Ronan’s voice was flat. “I used to call her Orphan Girl.”
Adam had suggested Cabeswater, so they took her to Cabeswater.
He wasn’t sure, yet, what they would do there; it was just the first thing he’d thought of. Actually, it was the second, but his first thought was so shameful that he’d immediately regretted it.
He’d taken one look at her and thought if she’d been another night horror they could have just killed it or left it somewhere.
A second later – no – no, less than a second, half a second, simultaneously – he hated himself for thinking it. It was exactly the sort of thought he’d expect from his father’s son. What, you want to leave? You’re going to go? Is that your bag? Believe me, if I was allowed to let you go, I’d have dropped you in a ditch myself. Everything’s a production with you.
He hated himself, and then he hated his father, and then he gave the emotion to Cabeswater in his head and Cabeswater rolled it away.
And now they were at Cabeswater itself, Cabeswater in the flesh, here at Adam’s second thought that he wished had been his first, taking the Orphan Girl to Ronan’s mother, Aurora. This was the field they had spotted from the air long ago, with a huge raven formed of shells. Gansey could not avoid driving over the scattered shells, but he took care to avoid the raven itself. Adam appreciated this part of Gansey, his endless concern for the things in his care.
The vehicle stopped. Gansey, Blue and Adam got out. Ronan and his strange little girl did not; it seemed there was some negotiation occurring.
They waited.
Outside, the sky was low and gray and torn by the peaks over the brown-red-black of Cabeswater’s trees. From where they stood, it was nearly possible to imagine it was just an ordinary forest on an ordinary Virginia mountain. But if one squinted into Cabeswater long enough, in the right way, one could see secrets dart between the trees. The shadows of horned animals that never appeared. The winking lights of another summer’s fireflies. The rushing sound of many wings, the sound of a massive flock always out of sight.
Magic.
This close to the forest, Adam felt very … Adam. His head was crowded with the ordinary sensation of his coveralls folded at the small of his back, the ordinary thought of the literature exam the next day. It seemed like he should become stranger, more other, when he was near Cabeswater, but in reality, the closer he was to Cabeswater, the more firmly present he remained. His mind didn’t have to wander far to communicate with Cabeswater when his body was able to lift a hand to touch it.
Strange he hadn’t had a premonition of what this place would become to him all those months ago. But maybe not. So much of magic – of power, in general – required belief as a prerequisite.
Gansey took a phone call. Adam took a piss. Ronan remained in the SUV.
Adam rejoined Blue on the other side of the vehicle. He took pains to stare at neither her breasts nor her lips. Adam and Blue were no longer together – insofar as they had ever been together in the first place – but being broken up and aware that it was good for both of them had not diminished the aesthetic appeal of either set of body parts. Her hair had got wilder since he first met her, less contained by all of her clips, and her mouth had got messier since he met her, more desirous of forbidden kisses, and her stance had got harder, her spine sharpened by grief and peril.
“I think you and I need to talk about,” she said. She didn’t finish the sentence, but her eyes were on Gansey. He wondered if she knew how transparent her gaze was. Had she ever looked that hungry when she’d looked at him?
“Yes,” Adam replied. Too late, he realized she probably meant to discuss the search for Glendower’s favour, not to confess her secret relationship with Gansey. Well, they needed to talk about that, too.
“When?”
“I’ll call you tonight. Wait – I have work. Tomorrow after school?”
They nodded. It was a plan.
Gansey was still talking to his phone. “No, traffic is nonexistent unless it’s a bingo night. A shuttle? How many people are you expecting? I can’t imagine – oh. The activity bus could be pressed into service, surely.”
“KERAH!”
Both Blue and Gansey started wildly at the feral shriek. Adam, recognizing Chainsaw’s name for Ronan, searched the sky.
“Jesus Mary,” Ronan snarled. “Stop being impossible.”
Because it wasn’t Chainsaw who had screamed the raven’s name for Ronan. It was the waifish little Orphan Girl. She was folded into an impossibly small shape in the colourless field grass behind the SUV, looking like a pile of clothing. She rocked and refused to stand. When Ronan hissed something else at her, she screamed in his face again. Not a child’s scream, but a creature’s scream.
Adam had seen many of Ronan’s dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he’d seen. What a frightened monster she was.
“It’s the apocalypse. Just text me if you think of anything else.” Gansey hung up. “What’s wrong with her?” His tone was hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure if something was wrong with her, or if this was just the way she always was.
“She doesn’t want to go in,” Ronan said. Without any ceremony, he leaned in, scooped up the girl, and began to march towards the forest’s edge. It was clear now, with her spidery legs dangling over one of his arms, that they ended in dainty hooves.
On the other side of Adam, Blue put her fingers to her lips and then dropped them again. In a very low voice, she said, “Oh, Ronan!” But it was in the same way one would whisper, Oh man!
Because it was impossible. The dream creature was a girl; she was not; she was an orphan; they were not parents. Adam could not very well judge Ronan for dreaming so vastly; Adam was also trading in magic he didn’t understand perfectly. These days, they all had their hands thrust into the sky, hoping for comets. The only difference was that Ronan Lynch’s wild and expanding universe existed inside his own head.
“Excelsior,” said Gansey.
They followed Ronan in.
Inside the forest, Cabeswater murmured, voices hissing from the old autumn trees, disappearing into the old mossy boulders. This place meant something different to all of them. Adam, the forest’s caretaker, was bound by bargain to be its hands and eyes. Blue’s power of amplification was somehow connected to it. Ronan, the Greywaren, had been here long before the rest of them, early enough to leave his handwriting scrawled on rocks. Gansey – Gansey just loved it, fearfully, awesomely, worshipfully.
Overhead, the trees whispered in a secret language, and in Latin, and then in a corrupted version of both, with English words thrown in. They hadn’t spoken any English when the teens had first found them, but they were learning. Fast. Adam couldn’t help but think that there was some secret hidden beneath this language evolution. Were the teens really the first English speakers to encounter the trees? If not, why were the trees only fumbling through English now? Why Latin?
Adam could almost see the truth hidden behind this puzzle.
“Salve,” Gansey greeted the trees, always polite. Blue reached up to touch a branch; she didn’t need words to greet them.