Unhonored (23 page)

Above it all, the rotating Umbra looked down on them like a sightless, unfeeling eye.

Suddenly the room changed, most of its outer walls and floor shifting away and altering their form, texture and color. There were still columns and bookcases but now they were set on the stage of the theater. The audience was all in their seats, gazing back at them from behind their masks. The angels and Shades dove and soared about each other, locked again in their combat. The audience applauded wildly, many of them leaping to their feet.

Margaret stood up, the Book of her Day in her hands. She screamed incoherently at Merrick. The walls fell away once more, groaning and cracking under the transformation. The audience tumbled through the air, still cheering with applause.

The room shifted again. They were in the ballroom. The pillars of the library were set about the center of the enormous floor along with most of the bookcases. The
Danse Macabre
played as all the masked audience were transformed, now wearing formal wear and settling onto the floor. Ellis saw her mother wheeling across the floor in time to the music with her dead father in pose.

“Ellis!” Jenny called to her from the base of the pillar she was clinging to nearby. “Please! Help me!”

“Just hold on!” Ellis jumped toward the nearest solid object she could see: a bookcase near her on the dance floor. She hoped it would be enough.

As the battle raged between the angels and Shades, so it raged between Merrick and Margaret.

The room imploded and replaced itself with the folly in the garden now ornamented with bookcases, columns and conflict.

It imploded again to be reorganized once more into the parlor of the Disir sisters. “Would you like some cakes to go with that?” said Minnie Disir with a wide smile.

The room tore itself apart once more, collapsing into the form of the foyer in Summersend. The swirling Umbra remained above them.

Jonas, managing at last to get his feet under him, rushed toward Merrick. He had the sword from one of the Soldiers in his hand and it gleamed with a bright flame.

Merrick saw his approach. He rolled around the thrust of the blade, closing into Jonas as he trapped the sword with his arm. Jonas struggled to get the blade free but Merrick held Jonas's arm tightly.

“Well, my old friend,” Merrick said to Jonas. “It has finally come to this.”

“Just let us go, Merrick,” Jonas groaned.

“Oh, I'll let you go.” Merrick smiled. “You are one problem I can solve right now.”

Jonas grew transparent, the dust of his form rising toward the Umbra.

“No!” Ellis shouted. “Merrick! Don't!”

Jonas's tears of regret turned to dust. In moments his form had vanished, its ashes fallen upward into the Umbra.

In that instant, the library exploded into a whirlwind of debris. The air itself was roaring about them, carrying bits and pieces of the structure with it. The prows of several ships appeared flying past in a chaotic tornado. She glimpsed parts of Echo House whirling about her in the madness as the house and its dreams came apart. The angels and the Shades were caught up in the rushing wind, carried into its violent wall. Mrs. Crow quickly wrapped an arm about a pillar that somehow remained standing above the floor. Dr. Carmichael, caught in her grip, flailed about in the sudden storm, buffeted by both the gale and the debris it carried with it.

Ellis gripped the heavy bookcase. The gale was gaining strength as something unusual caught Ellis's eye on the shelf.

“The End of Dreams,” she muttered to herself. “The beginning of life.”

She snatched the Book off the shelf, let go of the bookcase and tumbled into the chaos.

 

23

INTO THE STORM

Ellis closed her eyes for a moment against the torrent of sights and sounds tumbling about her. She concentrated within herself, trying not to permit the chaos to overwhelm her.

“Steady, girl,” she told herself. “You've done this before. Trust in that. Trust in yourself.”

Silence fell with utter and shocking suddenness.

She opened her eyes.

The chaos was still there, the confusion of pieces of past Days, her own memories and the hopes of the souls caught in the Tween all roiling about her in complete quiet as each vied for dominance in existence. Everything rushed about her as though tumbling in a gray fog, flashing occasionally with lightning through the darker patches. Everything moved in and out of existence. A piece of banister from Summersend, the doll from her earliest childhood memory, the doors to the Nightbirds Society, the Disir sisters' moldering cake, the dress from her coming-out party and Jonas's military jacket from when he met her on leave all roared about her flashing into and fading from reality amid a tumult of costumed spirits still clad in their masquerade masks.

There below was Merrick, screaming in rage against the fall of Echo House, his ferocity directed at the fates and most particularly Margaret who had brought about this collapse blinding him to all reason.

Margaret, too, was there, higher in the storm of broken dreams desperately fighting Merrick for control of the Day, knowing that if she failed now, Merrick's wrath and vengeance would be without measure.

Ellis turned her back on them both and gripped her Book more tightly. She was looking for something of her own amid the collapse of reason, something she could use as an anchor in the madness.

As if at her will, it emerged before her. It was not much—only a fragment—but she knew it would be enough.

It was a fragment of a ship broken from the bow.

In careful letters it proclaimed the name
Mary Celeste
.

Ellis reached out with her free hand and gripped the piece of broken top rail above the lettering.

Fragments and splinters of wood began swarming about her, drawn somehow to the order of her will. Pieces of the railing cracked into place, their sound the first she had heard since silence had descended on the chaos.

Sound returned with a vengeance. The storm of shattered dreams now howled at her with the fury of a nor'easter. The timbers of the ship crashed into place with deafening finality, forming the ribs of the hull against which the planks slammed in a cacophony of sound. Three sections of the bowsprit sprang into place, mending the fibers of their splintered wood with a crunch. Ropes, cables and stays whipped through the air, lashing themselves in place as the masts drove downward through the reassembled deck. The strips of tattered sails wove themselves together out of the fog. The ship was reassembling itself as though in the reverse of an explosion, pulling itself back together from its shattered remains to become whole once more.

Ellis swung over the side and planted her feet upon the reconstituted deck as the gathering ship sailed through the ferocity of the chaotic tempest still raging about her. Driving rain began to pelt her face as she gripped a backstay for support, facing the bow. The wind rushed at her from out of the chaos and tried to drown her as well as her words but she would not be denied.

“I
choose,
” she screamed into the storm. “I
choose
!”

*   *   *

“I
choose,
” sobbed Ellis as the ship around her shifted form and the sky became painfully bright.

This time the memory was fresh and clear. She was standing again on the deck of the schooner
Lola R.
She was making her way out of the harbor in the passage between Summersend and the lighthouse on Curtis Island. The expanse of Penobscot Bay and the Atlantic Ocean lay beyond. It was midmorning on a chill October day but she wanted to stand on the deck despite the biting wind.

“Are you sure, Ellie?”

The voice was warm in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her from behind.

She sank backward into his embrace though her eyes remained fixed on the old house by the sea that she now thought of as home.

“Yes, Jonas, I'm sure,” she heard herself say, and knew that she meant it with all her heart. “I suppose I love this place more than about anywhere else in the world. But after losing you, I realized that I loved it
because
it was where I found you again.”

“You found me?” Jonas chuckled. He was wearing his heavy long coat over his uniform but she felt comfortable in his arms. “I thought I was the one who found you here!”

“Maybe we found each other,” Ellis chuckled. “Can you at least concede that much?”

“As you wish.” Jonas smiled. They were passing the lighthouse now, the sweep of its great eye shuttered during the day. “You'll like Halifax. There is a real need for nurses there and as an army engineer we'll see a lot of each other until I'm shipped out. And when all of this is over, Ellis, I promise, we can find each other again.”

“Here?” Ellis purred. “Let it be here at Summersend.”

“Of course,” Jonas agreed. “If that's where you choose.”

“I do choose,” Ellis said, turning her back on Summersend at last and facing him. Her hands rose to his back and she pulled him close.

She sighed into his coat. “I do choose … I choose…”

*   *   *

“… you.”

Ellis wept the word into a peaceful, breaking dawn.

Ellis realized she was standing at the bow clinging to the backstay, now facing a new and breaking day. She blinked through her sudden tears.

She now stood on the foredeck of the
Mary Celeste
as it sailed across a gentle sea. There was only a slight swell, which the ship took easily as it bounded through the waters. She could hear the hush sound as the bow broke through the water beneath her. The gentle rustle of the sails behind her murmured comfort in her ears. Off the larboard beam—she smiled at the memory of her father teaching her the old nautical term for directly off the left side of the ship—there was a terrible storm, ink black at the horizon cut through occasionally with flashes of lightning. The clouds of that storm billowed dark and menacingly into the sky, but in the distance forward off the bow she could see the faintest line of a sunrise beckoning her toward clearing skies.

We've outrun the storm,
Ellis thought.
We'll make it home.

“Welcome back, Ellis,” said a young man's voice behind her.

Ellis turned expectantly but her face fell when she recognized him. “Silenus? However did you get here?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” Silenus Tune replied. He was wearing the same suit she remembered seeing him in when they had first met in the Nightbirds Society. “I heard you call me here … so I came. We all did.”

Silenus gestured back aft down the deck of the ship. Past the hatch covers toward the quarterdeck, Ellis was relieved to see Jenny, leaning slightly over the rail so that she might see what lay on their course ahead. The following wind blew about a few wisps of her hair that had escaped the tight bun at the back of her head and she seemed delighted at the freshening sea air.

Beyond her, Dr. Carmichael clung to the ladder leading back to the quarterdeck. He had lost the demonic brick-red skin tones, the horns, tail and cloven feet. He again appeared as she had first met him in the guise of her uncle. He had managed to retain his boater hat. Nevertheless there was a sad cast to his eyes that she did not remember before and he seemed ill at ease despite the serene passage of the vessel over the gentle sea.

On the quarterdeck, as she expected, stood Captain Walker at the helm. As she was pulling the ship together from the carnage about her, it occurred to her that they would need a seaman familiar with the operation of the craft. His face still carried the countenance of a hound dog but his eyes were brighter and he stood taller on the deck, his hands wrapped comfortably around the handles of the ship's wheel.

Next to him stood Ely Rossini, his face more peaceful than Ellis ever remembered seeing it.

“Let go and haul, if you please, Dr. Carmichael,” Captain Walker called down the length of the deck in a booming voice.

“I should be delighted to assist,” the doctor groused, “if I had any idea what you just said.”

Ellis frowned. “Why is Lucian here?”

“Only you can answer that, Ellis.” Silenus smiled. He turned away, calling back to the doctor. “He means we're on the best course for this wind and we need to trim the sails accordingly.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?” the doctor shot back.

“I'll come and show you,” Silenus said.

“Wait, Silenus,” Ellis said, putting her hand lightly on his arm to detain him.

“What is it, Ellis?”

“Is this all?”

“All what?”

“All that followed me,” Ellis murmured. “I called to so many from the chaos, offered them a place to come.”

“Don't blame them, Ellis. They were afraid,” Silenus said. “Afraid of Merrick. Afraid of you. More afraid of where you were going, maybe. But you managed to salvage the Day after all before we all fell into the Umbra. Surely, the souls of the Tween must be grateful to you for that.”

“What happened to them?” Ellis asked, genuinely concerned.

“I can't answer for all of them but I can show you some,” Silenus said with a smile. He reached behind him and pulled around a hard, leather tube that had been slung on his back. The young man quickly undid the latch and removed a beautiful brass telescope. He pulled it open to its full length, put it up to his eye and then handed it to Ellis as he pointed. “There. About two points to starboard of where Captain Walker stands.”

Ellis picked up the telescope and raised it to her eye. Her view skittered along the horizon until she centered on the dark form in the distance of their wake. It was a brig not unlike the
Mary Celeste
in size and rigging as near as Ellis could tell.

“Who is it?” Ellis asked.

“Merrick, I should think,” Silenus said. “Perhaps Margaret. We really don't know who won the Day between them. Whoever they are, they are falling further behind us. They cannot catch us now. We'll make the Gate before they can possibly stop us.”