Wink.
“. . . or repairing your arm, where at least I had something to work with and I could just darn together stuff that was already there, but how could I possibly make a whole person from pieces, so that you’d work as good as new, and not make any mistakes, when I’ve never done it before . . .”
Wink.
Lizbet stared into Strix’s eyes for long minutes.
Strix’s right eyebrow raised.
“You really want me to do this?”
Wink.
“Okay,” Lizbet said. “Okay. I’ll . . .” She had been about to say, ‘I’ll try.’ But instead she said, “I’ll do it. I swear I’ll do it. I’ll make you whole again. However hard it is. However long it takes.”
Wink.
Fudge put his paws on his roly-poly hips. “What do mean, we’re not going to Abalia?” he said. His tone was one of virtue outraged.
“Not until I rebuild Strix,” Lizbet said.
“But . . . the library! The books! The Margrave! Your father!”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” Lizbet asked.
“No! Is it working?”
“Fudge, move back. You’ll kick Strix’s arm out of place.”
Lizbet had spent the last day spreading out Strix’s parts on the cabin floor, arranging them in what she hoped was the proper order. Strix’s skull, made of snapping-turtle shells, was at the top, with her eyes, her teeth of glass and razor shards, and her nose (carved from a brown water-lily seed pod). Her ribs were all sorts of things: bent willow switches, basket withies, discarded chair slats. A few were still intact, but most had been snapped by the violence of the whirlwind and would have to be repaired or replaced. The long bones of her limbs were whittled sticks, or bundles of twigs tied with twine, or (in the case of her right thigh bone), the shaft of an umbrella, with its knobby handle pulling duty as the hip joint. Every bone had been broken, most in several places. At the center of where the chest should be, Lizbet carefully placed Strix’s heart.
At least Lizbet could figure out where the bones went. Muscle and skin were harder. Strix had never been brawny: her muscles were twisted fascicles of brown butcher’s paper, packed between with excelsior. Her skin had been torn into a thousand pieces of paper and parchment. It was impossible to tell how they had all fit together originally. Lizbet would have to improvise. She did find the page from the fishing manual that had been Strix’s cheek, and a love letter that made her blush furiously to read. She knew that it was supposed to go on Strix’s bottom.
“It’s no good trying to make me feel guilty,” Lizbet said to Fudge. “See, if you want, you can speed things up by helping. I need new upper arm bones—”
“Humerii.”
“Whatever they’re called. Go find a couple of sticks the right size and whittle them into shape. Not too thick, but not too delicate. Make sure they’re sound, with no rot. Hardwood is better than pine. And they mustn’t have any big knots to weaken them. And they should be a little springy. Bouncy. Saucy.”
“No trouble at all,” Fudge said dryly. “Anything else?”
“Why, yes,” Lizbet said brightly. “There’s lots else to do. Shall I make you a list?”
“No,” Fudge said. “I’ll just start looking for saucy humerii.” He trundled himself toward the door.
“And after that, ribs,” Lizbet called after him. “And make them perky!”
Abalia was only a day’s hike down the mountain. She could have left Strix in parts and gone down to try to solve things with the Margrave and her father.
But she couldn’t bear to leave Strix alone, a helpless pile of papers and sticks. And she suspected that fixing things with the Margrave wouldn’t be simple. Lizbet would do her best for her father. But she wanted Strix by her side. She needed Strix by her side.
Day by day, Strix came together. Bones, muscles, organs. Some things were missing entirely, and Lizbet had to make them up using her own ingenuity. A dish sponge for the liver. Stockings, their toes cut out and sewn up end to end, for bowels. Masses of yellow morel mushrooms, gathered in the woods, for the lungs. Rebuilding Strix’s head and face was especially hard. Lizbet had to work from memory. She was ruthless with herself. Twice she undid a whole day’s work because it just didn’t look like Strix.
The day she was about to close up the chest, lash the ribs to the breastbone, and pull the muscles over the top, Lizbet paused for one last look at Strix’s heart. She held it in her hands: a dark, exquisite vessel, seething with vices and virtues, like a den of serpents. I could make her more gentle, Lizbet thought. Among the vices and virtues she had saved from the hosts, and even in the ones Strix had harvested from the Outlaw, there were a few tiny sea-green pearls of Empathy, and a few pale threads of Humility. If Lizbet added those to Strix’s heart, maybe it would make Strix a little nicer. Less caustic. Less cynical.
Less like Strix.
Hot sweat prickled on Lizbet’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” she whispered under her breath, to no one but herself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Strix must be Strix. Nothing but Strix. Without blush or apology.
Inside and out.
Topside to bottom.
For good or ill.
For ever and ever.
Every morning, before she began her work on Strix, Lizbet plunged her feet into a mud puddle, or a pile of leaf mould, and let her legs soak up nutrients for a few hours. Fudge hunted for spring peepers and crickets among the larches and uncurling ferns. Twice Lizbet cast a shower of mice to add variety to his diet.
Every other moment of her day was spent rebuilding Strix. Long after the sun had set, and the fire guttered down to embers, long after Fudge was snoring in the corner, Lizbet still knelt on the floor over the remains of Strix, knotting muscles, carving joints, pasting skin. More than once she fell asleep at her work and didn’t wake until morning, to find her head cushioned on Strix’s breast as if it were a pillow.
Every day Strix came together a little more. Every day she looked a little more like Strix. Two weeks and a few days after Lizbet began, Strix was complete. Lizbet helped her sit up. “How do you feel?” she asked.
Strix shrugged her shoulders, bent her knees up, and put them down again. She swiveled her neck around, rotated her wrists, and wiggled her fingers. Her movements squeaked and groaned like a chair whose joints have loosened. “Not bad,” she said. “A little creaky. It’ll work out with use.”
Together they sewed up the tatters of Strix’s layered dresses as best they could. The result was enough to keep Strix decent, although she looked more like a patchwork girl than ever. Lizbet stitched her own dress together again at the split seam. It covered her adequately, but its days as a sack had stretched it to shapelessness.
Strix refused to wear the Outlaw’s cartridge belt though. “What’s wrong?” Lizbet asked. “You’ve been wearing it all along.”
“There’s something wrong with it,” Strix said, making a face. She held the cartridge belt up to her nose and sniffed. “Something . . . icky.”
“Icky?”
“Holy.”
“Holy is not the same as icky.”
“It is to me,” Strix said, dropping the cartridge belt. “I’m going to go wash my hands.”
Lizbet picked the cartridge belt up and examined it. It seemed fine to her. She guessed Strix was sensing the nature of Christ that she had extracted from the mush of communion wafers. Oh well. She would wear the belt herself, then. She slung it over her shoulder and chest.
The next morning they set off down the mountain road, Lizbet and Strix, with Fudge waddling after, panting and puffing and trying to keep up.
Lizbet had long since lost count of the days and weeks. The morning sun was high and warm. The ferns on the forest floor had uncurled fully. The birches by the creeks were leaved out. Lizbet thought it must be
almost June. She and Strix had been gone from Abalia more than a month.
The Margrave’s book in Lizbet’s skirt pocket was considerably worse for wear. Like everything else caught in the Pope of Storms’ tempest, it had been rains oaked. Although Lizbet had dried it out as best she could, the pages were wavy and wouldn’t shut properly, and its black silk covers were water-stained. On top of all that, of course, it was blank. As they walked down the mountain, Lizbet struggled with what she would say to the Margrave, what sort of deal she could make to get her father back.
Lost in these thoughts, it took her a moment to notice Strix tugging urgently at her sleeve. “What?” Lizbet said, slightly perturbed at having her thoughts interrupted.
“She comes,” Strix said. There was a tremor in her voice.
They had left the forest behind and were descending a switchback dirt road through rolling hills. A white goat trotted toward them up the road. A fluttering covey of pure white doves lighted on a bush. In a field by the road, a white cow chewed its cud beside an Andromeda shrub decked with trusses of glistening white buds. Lizbet’s gaze darted from one to another. If you looked at them a certain way, they almost formed a pattern, like puzzle pieces. She stepped back, forward, tilted her head to the side. She closed one eye and squinted.
Goat, doves, cow, flowers all came together, into a shape. The shape of a pale and beautiful woman.
Lizbet started back. Mrs. Woodcot stood in the road before them.
She wore a white silk gown that glistened in the morning light. It hissed when she moved. She had a white hat with a wide brim, decorated with a long white ribbon that half wrapped around her. “Good morning, my dears,” she said brightly. “Lizbet, whatever are you doing here? You were supposed to quit your silly trip over the Montagnes in failure and despair.”
“I figured that out,” Lizbet said. “But I didn’t.”
“That was rude of you. And you somehow escaped the Pope of Storms as well. You can’t do anything right, can you? I declare, Lizbet, you are the most irritating and incompetent mortal child I’ve ever met.”
There were about a thousand things Lizbet might have said. Instead, she held her peace.
She had learned something of witches in the past few months. They followed rules. They couldn’t do just anything. Mrs. Woodcot couldn’t put Lizbet in her press as she had threatened, because she had already done that to Carl. The earth witches couldn’t eat you if you weren’t already dead.
As far as Lizbet knew, she didn’t owe Mrs. Woodcot anything. If she left Mrs. Woodcot alone, maybe Mrs. Woodcot would not be able to harm her.
Trying to keep her voice from shaking, and choosing her words carefully, Lizbet said, “I beg pardon if I gave offense. Perhaps we can discuss the matter more fully another time. You will forgive me if I don’t stop to chat, but my companions and I have a full day’s journey ahead of us.”
“And you will find that journey easier if I relieve you of an unnecessary burden,” Mrs. Woodcot said. Before Lizbet knew it, Mrs. Woodcot was inches from her, close enough for Lizbet to smell lavender and lilies on her. Mrs. Woodcot’s hand darted into Lizbet’s skirt pocket and emerged clutching the Margrave’s book. She held it triumphantly above her head. Her smile was like a heartbreak.
Lizbet yelled, “Give that back! It’s mine! You can’t just take it!” She leaped to grab the book from Mrs. Woodcot’s hand, but missed. Mrs. Woodcot was inches taller, and the book was out of reach.
“Such twaddle,” Mrs. Woodcot said. She retreated a few steps, still holding the Margrave’s book over her head. “What a little liar you are, Lizbet. The book’s not yours at all, and you know it. You stole it from the Pope of Storms. As his agent, I will take charge of it, and return it in due time to His Holiness, the Triple Tyrant of Wind and Rain.”
Mrs. Woodcot worked for the Pope of Storms? “But it’s not his either,” Lizbet said. “It belongs to the Margrave. I’m just returning it. It’s not fair of you to take it!”
“Oh, the book is disputed property, then,” Mrs. Woodcot said. She put her index finger to her chin and made a moue. “That makes it an affair of the law. There must be a trial! We need judges and lawyers and witnesses, gavels and benches and wigs, depositions and motions and testimony. Go get all those things, little Lizbet, and we shall have the best trial ever. It will last a hundred years. It will be in all the papers. It will settle everything. Meanwhile, the object in dispute will be kept in safe hands. Which is to say, mine.”
Lizbet tried one more gambit: “You might as well give the book back to me,” she said. “It’s not even the book you want.”
“Oh, I think it is,” Mrs. Woodcot said. She turned it around in her hand. “A trifle water stained, but it has the right name on its spine, you see, and inside . . .” She riffled the pages. “But where are the words? This book seems to be empty.” Her wingy eyebrows narrowed, and she glared at Lizbet. “What mischief have you been up to? Where is Hengest Wolftrow’s soul?”
“The Pope of Storms got it all wet,” Lizbet said “Maybe the rain washed the ink out.”
“Oh, I think not. Hengest’s soul is not one to be unmade by a little rainwater.” Mrs. Woodcot did something with the book, and it vanished. Perhaps she hid it in her bosom. “I don’t quite know what happened here,” she said, “but my commission from the Pope of Storms is to prevent Hengest from getting his soul-book back. Book in hand, I have fulfilled that duty.”
Lizbet wondered whether Fudge could write out the Margrave’s soul in any blank book. She hoped he could, because she didn’t see any way of getting the original book back from Mrs. Woodcot.
And maybe that was for the best. If Mrs. Woodcot were convinced that the blank book was all she was going to get, then maybe she would be satisfied and go away.
Lizbet heaved a sigh as deep and dramatic as she could make it. “Mrs. Woodcot, it seems you have the victory. I have failed in my purpose. I bid you farewell and set my melancholy foot homeward toward Abalia and whatever fate awaits me there.” She forced out a sob, hoping that it sounded convincing. “Let’s go, Strix.”
“Go where you like,” Mrs. Woodcot said, “but go there alone. Your companion’s journey stops here. Strix! You faithless wretch! Quit hiding behind the mortal girl. Come out and give an account of yourself.”
Lizbet stepped in front of Strix. She held out her arms to block Strix’s progress. “She doesn’t want to,” she said fiercely. “She doesn’t ever want to see you again.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Mrs. Woodcot said, smiling. “And I will pleased to grant her wish. In just a little while, she will never, ever see me again.” Her curled finger beckoned. Her finely pointed fingernails glinted in the sunlight. “Come, Strix. Come and be dissolved.”
“What!”
“It is time for Strix to be unmade. From her parts, I will build a new Strix, a better Strix, a Strix more obedient to her maker. Strix, I have word from the Pope of Storms that he dissolved you himself, but it seems His Holiness is misinformed. I am so disappointed in you. All you had to do was leave the mortal girl to die in the mountains, or crawl home in failure. So simple. And yet, you could not do even that.”
“She freed me,” Strix said. “I accidentally took food from her—”
“What a fool I raised!”
“—and she freed me from thralldom to her.”
“So, Lizbet was no less of a fool than you.”
“She said . . .” Strix’s voice cracked, and Lizbet thought she might have cried, if she were capable. “She said she wanted to teach me what friendship meant.”
“An illusion, an affectation, a lie that mortals tell each other.”
“It is not!” Strix cried. “It is not! It’s real. It’s true as light and air, as the sun and the earth. Lizbet is my friend!” She clutched at her chest. “When Lizbet is with me, it hurts, right here. That’s how I know it’s real.
”
“Are you certain it’s not just heartburn?” Mrs. Woodcot asked.
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s friendship,” Strix said.
“I’ve heard enough of this,” Mrs. Woodcot said. She swept down upon Strix in a blizzard of hissing white silk. She seized Strix by the arm. “Strix,” she said, “it is time to say good-bye to all things.”
What could Lizbet do? Her mind raced. She had left the nose spell with Griffon and Cupido. But maybe—
Naso Maximus! she chanted. Could she remember all of it?
Naso Cumlulo!
Naso Laxio!
Fiat!
Vide!
Naso Deformis—
But that’s as far as she got. Mrs. Woodcot would not be subdued as easily as Maglet. She chirped, “Hush, child! Be seen and not heard.” She thrust out her index finger. Her fingertip exploded into shining white threads, which flew through the air, straight at Lizbet.
Lizbet got out one shriek before something stung her lips as if she had bitten into a hive of bees. Fighting the pain, she tried to open her mouth to continue the spell, but her lips would not open. The harder she tried, the more it hurt. She reached up to touch her mouth.
Dozens of threads dangled down her chin. Lizbet’s lips had been sewn shut.
“And now for you, treasonous child,” Mrs. Woodcot said to Strix. “I’d unmake you here and now, but then I’d have the bother of carting your parts down the mountain. Come, Strix.” She pulled Strix’s arm. “Follow me. I will take you to pieces when we get home.”
But Strix dug her heels into the dirt and twisted away from Mrs. Woodcot. “I’m not going!” she cried. “I’m not going to be unmade again! Not by you!”
“Strix!” Mrs. Woodcot said. “Follow me. I command you.”
The word command resonated like an explosion of thunder. Every pebble in the road, every tree and bush, the very sky and mountains sang it back. The world itself seemed, for a moment, to tremble and bow down. Lizbet quailed. How could Strix resist? She threw her arms around Strix and dug her feet into the dirt too.
“I won’t!” Strix yelled.
Half-Witch Page 24
