The White Forest Read Online Free PDF Page A

claimed, at least. And then he left me, following the other Fetches deeper into the chambers beneath the Temple. Do you know what he meant, Jane? It’s a religious term, isn’t it? Something from the Middle Ages? I know I’ve heard it before.”
    “Pascal, I—”
    “The priest at my parents’ church used to lecture about the old customs and beliefs. I think he might have mentioned that word.”
    I steadied myself, looking directly into Pascal’s dark eyes. I could hear Nathan’s voice in my head, solemnly listing the seven levels of the medieval Heaven as he attempted to explain my talent: “There’s the Faerie, Ethereal, Olympian, Fiery, Firmament, Aqueous, and most importantly, the Empyrean, Jane. That’s where the saints and the angels are said to live. A place of purity and stillness.” I told him I didn’t care for such cosmologies. They were nothing more than children’s stories. But Nathan persisted. “You’re hedging, Jane. You believe in all this more than you let on. You have to. You’ve seen it.”
    I pulled myself away from that memory and directed my attention again toward Pascal. “Nathan said so many odd things before he disappeared. I’m sure he was merely spouting more of Day’s rubbish.” I lied because telling the truth would make things worse for Pascal. Knowledge of the Empyrean spread through one’s body like an infection. I didn’t want that for him. In many ways, Pascal was like a childto us. We all did our best to take care of him because he was alone in London, and Alexander had broken his heart.
    After Pascal’s mention of the Empyrean, I found I couldn’t continue to sit in the Queen’s Host and act like everything was fine. I excused myself, saying I had to catch my father before he left his offices.
    “You aren’t angry with me too, are you, Jane?” he asked.
    “Never, dear,” I said.
    By the time I opened the tea shop door to leave, I could barely breathe, wondering why on earth Nathan had been foolish enough to divulge our secrets to Day. Nathan was so unpredictable near the end. I wondered too who else he’d told. Perhaps it was due to my distracted state there on the doorstep of the Queen’s Host that I did not shun the newsboy who approached me. He was small and filthy haired, and he rudely shoved an equally filthy newspaper into my hands. It was a copy of the Illustrated Penny, the worst of the rags, and rather than push back, I paid him and opened its pages.
    The Penny was printed for illiterates and told the news entirely in pictures. In this particular issue, a series of images purported to show the last moments before Nathan’s disappearance. Thick ink lines conjured the sullen streets of Southwark and the domed turrets at the Temple of the Lamb. In the first frame, Nathan bid farewell to a group of nefarious-looking young men, presumably the Fetches of Ariston Day. Hollow-cheeked and grim, the boys made knowing expressions as they watched Nathan stumble down the empty cobblestone. The smoke from the glue factory consumed him, turning him into a living shadow.
    He passed through pools of gaslight, moving toward the Thames, which appeared as a black vein in the landscape. Nathan seemed drunk or otherwise of altered consciousness, leaning too heavily on his walking stick. He paused at a railing above the water to check his clock. In doing so, he lost his footing.
    His expression as he fell toward the rushing current of the Thames was exaggerated—mouth a wide zero, eyes flat circles, andyet the artist captured enough of the actual sharp edges of Nathan Ashe to make my heart quicken.
    Nathan’s body was tossed along in the inky depths, sweeping past ancient debris long sunk in the river. The artifacts were nothing more than a scribble on the page, but I found my imagination presenting me with specific objects over which Nathan floated—the smooth head of a Roman god, a medieval cross burned in the great London fire, a carriage wheel, a coin box, an ax