW'S BICYCLE was gaudily spray-painted with dragons. He raced with Annie down the street to the house called LeafStruck, where they abandoned their bikes at the foot of a crumbling stairway hidden in a tunnel of branches. This dark passage led to a porch with carvings of leafy faces leering in the corners and wicker furniture rotting beneath foliage.
    Absalom, cast in moonlight, was solemn."It wounds me that you won't let me take care of this for you."
    "I thought you were supposed to be neutral?"
    "When it comes to you, Annie Weaver, I'll never be neutral."
    His words sent shivers up her spine, because it wasn't a boy looking at her through those golden eyes.
    The door to LeafStruck creaked open, revealing a dark, dusty hall, a floor scattered with leaves. A pale light glowed at the end.
    Absalom smiled. "You are, however, on your own when you step across this threshold. We don't trespass on each other. Remember: She's an owl and they're predatory. But she's no friend to the ones who haunt your mad girl."
    "How did you--"
    "Farewell." He jaunted down the stairs.
    Annie gazed after him. Then she looked into the house, which smelled of decay and malice.
    "Hello?" She stepped inside. She heard music from upstairs -- a cobwebby violin solo crackling from what sounded like an old recording. She slowly made her way up the stair,gripping a banister wreathed with ivy. She glanced at paintings of wild, sinister people and found it hard to believe this had once been a temporary home for her friends -- a boy who'd lost his life to a wolf king and a young man who'd been freed from a queen of serpents.
    Only one door in the upstairs corridor was open and the room beyond flickered with shadows and light. There was a presence in there that didn't bother to disguise itself and made the air hum like electric wires before a storm.
    Annie thought of Tess's pale face in the hospital.
    She stepped into the gloom, her sneakers crushing leaves and dead insects.
    Colleen Olive, the Cailleach Oidche, sat in a rocking chair, a tattered veil concealing her from head to toe. She spoke in a voice that resembled the rustling of leaves, "Little rabbit. Why have you come?"
    Annie tried not to imagine silver claws beneath the gloves, an owl's yellow eyes beneath the veil. "Ma'am, I've come for help against the King of Crows, the Bran Corax, who is trying to take my friend."
    "Trying? He wouldn't be trying...he'd have succeeded."
    "I won't let him."
    "Ah. That is why. She has had protection. She had someone before. Now, she's got a braveheart."
    The someone must have been Tess's boyfriend Vine, the one who had painted Atenoux. Was Annie then the braveheart? She spoke carefully, "Is the King of Crows your friend?"
    Colleen Olive made a spitting noise and her voice was suddenly young, "You should be afraid of me, coineanach. But I will help you against the Bran Corax because you are Jack Hawthorne's friend."
    As she flung back the veil, Annie braced herself to keep from flinching.