Read Online Hawthorn by Carol Goodman - Free Book Online Page A

handsome boys at Hawthorn Hall. My mother . . .” Her voice wobbled. “My mother will
not
be destitute and she and Ava’s grandmother will
not
be killed by bombs falling from the sky. Miss Corey and Miss Sharp will live long happy lives together and we’ll visit them at Violet House every Sunday for tea and Daisy and Mr. Appleby will be wed and Cam will fly planes for fun not to drop bombs on people. The world will not be turned into some awful grimy factory and Blythewood
will
be restored. You’ll see, Gillie, we’ll put everything back the way it should be.”
    At the edge of the woods Gillie turned to face Helen. “If anyone can put things to rights it’s you, Miss Helen, but I’m afraid I won’t see it. This is my world now and if ye change things it will be as though it never was. I’m glad I’ve gotten to see your face again, and yours, Miss Ava.” He turned to me, his eyes burning like twin beacons in the light. “I’ll leave you here, lasses. These woods no longer belong to me.” He looked at the blasted trees. “But I’ll be watching over you no’ the less.”
    I threw my arms around Gillie and hugged him tight, then turned toward the woods, stumbling blindly while Helen said her good-bye. When I opened my eyes, the woods were blurred and two green spots bobbed in the darkness as if Gillie’s eyes had been burned into mine—or as if he really was still with us,leading us home. I knew that home wasn’t behind us in the ruins of Blythewood. It lay through these dark and wasted woods and smoke-filled air and who knew how many other dangers.
    For all Helen’s optimistic list of how we were going to set things right, I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that. We didn’t even know if Raven’s watch would work or if we’d be able to find Faerie. The woods felt barren and empty—all the magic drained out of them. What if the door to Faerie was gone, blasted by the shadow crows and their infernal machines?
    I remembered Raven once saying that as the world grew more crowded there might not be any room left for Darklings. Maybe the shadow machines and van Drood’s factories had wiped out the last traces of magic from the world. Even Gillie had seemed to be fading. And if there was no magic left we wouldn’t be able to find our way to Faerie and this was all there would ever be—a ruined world without magic.
    â€œAva?” Helen said, slipping her hand in mine. “Are we almost there? I’m feeling . . . so very tired.”
    I turned to look at Helen, but I could barely see her in the dark. Her face seemed to blend in with the shadows.
    I moved closer and touched her face. Her skin felt gritty. I wiped at the grit and a white streak appeared on Helen’s cheek. She was coated with some kind of ash or soot. I looked up and saw that black silt was falling from the burnt trees.
    â€œEch!” Helen coughed. “It’s all over us. I can feel it in my mouth and lungs.”
    Now that she mentioned it, I could taste the soot in my mouth as well. It tasted like ash and rotten meat—the way the trow’s breath had smelled. Bile rose up in my throat and Idoubled over, retching the foul black gunk onto the ground. I heard Helen choking beside me, then I felt her hands smoothing my hair away from my face and patting my back.
    â€œUgh, what do you think it is?” she asked when we both could breathe again.
    â€œI don’t know—some kind of residue from the
tenebrae
, I think. Maybe it’s another way that the shadows have of getting inside us. We have to get into Faerie before it infects us, but I don’t know how to find it.”
    I turned around in a circle. The bare trees loomed out of the smoke like gaunt skeletons. One of the photographs from Mr. Bellows’ corkboard flashed in my mind—a terrain of ruined trees rising out of the smoke,