Milo and Shark grinned at him.
The sergeant nodded and went off at a brisk walk, snapping orders to his people. The grins on Milo’s and Shark’s faces vanished as if switched off. They looked at each other, then at the cypress leaning out over the water. It was right at the edge of the marshy place where Shark said he last saw Evangelyne. Shark picked up Killer and they walked over to the tree, glanced around, ducked under it, gave a final look to see if anyone was watching, then turned and ran as fast as they could into the marsh. They were a mile away before they heard the soft hum of the skimmer, but they didn’t even bother to look for it.
They had more important things to do.
Chapter 34
As they moved through the woods, Shark had Milo go through the mental conversation he’d had with the Witch of the World. When Milo was finished, Shark grunted. “Man, you are a freakjob, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Shark paused, then said, “It’s kind of cool, though.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, dude, you’re like a hero on an actual quest.”
“I may be a lot of things, but I am not a hero,” Milo said flatly. A few days ago the Witch of the World had tried to convince Milo that he was a hero, or at least needed to become one. Even though he’d come up with the plan to recover the Heart of Darkness from the Huntsman, and revised the plan when they wound up aboard the hive ship, Milo did not feel like any kind of hero. Lucky, maybe. Determined, no doubt. And probably more than a little nuts. He was okay with that. Hero? Not so much.
It would be nice, though, to suddenly become one. But he was small, scrawny, young, lonely, heartbroken, and scared. Hardly the qualities of a hero.
“Definitely not,” he said, shaking his head.
Shark ignored that and said, “So if you’re the hero, I guess that makes me the plucky sidekick.” He thought about it. “Not sure ‘plucky’ is the right word. Not even sure what it means. How about ‘intrepid’? Or ‘stalwart’?”
“‘Stalwart’? What’s that mean?” asked Milo. “I keep seeing it in stories.”
“Not sure. I think it means ‘tough.’ Or maybe ‘determined.’”
“I’d go for ‘annoying sidekick.’”
“Cute.”
“‘Fart-tastic sidekick,’” suggested Milo.
“I’m going to hurt you.”
“‘Smelly sidekick’ . . .”
“Or,” suggested a voice from the shadows, “how about ‘Idiot Boy and his loudmouth sidekick’?”
They whipped around and saw her standing there. Pale eyes, pale hair, pale skin, looking ghostly in the moonlight.
Evangelyne.
“I thought you boys were supposed to be skilled in woodcraft,” she said coldly.
“We were whispering,” Shark said defensively.
“A deaf rock troll could hear you half a mile away,” she fired back. “You’re only lucky that there are no shocktroopers around.”
Milo was glad it was dark, because he was dead certain his face was as red as a boiled lobster. Then all thoughts of his own embarrassment vanished as he saw the tear tracks on her cheeks and the wild look in her eyes. Her sarcasm had probably been an attempt to keep herself from going crazy with fear. Milo could certainly understand.
He took a half step forward. “How are you?”
She shrugged, and that simple action made her wince in pain. She stood awkwardly and looked worn out. “Healing,” she said, dismissing it. “It’s not important. We have matters far more grave than a few scratches.”
Her bones had been shattered, and even now, healing through the powers of her lycanthropic nature, she must be in severe pain, but Milo didn’t pursue it. Evangelyne was very proud and seemed to need to appear unaffected by things that bothered ordinary mortals. It was all put on, but if it helped her deal, then Milo was okay with it.
“Look,” he said, “I know about the Heart of Darkness. I know it’s damaged.”
“What? How? Who told you?”
Shark very unkindly said, “You screamed it loud enough for even a deaf rock troll to hear.”
Evangelyne turned a lethal stare at him, but Shark managed not to wither and die.
“What happened?” asked Milo. “Was it damaged when we crashed?”
“When you crashed?” she said in a voice that was nearly a snarl. Making it a clear accusation. “The wall crumpled inward on my legs and . . . well, the Heart was damaged.”
“How bad is it?”
Evangelyne considered his question, then with great reluctance reached a trembling hand into the pouch slung from her belt and carefully withdrew an object. She held her hand out and then uncurled her fingers. There on her palm was a jewel, like a multifaceted diamond except that it was as black as midnight sky. Milo had seen the Heart of Darkness before, had held it, had fought alongside Evangelyne and the Orphan Army to recover it from the Huntsman, but now it looked different and wrong to him. Instead of a jewel that felt alive, and that seemed like a window through which he could see an infinity of glittering stars, it was ordinary and small and totally without luster. The moonlight accentuated its damage by highlighting a jagged crack that ran from one side to the other.
“Oh no . . . ,” he breathed.
When he glanced up at Evangelyne, he saw that the wild look in her eyes was worse than he’d thought, and he realized that she was on the very edge of total panic. Maybe even despair.
“It’s all lost,” she whispered. “All lost.”
“No,” said Milo, “it’s—”
She wasn’t listening. Evangelyne clutched her hand tightly around the stone and pressed her fist to her chest, directly over her own heart. She kept talking, but Milo was pretty sure her words weren’t directed at either him or Shark.
“The Heart is broken. All doors are sealed to us, all pathways blocked. We’re lost and the worlds of shadows are closed to us. We called ourselves orphans before, but now we truly are. This is the end of all songs. This is the last page of the ancient story of the Nightsiders. We have survived so much, suffered and sacrificed so much, and it ends here because a stupid little boy did not know how to fly a spaceship. That doesn’t even sound like a real story. It can’t be real. The Heart of Darkness cannot be lost because of some human boy. It can’t have come to me, it can’t have been mine to protect, if it all ends so easily and so . . . so . . . so . . .”
As she spoke, her voice rose and rose, going from nervous to shrill to something bordering on hysterical. Milo tried to stop her, calling her name over and over again, but Evangelyne seemed like she was going away from them.
“Dude,” breathed Shark. “Do something. She’s getting loud. . . .”
Killer began to whine.
“. . . and we are all going to die. The Huntsman will destroy the forests and the mountains, and the Swarm will suck away the oceans and turn this world into an empty shell. He’ll take all the magic with him and he—he will build a new dark heart and he will find a new doorway into the shadow worlds and then all will be—”
Milo grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close until they were nose to nose. Risking it all, he shouted at her. Loud. Loud enough to break through her hysterical shrieks.
“We can fix it!” he yelled.
Everything stopped.
Her shrill rant, the sounds of insects in the woods, even the sound of Killer’s whines. It all stopped.
Until Evangelyne—who still stared with wild eyes—said, “Wh-what?”
Milo took a breath. “We need to find the Heir of Gadfellyn Hall. We need to find some kid who lives in a big old house that has this crazy-huge library. The Witch of the World said that if there’s any chance of fixing the Heart of Darkness, he’s the only one who’ll be able to help us.”
Evangelyne kept staring, her fist still pressed tightly to her chest.
“Listen to me,” begged Milo. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”
Her lips moved, forming four wo
rds that meant nothing to Milo. Not yet. In a ghost of a voice, Evangelyne said, “The Vault of Shadows.”
Milo flicked a glance at Shark, who spread his hands in an “I got nothing” gesture.
To Evangelyne, Milo said, “What’s the Vault of Shadows?”
“It’s a secret room in Gadfellyn Hall that only the Heir of that mansion can enter. It contains an ancient library where the most powerful and dangerous of magical texts are stored. But . . . but . . .”
She stopped and shook her head.
“What?” demanded Milo. “If it’s somewhere far away, who cares? We’ll manage. Just tell me where this Gadfellyn Hall place is and how we get there.”
She blinked the wildness from her eyes and then looked at him as if he were the one who had gone a little crazy. “Gadfellyn Hall,” she murmured, “is not even a real place. It hasn’t been for a long, long time. The Heir is long dead. Turned to dust and shadows.”
“What?” yelled Milo and Shark together.
“It was destroyed more than a century ago. It exists now only as a dream.”
“Oh, man,” breathed Shark, closing his eyes and banging his head lightly on the closest tree. “This is just great.”
Milo released Evangelyne and staggered backward. “No . . . ,” he breathed. “No, that can’t be. The witch told me to find the Heir of Gadfellyn Hall. She told me.”
A strange, slow smile blossomed on Evangelyne’s face, chasing more of the madness from her eyes. “Then we’ll find him.”
“But . . . but you just said he was dead.”
She looked at him, surprised. “And why should that matter?”
Chapter 35
Milo and Shark stared at her.
They both said, “Um . . . what now?”
Killer whined in confusion.
Evangelyne opened her hand and looked once more at the stone. There was still some wildness in her stare, but far less. She used the fingers of her other hand to brush errant strands of pale hair from her face and to smooth the tear tracks into her skin until there was no trace of them. If she was embarrassed, she didn’t show it. Instead she cleared her throat and spoke as if this were any normal conversation on any other day than this one.
“Do you know the story of Gadfellyn Hall?” she asked without taking her eyes from the jewel.
“Only some of it,” Milo confessed. “Just what I remember from dreams.”
“Tell me.”
Milo did. He told about the lonely little boy in the empty house, about how he was lost for a long time—cold and hungry and abandoned—and then found comfort among the endless rows of books in the Impossible Library.
“That’s just a story, though,” he said. “I think.”
“Everything is a story,” said Evangelyne. “Even the truth is a story.”
“Nope,” said Shark, “didn’t get that one at all.”
She ignored him and kept her eyes on the crystal. “Haven’t you ever heard that there is a little bit of truth in every tall tale?”
“Well . . . sure,” said Milo.
“Except when there’s not,” Shark pointed out. “People do sometimes just make stuff up.”
“Not this time,” Evangelyne said. “There is much more than a ‘bit’ of truth in this story. This may be our best hope, and I’m a fool for not having thought of it.” She blinked once more and then seemed to totally snap out of her distraught state. She looked around, as if surprised to discover that they were standing in the woods under a spill of moonlight.
“You okay?” asked Milo.
“It’s just that dealing with a ghost is frightening. They are so devious and strange. And besides, they never do anything for the living without payment.”
“What kind of payment?”
“There’s no way to know until we confront him. All I know for certain is that ghosts always want something from the living. Always. And no matter what the Heir demands of us to repair the Heart of Darkness, we will have to pay it.”
They stood there as the enormity of what they were about to undertake rose above them like a tidal wave. It made Milo feel very small and very tired. The others looked like they were on the ragged edge too.
“Maybe we should rest up a bit,” he suggested.
“No! We’re wasting time,” she said decisively, sounding very much like herself. “If you truly heard the voice of the witch, Milo, then we have work to do. We have a long journey ahead of us, and it will take us on strange paths.”
“No kidding,” Shark muttered.
“You don’t have to come, boy,” snapped Evangelyne.
“Hey, this is weird, so I’m allowed to complain. Doesn’t mean that I’m not all in on this.” Then he added, “Girl.”
Evangelyne studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough. We need Mook. Let me call him.”
“How?” asked Shark. “We don’t have a radio or—”
She smiled at that, raised her head, and uttered a single piercing, rising cry. The sound of it sent a chill down Milo’s back, and the cry was echoed—in a tiny, screechy chorus—by Killer.
It was the plaintive howl of a wolf.
Somehow, hearing that sound and seeing it come from the lips of a normal-looking girl reinforced the strangeness of it. Milo would not have reacted with such unease had she howled like that while in wolf form.
Shark actually yeeped again and jumped backward.
Evangelyne ended her call, took a breath, and sighed, her shoulders sagging. But she was nodding to herself.
“What if the Bugs heard that?” whispered Shark, clearly alarmed.
“Then they would think it was a wolf,” Evangelyne said simply. “And they would waste a lot of time looking for one. Besides . . . you may know the science of circuits and alien tech, but I know acoustics. Unless I howled more than once, no Bugs would ever be able to find me. Not if I sent it up to the winds in just the right way.”
“Okay,” said Shark, “that is both really, really cool and really, really creepy.”
Evangelyne smiled faintly, but Milo thought she was pleased, perhaps by both parts of Shark’s observation.
“Will Mook be able to find us, though?” he asked.
“Of course. Mook is Mook.”
“Couldn’t be clearer than that,” said Shark to himself.
“Others, too,” said Evangelyne. “If we’re lucky.” She did not elaborate.
“I think Oakenayl’s around here somewhere,” said Milo. “I’m pretty sure I saw him in the clearing where I saw my dad . . . I mean, where I met that holo-man.” Milo saw her look of confusion and he quickly filled her in on the new and utterly horrifying tech being used by the Dissosterin.
“That is quite dreadful,” she said. “They made you see your dead father?”
“Hey, my dad’s not dead,” insisted Milo, immediately angry. “The holo-guy was dead. This was some kind of weird mind-projecting. Don’t you go saying my dad’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied quickly. “I only meant that it was a cowardly and appalling thing for them to do.”
“Because up till now,” said Shark dryly, “they’ve been so nice and fuzzy with everyone.”
“Hey, guys, let’s stay on the subject here,” snapped Milo. “I saw Oakenayl. Or at least I’m pretty sure I did.”
Evangelyne frowned. “I . . . don’t think so. He promised me he would protect the Hummingbird Grove.”
“The what?”
The wolf girl flushed. “No. Forget I said that.”
“Too late,” said Shark. “Hummingbird Grove? Let me guess, that’s where Halfpint is hiding out until she recovers.”
“Halflight,” said Evangelyne and Milo at once.
“Right. Whatever. That’s where she’s at, right? And it’s some big secret Nightsider place that we Daytimers aren’t allowed to see. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Daylighters,” corrected Evangelyne, “and yes. But no, I won’t talk about it. Some places are sacred to us—different places
for each of the Nightsider clans. The Hummingbird Grove is one of the most sacred places of the fire sprites, and believe me, Oakenayl will defend it to his last leaf, his last drop of sap.”
Shark opened his mouth, clearly intending to make a joke, but Milo cut him off. “Okay,” he said, pointing the way he’d come, “then who did I see in the woods? It was definitely a tree face. Are you saying there’s others like Oakenayl around somewhere?”
“Yeah,” agreed Shark, “I thought they all left and that’s why there’s only a couple of you still here.”
Evangelyne shook her head. “No. Most of the Nightsiders departed for the worlds of shadow. My family left. So did Mook’s and Oakenayl’s. Most of them, anyway. There are always some relatives—cousins, distant uncles and aunts—who linger, but we can’t assume they are our friends, just like we can’t assume the Aes Sídhe are.”
“The who?” asked Shark.
“Tell you later,” Milo said quickly.
An owl hooted in the night and all three of them—and Killer—paused to listen.
“Burrowing owl,” said Shark, and Milo nodded. “A real one, I think.”
It was common for Earth Alliance soldiers to use bird calls for communication. So far, at least, the Bugs did not seem able to tell the difference between real bird calls and faked ones. The owl hooted again.
“It’s real,” agreed Evangelyne, relaxing a fraction. “Nothing to worry about. We’re safe.”
Milo remembered how real the holo-man had looked and sounded. “Not sure we’re ever going to be safe again.”
Shark and Evangelyne nodded, accepting that hard truth.
The moon seemed to have chased all the clouds from the sky.
“The night is burning,” said Evangelyne as she carefully returned the Heart of Darkness to its pouch. “I don’t know how long the jewel can be broken before it’s dead.”
“Dead?” echoed Milo, and he remembered the feeling he’d had when he first heard about the damage to the stone. It was like listening to the heartbeat of someone fading toward permanent blackness. “What do you mean, dead? Is it actually alive?”