“What are you?”
It was all I could think to say. His presence, his voice, made me tremulous and short of breath. This was not the person I had seen in the house. It did not seem possible that we two could be related, that we two could be the same thing.
“There are many answers to that question,” he began, dragging his cloak of shreds and leaves toward the dais. Croydon Frost placed one clawed hand on the wood, scratching deep welts into it as he gazed up with his black eyes into the vacant space above. “One answer will make you weep. One answer will make you laugh. And one answer will fire your blood for battle. I will give you all of those answers and more, but first you must do something for me.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” I said, trying to remember who he had been in my mind before. Neglectful father. Deserter. Coward. “I . . . don’t even have to stay here and listen to your silly babbling.”
He chuckled at that, and outside, out on the grass, I heard a wretched echo, the spiders and snakes shivering back and forth, making their own horrible laughter.
I was so distracted by the commotion outside that I almost didn’t hear his softly spoken question.
“Are you lost, child?”
Stunned, I stared at the back of his crown, my mouth opening and closing on a gasp. “My feet are on the path.”
I said it as a habit, having read the call and response over and over again in the journal. In the journal. But how could he possibly know what was in there?
“I don’t understand,” I murmured, backing away. “H-how do you know about that?”
“There should be a third throne here,” Croydon Frost said coldly, ignoring me. “Here. In that empty place. That is where my throne should be, where it would be, if they had not taken my kingdom away from me.”
I took another small step backward. “I do so hate all this cryptic nonsense. You and Mr. Morningside are a real pair when it comes to that.”
His shoulders bunched at the name, and he gave what sounded like a feral growl. “Do not compare me to that usurper.”
“Fine, I won’t compare you, but you told me I would get answers tonight and so far you’ve only offered more questions. Who are you? And I mean really—who are you? You’re not some wandering perfume maker, that’s obvious. I’m beginning to doubt Croydon Frost is your name, or that you’re my father. You’re not here for me at all.”
More laughter, more whispers amid the grass outside. I shivered, ending my retreat, when he turned and glared at me, those small red hearts in his eyes glowing like candle flames. His face looked gaunter and stranger, as if it were stretched thin around a deer’s skull.
“On the contrary, I came here for you first, Roeh second, and He-Who-Lies-In-Wait third.”
Him. Roeh, the shepherd. The lier-in-wait could only be Mr. Morningside. I looked down at the green mask in his hand and swallowed hard, aware then that I needed to choose my words carefully. God, I had wanted this man here to shame and rob him, and now I was the one in trouble.
“Where is the woman?” I asked, innocent. “There were four of you in the painting I saw. Where is the fourth?”
The scarlet beams in his eyes flared.
“Gone,” he said simply, the smoke billowing around his hollow cheeks dying down momentarily. “She was pure and selfless, and this world of darkening deeds swallowed her whole. There will never be another like her, nor can there be. There are no souls left pure enough to deserve her.”
Lies, lies, little child, all lies . . .
The voice echoed in my bones, and I tried hard to conceal its effect on me. Nobody, least of all this dangerous stranger, needed to know I was hearing whispers of warning.
“So what do I call you?” I murmured. “I’m not stupid enough to think the Devil’s name is Henry, or that you, whatever you are, that you are called Croydon Frost.”
“He does exist, or he did. I took a page from your employer’s book and . . . commandeered the life of Croydon Frost, wealthy merchant. He is a useful disguise. You may call me Father,” he replied with a slight bow of his head. “All Father of the Trees, if you prefer the formality, but ‘Father’ will suffice.”
This was who Bennu and his cult had worshipped. Mother and Father, only now “Mother” was somehow gone, according to him.
“Does that make you a god?” I asked.
He smiled, but it was a horrible thing to witness. “There are no gods left anymore, my child, only monsters too stubborn to die.”
“So a god can be killed?”
“Killed? No, but weakened? Made to surrender? Oh yes.” His hands curled into fists at that, and he seemed to grow larger, as if the anger buried in that remembrance fed him. Then he breathed out and diminished, though he was still an intimidating size. He roamed to the trestle table with the black pennant hanging above it. Reaching up, he pulled on the fabric, a black sleeve coming loose, revealing a more colorful flag underneath. It was a stag’s skull with many purple eyes, rose- and green-colored vines twisting around its antlers.
Placing one hand on the table, he leaned heavily against it, as if he were losing strength and growing tired.
“Ask your questions now, child. I am weak from many long years of slumber.”
I fidgeted with the little vines on my skirts, my mind working out two problems simultaneously. There were plenty of questions to ask, but the rules had changed, and quickly, and now I had to adjust and find a way to survive this. His arrival at this place signaled something terrible, that storm I sensed on the horizon, screaming in fast. Even if he was weakened, he was dangerous, dangerous and terrifying. It was upon us, I realized, the thunder and lightning and crashing winds beginning any moment. I did not know if I could control this man, this god who had diminished into a monster, but I had to at least manage him.
There were innocents at Coldthistle, Mary and Poppy, Chijioke and Lee, and I had no intention of letting them get hurt when the storm reached its peak.
“Am I the only one?” I asked. “Your only child?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly. “But you are the only one who matters, the only one who developed the gift.”
“So you abandoned many of your children,” I muttered.
He twisted, one black-and-red eye staring at me over his shoulder. “Your human lives and concerns struck me as unbearably petty. And fleeting. Is that offensive? Human lives pass in the blink of an eye. I had been sleeping for centuries; I was far too restless to care for one or two or three humans.”
“I see. I’m useful to you now because I inherited some of your powers,” I said. It almost felt good to realize this man, or thing, was as vile as I’d expected. It made it easier to dislike him, and inside that hatred was protection. He did not quibble with my observation, so I went on. “How do you do that? Change into other people, I mean. I can do small things, change my spoon into a key or a knife, sometimes a gun if I really need to, and I can translate things. But could I really become someone else?”
At that, he turned around to face me completely. He looked caught off guard, and if I squinted, sad.
“He taught you nothing. Of course. He must be terrified of you, of what you could become.” Grinning, he spread his clawed hands wide. “You are my one true child, and it would be an insult to my blood if you could not do all that I can. Let me see, there was a rhyme the druids once sang. A drop of blood, a lock of hair, lands you in the Changeling’s snare.”
“I need someone’s blood and hair to mimic them?” I pressed.
“Spill the blood of another or have them spill yours, and that is power enough to create their image,” he said. “But you will not be them, only appear and sound like them. It’s a mirage, child, nothing more.”
I would store that away for later, a useful trick if I could manage it.
“And what about pink foam? I . . . had a dream, and the next morning I had spit up something dark pink. What does that mean?” I asked.
“That can happen when our kind experience a particularly potent vision,” he said. “Whatever you dreamt that night could be prophecy.”
I shuddered. Prophecy? My friends and employers eating me alive was prophecy?
He approached me, the black mist rising from his face and robes contorting as he walked. Soft echoes surrounded him, as if he wore a cloak of ancient whispers. He reached out toward me and I froze, paralyzed by the strangeness of his eyes and the undeniable power that rolled off him in terrible tendrils. His talons traced the edge of my jaw and I inhaled quickly, trying not to tremble, trying not to show him my fear.
“There is a war coming, Louisa. The usurpers thought they could keep me safely sleeping for eternity, but their magic is weak now and it is time to reclaim what we lost. I wish you could have seen our world before they annihilated it. Druids, fae, creatures of mist and water and vine, a vast palace of root and stone, protected by the Sky Snake and the Tocahuatl . . .”
I nodded, feeling as if he had put me under a spell. It sounded like fantasy, like impossibility, but I had seen enough these past months to question everything I had learned as a child. “I . . . I read about some of it. In Bennu’s journal.”
He laughed, sending another ripple of excitement through the snakes and spiders outside the tent. “That was just a piece, just the tip of the spear. Imagine a kingdom encased in branch and leaf, all of its people asleep, doomed to wander in an eternal nightmare. Then imagine that one day the oldest of those people wakes up. There’s a crack in the branches, a bit of moonlight seeps through the leaves, and the people inside the nightmare slowly wake up.”
I said, “They put you to sleep because they could not kill you?”
He let go of my chin, and it seemed then that he frowned, overcome with grief.
“Do not be fooled by anything He-Who-Lies-In-Wait tells you. You are not his friend, Louisa, and you are not his employee. You are but a pretty curiosity to study, a rare butterfly pinned under glass.” He sighed and folded his clawed hands in front of his waist. “But I will take you away from this place. You will be made safe before my great war begins.”
I shook my head, holding out my hand to him. The marks left behind by the book were not erased by the magic of the pavilion. “I can’t leave. The only thing allowing me to come and go is this pin Mr. Morningside gave me. I’m bound to the book.”
His melancholy lifted, his eyes glittering then with interest. “So you have seen it. Touched it. Remarkable. And he gave you this pin? Then he knows you can handle the book without perishing.” He paced furiously, sharp brows drawn down in concentration. “We have even less time than I thought.” Then he stopped and spun to face me, eyes glowing brighter and brighter still. “You must bring me the book, Louisa. I will release you from its dark power, but first you must bring it to me and bring it in secret.”