I shrugged a little. “These are not the most convincing statements.”
“I think you should go find him and tell him to come sit where it’s warm.”
It was getting colder, and the sun was setting. She was right; he shouldn’t stay out, however comforting he found the outdoors to be at a time like this. I put on my coat and boots and headed for the shore again, pausing at the apple tree to regard the hoofprints of the fairy horse.
Past the apple trees, the forest started to thicken, and it already seemed dark here, with the bare limbs of trees casting complicated skeleton shadows, and the sun at my back to the west. A branch cracked beneath my sturdy shoe, and I heard Erris call distantly, “Nim?”
“It’s me,” I called back, stopping in my tracks.
“Can you come here? I’ve hurt my foot.”
There was nothing more he needed to say to set me running, terrified that he would be broken but just a little glad to be wanted and needed too.
I had once wondered if Erris had feet beneath his fairy shoes, back when he was a doll trapped at a piano. Now I came across him sitting on a fallen log, inspecting what appeared to be half of a foot. My heart sped up quite alarmingly.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “I think it can be fixed. Maybe the water weakened the wood, I don’t know.”
“Your feet…” They looked so unnatural that between his feet and the earlier glimpse of his insides, I was beginning to feel sick with what an alien thing he’d become-what an alien thing I’d turned him into.
He cringed with almost a hint of amusement, as if the situation were so unpleasant that he found it almost humorous. But I couldn’t find any humor in this. He held up the front half of his foot. It had a sharp piece of metal, like some sort of screw, jutting from it.
“What happened?” I said, walking over to sit beside him.
“Well, I haven’t felt quite right since I went in the water. My joints are a little sluggish. I guess I should have been more careful, but I was very upset and… a little desperate to feel alive. So I was running, like maybe I could shake off the stiffness, and I jumped off this tree trunk-and felt the snap.”
His feet were much like a cobbler’s form for making shoes, only with a joint that allowed a natural bend where toes would be. It appeared that the heel had cracked and the joint had broken off. I barely smothered my panic as he showed me the damage. I was always worried about him breaking down. In an ordinary person, the correlation between health and life was obvious, but I didn’t know if Erris could die if something happened to him, or if he would remain trapped in the body even if it broke. I could presume, however, that he couldn’t wake up if his mechanism failed and I couldn’t wind him. This was just a foot, but what if it had been something worse?
“I think it could probably be glued, or maybe I could get Lean Joe to help me fashion a new foot,” Erris said. “But… I’ll need help walking back to the house.”
I regarded him a moment. It was obvious I would have to touch him in order to help him.
“It’s all right,” he said, but he sounded distant. He held out an arm, and I helped him up.
He was still strong, and needed me mostly for balance as he hobbled along on one and a half feet. Still, his body was quite heavy, and his movements weren’t as smooth as before he went in the ocean. The house seemed very far away.
“Maybe you should wait here, and I’ll get Celestina,” I suggested, when I saw how slow our pace would be.
“I don’t want Celestina. Please. Just you. And let’s never mention this again.”
“All right. I certainly won’t.”
We were silent with concentration a moment, maneuvering past a space where the ground dipped and the depression was full of wet leaves.
“I think it will snow again tomorrow,” Erris said. In the morning, the sky had been a surprising blue, but now the clouds were back and the air smelled crisp. Wind rattled the bare branches of the trees.
I nodded. “Just stay by the woodstove tonight and get warm.”
“I will.”
We were quiet then, each of us no doubt with different but overlapping unpleasant thoughts.
Just before we got to the house, he said, “I am thankful for you, Nim.”
That was about the nicest thing he could’ve said to me just then. It made me strangely shy.
Erris, with the assistance of Lean Joe, mended his foot and sat down by the woodstove with a book. I was helping Celestina with the dinner, putting together a fish stew with salt cod, jarred tomatoes, and some rather withered-looking garlic, while she finished the biscuits.
Violet sat near Erris’s feet and scooped the cat onto her lap. “Uncle Erris?”
He lowered the book. “Hmm?”
“I want to learn magic. Fairy magic.”
Celestina looked sharply their way. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to learn any magic until Mr. Valdana comes home.”
“I don’t think we can wait until he comes home,” I said. “What will you do if the jinn remembers Violet? If he tries to take her? We can’t hide her in the ocean.”
“She-I don’t think-” Celestina stopped and brushed flour from her hands onto her apron. “I suppose I should tell you this. I didn’t burn my face on a lantern. I burned it trying to do magic.”
“How?”
“I had some idea of how spells worked from reading novels about sorcerers, and I started trying to do magic on my own, without any training. It took forever to learn how to make fire, and I thought it would just be a little candle flame, but it wasn’t. It broke through my hand like a torch. For a terrifying moment I couldn’t get the fire to stop. I caught my hair on fire. My father was so upset I thought his eyeballs might fly right out of his head.” She winced. “They told everyone else it was a lantern, but Mr. Valdana knew it wasn’t. A lot of people guessed it wasn’t.”
“Why didn’t you ask him to teach you magic properly when he hired you?” Violet asked.
“Oh, he told me when he took me on that he had no time to teach magic,” Celestina said. “But he could offer me a home where my parents wouldn’t frown at me and neighbors wouldn’t preach to me, and a fair wage.”
“I understand your fear,” I said. “But I have to learn. Even if it’s dangerous. I am not going to sit by helplessly while some magical villain hauls off the people I love.”
“I think we could be very careful,” Erris said, almost absently. He seemed to be considering the idea. “Fairy magic is very intuitive, and largely safe. Violet could start there. Human magic tends to be more agressive, but… Celestina, I understand that you are sort of the lady of the house in Ordorio’s absence.”
Celestina shrugged.
“I don’t want to usurp your position, but if we all had some magic, and time to plan, maybe we can thwart the jinn next time.”
She sighed. “I wish I knew what Mr. Valdana would say. But I won’t stop you. You are Violet’s uncle. I would just hate to see anything happen to any of you.”
I wondered if that was a fate we could escape, no matter which course we chose.
Chapter 12
The next day, Celestina handed over the key to the upstairs room in the hopes that I would find a book of magical instruction. Unlocking the door revealed a rather intimidating mess: stacks of books, unmarked crates, desks cluttered with tools and papers and writing implements and candles, things draped with sheets, and everything covered with dust. The walking space would have been almost entirely unnegotiable had I been wearing the standard array of skirts and petticoats.
“I see why the door was locked,” I said, stepping over a globe to get to some of the books. There was a shelf in the corner that looked like it had been arranged in some tidier era; it was all books of magic grouped by subject. There were books about magical species, advanced necromancy, astrology and divination, life after death. I started opening ones with promising titles, but many of them looked too difficult, while others seemed useless, and a great de
al of them were written with the air that understanding magic was indeed a sort of gentleman’s club, not something useful so much as something with which to show off.
Erris started going through the books on the desk. While we searched-making feeble attempts to tidy up as we went-Violet opened one of the boxes on the floor. “Doesn’t this look like parts for clockwork?” she said, and then sneezed.
“Clockwork?” Erris turned.
Indeed, Violet was peering into a box full of cogs and gears nestled in hay. The parts were still attached to each other, for the most part, and when Erris lifted them from the box, they formed a small four-legged figure with a tail, like a cat. He set that aside and took out a crudely carved wooden head. It looked like the clockwork would move the eyes and mouth, but some of the pieces had broken apart.
Violet gasped. “A clockwork cat! I don’t remember anything like this!”
Erris was still digging past the hay. “Look at this, Nim.”
I stepped over another box to see an array of crude little clockwork rodents, nestled in the straw with their keys.
“How cunning!” Violet shrieked with delight. “Do they still work?” She grabbed one and began to wind it, but when she released it, it made a rather regretful clicking sound and went silent again without moving. She tested one after another, and some of them didn’t work at all, while others simply didn’t work properly: their gears didn’t catch or a broken foot made them wobble. Erris looked at them with a concerned expression.
“Violet, did your father ever talk about constructing things from clockwork?” he asked.
“No,” Violet said. “I don’t think he built them, or surely he would have made me some dear little clockwork mice.”
I knew Erris didn’t believe for a moment that these crates of clockwork animals were a coincidence. He started opening all the boxes within reach.
“I had no idea he had so many interesting-” Violet’s words cut off abruptly, replaced by a strangled gasp. Erris had thrown back one of the sheets and found a face beneath it.
The wooden face had no hair and was only half painted, yet it was well done, and the staring glass eyes made it look lifelike-or rather, corpselike. In the dim light of the workroom, I could see why it made Violet gasp.
Erris looked at it intently for a moment, and then he started wrestling off the rest of the sheet. It was not easy, for a number of boxes stood in the way of the table on which the clockwork rested. He had to bend and reach, his body tilted awkwardly to favor his good foot, kicking up a great deal of dust in the process.
“What is it?” I said. Her inner workings looked very much like Erris’s. I wondered if the same maker’s mark was stamped on her back.
“It looks like it was meant to be a clockwork version of my-my sister.”
“Your sister? Do you think she was ever-Do you think she-?”
“I don’t think her spirit is here, no,” Erris said. “Besides the obvious question of why Ordorio would have trapped her in such a way, we would know. You sensed there was something strange about me from the start, didn’t you?”
Violet seemed torn between stepping closer to the clockwork woman or farther away. “But why would he make my mother out of clockwork?”
“That is still a mystery to me,” Erris said. He lifted her arm and then carefully turned her over. The plate on her back with the keyhole had no mark at all. “And I think she’s broken, besides.”
“Yes,” I murmured. I was no expert on clockwork, to be certain, despite how often I wound Erris, but the clockwork woman was dusty and neglected, and moreover, appeared unfinished. Her armature looked prone and fragile laid out on the table, and it was hard to imagine her making any movement on her own power.
We resumed our search of the room, but now we were more interested in clues than magic books, although I set aside a few prospects in that regard as I went along.
I tried to hide my excitement at our discovery. If Ordorio had been experimenting with clockwork, maybe he did know how to free Erris. Maybe we hadn’t been sent here only to help Violet.
It was Erris who found the battered leather-bound notebook, full of Ordorio’s small handwriting and sketches of clockwork parts and mice.
“‘Three mice have been put into the death sleep,’” he read. “‘Three other mice were killed. The mice placed into death sleep could be coaxed into inhabiting clockwork bodies, but the dead mice have thus far been unsuccessful. Is it possible that a spirit is unwilling to inhabit a contrived body without retaining some tether to its true form?’”
Erris looked at me, briefly, then back at the book.
“‘Experimented with cat,’” he continued. “‘The cat has been sick and listless as of late, yet attempts to persuade it to inhabit a clockwork form were unsuccessful until the cat was placed into a death sleep. There seems to be a natural resistance in living beings to inhabit these artificial houses, unless they are placed in death sleep, in which case…? Thus far, I am still unable to raise the dead without a body, but I am excited by the prospect that death may be preempted by death sleep. How long will the cat continue to live in its clockwork body?’”
Violet chewed a fingernail. “Papa was trying to raise the dead without a body?”
“I suppose it would be a great goal for a necromancer,” I said, thinking of Karstor telling me how such a thing was impossible.
“He managed to revive mice and cats into clockwork bodies from a death sleep,” Erris said softly.
“What is a death sleep?” I asked.
“It’s like being frozen. You don’t need food. You don’t age. But typically, it doesn’t last forever. People tend to wake from it at some point, so you can’t just keep them comatose for decades. Another spell commonly used by human necromancers.” Erris was still flipping through the book, but he briefly glanced at the clockwork woman. “And clearly, he had hoped to revive my sister, but I think he failed.”
“That’s disturbing,” I murmured. “Why wouldn’t he simply let the dead stay dead? I don’t really like necromancy one bit. But what about you? Do you think he’s the one who did this to you?”
Erris slowly nodded. “Maybe you were right, Nim.”
Our situation was still precarious, but if Erris would share my hope…
“But why would he do that?” Violet asked in a panicked voice. “Uncle Erris, you told me human sorcerers cursed you! Would my father do something like that to you?”
“Sure he might,” Erris said. “He left to fight the fairies. He cursed me, but then he fell in love with my sister and defected. I guess only he can tell us for sure, but either way…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he met my eyes, and there was a spark there I hadn’t seen since I had first freed him from the depths of the curse.
Chapter 13
We had a good snowfall that night. Erris played the piano, and Celestina the guitar, and I showed Violet a folk dance of Tiansher. We were a mess of cultures, and nothing matched, but I found it all the more fun for that.
In the evening, I wrote a letter to Karstor explaining our situation, asking for his advice-perhaps he had some elementary books on magic or information about jinn. Karstor would want to protect Erris just as I would, and I was fairly sure he wouldn’t disapprove of a woman learning magic, although I hoped he wouldn’t ask us to return. I had come to like having the woods around me, and the space to breathe, and I didn’t want to leave Celestina and Violet vulnerable.
The next morning, Erris went out to gather firewood, and when he asked if I wanted to accompany him, I happily agreed. This, more than anything, seemed proof that his mood had changed.
The air made my lungs feel scrubbed clean on the inside. There was snow on the ground now, a few inches deep in most places and pocked with animal tracks.
“Snow hare,” Erris said with a smile, pointing at the soft Y-shapes, the big hind feet splayed forward and the small front feet behind.
“Oh, I wish we’d see one. They must be cute.”
/> “But shy.”
The light was beautiful in the morning, full of golden patches where the sun struck, and blue shadows. The snow squeaked under our feet. Erris carried a basket in one hand and with the other, a walking stick he had found with the umbrellas by the door. His foot was obviously still troubling him, and he limped.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. It might be a difficult subject, but I was too concerned not to ask.
“No. I’ve just lost feeling in the part that broke off.”
“Even after you fixed it?”
“Well, we glued it in place, but it’s not the same. I’m wondering if it damaged the enchantment somehow.” He stopped walking. “Nim, this morning after you wound me, I sat and reread every word of Ordorio’s notes. I think those were studies he did while in school.” There was an ominous tone in his voice.
“Oh?”
“He talks about the clockwork mice, and the cat. Their bodies broke down quickly, strained by the magic, he guessed. He was always mending them and renewing the enchantment, but finally he let it go and put them back to their bodies and lifted the death sleep. The sick cat died. The mice were fine.”
His brown eyes met mine briefly, and then he looked out into the snow-dusted tangle of bare branches beyond us. “The good news is, I am starting to believe you’re right. Annalie sent us here because Ordorio is either the person who cursed me, or he knows who did. Maybe he even knows where my body is. The bad news is, I don’t think the feeling in my foot is coming back. My whole body has felt a little sluggish since I was in the water. This body isn’t going to last forever.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be gathering firewood,” I said nervously.
“No, I want to,” he said. “I need to be out here. My magic is stirring. I need to teach it to Violet.” He started to walk again.
“I was reading about human magic last night from one of Ordorio’s books,” I said. “It all sounds so… destructive.”
“You know, back home we had a magic tutor,” Erris said. “He said a lot of wise things I barely paid attention to at the time, but I find now make a lot of sense. He talked about magic of all the races, and he said that human magic is often thought of as destructive, because a lot of humans don’t value their connection to the natural world. They kill birds for sport, they hunt whales for oil, they cut down trees and don’t plant new ones. Their magic is thought of similarly-potent, but lethal.”
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