A Bitter Magic

by Roderick Townley

  “Don’t you?”

  Somber thought. I saw her in the vanity mirror last night, but what did I see? Was it Mother, or was it the ghost of Mother? Maybe Asa isn’t the only one being haunted.

  He thumps a sealed carton on the workbench and slits it open. New instruments—vials, electric wires, test tubes.

  “Don’t we have these already?” I venture.

  “I’m getting rid of everything I failed with.”

  Then you should start with me. “Sounds like an important experiment.”

  He holds up one of the new test tubes, then another.

  I hear a ticking sound and realize I’m tapping the glass tip of my thumb. “Sounds like you think this might work,” I say, louder.

  He grunts, sets the test tubes on a rack.

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  He looks over as if just remembering I’m here. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

  He’s avoiding me. Won’t even look at me. “Can’t you tell me now?”

  “No, I cannot. Too complicated.”

  Click-click.

  “Because,” I say, pausing for courage, “I don’t think I’ll be helping you with this one.”

  “What!” He glares at me. “What do you mean? You’re essential. The experiment can’t be done without you.”

  “Why can’t it?”

  His lips tighten. The lines at the corners of his mouth harden. “Will you stop interrogating me?”

  “I want to know why it can’t be done without me.”

  “You’re a very irritating young woman, do you know that?”

  “Tell me!”

  He rubs his face with both hands, as if to erase me from his mind. “If you must know, you have something I need.”

  Click-click, click-click, click-click.

  “A special ingredient,” he adds.

  Worse and worse.

  “What ingredient?”

  “Now, that’s enough! We’ll go over all this tomorrow!”

  “I’m not coming! You can’t make me!”

  Uncle Asa looks at me strangely. “What’s gotten into you? I very well can make you.”

  “No, you can’t! You’re not my father!”

  “Well, that’s one thing to be grateful for anyway.” He gestures to the supply cabinet. “I want you to take those old instruments and put them in the trash, then wipe down the shelves. After that—”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Instead of answering, I stalk over to the door and yank it open. The rain pounds down outside. I turn. “I found him, you know.”

  He cocks his head as if to hear me correctly.

  “My father!” I’m practically shouting. “I found him. I’m going to live with him. You can’t stop me.”

  Asa stares at me. “You mean that Underwood creature?”

  “He’s a better person than you are.”

  “Does he want more money?”

  “Does he what?”

  “Does he want more money?”

  I’d been feeling triumphant up to that moment.

  He jumps into the gap. “Tell him it’s too late. She’s gone.”

  “What are you talk—”

  “He didn’t tell you? He wouldn’t. Might jeopardize his chances.”

  Now I’m bewildered.

  “I paid him to go away,” Asa explains. “And go away he did, like a good dog.”

  “You paid him? Why?”

  “It was a test. He failed. And now, it seems, he’s back for more. Well, you can tell him—”

  Whatever he wants me to tell him I don’t hear, because I’ve gone outside and slammed the door. There’s Janko, in a slouch hat and slicker, standing under the canopy, smoking. He eyes me curiously, but doesn’t move to stop me as I march past into the wind-driven rain.

  —

  I’m down in my room, dripping. Asa says my father abandoned Mother. He’s lying, of course. Isn’t he? He’d say anything to keep me here, now that he needs…

  That’s what it’s about. The so-called golden blood. He wouldn’t tell me what he’s planning. Why wouldn’t he, unless it’s something horrible?

  I was going to stay and search for clues to Mother, but Miss Porlock is right. I’ve got to get out of here.

  I change quickly into dry things and hunt around for a suitcase. There isn’t one. My eyes light on the silk pillowcase. With trembling hands, I lay out the essentials—underwear, hairbrush, a second skirt and blouse—then load them into the pillowcase and tie the opening.

  Wait. I pick up Cole’s little wooden turtle and slip it in my pocket. I’ll need it for luck.

  I’ll also need my hooded cape against the rain. Draping it over my arm, I hoist my bundle and peer out. Strunk’s echoey voice reaches me from downstairs, talking to Mrs. Quay. Can’t go that way. I head to the right, toward the maze and Mother’s rooms beyond. The way is different this time, with subtler illusions, deceptive doors. Uncle Asa, it seems, is more determined than ever to keep me from getting away; but he has forgotten my sense of smell. I bang my head against a glass partition and nearly step in a hole, but the scent of the white rose guides me through.

  About to step out of the maze, I hear a male voice just ahead. A woman laughs in reply. The man lowers his voice confidentially. The woman giggles. I know them. It’s that new young valet with one of the housemaids, Bonnie, the very one I bribed to deliver a message to Cole.

  How do I get past them?

  Here I am, weighed down with my bulging pillowcase, and I can’t go forward because a servant is chatting up his girlfriend!

  Not a finger. Yes, I remember. Your uncle will not lay a finger on you.

  Miss Porlock.

  I’ve been to her rooms only a few times, but I remember the way. Hitching the pillowcase on my shoulder, I retrace my steps, silently cursing Asa’s obstacles, then hurry past my rooms and on around the curve of the corridor to a dead end.

  In the middle of the dead end stands a door.

  I raise my hand. Lower it. Take a deep breath.

  I knock.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Go away!” A voice like an angry crow.

  “Miss Porlock, it’s me!”

  Silence.

  I’m about to knock again when I hear a metallic slap, and a peephole slides open. A large eye fills the space. “Cisley?”

  “Let me in, please.”

  The peephole closes. After a pause, I hear the snap of a lock, followed by a scrape and a loud click. The door sighs inward.

  “Cisley! What are you—”

  “Can we talk inside?” I practically push past her. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”

  She lets me by and closes the door, resetting the locks and sliding the bolt in place.

  “That’s a lot of locks.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” she says. “Spies everywhere.”

  “Really? Spies?”

  “They call them servants. But they all report to Mr. Strunk, who reports to your uncle. Never mind. You’re here now.”

  I peer through the gloom. The air is heavy with the smells of old face powder and tired perfume, mixed with a hint of lamp oil. Not at all like my bright, airy apartment overlooking the Firth of Before.

  “Are you running away?” she says, noticing my bundle. “Why didn’t you say so?” She leads me to the sitting room, which is scarcely brighter than the entrance. There’s a window, but thick draperies block whatever light might find its way around this side of the castle.

  “Let’s get a better look at you.” She lights a lamp and sets the shade over it. “Now then,” she says, “tell Miss Porlock what happened.”

  I slump into an overstuffed armchair and immediately sneeze. Doesn’t anyone dust this place? “Well,” I say, “I realized you were right.”

  Miss P. sits on the edge of the adjoining sofa. In the lamplight, the knob of her forehead glows like a lump of gold. “About the blood?”

  I nod.

 
; “So you’re running away. I think that’s wise, but why come to me?”

  “I thought maybe…”

  “I could hide you?”

  Another nod.

  Slowly, she rubs her shiny forehead, as if to help her think. “That it should come to this,” she mutters. “Afraid for your life in your own house.”

  “It would be just for a little while, until—”

  She reaches out and catches my wrist. Turns my hand over. “Cisley! Oh my dear! What happened?”

  Under the lamp, the glass thumb shines.

  I blush, as though I’m guilty of something. Guilty, at least, of hiding it from her for weeks.

  “This is not a cut,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “Cisley?”

  “It came from the mirror Mother used in her magic trick.”

  “The black mirror? Oh no!” Miss P. launches herself to her feet and stalks about, muttering, her whole body agitated. I make out the word horrible! repeated under her breath.

  “It’s nobody’s fault, Miss P. I was careless, that’s all.”

  “Between your mother and your uncle, it’s a wonder you’ve survived this long.”

  “But I’m telling you, I did this myself.”

  “Yes. And no one was watching out for you, making sure you were safe. Just selfish, both of them!”

  She isn’t being fair. Mother disappeared long before my accident with the mirror. It is nice, though, to see someone angry on my account. Who else in this place even cares about me?

  “Can I stay here tonight?”

  “You must!” Her anger melts to motherliness. “You saw all the locks I have. No one will bother us.”

  I believe her. For the first time in hours, I begin to relax.

  It turns out Miss P. has a tiny kitchen, hardly big enough for a person with her bone structure, but with room to make tea, which she does and which I don’t mind as much as I usually do. She shows me around her cushion-stuffed rooms, stopping to gaze up at a large painting.

  “Who’s that?” I’m staring at a regal woman reclining on a couch, while two children, boy and girl, play a board game on the carpet. Another girl, larger, sits off on her own, with a knitting basket on her lap. A small dog pokes its head from under the couch.

  “You don’t recognize them?”

  I look closer. Shake my head.

  “That’s Grandma Isabel and the children—surely you recognize your mother and Asa?”

  That boy in short pants playing on the floor? Did he really turn into the Amazing Thummel, Illusionist? Was he nasty even then?

  And Mother! Ten or eleven years old. Already so pretty! Curls and flashing eyes.

  “And the other girl?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Really!” I squint. “Hard to see her face.”

  “Isn’t it.” Miss Porlock’s lips compress. “The artist felt my face would not add to the beauty of the composition, so he put me in shadow.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “I suppose I’m lucky to be in the picture at all.”

  “But you’re related. Aren’t you? Sort of?”

  “I’m their half sister.”

  I stare at her. I’d always thought she was some sort of cousin, twice removed. But she’s my aunt! “You’re really Mother’s half sister?”

  “The wrong half, apparently.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My mother had the bad taste to have an affair with the gardener, a fellow named Porlock. No education. Nothing to recommend him except the ability to make things grow. Me, for instance. Asa and Marina never let me forget it.”

  “Didn’t they treat you well?”

  “They tolerated me.”

  “Tolerated.” The word sours in my mouth.

  “And they made good use of me.” She flutters her hand. “It turned out well, though. They finally put me to use taking care of you. That made it all right.”

  “It doesn’t sound all right to me.”

  “It was, though. You were my ray of sunshine. But this is old history. You must be starved. Let’s see if we can’t find you something to eat.”

  It’s true, I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and not much then. She rummages in the cupboard and locates a tin of fish and a stale roll, which she serves on a wooden plate.

  “That’s not enough,” she says, watching me. “I’ll run down to the kitchen. Mrs. Quay will have something to tide you over.”

  “For you, too?”

  “Well,” she says slowly, “I do enjoy those currant scones of hers.”

  Pouring me a cup of the tea she likes so much, my just-discovered aunt pats my head and crinkles her face in a smile. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I watch her go, then lock the locks and curl up on the couch to wait. A thick candle squats on the mantel, throwing a wavering light on the lower part of the painting: the dog’s nose, a girl’s foot. I can’t stop thinking about it. That painting has to be painful to look at. Why does she keep it?

  Marina: slim, beautiful, graced with magic.

  Edna: thick, homely, clumsy, no magic at all.

  And they “put her to use.”

  I bite into a kipper and tear off a corner of the roll. A sip of chamomile helps them go down. Odd, the tea’s in a wooden mug, quite plain. All her dishes are of wood.

  An unusual person, my Aunt Edna.

  Restless, I get up and wander the rooms. I don’t expect to find any clues about Mother, but it can’t hurt to look. Miss P. is certainly a reader, to judge by the books piled by her narrow bed—dictionaries and histories and fat old novels.

  All those words! I’m reminded of the experiment Uncle Asa didn’t get around to doing: making words appear on a blank page. Precipitation, he called it. Mother could do it. Can I?

  I take a sheet of paper from the side table and sit down before it. What should I say? Something simple. Like this: Mother, where are you?

  I concentrate on the phrase, each word of it, and direct my mind to the page, eyes closed tight.

  Mother​where​are​you​mother​where​are​you​mother​where​are​you

  I open my eyes.

  Blank as a snowy field. Why did I think I could do this? I did think so. This was the one experiment I felt I could succeed at.

  Try again. Slow down this time. Sink deeper. Visualize each letter as it curls into the next.

  Mother. Where. Are. You?

  Finally, after an endless time, I let my eyes open.

  My breath catches.

  In a careless script that I recognize immediately, a single, terrifying word:

  Nearby.

  My eyes scissor around the room. Shadows and silence. I stare at the paper, but the word remains. Is it possible? Is this a trick my mind is playing on itself? My mind’s been playing all kinds of tricks lately, whenever I’m in Mother’s rooms. I’ve had thoughts…feelings…that I don’t understand. That I don’t want to understand.

  But Mother nearby? The thought should be reassuring, shouldn’t it? Cause for rejoicing?

  Why does it scare me so much?

  I get up and head out to the sitting room, just to do something, to shake the feeling. All those locks on Miss Porlock’s door—useless.

  I flop down on the sofa, roll my neck around to get rid of the cricks, then reach into my bundle and take out my hairbrush. Where’s a mirror? I try the bedroom. The bathroom. I look everywhere. There’s not a single mirror in the place! How does Miss P. get herself made up in the morning?

  Maybe she doesn’t want to look at herself.

  A sad thought. The more I think about it, the sadder it is.

  I fetch a blanket and curl up. I’m tired—exhausted, really—but can’t rest. Maybe this tea will calm me down.

  A sudden knocking. I lurch from the couch. Miss Porlock! Oh, thank goodness! I hope she’s brought something good.

  I snap open the locks and pull the door wide.

  Janko!

>   Janko smiling!

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I slam the door closed. He slams it back open, knocking me off my feet. Janko’s fast for someone his size. In a moment, he has me by my arm, yanks me up—“Ow!”—thumps me onto his shoulder, and heads down the hall, while I pound his back with my fists.

  “Help! Somebody!”

  Servants poke their faces out of doorways. In the back of my brain, I remember Miss Porlock saying they’re all spies for my uncle. One of them probably told him where I was.

  Janko starts up the spiral staircase. I’m squirming so hard I manage to knock my head against the wall. Then we’re on the parapet, and cold rain hits my face. A door opens to a stink of chemicals.

  Janko slings me onto the worktable, where I manage to bang my head again. Looking up, I see Asa sharpening a knife.

  “No!”

  He gives me an irritated glance and goes about his business, holding the blade over a flame, while Janko pins me down.

  Asa approaches. The blade glints.

  “Hey!” I shout. “HEY!”

  Click-click, click-click goes my glass thumb.

  “Calm down!” he says.

  Calm down? A bubble of hysteria rises in my throat.

  “This won’t hurt for long.”

  Oh my God, he’s going to do it! I thrash about wildly and manage to land a kick to his side.

  “Can’t you hold her?” he snaps.

  “She’s crazy! Like holding a snake!”

  Asa turns and reaches into his cabinet for a small bottle. He pulls out a handkerchief and sprinkles some liquid onto it. A sickly sweet smell makes my nose twitch.

  “Hold her now!”

  He presses the wet cloth to my face. I shake my head violently, but Asa’s grip is tight. It’s hard to think with my heart pounding like this. The heel of his hand muffles my scream.

  What was I screaming about again?

  Focus! Fight it!

  I roll side to side, feeling for the edge of the table. I find it and get halfway off before strong hands grab my ankles and pull me back.

  Somebody’s struggling.

  Oh yes, that girl down there.

  But my body’s so light! Am I floating? Never knew I could do this. Why haven’t I done this before?

  Up ahead stands a white door. No house, no walls, just white against white. I step through.