Autumn of One

I need a queen, please.”

“What for?”

“Just do. Hand it over.”

Heaving a great, put-upon sigh, Hawthorne shuffled through the pack of cards until he found the queen of diamonds. “I don’t think you’re doing this right.”

After their Chase Trial success (Hawthorne had hit an orange target—riding a camel, definitely not a cheetah), Jupiter had promised that Morrigan and her friend could have a sleepover at the Deucalion on Hallowmas night—so long as they swore to ignore bedtime, eat lots of sweets, and get up to no good. True to their word, they’d already demolished handfuls of candy and were now teaching themselves to play poker in the Music Salon while they waited for Fen, who was taking them out to the Black Parade at midnight.

In honor of Hallowmas, the salon was lit entirely by candles and jack-o’-lanterns. Frank the vampire dwarf was singing an obnoxious song about beheading his fearsome enemies and drinking their blood. The guests clapped along, enchanted by the idea of the little man beheading anybody at all, fearsome or otherwise.

Morrigan arranged her cards in a fan on the table. “Poker!”

Hawthorne examined them. “That’s not poker.”

“Yes it is, look: The Queen of Diamonds was out in the park one day, walking her dog, Jack of Diamonds. She met the King of Hearts and they fell in love. They were married six (of hearts) weeks later and had three (of diamonds) children and lived happily ever after.” She grinned triumphantly. “Poker.”

Hawthorne groaned and slapped down his cards. “That is poker. You win again.” He pushed the large pile of Hallowmas sweets over to her side of the table.

“Thank you, thank you, friends,” the vampire dwarf was saying loudly. “And now, on this Hallowmas night, the night when we feel closest to those we have lost—in honor of my dear departed mother, I shall sing for you her favorite song.” His audience cooed sympathetically. Frank motioned to the pianist. “Wilbur, if you please—‘My Sweetheart Is a Garroter’ in D minor.”

“Where’s Fen?” asked Hawthorne, shuffling the cards listlessly. “It’s almost ten thirty! If we don’t leave soon, all the best spots will be taken.”

“My sweetheart is a garroter, my sweetheart loves to strangle. Her hands are wrapped around my throat, but my heart is in a tangle…”

Hawthorne had talked of nothing but the Black Parade since autumn began, and as Jupiter was marching with the rest of the Wundrous Society, he’d persuaded Fenestra to accompany Morrigan and Hawthorne in his place. Fen had agreed under extreme protest, and only after she’d extracted a promise from Jupiter that if they misbehaved, she could put itching powder in Morrigan’s bedsheets every night for a month.

“Fenestra does things on Fenestra time,” said Morrigan, biting into a sour skeleton.

“She grips me with her burly arms and the stars begin to shine. My scrawny neck is hers alone, her violent heart is mine!”

Frank finished his song with a grand flourish and a high note that made Morrigan and Hawthorne wince. The other guests broke into applause and the vampire dwarf took a deep bow.

“Any requests?” asked Frank.

“Sing something scary!” a young man shouted.

“Ah. Beheading and strangling not scary enough for you, eh?” There was a gleam in Frank’s eye. “Then perhaps you’d like to hear a song about… the Wundersmith?”

The guests gasped, then fell into nervous laughter. Across the card table, Hawthorne grew very still. “Shall we go wait in the foyer?”

“Fen said to wait here,” said Morrigan. “She’ll be cross if we leave. What’s wrong?”

“I just…” He swallowed and lowered his voice. “I wish he wouldn’t sing about the Wundersmith.”

“The Wundersmith.” Morrigan rolled her eyes. “What’s a Wundersmith, anyway? Why is everybody so scared of it?”

Hawthorne’s eyes bulged. “You don’t know about the Wundersmith?”

On the other side of the room, the piano clanked to a halt. “Can that be true?” called Frank. He was staring right at Morrigan. “Can this really be a child who has never heard the stories of the Wundersmith?”

His audience turned to look at Morrigan with shocked faces. “I mean,” she said, “I’ve heard of him, but…” She shrugged and bit the head off a gummy ghost.

“Can it be,” Frank continued, his voice rising, “that she knows nothing of the thing they call the Butcher of Nevermoor? The Curse of the Capital? That wicked devil with blackened mouth and empty eyes?”

Hawthorne made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. Morrigan sighed. “So what is he?” she asked, exasperated.

“My child, my dear darkling child,” said the vampire dwarf, drawing his cape around him with a dramatic swish, “perhaps it is best you don’t know…”

The guests fell for his ruse. “Tell her, Frank,” they cried, clapping their hands with savage delight. “Sing about the Wundersmith!”

“If you insist,” he said, affecting a reluctant air. The pianist hit a loud, dramatic chord, and Morrigan giggled. This was all rather silly, she thought.

“Who—or what—is the Wundersmith?” Frank began. “Is he a man, or is he a monster? Does he live in our imaginations, or is he lurking in the shadows, waiting… to… pounce?” Frank lunged at a group of women, who shrieked, first with fright and then with laughter. “Is he human, or is he a savage animal who will tear through the realm with talons and teeth until he has consumed us all?” Here he paused to bare his own impressive fangs, and there were gasps and giggles around the room.

“The Wundersmith is all of those things. He is a phantom that lives in the darkness, watching, always watching, biding his time until the day when we have let down our defenses, when we are not expecting him, when we have almost forgotten he existed.” Frank grabbed a candle from its holder and held it under his chin so that his face was eerily lit by the glow. “And that is when he will return.”

“Tosh,” said a quiet voice from the corner. Morrigan turned to see Dame Chanda playing chess with Kedgeree Burns, the concierge. They were staring at the board, deep in concentration and all but ignoring the musical goings-on at the opposite end of the room.

Kedgeree hummed in agreement. “Aye, utter nonsense.”

“Is it?” said Morrigan. “Then the Wundersmith isn’t real?”

Dame Chanda sighed. “Oh, the Wundersmith is real. But I wouldn’t ask that sharp-toothed showboat about it,” she muttered, nodding toward Frank, who was now doing a tap dance in the instrumental break. “He wouldn’t know the real Wundersmith from a potted agapanthus. He thinks it’s funny trying to scare people.”

Morrigan frowned. “But why is everyone so scared of the Wundersmith? What is it?”

“That’s a very good question,” said Dame Chanda. Kedgeree shook his head warningly, but she waved a hand at him. “Oh, Ree-Ree, she’s bound to find out sooner or later. Better to hear the truth from us, don’t you think, than a load of hogwash from some other fool?”

Kedgeree held up his hands in defeat. “All right, but I don’t think North will like it.”

“Then North should have told her himself.” Dame Chanda took a moment to capture Kedgeree’s knight and sip her brandy. “Now. Frank is being silly, of course, but he poses an interesting historical question: Is the Wundersmith a man, or is he a monster? Certainly he was once a man. He once looked like a man, although almost all photographs and portraits from his younger days have been destroyed. Some people say he has turned inside out, and the darkness within him is now on the outside, for everyone to see. They say he is hideously deformed, that his teeth and mouth and the whites of his eyes have turned black like a spider. That his skin is grayed and decaying like his decaying soul.”

“Is it true he was exiled from Nevermoor?” asked Hawthorne.

“Yes,” said Dame Chanda, her expression grave. “Over one hundred winters he’s been in exile, banned from Nevermoor, from all Seven Pockets of the Free State. To this day he is kept out by the force of this great and ancient city, by the combined efforts of the Royal Sorcery Council and the Paranormal Services Union, by our protective borders, which are manned by the Ground Force and watched over by the Sky Force and patrolled by the Stink and spied on by the Stealth and probably by dozens of other secret organizations that exist only to protect us from the Wundersmith. Thousands of men and women all working constantly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a hundred years, all to keep one man out.”

Morrigan swallowed. Thousands of people… just for one man? “Why? What did he do?”

“He was a man who became a monster, lass, that’s what he did,” said Kedgeree. “A monster who made monsters of his own, who was so brilliant—so talented and twisted—that he decided to play God. He built a great army of fearsome creatures with which he planned to conquer Nevermoor, to enslave the people of our city.”

“Why?”

Kedgeree blinked. “For power, I suppose. He sought to own the city, and by owning the city, to own the entire realm.”

“Some people stepped up and tried to stop him,” added Dame Chanda. “But they were massacred. Brave, selfless men and women, destroyed by the Wundersmith and his army of monsters. It happened not too far from here, in Old Town. The place where they died was renamed for those brave people. Courage Square.”

“We’ve been there. That’s where the Chase Trial ended,” said Morrigan, and Hawthorne nodded grimly. It was hard to imagine that cobbled, sunlit square awash with the blood of a massacre. “And—oh! We read about the Courage Square Massacre, didn’t we, Hawthorne? When we were studying for the Book Trial. The Encyclopedia of Nevermoorian Barbarism didn’t mention anything about the Wundersmith, though.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Kedgeree, pointedly raising an eyebrow at Dame Chanda. “Even history books don’t like talking about the Wundersmith.”

“Nobody knows exactly what happened to the Wundersmith that day,” continued Dame Chanda, ignoring his comment. “Some say he was weakened by the attack. Some say his monsters deserted him—that they’d gotten a taste for death and liked it, and so they melted away into the darkest corners of Nevermoor, where they lurk still, killing off its people one by one, waiting for the day when their master will return to conquer the city.”

“Chanda…” Kedgeree said, shooting her a significant look.

“What? That’s what some people say.”

“It’s not true, wee ones,” said the concierge. “Just a scary rumor.”

“I never said it was true, Ree-Ree, I only said it’s what people say,” said Dame Chanda, ruffled. “Anyway, after that day, Nevermoor locked her doors to him forever. Of course, the ban is reinforced by sorcerers and magicians, the Stink and the Stealth and all the rest, but everyone knows it’s Nevermoor herself who truly keeps the Wundersmith out.”

“How?” said Morrigan with a glance at Hawthorne, who swallowed hard. She thought he looked a little clammy. “What if the Wundersmith finds a way back in?”

“This is an ancient and powerful city, children,” said Kedgeree, “protected by ancient and powerful magic. More powerful than any Wundersmith, don’t you worry about—”

“Fen’s here!” shouted Hawthorne suddenly. He grabbed Morrigan’s arm and ran to meet the Magnificat at the door, clearly eager to leave all talk of the Wundersmith behind him.

Nevermoor was full of ghosts.

Also vampires, werewolves, princesses, and warty-nosed witches. Quite a few fairies. The occasional pumpkin. Thousands of people in costumes lined the high street, waiting for Nevermoor’s Hallowmas festivities to begin.

Morrigan rubbed her hands together for warmth and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. She and Hawthorne shared an excited grin, their breath turning to fog in the crisp autumn air. They’d managed to barge their way through the heaving crowd to what Jupiter had promised would be the best spot on the parade route, right on the corner of Deacon Street and McLaskey Avenue.

The Wundrous Society had started the parade hundreds of years ago, Jupiter had said. It was originally a silent procession of Society members, dressed in formal black uniforms with their gold W pins at the throat, marching to honor those Wuns who had died in the previous year. They walked through the streets in rows of nine on Hallowmas night, when the walls between the living and the dead were thinnest.

As the years went by, the people of Nevermoor started gathering to watch the procession in silence and pay their respects. It became one of the city’s most sacred traditions, and they called it the Black Parade. Over the Ages it grew into something much louder and more colorful, but the Wundrous Society still upheld tradition by marching first.

The crowd was eerily quiet as the solemn rows of nine passed by, their footsteps on the cobblestones the only sound to be heard. Morrigan thought she spotted Jupiter’s big ginger head at one point, but there were so many Society members going by so quickly that she couldn’t be sure. They wore somber expressions, their eyes straight ahead. Here and there were empty spaces, and some of the people marching carried candles—one candle for each of the departed, Jupiter had said. The youngest Society members, who looked only a little older than Morrigan, marched in the first row. She supposed this must be Unit 918.

Would she and Hawthorne march in next year’s parade? Morrigan wondered. It was hard to picture Hawthorne keeping a straight face for that long.

Another, unwelcome image entered her head: Hawthorne and Noelle marching side by side. That’s more likely, she thought miserably. The dragonrider and the girl with the voice of an angel, joining the rows of talented Society members marching through the streets of Nevermoor. Her excitement dimmed a little.

Once the Wundrous Society reached the end of the route, the “proper parade” (as Hawthorne called it) began at last. A wave of anticipation rolled through the crowd as music began to play.

“I’ve never been this close to the front before!” said Hawthorne.

“You’ve never had Fen to scare people away before,” said Morrigan, glancing up at the Magnificat, who loomed behind them, drawing looks of alarm from passersby.

Though she wasn’t thrilled to be babysitting, Fen took her duties very seriously. When anyone came too close, she hissed and bared her teeth until they retreated, wide-eyed, and a small plot of empty space miraculously ballooned around Morrigan and Hawthorne. She was like a mean, furry force field.

The parade was led by a marching band dressed as demons, conducted by a flickering ghostly apparition. They were followed by a procession of what looked like garden hedges, trimmed into animal sculptures and brought to life by some mysterious combination of puppetry and mechanics. A hedge mammoth swung his enormous tusks to and fro, and a leafy-green lion growled and roared at groups of squealing children.

Morrigan and Hawthorne made themselves hoarse screaming and laughing in turn as the parade floats went by. There was a terrifying three-story-high puppet of a werewolf, controlled with long wooden sticks by a team of people below. They could even make it snap its jaws and blink its yellow eyes.

But the Alliance of Nevermoor Covens was Morrigan’s favorite.

“They’ve embraced the cliché this year, haven’t they?” said Fen, in a tone of grudging approval. The witches wore pointed black hats and had fixed fake warts to their noses. Some carried black cats, and others flew on motorized wooden broomsticks. Cackling filled the air. “Normally they’re all, ‘Oh, don’t stereotype us, we’re just normal people.’ This is better. Witch it up, ladies!”

The grown-ups in the crowd were just as excited as the children, cheering each float as it passed. With one exception: When an enormous puppet of an old man in a cape came into view, accompanied by screechy violins and spooky organ music, it was met with gasps and disapproving glares. It wasn’t as big as the werewolf puppet, and in Morrigan’s opinion, nowhere near as scary—but a lot of parents looked very unhappy as it lumbered past, and children hid their faces. Even Fen was frowning, although Morrigan couldn’t tell if it was just her everyday-grumpy frown or her special-occasion-grumpy frown.

“Did they have to ruin the fun?” said a lady standing nearby, covering her young son’s eyes. “There is such a thing as too scary, even for the Black Parade. The Wundersmith! Honestly.”

“That’s the Wundersmith?” Morrigan laughed and turned to Hawthorne, who was eyeing the puppet warily.

It didn’t look frightening. Just a hunched old man with sharp black teeth, black eyes, and a swirling cape, his fingers ending in long talons. Occasional sparks of fire shot from his hands and eyes, and a silly, maniacal laugh issued from a speaker in his mouth. Morrigan wondered how anyone could be frightened of something so daft, but then she remembered the story of the Courage Square Massacre, and Dame Chanda’s words rang in her head: He was a man who became a monster.

“Here it is!” Hawthorne shouted, looking determinedly past the Wundersmith puppet. “The Morden Cemetery float. It’s the best one.”

Built to look like a real cemetery, the float was shrouded in white mist and swarmed with zombies. Morrigan knew it was only people dressed up as zombies—the green makeup gave it away—but they gave her chills, groaning and clawing their way out of freshly dug graves. They reached through the rails of the wrought-iron fence that encircled the float, lunging at children who wavered between delighted squeals of laughter and terrified screams.

Hawthorne was right; it was the best float. The crowd seemed to agree, because people were pushing closer to the front and standing on tiptoes to see. A man in front of them lifted his son up on his shoulders, blocking Morrigan’s and Hawthorne’s view completely.

Hawthorne groaned. “Come on—there’s a dumpster back there. If we climb up we’ll be able to see.”

Morrigan hesitated. “But Fen—”

“We won’t be long. Quick, while she’s distracted!” said Hawthorne, nodding at Fen, who was swiping at the zombies as they reached through the rails.

“Fine,” Morrigan grumbled, “but I swear, if I get itching powder in my sheets…”

The alley was dirty and the dumpster smelled awful. Hawthorne struggled up first, then offered Morrigan a hand.

“Help me.” The voice came from the end of the alley. There was nobody there.

“Please—somebody please help. I’ve fallen down.” It sounded like an old lady, frail and frightened. Morrigan and Hawthorne exchanged a glance. Hawthorne took one last, longing look at the Morden Cemetery float before jumping down from the dumpster.

“Hello?” said Morrigan. “Who’s there?”

“Oh, thank goodness! Please, I need your help. I’ve fallen down here and… it’s dark and wet, and I’ve hurt my ankle.”

They stepped cautiously down the alleyway.

“Where are you?” said Hawthorne. “We can’t see you.”

“Down here.”

The voice came from beneath their feet. Morrigan stepped back.

“It’s a manhole, Hawthorne.” A feeling of unease crept upon her. Was somebody actually stuck down there?

They pried the manhole cover up with their fingers and heaved it to the side. Peering down into the hole, Morrigan saw only darkness. “Hello? Are you down there?”

“Oh! Thank goodness you heard me. I tripped and fell, and… I think I’ve broken my ankle. I can’t climb up by myself.”

“Okay, don’t—don’t panic!” Morrigan shouted. “We’ll climb down and help you.”

Hawthorne pulled her aside, whispering anxiously, “I’m no expert, but do you reckon maybe if you hear a voice from the sewer asking you to climb down inside, you should consider… not climbing down inside?”

“She’s just an old lady.” Morrigan was trying to convince herself as much as Hawthorne. There was something weird about it. “Since when are you scared of old ladies?”

“Since they started shouting at me from sewers.”

“She needs a doctor.”

“Maybe we should get Fen—”

“Oh yeah, let’s go tell Fen we ran off down a dark alley without her,” hissed Morrigan. “Brilliant idea.”

Hawthorne growled. “Fine. Fine. But if we get eaten alive by giant rats or torn to shreds by the Nevermoor Scaly Sewer Beast, my mom will be really cross.”

They decided it was best for Morrigan to go down and help the old lady climb onto the ladder so that Hawthorne—who had more upper-body strength, thanks to all his dragonriding—could pull her up from above.

Morrigan stepped onto the ladder feeling nervous, but by the time she’d gone two or three steps down into the dark, she was downright terrified. She looked up to check that Hawthorne was still there.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

A cry came from below. “Please hurry—I can barely stand.”

Morrigan swallowed. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. She took another step, then another, concentrating only on putting one foot down after the other, and at last stepped onto solid ground.

It was darker than she’d imagined. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

“H-hello? I can’t see you. Where are you?”

No reply. Morrigan’s heartbeat quickened. “Hello?” she said. Her voice echoed. “Are you all right?”

She looked up. The light from the alleyway above was gone, as was Hawthorne. She gasped and reached for the ladder, grasping all around in the dark, but it had disappeared too.

“What’s going on?” demanded Morrigan. She tried to sound tough, but her voice came out squeaky. “This is not funny.”

The old lady cackled with laughter.

Morrigan heard the unmistakable sound of a match being struck. The darkness yielded to glowing yellow light, and Morrigan blinked into the sudden glare. When her eyes adjusted, it was clear that she and the old lady were not in a sewer at all.

And they were not alone.