The Death of Yorik Mortwell

Yorik sighed. “You don’t need to bother with those anymore. Just push through the wall. It’s like swimming.”

Thomas looked entirely blank.

“You can’t swim?” Yorik asked.

Thomas shook his head no, wobbling his whole upper body along with it. Suppressing a groan, Yorik grasped Thomas’s arm and pulled him through the wall.

Yorik led the way across the Manor, frustrated with Thomas’s slow waddle. As they went, he instructed the other boy. “We must avoid the Dark Ones. Try to do as I do. This late at night, almost everyone in the Manor is asleep, so most of the Dark Ones will be with them, whispering into their dreams.”

Thomas nodded, lip quivering. No doubt he understood about the whispered dreams.

At last they stopped outside an ornate double door at the end of a long hallway. The corridor was dark, but firelight flickered around the edges of the door.

“Fa—!” gurgled Thomas.

“Yes,” said Yorik grimly. “He’s been denying himself sleep these last few nights. You’ll see.”

Thomas lurched for the door, but Yorik stopped him and led him to a place where they could enter the study in a shadowed corner, opposite the fireplace and away from the burning firelight.

They faded in through the wall. Thomas whined at the sight of his father.

The once-commanding figure of the Lord of the Estate was bent forward, his shoulders slumped. His mass of dark hair had turned a scraggly gray.

He wore a dressing gown that had not been washed in weeks and muttered over stacks of papers that had fallen and slipped all over his broad mahogany desk.

Amid the paper piles crouched two Dark Ones, hissing their lies.

Both your children are dead. You could not protect them. You failed as their father and now you have nothing. Nothing.

Lord Ravenby shook his head and mumbled.

The door burst open. The dirigible captain stormed in, wielding his club. His flight suit had a long, jagged tear down its front.

Lord Ravenby looked up blearily. Yorik felt Thomas shrink at the sight of the two Dark Ones hissing into the ears of the captain.

“Rabid hounds loose on the Manor grounds!” the captain shouted.

Lord Ravenby’s gaze wandered, vague and confused. “My Kennelmaster told me this was necessary. I can’t recall why.…”

A Dark One hissed something to the captain, who replied, “You should have all the hounds shot at once.”

“Shot, yes,” muttered Lord Ravenby. He pushed back from his desk and stood. He stumbled across the study toward the fireplace. Yorik could hardly look in that direction, as the sharp firelight burned his eyes. Then Lord Ravenby stepped in front of the fire, blocking the light. Yorik watched as the man reached for the enormous rifle above the mantel—the famous rifle that Lord Ravenby’s grandfather had used to hunt mammoths a century ago, when mammoths still lived.

Lord Ravenby ran his hand along the barrel of the mammoth rifle. “Shoot the hounds.” He shook his head. “I’ll consider it.” He turned away from the fireplace.

The Dark Ones on the captain’s shoulders continued hissing. “There is no longer any reason to ground the Indomitable,” the captain said angrily. “She’s ready for flight.”

“The mechanical problems—all repaired?”

Dark whispering. “Yes,” said the captain.

Yorik could see that the captain was lying. When Lord Ravenby responded, “Very well, I will leave tomorrow night,” Thomas gripped Yorik’s arm in terror.

The captain stormed out. Lord Ravenby hesitated, then took the mammoth rifle down from the mantel and placed it across his desk before returning to his papers.

Yorik pulled Thomas into the next room. “Come on,” he said to Thomas. “You’ve seen him. Now I must get you to the Princess.”

Thomas shook his body no.

“But you have to!” said Yorik.

His eyes rolling, Thomas shook and refused.

“Don’t you understand?” said Yorik. “There is nothing you can do for your father. And the Princess can’t protect you outside the glade. Do you want to end up like Doris? Consumed by the Dark Ones?”

Thomas tried to make a shrug—I don’t care. He would not look Yorik in the eye.

“Very well,” Yorik said testily. He reached into his pocket and produced two small, dryish mud-balls. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at Thomas. “These are the last two that Erde was able to make. Stay hidden, but if any Dark Ones find you, hit them with these.”

Looking dubious, Thomas accepted the mud-balls.

Yorik turned and faded through the wall, then raced for the aviary glade.

Chapter Eleven

More of the Dark Ones had gathered around the glade. Yorik had to run in a wide circle before he found an opening in their lines.

At first he could not find the Princess. She was not with the partridges roosting in trees. Nor was she near the elm, nor walking by the pond, nor sitting on her sycamore throne. She was not in the clearing, where the remains of last autumn’s snares had long vanished.

Finally Yorik discovered her beneath a spreading cherry bough. In this quiet place, the Princess had parted the long grasses to form a cradle. Erde lay within. The Princess knelt beside the withered brown girl, gently tapping her leafy twig and making little clouds of misty water that settled over Erde’s dry form.

Yorik knelt beside the cradle. Erde was so small now, curled into a ball no larger than one of her old mud- balls. She wasn’t speaking, and her eyes were closed.

“Is that helping?” Yorik asked, nodding at the mist.

“No,” said the Princess miserably. She stood abruptly, waving the twig across the grass stains on her gossamer dress. The stains vanished. “So where’s the other ghost-boy?” she asked. “He must have appeared by now.”

“He did,” said Yorik. He explained about Thomas.

“Too bad,” murmured the Princess. “I could have used another servant.”

Yorik could tell she was trying to resume her old imperious manner. But her heart was no longer in it. Even as the aviary glade burst with life, the Estate darkened, and Erde crumbled.

Yorik stood too. “Poor Thomas,” he said, looking down at Erde. “He can’t do anything to help his father.”

“If he’s so useless,” snapped the Princess, “then what did you want him so badly for?”

“I only wanted to bring him here, for protection. But now I’m not sure how I would have gotten him in. A lot of Dark Ones are surrounding your glade now, you know.”

The Princess laughed darkly. “I wish a few of them would drift a little closer, but they know better, don’t they?” This idea seemed to perk her up.

Yorik continued. “And there are more of them everywhere, all the time. It’s getting harder for me to move around the Estate.”

The Princess’s dismal mood returned. “What does it matter?” she said. “Did you really think you’d find a way to defeat the Yglhfm? In all these nights of prowling everywhere with those dogs, you haven’t, have you?”

“No,” said Yorik, crestfallen. “Not yet. But I have learned something. The Dark Ones are focused on the