Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill

  He calls it whiskey, but it is not whiskey. It is a homemade alcohol that he brews in a boot and distills in small batches in a miniature coil that he designed himself.

  His daughter is amazed that he hasn’t gone blind. Or blown his hands off. She knows that it has something to do with the unintentional protection that she affords him simply by existing.

  What will happen to him if she is discovered? How will he survive without her? Who will take care of him if she is gone?

  (Not if, her heart knows. When.)

  The junk man groans in his cart.

  “Did you say something, my Sparrow?” he slurs.

  “No, Papa,” she says. “Go back to sleep.” By the time she finishes the word papa, he is already snoring. Still she says it. “Papa.” Her voice is like the clasp of fingers curling around a living heart and holding on for dear life. He has been her papa since she opened her eyes for the second time, fifteen years ago. But will he even remember her when she is gone? She doesn’t even know.

  The anthem blares—a long, plodding, minor-key affair, like a funeral dirge. It is sung this time by two old men, their voices tired and sagging.

  Former generals, the girl knows without trying. And today is their last day.

  Being a general is a risky business, after all. Little failures are more likely to catch the Minister’s eye, and no one wants to catch the Minister’s eye. Not if he wants to keep his own head. The two men heave a great sigh the moment the song ends. One begins to sob.

  “DO YOU SEE, BELOVED CITIZENS, HOW PATRIOTISM STIRS THE HEARTS OF EVEN THE MOST HARDENED OF MEN? LET US ALL TAKE A MOMENT TO WIPE OUR OWN FLOWING TEARS! LET US ALL PAUSE TO BLOW OUR LEAKING NOSES!”

  The Vox devolves into a chorus of fake sobbing. Someone makes a honking sound like a dying goose, or a broken horn.

  The junk man’s daughter sighs. She pulls herself to her feet, wraps what used to be a boiled-wool blanket, but now is little more than a scrap, around her shoulders and tiptoes, barefoot, across the frost-kissed lawn to the window of the farmhouse. She shivers, but not from the cold. The inhabitants do not know that she spent the night on their lawn with her beyond-drunk father. Even if they looked out the window, they would see him and they would see the cart, but they likely wouldn’t see her.

  Hardly anyone can see the junk man’s daughter. Those who can do so, she can count on one hand. Others can see her from time to time, but without any regularity. (And most don’t like her much, when they do. She is the junk man’s daughter after all. Tainted, clearly, by his drinking and shiftlessness.) It is lonely, this invisibility. Of course it is lonely. But safe. Safe.

  (But for how long, she finds herself wondering more and more lately. And for what purpose? Even now, having lived this way for fifteen years, she still has no idea.)

  She leans her chin on the sill and rests her forehead against the glass. She can feel the vibrations of the Vox’s voice buzzing in her skull.

  “BELOVED CITIZENS! HAS THERE EVER BEEN SO GREAT A NATION?” The Vox chuckles at the very thought of it. “NOW, GATHER CLOSE. WE HAVE ITEMS OF BUSINESS TO DISCUSS BEFORE OUR DEAR MINISTER COMES TO BRING YOU HIS MESSAGE OF HOPE AND PEACE!”

  The farmhouse inhabitants have ignored the Vox and have kept their lights off and bedroom doors closed. Likely, they have fashioned earplugs for this very purpose. (These cannot be bought, of course. Earplugs are illegal. Ignoring the Vox is also illegal. This family, like many this far away from the capital, sometimes lives by its own rules. For now, anyway. The junk man’s daughter finds this charming.) The Vox drones on for a bit—new regulations for the sale of homemade baked goods. New regulations for the admission of young children into Obedience School. (There is, the Vox assures the people, no place in this great nation for disobedient toddlers. All children over twelve months of age must now report to Obedience School. No exceptions. Starting today.) New regulations for the sale of liquor. (The punishment for unlicensed sales is no longer life in prison, but is now, as it should be, death. A righteous and glorious decision. All hail the Minister.)

  The farmhouse is warm and cozy. Hand-stitched crazy quilts draping over the sagging sofa and rough-hewn chairs. A wide, hand-planked wooden table with a bowl of field flowers in the center.

  There are five people who live in this house—two parents and three boys. The youngest, not quite eleven, still attends Obedience School. The older boys are thirteen and seventeen, and they both work the farm.

  The junk man’s daughter knows this family well. She has sat with them at their dinner table as they ate. She has listened at the foot of the boys’ shared bed as their mother or father took turns snuggling in and reading the stories from ancient copies of illegal books. (Books with numbers and diagrams. Books with stories and histories. Books with plants and microbes and far-off galaxies and sliced-open stars. Old volumes. Carefully rebound. Remnants from another world. The family regards them as precious.) She has peered over the mother’s shoulder as she worked through the arithmetic of farming, weeping as the numbers didn’t add up. She has lain on the floor while they made music in the living room with homemade instruments. They never see her. They have no idea.

  The oldest boy, Jonah, seventeen years old and taller than his father, has taken to building contraband telescopes in the backyard. The junk man’s daughter has stood near him as he peered into the sky in the darkest hours of the night, her breath clouding before her face like ghosts. She has listened as he muttered to himself—rattling names that she has never heard—Antares, Canis Majoris, Andromeda.

  She has peered over his shoulder. She has watched him fuss over his own charts. She has listened to his whispery voice. He has no conscious memory of her.

  And yet.

  He wears a locket around his neck. He doesn’t know where it came from. He wears it anyway. She has watched him wrap his fingers around the locket and hang on tight. She has felt how their breathing in and their breathing out becomes synchronized. Noticed moments when he speaks into the darkness. A question, always.

  There are moments when she almost answers back.

  But there is no Jonah this morning. And no Isaac and no Benjamin. There is only the voice of the Vox, and its announcer’s excitement reaching a fever pitch.

  “Can you turn that thing down, my Sparrow?” the junk man slurs, though she can tell that he is still dreaming. No one can turn down a Vox. And dismantling them sets off an alarm.

  Whole families have disappeared following Vox infractions.

  “I’ve already done it, Papa,” she says. “Sleep.” And her voice, heavily laden with intention, does what she hopes it would do. The junk man sinks into unconsciousness. He will not rouse before noon.

  “HE IS HERE, CITIZENS!” the announcer nearly screeches. His voice is hoarse. He trembles and panics. “THE MINISTER IS HERE! ALL HAIL THE MINISTER!”

  The junk man’s daughter, the Sparrow, the child that never lived, the guttersnipe, the tramp, the trash-spawn, the dirty thief, the tart-in-training, and every other name that has been assigned to her in her young life, presses her hands against the glass. The family may notice her fingerprints. She hopes they do.

  The Vox scrambles a bit, static scratching the quiet world. The Minister has no magic, of course, but he has spent enough of his overly extended life in the presence of magic. And it interferes with radio signals. His voice stutters and halts. It is far away. It is in a cloud.

  The girl holds her breath.

  “Are you listening?” the Minister says through the Vox. His voice is tender. Loving. Stern. And underneath it all, terribly, terribly afraid.

  The junk man’s daughter nods.

  The Minister clears his throat. “It has come to my attention, my beloved children, that . . .” His voice trails off. He clucks his tongue. Even his bodiless voice seems to shake its head. “Well. It seems so crazy to say it out loud.”

  A bug
le, very far away, plays the anthem. Its long, sad notes slide under the Minister’s voice.

  “Have I not loved you, my children? Have I not cared for you? Have I not kept your bellies full and your wounds healed and your homes safe from harm?”

  His voice, she can hear, is amplified, not by the radio, but by magic. Whose magic, she has no idea. The last remnants from the depleted magic children—dying now, if they aren’t dead already. The Sparrow shivers, thinking of them.

  “Nonetheless, I have heard reports of . . . oddness. Here and there. Things that have no right to be happening. It is astonishing to me that there could be, somewhere in this nation, an unlicensed magician. Laughable, even. It is beyond ludicrous to believe that such a level of flagrant rule-breaking could exist here, in this most blessed nation.”

  The junk man’s daughter’s heart gives a little thrill. She presses her lips lightly against the glass. Gives it a kiss. The house shivers.

  “And yet, the facts prove otherwise. An unlicensed magician now walks among us. But not for long. Not if we can help it. You and me together.”

  His voice trembles. He worries. He yearns. He fears. He is beside himself. The girl is moved with compassion.

  “To you, my beloved citizens, I say this: Watch. Observe. Report. Even small things. I am relying on you.”

  She loves the house. She loves the family. She loves the Minister too. She is suffocating from so much love. Her very skin is stretched tight with it, like a balloon about to burst.

  “And to you—little magician.” His breath rattles. There is a hiss in his voice. He is afraid. She can feel his fear in her very skin.

  Poor baby, she thinks.

  “You have no name.”

  I have a name, she thinks. My mother whispered it before I was born. And then she forgot it. I am the only one who knows my name.

  “You have no place. You are lost. You are a lost lamb in a dark, cruel wood.”

  No, she thinks. It is you who is lost.

  “But I am coming.”

  I am waiting for you.

  “I will find you, my darling,” the Minister says.

  I will lead you to me. As a spider leads a fly.

  “I will catch you. I will claim you. I will love you to bits.”

  As I love you, the junk man’s daughter thinks. As I love you and love you and love you. And she does. She loves him so much. As she loves everyone. It is dangerous, this love, and she can’t control it. It is ever so much bigger than she, and growing by the day. It is a river. An ocean. The sky. Her love crushes planets, shatters suns, burns whole galaxies to cinders and dust.

  “And then, child, I will drain you.”

  Yes, she thinks. You can try.

  “Do you hear me? I WILL DRAIN YOU DRY.”

  Try, she thinks. Try and you will drown in it. You will drown, and drown, and drown.

  And for the first time, she knows it is true.

  2. Then.

  The first appearance of the Boro comet and the subsequent appearance of magic children occurred shortly after the Minister first began his long and fruitful rule.

  No one can say how long ago—how very, very long—this was.

  Only the Minister knows. And he won’t tell.

  The comet simply appeared one day in the eastern skies, fat and shining like a pendant on the neck of the horizon. Astonished astronomers clamored over one another, elbowing their colleagues out of the way in an effort to be the first one to name it. In the end, it was named in honor of the Minister’s father—a dear man who had met an unfortunate and untimely end a decade earlier in a tragic firing-squad accident (all condolences to the Minister). No one knew at the time—aside from the comet’s mysterious and surprising appearance—the impact the object would have on them all.

  No one knew that the whole world was about to change.

  First, it was the dreams, crowding thick and fast, night after night, into the slumbering skulls of the populace. No one mentioned it, but everyone knew—every man, woman, and child was marked by pale faces and darkened eyes and mouths slack from dreaming. And oh! What dreams!

  And then, shortly after the comet disappeared, the babies arrived—one hundred and two of them in counties all around the nation. Magic babies.

  They all had, to a one, a curious birthmark curling out of their navels—a strange spiral that glowed in the dark. They were volatile, some of them, liable to make doors explode or syringes vanish or to catapult their mothers from one side of the room to the other. There were broken bones. Cracked teeth. Annoyed nurses.

  Other babies were more benign, liable to make their teddy bears sentient, so as to see to the important work of infant cuddling when their busy families could not. Or they made lullabies come gurgling out of bedsheets and cradles. Some endowed their panicked fathers with new, round breasts, laden with milk. And others, remarkably, grew wings.

  The Minister, thinking fast, sent his massive landships (each one large enough to house and transport several battalions), gouging the earth as they went. In each town, swarms of soldiers poured out, invading nurseries and bassinets, checking for the magic mark. The children were to be rounded up and sequestered for study.

  “They could be dangerous,” the Minister explained.

  “They could be sick,” he went on. “Or contagious.”

  He paid the families, of course. Handsomely. They were in no position to argue. He had all the guns.

  “So many things,” the Minister mused, “can be accomplished with guns. How many more things might be accomplished with magic?”

  And thus his experiments began.

  He used earplugs to keep out the screams.

  3. Now.

  There are signs all over the marketplace.

  UNLICENSED PRACTICES OF MAGIC ARE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

  BE A MODEL CITIZEN.

  WATCH.

  LISTEN.

  REPORT.

  FAILURE TO REPORT IS A FAILURE TO YOUR COUNTRY.

  FAILURE IS NOT TOLERATED.

  The signs appeared the night before, sometime after midnight. No one knows who hung them. The people in the marketplace are doing their best not to notice the signs. Their eyes slide from side to side. They talk about the weather. They talk about their children’s need for new shoes. They talk about their recent teeth extractions. Why would they mention the signs? They have done nothing wrong. They are not breaking the law.

  (They say this over and over, in the silences of their hearts, until it feels true.)

  The junk man does not have a stall, and pays no tax to the mayor—never has. The mayor has never forced the issue. If he did, the junk man would simply sell elsewhere, and then the populace would revolt, and then—after both tarring and feathering him, because that’s what happens to mayors who fail their constituents—they would find themselves a replacement. Or maybe they’d just report him to the Minister, and have him disappeared quietly. These things happen.

  It’s tricky work. Being the mayor. Times being what they are.

  It snowed the day before, but now the winds have slowed and the sky has cleared and the day is fine and warm, with the easing dampness of a world still soft, but readying itself for a freeze.

  The junk man’s daughter eats an apple. She sits on the edge of the cart while the junk man stands off to the side, conferring with a matron in low, hushed tones.

  “As you can see,” the junk man says, pulling an apple out of the empty bowl, and holding it with a flourish on his open palm. He tosses it without looking at his daughter, who plucks it from its high, clean arc, and places it with the rest of the apples on her apron. Each apple came from the empty bowl. “It’s just a bowl. Lovely, yes. A couple chips, sure, but the ceramic is of good quality and you don’t find that kind of glaze-work nowadays.” He reaches in. The bowl is empty. He grabs another apple. This one he bit
es. The skin is red and firm and the flesh is a creamy white. A burst of sweet apple smell hangs between the two of them. He grins.

  “Delicious. Would you like one?”

  The matron nods slowly, her eyes wide.

  “Well. Help yourself.” He winks. She reaches in. The bowl is empty. Her fingers find an apple—this one golden in color. She bites. It tastes like honey—the junk man’s daughter can tell just by looking at her face. The matron closes her eyes and her lips spread across the crushed apple in a smile.

  “How much?” the matron says with her mouth full.

  It takes fifteen minutes to negotiate a price. The junk man’s daughter tires of the conversation and returns her gaze to the marketplace. There is a toad on her lap, and two identical chickens pecking the ground at her feet. The toad settles itself in the folds of her skirt. She caresses its head absently.

  The matron leaves with the bowl balanced on her hip, pulling apple after apple from its empty depths and shoving them into her pockets. The girl shakes her head. It was a mistake, that bowl. Like so many others. Her eyes slide back over to the signs.

  She doesn’t want anyone to get into trouble. She never has.

  The junk man waves as the matron disappears and counts his earnings, dropping each coin into his purse with a pleasant jingle. “Oh, my Sparrow, my Sparrow, my Sparrow!” he croons at his daughter. “And oh, the cleverness of me!” he enthuses, throwing his arms wide open. He wobbles and giggles and gives a little hiccup.

  “You stole that line,” the girl says, though it isn’t exactly true. The junk man cannot read very well, and even if he could, he would never have encountered such a turn of phrase in a book. In theory, only the books that the Minister has approved exist anywhere in the country. And the Minister doesn’t approve of much. Still, there is much that is suddenly available to the junk man when his daughter is nearby. Images pop into his head. Proverbs. Quotes. Even a song or two. And worlds and worlds of stories. He collects them the way he collects his junk, which is to say, joyfully. His daughter gives him a snort. “And, anyway, you are not that clever, Papa.”