by Shannon Page
Notebook in front of me, I sketched out what I knew, and what I wanted to find out.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE OLD COUNTRY:
-WHERE OUR LINES ARE ALL FROM
-TRADITIONAL, FORMAL
-HIDDEN, YET POWERFUL; UNWELCOMING TO HUMANS, NOT FRIENDLY TO TOURISTS
-TENSIONS BETWEEN THE IRON ROSE AND REGULAR OLD WITCHKIND. SOMETIMES OPEN WAR.
Useless, too basic. I put a line through the list and started another:
IRON ROSE:
-UBER-TRADITIONAL WITCHKIND FRINGE GROUP, WANTING 100% SEPARATISM BETWEEN US AND HUMANS
-NOT AFRAID TO USE DEADLY FORCE TO GET THEIR WAY
-ARE THEY IN POWER HERE? OR JUST A THREAT?
Why hadn’t I asked more questions before I’d just rushed off? Jeremy could have told me plenty…but then, of course, he’d have known where I was going. He wasn’t stupid. By my second “casual” question about how the Old Country worked and what the Iron Rose was all about, he’d have sniffed out my intentions.
So, I just had to figure it out here.
Well, that made my initial destination easy: Balszt, the capital. Just as I’d told Parson. I’d find lodging and spend a few days getting a sense of things. Read the local newspapers, chat casually with people I met, if they were willing to talk. It made sense that folks would be cold and unapproachable, if you walked up and knocked on their doors and asked about neighbors who mysteriously disappeared decades ago. But surely a young witch with an adorable infant getting breakfast in a café would be able to strike up conversations.
I stared at my list a while. Then I tore off the sheet of paper and started another list on a blank page.
WHAT I NEED TO FIND:
-EQUIPMENT COMPANY: GRAND LAUREL MERENOC
-THEIR METHOD FOR EXTRACTING AND COLLECTING ESSENCE, AND SOULS
-INCONTROVERTIBLE EVIDENCE LINKING THESE CRIMES TO GREGORIO ANDROMEDUS
-ALL THE LOST SOULS
Easy-peasy! I laughed at myself. But I had to start somewhere.
It’s odd that no one mentioned to me that there is no way for a witch to just “slip in” to the Old Country, even off the most obscure ley line. Every entrance to the country is guarded and regimented, with the witchkind equivalent of Border Control.
Okay, maybe it’s not odd, because of course nobody knew I was headed to the Old Country. But still. A little strange that it had never come up. I’d ventured into and out of Canada, not to mention the Azores, and several European countries, without running into any bureaucracy.
Now, I stepped into mundane existence in a small office, just behind a large sign that read “Wait Here To Be Called.” Beyond the sign was a counter, with five or six windows, three of which were closed. Bored-looking functionaries toiled behind the open ones—all witches, I noticed.
Other than the fact of there being no line, it could almost have been a witchkind DMV.
The witch at the window closest to me scratched away at something with a quill pen for a minute, then raised her eyes to me. “You may approach,” she said, out loud, in words.
I walked up to her window. Petrana walked with me; the clerk raised a hand, as if to stop her, but then lowered it and nodded.
“Name?”
“Is this…necessary?” I tried. “I’m traveling, um, quietly.”
She stared back at me. “Name,” she said again.
“Calendula Isadora,” I said with a sigh.
“Country of origin?”
“Really?”
Again, the stare.
“America. San Francisco.”
She made a note on a piece of paper, down below the counter where I couldn’t see. “Reason for visiting?”
“Research,” I said.
She eyed my baby, then my golem, very pointedly. “Research.” Since she hadn’t phrased it as a question, I just nodded. “What kind of research?”
“Ah, genealogical.” I jiggled Rose, who sat adorably in her carrier, making sweet eyes at the clerk. “I’ve recently developed a greater interest in my origins, more than my birth parents have been able to tell me about. I had some time in my schedule, so I thought I’d pop on over. It’s a secret, though. It’s a, um, a surprise for my mother. So I hope word doesn’t get back home.” I gave her a brilliant smile.
The clerk gave no indication whether or not she was buying this line of bull. “Any reason you brought that…creature…with you?” She pointed at Petrana.
“She’s my nanny,” I said. “She cares for the baby when I’m busy. Busy researching.”
“Busy researching.” She stared at the baby, Petrana, and me again before making another note.
Well, I supposed she had to do something to liven up her day. Could she turn me away, deny me entry to the country? I noticed the other two clerks watching our interaction while pretending not to. No other visitors had come in. Maybe I was the only person to arrive at the Old Country today—at least at this station.
“Yep.” I shuffled from foot to foot. “It’s really convenient to have help with the baby. She helps around the house, too.”
The clerk narrowed her eyes. “So you decided to build a golem rather than, say, hire someone?”
I kept the pleasant expression on my face as I asked, “Is it not legal to bring a golem into the Old Country?”
The clerk recoiled, just the tiniest bit. “It’s not illegal, no. It’s just unusual.”
“Not sure I’ve ever seen such a thing before,” the clerk at the next window put in, finally giving up the pretense that she was not following our every word.
I shrugged and smiled. This, at least, I was used to. “I guess I’m unusual, then!”
My clerk made another note. “Length of stay?”
“A week, maybe two,” I said. Even though two weeks was supposed to have been the length of my entire trip…
“Maybe?”
“Depends on where my research takes me.”
She looked back at me for a minute. “Local address?”
“Excuse me?”
She blinked and leaned forward. “Where will you be staying while you are in the Old Country? I need the address of that place.”
“Ah. Right. I don’t know that yet. I’ll get a hotel, I thought.” The Old Country has hotels, doesn’t it? I thought in a sudden panic.
“A hotel.”
“Yes.”
“Not an inn? A hostel?”
I shrugged, wondering how long this bizarre cross-examination was going to go on. “Sure, or those—anything. A place to sleep, maybe near things, restaurants, shops. But, um, I did sort of leave on the spur of the moment, I don’t have anything booked. Do you have any recommendations?”
She looked startled at this, shaking her head. “We don’t recommend.”
“Okay.”
Now we were at a stalemate. We just stared at each other.
“I’ll put The Majestic,” she finally said, and made a note.
“The Majestic. Great.”
“It’s downtown.”
“Wonderful.”
“If you decide on a different place, you leave word at The Majestic, all right?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Sure thing.” Would I be so hard to find, I wondered? How many American witches with infants and golems could there be, even in a big city like Balszt? I didn’t ask this aloud, of course. “I’m sure The Majestic will be great, though,” I added. In case it mattered to her. In case it would move this along at all.
Weirdly, that seemed to do the trick. She picked up a big metal stamp, thumped it onto an inkpad, and made a few stamps on the piece or pieces of paper I still could not see, below the counter. Then she looked up at me with a professional, artificial smile, and raised both hands. “Welcome to the Old Country, Calendula Isadora,” she said, sending a tiny spell at me. It felt good, tingling and welcoming; I could tell that it coated my companions as well. Probably contained some sort of tracking capacity as well, but, so be it. “We hope you enjoy your stay.”
“I…thank you?” I stammered. She hadn’t handed me anything, or asked for Rosemary’s name, or even Elnor’s. Just that little spell. “I’m free to go now?”
The clerk’s smile grew a little more genuine. “Of course,” she said, waving a hand toward a door just beyond the counter. “Right that way.”
“Okay. Um.” I turned to Petrana. “Come on.”
My little entourage made our way to the door, past all three clerks, who were just openly staring at us.
“Most exciting thing that happened to them all day,” I muttered, as I opened the door and we all stepped out onto a bustling, cobble-stoned street.
— CHAPTER SIXTEEN —
The Old Country. Here I was! At long last. I stood at the edge of the street for a while, taking it all in. Superficially, it was much as Jeremy described—a kind of old-fashioned European-looking city—but also completely other.
It took a while to pinpoint the exact nature of the otherness, even though it was something I already knew. Balszt was the capital city of a country in which magic did not have to be hidden. Everyone I saw was either a magic user, or—and these would be rare instances, very rare—mundane humans who nonetheless knew of magic and accepted it.
So the biggest thing was the gender balance. Imbalance, rather; as there are far more witches than there are warlocks, the vast majority of the people I saw were female. It was like a witchkind party, or a night out at Rose’s Bar. In the regular, public parts of San Francisco, the streets were of course filled with humans—men and women in roughly equal numbers. It was the same as I’d made my way across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Not so here.
But the differences didn’t stop there. The buildings had all been built with magical assistance and decorated with magical embellishments.
I imagined every restaurant would feature food that was helped along by magical means, if the chef decided he or she wanted to do it that way. And they wouldn’t have to hide this fact from their co-workers, because they’d be doing the same thing. Their customers would expect it. Even appreciate it.
The people I saw on the street—they might have been using glamours on their appearances. Or they might have gone further and performed magical adjustments to their very biology. I looked at a few passers-by with my witch-sight, just to see. Yes—that witch was wearing an illusion of long silver hair today, which was lying perfectly flat and straight down her back, as though spelled; her actual hair was cut short, and flitting about atop her scalp, in what might be angry protest or just reckless abandon. That warlock had added six inches to his height, though he’d put it all in his legs, which gave him a strangely scarecrow-ish aspect. A little witchlet, not more than seven or eight years old, had a long, striped tail reaching out from under her flouncy skirt, flicking back and forth like a cat’s as she walked; her skin was striped as well, tiger-fur yellow and black.
Speaking of which: the cats! Of course every witch had a familiar—most of us did back at home, after all—but here, nobody had to leave them behind when they went out in public. Cats proudly strutted down the street with their mistresses, many of them embellished with the same levels of illusion and glamour that the witches and warlocks wore. I saw little lynxes, piglets, toy poodles, even a baby seal, but they were all cats. Astonishing.
I shook my head, bringing my sight back to the mundane. How did people do it here—how did they not keep trying to unpick the illusions?
Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was rude.
Or, most likely, it was such a part of the landscape that they hardly noticed it.
I had so much to learn!
It took a while for the strangest thing of all to hit me, something that ran completely contrary to the story Jeremy had told me. Yes, the streets and sidewalks were jam-packed—and everyone was interacting with one another. Smiling, talking, and all out loud.
Why had he told me this was a gloomy, silent place? Yes, he’d been talking more about the small towns, rather than the capital, but this was striking. Had he been trying to discourage me from coming here, even as he’d promised to take me? He certainly hadn’t made it sound like fun.
“Mistress Callie,” Petrana murmured, at my side. “Mistress Elnor might be needing sustenance soon.”
Startled, I looked down at my poor kitty. Elnor had indeed been meowing at me for some minutes, I realized. I hadn’t even heard her over the bustle around me, and my distraction. “Sorry, kitten,” I said. “Let’s find…” I looked around. What had that hotel been called?
Perhaps I was hungry too.
And if we were hungry…
As if in answer, Rose wiggled on my chest, reaching out with her little hands. “Okay, gang,” I said, more firmly this time. “The Majestic Hotel. We just need to—”
“One block down, turn right, go straight for two blocks, can’t miss it,” said a matronly witch passing by. She didn’t slow down, but she did give me a warm smile.
“Thank you, Auntie,” I called at her back. She nodded and waved in response.
I started off in the direction she’d sent me, still marveling at the buildings, at everything around me, like a small-town rube seeing downtown San Francisco for the first time. The sights continued to astonish me. Horse-drawn carriages shared the cobblestone streets with sleek luxury autos by makers I’d never heard of. A few witches even rode what could only be magic carpets, hovering through the air a few feet above street level. Businesses lined the streets, openly selling magical herbs and artifacts, scrying stones, and cauldrons of every size. Witches and warlocks were dressed every which way, from any era, to every level of formality—it was as though the whole city had raided Leonora’s closet.
I even saw tourists. I could spot them because they looked like me—dressed in jeans, and gaping around like idiots, and wearing their own skins. I smiled at one group; they just stared at Petrana.
Oh, like I was the weird one here.
All this rubber-necking almost made me miss my first turn for the hotel. It didn’t help that “block” was kind of an imprecise concept here; the city had obviously been laid out along different principles than right angles and regular distances. Eventually, though, I did find it. My growling stomach persuaded me to stop at its street-level restaurant first.
A young witch met me at the hostess stand. Her skin was black as midnight; she was extraordinarily tall and slender, and her hair was a marvel—tight braids that nonetheless shifted and curled around, slow and sinewy. I shifted briefly to witch-sight, surprised to see that she was actually of African descent. From what I’d been able to tell through their glamours, everyone else I’d seen on the street had been so very white—European white, I mean. I really wanted to know her story—Africa had its own magical history, distinct from ours—but I worried it would be intrusive to ask.
“Four for lunch?” she asked smoothly.
“Yes, please, though only two of us will be eating.”
She led us to a table by the window. Impossibly, every table was by the window, though the restaurant was quite large…no, it wasn’t large, it was intimately small…I couldn’t pin down its nature, and I made myself stop trying. Maybe when I wasn’t so hungry…
“I’ll send your server by immediately,” the hostess said, stepping away with a graceful smile.
The server was also a young witch, this time a redhead. Her exuberant long curls reminded me of Sirianna’s, though they were much better behaved. “Would you like to see a menu, or shall I just go chef’s choice?”
“Chef’s choice?” I echoed.
She smiled. “Chef is a strong empath. She looks to see what you’re hungry for, even if you don’t know. It’s our specialty here.”
“That sounds amazing, I’ll take that.”
“Coming right up!”
Moments later, she was back with a big, thick drink. Like a smoothie, but…warm? “Chef said to start with this. You’ve just come off the Atlantic ley lines, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
I took a sip, and the rest of my sentence fell away. The server didn’t need to know that I’d been on the continent for a few days—indeed, she, and the chef, obviously knew far more about me than my babbling words would convey. The warm smoothie was astonishing. It had all the immediate satisfaction of a milkshake, plus all the soothing heat of a cup of thick cocoa on a cold night…plus something with a little zing in it, like Witch’s Mead or aged frog brandy.
Yes, just what I needed.
The server had stepped away while I drank, so I didn’t even embarrass myself. Or notice her leave. I gulped down the rest of the drink, feeling my very cells plump up with nourishment and energy.
“Ah,” I sighed, leaning back.
Rosemary wriggled in Petrana’s arms, turning to face me. Good thing some of the cells plumping up were milk ducts.
“Hand her over,” I told my golem. I glanced around the restaurant, and though I still couldn’t tell whether it was large or small, crowded or empty, I could see that I was seated perfectly to ensure privacy while I fed Rose. I unbuttoned my blouse, only then realizing that, along with everything else unexpected about the Old Country, it wasn’t cold at all; the temperature was quite pleasant. I shrugged—I’d have to ask someone about this—and brought my daughter to my breast. She cooed with satisfaction as she drank.
I noticed that Elnor had been chowing down on something this whole time. The hostess had seated her on a special banquette by the wall, giving her a view of the room and raising her nearly to table-height, while keeping what she ate discreetly hidden from my view. How thoughtful, but also, of course. In a country where well over half the population had a familiar and brought them everywhere with them, there naturally wouldn’t be any foolish laws barring animals from eating establishments. Even if we didn’t want to watch them snarf down stinky tuna fish.
I can see why people might want to live here, I thought, and wondered if there were any way to make some of these changes at home. Rose’s Bar, for example; the entire back room was for witchkind only. Why not cat seating in there? Granted, it was pretty small, but that was easy enough to work around. What if…
