A Bitter Magic (11 page)

“Sheep manure?”

“That's what it says. Three teaspoons.”

My nose, my eyes, and any other part of me that can wrinkle wrinkles. The curse of a sensitive nose. At least it's
dry
manure. I measure it into the vial.

“Now,” says Asa, reading, “the powdered alder fruit.”

“How much?”

He flips the page back and forth. “It doesn't say. What idiot wrote this? It's no good unless you know the measurement!”

I wait. I've learned that Uncle Asa has to finish ranting before he can listen.

“Two months I waited for that shyster bookseller in Calais! And the book is useless!”

I wait.

“He's supposed to know his business!”

His anger is winding down. Good.

“What if we make three batches,” I suggest, “with different amounts? Maybe one will be right.”

“You have to be exact.”

“What choice do we have?”

He sighs.

Three batches are made, turned into paste by an admixture of vinegar and salt, and applied to the stripped roots of three rosebushes.

He looks at me. “Do you think it will work?”

“Well, we've got three chances that it will.”

“Be honest.”

“No, I don't.”

We've been at this six days now, trying everything he can think of in every book he has. We even talk at dinner. That's new. We discuss grafting methods. I back off when he yells, but lately he's been yelling at others, including some long-dead botanists.

Privately? None of these experiments will work. He's trying to create a magical plant through mechanical means.

But I'm willing to help. Sooner or later, it will gain me my freedom; and it allows me to nose around for clues to Mother.

Two days after the sheep manure experiment, the plants are dying. But ever resourceful, we try a new method of grafting: we attach the roots of a rose to the stem of a black currant bush and, in a separate experiment,
to a black birch sapling. Grafting has never been tried like this.

We're almost finished when the door swings open. Mr. Strunk stands there, a stubby silhouette, holding a package. His nose twitches. He should have
my
smelling ability. “Something for you, sir,” he says.

Asa doesn't look up. “See what it is,” he tells me. “I didn't order any more books.”

I wrestle open the packaging. “It's a book, all right. An old one. I think it's in Latin.”

He frowns. “What's the matter with your thumb?”

I try to ignore the stab of panic. After all, I've been careful to keep my thumb out of sight for weeks.

“Nothing. I cut myself.”

His look narrows. “Wait. I happen to know you can heal cuts.”

I pause a little too long.

“I think you're lying. Let me see it.”

I try to pull away, but he catches my wrist. My glass thumb tip gleams like a lighthouse. He turns my hand back and forth, his eyes intent. He taps the glass tip. “What on God's earth…?”

I take a deep breath. “I found a piece of the mirror. You'd thrown it out.”

“The black mirror? You
stole
it?”

“You'd thrown it
out
!”

“Never mind. What happened to the thumb?”

I blow out a sigh. “Can we sit down?”

“No, we cannot sit down. What happened?”

There's no way to avoid this. Before I'm finished telling him, he has stopped listening. “Where's the glass now?” he demands. “Get it. Bring it here.”

Not a word about how I feel, or what it might be like to be a girl with a partly amputated thumb.

I head downstairs and retrieve the glass from the back of my closet. I'm careful to hold it from underneath, by its lead backing.

Asa pushes the new book aside and lays the mirror on the table. “I'd given up on this thing.” He shakes his head. “Let's see what we can find out.” He reaches into a terrarium, pulls out a wriggling chameleon, and sets it on the glass.

The lizard looks up at me.

“Wait!” I say. “Take something else. This pencil.”

“I want to see if it works on a living organism.”

“It does! Just look at my thumb!”

“Be quiet. It's starting.”

The slightest fizz of light begins circling the bewildered creature. The lights grow clearer, more numerous, while the chameleon loses bits of itself. Instead of changing from one color to another, as such creatures do, it changes from something into nothing.

Then it's gone.

Asa picks up the mirror, turns it upside down, and shakes it.

“Do you think he'll fall out?” I ask.

“I don't know what I think. I think it's magic.”

“Be careful how you hold that,” I add hastily. “Hold it from underneath.”

He sets the glass down. “So.” His gaze is intense. “We're left with a dilemma. It seems that in order to
make
magic, we have to
have
magic.”

“Probably true.”

“Which is one definition of
impossible
.”

We look at each other in silence.

I raise my eyebrows.

He lowers his.

Somehow, I expect Miss Porlock to look different. I certainly look at her differently. It makes me nervous just sitting across from her. But here she is, in her usual seat by the window, biting into a ginger cookie and going over notes for today's lesson. Not a trace of the furtive creature in the dark, pawing through Mother's things.

This afternoon, it's history. English. From Thomas Cromwell all the way to Oliver Cromwell. Lots of torture and burnings at the stake. Somehow it feels appropriate.

I dip one of her cookies in my tea in hopes of softening it and write dutifully in my notebook, but it's hard to concentrate. When Miss P. speaks of the beheading of Anne Boleyn, all I can think about is a dark room and the flash of scissors.

An hour in the court of Henry VIII has worn out even
Miss Porlock. She releases me, and I step into the hall, the conch shell under my arm. Voices of tourists reach me from the atrium—the afternoon group. No one up here, thank goodness, although they'll be brought up later to be shown the Mirror Maze, Uncle Asa's pride.

Free to wander, I head for Mother's rooms. I've been going there a lot these days. It's my secret, a place where I don't have to be polite or obedient or normal. A place that understands me.

Arriving at her door, I have a little shock: the lock has been replaced—in fact, with a larger, stronger lock than before. I suppose Strunk is responsible, no doubt instructed by Asa.

I smile. Do they really think they can keep me out, when the answer's at the tip of my thumb? Three minutes later, the lock doesn't exist, and the door sways open.

Dimness, silence, the sweet scent of a white rose on the mantel.

Ordinarily, that's where I'd leave the shell, but today I take it to the vanity. It has been giving me advice on hair, something I never gave a thought to in my younger days—three weeks ago. Why am I so interested now? And dresses! I used to hate dresses.

“Can you help me do my hair like Mother in the painting?”

A breathy voice: “I'm afraid your tutor would not approve.”

That gets a giggle out of me. “No, I don't suppose she would.”

“Too adult?”

I pick up the shell. “You don't like her, do you?”

“Me? I'm nothing. Just a gust of wind.”

“So you say.”

“Shall we start? First, brush your hair out so we see what we have to work with.”

I settle myself at the vanity and watch my image in the three-sided mirror. An arsenal of Mother's implements lies before me, and during the next twenty minutes I use most of them. When we're finished, the Cisley before me looks more eighteen than thirteen, her long brown hair swept upward in carefully casual swells, like waves on the verge of breaking.

“What do you think?” says the voice from the shell.

“My goodness!” I jump up and run to compare myself to the painting. In the half-light, Mother gazes down at me, her expression inscrutable. Our hairstyles are identical—identical!—but there's something I'm missing.

Apart from her blazing beauty, of course.

The dress. It must be in the closet.

Go ahead
, says a voice inside me. I've been hearing that voice a lot lately. Disobedient. Hard to resist.

The closet door swings open as I approach, and I enter as I would a church. The way ahead is dim as a wedding aisle lit by glowworms. Lines of gowns sway like well-wishers, a fantasy so strong I find myself nodding to each one as I pass.

Go on; go on
, they urge, silks rustling.

I've never made it all the way to the back—although I've set out for it twice before—and I begin to wonder if the closet ever ends, or if it's like the images in mirrors reflecting other mirrors, myself, my selves, forever.

I pass the red gown I tried on last time, and farther ahead, the white sheath with the diamonds up the side. I nod to each. Continuing, I hear muffled whispers.

Is someone here?

The sounds, very soft, come from just ahead. They're not in any language I know, unless it's the language of satin. They're coming from, swirling from, circling around, one of the gowns—floor-length, pale blue, the very dress from the portrait!

Reverently, I unhook it and carry it out.

Way too long for me, of course. Way too everything. A daring swoop. Getting into this thing, I realize, will be a project in itself.

I step out of the girlish dress that Porlock likes me to wear, and pause, catching my own eyes in the mirror.
What do I think I'm doing?

But then that other voice:
Who has a better right?

I gather the material and slip it over my head, careful about my hair. Immediately, strange as it sounds, the gown takes over. It never touches my hair as it slithers over me, whispering as it goes. I feel caressed, perfumed, as the waist cinches itself, the hem retracts, the bodice conforms to my more modest size. I reach back for the satin buttons and find them already done to the top.

I behold a transformed Cisley Thummel. Heart
pounding, I turn and face the portrait of Mother. A shiver goes through me. For a moment, it's as though I can see through the painting—and she can see me!

All my life, she's been a mystery to me; but maybe I've been a mystery to myself. I look into her eyes and feel some of that same mischief in my own.

Mischief and something else. Something…worse?

Asa. Strunk. Porlock. Janko. Not an ounce of magic among them. What makes them think they can tell me how to dress? Or how to behave? I'm not a child anymore. Not here.

I could fool them. I could play tricks on them.

I could hurt them
.

My stomach drops. How could I
think
such a thing? But here in this room, it feels…thrilling.
We're different from them, Mother. No one makes rules for us
.

We mirror each other
.

Oh. Except for one thing. I run to the outer room and fetch the rose from the mantel. Then I stand before Mother and try to hold it the way she's holding hers, the casual assurance, the lightness of touch, the curve of her wrist.

There are still differences. The roses, obviously. Hers is black, as black as Underwood's paintbrush could paint it. Mine is white.

Just then a distant whistle breaks my reverie. Who do I know who whistles like that? I run to the window and pull aside the drape. It's coming from the beach.
Cole!

I shake myself, shake off Mother and the thoughts I
just had. It's Cole! He puts his fingers to his lips and lets out another long whistle. He's looking toward the castle. Toward my room.

I push open the window. “Here! I'm up here!”

I wave frantically, but I'm in the other wing and he's not looking this way.

Not thinking, I run out in the corridor. One of the new cleaning women looks up from the statue she's been dusting. She stares at me, her mouth agape, like a hooked fish.

Before she can speak, I thrust the rose in her hand and run past into the Mirror Maze.

A group of tourists is shuffling along ahead of me, led through the maze by their energetic guide. I slip in among them. At first, no one notices, and together we start down the curving glass staircase to the atrium. I try to keep my head down, while looking out for Janko and Strunk; but my head is gorgeously not my own, and my body a river of satin. Several people have become aware of me. They turn and stare, but seem afraid to say anything.

Trying to hide is not going to work.

Be a Thummel
, I tell myself. And I stand erect, chin up.
Be Marina!

Now everyone steps aside, practically tripping over themselves to make way for me. “It's her!” gasps an elderly woman, laying her hand on her throat.

A girl whispers to her friend, “It's the magic lady. The one who was killed!”

We reach the atrium, and I separate myself from the
others, hurrying toward the kitchen and back exit. Mrs. Quay glances up at me from the meat pie she's readying for the oven, and for a moment I see fear in her eyes.

Then I'm outside in the wind.

I'm running.

My heart's thumping hard, not just from running. We haven't seen each other in weeks, and I haven't been able to explain to him why. Did that serving girl ever give Cole the message that I couldn't meet him?

The first thing he says confuses me. “What
happened
to you?”

I stand before him, catching my breath. “What do you mean? Oh.” Only now do I remember the gown. The satin shoes. The hair.

Oh, the hair!

“Tell me later,” he says. “You can still heal people, right?”

“What?”

“I need your help. Somebody's hurt.”

“Hurt? How?”

“Let's walk. In fact, can you run?” He grabs hold of my hand and pulls me to a trot.

“Wait!” I stop and take off Mother's satin pumps. Barefoot, I can run fast, but it's still hard to keep up. After a minute, my breath is ragged.

“What happened?” I manage.

“Accident. The glass factory.”

I remember something about that factory, the only one in Ravensbirk. Started by Uncle Asa years ago to make glass for his castle. “Is it very bad?”

Would Cole be running if it weren't?

“Do you have a doctor?” I ask, breathing hard.

“Who can afford a doctor?” He glances over, sees me gulping for air, and slows. As soon as I catch my breath, he starts off again. We pass the fishing boats. Several men stop what they're doing to stare. At me, mostly.

We push on, veering away from the water toward the sandy bluff. As we start to climb, I realize where we're heading.

“Is it that painter?”

He looks back at me and nods, then turns and continues to climb, the back of his work shirt a triangle of sweat.

I scramble after him. It's not easy climbing a stony embankment in a formal gown. The hem is getting filthy. “But,” I gasp, “what's a painter doing in a glass factory?”

He doesn't speak till we reach the grassy top. “He hasn't been able to sell his paintings. My dad got him a job in the factory. Here, we should go in.”

I glance at the house—dilapidated as ever. Several people are outside, including a hard-faced man in overalls, leaning against the door. Seeing me, he pushes himself up, gives me a look that I can only think is a sneer, and walks away.

What does he have against
me
? I've never
seen
him before
.

There are two others, one of them an old woman in a blue head scarf sitting cross-legged, with a wooden bowl in her lap. A younger woman, standing beside her, turns and looks at me in surprise.

I start toward her, but hesitate, seeing her unsmiling face. Finally, she nods. “Hello, Miss Tummel.”

“Anna!” I seize her hand. “What are you doing here?”

“My
mamus
, she makes special
meski
for the painter.” She nods at the woman, who frowns up at me.

“Your mother, yes! Hello.”

No answer. Just those sharp eyes, black as gunsights.

“Meski,”
Anna explains. “It is tea.
Mamus
, she knows the plants. How you say? Herbs. Her tea make strong blood. But it is too late for the painter man.”

Cole speaks up. “You mean he's
dead
?”

“He is alive. A little.”

Cole takes me by the arm.

Inside, two large people crowd the dim, low-ceilinged room. When my eyes adjust, I see they are Cole's parents.

“Hello, Mrs. Havens, Mr. Havens.”

Cole's mother looks me over and shakes her head. The satin ball gown doesn't help my case.

Cole's dad steps forward, leaning heavily on his cane, and offers a callused hand.

“I understand the painter's hurt,” I say, peering about.

Havens nods. “I'll never forgive myself, getting him that job. He has no business in a glass factory. This one, especially.”

“He's back there,” says his wife in a flat voice.

I edge past them to the bed. A man lies in dirty work-clothes, his face smeared with ashes, eyes shut, neck and shoulder bandaged, blood seeping through the gauze.

So this is Underwood. He looks barely alive.

“I don't think you can help.” Mrs. Havens has taken a seat on the other side of the bed. “Too late.”

I glance from her ruddy face to his unnaturally pale one. She may be right. I can see my coming here was a last resort, after everything else failed.

“What happened?”

“Ach. That damn factory. A sheet of glass slipped and took a slice out of 'im. It would never have happened if that uncle of yours…”

So it's a cut, then. I can do cuts
.

I kneel beside the bed for a closer look, but it's hard to concentrate with Cole's parents staring at my back. Anna has come in, too, and her mother. Just what I need, an audience.

Careful not to touch him with my glass thumb, I place my hands on the sticky gauze at the base of Underwood's neck. His blood stains my sleeve.

The pulse is weak, the pillow soaked and reeking. His eyelids flutter, mothlike, and I get the feeling—it's a feeling through my hands—that I'm losing him. There's just not enough life. I bow my head and concentrate.

My eyes are closed.

His eyes are closed.

You'd almost think we were praying.

We are.

Now my hands tingle and grow warm as I press the base of his neck more firmly. It's hard to find a pulse. For seconds, there's nothing. Then another beat.

Come on, mister
.

I will my life into him. Through my hands into him.

My hands grow warmer.

Shutting my eyes tighter, I sink into myself. Not myself exactly, because I don't feel alone. We're doing this together. My life. His life. Our life.

We can do this
.

No pulse. I'm counting now. Three seconds.

Five seconds!

I feel myself lose concentration. Fear does that. I glance at Cole's mother. She stares back. And there's Anna's mother….

Don't look at them!

I close my eyes again. Shut out everything. Alone. Alone with this man, this Underwood. The two of us.

The one of us.

A heartbeat!

My hands grow hot.

Another heartbeat, faint as the first. Then, seconds later, another.

We stay like this for what must be minutes. The pulse is irregular, but getting stronger, the breathing more definite, as I pour my life into him. Finally, feeling woozy, I have to stop. I need to stand up, to get back some of the energy that's been drained from me; but I'm afraid to. Can he keep going on his own?

I lift my hands a few inches, but hover. His chest rises slightly, falls slightly.

I take my hands away. He keeps breathing.

I look at Cole's mother, on the other side of the bed. “What if we take off the bandage?” I ask.

She frowns. “I don't think so.”

“I need to see.”

She looks at me doubtfully.

“Would you do it?” I ask.

Silently, she gets up and takes my place. I'm glad she does, because a strange dizziness sweeps over me. I lean against the wall. Cole slips an arm around my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

I take a couple of slow breaths. “A little weak.”

We watch as Cole's mother snips the bandages.

She gasps.

There's blood all over him. His neck, his shoulder, the mattress. But it's dried blood.
Dried blood!

Only a narrow red line still oozes.

Cole's mother turns toward me. She starts to speak,
but can't get anything out. There are people who are criers and people who aren't. Today, she comes close. She stands, reaches for me, pulls me against her. Then pushes me roughly away, holds my shoulders, and looks at me hard.

At the sound of a moan, we turn. Underwood's head moves back and forth as if to escape a dream. I kneel beside him and hold his head to calm him.

His eyes tremble, then open.

They open wider. Bright clear blue. He's staring at me.

He tries to speak. Swallows.

Finally, in a whispery voice:
“Marina?”