A Bitter Magic

by Roderick Townley

  Someone is outside the door, going through keys, then stopping, realizing there’s no lock.

  “Hide!” the shell hisses.

  I grab my clothes and race to the closet, easing the door shut behind me. All I can think is that Asa—or worse, Janko—has come to drag me back to the lab.

  Crawling between dresses, I crouch behind a ball gown. The outside door creaks open.

  A long silence, then footsteps, muffled by the Oriental rug.

  The shell! I left it out there!

  Maybe he won’t notice.

  I hear a scratching sound, then smell a match. A faint light flimmers.

  After a long minute, a drawer groans open. Bumps shut.

  Then another drawer.

  A thief! Do we have thieves in the castle?

  The steps come closer, then stop. I close my left hand in a fist, but leave my thumb free, careful not to touch anything. The doorknob turns. My breath halts. Then a light darts about, making sequins wink.

  The footsteps are coming right toward me! Trying to shrink back, I brush against a taffeta dress, which makes a shushing sound.

  The steps cease. Someone is listening.

  I listen to him listening.

  The steps resume. Pass next to me. A shock: thumping by are the brown, thick-heeled shoes I’ve seen so often before.

  Not Asa after all. Not Janko.

  Edna Porlock! What’s she doing here?

  My old tutor turns and stumps back out to the bedroom.

  I wait a long minute, a muddle of confusion—Miss Porlock!—then creep from my hiding place and peek through the narrow opening by the door hinge. Now Miss P. is going through Mother’s bureau. She slides open the top drawer, contemplates what she sees there, pulls something out. Turns and holds it up: a pair of filmy silk stockings.

  She gives it a long look, holds it to her cheek, feeling its softness. Her eyes close.

  I shouldn’t be seeing this.

  The lamplight flashes on something metallic, turning it gold. Scissors! Slowly, as if dreaming, Miss Porlock snips the stockings in half.

  She continues cutting until the bureau top is littered with silken fragments. She stares at what she has done, her face a mask. Now she gathers the remnants, sweeps them back in the drawer, and closes it.

  She lifts her chin, checks her hair in the mirror, and walks out of my range of sight.

  With a creak, the outer door opens, then bumps shut.

  When I’m sure she’s gone, I quick-change my clothes, and grab the shell from the mantel.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “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.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  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.

  PART THREE


  A Quiet Lie

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  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.