by Tamara Berry
“I did.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t hear you. Perhaps all the crashing and booming covered the sound of your cries.”
“But I didn’t call out with words. I summoned you, but you couldn’t be reached. Are you feeling blocked? You feel blocked to me.”
I don’t dignify this with a response. I’m not meant to. Birdie has clearly been sitting here awaiting an audience—and I, in my foolishness, rushed in to provide her with one. “Where did Otis go?” I ask, fairly confident this is the line she’s expecting.
I’m not wrong.
“Poor Otis.” She heaves a monumental sigh and stabs a finger at the floor next to her. “He broke that lamp.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t hit you over the head with it. It’s what you deserve.”
Although the room isn’t nearly bright enough for me to make out the details of Birdie’s expression, I could almost swear that her eyes glint with appreciation.
“His wife asked me to reach out to him,” she responds primly. “It’s not my place to deny the spirits. I am merely their vessel.”
For those of you keeping track at home, Otis’s wife now makes the fifth spirit Birdie has communicated with. Five.
Ashley provides the next line in our little farce. “If he only broke one lamp, what was making that noise?”
I’m similarly curious as to the source of all that distress. A good recording and a few well-timed thumps on the wall can go a long way in faking a disturbance, but Birdie has just as little access to her luggage as I do to mine. I know this for a fact because the patchouli scent is almost entirely absent from her person by this time.
“Your father.”
I bite back a groan. Of course it was.
“F-father?” Ashley takes a huge step backward, almost colliding with me in the process. He darts a nervous look around the room, as if expecting his sire’s ghostly apparition to appear in the corner.
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of entity did materialize—not a ghost, obviously, but a cheesecloth dangling from a string or an aerosol spray hitting baking powder at just the right angle. These tricks, however, don’t appear to be in Birdie’s repertoire.
“He’s here? Now? Did you ask him where the gold is?”
I could kiss Ashley for getting right to the heart of the matter, even if it is incredibly suspicious. Anyone who’s confronted with the great beyond and can only think to ask about money has some strange priorities. Doesn’t he want to know about what happens in the afterlife? The possibility of God’s existence? Or, at the very least, what caused his father’s death in the first place?
“I didn’t have to ask,” Birdie replies. “He already knows why I’m here.”
I won’t say it. I won’t play into her hand.
Ashley, bless him, does it for me. “And?” he demands. “Where is it?”
Birdie rises from her chair. Her movement is fluid and graceful, though I hear the crack of her knees before she reaches a full standing position. In a more sentimental mood, I might say the sound is like that of wooden parts clacking together, her puppet strings being tugged and pulled.
My mood takes a turn in that exact direction when Birdie lifts her finger and points it at me. “Only Madame Eleanor knows. Only Madame Eleanor can find it.”
It should be a moment for triumph. Birdie is basically admitting she has no idea where the gold is or even where to look next. Her only lead must have been the wine cellar. Now that the hand has been played—and lost—she needs me to help direct her next actions.
Unfortunately, triumph is the last thing I’m feeling.
“Seriously?” I put my hands on my hips. “You’re making it my sole responsibility now?”
“The ways of the dead are not for me—or you—to question.” Birdie smiles at Ashley. “Your father has told me that he’ll communicate with dear Ella or with no one. The fate of the gold and of your family are now in her hands.”
I shake my head in warning, but Birdie doesn’t pay me any attention.
“He’s taken an odd liking to her, our Glenn. He always did have an eye for a pretty face.”
My face is none too pretty as I hold back the torrent of emotions this speech is eliciting, but Ashley glances over and decides the epithet is close enough to count. He also decides he’s had enough of our company for one evening and makes good his escape. He lingers only enough to ask, “How much longer do you think it will take, Madame Eleanor?”
“Lifting a curse is a tricky business,” I say through clenched teeth. “These things can’t be rushed.”
The answer isn’t a helpful one, but Ashley is forced to accept it. He expresses his hope that I’ll enjoy his poems before heading on his way.
I’m deciding how best to tell Birdie what I think of her tactics when she beats me to it. “You really ought to be doing more to find the gold, you know. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous the curse becomes.”
I throw my hands up. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t aware I was disappointing you.”
“I’m not disappointed. Just curious.” She tilts her head to one side, a thoughtful purse to her lips. “What do you intend to do next?”
“Well, I was going to try and fabricate a ghost, but that’s probably out now that you’ve enraged Otis and used up all the spooky sound effects. What was it? A recording? A crash box? I’ve been thinking about making one, but I don’t know how to steal a bunch of plates without Elspeth finding out.”
Birdie blinks at me. “A crash box?”
I’m not fooled by that innocent stare. Even beginning theater students are familiar with the basics of stagecraft. Shaking or dropping a box filled with broken glass and porcelain is the easiest—and cleanest—way to create crashing sounds in the distance.
“What do you want, Birdie?” I ask, suddenly exhausted with it all—the pretense and the doublespeak, this idea that either one of us believes in any of this for real. I sag against the nearest bookshelf, dislodging several large tomes. “Is it the gold? Is it to show off? To win? Because I can tell you right now, you’re winning. You’re winning big-time.”
Tell her it’s not safe, Winnie says. Tell her she knows too much.
I close my eyes and sigh. The last thing I’m going to tell Birdie White is that she has more insight than is good for her. Her ego is big enough as it is.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Birdie says before I have a chance to share my sister’s otherworldly wisdom. “Just now. Your spirit guide was talking to you, wasn’t she?”
I’m back to standing straight and being alert in no time. “What? You can tell?”
Birdie nods and draws so close that her face is practically pressed up against mine. She peers into my eyeballs, but not in the way of a medium pretending to see something deep within my irises. This is more of a medical check, as if she wants to make sure I’m taking all my vitamins.
“How does it work?” she asks. “Do you hear her? See her? Feel her?”
“I, um. I don’t know exactly. I hear her, I guess. But it’s not an external sound. It’s more like she exists inside my head.”
“What did she say?”
I can’t think of any logical reason to lie. Besides, Birdie did say that she might be able to help me hone my powers. I mean, I don’t believe her, obviously, but it’s not as if I have any other options.
“That I should tell you it’s not safe. That you know too much.”
She jerks back. “Too much? She said that?”
“Yes. Does it mean something to you?”
Birdie doesn’t answer. Instead, she puts her face next to my eyeballs again. Her breath is hot and smells of seawater. “What else does she know? About me? About the curse?”
I shake my head. “I told you. It doesn’t work like that. She comes to me, not the other way around. It doesn’t do any good to ask her questions. She won’t answer them unless she wants to.”
Birdie’s response to this is to pull me into an
embrace. She’s far too tall and gaunt to be a good hugger—it’s all angles and the thin press of her bosom. Her elbow even manages to wedge between us, which seems anatomically impossible.
“There, there,” she says.
“Um. I’m okay, Birdie. There’s no need—”
“You poor dear. You miss her, don’t you? Your sister?”
I don’t know how to explain that I don’t miss her—or, rather, that I miss her less now than I did when she spent ten years in a coma. During that entire decade, I could see her and touch her and brush her hair, but I couldn’t reach her. Not in any way that mattered.
Now that she’s gone, however, I get direct access to her soul.
I try to pull out of Birdie’s embrace, but she’s much stronger than she looks. She holds me there a moment, soothing and patting, before finally putting her hands on my shoulders and pushing me back.
“You’ll tell me if she contacts you again?” Birdie asks. All the kindly solicitude seems to have left her, returning her once again to a woman I neither know nor trust. “We won’t accomplish anything unless we’re totally honest with one another. Gloriana is too powerful for one woman alone.”
Wait a minute. “I thought you said I’m the only one who can find the gold. You basically told Ashley that the rest of this is on me.”
“I’ll make you a spagyric tincture.” She nods once. “To strengthen your abilities.”
“I don’t want a spagyric tincture.”
“And we’ll see if there are any amethysts in the house for you to put under your pillow. Perhaps that will call Winnie to your dreams.”
“Now see here, Birdie. You can’t just barge in like this and—”
But she can. She totally can.
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your breath. In fact, I don’t know what you’ve been doing with yourself this whole time. So far, I’ve done all the heavy lifting. Are you even trying to help this family? What kind of a medium are you?”
I’m so bewildered by this sudden attack that Birdie manages to slip past me and out the door without answering a single one of my questions. Nor do I have a chance to defend my honor even though I have an answer at the ready.
I’m the kind of medium who knows that answers lie not in the mysterious, but the banal. In understanding people and their relationships. In asking questions and listening to the answers behind the answers.
I glance down at the book of poems in my hand and groan.
In reading two hundred pages of poetry before bed on the off chance that Ashley knows something more than he’s letting on.
Chapter 10
The only good thing to come out of Ashley’s book of poetry is my discovery of the cavern.
Strictly speaking, it’s more of an alcove than an actual cavern, a rocky indentation at the bottom of the cliff so favored by Elspeth’s grandsons—and, in his younger days, by Ashley himself. Apparently, this place had a profound effect on his childhood. There were no fewer than thirteen poems dedicated to “slipshod, slapping susurrations of the sea against the shore.”
As there was also a lengthy description of the winding path that leads to it, I was able to find my way down here without assistance. And, I need not add, without letting the twins know that I was about to descend on their privacy. Two less gracious hosts I have yet to meet in my lifetime.
“Just say it. I promise it won’t hurt.” I settle onto the damp rocks along one side of the cavern, careful to protect my velvet dress from the seaweed residue that coats every visible surface. A cursory glance around the cavern reveals it to be a trove of boyhood treasures—rocks and cracked shells, driftwood and my two filthy pashminas—but my luggage isn’t anywhere to be seen. If they’re hiding it somewhere in here, it’s not visible to the naked eye.
“Lily-livered landlubber,” Red says.
I nod and smile my encouragement. A used rope spool has been set up between us to serve as a table, but I don’t dare touch it. I saw a crab scuttle out from underneath it not too long ago. I’m horrified to think of what else might be living inside.
“Now try another one. Lex Luther loves lollipops.”
Red looks doubtful at this, but when he glances up to find his brother nodding his encouragement, he gives in. “Lex Luther loves lollipops,” he recites. His words echo inside the rocky inlet, making him sound much older than his eight years.
“One more,” I urge. “The lion licked his lips and laughed.”
This, apparently, is taking things too far. Red crosses his arms and refuses to indulge me. “That doesn’t sound like a real spell. You’re just making up nursery rhymes.”
He’s not wrong, but I can hardly admit it. I’m already a trespasser in their secret hideaway, an adult interloper guaranteed to ruin their fun. To admit my tactics would be to get myself permanently banished.
“Where do you think nursery rhymes came from in the first place? They’re nothing more than ancient witches’ spells that have been passed down through the ages. ‘Ring Around the Rosie’—you know that one, right?”
Both boys are interested enough to nod.
“It’s about the bubonic plague. The ‘ring around the rosie’ is code for the rash that breaks out when you get infected. The ‘pocket full of posies’ is an herbal remedy. And when they all fall down—well, you know what that means.”
Since they don’t hazard a guess, I go through the motions of a terrible and gruesome death before slumping into a heap onto the ground—seaweed slime and all. As I expect, this pantomime of death delights the boys more than it should, given the recent history of events inside this castle.
“No way,” Blue breathes. Of the two of them, he naturally finds this macabre tale most suited to his taste. “So it’s a spell?”
“In a way, yes.” I gather my dead and scattered limbs and resume my seated—and now damp—position. “It might be best if you think of it like a special kind of chant.”
“And if I sing it at someone, they’ll die? Of the plague?”
“Well, no. Spells don’t really work that way.”
“You mean they don’t work at all,” Red says with a jut of his lower lip. “I knew it was fake. My tooth’ll never come out just by saying all that daft stuff.”
Blue doesn’t seem the least dismayed by this—a fact that’s explained when he extracts a string from out of his pocket and whips it over his head. “You know what that means . . .”
“It means that neither one of you is a certified practitioner of the dark arts,” I say sternly. I have no doubt that if I said the word, Blue would willingly—and happily—extract every one of his brother’s teeth by force. “And my incantations will work. If you practice them all day every day, your tooth will be barely holding on by the end of the week. Word of a witch.”
This isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. I might not know much about the magical removal of teeth—or, admittedly, the forcible removal of teeth—but I do know how the mechanics of linguistics work. Those repeated l-sounds will push Red’s tongue against his front teeth and loosen them naturally. Like I told Nicholas, all my spells come with a side of science.
Unfortunately, little boys seem much less impressed with my knowledge base.
“A whole week?” cries Blue, giving the string another whip over his head. “That’s forever!”
I recall feeling much the same way when I was eight years old. Every day was an adventure, each week an eternity. Now that I’m an adult, I know better. Time is practically whizzing by, and unless I do something about this curse soon, Birdie is going to take it into her head to do something drastic. Theatrics, hysterics, murder—I’m not putting anything past her.
With this in mind, I smile at Red in hopes of furthering this interview along. “Keep saying the chants,” I tell him. “By this time tomorrow, you’ll start to feel how loose that tooth is becoming.”
“Fine,” he agrees glumly. “I s’pose it can’t hurt.”
I wink at him. “Not as much as yanking it out
with a door, at any rate.” Without waiting for the boys to respond, I adjust my position so that my hands are clasped and resting on the spool table. “Now. It’s time for your payment. No chant or spell comes without a heavy price.”
The boys exchange a wary but excited glance. My lips twitch as I struggle to suppress a smile. They obviously think I’m going to exact a pound of flesh or the handover of their firstborn children.
“What do you want from us?” Blue asks, his eyes alight with possibility.
Red is more circumspect. “Will we have to tell Nanna?”
I pass a finger over my lips. “This one should stay between us. What I’m going to ask you for is a very special artifact—a talisman of sorts.”
“But we don’t have any talismans,” Red says.
“We don’t know what a talisman is,” Blue corrects him.
The liars. They have oodles of talismans. Talismans and bundles of sage and a backup phone battery. Not to mention my toothbrush and clean underwear. Since to ask for such earthly belongings will only cause me to lose what little credibility I have with them, I plan to ask for items of strict necessity—in this case, my favorite white scarf and a small motion detector I plan to plant outside Birdie’s bedroom door.
“What I require is one object of great value and one of great beauty.”
“We don’t have those, either,” Blue says quickly. He shoots his brother a dampening glare. “We’re kids.”
“Yes, but you’re twins,” I remind him. “Remember how powerful I told you twins could be?”
Blue isn’t buying it. “This doesn’t seem like a fair trade,” he protests. “All you did was tell us some stupid old nursery rhymes.”
“Yeah,” Red chimes in. “T’other one gave us—”
He claps his hands over his mouth before he can divulge what Birdie gave him, but it doesn’t matter. He’s been made, and he knows it. So does his brother. Blue shows every sign of wanting to remonstrate with his brother, but he’s too smart to do it in front of me.
