“Can you see me?” asked Yorik, astonished.
“Aye,” replied the Kennelmaster. “The Dark Ones are victorious. The worlds of man and spirit are joined.”
“No,” said Yorik desperately. “There’s still time.”
Mr. Lucian spat. “Perhaps a bit o’ time, to flee. But too many have flooded in from the outside. We can fight them no longer.”
“But they didn’t come from outside—they came from within. From beneath the Manor.”
“Ah, then I was wrong all along.” The old man slumped wearily. “Ye fought yer best battle, I know, lad. Run while ye can.” He went forward with Oke at his side.
“Where are the others?” called Yorik after him. “The other hounds?”
“Dead,” came the reply. “They shot them all.” Then Mr. Lucian and Oke disappeared around a bend in the path.
“No,” Yorik pleaded. No no no. He ran for the topiary garden.
He found the topiaries burning, each of them—lion, elephant, swan, even the great hare—a pillar of flame. The garden was sundered by an enormous furrow of earth where the Indomitable’s cabin had struck and slid through. In the forest beyond the garden, the airship’s envelope was ablaze, billowing free from its steel skeleton. Flames from the burning engine were spreading.
In the smoke and firelit shadows, a human figure crawled from a smashed cabin window.
Lord Ravenby.
Two dark things were with him—not Yglhfm, Yorik saw, but a pair of shadows in the shape of children. Each shadow held one of Lord Ravenby’s arms and helped him stagger away from the wreck. In one hand, Lord Ravenby held his mammoth rifle.
Behind him, the engine exploded, and Lord Ravenby was thrown forward onto the grass, the mammoth rifle clattering away.
Yorik recognized the two shadows.
“Doris,” he said. “Thomas.”
The Thomas shadow looked at him. yorik, came a scratched, tiny whisper, though the shadow had no mouth. i’m sorry.
“What happened?” asked Yorik.
yorik, moaned the Doris shadow. the yglhfm don’t need us any longer. they’ve abandoned us. won’t you run, yorik, at last? there is nothing left.
She pointed, and Yorik looked. There was the Manor, or what had been the Manor. Now, even as he watched, it was transforming into a mountain, the many giant Yglhfm piling up into a single vast, dark presence, its peak breaking above the flame-blue clouds.
Yorik turned away. “If there is nothing left, Doris,” he said gently, “then why are you still helping your father?”
As if in answer, Lord Ravenby moaned and stirred, and his shadow-children floated to him and helped him rise.
Then he spotted Yorik and cried out, his eyes crazed and panicked. He crawled forward and grasped his rifle. He swung it wildly, seeming to see enemies all around. Apparently mistaking a topiary bear for the real thing, he fired.
The bear exploded in a cracking cloud, and the bullet smashed through the garden behind.
Yorik heard animal screams.
He watched the shadow-children trying to calm their father. He thought of the Princess, tending to the dwindling Erde. And thinking of the Princess, he remembered something he had seen, just before the crash of the Indomitable. One last chance. But he would have to move as fast as he could, as fast as a ghost could ever move, swifter than a deer, quicker than an eyeblink, for he was about to do the most dangerous thing he had ever done.
Just before leaving, he paused as a movement in the wreckage caught his eye—behind a blackened window there was a toss of hair, a frightened face, and two hands pressed against the glass.
Susan. Yorik longed to run to her. He could see she was unhurt and safe for the moment, and he knew this was likely his last chance to speak with his sister, ever again.
But there wasn’t time. Gathering himself, he raced back toward the aviary glade, hurdling the blockade once more, the chill reaching into his ankles.
Fast as he was, events around him crawled slowly by. There, under the cherry boughs, crouched the crying Princess, huddled over the last dusty crumbs of Erde in the grass cradle. A teardrop hovered between the girls. In that instant, the Princess did not yet see Yorik.
Beside her, glowing in the grass where in her anguish she had dropped it, was the leafy twig.
Yorik aimed for the twig. He put his fingers down as he passed.
The Princess opened her mouth and began to turn.
Yorik snatched the leafy twig.
He had grasped a lightning bolt in his hand. His teeth seemed to shatter from the shock. But he held on, running. Something was happening behind him as he left the glade—a tidal wave of light and power. On the edge of his vision he saw curls of blistering light reaching for him like fingers.
Then he was leaping out of the glade and back onto the Wooded Walk. He had been in the glade for less than a second.
The instant any bit of me left my glade, he would know, the Princess had said.
The pain in his hand burrowed up his arm, feeling like flesh peeling away as electricity and fire ate into him.
It’s part of me. It can’t leave either.
He ran toward the topiary, his arm burning, electric shocks rattling his teeth. Finally the pain became unbearable, and he screamed as he dropped the leafy twig on the wooded path.
Beastly Father.
The twig danced on the ground, spitting sparks.
Yorik gaped at the space where his right hand had been. His ghostly forearm faded away into nothing. His wrist and hand were gone.
A rumbling tremor passed through the earth beneath him.
In the forest, something moved.
First he saw vines snaking from the forest onto the path and curling around themselves to form a chair. No, Yorik realized as the shape grew—a throne.
In the dirt at the foot of the throne, shoots appeared. Quickly they grew into tiny seedlings, then saplings. The trunks twisted into angles and put out branches, and ivy sprang up and threaded around them, forming ropy sinews of muscle around the sapling bones, until a man was sitting on the throne. Two lilies blossomed on his face, and they opened, the petals like eyelashes. And then the light from Pale Moon Luna changed, and suddenly Yorik could see each mote of dust in the air around him, the dirt and smoke from the fire suspended in the glow.
He fell to his knees before beastly Father. Warm currents of light flowed through Yorik. He opened his mouth but found he could not speak. His tongue felt paralyzed.
Beastly Father leaned forward on his throne. His lily eyes cast their filaments down at the spinning, sparking twig. He reached forth with a woody hand. As he did, the leafy twig stopped dancing and flew to him. He held the twig before his face, and as he did so, a terrible expression of limitless anger passed over his sylvan features.
Yorik thought of the Princess, sobbing over Erde in the glade. He found his tongue. “Please, sir,” he began. “Your daughter is so very sorry. She—”
The woody fingers twitched, and the leafy twig burst into flame, burning down to a cinder and disintegrating. Beastly Father’s face darkened.
Yorik stood, holding out his only hand in supplication. “Sir,” he said, struggling to find the words he needed. “Your Majesty … I know your daughter’s mistake was terrible. But she has changed. When I met her she was so … rude.…” He hesitated. “Well … she still is. But she has become the guardian of Erde, the Oldest of this land … and she has protected her so fiercely against the most evil …”
Yorik faltered. Beastly Father was ignoring him, his lily eyes scanning the forest.