Wishes and Wellingtons

by Julie Berry

  She shuddered. “I never understood, in that fairy tale, why her scalp didn’t hurt dreadfully.”

  “It just goes to show,” I said, “that writers don’t know very much. I’ll bet the Brothers Grimm never had anyone yanking on their pigtails. What do you say?”

  She began undoing her braids. “All right. I’m trusting you, Maeve.”

  Good old sport!

  “Wait,” she said. “The Brothers Grimm would never have had pigtails.”

  “They were German,” I told her. “You never know what happens on the Continent.”

  She loosened her hair, fetched a ruler from her desk, and stood before a mirror. She held the ruler straight across her upper arm, at the exact place her hair ended.

  The time had come. How had I worded it before, exactly? I clutched the ring to my finger.

  “May Alice Bromley’s hair grow an inch longer,” I said.

  Nothing happened. Foiled once more. Alice’s hair stayed resolutely the same.

  For a moment, I’d almost gotten excited again. We both went and sat in the soft cushions by the bay windows, with a view of the street and the park below. I dropped the ring in the gingerbread tin, where it landed with a clink.

  “Maeve,” Alice said softly. “This, er, sorcerer king. He doesn’t seem to have been a very nice person at all.”

  “Like father, like son,” I said. “Chip off the old block. The apple doesn’t fall far…”

  “No,” said Alice. “What I mean is, what if his magic only does harm? Wishing pimples for Theresa wasn’t a very nice thing to do.”

  A power created for the sole purpose of doing harm? Who would be so low?

  A king who ensorcelled his sons—all three—into an eternity of servitude, perhaps.

  The sinking feeling in my belly told me Alice was right. Even before I had any proof.

  “Wish me harm,” Alice whispered, handing the ring.

  “No!”

  “Something small,” she urged. “Like a toothache.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t even wish a toothache on Theresa Treazleton.” Not that I was an angel, but toothaches are agony. Nothing small about them.

  “When I wished pimples on Theresa,” I said, “I was furious at her. If your theory is true, about this being a mean sort of magic, I just wonder if it might not rely on that. On real anger or hatred being part of the spell.” I elbowed Alice playfully. “I couldn’t hate you for anything.”

  We sat and looked out the window. The streets were quiet , and the park, too, at this hour. Grosvenor Square was a posh neighborhood.

  By the light of a streetlamp in the park, though, we saw an old man walking slowly along the path. His figure was stooped and bent. Suddenly, along came another figure, someone younger and much more fleet of foot. Just as the old man was leaving the safety of the light, the younger figure pounced. In the distance and the darkness, the struggle was confusing, but there was no doubt in our minds: the younger man had robbed the older one.

  Off the thief shot, like a cannonball, leaving his victim without a coat or, presumably, a wallet.

  A surge of anger rushed through me. “Make that man trip,” I said. “Let him twist an ankle, and let the constables catch him.”

  Down went the villain, as though a giant club had swept his feet out from under him. Two constables came running from the shadows and tackled the man, calling out something that sounded encouraging to the shivering victim left behind. We watched as the thief limped away, pinned between the two constables, after giving the coat and wallet back to the old man.

  Once again, I dropped the ring into the tin with a clink.

  “It worked,” Alice said in wonder.

  My whole body shivered. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”

  “That wasn’t a coincidence, was it?” said Alice.

  I shook my head. “That was me. I felt it.”

  Concern for me showed on Alice’s kind face. “He deserved it, Maeve,” she said. “You didn’t hurt him badly. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I think I did.” I put the lid on the tin and buried it once more in my luggage. “That ring is deadly dangerous.”

  “Even if you used it to, you know, help with crimes and things?”

  How many times had I wished I could better teach brutes and bullies a lesson! But not this way.

  “If I did,” I said slowly, “I’d become Mermeros’s father.”

  Alice regarded me strangely.

  “I don’t mean his actual father,” I said. “I mean, someone ruthless and powerful and cruel. Someone owned by their anger.”

  We went back to our beds and returned to the shelter of our blankets.

  “Why do you say so, Maeve?” she asked.

  I sat up on my elbows. “Because I liked it, Alice,” I said. “Just like I liked turning Theresa’s braids green. It felt good, in a nasty way.” I sank back into my pillow. “It terrifies me.”

  Alice was quiet for a long time.

  “Maybe I’d start out thinking I could only use such power for good causes,” I went on. “For justice. But I’m the sort who gets mad at people all the time. And if I had the power to hurt others just by wishing it? It’s already gotten me into trouble too often. Whether with my wishes, or my fists.”

  I thought maybe Alice had fallen asleep.

  “If Mermeros’s father wanted an apple on his table,” I said slowly, “or a brighter lamp, or whatever he might want, he could threaten someone with agonizing pain if they didn’t get it for him.”

  “Power changes a person, doesn’t it?” she said softly.

  I nodded in the dark, though she couldn’t see it. “Hurting others to get what you want makes you evil,” I said. “I can’t sell these artifacts to Mr. Poindexter fast enough.”

  “But Maeve,” Alice said, “if you get rid of them, what if someone terrible gets them and uses them cruelly?”

  I was trying not to think of that myself.

  “The odds of that happening,” I told her, by way of reassuring myself, “are so small as to be insignificant. No one would know where they came from, nor what they can do. These pieces will end up in a museum, or in some collector’s glass cabinet.”

  Alice didn’t sound convinced. “I hope you’re right.”

  Chapter 25

  We stood in the vestibule of Mission Industrial School and Home for Working Boys across the street from our school and eavesdropped as Alice’s grandfather persuaded the head orphan master that he should be allowed to bring Thomas, surname unknown, on an outing. The orphan master didn’t seem pleased to hear that Tommy had been fraternizing with girls at the school across the street.

  “That one gets out too much as it is,” he grumbled.

  Mr. Bromley coughed. “I’m sure that my good friend, Sir Henry Bates of that London Orphans’ Commission, would be thrilled to hear of your generosity in allowing this young man a special treat with his friends.”

  The headmaster summoned Tommy. He appeared looking wary, but curious, and shook Mr. Bromley’s hand.

  “Am I in trouble?” he whispered.

  “No,” I told him. “You’re in for an adventure.”

  “Another Maeve adventure?” He grinned. “Let’s go!”

  Tommy grabbed a coat from one of dozens of pegs in the entryway and followed us outside.

  “Now,” Alice said, “you need to fetch Morris.”

  He stopped and stared at me, then at Mr. Bromley.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Alice told him. “Grandfather knows about your owl.”

  “But…” Tommy blinked repeatedly. “Why do you want Morris? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve found someone you need to meet, Tom,” I told him. “Someone eager to give an owl like Morris a proper home.”

  Tom looked unconvince
d, but he nodded slowly. “It won’t be easy to slip in and out of the cellars in broad daylight without being seen.”

  “No fear,” I said. “The school is closed, and the mistresses and staff are still away on holiday.”

  “We’ll stand guard,” Mr. Bromley said. “Hop to it, young man.”

  I handed Tommy some licorice. “Here,” I said. “Lure Morris out with this.” He made a wry face at me, then laughed and popped a piece in his own mouth.

  We sat waiting for him in the carriage. A young woman passed by, quite near us, and gazed up at Miss Salamanca’s School and then down again at a paper in her hands several times, looking quite perplexed. Mr. Bromley opened the door to the carriage.

  “Can we help you, miss?” he inquired. “Are you lost?”

  The young lady turned and curtsied. “Thank you, sir. I’m looking for Darvill House. The employment agency said it was near here. Do you know of it?”

  “Darvill House,” repeated Mr. Bromley. “Can’t say that I do.”

  “It’s the mansion behind this building,” Alice said, “on this block, but on the opposite side.”

  “It is?” I was surprised. I’d never heard of Darvill House.

  “It’s the place where we—” Alice cut herself off quickly. “But surely nobody is hiring there,” she said. “It’s empty and quite run-down.”

  She meant the empty mansion, with the spooky gallery. The place from which we’d embarked on our journey to Persia.

  The young woman, who had a very friendly, likable face, grinned. “Thank you, miss,” she said. “I’ll look into it, all the same. Can’t afford to let an opportunity pass.”

  “No, indeed,” said Mr. Bromley. “We wish you good luck.”

  “Who could be interviewing for positions at Darvill House?” I wondered aloud.

  In only a few minutes, Tommy returned, bearing a blinking Morris on one arm. The bird ruffled his feathers and hooted in agitation, but he allowed Tommy to carry him into the carriage. Our driver looked quietly horrified.

  “Morris is the most interesting traveler I have ever had the pleasure of riding about London with,” declared Mr. Bromley. “And I once rode with the Lord Mayor.”

  Once Morris was situated—no easy proposition—we rode through the alleyway that ran between the girls’ school and the boys’ home, passing by the grand derelict mansion.

  So this was Darvill House. Derelict no longer; an army of workmen scampered about on ladders and scaffoldings, like sailors flying through the riggings of a merchant vessel.

  “Look, Maeve,” Alice said. “That young woman was right. Someone has taken the old mansion and is fixing it up.”

  “It’ll take a maharajah’s fortune to do it properly, by the looks of things,” Mr. Bromley observed.

  Tommy peered out the window as London flashed by our eyes. Despite the congested streets, in very little time, we reached the Oddity Shop. I felt a load lift off me as we arrived. Finally, I could be rid of these wretched objects and make some money in the bargain. A sorry ending to my djinni adventure, but better than nothing.

  Alice’s grandfather helped us all out of the carriage, then entered the curious little store, holding the door for us. Tommy and Morris went first, then Alice. I was next to step down into the fascinating little shop, when a strange sound froze me to the pavement.

  A cry, a wail. Somehow both a hiss and a scream.

  The London sky, always gray and smoky, went black and still. A shadow passed over me, but when I looked up to see what huge thing had flown by, I saw nothing. An icy chill sliced through me, colder than any wind off the Thames.

  I couldn’t move. All around me London shuffled by, horses and carts and people, plodding slowly, like dead men walking.

  Through the shop window, I saw Mr. Siegfried Poindexter greet Tommy and Morris, but far away, thickly, as if through treacle. They didn’t realize I hadn’t followed them inside. It felt like a dream that becomes a nightmare. A dream where your friends forget you exist.

  “Help me!” I called out, but the sound was snatched from my mouth as if by a hand. They never turned. They never heard me. It was as if I wasn’t even there.

  I’d been erased from London. Erased from the earth. Except for Morris. His wide owl’s eyes watched me closely. I could feel it. It felt—I’d swear—like Morris was the only thing keeping me alive.

  The eldritch scream uncurled behind me like a cracking whip. Slowly, painfully, I turned around.

  A man walked toward me.

  But not a man. The haggard shape of one, rigid, as if framed of tree limbs. Draped in raggedy black clothes, a shabby old suit and coat, that billowed as if they enclosed a cyclone.

  Was there even a body? There was a face. His eyes settled upon me, black as tar pits, empty as night. A hat slouched low over his head. His skin was white, like teeth, and his nose, two livid holes.

  Winds whipped around us both.

  Three things I knew: He was not alive. He was evil. We’d met before.

  He raised a long arm and pointed his bony fingers at my face. “You,” he said, his voice, like rocks shifting at the bottom of an ancient tomb. “The things you carry are mine. Give them back.”

  Chapter 26

  I stared at the fiend.

  “Give them back,” he repeated. His fingers flexed, grasping air. “My talismans. They belong to me.”

  “What are you?” I cried. The wind snatched my voice from my throat and flung it away.

  “Give them back.”

  I tried to move away from him, but my feet wouldn’t budge. My hands moved as though forced by an unseen power toward the bag where I kept the gingerbread tin.

  “Tell me who you are,” I shouted again.

  He advanced closer. His gruesome lips moved over his mouth, then flickered out of view, revealing long, broken teeth. His face wavered between flesh and skull, as if it couldn’t decide. Teeth, and a skull, that I had seen before.

  “You know what I am,” he said. “You know who I am.” His hand clutched my elbow, and cold—cold, so cold it burned—shot down to my fingertips.

  “You may be a sorcerer,” I gasped, “and you may have been a great king. But you’re nothing but a bully. Just like your rotten son.”

  No, I thought. Far worse than his rotten son. He made Mermeros look like Father Christmas.

  Even as I spoke, my hands opened my sack and pulled out the tin of their own will. Of his wicked will. I struggled against the inexorable force. I was losing sensation in my entire arm and shoulder. If this deadly cold spread throughout my body, I was finished. I turned, with effort, to again see Morris’s great owl eyes upon me. Their golden depths were the only suns in this deathly world.

  “How did you find me?” I cried to the specter before me.

  He laughed. “Fool,” he spat. “I care nothing for you. I left my sons to guard my realm and its treasures for all eternity. Should anyone disturb them, I will always find my talismans, even if I must rise from the underworld to reclaim what is mine.”

  I glanced into the store again, at Tommy and Alice, Mr. Bromley and Mr. Poindexter. Happy and smiling, oblivious of my doom and theirs.

  “You’ve used them, haven’t you?” he hissed. “I can smell it on you. It made you so very easy to find. Did you enjoy it? Do you want to drink the wine of power one more time?”

  “You’re sick,” I cried.

  “You’re weak,” he spat back.

  “Speak your name,” I cried.

  “Shall I?” he hissed. “It is an ancient spell of power. If I utter it, the very rocks would crumble. These buildings would topple and crush poor fools inside.”

  Maeve Merritt doesn’t back down. She doesn’t give in to bullies. She refuses to play their games.

  But my friends’ bright faces through the window, unaware, smote my heart. I’d en
dangered them once before in Persia, when first we tangled with Mermeros’s family. I couldn’t do it twice. Once was already too many.

  Morris blinked at me. Go on, he seemed to say. Do it.

  With my last shred of will, I removed the gingerbread tin from my pouch and handed it to the wraith of the sorcerer king, and with it, my last hope of all my dreams.

  His bony fingers punctured and peeled back the metal of the tin as if it were wrapping paper. He seized his precious things, and their metal clinked against his bones. Cradling the relics in his hands, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, slowly, like someone savoring a delicious fragrance. My flesh crawled at the sight.

  The sorcerer king, dressed as a vagrant, fell to dust before my eyes, and a great shape, dark and winged, leaped into the air from the spot where he’d stood. With one final shriek that rent the sky, he gathered into himself the cold darkness that had surrounded us, and surged away. East, and south, if my bearings were reliable.

  And he was gone.

  I gasped as sensation returned to my frigid arm, like a hundred thousand stabbing needles. I tumbled down the stairs and into the welcoming warmth of the Oddity Shop, and hurried over to its potbellied coal stove. Morris’s neck swiveled as he followed my movements.

  “Oh, there you are, Maeve,” Alice said. “Mr. Poindexter and Morris are making great friends.” She took a closer look at me. “What’s the matter? You look as pale as the grave. Have you seen a ghost?”

  My teeth chattered. I turned away so she wouldn’t see me and draped myself over the stove as close as I could without touching it. “I’m all right,” I managed to say. “Just a cold wind outside, is all.” Just a cold wind that keeps snatching my hopes and carrying them off in the whirlwind. I don’t like admitting it, but not all the blurriness in my eyes was the result of the cold.

  I heard Morris hoot across the room, and looked over to see him occupying the perch formerly held by the stuffed owl. I went to his perch and pulled a licorice from the pouch I’d brought. He nipped it from my fingers and nibbled at my open palm.