The Dark Passenger (Book 1) (19 page)

The floor wasn’t comfortable, and his neck throbbed when he
woke up. Footsteps were coming toward him from down the hall, and he jumped up
when the latch on the door shook.

“It’s me,” Walt said.

After Edwin unlatched the door, Walt walked in and closed the
door behind him, waving away Edwin’s concern. “Don’t worry about Sam. You’ll be
fine here, I promise. And now that that’s over”—he clapped his
hands—“let’s get you changed out of your Hawthorne uniform and into
something more comfortable.”

Edwin wasn’t sure when the twins’ aunts had time to prepare such
a magnificent dinner. The tablecloth was covered in fine embroidery,
candlelight danced across everyone’s face, and a pleasant trail of steam rose
from fresh rolls of black bread, stuffed hen with gravy, and half a dozen fruit
pies. The triplets sat around him: Pyre in red, Mistral in white, and Meryl in
blue. At one end of the table sat Mina, the fortuneteller, and across at the
head of the table was Gretchen, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. More
than once Edwin touched his lips and thought of their kiss.

After taking a drink from her chalice, Gretchen said, “I
suppose you want to know what we did to your blanket.”

“Yes, it was my baby blanket,” Edwin said between mouthfuls.
Anytime a clearing appeared on his plate, someone helped him to another
serving. “But more than anything, I want you to tell me how you controlled my
spirit.”

“Oh, that?” Mina said. “It was a simple binding chant,
nothing more. It will control a
mahr
for a time, but after a while the
mahr
learns to adapt and it loses its potency. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Edwin said truthfully.
“What else can control a
mahr
?”

“I know of nothing else, unfortunately.
Mahrs
are
notoriously impervious to others’ power.”

Smiling her coquettish smile, Gretchen put her hand on
Edwin’s and said, “Let’s talk about your blanket. First, why don’t you tell us
what you know about it.”

Her smile at once warmed his heart and made his voice stick
in his throat. “About my blanket? Erm, I hardly know anything about it, only
that I’ve had it since forever, and that nothing keeps me warmer.”

“There’s a reason for that, you know.” She laughed abruptly.
“Oh sisters, I’m doing all the talking. Speak, speak.” While she took another
sip from her chalice, Pyre, who had been wiping her lips, put her napkin back
down and cleared her throat.

“You weren’t wrong when you said it can keep you warmer than
anything else you wear.” Between her harsh speech, the intense way she looked
at him, and her flaming red hair, Pyre was by far the scariest of the five
sisters. “Your cloak is much more than it appears. It’s woven from the very
blossoms of the hallow tree. Ah, I see the name is not lost on you. We have
lost so, so much. Few remain who know anything of the old ways.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Edwin said.

“My aunts can help you with that. They know just about
everything,” Walt bragged.

“My powers—what I can do—it’s done nothing but
get me in trouble,” Edwin said, looking intently at his food.

“Not so. My ribbon saved you,” Gretchen said.

Sam snorted. “From a magic box.”

“From villagers who don’t understand the old ways,” Gretchen
corrected. “We were going to tell you about your blanket, but I think it might
be best if we show you. Someone fetch Mina’s shrew stone.”

Mistral left the table, went upstairs, and when she came
back she held a large rock covered in satin. The sisters made room on the
table, placed the rock at its center, Gretchen removed the cloth, and Edwin
found himself staring into the foggy depths of a glass egg. “Mina, show Edwin
the story of the hallow trees,” Gretchen said.

Mina nodded, placed her fingertips on the egg, and began
chanting quietly.

Standing behind him, Gretchen rested a hand lightly on his
shoulder. “You see Edwin, like many stories with unhappy endings, the story of your
blanket begins with a girl.”

Edwin stared into the shrew stone and the shape of a girl
took form. “But… But she’s so…”

“Ugly?” Gretchen laughed. “Yes, she did have that
reputation… But to one Host—the most powerful Host of his day—she
was the most beautiful creature to ever live. The Host decided that he had to
have her, but the girl’s people were of a village without a name, for that
without magic was unworthy of a name in those days, and a bond between her and
a Host could never be.”

“Why not? That doesn’t seem fair,” Edwin said.

Gretchen smiled sadly. “Pollution of the blood was strictly
forbidden in those days. The Hosts feared halflings because they didn’t know
where their loyalties would lie. Any child born of their union would be
entirely new. The Hosts had good reason to be afraid. You see, it was the Hosts’
duty to maintain order. They feared the smallest change would throw everything
out of balance. The world they protected was very different than the world
today.”

Edwin stared into the stone and saw a cave where a three-headed
serpent battled a troll. Then, smoke filled the crystal, and a valley emerged
where a scurry of horned squirrels frolicked in the trees, easily avoiding the
pack of wolves staring at them from below. There were owls with serpentine
faces, tailed giants, and dwarves with no eyes on their heads but many in the
palms of their hands.

“You see, there was a different order then,” said Gretchen.
“It was a brutal but lively time, a time when the impossible was
possible—not because rules were broken, but because rules had a different
meaning. The energy we carry inside us was used in ways that have long since
been forgotten and lost, and it is to this lost time that you were conceived. Of
course this Host in love refused to accept that he couldn’t have his heart’s
desire. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a story.” The image in the egg changed to show
the Host, who was a handsome man with bright red hair, climbing over a stone
wall to get to a small house. “If he hadn’t forsaken his
mahr
, the Hosts
may never have fallen.” She shrugged. “He was a man in love.”

“Tell him about the hallow trees,” Walt said.

“Yes, the tree, I was just getting there,” Gretchen said.
“The Hosts believed the forest was the ultimate symbol of power and life, of
permanence and change. The Umbrage Box held their greatest treasure, seeds for
a tree immune to magic. The Hosts weren’t alone in possessing magic, you see,
and they saw these seeds as a last defense. Blinded by his love for the girl, the
Host marched to the girl’s village with the Umbrage Box and offered it to her
father for his daughter’s hand. Many said he must have been bewitched by a
powerful spell.” Gretchen shrugged again.

“Dark magic,” Mistral said, chiming in.

“None darker than love,” Pyre spat. “Many foolish decisions have
been made in its name.”

Inside the stone Edwin saw the Host walking importantly up
to the girl’s father, and behind him, floating on a cloud of air, was the
Umbrage Box. “Then what happened?” he asked.

“The Host got the girl,” Gretchen said. “He stayed with the
girl’s family, and with his help the village prospered into a city. They built
a castle and grew a hallow tree, and the Host taught them the sacrifices
necessary to make the tree grow and bleed the red amber—bloodstones, they
call them in Chardwick. He had children, and he taught them about the Hosts and
their powers, and how to use other creatures’ powers for themselves.”

“The Hosts never forgave him,” said Mistral sadly. “He never
knew that the amber would be used as weapons. But he loved his new family. The
hallow tree was meant to give them peace from the Hosts’ power and all the
dangers power breeds.”

“Tell Edwin about the fabric of his cloak,” Walt said.

“Yes, of course,” burbled Meryl. “Your cloak is made from
one of the rarest materials ever found. A hallow tree blooms perhaps once a
century, and even then a cloak such as yours would require the blooms of many
seasons. Very few were ever made, and even fewer survive.”

“No, not that part,” Walt said. “Tell him about the ribbon.”

Meryl was almost bouncing in her chair she was so excited.
“The ribbon was my creation,” she boasted. “Don’t look at me like that, sister,
you know it’s true. The trick was to add a dash of salt as the potion became
noxious.”

“Salt?” Pyre chided. “Your secret ingredient was salt?”

“Yes, at the correct concentrations and added at the right
moments salt can be very useful.” She winked at Edwin.

Gretchen intervened. “Once we had the potion, we had only to
attach it to your blanket. We left it to the twins to lure you to my tent.”

Walt’s mouth was full of blackberry pie when he smiled. “It
was easy. Edwin found you all on his own.”

“The Lucent is… let us say, an ally of ours,” Gretchen said.
“We knew if you were discovered you would be taken to the Umbrage Box. It is
said that the ancient power of the Umbrage Box was once used to punish the most
wicked of Hosts. What was meant as a safe place for the seeds of the hallow
tree was, for a Host, rumored to be worse than death. It is said the Umbrage
Box steals a Host’s very soul—his
mahr
, of course.”

Shaking his head, it took Edwin a moment to find his voice.
“How do you know all this?”

“We are the traitor Host’s children, of course,” Gretchen said.
In the crystal egg Edwin saw the Host and his ugly mortal wife holding their
five girls.

*   *   *

Unable to sleep that night, Edwin stared at the ceiling. There
was nothing to see, not even a crack for his eyes to follow. His mind kept
replaying the dinner conversation and returning to the book he had left on a
roof on the other side of Chardwick. As he tossed and turned, he finally
decided, no matter the risk, he had to go back and get it. It could hold the
key to everything: his legacy, controlling his spirit, and saving himself from
the villagers who wanted nothing more than to kill him.

Dragging himself to his feet, he was careful not to make the
mattress or floor squeak as he changed out of his night gown and crept over to
the window. Snow had built up on the windowpanes, making every square grin. It
took him a moment to find the latch, and when he did he gingerly pushed the
window open and poked out his head. Above and below there was only brick
between him and the next window, but to his right, just out of reach, was the
rain gutter. Fingering the ribbon around his neck, he made sure his cloak was
secure.

“What are you doing?” the spirit hissed in his ear, and he
swatted it away.

Not looking down, he reached out and leapt for the pipe.
“See, I don’t need you for everything,” he said. The pipe was freezing, and his
hands, which had been so warm inside, quickly lost all feeling. He crawled down
the pipe inch-by-inch until he was close enough to the ground to jump. With his
cloak pulled up over his face, he walked quickly towards the village square,
doing his best to stay in the shadows.

But he hadn’t even made it to the arch when he saw a guard
posted by the entrance. As casually as he could, he turned around and headed to
the other end of the street, but found a guard stationed there too. Realizing
how much his escape had rattled the villagers, he headed back to the Morrisey
house and began climbing back up the pipe.

“Well, that wass fun,” his spirit said.

“We’re not done yet,” Edwin said as he climbed past his
window and up to the roof. It was a clear night, and he saw a light half way up
the cliff pass and wondered if the Medgards were up feeding Dana.

“So what’s your plan?” his spirit asked.

Rolling his eyes—his spirit knew what he
wanted—he said, “I need to go get my mother’s book, but all the roads are
blocked. If only there was a way to jump over a road…”

“No need to be snarky. Join with me at the road, and I will
get you acrosss.”

Edwin sighed and began walking to the next roof. “We sure
have made a mess of things, haven’t we?”

He felt the air vibrate near his left ear as the spirit
found its voice: “Perhapss. But we have learned much.”

Edwin thought that over before responding. “Yes, but at the
same time, I feel like we’re more lost and confused than ever.” They reached
the road, and Edwin joined with his spirit, jumped over to a roof across the
way, and released it. Picking up the conversation where he left off, he said,
“And we both know the twins’ aunts are using us for something. They didn’t come
all this way for nothing. I still don’t understand why Walt and Sam were in
Hawthorne when their grandfather is the Lucent.”

“They want uss to enter the miness. Your little friend’s
story about the Hosts’ sanctuary—think about everything we know about his
auntss.”

Edwin pondered Gretchen finding him in the crowd and giving him
the charm. After that he had stumbled into the fortuneteller’s tent.
That wasn’t
an accident
, he realized, remembering the ground shaking and the fire and
wind and water that had seemed to come from nowhere. “The fortuneteller, Mina.
In the tent, she said,
The answers you seek are in the mines. The mines will
show you the way. Until then you will be a danger to yourself and those around
you.
Walt said the Hosts’ sanctuary was in the mines, but why would they
want us to go there? What’s it to them?”

“Perhapss we should leave before we find out,” the spirit said.

“But they saved me. Maybe we should trust them. Maybe they
can help us.” Edwin thought a moment, and, reaching the next road, again joined
with his spirit. After making it to the other side, he released it and asked,
“How old do you think they are? They say they were alive before Chardwick was
even founded… How old is Chardwick? What have they done to live so long?”

The spirit picked up his line of thought. “And where do they
get their power? You need me to do anything.” Edwin grimaced, but the spirit
continued, “What do they want from uss? You say yoursself that every spell has
a cost.” A yellow spark coursed through its essence, which was undeniably
bigger.

Edwin chewed his lip and tried not to be afraid. He and his
spirit jumped over many more roads that night, and before long he was back
where he had left the book. His spree of good fortune held, and it was exactly
where he had left it. As quickly as he could, he made his way back to the Morriseys’
house, and slid back through his window.