Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  Bram gave me a confused glance and began stuffing another of the little doorways. I turned red.

  “Look, I’ll help you,” I said quickly, dragging over a second chair. Hitching up my skirts, I climbed onto it. Bram looked at me as if I were mad, but I didn’t stop. I began snatching handfuls of straw from the bucket in the crook of his arm, stuffing them into the popped-out eye socket of a plaster cherub. The straw smelled stingingly of lavender oil, as if it had been drenched in the stuff.

  “Bram?” I said, after a while. “Have you ever heard of something called the League of the Blue Spider?”

  Bram wobbled on his chair. “What do you know of that?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  I was pleased to note that while he had been shocked by my question, he did not look entirely unhappy. If anything, the little rain cloud under which he seemed to be operating lifted slightly. But in the end he only returned to his bucket, saying quietly, “I can’t speak of them. It isn’t allowed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Terrible things will happen.”

  “You know, terrible things mostly happen when people don’t speak of things. It’s almost always better in the long run to say things rather than to not say things.”

  I didn’t know if this was true, but the Mother Superior had always told us that when she wanted us to confess to something, and I very much wanted to know whatever Bram knew of the League of the Blue Spider. I thought I’d try my luck.

  “It’s not that simple,” said Bram. “Not in this house. I would like to tell you, but—”

  I remembered Minnifer’s mouth clamping shut, her eyes swiveling desperately. Were Bram and Minnifer under some sort of enchantment too? But why? And who had cast it?

  “What if you don’t tell me?” I said. “What if you showed me? Where is Minnifer?”

  “Mrs. Cantanker gave her fifty-seven pillowcases to mend,” said Bram. He hopped off his chair and peered up at me gently. “I’m sorry. And thank you for helping me. It was very nice of you.”

  Casting one last tragic look at the tufts of straw in the ceiling, he headed down the corridor, his bucket banging against his leg.

  I continued to stand on my chair, feeling a bit foolish. Then I sighed, dragged the chair back to the spot where it had no doubt stood for decades, and returned to my room.

  I was eager to talk to the marble prince again, but when I removed the petticoat from his head, I found him cold and immobile, his mouth shut tight. His expression had changed: the haughtiness was gone from his brow, and his sneering lips were turned down. He looked as if he had been frightened quite badly, and then frozen that way.

  “What happened here?” I said.

  I tried asking him careful questions, using just the right words. “The League of the Blue Spider,” I whispered. “Ephinadym mulsion.” But the prince’s lips remained resolutely closed.

  What a strange place I’ve stumbled into, I thought, and set off to explore the castle on my own.

  I’d not gone very far, only down the corridor and into a chamber mostly occupied by a large, leafy tree, when Minnifer poked her head in like a small, lively owl.

  “Bram said you wanted a tour?” she said, and I whirled so quickly I almost lost my balance. Bram stood in the doorway too, his hands in his pockets.

  “I’d love a tour,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “But don’t you have fifty-seven pillowcases to mend?”

  “Yes,” said Minnifer. “Mrs. Cantanker likes to keep us busy. Says it keeps us out of mischief. But she also sends the triggles down each night to undo the work I’ve done, so she can’t be in any great hurry to have them finished. We’ll be fine unless she catches us. And she won’t. She doesn’t know the castle the way we do.”

  Minnifer winked at me, and I smiled back, following her into the corridor. “What’s the matter with her anyway?” I asked. “What did anyone ever do to her that she acts like she’s got a load of hedgehogs stuffed down her—”

  “Shhh,” said Minnifer, giggling and casting an anxious look down the corridor. “She failed her tests, you know. . . . She’s an underwitch and always will be. Quite the grandest society lady, but that counts for figs in the world of witches.”

  “She’s not even a real witch?” I asked.

  “Well, not the way your mother was,” said Minnifer, suddenly serious. “But don’t let it fool you. She’s studied all sorts of things, visited all sorts of mad folk. She’s interested in the dark arts, that one. You underestimate her for one second and she’ll eat you alive.”

  I gulped. Minnifer took a candlestick from a side table and lit it. “But who cares about Mrs. Cantanker? She’s probably soaking in a tub somewhere with cucumbers over her eyes, and we’ve got a castle to explore.”

  She snatched my arm, and the three of us hurried down the corridor in a little bouncing globe of light, tallow and smoke streaming behind us like a pennant.

  “Shall we start in the Library of Souls?” said Minnifer, her voice echoing as we went down the dragon staircase. “Start with a bang?”

  “Start with us all getting eaten, you mean,” said Bram. “I saw the bulldogs in there just this morning.”

  “Oh,” said Minnifer, casting a sidelong look at me. “The spirits of seventeen bulldogs covered in horrible warts. Very unfriendly. Origins unknown. Yes, perhaps not. The Orchid Room, then! That’s a lovely one, and the orchid wallpaper hasn’t driven anyone mad in ages.”

  “I say we start in the west wing and work our way east,” said Bram. “That way we’ll be well past all the really horrible corners by nightfall.” He cast a meaningful glance at Minnifer. “And Zita will see all the things she needs to.”

  Chapter Six

  NOTHING is quite as it seems.

  That was the first thing I learned about witches’ houses. Gilt mirrors opened into corridors, long as train carriages and glittering with gas lamps. Walls folded about with the pull of a brass lever, turning a perfectly respectable-looking parlor to a potion kitchen. Some rooms had groves of mushrooms growing between the tiles, watered by little pewter pipes, and in one gallery, a staircase ran upside down across the ceiling. “For the Bellamy ghost,” said Bram, as if that explained everything.

  I saw the ghost in question—a large man in old-fashioned pantaloons and a red velvet coat, sitting on the upside-down stairs, chin in hands, peering at us mournfully. I shivered.

  “The house really is full of spirits,” I murmured, remembering Mr. Grenouille’s words.

  “Oh, yes,” said Minnifer. “Hundreds upon hundreds. It’s a sanctuary for them. It’s not really legal to keep ghosts from passing on, but the ones who would cause more trouble in the lands of the dead, or the ones that have been expelled for political reasons . . . those are the ones Georgina allows to stay. Most witch families will banish all ghosts right away, but we were never that sort of house.”

  “Most witch families?” I squinted at Minnifer. “I thought Mrs. Cantanker said the Brydgeborns were the last of the reigning witch families,” I said. “Are there others?”

  “A handful,” said Minnifer, as we inched around a gaping hole in the floor. I peeked over its edge and saw all the way down to the cellars and up to the sky high above. It was as if someone had dropped an anvil on the house. “There’re the Bluejays of Manzemir, the Jelossians of Belaru, the Balaikabaradas of Rajan. . . .” Minnifer began to count on her fingers, then gave up with a dismissive gesture, saying, “But most of them are just regular high-society folk these days. Not worth the shoes they walk in, that’s what Georgina used to say. In the old days, they’d band together when there was a larger breach and work to banish the soul eaters that came pouring into the lands of the living. They would have proper battles with ranks of witches marching across the fields. But I suppose they don’t have time to fight the darkness anymore, what with all the feasts they’ve got to attend and assemblies they’ve got to speak at. I think most of them wouldn’t kno
w a moorwhistler if it bit them on the nose.”

  I wouldn’t know a moorwhistler if it bit me on the nose either, but it alarmed me that those whose business it was to know these things were just as ignorant. If the dead were indeed as terrible as I had begun to imagine, and if one had just cursed my family to eternal petrification, all these half-retired witches should be very worried indeed.

  We entered a greenhouse, the air muggy, bizarre plants growing wild and untamed all the way to the leaded-glass cupola. Bram and Minnifer began to argue quietly, about what I wasn’t sure. I sometimes wondered if they were brother and sister, though they didn’t look alike and they certainly didn’t act alike. Minnifer had a rather merciless streak beneath all her giggling, and Bram, though he had seemed very serious and particular about everything at first, was patient and long-suffering. He kept busy telling Minnifer what to do, and Minnifer kept busy ignoring him.

  I was only half listening to them, my gaze following the twisting stems and fanlike leaves, noxious purple blossoms and jewel-bright fruits. I found myself looking up at a ring of stained-glass ravens unfolding along the perimeter of the cupola, their wing tips touching, as if cut from paper.

  “Why is it called Blackbird Castle?” I asked, as we passed under a plant whose blossoms were shaped like bright pink babies with little hands and sly faces.

  “Ah, that’s a tale,” said Minnifer. “It was Magdeboor who named it.”

  My skin prickled at the mention of that name. “Ask them . . . about Magdeboor. See what they say.”

  “But not the bad Magdeboor, not the Magdeboor everyone whispers about,” said Minnifer. “This was the first Magdeboor, Mary Coalblood, the very first Brydgeborn.” And puffing herself up like an actress on a stage, Minnifer began her story.

  “Long ago, before there were witches, before the first Magdeboor ever planted the seedlings that became Pragast Wood, this hill was a sacred burial place. Blackbirds nested here, crows and ravens and jackdaws swirling around it like smoke from dusk till dawn. It was thought their wings bore souls safely across the river and into the underworld. People came from far and wide with their dead. They brought them up the mountainside and left them in the grass. And then the birds swarmed. . . .”

  Minnifer shuddered and clutched the candelabra, and we all huddled slightly closer together as we passed beneath the drooping vines. “The trouble began when Magdeboor had the first castle built. It wasn’t much of a castle, more of a tower with two windows. But after she built it, all the birds went away. Perhaps they didn’t like the sound of the stonemasons, or perhaps Magdeboor asked them to leave because they were annoying her. Whatever the case, they all vanished into the sky, and that was that. You’d think no one would have minded, but everyone did. The peasants were furious. Because the peasants were furious, the king became furious too. So one day, the king climbed up the mountain and confronted Magdeboor.

  “‘What will happen to us now?’ he demanded. ‘The birds are gone! The villagers fear their souls will no longer cross over!’

  “And Magdeboor, her students and daughters standing silently behind her, clad all in black, like tar and storm clouds, said, ‘We will be your blackbirds. We will be your ravens and crows and jackdaws, your dark wings and messengers. We will shepherd your souls to safety.’ That was the first Magdeboor,” said Minnifer darkly. “She was the good one.”

  We had arrived in a high, dim gallery. Part of the roof was caving in and long strands of yellow light trailed down, pooling on the parquet floor. Every inch of the walls was covered with ornately framed pictures, except where two or three were missing, like gaps in a toothy smile.

  The pictures showed landscapes, or ladies and gentlemen in stylish hats and capes eating dinner, or writing books, or looking thoughtfully into the distance while stabbing strange beasts with silver scissors. Cats, tawny rabbits, or crows, lurked in the backgrounds, glinty-eyed and mysterious. One of the largest pictures showed a witch in an angular black dress shaped like an umbrella. She looked no older than twenty. Like me, her hair was a wild tangle, her face a bit surly. She was striding confidently deeper into the picture, but looking back over her shoulder at the viewer. In one hand she held a gold coin, in the other a sprig of lavender.

  “But there were other Magdeboors,” said Minnifer quietly. She did not look at the girl in the painting.

  “Who is that?” I asked, approaching the portrait. It was much larger than the others. A curled-up cat lurked in its darkened background, along with a scroll with foreign writing on it, a half-eaten apple, and a skull on a table. And even farther back, deep within the layers of paint and oil, a figure, thin as a wisp of smoke. It was very tall. Its arms were unnaturally long, hanging almost to its feet.

  I knew who it was. I had met it once, years ago, at the edge of the woods.

  “Magdeboor III,” said Bram, squinting up at the girl in the umbrella dress. “Also known as the Dark Queen. Also known as Mad Magdeboor Brydgeborn. Also known as . . . are you all right?”

  I must have shuddered, because both Minnifer and Bram were looking at me curiously.

  “I’m fine,” I said, still staring at the wispy figure in the background. It was the merest suggestion of a thing, hardly there at all. But looking at it gave me a horrible sinking feeling. Once again I saw the soaring trees, a pale hand extending toward me. What was that creature doing in a painting of my ancestor?

  “What happened to her?” I asked. “Why did they call her mad?”

  “Because she was,” said Minnifer. “A proper witch will watch over the boundaries of life and death, ferry lost souls into the lands of the dead, and keep the moorwhistlers and fangores and red dukes from devouring them along the way. But Magdeboor wasn’t good at any of those things the way other witches were, and she became terribly envious. She also became rather friendlier with the moorwhistlers than with her own sisters, and she was even known to nibble a soul or two in her day.”

  The three of us stood in a pool of light, looking up at the painting. Bram made a disgusted face. I remembered the coachman and his talk of eating hearts on beds of boiled greens.

  “She would go wandering in the lands of the dead for weeks at a time, exploring the woods and marshes,” Minnifer continued. “And eventually she went too deep, all the way down to the underworld. She brought something back with her. Normal folk bring back a spoon or a tea towel from their travels, but Magdeboor brought back one of the high-ranking dead. It whispered in her ear and made her quite evil.

  “She began to think life was not half as interesting as people made it out to be, and people were just bags of meat, not really worth the trouble. She wreaked havoc on the villages and graveyards, kidnapped children and ate their souls, and once she inherited this castle, she threw out all the other Blackbirds and began filling it up like one of those old-fashioned witches of yore, with skulls, and blood in bottles, and doorways to other places. And it wasn’t where things were headed. Witches were becoming modern and government approved. They were being given positions at court and invited to banquets. And Magdeboor disagreed with all that. She thought, Why should we bow to powerful men and cruel governments and all the people who used to burn us at the stake? Why not fight them tooth and claw, and eat their souls for breakfast?”

  “Well, that’s not unreasonable,” I said. “Except for the breakfast bit.”

  “Of course it’s not unreasonable,” said Minnifer. “But it is very stupid. Supposing all the elephants in the zoo decided to trample the people who came to feed them. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, because who wants to be locked up in a zoo? But it’s stupid, because you’re still in a cage, surrounded by people, only no one likes you anymore or brings you peanuts.”

  Minnifer crossed the gallery. Bram and I followed, and we all paused beneath a diamond-paned window. Shrouds of ivy grew against the glass, turning the light green and slithering, as if we were underwater.

  “You’ve got to be clever about changing the rules,” said Minnifer. “And
Magdeboor wasn’t. She wanted to change everything at once, and by change everything, I mean conquer the world with an army of the dead and feast on the souls of the living. She probably would have done it, too, if the other witches hadn’t caught wind of it. They banded together to bind her essence in the underworld. They burned her alive, right there.”

  Minnifer pointed out the window. Across the court, through the dancing leaves, I saw the looming black carcass of the castle’s burned wing. Branches of laurel and rhododendron had softened its charred edges and wrapped it in a gentle embrace. But it was a dead, desolate-looking place, and the ivy that poured from its broken windows and crawled across the buttresses looked like nothing so much as thick black smoke.

  “What a horrible way to die,” I said. “To know that your whole family has turned against you and wants you gone.”

  “Yes,” said Minnifer. “But she deserved it. You know, they didn’t even bury her in the family plot. They put her just outside it, in Pragast Wood. You passed it on the way in. The great big mausoleum? That’s hers.”

  “Awful place,” said Bram. “Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.”

  We continued down the gallery, peering up at the pictures all around us. I searched for my mother’s face or Greta’s, but I couldn’t find them. No one here looked like me, no one except the wicked Magdeboor. These people were all elegant and hawk-nosed. Their hair was smooth as black oil, their expressions clever or politely bored. I was sure none of them had ever been called gawky or ungainly in their life.

  I thought of Greta down in the dining room. She didn’t look like a Blackbird either, but she did look lovely, golden-haired and fashionable. I imagined her wearing the expensive clothes in her closet, marching through the house and brilliantly doing battle against the evils of night and fog. I was no Greta. I wondered if that was why Mrs. Cantanker disliked me so, and I wondered if my mother might have liked Greta more too, perhaps not at once, but with time. . . .