What on earth is going on?
Two clean teacups dry along the edge of the countertop. Fresh bubbles drizzle down their sides. A nest of soiled cups hisses from a bucket placed in the sink. Someone’s done up the dishes we left. It wasn’t Urlick. And it certainly wasn’t me.
I gasp, drawing back, as someone appears, scuttling in and out of the shadows like a confused beetle exposing itself timidly to the light. A girl. Not much older than I. She’s of modest height, but not modest size. Her shoulders are much, much broader than my own. From there her physique slims to nearly half its size by the hips, her torso forming the perfect triangle. That explains my trouble with the skirt. Her eyes are a collaboration of hazel and grey, hanging droopy and sad as a dog’s, half-masked under a pair of lazy lids. Her hair, an undesirable shade of mousy brown, is twisted like tumbleweed and held by a comb at the nape of her neck. Frizzy curls line the edges, sticking out around the sides of her face. She wears a traditional floor-length day dress, sewn of the most modest fabric, although the color is, surprisingly, dark cherry red. A stiff white ruffled collar, which she yanks on from time to time, chokes her off at the neck.
Iris. Hands in the dishwater, sleeves rolled back, cherry-colored-dress-wearing, stuffy-collared Iris.
I look down at the screaming side seams of my borrowed skirt, at the extra space in the shoulders of the jacket. That explains a lot. I clutch the side of the jamb, waiting for just the right moment to reveal myself, not wanting to burst out and frighten her.
She scuttles off into the pantry and just as swiftly back out, carrying a couple of unmarked tins. I step forward into the light, startling her a bit. She pulls back, nearly dropping the tins, which she quickly hides behind.
“I’m sorry.” I offer my hand. “I didn’t mean to give you a start.”
She stares at my hand, bewildered, bottom lip trembling.
“Eyelet. Eyelet Elsworth.” I push my hand toward her. “The new houseguest.”
She squirms backward, as if I were holding out a handful of worms rather than fingers.
“Urlick did mention me to you, didn’t he?”
She drops the tins and turns her back, plunging her hands into the dishwater.
“Iris, isn’t it?” I step closer.
She nods, clenching her teeth as if it was agony to be in my company, shoulders folded forward around a sunken chest.
What’s wrong with this girl? I can’t be that repulsive. I’ve only just arrived. She doesn’t even know me yet.
I drop my hand, feeling silly with it hanging there empty in the air, clicking heel-toe around to the other side of her, and try again. “It must be awfully lonely living here,” I say, leaning in. “Being the only girl, I mean.” Her eyes get big. They pepper me in nervous glances. “I was thinking, since I’ll be here a while and since we’re the only two girls in the house”—she begins to slosh her hands around in the dishwater, drowning me out—“what I’m trying to say is, I should like it if we could become friends!” I shout.
As if scorched by the suggestion, she withdraws her hands from the water, towels them off, and scurries into the other room. She disappears into the depths of the pantry, clanging tins and clattering pans.
It appears I’ve upset her, though I can’t imagine how.
She reappears seconds later carrying a loaf of crusty French bread and a knife as big as my foot. Thrusting both down on the table, she cuts the bread with such enthusiasm you’d think her hands had been set ablaze.
“I understand Mr. Babbit Senior is somewhat of a recluse, is that right?” I start again.
Her eyes jump a little in their sockets.
“I only ask because I wonder what to expect of him when we meet.”
She drops the knife, her feet again clattering over the floorboards. This time she makes her way to the icebox and back. I follow, nearly stepping in her footsteps before she’s made them. “Surely you’ve seen him?”
She spins around, worry lines bunch in the corners of her eyes.
“You haven’t? Have you?”
She sidesteps me, and heads back to the table a block of cheese in hand.
“How is that possible?” I chase close behind. “How can you live here and never see the master of the house?”
She averts her gaze, making short order of the cheese, her knife falling hard against the tabletop.
“He does live here, doesn’t he?”
She looks up at me, swallows, then just as quickly looks away.
What’s going on here? Why won’t she answer me? She can’t be deaf, or I wouldn’t have startled her. She can’t be daft or she wouldn’t look so alarmed at the things I’m saying. Which leaves only stubborn, or unwilling to befriend me. Which is completely unacceptable.
Especially when I’ve been so perfectly lovely.
“Perhaps you can tell me what this is?” I change the subject, revealing the strange gadget I’ve held hidden behind my back.
Her eyes move nervously over it as if I’d just pulled out a gun, not some sort of mixer.
“What’s the matter? I say, sticking it up under her nose. “Should I be afraid of this?”
She looks away.
“What about these?” I say, dashing back to the study to retrieve the rest. “What can you tell me about them?” I whirl the apple coring thingy around in the air, and her eyes grow wide as plates. Her gaze shifts nervously between the blades and a mysterious button on the handle. “What is it? What happens if I touch this?”
The tiniest shriek departs her lips, as I move my finger, accidently triggering the device.
A miniature arrow launches from a secret compartment in the handle, nearly clipping the vein in my wrist. My jaw drops, as it whisks across the room sticking with a crisp swick into the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen. Iris’s knife, misses the cheese altogether, slicing off a generous portion of pink skin from her thumb instead.
“Oh God!” I shout, flinging myself at her, seeing her blood trickling through the holes of the yellow cheese. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
She lunges away from me, teeth clamped together.
“You didn’t mean to what?” Urlick’s eyes catch me hard as he enters the room. His gaze swings from me to Iris. “What have you done?” He bursts across the kitchen to her aid. Producing a handkerchief, he binds her thumb.
“I—”
“I thought I told you Iris was to be left alone!”
“I’m sorry.” I gulp. “I didn’t mean to hurt her...I just wanted to know what this was…”
His eyes move to the object in my hand, and from there, to the ones on the table.
“I found them, in the study,” I offer stupidly, “and I was just curious to know—”
“To know what?” He rises slowly, and I step back, afraid. “Something that’s none of your business.” He gnashes his teeth.
I wince as he darts past. One by one he picks the objects off the table and shakes them in the air, slamming them back down once he’s named them. “Coffee Grinder! Lemon Zester! Cork Shaver! And this!” I cower as he wields the cigarette holder up in front of my face. “THIS is a Meringue Torch! If you must know!”
He’s standing so close, the rage in his heart burns through his shirt. “From now on you are NOT to touch anything in this house that doesn’t belong to you. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” He straightens.
“But nothing here belongs to me—”
“Precisely!” He storms from the room.
Nine
Eyelet
That night I dream of Iris’s thumb, her skin slicing away smooth as butter, Urlick’s words as he scolded me, “I thought I told you Iris was to be left alone!”
Why she wouldn’t speak to me? Was she ordered not to? Why is Urlick so desperate to keep us apart? I toss in my sleep, my mind reeling. I’ve never so much as hurled an insult at another person, let alone injured one.
I shouldn’t have bothered the poor girl. I should have listened to Urlick. He’s righ
t; sometimes I do need to learn to mind my own business—just as my mother used to say.
I wake in a cold sweat, hot tears stinging my cheeks, bolting upright in the center of the heavy walnut four-poster bed where I sleep. The huge circular window of the turret room I’ve been assigned, stares across the room at me like a giant eye. To better monitor the advancing Vapours as they pour down over the escarpment, Urlick’s father had the windows of the turret only slightly tinted. They are the only windows of the Compound through which things are barely visible, Urlick explained, which at first I found comforting, but now, watching the Vapours ghostly black figures twist atop the not-so-far-away ridge, I find it nothing but disturbing.
I blink away my tears, heart racing, sheets clenched in my fists, longing for the thick, velvet, window coverings of my former palace home.
Mother. My head fills with her image, her body dangling from the gallows in the square. I sob. If only I’d reached her sooner. If only I’d gone back, immediately, with the birds. I might have gotten to her before the authorities. And perhaps she’d be with me now.
I bow my head, heavy with the grief of the day, and of the day before that, never having allowed myself a moment to deal with my mother’s death. But here, now, in the silence of a stranger’s room, the notion of her loss overwhelms me. My shoulders heave under the weight of it. My sobs turn to cries.
I touch the necklace—my last link to my mother—the only thing I have left of my family. I thought the loss of my father was too much for me to bear, but I fear the loss of my mother will be the complete end of me.
Run. Hide. Live. I hear her say. But how do I do that without you? I turn my chin to the Heavens. What is there left for me to live for in this world? You and father were the only ones who could ever love me unconditionally. The rest of the world seeks to have me put away.
Even if I do successfully recover Father’s machine and use it to cure my affliction, underneath I’ll always bear the scars of its emotional pain. The years of exclusion, of living in fear, under the constant threat of being locked away, never able to trust that anyone could ever accept me, knowing only my parents could ever love a thing such as me.
A branch slaps the window, severing the thought. I pull the covers to my chin, shaken. The light of my necklace pulses through the bared threads of the sheets, breaking the darkness of the room. Through its dim haze I see something fluttering on the opposite side of the window, a dark shadow rapping at the bubble-speckled glass.
I hurl back the sheet, worried at first that the Vapours may be shifting, seeing their ghostly figures still dancing on the ridge.
The shadow again comes slamming into the glass, a black puppet cast aside by the force of the wind.
“Pan?” I say into the air, squinting. “Pan, was that you?”
She appears again, this time shrieking, and I fly from the bed across the room, falling to my knees on the window seat.
“Oh, Pan!”—I stroke the glass—“It’s you, you’re not dead! How on earth did you find me? Oh, Pan, you have no idea how glad I am to see you!”
She nestles in close to the glass as if trying to absorb the warmth of my hand, her head tucked close to her chest.
“I’m so sorry”—I press my cheek to the window—“I should have listened to Archie. I should have followed him home.” I drop my head in shame. “Oh, Pan, what ever are we going to do without Mother?” I look up. Tears have filled her eyes, too. “How are we supposed to go on?”
I stare through the slightly darkened window, thinking my eyes are playing tricks on me, realizing her beak shimmers crimson, the color of blood. “What’s happened? Why is your beak red? Has someone marked you, Pan?”
She turns her head as if to hide it from me.
“Who did this to you? Was it Smrt?”
She lowers her eyes.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Why won’t you speak to me?”
The wind tosses her feathers aside, revealing a fresh scar at the base of her neck. “It was Smrt, wasn’t it? Has he harmed you after I left?”
The wind sucks her down, away from the window.
“Pan!” I leap forward, seeing her descend deep into the fog-filled cavern below. Located at the back of the Compound and the only piece of the building that projects from the rock, the turret offers the only natural view of the surrounding landscape. My head swims, noting that the footing rests half on and half over the lip of the ravine. I’ve never seen a sheerer drop. There’s nothing beyond it. No forest. No valley. No trees. Just a pit.
A bottomless swell of black swirling froth.
Pan fights against the downward spiral, finally breaking free of the gust, emerging up through the darkness. She returns to the window and digs at it with her claws. I fling myself at the seal trying to open it. “It’s no use.” I shake my head. “It’s stuck! Wait!” I say, and burst across the room for the door, rattling the handle, slamming my shoulder into it. “It won’t budge!” I shout, bouncing back into the room. “I’m locked in! He’s locked me in!”
The winds pick up again, sucking Pan down into the pit.
“Pan!” I scream, flying back to the window. “Pan! Come back! Please, come back!”
I press my forehead to the window, seeing her disappear into the roiling froth below. My eyes move to the ridge. Vapours crest the escarpment.
Unlike the swirling docile clouds I’d feared when I first stepped from the carriage, these Vapours reared their venomous heads, threatening at any moment to spill down over the hillside and into the forest, devouring us in their wake. Just as Urlick warned. It won’t be long now, I hear him say. A day or two, maybe a week.
Pan reappears on a gust of wind outside my window. “Go!” I shout, slamming my palms against the glass. “Get out of here, Pan! The Vapours! You must go!”
Her head twists forward and back.
“Please, Pan!” I urge her. “Don’t worry about me! Just go!”
She hesitates, then bends her head and breaks away, breaking my heart as she goes.
“Be safe,” I whisper, fearing I’ll never see her again. She wings off over the treetops, a dark blotch in an ever-darkening sky, and I dissolve, hug-kneed, to the turret floor, and sob.
Ten
Eyelet
I wake, a frazzled mess, to the stench of phosphorus being struck and the sound of the spinning chimes on the candle carousel in the corner striking six.
The Vapours did not break over the ridge, as I had feared. But the night was not peaceful. It was filled with racking, restless winds. Stronger winds than I’ve ever experienced in my life before, continuously flogging the sides of the Compound. Between the onslaught of the winds and my mounting grief, I was up most of the night.
I blink open my weary eyes to the sound of the lock on my door mysteriously giving way. The handle turns and the door falls ajar.
Lights out at nine. Breakfast at six-thirty. What am I, his prisoner?
I’m up and dressed in seconds, racing down the stairs. How dare he lock me in my room. I am a guest, not a threat. I sprint from the bottom stair through the doorway of the kitchen prepared to confront Urlick, a barbed tongue my weapon.
Iris looks up at me from the eggs she’s preparing and quickly looks away.
I stalk past her to where Urlick stands stretched out over the pantry, failing miserably to look innocent, while he selects his morning tea.
“I demand to know why I was locked in my room last night,” I say, hands on hips.
“You do, do you?” Urlick almost laughs as he turns his back.
Iris’s whisk picks up speed.
“That’s right,” I say, scuttling around to the front of him, skirts swinging. “I have the right to know why I’m being held captive.”
“Captive.” He guffaws. “Don’t be silly.”
He turns and makes his way across the kitchen, apparently abandoning his thoughts of tea.
“I couldn’t open my window, either.” I chase after him. “Do you care to explain
why?”
“Simple.” Urlick answers, matter-of-factly. “They’re sealed.”
“And why would anybody do such a thing?” I pinch my face up close to his face.
“To keep the Vapours from ravishing the house, that’s why. All the windows of the house are sealed.” He turns to me. “Not just yours, Princess. But I can certainly have yours unsealed if you’d prefer.” He leans in close, his breath beating a moist path across the hollow of my neck.
I snap back, disgusted.
Disgusted with him. Disgusted with myself for not thinking of it. Of course they’d be sealed. What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with him staring at me like that? All googly-eyed and silly. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was enjoying this. “And the door—” I wag my head cockily in front of his. “Do the Vapours threaten to seep under there as well?”
Urlick purses his lips into a hard thin line.
Iris whips her eggs into a froth behind me.
He says nothing, tugs on his waistcoat and breezes past, his quick, lithe movements prickling my skin.
“All of the locks of the Compound are designed to keep things from getting in, not out,” he says at last, clutching the doorknob in one hand. Letting the other hover just above the keyhole, he drags it slowly down the length of the brass plate. Turbines churn beneath his palm, and the lock shifts out of place. “They operate on sensors, activated by the molecular chemistry of the human hand. You see?” he explains, applying slight pressure to the brass plate, then releasing it. Magically, the latch releases. The door falls open, creaking on its hinge. “You can escape at any time.”
I take a breath, feeling stupid. His goal again, I suspect.
“As long as you are human,” Urlick turns around slowly, “you will never be denied passage to any room in this house. Unless, of course, the deadbolt’s been tripped—”
Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) Page 8
