The Sweet Far Thing

Page 175

“Wendy? What has happened? Why are you hiding?”
“It’s that screamin’, miss.” She sniffles. “Used to be a lit’le. I ’ear it all the time these days.”
Felicity checks behind the other tapestries in the room on the chance it’s all a game of hide-and-seek. “Allee-allee-all free! Pip? Pippa Cross!” She drops into the throne with a pout. “Where is everyone?”
“It’s as if they’ve vanished.” Ann opens a door but there’s nothing but vines inside.
Wendy shivers. “Sometimes I wake up and it feels like I’m the only soul ’ere.”
She flutters her blue-stained fingers to a basket of the berries Pip has gathered, the berries that have cursed our friend to her existence here. I note the blue stains on her mouth as well.
“Wendy, have you been eating the berries?” I ask.
Her face shows fear. “It’s all there was, miss, and I was so hungry.”
“Don’t fret,” I say, because there is nothing else that can be done.
“I’m going to the tower for a lookout,” Fee says, and I hear her feet making quick work of those crumbling stairs.
“I’m afraid, miss,” Wendy says, fresh tears falling.
“Now, now.” I pat her shoulder. “We’re here. It will be all right. And what of Mr. Darcy? Where is your twitchy friend?”
Wendy’s lips quiver. “Bessie said ’e gnawed through his cage and got out. Been callin’ for ’im but ’e won’t come.”
“Don’t cry. Let’s see if we can scare him up. Mr. Darcy,” I call. “You’ve been a very naughty bunny.”
I search anywhere a mischievous rabbit might hide—in the berry baskets, under the moldy carpets, behind doors. I spy the cage sitting upon the altar in the chapel. There’s no sign of the twigs having been nibbled through; they’re right as rain. But the cage door is open.
“Looking for your friends?” The fairy glows brightly in the gloom of a corner. “Perhaps they have gone back to the Winterlands.”
Felicity bounds into the room at precisely that moment. “Pippa wouldn’t go without me.”
“Do you know for certain?” the winged thing asks.
“Yes, I do,” Fee says, but her face darkens, and she glances quickly toward the Winterlands.
“Someone comes,” the fairy says. Quick as a snap, she flits out of the castle. Felicity, Ann, and I chase after her into the forest. On the other side of the bramble wall, a cloud of dust moves toward us. It is the centaurs riding fast. They pull up short, not daring to cross into the Borderlands.
One of the centaurs shouts to me through the thorns. “Philon has called for you, Priestess.”
“Why? What has happened?”
“It’s Creostus. He’s been murdered.”
Beneath the olive trees in the grotto where the Runes of the Order once stood, Creostus’s body lies sprawled, his arms stretched out on either side. His eyes are open but unseeing. In one hand he clutches a perfect poppy. It mirrors the bloody wound in his chest. Creostus and I were not friends—his temper was far too great—but he was so very alive. It is hard to see him dead.
“What do you know of this, Priestess?” Philon asks.
I can scarcely look away from Creostus’s blank eyes. “I knew nothing of it until a few moments ago.”
“Liar.” Neela hops onto a rock. “You know who is responsible.” She transforms herself into Asha—the orange sari, the blistered legs, the dark eyes.
“You think it is the Hajin,” I say.
“You know it is! Creostus had ridden to bargain for poppies. The foul tribe had cheated him of a full bushel. Now we find him here with a poppy in his hand. Who else could be responsible? The filthy Hajin, helped by the Order!”
Neela’s voice chokes with emotion. She strokes Creostus’s face lovingly. Crying, she lowers herself to his chest, stretching out across his lifeless form.
Gorgon speaks from the river. “The Order can be hard, but they have never killed. And you forget that they have no entry into the realms at present. They have no power here.”
Neela glares at me. “And yet I saw the priestess on her way to the Temple, alone.”
“Neela speaks the truth, for we were with her. We saw the priestess, too,” a centaur adds.
“You’re lying!” Felicity shouts, coming to my defense, but my cheeks redden, and it does not go unnoticed by Philon.
“Is this true, Priestess?”