Chapter 28
Just as the golden light crested the hill, Mouse felt her pinky finger twitch. Her eyes snapped downward, and it did it again, less of a spasm than a flick. The leather bag on the bed closed with a sharp snap.
John and Mouse screamed, diving down under the window frame. The bag shuddered, then lifted itself on one side before it fell. In this way, it walked to the end of the bed and fell lifelessly to the floor. Mouse’s finger twitched, and the bag rolled to the door and slipped into the hall.
“Am I going mad?” John breathed.
“No, I saw it, too,” Mouse said.
The bag clattered down the stairs.
Mouse ran after it, her heart pounding in her ears. She skittered to a stop on the top steps just in time to see the bag throw itself against the door. It bounced off and somersaulted back. Its sides thumped against the wooden floorboards before it picked itself up and repeated the process.
Mouse crept behind it, and it shifted halfway toward her, emphatically scooting back and forth. John eyed it from the top of the staircase.
“Thornwood?” she whispered.
The leather creaked as the bag bounced up and down in impatience. It looped its straps around her arms, pulling her forward. Mouse struggled against it, breaking free only by falling back up the staircase. A shudder ran through the bag, and it resumed thumping against the door.
“It’s him,” John said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Even he thinks you should leave.”
Mouse knew John was right. Thornwood was asking her to leave. Although she did not trust the Faerie, and although a large part of her even hated him, the fact that he was worried about her meant something.
She looked down at her hand. His ring was there, the gem still whole and shining. A lump formed in her throat at the thought of what the Faerie King might do to him, if he was willing to run Mouse off the grounds despite her history with Mr. Hobb and the fact that she was his blood.
She’d been too late to save Bertie and Roger. She’d been too late to save Thistlemarsh. But she was not too late to save Thornwood, or herself. Not yet.
“I can’t leave now,” Mouse said, brushing John off. She felt as though she was finally waking from a dream, her mind clearing, her heart thudding in her throat.
“What?” John demanded.
“Think of the villagers,” she said, changing tactics. She knew he did not care if Thornwood died, but surely he would want to protect the village.
“I will, but why should you? Before, with the fear of Lord Dewhurst looming over them, I could understand, but now, with him gone, they have no excuse to treat you the way they do. Barely talking to you. You would think their guilt at leaving you to his abuse for all those years would be a motivator, but they’ve never done anything for you—they did not lift a finger in the last month. ”
Mouse twirled on him. “Maybe not. What about you? They’re your parishioners!”
“You think they would hesitate a second before turning their backs on me, if they knew who I really am? You are the only person left who cares about me. I won’t see you charge off into battle with a Faerie King for the fucking village of Tithe!”
“Fine, I am not staying for them,” Mouse started, thrown by John’s curse.
John cut her off with an enraged scoff. “What for, then? The bloody house?”
“No, it’s not for Thistlemarsh either. It’s for me!” she shouted.
John paused, thrown off his footing just as she had been, and Mouse took the opportunity to plow on.
“I know that to you this whole exercise looks like some desperate bid to prove myself. And maybe it was at the start, but it’s changed. I’ve changed. It’s not too late for me to start again, but I want to do it with a clean slate.”
John jerked at that. “And you want to save Thornwood. Why? He lied to you.”
“He did, and I’m not trying to defend him. All I’m saying is that he helped me find a part of myself that I buried long ago. And I refuse to have my life dictated to me for one moment longer by arrogant bastards who think they know what is best for me.”
“I suppose I am one of those arrogant bastards in this situation?”
Mouse squared her shoulders. “That depends. Are you going to get in my way?”
For a moment, John looked as though he might try to stop her, his jaw tight and twitching. Mouse met his gaze, and her chin tilted up. They stared at each other that way for what Mouse felt was an eternity until John’s anger collapsed. “Do you have a plan, at least?”
“No, not really,” she admitted. “But I don’t think Thornwood stands a chance without the source of his power. If I can get it to him, maybe he can do something to stop the Faerie King. It is a long shot, but it is our best option.”
She showed John the ring.
“I promised Bertie I would look after you,” he groaned, sliding down onto the stairs. He pressed his face into his hands.
The bag, which had paused its knocking when they spoke, took up its cause again, throwing itself toward the door with increased precision.
Mouse knelt before John, and he looked up at her. Tears trailed down his cheeks.
“Bertie was a cheeky thing. He made me promise to look after you, too,” Mouse said.
John sobbed, and he turned his face into his shoulder. She clambered up to the stairs to hug him.
“I know I can’t stop you,” he said. “I just had to try.”
It turned out that while Mouse was worrying about John trying to stop her, she should have been more concerned about the bag.
It must have sensed her plan because it stopped trying to coerce her outside.
When she tried to brush past it into the garden, it tangled around her legs and looped over her arms, pulling her back.
It managed to drag her a quarter of the way up the stairs before she was able to pry it off.
With John’s reluctant help, she wrangled it into a closet.
“If it breaks my door, I’m holding you responsible,” John said, smoothing down his hair and adjusting his collar. A streak of white dust stained the black cloth of his suit where the bag had fought him.
“Fair enough,” Mouse panted. “Could have done without that extra strain right before I take on a magical creature, but what can you do? Thornwood is almost as stubborn as you.”
“Please, don’t flatter me. Based on his magic, he is much more stubborn. Stay here for a moment,” John said, then dashed back upstairs before Mouse could respond. When he returned, he held a thin military sword and scabbard, the handle glittering between a knot of blue and gold ribbons.
“Take it. It was my father’s.”
Mouse tried to brush it away, remembering her last encounter with the weapon by the pond with Thornwood. “I have recent experience with swords, and it was not promising. I’m more likely to stab myself.”
“Better than going in with your bare hands,” John insisted.
Mouse relented and looped the hilt through her belt. Her hand brushed against her pocket, and she nearly shot out of her skin when she felt a small hard bump beneath her palm. She pulled out Mickelwaithe’s acorn.
“What is it?” John asked.
“It was a gift from Mickelwaithe,” she said. “I’d forgotten it.”
Mouse held it out to him, and John reared back as though it would bite him.
“Take it. If I’m not back by nightfall, rub the cap.”
John took it gingerly between his fingers. “What will it do?”
“Summon Mickelwaithe.”
“It would be better for you to have it, then,” John said, trying to push it back on her.
“No, I want you to keep an eye on the time for me. Who knows if I will fall prey to another enchantment? Use it if the time comes.”
He closed his hands around it and nodded. “Fine, yes, fine.”
“Are you furious with me?” Mouse asked.
“No more than usual,” he said, pulling her in for a tight hug.
“Good,” she whispered into his shoulder.
The way back through Thistlemarsh Wood was eerily quiet.
No birds sang, and although the wind tugged at her hair and clothes, the leaves made no sound as they moved.
Mouse shuddered as she passed the statue of Carlyle.
Moss already dusted his legs up to his knees in the direction of the Hall.
The golden magic illuminated the lines of horror on his face.
His pupils and irises were gone, leaving only wide, lifeless orbs. Still, Mouse felt his gaze on her.
Trees bent down to her as she passed, the bark shifting on their trunks into distorted faces. The branches snatched at her clothes, like long, snarled fingers. She bit back her scream, painfully aware of the Faerie King and his hunt in the house on the other side of the forest.
She had to hope that the Faerie King believed he’d scared her away and that the other Faerie courtiers were too busy to think of the possibility of a mortal sneaking into their lair.
The skill of making herself small that she learned as a girl in Thistlemarsh under Lord Dewhurst’s tyranny, paired with her knowledge of the house, might be enough to help her in without anyone noticing.
Other elements of the forest also strained toward her.
Flowers pulled against their roots to drape themselves on the path, and the grass flowed like waves back and forth.
They coiled toward her, a lusher green than they had been before the touch of magic.
As she passed, a vine slipped around her ankle.
It pulled her back, biting into her flesh.
Her knee gave out, and she collapsed, limbs splaying across the path. Stones bit into her palms.
“Let me go!” she said, her voice hoarse.
The plants ignored her. She could feel the other tendrils stretch along her leg and wrap up her calf, twisting around her knee like a vise.
Mouse dug the toes of her other boot into the bands and scraped down.
One string came away, but as she tore out one vine, another slithered to replace it.
Her legs dangled off the path. Desperate, she bore her fingers down between the stones.
The compact earth came away in her hands with another pull.
“Let go!” She threw the stones, aiming at the roots. As soon as they hit, the stones bounced away, but a shudder ran through the plants, giving Mouse the moment she needed.
She finally had the leverage to pull the sword from her belt, striking the vines below her shoe. They snapped, curling off the path, and Mouse sprang to her feet and ran.
She did her best to ignore the pain in her arms and legs until the forest ended and the Thistlemarsh grounds began.
Hedgerows pressed along the wall of trees, grown wild with magic. Mouse darted behind them, careful to avoid the threads of light passing between them into the woods. She peered through the interlacing branches, pressing herself into them as much as possible.
Thistlemarsh’s exterior walls were the same, although the light shining out from inside the windows highlighted the cracks in the facade, like a poorly mended teacup.
Figures brushed past the windows, resplendent with crowns of feathers, horns, and hooves.
Behind the hedges, she could see their jewels twinkling, matching their bright white teeth.
To Mouse’s eye, it seemed that the Faerie King’s magic had dethroned Thornwood’s, and that the Faerie King had added his own menacing signature to the building.
She leaned further into the hedge, letting it hold her up so she could focus on the faces. Thornwood was not among them. Mouse barely had time to tamp down the knot of relief, anger, and fear that tangled in her breast when the hedge cracked in two before her.
She fell into the space where the plant had been before, and its sides came together around her, swallowing her whole. The light of the house illuminated the inside of the hedge, where moving branches worked like clockwork to pull her toward Thistlemarsh.
She panicked, reaching for the hilt of John’s sword, but she paused. The touch of the hedge was gentler than that of the wild branches in the woods, almost soft compared to its feral cousins.
Mouse stumbled over a root. Both the branches above and below cradled her, sweeping her back to her feet with the grace of a courtier.
She realized that many of the bushes had grown up with her, tended by her father and then herself.
She could understand why the magic here might help her, unlike the wild trees in the forest. She remembered Mickelwaithe’s hint, that not all the creatures in the house would serve the Faerie King.
The branches brushed through her hair again. Emboldened, a single stem slid across her cheek up to her eyebrow. Mouse gasped as she felt the ghost of her father’s movements reflected in the plants he tended for so long. A knot formed in Mouse’s throat.
The hedge opened just wide enough for her to slip out onto the lawn. The glass of the conservatory twinkled a few feet away.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
The sigh of a thousand leaves brushing against one another echoed from the hedge.
Mouse dove from the opening into the shadow of the conservatory.
The gold of the Faerie King’s magic was muted close to the house.
She could only assume that most of the spell was creeping outward toward Tithe.
Although she was not completely sure of his intentions, Mouse knew enough of the story of Thistlemarsh Hall to assume that the Faerie King intended to take back Tithe, his original payment for the Faerie-blessed house all those years ago.
She was not sure what interest he might claim on that payment, but she would not put it past him to take the surrounding villages as well.
Even if Mr. Hobb would never do something like that, the Faerie King of the old stories would. And so would the Faerie King who’d appeared at her wedding.
Dread at the thought blew through her like an artillery shell. If the last few hours proved anything, it was that Faeries could be cruel indeed. The Faerie King’s magic was strong, and if he wanted to subjugate everyone his magic touched, she knew he was powerful enough to do so.
During the war, mortals had longed for the return of Faerie magic.
Hell, Mouse had yearned for the return of Faerie magic.
But now she knew that it would not have helped at the Front.
Magic would have only prolonged the war when wielded by unfeeling masters.
She thought of Roger, his mind addled by magic as well as gunfire. She grimaced.
Still, she had to move on.
The glass conservatory billowed up at the side of the Hall like a shimmering black cloud. The frosted outline of orange trees pressed against the glass.
A twisted bronze handle jutted out from the conservatory wall. Mouse palmed her keys, still tied around her neck and tucked beneath her collar, but the door swung open at her touch. She wavered, her arm extended forward into the darkness.
She saw the outline of Thornwood’s ring, the gem glinting on her battered finger. She closed her fist tight and followed it into the conservatory. Behind her, the gap in the hedge snapped shut.