“Look,” said Yorik. “There’s no use crying. You’re dead, and that’s that. You’ll get used to it soon.”
But the small, round figure was inconsolable. Thomas huddled on the flagstones, weeping. His burbling cries sounded like water gurgling down a drain.
Yorik groaned. “Weren’t you listening? You’re not safe outside the glade.”
Thomas’s sobs resolved into a single sound. “Fa—” he cried. “Fa!”
Yorik calmed himself. He knew he must be patient with Thomas, who had been tormented by the Dark Ones for so long. Yorik stared into the dark, where torch beams bobbed, voices shouted, and hounds barked. “Your father,” he said finally. “Lord Ravenby is strong. The Dark Ones have been unable to break him.”
But since your death, he has declined. I am afraid he will not resist much longer. Yorik elected not to share this with Thomas.
“Fa—” said Thomas brokenly. He struggled to his feet.
Yorik eyed him. “It’s unwise for you to see him now. And it’s too dangerous for you here. I can outrun a few Dark Ones. You can’t.”
Thomas wobbled, as though trying to shake his head. “Fa.”
“It’s unwise,” repeated Yorik.
Thomas wobbled defiantly.
“Very well,” said Yorik. “But you must obey everything I say.”
Thomas dipped his whole upper body. “Ys.”
“Follow me, then.” Yorik led the way across the courtyard, aiming straight for a far wall. Thomas waddled behind.
Then the argument that Yorik had been ignoring came spilling into the courtyard. There was an eruption of howls and barks. Electric torchlight stabbed through a green spirit glow. Men in flight suits and caps ran around the corner, pursued by the hounds.
Yorik recognized Lord Ravenby’s dirigible crew. One of them, the pilot, had a club. All of them had Dark Ones on their shoulders.
Advancing on them were Hatch and Oke, barking and snapping, their green spirit forms bristling and bright. The crew was shouting at them.
“Rabid dogs! Get back!” They shone their torches in the hounds’ eyes.
Hatch leapt at the pilot, his spirit jaws stretching for a Dark One. The pilot swung his club and hit Hatch in the ribs with a vicious crunch. Hatch fell soundlessly, and his spirit form winked out.
Oke raced for the pilot too. But the men were fleeing now. Reaching a door, they piled through and slammed it in Oke’s face. The hound sat for an instant, howling, then ran back to where Hatch lay.
“Hatch,” moaned Yorik. In the distance, he could see the other hounds running. Behind them bobbed the Kennelmaster’s lantern. There was nothing Yorik could do. He pushed through the Manor wall.
Thomas didn’t follow.
Yorik poked his head back into the courtyard.
Thomas was looking fearfully at the wall and gesturing toward a nearby door.
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.