Though the sun blazed down upon him, it felt as if Arthur had stepped into David’s room again, skin and blood like ice, an electric shiver arcing up and down his spine.
“Are you certain this is the best course of action?” Miss Marblemaw asked, and Arthur’s fury lessened. Not by much, but enough to consider her words carefully. She sounded … unsure? Or something so close to it that it didn’t make a difference. He could work with that. It might take time—not that they had much—but maybe he could convince her that—
“I’m certain,” Rowder replied. “More than I’ve ever been in my life. I have seen what people like them are truly capable of, and I fear for all of our futures. Never before have we been on a precipice like we are now.” Her eyes narrowed. “And need I remind you, without me, you wouldn’t be an inspector. You’d still be in the mail room, toiling away. I lifted you up, put my faith in you. I made you what you are, and this is the thanks I get?” She shook her head. “Maybe I was wrong about you.”
“No!” Miss Marblemaw said quickly, leaning forward. “I can do it. I know I can. It’s just…”
“Spit it out, Harriet. You’re wasting precious time.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
Yes, Arthur thought through fire. Yes.
“I’m not,” Rowder said flatly. “You were at the hearing. You heard what everyone else did. Arthur Parnassus is a liar, but more than that, he’s a magnetic liar. Whatever he says, you mustn’t believe. An animal backed into a corner will do whatever it can to survive. He is no different. We must ensure the children aren’t being brainwashed by whatever he decides is the issue du jour. Are you going to tell me you did everything you could when he unleashes his army upon the world? Could you live with yourself knowing you could have stopped it before it began?”
Miss Marblemaw hesitated.
Arthur breathed in. Arthur breathed out.
She said, “No. I couldn’t.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“Good,” Rowder said. “Now, about the Antichrist.”
“Why can’t I just take him in the night?” Miss Marblemaw asked. “Sedate him and remove him while everyone sleeps.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Rowder asked incredulously. “He’d know immediately, and there wouldn’t be enough of you left to bury.”
“But if I sedate the child, he won’t—”
“I’m not talking about the Antichrist, you bloody fool! Arthur Parnassus would burn you to the ground before you made it three steps from the orphanage. No, we do this by the books. Say whatever you must in your reports to get it done, Harriet. Given the … complexities of this situation, I alone have the final decision as to the removal, but mine won’t be the only eyes on your reports. Make it count. Legally, of course.”
“I will,” Miss Marblemaw said. “But—”
“But what?” Rowder growled. “Out with it, Harriet. I don’t have all day to sit here and listen to you whine on and on. Plans are in motion, and they will not fail because of your ineptitude.”
“But, I just … I have to ask, Miss Rowder. Why would the Antichrist listen to you at all? Why would he do anything you wanted him to? What’s stopping him from killing all of us and returning to the island?”
“That’s where the other children come into play,” Rowder said, and a print of Arthur’s hand burned into the tree, the bark blackened, smoking. “By your account, he’s close with them. He considers them his brothers and sisters, as if a monstrous thing could ever understand family values.” She laughed, a low, throaty thing. “He cannot, as he’s a demon hell-bent on destroying everything we hold dear. But on the off chance there’s a sliver of light in the rotting carcass of his soul, then he’ll do whatever I tell him to keep the other children safe. Imagine having an endless reservoir of magic at the government’s command. Why continue to fight the good fight when we can just as easily place our will upon the world with a gentle hand and a well-placed threat to the Devil himself? Never again will we be questioned for our actions, not when every magical being is under government control through the Antichrist.”
Lucy had thought the same thing. And yet, as a boy of seven years of age, he was making a different decision. He chose joy. He chose happiness. He chose others above himself, even knowing he had the power to do whatever he wished. Why could a child do what adults could not?
“Not everyone will agree with you,” Miss Marblemaw said, clearly uncomfortable. “Most of all Arthur Parnassus and Linus Baker. You saw what Parnassus can do, and I fear that’s only scratching the surface.”
You’re right, Arthur thought coldly. I’ve barely begun to show you what I’m capable of.
“Which is why I entrusted you with this,” Rowder snapped. “Removing the children is the first step. The media is already playing their part by continuing to push the photograph of the bird breaking free in Netherwicke. We couldn’t have planned it better if we tried. The world knows him for what he is now. And when we announce we’ve removed the children, everyone will understand that we saw something, we said something, and we did something that no one else before us could do: we protected the children who needed us most. You have ten days, Harriet. Do not disappoint me. You know what will happen if you do.”
The screen went black. Miss Marblemaw reached up and closed the briefcase.
Arthur left her on the beach.
He did not remember walking back through the woods. He did not remember climbing up the trail, slipping and skinning his palm. He did not remember passing by the shuttered guesthouse. He did not hear Linus and Talia chattering away in the garden. He did not feel the creak of the porch steps beneath his feet. He did not smell the scent of polish—lemon, crisp—that caused wood to gleam. He did not see anything but a narrowed tunnel, the edges as ragged as the harsh breaths he took.
He made it to the bedroom and shut the door, leaning his forehead against it. In his chest, a snarling star of fire, flares snapping like a whip. Rage. Horror. Fear. All of it merging, amassing into a misshapen, sentient lump of oily black.
Nearly blind with panic, he turned, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
“Hope,” his mother said, standing near the window, “is the thing with feathers.” She faced away from him, her straw-colored hair cascading down her back. She wore a lavender dress, the one he remembered vaguely from his youth because it had pockets. According to her, a good dress always had pockets.
“Anger,” she said without looking at him, and he wasn’t so far gone that he thought her real rather than memory, but it was a close thing. “It builds on top of old wounds, on scar tissue. It grows and grows until it becomes all you know.”
He’d been here before. This conversation was one of the few he could remember, a precious treasure hoarded in the furthest recesses of his mind. He had a part to play, and play it he would. When he spoke, it was not as a man, but as a child. “How do you stop it?”
Though he could not see her face—would he even recognize it if he did?—he knew she was smiling. He could hear it in her voice when she said, “With hope, little bird. With hope, because hope is the thing with feathers.”
“I have feathers,” he said excitedly. And then, “Mother, I—”
But she was gone, gone, gone, years gone, decades gone, and how he had grieved the loss of her, of his father, of the only life he’d ever known, a life with laughter and gazing at the stars and flying higher and higher until he thought he could touch the sky.
With the last of his strength, Arthur stumbled over to his chair, collapsing into it, chest heaving, eyes burning. He raised his hand to his face as his shoulders began to tremble.
He floated through the rest of the day, unable to shake the high-pitched buzzing noise in his ears, a sound that made him feel as if he were being pulled beneath the sea, dragged down to black depths where darkness lived.
The buzzing only grew as the day wore on, Arthur lost to it. There were moments of clarity, brief though they were. Smiling when Talia and Linus came back in the house for lunch, their knees and hands caked with dirt. Nodding when Chauncey explained (in great detail!) how he’d spent his morning with David and Lucy, and that they’d pretended to be gigantic beasts knocking over buildings made of wooden blocks. Praising Sal and Theodore for their cataloguing of the wyvern’s hoard with little labels to show why they were important. Exclaiming over a leaf Phee had grown in the shape of Helen, stout, strong, colorful, a perfect representation of its counterpart.
Miss Marblemaw arrived late afternoon, her clipboard clasped firmly in her hands. Appearing no more nervous than she had been the day before, she asked after Zoe, reminding Arthur that she would interview the island sprite, and any efforts to keep that from happening would be considered an act of subterfuge.
