Driven by curiosity, the crow had entered the part of the forest that made him tremulous with dread. Here, the old-growth trees, blanketed with moss, muffled all sound. Water dripped into hollows formed by fallen branches and roots thrust from the earth. The ground was higher than the surrounding landscape, forming an island in the swamp. A shuttered building rose out of a confusion of rooftops, casting a deep shadow. It was known as Little Eye, the Monster's prison up until the time of the forced evacuation at the war's end. That had been several years ago. The crow never knew the fate of the Monster. He knew only that the boy had lingered after the summary execution of the dwindling members of the order. The soldiers, eager to be away from this haunted place, had overlooked him in the mayhem. Whether the Monster had died, taken by the harsh winter that followed, or found some way to escape the island was impossible to know. The crow was aware that the reason he could feel badly about this was the Monster's gift of consciousness, given one day with a touch as soft as a petal.
Smoke poured from a brick furnace. The snap and hiss of burning wood sounded closer than it was. The furnace's conical shape was blackened at the top and mottled with lichen at the base. Concrete walls spread out from the foundation and disappeared under a heavy growth of deadly nightshade, a sign of a once greater industry. A pile of dead branches leaned against the chimney, a green layer on top of one much thicker and darker. Sacks and wood blocks, iron implements and mounds of shattered green glass surrounded a work area.
A girl opened a grate in the side of the furnace, unfazed by the blast of heat and a shower of sparks. Nearby, seven human-sized puppets sat knock-kneed on a wall, each wearing an animal mask. The crow was familiar with the shapes of a bird, a fox and a frog. They were a part of his world. The others he found unsettling. Staring in different directions were four disturbing amalgams of multiple creatures, with split snouts, multiple eyes and bared teeth, no less frightening because they were carved from wood. Although there was no puppeteer to be seen, the group's hands and feet twitched. A black dog lay panting before them, its tongue hanging like a ladle. The girl was as indifferent to the puppets and their fidgeting as she was to the breath of the fire.
She wore a leather apron over a ragged dress and mud-caked boots. Her tangled black hair was tied back with a strip of cloth. She worked a blowpipe through the grate into the flames, turned it for a few seconds, and then pulled it back. A globule of molten glass clung to the tip of the pipe. The crow, which had sidestepped his way along the bough, stood with head cocked, watching with a beady eye.
The girl turned, squinting against the smoke. Climbing onto a stump, she whispered to herself. With the pipe held vertically she lowered the glass through the opening of a wood mold that sat on the ground. She blew into the end of the pipe, causing steam, or smoke to pour from the mold's seams. The crow smelled burned cherry wood and felt excitement in his breast. The pipe came away on a ribbon of smoke. Resuming her whispers, the girl let it fall into the mud and stepped down. She kneeled before the mold and pried the halves apart, releasing a glass form. It looked like a large moth pupa. It squirmed, a living thing of glass, as she retrieved it with tongs pulled from the belt of the apron. The crow cawed and hopped on the branch. He could not help himself. The girl paid him no mind and carried the magical thing back to the furnace, where she placed it on a cooling ledge.
What was this? The pupa had joined several other miniature writhing glass pupae. Each one was iridescent and irresistible. A beautiful prize, thought the crow. He sidled further along the bough, flapping to maintain his balance. One pupa was nearer to the edge than the others. It seemed to beckon to him, an illusion brought on by excitement no doubt. The girl had returned to the stump and now sat with her face in blackened hands, as though depleted by her work. She had shed the apron on the ground. Taking advantage of her distraction, the crow leapt and crossed the clearing with three surging wing beats. He landed on the ledge and seized the object in his beak. It clinked against the brickwork.
"No," screeched the girl, as she jumped to her feet. "Idiot bird."
The crow, a master thief, was already in the air. He flapped his wings, plunging through the trees. But from the start something was wrong. The pupa was heavier than expected and threw off his center of gravity. He misjudged his movements and twice came close to dropping the prize. The girl's angry shouts followed him, but then stopped as he shot free of the forest. A few more strokes carried him away from Little Eye. It was when he was once again in the great vault of the sky that he understood that back in the forest something had been forming in the air above the glass pupae. He understood now, the girl had been performing a summoning magic. What had he gotten himself into?
"Echo," the girl said to the air thickening in the clearing. "Echo, you will never be complete now."
The form coalescing around the glass pupae, drawing into itself a rind of forest detritus, leaves, lichen and scraps of tattered wasp's paper, answered with a voice of howling fire. "Elizabeth, undo this. Unmake me."
Elizabeth laughed. "That I cannot do. You must be whole to be sundered, and that silly crow has stolen your heart."
PICKPOCKET
The Songbirds of Nightjar Island was a smallish book. Moss lifted it from the museum display case and ran a finger over the embossed cover illustration, a thistle head bowing under the weight of a finch. Restless hands had long since worn away the gold.
He opened the book, wincing at the spine's protest. The endpapers and the title page were foxed. For S. The emissary of dreams.
Strange, thought Moss. He believed he was aware of the few people who played a significant role in the author's life. S was a mystery. He checked the sewn binding and found it well used but sound. When the book was held just so, it fell open to the stained impression of a plant. Deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonna, it grew in profusion along the walls of Brickscold Prison. Moss paused as he considered the significance of the impression. The author had made a tea from the root of the plant, ensuring a release that no authority could rescind. Moss's fingers moved through the book. Tissues covered the engravings. The raised typeface could almost be read through the fingertips.
On the other side of the display case, Mr. Tern, the Head of Collections, sighed and fidgeted with a key ring. Moss opened his eyes expecting to meet Tern's gaze, but a young woman passing several feet away distracted the man. Had the woman had been looking at Moss? She averted her eyes too soon for him to be sure. Sensing he was unobserved, Moss slipped the book into his coat and pulled out the facsimile that he had spent the past week constructing. He opened the new book and closed it with a slap.
"Did you find what you were after, Mr. Woods?" asked Tern, returning his attention to Moss. He glanced at his watch and swept his hand over his balding head as though he had lost his hat.
"Yes, thank you. There's no question that it's the signed first edition." Moss put the book in the case with care. "It's a nuisance, but the insurer was insistent that the location of the book be verified in person. I apologize for the inconvenience."
Tern shrugged. He lowered the glass lid and locked it. "Allow me to once again express our heartfelt thanks to Judge Seaforth, for his generosity in allowing the book to be displayed in the museum." The man retreated. "Now, if you'll forgive me, I have a meeting of the board."
"Of course," said Moss, smiling. Tern spun on his heel and walked away. Moss looked down the front of his coat to ensure that there were no suspicious lumps or creases. There should not be. He had spent almost as long sewing the pocket and practicing the deft movements needed to steal the book as he had on the creation of the facsimile.
The Museum of Natural History's central hall was as large as an airship hangar. Even the suspended skeleton of a right whale seemed insufficient to command the space. Opposite the entrance, a reception desk sat on a marble floor. Wall murals, sparkling with efflorescence, surrounded staircase openings, which led to the collection galleries. Few people were around due to the hour. A group o
f museum employees argued in whispers behind the desk. Visitors meandered through the hall or sat in chairs flipping through exhibition catalogues. No one paid attention to Moss as he paused against a pillar to rein in his excitement.
Confident that his theft would not be discovered, Moss decided to wait for the weather to clear. He had arrived an hour earlier, moments ahead of the rain, and now had a practical reason, even a responsibility, to avoid a drenching. He could not risk getting the book wet. After visiting the lavatory where he wrapped the book in cloth and transferred it to his shoulder bag, he decided to kill time with a visit to the beetle lithographs.
The Coleopterist's Society's Special Collections Room, or Beetle Room, was deep within the building. Moss turned left and followed the wall beneath a row of portraits. At the foot of a staircase, he noticed a world map affixed to a bulletin board. A sign invited visitors to insert a pin at their birthplace.
He searched for the places his life had taken him so far, a depressing exercise. For a start, he had never left the continent of Irridia. He picked a brass pin from the tray below the map and stuck it in the City of Steps, a fading bruise on the northeastern coast of the continent. A centimeter to the north, his finger found the Chimneys Institute where as a man of twenty-two he had been an assistant professor of literature. Two centimeters above the institute and slightly to the left was Brickscold Prison where, following his brief career, he had been incarcerated for twelve years before escaping into the wilderness.
Moss stepped back, dismayed by the possibility that he would see just a tiny portion of the world during his lifetime. As a fugitive he lived in a different kind of prison, its walls now defined by a lack of official stamps, papers and passports. Depressing indeed, but one day he would break free of it, just as he had broken free of Brickscold Prison.
He climbed the stairs reworking a well-worn plan to leave the city forever, in the hold of a cargo ship. It would be a fresh start on another continent, where nobody was looking for him, and where memories would be buried under new experiences. Moss's friend Irridis had developed the ability to travel clandestinely. Irridis bore danger and privations that would finish a lesser man, things that Moss longed to test himself against. Eventually Moss came to the doors of the Beetle Room, and found them locked.
He set his bag on the floor and rattled the handles, even though he could see through the window that the room was deserted. The only source of light was an ellipse cast by a barrister's lamp. Moss was disappointed. As a boy he had been an avid collector of Buprestidae, metallic wood boring beetles. The lithographs would have to wait. As he turned to retrace his steps, he collided with a young woman in a rust-colored coat. She swept around him, head down, muttering. It was the same woman who had distracted Tern. Surprised, Moss watched her disappear down the stairs. He shook his head and took the same route at a more thoughtful pace. When he entered the central hall, he realized that he was not carrying his bag. He knew what had happened. The woman was a pickpocket. She had walked into him to create a diversion. With her back turned she had concealed the bag from his view. In a moment she had taken the book he had spent weeks planning and preparing to steal. He raced back up the steps to confirm with his eyes what he already knew in his gut.
"Think, think," he said, as he paced before the Beetle Room doors in a cold sweat. Would she have left the museum immediately? Surely she would be afraid of being seen and confronted. Unless she had seen Moss's crime, in which case she would know he would never risk publicly exposing her. It was more likely that once she realized there was nothing in the bag of apparent value, she would dispose of it. To the uneducated eye—and he had to hope she was simply an opportunist—the stolen book would appear unremarkable. Unburdened, she might stay to work the mid-day crowd, already trickling into the museum. He realized this plausibility was his only hope. If it proved true, then he had to find the abandoned bag before it was turned into the Lost and Found or discovered by a member of the museum staff.
An hour later, he stood in the museum's Hall of Time, waiting, blended into the background. He had walked through the collection galleries peering into waste bins and under benches. As he did so, he had watched for the thief. He could not shake the feeling that she had just vacated each room as he entered, that they were playing a private game in and among the oblivious crowd. Convinced that she had not dumped the bag in any of the public areas—it was early in the day and the bins were low—it occurred to him that remaining in one place might be a better way to find her. Needing a prop, he had bought a small notebook and pen from the gift shop. He had then taken up a spot in front of a mounted pterosaur skeleton with a good view of the hall.
It was now early afternoon. He was beginning to think the woman had made her escape after all. The hall rang with voices and the air was sticky with the humidity from rain-dampened clothing. Moss was alert as he sketched. He had always been poor at drawing but it was a simple and convincing role to play, the amateur naturalist with more enthusiasm than talent. It rendered him invisible. If he needed proof, it came in the form of the numerous shoves he received as visitors pressed against the velvet ropes surrounding the exhibits. Moss sketched the same skeleton three times, scanning the crowd with each upward glance. And then, she appeared, so abruptly it took him a heartbeat to recognize her.
"There you are," he said to himself. It was obvious from her direct gaze that she had seen him first. She had probably known of his whereabouts the entire time, and was now, for reasons of her own, revealing herself. He remained still, meeting her eyes through the barrier of mounted bones. She backed through the throng and vanished. Moss pretended to return to his drawing. She would show herself again, he had no doubt. He frowned as he drew, chewing the inside of his cheek. He looked up and searched the slow-moving crowd of visitors. She was not among them. He closed the notebook around the pen and put it in his coat pocket. Someone bumped his shoulder from behind. He took a deep breath before turning to see her several feet away. The strap of his shoulder bag was twisted around her hand.
"Wait," he said. "Let's work something out."
There was amusement in her brown eyes. He reached for her, but she evaded his hand. She ran, pulling the strap of the bag over her neck. Moss gave chase, pushing between people. He could sense curiosity spreading through the crowd as he pressed forward.
"It's nothing," he said, holding up his hands. "My apologies, excuse me please." He stepped over the rope that surrounded the diplodocus exhibit and, ignoring the shouts of a guard, took off down the length of the hall. He watched for her rust coat. At last he spotted her running up a staircase, his bag thumping against her backside with each stride. This was the route to the central hall and the museum's exit. The slap of the guard's boots approached. Moss plunged into the crowd of amused onlookers.
She stopped at the top of the stairs and leaned with her back against a column. Hair hung across her face in damp strands. She whipped it back over her head, smirking. Now at the bottom of the stairs, Moss understood that she was waiting, giving him time to close the gap. With a hand pressed to a stitch in his side he took the steps three at a time, conscious of the spectacle he presented.
"Wait," he called out. The woman sprinted across the marble foyer. Moss reached the top step in time to see her push through the revolving doors to the outside. Lightning lit the windows.
MASTER CROW
The crow longed for the morning's serenity by the time he reached Absentia. The air was cold and briny. Fish flies occupied every square foot of the sky, blown in from the ocean before a curtain of fine rain. The wind was an invisible terrain, a distorted reflection of the land below. It had its own paths and obstructions, cliffs and valleys, but they were made of vortices and perilous changes in pressure. Any miscalculation or distraction from his purpose would send him plummeting. The crow's head ached from concentration and the muscles in his breast and wings cramped with every downward thrust. The foot missing a toe curled inward. Seeking relief, he let it trail, bu
t this further destabilized his flight.
Absentia was a city of war ruins. The library's domes and cupolas, the caverns of the theatres and the opera house were home to the birds. The halls of governance and religion were the domain of bears, elk and wolves. The Monster had told him about the destruction of the zoo and how the animals had gone out into the city and terrorized the survivors of the war, and later the Purge. He could be an eloquent storyteller and had heard many things from the order of sisters in Little Eye. Though they were forbidden to speak to him, the Monster had sharp ears.
Fog drifted from the countryside into the avenues and squares. The crow was overwhelmed with a need to protect the squirming thing he carried in his beak. He struggled to understand what drew him to the city, until he realized he needed the reassurance and silence of its unmoving walls. The riot of the wild made him feel ill. The crow sensed that something followed him on the wind, leaping and running like a sprite along the calm trails between the cascading walls of air. A sibilant whisper, audible even over the rush of air, urged him toward desperation. The sound had become trapped in the three chambers of his ears, and no amount of exertion would dispel it. He was sure it was the girl's voice. The crow's sense that the pupa was somehow alive, and that he was bound to protect it, drove him forward. The magic of it held him to an unspoken obligation.
Necessary Monsters Page 2
