The Iron Thorn

22 The Lore of the Weird

MORNING HAD ROLLED around while I’d vanished into the Land of Thorn, and the apple orchard was painted with crooked light and shadows.

Blue light wound through the trees, along with Cal and Dean’s voices.

“Aoife! Aoife Grayson!”

“Stop that racket,” Dean said. “You want to bring down every ghoul living under the mountain?” His lighter snapped and smoke hissed into the morning air. “Aoife! Call out, kid.”

“I’m here,” I said. I was standing on the spot where the hexenring had snatched me, and I moved away from it with all haste, stuffing the goggles Tremaine had gifted me into my pocket. One less thing to try and explain. “I’m here!” My voice ripped out of me, echoing loud and earthly. My knees trembled with relief to be free of the Land of Thorn.

Aether lanterns bobbed around the corner of the house, from the orchard, and Cal came running. “Where in the stars have you been?” he snapped. “You just ran off again. What am I supposed to think?”

Dean followed, slower, his cigarette ember trailing smoke spirits after him. “Got all your fingers and toes, princess?”

“I’m sorry,” I said to Cal, folding my torn sleeve under so he wouldn’t notice. The mornings had gotten colder since we’d been away from Lovecraft, and I could see my breath. “I was walking and I lost track of the time. My chronometer’s in the library.”

“You silly girl!” Cal’s face contorted. “You could have ruined everything. What if a Proctor or someone from Arkham saw you?”

Cal’s worrying would be endearing normally, but right now it just sparked irritation. “Ruined? Cal, this isn’t anything to do with you.” I was shivering, and I put my arms around myself, shrinking away from him. “I’m sorry I worried you,” I said. “But it’s all right. And stop calling me silly.”

He tensed, fists curling, and then released, as if someone had cut his strings. “I thought I’d lost you, Aoife.”

“Far be it from me to interrupt this little reunion,” Dean coughed. “But it’s freezing out here and I’d just as soon we were discussing this over a breakfast and a hot cuppa.”

“He’s right,” I said in relief, stepping around Cal so I didn’t have to look at his shattered face. “Let’s all go inside. I’m starving.”

We trooped back to Graystone, where Bethina waited in the doorway, twisting her striped apron between her hands. “Oh, miss!” she cried when I was close, and flung her arms around me.

“I …” I patted her back as well as I could, crushed between her plump arms. “It’s all right, Bethina.”

“When your bed hadn’t been mussed and Dean hadn’t seen you for hours, I knew you were lost for good this time, miss. Knew it.” She sniffled deeply.

“It’s good to know all of you have so much faith in me,” I grumbled with a smile. No one returned it. I extricated myself gently from Bethina’s grasp. “If you’re up to it, I think we’d all like some breakfast.”

“Of course,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “I’ve got some oatmeal and store-bought pancake mix. Should still be good. Pancakes and porridge all around.”

While Bethina bustled in the kitchen I went to my room and changed into a pair of toreador pants and a silk blouse that I tied up around my waist. My hair was hopeless, but I managed to comb out the moss and leaves and lily petals.

Dean found me as I descended the stairs, stopping my path. “What’s the word, kitten?”

“Exhausted,” I said, glad he’d found me and not Cal right then. “Hungry. Pick one.”

Dean tipped his head to the side. The light caught his eyes and turned them liquid silver. “You going to tell me what really happened after you went AWOL last night?”

I worried my lip. “I’m too cold to go up on the roof again.”

“When the sun warms things up, then,” he said. “We’ll walk and you’ll talk. Sound fair?”

Tremaine’s words bubbled up in my thoughts, scornful and sharp. That’s the last bargain I’m to give you.

“All right,” I said. On an impulse, I grabbed Dean’s hand and squeezed. He was warm, alive and solid and I clung longer than I needed to. “I’m glad you stayed.”

Dean squeezed in return. “Right back at you.”

“Breakfast!” Bethina’s shout echoed from the kitchen. “Pancakes! Come and get ’em if you’re able!”

Dean sighed and let go of my hand. “Stale johnnycakes and mushy oatmeal. The stuff dreams are made of.”

“Dean …,” I started as he thumped down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom.

“Yeah, princess?”

I waved him off. Dean seemed willing to accept my flights of fancy about the Weird, but telling him I’d visited a land where the Folk watched their cursed queens sleep could only be asking for even more trouble than telling Cal about the library.

“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”

“I won’t, but I’ll be patient,” Dean said. “Hungry enough to eat a nightjar raw.”

I waited until he’d gone and then went to the library above and got my father’s journal. I needed it near me. I needed to know that in shouldering the burden of Tremaine and his cursebreaker, I wasn’t alone.

Cal shoved his third pancake into his mouth, rivulets of syrup coating his chin. “I don’t understand why you read those musty things,” he said, pointing at my father’s book. “I’d kill for a copy of Weird Tales.”

“I like books,” I said, tucking it under my elbow. “We always had books.”

“That one doesn’t even have a proper picture on the cover,” Cal snorted. “Give it here, let’s see what the fuss is about.”

“No.” I jerked it away from his sticky fingers. Cal frowned.

“See, this is what happens when you read too much. You get bad manners and bad habits. You’ll need glasses before you know it.”

“Nothing wrong with a pair of cat’s-eyes,” Dean said. “They can do favors for a pretty girl.” He dropped me a wink while Cal’s face pinked.

“We won’t always be schoolkids, Aoife,” Cal piped up. “What will a husband think of this bookworm habit?”

“Cal, why do you care?” I slammed down my plate, appetite gone after half a bowl of oatmeal.

“I’m helping,” he muttered. “You—you don’t have a mother to tell you these things.”

I grabbed my father’s book and shoved my chair back with a screech. I loved Cal like another brother, but right then I felt like I did when Conrad teased me once too often—like I wanted to slap him and tell him to go jump off a bridge. “Cal, unless you want the job, lay off. Stop being my fussy aunt and just be my friend.”

“You’re misunderstanding …,” he started, and then scrubbed at his chin with his napkin. “No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have spoken up.”

“You shouldn’t,” I concurred. Cal’s jaw twitched.

“Aoife, what’s gotten into you? You’re rude and short and you disappear for hours on end. Is there something you want to tell me?”

I tightened my grip on the journal. “Not a thing,” I gritted and turned on my heel, storming into the library.

The orderly rows of books were soothing, familiar. After the alien landscape of Thorn, it was a larger relief than I’d imagined.

Alone after I’d climbed into the attic space, I felt a deep, fathomless cold envelop me. Tremaine had threatened Cal and Dean if I disobeyed him. He knew what had happened to Conrad and he would keep the secret eternally, I had no doubt, if I crossed him.

Even believing that there was more to my world than the School, the necrovirus and life with the stigma of madness was still difficult in the light of day.

To think that I now had the task of serving the Kindly Folk in my father’s place made my chest tight, my heart beat too fast. I sat down, or rather folded over, and put my head on my knees. I breathed until it wasn’t difficult anymore. I might not have known my father the way most children did theirs, but I was still his daughter. The truth was inescapable, after what Tremaine had shown me—my father and I shared a duty, and I would not let him down while our odd blood still flowed in my veins.

I opened his journal. The ink swam for a moment before it settled onto the page when I touched it. I paged through my father’s more recent entries, but found nothing of much use.

I become more disconcerted each time the Strangers visit me,

my father wrote. Before my geas-bewitched eyes, he paced a vast bedroom, rain lashing the night beyond.

They conceal secrets beyond imagination about the Thorn Land, and I fear the dark shadow that belies their appearance a little more at each turning of the moon.

I heard glass shatter somewhere beyond my view, and my father’s head whipped around, then he turned back and continued pacing.

Breathless, I read on to see what became of him.

Not very becoming of the line, to admit fear, but the Strangers are harbingers of the foe we both face in the Kindly Folk’s secrets, and what that foe is, even nightmares could not conceive.

My father put his pen down quickly, then ran from his bedroom, and I rubbed my fingers over my eyelids. Sighing, I flipped to the most recent entry in the diary.

No further mention of Strangers leapt out at my eyes. They came in shadow, and shadow had taken Conrad.

Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I wished that I’d known Archie sooner. If I’d grown up with a father who’d prepared me to take the reins of Minder, I would know where Conrad was already. I wouldn’t owe Tremaine my end of the bargain.

“I could use some help,” I told the diary. “Not that you appear to care one bit.” I turned my eyes back to the ink.

2 September, 1955.

A few months before I’d gotten Conrad’s letter. Such a small amount of time, when you put it on the vast line of the universe, yet so large when it was the gulf separating me from using my Weird and staving off the Folk from my friends.

I must be quick.

I paid full attention to the page for the first time that evening. My father was, if anything, as verbose as he was cryptic. His normally bell-clear handwriting was jagged, too, jumping all over the page and leaving behind a snowfall of ink drops from where he pressed down too hard with his fountain pen.

They are at my heels at last. I have refused their command, their mantle of cursebreaker, for the final time.

They are coming, and there is no help for it now. Not even the clockwork bones of my house can hold them back. I must flee. I must find the Bone Sepulchre and seek the shadowy aid of the mists, of the Strangers. I must, I must, I must, or perish on the Winnowing Stone surely as the chosen maiden at the harvest moon.

My throat was dry in the warm air of the attic and my fingers rattled the vellum paper as I turned the page.

Conrad, Aoife … my charge to you is to flee. Never visit the Land of Thorn. Never seek the truth that lies beyond the iron and steam of the Proctors’ world. Let it die with me.

If you value your lives, let it die. Do not seek me. Do not find me.

Save yourselves.

The journal hit the floor with a muffled thwack as I pressed my hand over my mouth. Shivers racked me, the air suddenly icy. But not the air—just my skin. Chills crawled over me, digging in their thorny claws.

My father knew I’d come looking for him. He’d tried to warn me about the very thing I’d agreed to do for Tremaine.

What had I done?

A creak sounded at the foot of the ladder and I composed myself. “Cal …,” I sighed, turning to the hatch. “I just need to be alone for a bit, all right?”

“Not Cal, I’m afraid.” Bethina’s copper curls crested the ladder, eyes roving over the unruly shelves, the dust, my cross-legged seat on the floor. Anywhere, I noticed, but my face. “May I come up, miss?”

I composed myself, running a hand over my face to erase the anger and fatigue. “It’s a free country,” I said. “ ’Less you’re a heretic.” Or a madwoman.

“I don’t talk so, you know.” Bethina hoisted herself over the hatch, puffing. “The gals from Arkham—the nice ones—don’t spit out whatever they’re thinking.”

“It’ll be the bane of my imaginary husband’s existence, I’m sure,” I said bitterly.

“I like it, actually.” Bethina ducked her head. “You’re frank, miss. Like a boy.”

I tucked the journal under my knee. I didn’t want anyone reading it, especially not an ordinary girl like Bethina. She wouldn’t understand and I didn’t have the words to explain.

“Truth is the only constant thing we have,” I said. “My mother used to say that.” Like Nerissa would know a real truth if it bit her. There were the things my father wrote about, and then there were my mother’s ramblings.

“She sounds like a whip-smart lady, miss,” Bethina said.

“She’s not.” My curt tone made me even more disgusted with myself. Useless to find my brother or my father, and now snooty on top.

“Mr. Cal speaks highly of her. He says that she did a fine job of raising you.”

I worried the edges of the journal, surprised that he’d actually said that out loud after our fight, and to Bethina, of all people. Cal thought girls were a different species. “Cal’s kind,” I said aloud. “He … he prefers to see things as they might be.”

“He’s got a shine for you, miss,” Bethina said. “And with the way you fight like cats and dogs, might I assume that it goes both ways?”

“You might not,” I sniffed. “And you’re being …” What was it the snooty characters in the lanterns said? “Entirely too familiar,” I finished, with the requisite disapproving eyebrow.

“Apologies, miss,” Bethina said, though she didn’t seem sorry. “I didn’t mean to jabber at you. I just wanted to give you this.”

She reached under her apron and drew a battered notebook from her dress pocket. It was small, the type that would be carried in my uniform were I at school to work problems and jot down notes while I walked to and fro from classes.

“What is this?” I said. The book’s black leather cover bore no marking.

“It was in Mr. Grayson’s personal things after he went away,” Bethina said. “I think he forgot to take it.”

I took the book and thumbed the dog-eared, coffee-stained pages. Something new. Something that could help me out of this mess. Bethina had actually come through. I tightened my grasp on the book. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” I said.

“Don’t, miss.” Bethina shrugged. “Most city girls with your breeding, they’d take me for a bumpkin and boss me about. You just talk to me. I appreciate it.”

The notebook was nearly full, tight sentences almost too small to read. “Why not give it to Conrad?” I asked. “He was looking for the same things I was.”

Bethina’s smile fell away. “Mr. Conrad got taken before I could tell him any of this.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask …” I paused, wondering if I really wanted to know. “How did he seem before he left? Archibald … my dad?” The last words of his witch’s alphabet burned in my mind. Do not seek me. Save yourselves. Had he thought I might actually read those words, before he left? Had he thought of me ever, besides putting my name at the top of the entry?

“Like I told before, frantic,” Bethina said. “Never seen him scared before that. He was a gentleman but he weren’t no dandy, your pop.” She put her chin on her fist. “It was like he’d done something wrong, you follow? Like he were a heretic and the whole Bureau of Heresy was coming for him.”

“Worse,” I muttered, thinking of Tremaine.

“Maybe that will help,” Bethina said, tapping the notebook. “He were always scribbling in it, when he’d be up and about the house. I can’t make hide nor hair of the coding he put his words into, but you’re a bright one, miss. Good luck.”

She started back to the hatch and I stole another look at the notebook. The cramped writing swam before my eyes and became clearly legible. I blinked, and the type was gibberish again.

The notebook was enchanted like the witch’s alphabet. “Thank you, Bethina,” I said. “Really. I’d like to be alone with this, if you don’t mind. To … er … think.”

She bobbed her head. “Yes, miss. And if I may … I just know you’re the kind of daughter Mr. Grayson’d hold his head up to have.”

Well, that made one of us.

The ladder creaked, and she was gone. I shut the hatch, agonizing while it rolled its slow way into place, and then opened the notebook and stared at the writing while I waited for my father’s memory to appear.

It didn’t take long for the silvery images to fade the real world around me, graying my vision like rain and fog through window glass.

My father wasn’t young in this memory, but his hair was still dark and he was sans spectacles. He sat thoughtfully in his armchair, tapping his fountain pen against his bottom lip. I did the same thing when I was stuck on a calculation or a persnickety mechanical problem.

After a moment, my father scribbled something in his notebook. Conspirators? Who? Why?

I’d stayed nearly motionless before, lest I disturb the enchantment and break up the reel of memory, but this time I spoke. My voice came out a papery whisper.

“Um … excuse me?”

My father continued to scribble, a lock of hair falling into his face. He hadn’t shaved and he wasn’t wearing a collar or a vest. Deep silver-gray crescents painted themselves under his eyes, and he scratched absently at the cleft in his chin.

“There isn’t a lick of sense in this,” he grumbled.

“Archibald,” I said, louder, when his image didn’t vanish. “Father?”

Memory-Archie’s head snapped up. “You can see me?”

“Of course,” I said, after a moment of silence at the shock of getting his attention. “I found your journal.”

“The witch’s alphabet?” Archie dropped his notebook and scrabbled for it. “Star and sun, do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in reading that thing?”

“I don’t know how to say this,” I began, deciding to keep on course even though his proclamations of danger threw me off balance. “But do you … do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do. You’re my daughter. Aoife.” My father rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll be honest—I’d hoped to never see you. But here you are.”

“I …” My voice hitched without my accord at his disappointment in putting eyes on me. “I’m sorry—no, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry. I need to know something.”

My father sighed, his silvery image fluttering like a hand had passed through the lantern projector’s light stream. “You want to know about the cursed queens. And why I didn’t take Tremaine’s infernal bargain.”

I felt my eyes go wide, but composed myself even though a thousand questions were fighting for space in my mind. I bit down on them. “Yes,” I said. “Tremaine says that I’m the cursebreaker, but … I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to break the curse.”

My father stood, tucking his notebook into the sagging breast pocket of his jacket. “You look like your mother,” he said. “I always imagined you’d take after me. Guess that’s why I’m not a fortune-teller.”

He did think about me. At least once. My stomach stopped flipping over. He did know who I was. I was still knotted up and terrified over my confrontation with Tremaine, but at that moment I could have sprouted clockwork wings and flown. “I have your eyes,” I murmured. “At least, that’s what Nerissa always says.”

“Aoife.” My father reached out, and his fingers brushed my shoulder and passed through me like a ghost in a beam of light. “You have to understand I didn’t give you up willingly. It was for—”

“For my own good?” The words ripped from me and I jabbed my finger into the memory’s face, all attempts to appear demure and well bred flying out the window at his words. “Do you have any idea what I’ve endured in the name of my own good? You made Conrad and me orphans, so please don’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that you were being altruistic.” I flung up my hands, my face heating and my voice rising. “None of this is for my own good, Dad.”

The memory held up its hands. “You’ll believe what you’ll believe, Aoife. Think me cruel if you want, but trust me when I say that the Folk are dangerous to a man, and that Tremaine is worse than most.”

“Just tell me how to break the curse,” I grumbled, “and I won’t bother you any longer.” I’d waited my entire life for this moment, and though I knew the enchantment wasn’t my father in flesh, it was close enough. The crushing feeling on my chest was one I knew well enough that I wasn’t surprised by its presence, even in the wake of my elation. Nerissa had disappointed me innumerable times. I had been stupid to think that my father would be different.

“You can’t break the curse,” my father said impatiently. “No one can. The magic laid on the queens is like nothing else in either the Thorn Land or the Iron one.” He slashed his hand across his chest. “I don’t know Tremaine’s motive for setting us the task, but it isn’t anything good. Forget about trying. You’ll only get hurt.”

“Choice is a luxury I don’t have,” I said, holding myself straight as if I were being castigated by Professor Swan. “Conrad’s missing and Tremaine knows where he is. So, Father, are you going to help me or not?”

He pressed a hand against his forehead and then paced away from me, like the library above was too small to contain even his memory. “No one among me and my kind knows who set the curse against the Folk. No one knows why and no one knows how. Even the Iron Codex has been no help, the pooling of all our knowledge for two hundred and fifty years. With that dearth of information, feel free to do your best with Tremaine’s task. It’s impossible. He’s setting you up to fail, Aoife.”

“Why?” I demanded with confusion. “He wants his queen awake—he told me.”

“Tremaine would as soon have the Winter throne for himself,” my father scoffed. “And to have a Gateminder in his pocket, when you inevitably can’t fulfill your end of the bargain—he could travel in the Iron Land free as we do.”

All of what he said made a certain, sickening sort of sense, but it didn’t change the fact that I had to find Conrad. Even though he’d begged me not to come after him, I couldn’t leave my brother to the Folk. Knowing now how my father felt, Conrad was all I had.

“I’m doing it” was what I voiced.

“Aoife, dammit. There are things I can’t explain to you, but know that the curse cannot be broken. To try is to fail.” He reached for me again, but I backed away. My father’s face fell. “Please, Aoife,” he said softly. “Just go home.”

I slapped the notebook shut, and the silver memory shattered into a million dancing motes before it vanished into the shadow of the library above.

“This is my home now,” I whispered, but my father was gone.

I stayed where I was for a few moments, feeling sick with disappointment and confusion. My father wasn’t going to help me. He didn’t even want to speak with me.

There was a knocking on the ladder, and I swiped at my watering eyes and opened the hatch. Sniveling wasn’t going to break Tremaine’s curse or get Conrad back.

Dean stood at the foot of the ladder, rolling a cigarette between his forefinger and thumb. I shoved the notebook into my pocket and climbed down.

Dean examined me.

“You look upset.” No pet names this time. No doubt he was sick to death of my antics and broody moods, just like Cal.

“I am upset,” I ground shortly. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk or think or do anything but ball up my fist and hit something, but if I do that I’m unladylike, so I guess I’ll just go try on some dresses or put up my hair until the urge passes.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose. “Let’s you and me take a walk,” he said.

“I don’t want to walk,” I snarled. “I don’t need to be protected.”

“No, you don’t,” Dean said. His calm was maddening when matched with my rage. “But I want to walk, and I want you to walk with me, so before you take my head off again, consider that you don’t have to say a word.” He flashed me his grin. “I hate mouthy broads, you know.”

The tightness in my chest eased, a fraction. “You said you wanted to hear what really happened when I disappeared.” I went to the panel and shut up the library above. “That still true?”

“So true it squeaks,” Dean said. He put the cigarette in his mouth and tipped his head toward the door. “Come on. I’ve been listening to the cowboy smack over pancakes for the last half hour. I’d swear that kid was a rot-gut if I didn’t know better.”

I crinkled my nose. Rot-guts were gluttonous globs of used-to-be people who hid in dark damp places when the virus overtook them and ate anything they could. Tin, garbage, human flesh. It was all the same when the necrovirus was riding your bloodstream.

“No,” I told Dean. “He’s not. He just eats like one.”

Dean nudged my elbow. “Come on. Walking. You and me.”

I followed him outside, not wanting to admit how much I liked the sound of just Dean and me, together.