A Feather of Stone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Clio

  thais

  Clio

  Black Like My Soul

  All the More Believable

  Taught by Evil

  Thais

  Not to Be Trusted

  Clio

  Someone Who Could Help

  Thais

  Would That Kill Him?

  Clio

  Thais

  Not by Ordinary Means

  True Love

  No Room for Her

  She Can’t Hide It

  Clio

  Two Black Sheep

  Thais

  Get Over Her

  Clio

  The Bottom

  When They Had Met

  Clio

  Someone Unseen

  The Endless Cycle

  Thais

  Clio

  Tonight

  Thais

  Please Forgive Me

  A Burst of Divine Power

  Had He Learned Nothing?

  Clio

  A dangerous temptation . . .

  I closed my eyes and murmured the words that would let me access the cats’ power. Within seconds I felt their feline life forces. Without thinking, I coiled my muscles. I crouched and jumped easily to the top of our seven-foot brick wall. I landed on my toes, arms out for balance, but felt solid and secure.

  Laughing aloud, I raised my face to the sky. I saw differently, heard differently, tasted the air more powerfully. I smelled other animals, damp brick, green leaves and decaying plants and dirt. I was giddy with sensation, thrilled, with fierce anticipation about exploring the whole new world opened to me. My night vision was amazing, and I gazed at everything, seeing every dark leaf, every swaying plant, every cricket in the grass, one crisp, clear snapshot at a time.

  I was super-Clio, bursting with life and power, and a dark and terrible joy rose up in me.

  I sat down again in my circle, trying to still my frantically beating heart. I didn’t want to lose this feeling, this incredible, exhilarating extra-ness. It would be so easy to just take it, take it and keep it, and not care about the consequences.

  BY CATE TIERNAN

  BALERFIRE

  Book One: A Chalice of Wind

  Book Two: A Circle of Ashes

  Book Three: A Feather of Stone

  Book Four: A Necklace of Water

  SWEEP

  Book One: Book of Shadows

  Book Two: The Cover

  Book Three: Blood Witch

  Book Four: Dark Magick

  Book Five: Awakening

  Book Six: Spellbound

  Book Seven: The Calling

  Book Eight: Changeling

  Book Nine: Strife

  Book Ten: Seeker

  Book Eleven: Origins

  Book Twelve: Eclipse

  Book Thirteen: Reckoning

  Book Fourteen: Full Circle

  Super Edition: Night’s Child

  Balefire 3: A Feather of Stone

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Copyright 2005 © Gabrielle Charbonnet

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15723-7

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  With love to Fiona Morgan,

  who supports me in so many ways.

  Clio

  I heard a faint sound behind me and froze, my hands inside my canvas bag. I waited, sending my senses out more strongly, but felt nothing out of the ordinary: only sleeping birds, neighborhood dogs and cats, mice. Insects.

  Ick.

  I let out a deep breath. It was a new moon, which meant this cemetery was even blacker than usual. I was tucked into a remote corner, kneeling on the grass between two tall crypts. I was invisible from all directions, unless someone was right in front of me.

  It was almost midnight. I had school tomorrow and knew I would feel like crap in the morning. Too bad. This was my chance, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

  Quickly and silently I drew a five-foot circle on the ground with sand. Inside the circle, I set four red candles at the four compass points. Red for blood, lineage, passion, fire. I was in the very center, with a small stone bowl filled with chunks of coal in front of me. I lit the candles and the coal, blowing on the coal until it was glowing red.

  Then I sat back, gently rested my hands palms up on my knees, and tried to calm my nerves. If Nan woke up and found me gone, I would be dead meat. Or if anyone else found out what I was doing, again, there would be much of the brouhaha.

  But two nights ago, at a circle for Récolte, I’d been blown to the ground by a huge surge of power. My own power had been taken and used by someone else. I was still pissed at Daedalus for doing it. So here I was, trying to find out how he’d done it.

  I’d practiced magick, the métier, pretty much my whole life. I hadn’t had my rite of ascension yet, but I’d had great teachers and knew I was pretty powerful for my age. I’d seen any number of grown-ups work magick, for years. But I’d never seen anything like what had happened at Récolte.

  Where had Daedalus’s power come from? Was it from being immortal? Tonight I was going to try to go to the source: my memory. For some reason, my sister, Thais, and I could tap into memories of our ancestors, the line of witches twelve generations long that led back to the rite, the first rite, the one where the Treize became immortal and Cerise Martin had died.

  I’d seen what had happened that night. At the time I’d been too freaked to see the big picture. But now that I knew what it was, what had happened, I would find out how.

  I stilled my whirling thoughts and focused on the burning coal. Fire was my element, and I concentrated on the glowing red heat, feeling it warming the heavy air. On the ground I drew different runes:

  ôte, for birthright and inheritance, rad, for my journey, lage, for knowledge and psychic power. I slowed my breathing. The barriers between myself and the rest of the world slowly dissolved; our edges blurr
ed. I took on an awareness of everything around me: the inhalation of a blade of grass, the microscopic release of old, weathered marble on a tomb. In my mind I chanted a spell, one that I’d spent the last two days crafting. It was in English, and I’d totally given up on trying to make it rhyme.

  Chains of time, pull me back

  Let me sink into memory

  Follow the red thread of my blood

  Back through the ages

  Woman after woman, mother after mother

  Giving birth, succumbing to death

  Back to the first one, Cerise Martin

  And the night of Melita’s power.

  Show me what I need to know.

  I had never done anything like this before, never worked a spell this big. Also, I was deliberately invoking a memory of someone I knew to be evil—Melita Martin, my ancestor. In my earlier visions of that night, I’d been both terrified and horrified at what I’d seen. Now I was going there voluntarily. No one with any sense would think that was okay. But part of being a witch was having an ever-present thirst for knowledge, a desperate need to have questions answered, an overwhelming desire to understand as much as possible.

  Of course, part of being a witch was also accepting the fact that there were many, many questions that could never be answered and many things that would never be known.

  I began singing my song, my unique call for power. I sang it very, very softly—this cemetery was in the middle of an uptown neighborhood, not far from my house, and was bordered by four narrow residential streets. Anyone walking by might hear. A thin shell of awareness was distracting me—I still felt the damp grass I sat on, heard the faint drone of distant grasshoppers.

  Maybe this wouldn’t work. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough. Maybe I had crafted the spell wrong. Maybe I should ask Melita for help.

  That last thought startled me, and I blinked.

  It was sunny, and I was standing in the middle of a small garden patch. I held my long apron up with one hand, and with the other I picked tomatoes, letting them slide into the pouchy sling my apron made. I saw that fat green tomato worms were eating some of the vines. So my anti-tomato-worm spell hadn’t worked. Maybe I should ask Melita for help.

  But now I had enough tomatoes for Maman’s gumbo. I hitched up my apron so they wouldn’t spill and headed back to the kitchen. My bare feet felt the warm earth, the slightly cooler grass, the rough, packed oyster shells of the path to the barn. My back hurt. My big belly stuck out so I could hardly see my feet. Two more months and the baby would be born. Maman said my back wouldn’t hurt anymore then.

  I’d heard the English looked down hard on a girl unwed but with child. Our village was more accepting. Maman did want me to choose Marcel, to make my own family with him. But I wanted to stay here, in this house, with Maman and my sister. Papa had left long ago, and since then, we were only women here. I liked it that way.

  I climbed up the wooden steps to the back room. We cooked outside, everyone did, but we kept our kitchen things in the workroom. Maman and my sister were inside.

  “Here.” I lifted the tomatoes onto the table, then sat down in a wooden chair, feeling the relief of not carrying the extra weight.

  “ The bébé grows big, no?” my sister said, going to the pail of drinking water on the bench. She dipped me up some, filling a cup, and brought it to me. “Poor Cerise.”

  “ Thanks.” The water was warm but good.

  Melita knelt in front of me and put her hands on the hard mound of my stomach. She soothed the tight muscles, and her movements calmed the baby, who was active and kicking. One big kick made me gasp, and Melita laughed and tapped the plain outline of a tiny foot.

  “You’re full of life,” she murmured, and smiled up at me, her eyes as black as mine were green, her hair dark like Papa’s.

  I smiled at her, then caught a glimpse of Maman’s face as she snapped green beans. She was worried, watching us. Worried about me and the baby, about Melita and her magick. People said that she worked dark magick, that she risked her soul pursuing evil. I didn’t believe them and didn’t want to think about it. She was my sister.

  “Are you ready for the special circle tonight?” Melita asked, starting to chop tomatoes.

  I made a face. “I’m tired—maybe I’ll stay home and sleep.”

  “Oh no, cher,” she said, looking distressed. “I need you there. It’s a special circle, one that will guarantee a time of plenty for the whole village. You must come. You’re my good luck charm.”

  “Who else is going?” I bent down with difficulty and picked up some sewing from the basket. I’d begun making baby dresses, baby hats, baby socks. I carried a girl; I could feel her. Now I was working on a small blanket for the cradle.

  “Well, Maman,” said Melita.

  I glanced at Maman to see her frowning. She, too, was unsure about this circle of Melita’s.

  “Ouida,” Melita cajoled. “You like her. And cousin Sophie. Cousin Luc-Andre. Manon, the smith’s daughter.”

  “ That little girl?” Maman asked.

  “She wants to take part in more circles,” Melita answered. “Um . . .”

  The way she hesitated made me look up. “Who else?”

  “Marcel,” she admitted.

  I nodded and went back to sewing. Marcel was a dear. He was so anxious about the baby. Had asked me to marry him a thousand times. I cared about him, truly, and knew he would make a good husband. I just didn’t want a husband. He’d been so sure that I’d marry him when I knew I was going to have the baby. But why would I bother marrying when I had Maman and Melita to help me?

  “Several others,” Melita said, sweeping the chopped tomatoes into a bowl. “It will be perfect. I’ve been crafting this spell for a long time. I assure you it will bring a long and healthy life to everyone who participates.”

  “How can you know that?” Maman asked.

  Melita laughed. “I’ve crafted it to be so. Trust me.”

  At sundown Maman and I walked from our little house to the place Melita had told us about, deep in the woods, not far from the river. I had rested and felt fine and healthy. I couldn’t wait for two months to be past so I could meet my baby girl. Would she have light eyes or dark? Fair skin or warm tan? I looked forward to her fatness, her perfect baby skin. Maman had delivered many babies, and I knew it would be hard, but not horrible. And Melita would help.

  “Through here,” Maman murmured, holding back some trailing honeysuckles. Their strong sweetness perfumed the air, filling my lungs with scent. It was hot and humid and our clothes stuck to us, but everything felt fine.

  We reached a small clearing, in front of what Melita had described as the biggest oak tree in Louisiana.

  “Holy Mother,” Maman breathed, looking at the tree.

  I laughed when I saw it—it reached the sky, taller than any tree I’d ever seen. It was so big around that five people holding hands still could not encircle it. It was awe-inspiring, such a monument to how the Mother nourished life. I touched the bark with my palm, almost able to feel the life pulsing under its skin.

  “How could I have not known this was here?” Maman said, still gazing at it.

  “Petra,” said a voice in greeting. “Cerise.”

  It was remarkable, how I felt chills down my back when I heard his voice or knew that he was near.

  Maman turned to him with a smile. “Richard, cher. How are you? Melita didn’t tell us you were coming.”

  I turned slowly, in time to see him take off his hat and brush it against one leg. “Melita is very persuasive,” he said, not looking at me.

  “Petra.” Ouida called to her from across the clearing, and, smiling, Maman went to hug her.

  I looked into Richard’s dark eyes. “Did Melita tell you what this was about?”

  “No. You?”

  I shook my head and looked for a place to sit. Finally I just sat on the grass, smoothing out my skirts and arching my back to stretch my stomach muscles. “She said it was about ensur
ing a time of plenty for the village,” I said. “Long lives for everyone. I didn’t want to come, but she said I was her good luck charm.”

  Richard sat next to me. His knee accidentally brushed mine, and a ripple of pleasure shot up my spine. My mind filled with other memories of pleasure with Richard, and I wriggled a bit and smiled at him. He got that very still, intent expression that always meant I was about to feel good.

  Then he turned away, his jaw set, and I sighed. He was continuing to be upset about Marcel. Just like Marcel was very upset about him. Sometimes the two of them made me tired—why should it matter if I wanted both of them? Why should I have to choose? I wouldn’t have cared if they’d also wanted to spark some other girl in the village.

  I fanned myself with my straw hat and saw that others were arriving. M. Daedalus, the head of our village, was there, and his friend Jules, who’d lived here for ten years now. M. Daedalus had just gotten back from visiting his brother in New Orleans, I remembered hearing. I wondered if he had brought back any fabric for the Chevets’ shop. I’d go look tomorrow.

  Melita’s best friend, Axelle, arrived, slim like a snake, even in her full skirts and sun hat. I smiled and waved at her, and she waved back.

  “Greetings,” said a voice, and I turned to see Claire Londine stepping through the honeysuckle. She saw me and came to sit down.

  “You’re as big as a house,” she told me, shaking her head. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, mostly,” I said.

  “I don’t see why you would—” she began, then looked at Richard and stopped.

  “I’m going to talk to Daedalus,” Richard said abruptly, and left.

  Claire laughed. “He sensed woman talk coming on. I wanted to say, why did you let this happen? It’s so easy to prevent it. Or to stop it, if it comes to that.”

  I shrugged. “I decided I’d like to have a baby. I’m going to call her Hélène.”

  “But babies are so much work,” Claire said. “ They scream all the time. They never go away.”