Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books)

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  Flynnie’s warm wet tongue lapped against my cheeks, slurped at my tears. He didn’t care that I was a failure, an idiot, a baby. He loved me, anyway, no matter what. But who would feed him when I had entirely disappeared? Who would make sure Poppy didn’t give him chocolate or leave the gate open so he could run into traffic and get squashed? Flynn squirmed, and I let him go, reluctantly. The sky had gone a thin pink—dawn at last—and Flynnie stood at point, quiveringly alert.

  A gentle mist rose from the Sunken Puddle’s surface, floating gently upward like cigarillo smoke. A small dark shape was moving fluidly across the water. Valefor, in his garden brag, had sworn three ancient turtles lived within the pond’s deep, green waters, but if that was a turtle head, it was the biggest darn turtle head I had ever seen. And a big turtle could have a big head, but it would not stand up and clamber out of the water on hind legs, nor would it be tall and skinny Or so white, either, like pale gleaming bone.

  “Poppy! What are you doing?”

  “Swimming,” he answered, shaking himself like a dog. Flynn bounded up upon him, and he pushed the bounce down. “Could you hand me my towel? It’s on that rock.”

  I tossed him his towel, then picked up the pack of cigarillos that fell out of its folds. He wrapped the towel over his shoulders, awkwardly, and sat down.

  Mamma had warned Idden and me never to swim in the Sunken Puddle, but that was one warning she didn’t need to make. I had never had the slightest desire to go swimming in it. The water smelled like yuck and Goddess knew what icky things swarm within its sour, green depths.

  “You shouldn’t swim in the pond, Poppy.” I sat next to him and snuffled my nose against my sleeve, but he didn’t notice that, or the catch in my throat. Would he notice when I was gone? “You might get tangled in the weeds and drown.”

  “Not in this water. It’s too buoyant. It’s not really water, anyway. It’s the Current, bubbling to the surface. If you dive down deeply enough, you can breathe the Current like air. It is marvelously refreshing, Flora—you should give it a try—you look like you need a little pick-me-up. It’s delicious.”

  I ignored Poppy’s crazy talk. I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I should have gone back in the house, but I didn’t have the energy to move.

  Poppy put a cigarillo to his lips and muttered something under his breath. There was a small glitter of coldfire, followed by a long exhalation of smoke.

  “Was that Gramatica, Poppy?”

  “Ayah,” he answered, sounding pleased. “Ayah, it was. I don’t know much, but I know enough to light a few fires and to maybe make it rain, if I’m on a roll.”

  “It’s forbidden for soldiers, Poppy, you know.”

  “So is forgery, darling, and that comes in handy sometimes, doesn’t it? Anyway, Flora, you needn’t sound so self-righteous. You got Gramatica words in you, too. I can see them floating around inside you—and not just little ones, but big fat bright ones, the kind that burn. Once Gramatica gets into your blood, you know, you can’t ever get it out. It grows and changes you, if you don’t take care.”

  A tiny shiver ran through me. I remembered the Oatmeal Word—it had sprung into my head and out of my mouth, yet I could have sworn that I had never heard or read it before.

  The little winkie cigarillo butt flew through the darkness and plopped into the water. “You know that if ever the Fyrdraaca family is in true trouble, Barbizon is supposed to come to life and to our rescue, just as she did for Azucar.”

  “Ayah, Poppy, I’ve heard the story.”

  “Well, I often consider that I’ve sat here many times, and often felt in true trouble, and yet Barbizon has never leaped to my aid. So you know what that makes me think?”

  “That’s it’s just a story?”

  “No, no. That my trouble is never true trouble. And things, though I think them bad, are not really so.” Poppy turned his gaze back from Barbizon to me. “You should have a swim, Flora. You look as dead as winter grass. Come on. We shall jump from the Folly roof, and it shall do you great good.”

  The Folly is a summerhouse that sits right at the pond’s edge, like a cupcake on stilts. For generations, Fyrdraaca kids have used it as a clubhouse, but I hadn’t been there for ages. Now, I glanced toward its shadow. “It’s much too high, Poppy.”

  “Nayah, not at all; it’s perfect. You have to run, of course, to clear the gutters and the patio deck below. But it’s like flying—just wonderful. The arc of the air and the smack of the water. And then the pull of the Current.”

  “It sounds painful.”

  “Ayah, but deliciously so. Come on!”

  He grabbed my hand and yanked, and I was so surprised that I didn’t yank back but came right off the rock. During the War, Poppy was wounded, and during his captivity he was tortured, and so one of his arms doesn’t work too well and he limps badly. But there was no weakness in his crazy, hard grip now, and I couldn’t get free.

  “Poppy!” I protested, bushes whipping at me as we ran down the path, Flynnie bounding behind, barking his approval, the rat dog. We bumped up the Folly’s front steps and into the musty interior. At the stairs, I took advantage of a solid banister and grabbed, with a sudden strength that I hadn’t had earlier when I was deep in my despondency.

  “Come on, Flora, don’t be a stick,” Poppy said, pulling harder. I clung, and he tore, and because he had me with his good hand, he won. We thumped up two flights of stairs, and my protests did not weaken Poppy’s grip at all. When Poppy threw open the attic door, the dust our feet had raised gleamed like fog in the pink dawn light that spilled in through the open casement window.

  “Last one in is the Man in Pink Bloomers!” Poppy crowed.

  I gave one last yank, breathless from our hurtle up the stairs, and got free.

  “Poppy, please don’t—”

  He turned toward me, and by some weird trick of the pale light and the streaky shadows, his face looked like a skull, bleached and grinning a white bony grin. “You have to burn in order to shine, Flora.” He pounced with a grip as hard as iron, yanking me into his run, and I had to follow or fall. The windowsill bruised my knees as Poppy pushed me over. I flailed about, grabbing empty air, and then I was jumping.

  Immediately, my jump turned into a fall and then my fall turned into a plummet. The night blew by in a blur of shadowy trees, the sharp edge of the Folly roof, Poppy’s loud shriek: “Cierra Califa!”

  I hit with such a smack that all the air sucked right out of my stomach, and then I was twisting, turning, choking. Burning cold water weighed me down, pulling at me. In the darkness I could not tell which way was up toward air, which way was down toward death. My lungs swelled, my throat burned, and pressure roared in my ears. The compulsion to breathe forced my mouth open, and suddenly I was sucking in water.

  A cloud of pinkness lit up the darkness, surrounding me in a nimbus of light. A thick syrupy warmth flooded my mouth, soothed my throat, a yummy goodness that tasted like apples and nutmeg, vanilla and ginger. I wasn’t drowning anymore. I felt buoyant, almost frothy, as though my blood had been replaced with bubbly excelsior water. The water—the Current?—felt as warm as bathwater, curving over my body, caressing away all pain and tension. Other colors swirled in the pinkness—cerise, celadon, azure, umber, violet—and shapes, too, tremulous and serpentine. Below me, the light swelled into a brilliant glow of pinkness as bright as fire, and irresistible. I dove down toward this brightness, feeling the Current tingling and buzzing around me, but then my motion was arrested by a hard grip to the ankle.

  I kicked the grip off, twisting and flailing, turning to see Poppy hanging in the Current beside me, as radiant as a star, his eyes glowing like green lamps. His movements were languid and graceful, with no sign of injury or crippling.

  “Not yet.” His lips shaped the words, and I could hear them as clearly as if we stood on dry land and he had whispered into my ear. “We must go back.”

  He grabbed my hand and began to pull me to the surface, which hung
above us like a black ceiling, featureless and dark, and though I struggled and pulled, once again I couldn’t shake free. The pink light was fading, and suddenly I was again choking on icy cold water, sputtering and panicking as my lungs began, again, to burn—and then my head broke the surface, and Poppy was pulling me to shore while I choked and coughed and splashed.

  For a few seconds all I could do was lie on the sand, like a beached dolphin, spitting pond water and coughing, while a frantic Flynn licked my face and Poppy crouched next to me, laughing.

  He crowed, “Did I not say? Oh, the Current is so sweet! I told you it was divine!”

  “I almost drowned!” I pushed Flynn away and sat up, trying to spit the nasty taste from my mouth. “You could have killed me!”

  “You can’t drown in there, Flora. I told you, it’s not real water; it’s the Current. Do you not feel divine? Do you not feel better?”

  Actually, now that my lungs were clear again, I did feel better. I felt drained and loose-boned, but better. Flynn pressed against me and I hugged his solid warmth. The air seemed less cold and the dark less dark, though perhaps that was just dawn coming on. The trees above me and the surface of the lake seemed edged in a pinkish glow, and my brain felt soothingly calm. For a few minutes I had forgotten about Valefor, forgotten about Boy Hansgen, forgotten about everything. Now I remembered, but somehow it didn’t all seem quite as hopeless as it did before. My clothes felt heavy and wet, and yet that wasn’t so bad, either.

  “What was that light in the water, Poppy? Was it really the Current?”

  “Oh, ayah. I told you, the wellspring of this lake is the Current. If you dive down to the very bottom, you can slip through the cracks into the core of the Abyss. All the Great Houses have their foundations in the Current, don’t you know?”

  But I didn’t answer—he had stood up, and with that movement, the towel shrugged off his shoulders. In the thin dawn light I saw a large tattoo in the middle of his concave chest. A tattoo of a hand holding a whip. The same insignia as on the seal lock on Valefor’s tea caddy.

  “Poppy—that tattoo—what is it?”

  He looked down his chin at his chest, grinning. “Like it, eh? It’s my seal—the Flexing Whip.”

  “Your seal?” I choked. Suddenly I felt like an idiot. We had found Valefor’s tea caddy in Poppy’s trunk, so Poppy must have put it there. Why shouldn’t the seal lock be his?

  “Ayah, see.” He tugged the cord around his neck up and over his head, and dangled it before me. “Take it. I don’t need it anymore.”

  I took it, and there was the seal I needed to unlock the tea caddy that contained Valefor’s fetish. As easy as that.

  Poppy ran his hand over his cropped skull and frowned. “I’m sorry, Flora.”

  “Sorry about what, Poppy?” I asked, still staring at the seal.

  “I thought the Current would help you, but it didn’t. I can still see right through you.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Udo Shouts. Restoration. A Gramatica Word.

  I FLEW FROM THE GARDEN into the kitchen, from the kitchen upstairs, so quickly that my feet barely touched the ground, set speedy on wings of panic and fear. Udo lay snoring on the settee in my room, still fully dressed, his big boots hanging over one end, his head almost hanging over the other. He hadn’t drawn the blinds, and the room was already suffused with the slight glow of dawn.

  I still clutched Poppy’s seal in my hand; now I shoved it into my pocket and poked Udo, hard. “Udo, wake up!” He moaned and threw up an arm to ward me off.

  “Uhhhh...”

  “Can you see through me?” I hollered, yanking away the shawl draped over him and poking him hard again. “Can you see through me?”

  Blearily he sat up. “What the hell is wrong with you—”

  “Poppy said he could see through me! He said I was transparent! He said he could see right through me!”

  Udo stood up, took me hard by the arms, and shook me. “Hotspur is crazy,” he said calmly. “Calm down. And why are you all wet?”

  I wrenched out of his grasp and flew to the mirror. I did look a bit blurry around the edges; my eyes were tiny blue marbles and my freckles looked rather gray. “I am blurry! I am fading! Valefor—”

  Reflected in the mirror, standing behind me, Udo stared at me. He didn’t look so good himself. His hair had disintegrated into a mass of matted elflocks, and his eyes were little slits of sleepiness. But he looked solid and firm, not insubstantial and flyaway.

  I said hysterically, “Boy Hansgen said I had something—Anima Enervation—he said that Valefor was sucking all my Will. He said that Valefor would take it all and I would dwindle to nothing. He’s done it, Udo! Valefor said we were connected, and as he goes now, so will I!”

  Udo suddenly looked wide-awake. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he roared. He grabbed me and shook me again, this time hard enough to clack my teeth together.

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t. I forgot,” I said weakly, knowing I sounded lame. “Anyway, never mind that. Valefor said there was no way to break the link between us, but that if we restored him, then he would be made strong again, and so would I.”

  “Do you believe him?” Udo asked. “You look all right to me, although maybe a bit wiggly about the edges. But perhaps I just need coffee.”

  “At this point he has nothing to gain by lying.” I said. “And Poppy can see through me.”

  “Hotspur is crazy,” Udo repeated. “What did you say the Dainty Pirate said you had?”

  “Anima Enervation.”

  “Did you look it up in The Eschata?”

  I shook my head. I had been too busy panicking to do anything that sensible.

  Udo found an entire section on Anima Enervation—a section I could have sworn hadn’t been there before or surely I would have noticed it and been warned. (Or maybe, Udo suggested, I had just not wanted to see it and had ignored everything that didn’t suit my purpose? I doubted that, but didn’t feel up to arguing with him.) The condition occurs when a galvanic egregore attaches itself to an energy source and then begins drawing so much Will that the source is completely drained and ends up with no Will at all.

  Udo said, “Even if he sucked away your Will, that doesn’t mean you would disappear, or be transparent—it only means you would lie around like a noodle, doing nothing.”

  “It is because I am abrogated,” Valefor’s voice said, from somewhere on high. We looked up from the book and didn’t see Val himself, but his voice continued, “The abrogation is draining me, pulling me back into weakness, and now that Flora is connected to me, she’ll be pulled, too, like me, from the Waking World to Elsewhere, and then to the Abyss of Nowhere.”

  “Break the link!” Udo commanded. “Leave Flora out of this!”

  Valefor answered, still invisible, “I cannot; I haven’t the strength to pull away, and neither does Flora. But if I were restored, we’d both be fine.”

  “Then we’ll try the Restoration Sigil,” Udo said. “If that’s the only way.”

  “Finally, you all come to your senses!” Now Valefor’s voice resolved into the rest of him. From the waist down, his figure had blurred into a purplish vapor, swirling and trailing like a train, and he looked airy and half transparent. “Finally, you do the right thing! Unlock my fetish, restore me, and I shall restore Flora!”

  “You—” Udo made a lunge at him, but all for nothing, because Valefor whisked out of his reach, drifting up to float near the ceiling. “How could you do that to Flora?”

  “Was it my fault she didn’t know her own weakness? I’m just a poor redacted denizen, powerless and forlorn. I looked to you for succor, Flora—and look how I was taken in!”

  “Taken in!” Udo shouted. He was balanced precariously on my desk chair and was trying to whack at Valefor, but Val was so wispy that Udo’s snatches went right through him. “She was taken in by you, Valefor, by your promises—”

  “I never promised nothing I didn’t deliver! Didn’t V
alefor do your chores, Flora, and clean the house?”

  “What price a clean house if Flora is gone?” Udo roared. “I don’t want a clean house—I want Flora!”

  “Stop it! Both of you. We don’t have time for this!” I interjected. “Mamma will be home this afternoon, and my Catorcena is tomorrow!”

  “Ayah so, but rest assured, Valefor, I’ll be taking this topic up with you later,” Udo said, climbing back down. “Where’s that tea caddy? I’m going to get it open even if I have to smash it open. We’ve got to have Val’s fetish.”

  “Smashing won’t be necessary, Udo. I have the key.” I fumbled in my pocket, withdrew the cord, and swung it before Udo’s astonished gaze.

  Udo grabbed at the cord and I let it fall into his grasp. “Pigface! Where did you get it, Flora? And why didn’t you mention it earlier—”

  “I got it from Poppy, just now. And, Valefor, how is it that you didn’t recognize the insignia, when it was Poppy’s seal all along?”

  “Let me see that!” Valefor demanded, drifting down for a closer look. He snorted. “That’s not Hotspur’s seal! Hotspur’s personal seal is Three Interlocked Rings Surmounted by a Star. I don’t know whose seal that is, but—”

  I cut him off. “Poppy said it was his seal, and anyway, it doesn’t matter, because it’s the same seal as on the tea caddy, and so it could be the d^mon Choronzon’s for all I care, as long as it works.”

  “Flora,” Udo said. He looked up from The Eschata. “I’m reading through the Restoration Sigil—and I think we have a problem.”

  “What problem?” I asked, feeling dismay start to prickle. Just when I had started to feel hopeful again.

  “Well, to activate the Sigil, we need a Semiote Verb.”

  “A what?”

  Valefor said helpfully, “A Semiote Verb is a Gramatica Word that is so concentrated that it can only be in one place at one time. It’s the most powerful type of Gramatica Word, very dangerous and not to be trifled with.”

  “In this case, we need the Semiote Verb to Quicken, in the Present Participle form,” Udo said.