Panting, she halted. The hall branched into three passageways: to the right and left, stairs led down; in the centre, a grand staircase rose. Right or left? Badger was on her left. She would go that way. Up or down? She would go down, if for no other reason than she didn’t want to climb stairs. Down she went, and once she was on the staircase, there were no more hallways, no way to get off the stairs. The strange blue stars, now in small torches affixed to the wall, shed a weak light. She ground her teeth and continued downward.
With several more turns, Badger’s fur bristled and he began sniffing madly. Then Maggie smelled something overripe, rotting even. She imagined the carcass of a whale, or a walrus, putrefying in a cellar below. Fishy, yes, but also musky, oily, meaty. She covered her nose with her hand and breathed through her mouth in an effort to stop the stench from turning her stomach.
The staircase grew darker with each turn as the torches dimmed. Badger pulled on the leash and Maggie ran her hand along the wall to keep from stumbling. What if this stairway never arrived anywhere? Aunt Ravna’s tavern flashed through her mind – the people, the fire in the hearth, the apple cider. And then she thought of home. Home. To sit in a quiet room, surrounded by books, surely that was paradise. And Alvin. Yes, to have Alvin’s big warm body next to hers in her own soft bed. To smell the good water-and-wind scent of him. She thought of his forearms, the muscles and the down. She thought of his laugh, that deep, rumbling chuckle. To sit across the table from him again, to share a bowl of stew and to talk of silly things. Her eyes stung and her throat constricted. She couldn’t help but cry. A vast sense of the nothingness all around her – the ice, the snow, the endless sky – mile after mile of cold and dark, and here she was with Badger, two infinitely tiny sparks in a sea of white and black and grey.
Badger growled. A bluish light wavered far below. Small, fighting against shadows, but a light nonetheless. She stopped crying as her breath quickened. Something, someone, was down there. What now? What horror? A sound … and yes, again … She couldn’t be sure but it sounded like one of the ravens cawing. She straightened her spine and wiped her face. Caaaw. Yes, it was the ravens. If they hadn’t disappeared, perhaps there was hope yet.
The smell remained, but at least it grew no worse, or perhaps she was growing accustomed to it. Whatever was down there, at least something was down there and she wasn’t walking into a bottomless abyss. There was an end. Even as her heart threatened to break through her ribs, it was a token of solace.
One turn of the stairs, another and another. There were no torches now, but the light from below seemed to creep up the stairs toward her, more liquid than light. She thought of the phosphorescence one sometimes saw on waves at night. And then, the last turn. Maggie and Badger found themselves in a chamber of sparkling, glistening crystal stalagmites and stalactites. The smell was very strong, thick with decay, and in the centre of the room stood a fountain – the light source. Luminescent water flowed from the mouth of three bears carved from ice. The light was silver and blue and white; a cold, hard light, offering no warmth. Pipes ran in a ring round the base of the fountain, catching the liquid and carrying it into the walls. Even at the entrance, an atmosphere of despair and hopelessness rose around Maggie. It took all her will not to crumple to the floor.
No sooner had they stepped into the chamber than Badger began barking wildly. A huge shape, which Maggie had taken to be a mound of snow, separated from the whiteness around it. It shook and reared on its hind legs. A bear. A polar bear, at least ten feet high. Badger went mad and Maggie shrieked, struggling to hold him back. The bear, apparently the source of the stench, fell onto all fours and lumbered forward. Maggie thought to run back up the stairs, but when she turned she was met with nothing but a wall of ice with a railing sticking out of it.
The bear snarled, revealing … well, not much at all. Gums and a tongue. It seemed the bear had not a tooth in its head. The bear tooth! The bear swiped at them with its enormous paw. What it lacked in teeth, it more than made up for in claws. Badger would be eviscerated, as would she. Trembling, she reached into her pocket, grabbed the box and pulled out the tooth. It was curved and as long as her middle finger, with a lethal point at one end and a hollow at the other. She held it up. The bear paused, closed his mouth and sniffed.
“Do you want this? Is it yours? Have you lost it?” she asked.
The bear swayed back and forth as though unsure. He was a terrible mess, marked with malodorous goo and stains. His muzzle was not white but brown and red. Maggie noticed a mound of rotten seal carcasses in the shadows. That, more than the bear itself, was the cause of the stench. His food source? Liquefying seal? Perhaps that was all he could eat, given his lack of teeth.
The bear could, of course, simply kill them and take the tooth, if that’s what he wanted. So why didn’t he? He tapped the ground with his paw. Badger, although his hackles were still raised, making him look like a porcupine, stopped barking. The bear sniffed and Maggie held out the tooth, letting him get a good look at it. He became practically cross-eyed and then, with a kind of slow dignity, as though this were the most formal of gestures (and perhaps it was), he lowered himself onto his forepaws in a bow, keeping his eyes on the tooth.
Badger sat. Something flapped behind Maggie and, loath as she was to take her eyes off the ursine hulk, she glanced behind her. The ravens were settling on the stair railing. How they got in was a mystery. They cocked their heads and cawed. When she looked back at the bear, he had not moved. He put his head on his paws and looked, with his dirty rump in the air, very much like a monstrous dog asking to frolic.
She held up the tooth. The bear inched toward her, crawling. She would have backed up, except there was nowhere to go. Badger vibrated with tension. She put her hand on his head and stilled him. She was surprised the dog could control himself and wondered if he sensed something about this bear. The great beast inched nearer. Badger growled and, before Maggie could stop him, he snapped, his jaws a hair’s breadth from the bear’s nose. Maggie winced, picturing Badger’s head under an enormous paw, but the bear didn’t move. Rather, he gazed at Maggie and when his dinner-plate-sized foot was nearly resting on her boot, he opened his mouth and tilted it toward her.
It was evident he wanted the tooth. If she gave it to him, and it worked whatever magic she had no doubt it would, he might rip her head off. The rumpled raven cawed, twice, in short sharp bursts. Gingerly, she extended the tooth and as she did the bear stuck out his tongue. Not sure what the right thing to do was, she placed the tooth on it. He flicked it into his mouth, closed his eyes and flung backward with such force he slammed into the wall. Badger barked and Maggie screamed. The bear writhed and growled and bleated as though being flayed. He shook his head so quickly it blurred and then he threw it back and roared and roared.
His mouth was full of razor-sharp white teeth. The atmosphere of despair in the chamber lightened ever so slightly, even as the light from the liquid in the fountain dimmed a little. The air vibrated with the bear’s roar and Maggie threw her hands over her ears. As she did, she dropped Badger’s leash and the dog jumped forward, snapping at the bear. The bear, returning to himself, stopped roaring and looked down at Badger.
“Badger, come. Come to me!”
The dog ignored her and nipped the bear’s leg. The expression on the bear’s face was one of surprised amusement. Maggie chewed her knuckle, afraid if she made the slightest noise she’d spook the bear into attacking, but he sat down and let Badger nip at him until, seeing it had no effect whatsoever, Badger stopped. Then the gigantic beast lowered his head and sniffed at Badger and let Badger sniff him. Badger returned to Maggie and sat by her side.
The bear opened and closed his mouth, as though testing his new teeth. He put his paw in his mouth, then removed it. He picked up one of the putrid carcasses and roared, flinging it against the wall where it exploded, releasing a torrent of liquid matter and a reek so to
xic, tears sprang to Maggie’s eyes.
“You ought not to have done that,” said a voice.
A figure sat at the shadowed far end of the chamber, in a sort of chair carved in the ice wall. It was so still, and of the same bluish white colour as the chamber itself, it was almost invisible. She took a step toward whomever it was. Badger trembled, his tail between his legs. She stepped closer, her heart a panicked bird in the cage of her ribs.
Was it possible?
The figure stood. Thin as a birch tree, brittle as spun glass, his hair as frost, his skin bloodless and intricately swirled with blue, his eyes like oyster shells, but him nonetheless, the one she sought. Kyle, or what was left of him, stood before her, dressed in rime, shimmering and frigid.
“He guards me and now you’ve broken him. She won’t like that a bit.” His voice was like something heard on a distant north wind, all thin and hollow.
Something stopped her from throwing her arms around him. “Kyle, it’s me. It’s Maggie.”
“I know who you are.”
“I got your message.”
“What message?” His eyes were dead. They looked but saw nothing. Like the eyes of some creature who lived far, far beneath the sea, beyond the reach of light.
“You sent a message. You wanted me to come and find you. You said you needed me. We have to get you out of here.”
“I remember no message. You shouldn’t have given the bear back his teeth. You’ll be in trouble.” His voice was so emotionless. “He didn’t need teeth. Not in here. She fed him. Now he’s got teeth again he’ll probably leave, and then she’ll have to catch another.”
Maggie reached out to touch Kyle, but he pulled back as though scalded. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want your filthy hands on me.” He held his hand in front of his left eye, as though protecting it.
“Kyle, where is she?”
“She’ll be back. She knows you’re here. She thought the bear would capture you for her.”
A loud thumping noise behind them startled Maggie. The bear hammered at the wall with his enormous paws and his dagger-like claws. With every swipe a larger hole appeared, although it seemed they were so far underground it would take him forever to dig out. And then, with an earth-shaking thwack, the wall cracked and, with a shudder, crumbled, revealing a vast expanse of moonlit snow.
It was quite impossible, of course, since Maggie and Badger had walked down so many stairs they must, had they been in any place where the normal rules applied, be a long way below ground. Impossible or not, however, the bear sat on his haunches and gazed onto the ghostly plain. Then he turned to Maggie and made a low sound in his throat. She had the impression he was thanking her for breaking whatever enchantment he’d been under. He got to his feet and hesitated, as if waiting for her. She shook her head. She hadn’t come so far only to leave without Kyle, and it was obvious he wasn’t ready to leave. The bear growled, but then turned and sprang forward, bounding away over the snow.
“He wasn’t very good company, anyway,” said Kyle. He rubbed his eye.
Maggie positioned herself in front of her brother so he couldn’t help but look at her. He regarded her blandly, appearing quite bored. The white of his eyes were silver, but in the left one something glinted. She couldn’t imagine how he wasn’t frozen to death. He seemed to be made more of ice than flesh and bone.
“Snap out of it,” she said.
“You are dull,” he replied and turned away from her. “But stay. Everything becomes as it should here.”
He glanced at the hole in the wall through which the bear had escaped. It was closing up. Now it was less than a door’s width. Now less than a porthole. Maggie’s heart fell. She’d never have the strength to bash through. Kyle returned to his ice chair. He glided, rather than stepped. A silver pipe lay on the arm of the chair. He picked it up, drifted to the fountain and scooped the luminous water into his pipe. He lit it using a match with a blue flame that he pulled, already lit, from his waistband.
Although the concept of flammable water was baffling, Maggie understood then at least part of what ailed Kyle. The fountain was the source of elysium. “You’re more elysium than human,” she said.
“Being human was never much fun.” He blew smoke to the ceiling, and still his fingers worried his eye, now rubbing it, now pulling down the lid, now tapping the socket. “You have no idea, you poor sack of skin, just what glory there is in the dreams, which aren’t dreams at all, but surely you know that, now you’re here. I have all the elysium I want, all the time. It pleases Srebrenka that I dream. She says the dreams make her stronger, and I do enjoy them so.”
His wrist was hardly wider than a twig. His cheekbones stuck out. He was blue-swirled ice over bone. As he sucked in the smoke, Maggie fancied she watched it swirl into his chest and along his limbs. He was virtually transparent. And there, in the corner of his nearly opaque eye, the place he kept touching, was that glint. It looked sharp. It looked like glass.
“The stronger she gets, the weaker you get. Surely you see that?”
“I float.” His hand trailed in the air as he sank into a reclining position on the ice ledge. “I float amidst the beauty and the plenty.”
She stalked toward him. “What are you talking about? You’re sitting in a frozen cellar, surrounded by putrefying seal meat.”
This seemed to get a rise out of him. “Rotten meat.” He laughed, and it was little more than wind whistling through bone. “Now who’s crazy? Caviar and champagne, lobster and truffles …” He picked a piece of rancid meat from where it had stuck to the wall. He popped it in his mouth. “Served on plates of gold.” His voice was dreamy and his eyes glowed with the same blue light as the match. “One dreams with eyes wide open here. All the world’s a dream … Ah, delicious.”
Her stomach heaved as she watched him chew. She swallowed to keep from vomiting. “Kyle, you’re not seeing things as they are. It’s the drug. It’s this place. It’s that piece of glass in your eye. It’s an evil thing and we’re in an evil place.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t see. You never did. Selfish cow.” He gazed at her with an expression somewhere between disinterest and contempt. “What do you know of love?”
“Love? You call this love? Left to freeze to death in the dark?”
“Her kisses are molten sugar. Her skin is warm honey. Impossible to freeze.”
That shut her up. The woman was a vampire in more ways than one.
The ravens flew to the fountain and perched on the top of the ice-sculpted bears. Kyle looked at them with amusement. “Your guardian, I see. And isn’t that your old neighbour? Fancy them bothering. They must have come in with you.”
Maggie looked at the ravens. The rumpled one had spread his wings wide. His mouth was open as well. Surely not. But then, why not? Wasn’t it entirely possible? She frowned and the bird bobbed up and down. “Mr. Mustby?” she asked. The bird cawed. Then he cawed again, and suddenly the other raven began as well, and the two became raucous and urgent. They flew into the darkest corner of the chamber where Maggie couldn’t tell them from the shadows.
Badger growled and then barked. Srebrenka stood at the foot of the blocked stairs, bringing with her the same heavy scent of cloves, sandalwood and amber that had permeated her Forest den. It almost masked the stench of rotting meat. The bobbed haircut was gone and in its place were long, slithering tendrils. Her skin was as white as ever, and her eyes as blue, but her lips were no longer red – they were quite black. She wore a long dress that seemed to be fashioned from snowdrifts and icicles.
“Pretty Maggie, how resourceful you have turned out to be.” Srebrenka glanced at Badger. “Stupid dog,” she said and spit at him.
Badger began barking even more wildly. Srebrenka raised her hand as though to strike him, but Maggie stepped between them. “Don’t hurt him.”
; “Hurt him? My dear, I’m going to kill him.”
“No!” Maggie threw herself over Badger and made him lie down. “See, he won’t bother you. Leave him alone.”
Srebrenka shrugged. “Perhaps he’ll prove useful. Perhaps he’ll guard you as the bear guarded Kyle.” She shook her thin finger and tsk-tsked. “I do not like what happened there. Where did you get the tooth?”
Maggie noticed Srebrenka’s accent seemed to have disappeared. “You not only look different, you sound different.”
“What adds a certain allure in one place is useless in another. But you didn’t answer me, my girl. Where did you get the tooth?”
“I found it.”
“Nasty little liar.” Srebrenka smiled. “There may be hope for you yet. And I’m glad you got my messages.”
“Your messages?”
“You don’t think he sent for you, do you? Look at him. He doesn’t want your help. He doesn’t want to leave me, do you, sweetheart?” She walked over to Kyle and, with her finger under his chin, lifted his face so he looked in her eyes. She licked her lips and bent to kiss him. He shuddered and moaned with pleasure.
Bile-like revulsion rose in Maggie’s throat. “But why? Why should you want me here? If Kyle’s so happy?”
“Look at him. He’s weak. Drawing pain from the weak is a limited pleasure and I am easily bored.” She pushed Kyle away and turned to Maggie. “I like a challenge. I was so happy when you used to come and visit me, and so sad when you stopped. I miss you, Maggie. You were so close to being mine. You’re the only friend who’s ever left me. I’m just like anyone else, aren’t I? I want to be loved, don’t I? I want to be needed. But you cried so hard you washed the splinter from your eye, and you found someone to take you in, that ridiculous man. You forgot about me, but I never forgot about you. I never forget a friend.”
Maggie recalled what Mr. Mustby had said about the creatures who were attracted to you when you used elysium, how you could keep them away if you stopped, but they never forgot. She remembered what he said about Srebrenka feeding off guilt and grief. Well, Kyle may not want to leave, but if he stayed he’d die. She had to find some way, but it was hard to think, hard to focus …
The Grimoire of Kensington Market Page 26
