The room was a pyre of heat and smoke and fire. The blaze crept up the window curtains, hissing and popping. Thick tongues of flames spread across the carpet. Only the couch remained untouched by the fiery assault, and Bijou stood at the end of it, barking angrily at the smoke edging around them, stalking its prey.
Terrified, Nor scooped up Bijou and leaped to the center of the room, the only spot free of flame. The blaze immediately engulfed the couch where she and Bijou had just been sleeping. If they were going to get out alive, she had no choice but to brave the inferno. She dashed straight through the fire and headed for the stairs. As she ran, the flames shrank from her; they evaporated like puffs of steam on contact. She didn’t suffer a single burn. Her clothes were untouched, and Bijou’s fur smelled only vaguely like smoke.
With her hair flying behind her and Bijou’s wet nose tucked against her throat, Nor ran up the stairs past the body of a man lying slumped halfway up the steps, its skin black and raw. She plowed through the front door just as the windows of the basement exploded.
“Nor!” A screech rang out, and suddenly Nor was caught in a crushing embrace. “How in the hell are you not dead?” Savvy cried, gripping Nor’s face with freezing hands. Savvy’s tearstained face was smudged with soot, and there was a burn on her arm.
“Here,” Nor said, pressing her hand against the burn. She felt a slight pinch, and the wound started to mend. Savvy stared at her arm in wonder.
“Have you seen Reed?” Nor asked. Savvy pointed across the compound, and Nor breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him, half-hidden by the statue of the woman with the bowl held over her head.
Nor turned back to the house. The fire was a raging monster, a black fire-breathing dragon scaling the roof and dropping burning shingles onto the crowd below. Some people were still in their pajamas. Others had obviously thrown on whatever clothes they could find; one man seemed to be wearing his wife’s housecoat. Many of them were carrying buckets, vases, and watering cans to and from the fountain. Pike, Sena Crowe, and Gage stood knee-deep in the water. They couldn’t fill the containers fast enough.
“What happened?” Nor asked.
“Lightning,” Savvy said, sobbing. “It struck the house, and everyone else could get out, but they’d locked you in the fucking basement. Cliff went in after you.”
“Cliff?”
“Your guard.” Savvy sniffed. “The one who got you out.” She ran her fingers through Nor’s waist-long tresses and pulled away a handful of singed strands. “What did you do to your hair?”
Nor remembered the body on the basement stairs. She felt sick to her stomach. “Savvy, Cliff’s dead.”
“Cliff’s dead?” Savvy wailed.
A whooshing crack filled the air as a great billowing cloud of fire erupted from the roof and spilled onto the neighboring houses. A woman screamed. Another bolt of lightning cracked purple across the blackened sky. Fiery ash rained down on the crowd, and soon everyone was covered in cinders, their faces contorted with so many different emotions. Fear. Grief. Defeat.
Nor set Bijou on the ground and splashed into the fountain. She had always thought that story about Rona and her wooden behemoths — the aegises, their protectors — had been a myth, a story elevated into legend by exaggeration. Nor pressed her hand against the wooden statue’s leg.
At first, nothing happened.
And then, with a great creaking moan, the lady in the fountain turned her head and blinked at Nor with large, vacant eyes.
“Protect us,” Nor breathed.
With a great rattle, the woman lifted her skirts and stepped out of the fountain, which sent Pike, Sena Crowe, and Gage scrambling and tripping to get out of her way. The crowd fell silent as the woman overturned her bowl of water onto the burning house.
“Holy shit!” Savvy gasped. “Nor, how did you do that? Never mind! It doesn’t matter! Do the bear next! Or the cat!” Savvy dragged Nor around the compound, cheering as Nor brought all of the other statues to life, but stopped abruptly at the sculpture of the troll-like woman looming over the burning remains of Dauphine’s house.
“Let’s just skip this one,” Savvy decided, backing away. “I don’t think I’m ready to see that thing walking around just yet.”
These are the things Nor would later remember: the utter magic of watching the inanimate come to life; the welcome feeling of relief that settled over the crowd; Savvy’s incredulous laughter; Bijou’s excited bark; and Charlie with her hands held out as the water the aegises poured over the flames fell like rain.
And then.
The clap of thunder was so loud that Nor almost believed she’d made it up. The lightning was so bright it looked like nothing at all. It was like staring at the sun, like watching the last sparks of a dying star. The tree it struck burst into flames, and suddenly something was on fire on either side of the compound.
The air turned black with smoke. Nor reached behind her and grappled for Savvy’s hand. “Stay with me!” she yelled. The fire spread. It surged through the compound, crackling hot and bright and terrifying. Stumbling, they ran from the fast-moving blaze.
“We gotta get out of here!” she heard Gage shout.
Nor and Savvy now ran toward Gage’s voice, dodging falling debris and the pounding feet of the aegises fighting the blaze: the bison, who gathered two crying children into a hooved embrace, gave a mighty flap of those thick, leathery wings and soared off into the night sky; the bear with his colossal ox horns; and the wolf, the quills on the back of his neck raised. The woman from the fountain emptied her bowl over one house and then another, dousing the flames. But not all of Rona’s monsters were matches for the fire. First the wildcat faltered, and then the bear, his ox horns turning to cinders.
Nor and Savvy followed Gage away from the compound, away from the fire, and into the surrounding woods. The three fell to the ground and began coughing the smoke from their lungs. Charlie and Sena Crowe staggered in after them, carrying someone. It took Nor a second to realize who. It was Pike. The side of his face had been badly burned.
“Where’s everyone else?” Nor coughed.
Charlie and Sena Crowe quickly lowered Pike to the ground. He lurched forward and retched, then his eyes rolled back and he started convulsing.
“Do something!” Gage yelled.
Nor could hear the others calling out for one another through the trees like lost children. She thought she heard Reed screaming her name over and over again, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Try to keep him still,” Nor said, her voice quivery. She placed her shaky hands on Pike’s blistered cheek, but all she felt was a tiny pinch. She tried once more and still, nothing. Pike’s breathing grew shallow.
“Nor,” Savvy whimpered. “Help him.”
He’s going to die, Nor thought. He’s going to die, and everyone here will be forced to watch it happen. “I’m trying!” she choked. I’m afraid, but I’m trying.
Nor gritted her teeth and pressed her hands harder against the burn until Pike’s pain finally trickled out, as slowly as an intravenous drip, onto the ash-covered ground. The wound struggled to knit itself back together, a scar like a jellyfish sting spreading across Pike’s cheek. Finally, his breathing steadied.
Nor fell back on her heels with relief, her heart pounding wildly. She looked around at the small band of survivors. Gage’s arms were bright red from the fire’s wrathful touch. A deep gash ran along Savvy’s face. Sena Crowe’s shirt was ripped. Charlie’s arms were scratched and bloody. But Nor? Nor had run through a burning building, and all that she had lost was some hair.
All around them, the woods glowed the hazy orange of a dying fire and were filled with the sounds of people calling out, trying to find one another in the chaos and the dark. She wondered where Reed was. Grayson. Bijou.
Nor went to stand, but Gage quickly pulled her back down. “What the hell are you doing —?” she began, but what she saw next stopped her cold.
If it hadn’t been for the light of the flames, she might have mistaken them for people. There were at least a dozen of them. Slinking out from behind the trees, with their gray, rotting skin and their blackened eyes and tongues, they looked like monsters, like nightmares.
The Resurrected. And they were heading straight for Nor and the others.
“I thought you said the compound was undetectable,” Nor whispered. She recognized many of the faces under dead gray features. One of them had once been Bliss Sweeney. Another had been the boy with the Mohawk, the one who had helped Catriona bring Wintersweet to Fern. These were fellow islanders, people whose loved ones had laid them to rest in Anathema Island’s cemetery. Had Nor’s mother been the reason for all those graves? Is that why they were here? Had they been brought back to life only to be used to carry out Fern Blackburn’s commands?
“It is,” Charlie answered shakily. “Or at least, it was.”
She brandished her dagger at one of the Resurrected, looming menacingly over Pike’s prone body. Gage pushed Nor behind him.
“They’re here for me,” Nor said to Gage.
“They’re not getting you,” he grunted, wielding the knife clutched in his hand.
But a sharp object meant nothing to the dead. One grabbed hold of Savvy’s blue braids and yanked her to the ground. Sena Crowe lunged at it with his knife, but the blade sank right through its dead gray skin like it was slicing into rotten fruit. Black sludge leaked out of the wound and onto the ground. Savvy whimpered as the creature swiped its blackened tongue across her cheek. Scared tears spilled down her cheeks.
Nor had become all too familiar with fear. Too many times it had coated Nor’s insides black and filled her throat with its bile. Too often it marked the faces in her dreams and nightmares: Wintersweet right before a fern had wrapped itself around her throat. Bliss Sweeney right before she’d been killed.
In anger, Nor pulled away from Gage. “Let her go,” she commanded, speaking to the Resurrected that was terrorizing Savvy.
“Nor, what the hell are you doing?” Gage hissed.
I’m not sure, Nor thought to herself. But if her unexpected and unbidden gifts were any sign, she might be able to do something. She had to take that chance.
“I’ll come with you,” she said to the Resurrected. “I’m the one she wants.” The one clutching Savvy’s hair loosened its grip. It turned toward Nor, staring at her with its black dead eyes. She had piqued their interest. Savvy took a tentative step back toward Sena Crowe — and then the ground began to quake.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The lady from the fountain had come to stand in front of Nor, to use her giant bowl to shield Nor. Her thunderous arrival knocked Nor to the ground, and she brought the overturned bowl down over Nor to trap her there. Nor’s face skidded against the rocks and dirt.
“Savvy!” Nor cried. Nor rolled over and beat her hands and feet against the top of the bowl. It was no use. The shield wouldn’t budge.
From under the bowl, she could hear screaming and the sound of people running. And then she heard nothing but her own ragged breath, her own pulse drumming in her ears.
Finally the statue lifted the bowl a bit and peered in at Nor.
“Let me go,” Nor commanded in a voice so irate and so determined, she hardly recognized it as her own. With reluctance, the aegis lifted the bowl completely, setting Nor free.
Nor scrambled out, slipping on wet leaves and muddy ashes. Pike, still unconscious, lay a few yards away. Charlie was beside him, one cheek sliced open, one leg bent at an odd angle. Before Nor had a chance to go to her, Gage came crashing toward her through the trees.
“They took Savvy,” he said, panting. “Those ghouls, or whatever they were. Sena Crowe, too.”
Nor closed her eyes and thought of her best friend, beaten and bloody and afraid. Nor could hear Savvy’s screams so clearly in her head it was as if she hadn’t stopped screaming. Maybe she hadn’t. “I’m going after them.”
“If you were right that they came for you,” Gage said, “that your mother just wants you, then this is probably a trap.”
“All the more reason for me to go,” Nor said. “She’ll kill them if I don’t. You know she will.” She looked at Gage, expecting him to try to dissuade her.
But all he said was, “I’m in.”
Nor looked back at Charlie uncertainly. How could she leave her and Pike to fend for themselves?
“What are you waiting for?” Charlie barked, giving Nor her answer. “Go!”
Gage and Nor took off toward the woods. On the way, Nor spotted Reed, standing on the other side of the compound where only a few flames still burned. He had Bijou cradled in one arm and the other wrapped around Grayson’s shoulder protectively. The look on Reed’s face was one of bewilderment and disorientation, and Nor was struck with guilt and remorse.
She had brought him — and everyone else around her — nothing but terror and pain.
But that stopped now. Nor darted after Gage.
The aegises shuffled back to their posts and stiffened into lifeless statues once more, the face of the woman in the fountain turned forlornly toward where Nor had disappeared into the trees.
Gage and Nor made their way down a curved trail in the woods. With every step, Nor could feel the sheathed knife Charlie had insisting on sliding into the side of her boot. The saphenous vein in Nor’s ankle pulsed against it; the mere possibility of spilled blood had woken it up.
The trail Nor and Gage were on had been familiar once, but as the woods were now, Nor didn’t recognize it at all. The trees were warped like deformed skeletons. Black moss dripped from branches like mourning veils. Instead of the distant cascade of Lilting Falls, she heard a sound like a dull grinding, as if someone were wading through miles of broken glass. And when the lake came into view, Nor saw why.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
Celestial Lake had turned to ice. A wall of ice, to be exact. A wall that stood as high as a grown man’s hip. It crept its eerie way toward shore, and as it went it sprouted thin crystal fingers that groped at whatever was in its path. It reminded Nor of the mythical River Styx and the desperate hands of the damned reaching, pleading for salvation in the wake of Charon’s ferry.
Nor and Gage inched their way around the lake, whose icy limbs twitched like the whiskers on a sleeping beast. It raged with a kind of vengeance that made Nor uneasy.
“Is this because of your mother?” Gage shouted to Nor.
Nor shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think it’s because of me.” The hostile plants, that eerie fog, the sudden lightning storm, all brought to mind the way the body’s immune system, in its desperation to destroy an invading virus, could go so far as to destroy itself. Was it possible that Nor’s fear — of her mother, of herself — had grown so large that she’d infected the entire island with it?
Nor shuddered when the wall of ice swept over a maple tree as if it were nothing more than a blade of beach grass.
And now it might be too late. The island, she realized, might no longer care who it had to fight off.
It might just destroy them all in its desperate attempt to save itself.