Thornghost by Tone Almhjell

save every prince she met.
    It suited her well.
    He opened the second box and struck gold. Tapes. All of them were dated and labeled with place, musician, and songs.
    Except one, which simply said
ERIKA
.
    Niklas slapped his forehead. Anne Rosenquist had nearly told him about this tape last summer, while he was waiting for Lin to feed Rufus so they could go troll hunting. Anne had sat with him for a moment, looking out on the morello garden where Uncle Anders was watering the strawberries.
    â€œSo, you’re Summerknight,” she had said, which had annoyed Niklas a little. No one was supposed to know about the code names, least of all a grown-up. Anne must have seen it on one of Lin’s maps. He had nodded anyway.
    â€œIt sounds like a proper knight’s name,” she had said. “Your mother would have liked that. She loved heroic songs, especially if they contained death and impossible tasks. Did you know she even wrote one herself?”
    She had smiled at him. “I actually have a . . .” And then she had stopped and looked over at Uncle Anders, and Niklas was sure she wished she could take it back. Lin had come out with Rufus concealed in her pocket, and that was the end of that. Later, both he and Lin had tried asking about it, but Anne had brushed them off. The week after, they left for the city.
    He bet his entire collection of comic books that she had been about to say “tape.” Had she left this here for him?
    He shoved it into the player and pushed the button.
    At first he heard only muffled voices, fuzzy laughter, a fiddle being tuned.
    Then the recorder must have been moved into a betterposition, because he heard Uncle Anders say, “You should sing it.” He sounded so different. Light, almost crisp. “I’ll play, if I can remember the tune.”
    â€œYes, sing it,” Anne Rosenquist chimed in. “It ought to be preserved for future generations.”
    A third voice sounded, echoing from rooms at the very back of Niklas’s mind. “It’s not worth preserving,” said his mother. “It’s not traditional.”
    â€œWho cares,” Anne said. “Every legend begins somewhere. Why not with you?”
    Silence followed, and through the scratchy, wheezy filter of the tape, Niklas could almost hear them hold their breaths. Then his mother said, “Because it didn’t.”
    But she sang anyway.
    Wake now, little rose,
    The night grows dark and old.
    Your feet must find the trail tonight,
    To Sorrowdeep the cold.
    Wait now, little dog,
    Your voice will carry through.
    The key lies in her hand tonight,
    Sebastifer the true.
    Stay then, ghost of thorns,
    If you can’t play the part.
    The key will lead you nowhere when
    It’s locked inside your heart.
    The recording ended.
    Ghost of thorns. Even if Grandma Alma insisted he had dreamt it, Niklas had always believed that the last word he heard his mother speak was
Thornghost
. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
    His skin prickled, but he listened to the tape again, then jotted down the lyrics and tucked it away for evidence.
    The third box contained a framed photograph, taken in the yard. His mother with her white locks tossed back and an intense, uneasy look in her eyes. The dark twist of the Willodalers’ gossip, captured for anyone to see. And next to her a miniature building that Niklas knew well.
    The bird castle. Except it wasn’t mounted outside the east window, it sat on a workbench beneath the elm tree. The tower lacked its dome, and the drawbridge dangled by its chains, unfastened. But that was about to change, because in her hands Erika held a carving iron and a tiny screwdriver.
    His mother had made the castle. She was the unknown master carver.
    Niklas pried open the clips behind the frame and removed the cardboard. Anne Rosenquist had written something on the back of the photo.
    Erika and her nightmare castle.

C HAPTER T WELVE

    A flock of