by Ursu, Anne
He remembered a feeling, too—vibrations and the sense that his whole body was charged with something, something unnatural, like his heart and brain were always spinning—and that nothing could take it away, not the sticks of the dons or the taunts of the other children or the bemused expression of the islanders who would ask him questions and then pass him by.
Look me in the eye, boy.
And another one: that grinding sensation again, deep at the core of him.
You were the one who would never get picked.
Yes, he had known.
You are not right.
A weight on Oscar’s chest, a steadiness—Crow, though it was not her routine. She purred loudly, as if to overpower the voices in his head. Slowly, his mind stopped chattering at him. There was this—rhythm and softness and nothing else.
Shh, she said. Shhh.
She melted into his chest, and he into his bed. He was so tired.
Shh, she said.
He could not protest. Crow was right. He had nothing left. He did not care what sleep might bring, as long as there was sleep to be had.
Shhh, Shhh . . .
Caleb was gone by morning. Oscar did his chores and ate his bread and most spectacular cheese, shook the tinctures and prepared a few envelopes, and then headed up to the shop. It was all up to him: He would be loyal. He would work hard. He would not be odd.
Oscar tidied the shop; he straightened his white shirt and black pants, he smoothed his thick hair, he rubbed off all the dirt patches on his boots.
And when it was time to open for the day, Oscar walked over like a good shop boy and unlocked the door. And there, waiting outside, was Callie.
Oscar flushed and looked down, his guts burning. Callie pushed open the door, and he stepped to the side—she could just take what she needed and leave the coins and go without seeing him. His eyes darted to Caleb’s obscuring blankets, as if he could will one to fly to him now.
Stillness. Oscar could see only the floor, but Callie wasn’t moving; he could tell that much. The quiet lasted several heartbeats. And then, an echoing beat—the fall of Callie’s boots.
“Are you all right?” she murmured.
Oscar swallowed. If only he’d found something for her in the library. He could hand her the spell, and she would know he was good for something besides making the shining girls laugh.
“Oscar,” Callie said, “listen to me. Those City girls are mean. And horrible. I hope their dresses were ruined.”
Oscar glanced up. “You do?”
“Yes,” Callie said. “And their boots, too. Don’t think about it anymore. Is Master Caleb in today?”
“No,” Oscar said. He straightened and smoothed down his shirt. “He’s away.”
He could see Callie now—she was wearing an apron and had her hair tied back. It bounced slightly as she moved her head, like it might spring off into the air.
“Hmm,” she said, glancing over at the herb packets. “All right. Well. I need some barberry.”
Oscar blinked. “Barberry? Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“I mean, um, what do you need with barberry?” He leaned in. “Is someone following you?”
Callie’s eyes darkened. “No.”
“Oh.”
“I have a patient who has a terrible headache,” Callie said. “She’s had it for a day. That is why I want barberry. Since you are so curious.”
“Butterbur!” he exclaimed. “Not barberry,” he said. “Butterbur.”
Callie folded her arms and gazed at him. “That’s rude, you know.”
“But . . . ,” Oscar started, “isn’t that what you want? Butterbur? For headaches?”
“Yes! But”—Callie shifted—“you just can’t come out and say that.”
“Why not?” Oscar asked, words a plea.
“I mean, you say it nicely. You can’t just go around telling people they’re wrong. You . . . suggest that they might be wrong.”
“I tell them . . . they might be wrong?”
“Like this.” She cocked her head. A curl fell and dangled toward the floor. “Pardon me, Miss Callie,” she began, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m wondering if you are perhaps confusing your barberry for your butterbur.”
Oscar tried it. He cocked his head to the right. It was not entirely comfortable. “P-pardon me, Miss Callie. I don’t mean to be rude, but”—he looked up at her; she smiled encouragingly—“I’m wondering . . .” He shook his head. “I’ve said three extra things already! Isn’t it quicker to just say what’s right?”
“That’s not the point. Keep going.”
He tilted his head farther and finished: “I’m wondering if you are perhaps substituting your barberry for your butterbur . . . because they’re completely different!”
He could not help it. They really were.
The left side of Callie’s mouth went up. “That’s better, anyway. But you don’t have to . . .” She studied him. “Well, here . . .” She put her hands on his head and moved it slightly back toward the center. “Like this.”
Oscar’s breath stuck in his throat. Her hands burned his skin. His neck felt like a stick of wood as she moved it, like it was not made to bend in quite that way.
“You’re very stiff, you know,” Callie said. “It’s not natural. Just relax.”
Oscar took a deep breath and willed his neck to un-stiff, to do whatever a normal neck on a normal person did.
“That’s . . . better,” Callie said.
Oscar jolted his head up, the way he was used to holding it, the way his wooden neck knew best. He did not look unnatural that way; at least he didn’t think so.
“So,” he said, breathing, “you want the butterbur, then?”
“Yes.” She looked around and then added, “Madame Mariel’s with the patient now.”
Oscar frowned. “She usually comes in, doesn’t she?”
“She’s busy.”
“She hasn’t been here in a few days.”
“She’s busy.”
“Is she coming soon?”
“Busy!” Callie repeated.
“Forever?”
“I can handle going to the shop,” Callie said, standing as straight as an oak. “I’m an apprentice. It’s my job to take over.”
“I know,” said Oscar.
“I just mixed them up, that’s all. It’s an easy mistake.”
“All right,” said Oscar.
“Barberry and butterbur.” She stared at him as if he were the one who had named them. “They sound just alike.”
“Well . . . sort of,” said Oscar.
Callie looked at him again intensely, carefully, and something in her seemed to loosen. She looked at the shop door and then leaned in to Oscar. She smelled like licorice and hazelnut oil. “Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.
Oscar’s eyes widened. “Yes!” Who was he going to tell, the cats?
“Madame is gone.”
“Gone?”
“She goes to the Eastern Villages once a year for—to visit patients.”
Oscar’s eyes widened. The duke had made it illegal for magic smiths to practice in the east—the magic was for the Asterians. It didn’t stop the magic smiths from doing it once in a while. Some years ago Caleb had invented a shield that allowed magical items to survive the trip across the plaguelands. This was the first time anything magical had left the Barrow since the time of the wizards. And what the duke doesn’t know about, Caleb had said, he cannot tax.
“We have to keep it secret,” Callie added, “of course. But . . .” She looked at Oscar, then tucked the stray strand of hair behind her ear. “She’s been gone since Tuesday afternoon. Four days is a long time. I am sure there’s a good reason. But I’m supposed to pretend she’s just . . . out, when people call on us. Busy. It’s not just the duke. She says no one will call if they know she’s gone.”
“But you’re an apprentice!” Oscar said. It wasn’t like Mariel was leaving the shop in t
he hands of some idiot orphan.
“Oscar, I don’t have . . .” And then she stopped and shook her head.
“What?” Oscar said. “You don’t have what?”
“People are sick and they come to me and they need help, and . . . Oscar . . . I don’t have magic.”
Oscar stared. “You don’t?”
She shook her head.
“But you’re an apprentice! Apprentices are supposed to—”
Callie stiffened. “I know what apprentices are supposed to have! But . . . I don’t. And I can’t learn the remedies. Not more than the basic ones. I try to sit down and study the herbs, but it just makes me prickly and tangled and stupid, and all I want to be doing is something else. None of it makes any sense.”
“I could help you,” he said. The words popped out of his mouth. He hadn’t even known they were there.
She blinked. “How?”
“Well, it’s just that”—he coughed—“I know a little about herbs and . . . I mean . . . not just preparing them, but—”
“You do?”
Oscar’s stomach churned. If this had been Wolf, he would have gotten hit already. “Actually, I . . . I know a lot about herbs,” he said. “I read a lot of books, and—”
“Oh,” said Callie. Her dark eyebrows knit together, and she studied him a moment. Two moments. Three. “I believe you,” she said finally.
“You believe me?”
“Yes,” Callie said, studying him. “That envelope Master Caleb gave me yesterday was completely different from the one you gave me the day before,” she said. “Entirely different herbs. You made it yourself, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t—I mean, they were the right herbs,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t making it up.”
“Oscar, I know.”
“So I can show you,” he said. “It’s really easy once you get a feel for it. See”—he could hear himself getting louder, but could not seem to stop it; there were too many words to say—“most things work better in combination. You want two or three things in a decoction. It’s better if they flower in the same season; then they’re more like each other: it’s like they have the same hearts, just their bodies are different. Then they bring out the power of the other one more—”
The door opened then. Mistress Alma, the silversmith, walked in, eyed them, and then moved over to the charms.
Callie leaned in. “You don’t usually talk that much,” she said in a whisper.
“Not to people.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Oh,” Oscar said. “It’s . . . better.”
He flushed suddenly, intensely, like his whole face was a match someone had just lit.
Silence then. He could not look at Callie, had no idea what her face was telling him, probably could not even have understood it if it had been trying to tell him something. Mistress Alma clattered in the corner.
“In the shop yesterday,” Callie said, voice hushed, “with the City girls . . . you weren’t trying to be rude, were you?”
Oscar shook his head. “I was just telling them the truth.” The words felt like a confession. And, underneath, a question.
“Sometimes,” Callie said slowly, “the truth is not always the best thing to say.” She tucked the errant curl back behind her ear and studied him. “Oscar,” she added, “why don’t we trade? You help me with the plant magic. I’ll help you with . . . people. Working the shop. Talking to customers. I’ll show you what to do. And how to deal with City people. We’ll just trade, that’s all.”
“You’ll . . . help me?” Oscar said.
“Yes. A trade. A deal.”
Oscar inhaled, and the breath he took in filled him so much that he was all air. “Yes,” he said, bringing his eyes almost up to hers. “Yes.”
Callie took her butterbur, with some feverfew for good measure, and left for the healer’s house, promising to come back later, in the afternoon, when her appointments were done. She promised, and so Oscar believed her.
He worked the shop methodically, studiously, trying to take up as little space as possible. He answered the customers’ questions in as few syllables as he could, and every few minutes he smoothed his shirt and ran his hand through his hair. He would do the best he could.
But he felt stiff everywhere. Even the syllables felt stiff in his mouth. The only thing worse than being odd was trying desperately not to be.
Then, in the afternoon, Callie walked through the door again, now in her bright red cloak. She strode right to the counter and stood behind it.
“Is this all right?” she whispered to Oscar, glancing at the people browsing the store. “To act like I’m working here?”
Oscar’s mouth hung open. Of course it was all right. It was the most all right thing that had ever happened to him.
“I just put a sign up at Mariel’s for any messages or callers to come here.”
“Can you do that?” Oscar whispered.
Callie shrugged. “It’s not like a shop. As long as people know where to find me, it’s all right.”
So for the rest of the afternoon she stood at the counter, head tilted just so, and whenever anyone came in, the perfect words came out of her mouth in the most perfect way possible: “How may I assist you?”
Oscar stepped back and watched as Callie worked the shop as if she were its madame. She never said anything like What do you want? or Not barberry, butterbur—though she meant the same things. It was like Callie covered her meaning in cushions and invited people to settle back into them. All morning Oscar had told people who wanted a special preparation that Caleb was gone and they’d have to come back when he returned. But Callie smiled and layered softness upon her words. “Perhaps you might look at the prepackaged spell kits? I’m sure we have something that can help. Let’s go see.”
How could you tell someone to buy something that’s not what they came in for? Why would anyone listen?
And yet they did. They took the packages, looked them over, and smiled at Callie as if she had somehow read their greatest thoughts. “Thank you, Miss Callie. This should do nicely.”
Callie might not have known magic, but that didn’t seem to slow her down. She directed people to the charms and the herbs and the packaged spells and the potions—where Caleb might give his Caleb smile and say he would go to the back room and whip up something very special, Callie would just pick a charm off the shelf and explain its wondrous properties.
Whether it had them or not.
The Barrow folk did not seem surprised to see Callie there—Caleb would want an apprentice to help mind things, and wasn’t it so generous of Madame Mariel to lend hers for a time? Rather uncharacteristically generous. And the shining people did not care, as long as someone was there to give them their small magic.
Oscar worked behind the counter, sorting and cleaning and counting and listening, and tapped his foot against the floor in a steady rhythm. Whenever Callie said something to a customer, he took the words and placed them on a map in his mind. On When a customer approaches he put a pin that read How may I assist you?
No one else needed to do this. No one else needed lessons on how to be a person.
Late in the afternoon, Callie came over to him and whispered, “Do you have something to soothe animals? Mistress Margaret says something is wrong with her chickens.”
“They’re cranky,” Mistress Margaret called from across the store, apparently putting her large ears to good use. “They’re talking funny.”
“Your chickens talk?” asked the villager who was standing near her, a tall man whose name Oscar did not know.
“Well, not with words,” said Mistress Margaret. She shot the man a look and then turned back to Oscar and Callie. “But they’re talking funny all the same. Like they have something to tell me. They’re anxious.”
“Your chickens are anxious,” the man said.
Mistress Margaret turned to the man, arms folded. “Yes. My chickens are anxious. Roger, you clearly know nothing about chic
kens.”
Oscar stiffened. Her voice had edges. The other villager in the shop turned to look at them. The City lady who was lingering near the glass figurines cocked her head to listen.
“I don’t understand how you could tell that a chicken is anxious,” Roger said. “Now, goats, on the other hand—you come to my pasture, I’ll show you some anxious goats. They’re more than anxious; they’re agitated.” He turned toward the counter. “Do you have something for agitated goats?”
Callie’s eyes slid over to Oscar.
Oscar took a deep breath. “Um, it might be . . . that they want . . . passionflower,” he mumbled.
“For goats or chickens?” Callie whispered back.
“Both.” His eyes shifted to her.
The other man spoke up. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “my pigs have been acting funny. Not anxious, really, but—peevish, I think. Prickly.”
Mistress Margaret shook her head. “I told Edmund that there was something out there,” she said, her voice rattling the potions. “‘Edmund,’ I said, ‘there’s something out there. Something unnatural.’”
Callie cleared her throat and moved out from behind the counter. “Passionflower,” she said. “You all want passionflower.”
The group turned to her as one—anxious, agitated, peevish.
“I’m so sorry about your chickens, your goats, and your pigs,” Callie continued, looking at them each in turn. “If you need anything else, please come back. We’ll take care of you.”
And at once the villagers eased, as if they’d just let go of something they’d been holding on to very tightly. Callie gave them a smile, and they all smiled back at her, like neither they nor their chickens, goats, or pigs had ever had an unpleasant thought. She gave them tinctures of passionflower; they gave her coins and left, chatting happily to one another.
As soon as the door closed, the lady from the City shook her head and exclaimed to no one at all, “Country people are so superstitious!” She laughed a pretty little laugh and then purchased three sachets of Caleb’s special True Love Powder.
After the lady was gone, Callie looked at the coins she’d left on the counter and blew air out of her mouth. “Amazing,” she muttered.
