The Hidden Goddess

by M. K. Hobson

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Light and Sweet

  … Emily was five.

  Emily was five, and she lived on a farm with chickens and cows and goats, and her father always smiled. Her dedushka was made of smiles, and chasing, and tickling. Her life was lived in light that seemed golden and diffuse, as if she were moving through an ocean of sunlight. It was autumn, she had just had her birthday, and the leaves of the trees were becoming gold and red.

  “Well, moya devuchka, have you come to watch me again?” her father said, as he saw her peeping from behind the fence. He was working with his machines again. Father loved his big machines, his great thumping machines that stomped on the ground like feet. He swept her up in his arms, his thick brown beard tickling her face. She giggled.

  “But what do they do?” Emily asked again. She’d asked before, and he’d answered before, but she liked to hear him tell it.

  “They stomp and they stomp on the earth, like the feet of giants,” her father said, making his face look terrible, like the face of a giant. “They stomp on the earth, and they make noise. And the earth hears that noise, and it listens, and it understands. And the earth talks back, sometimes.”

  “You talk to the earth?” Emily asked, wrinkling her nose with disbelief. “And it talks to you?”

  “I do.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “About what the earth likes, and what she doesn’t like. What she wants.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She wants people not to hurt her,” her father said. His face became mischievous. “She wants little girls like you not to use your da’s shovel to dig holes.”

  “I only dug one hole, and Vas was the one who started it, anyway!” Emily was outraged. Vasilly, the big black dog with such soft sweet eyes, was always digging. That’s what dogs did, and Emily didn’t see why little girls shouldn’t be allowed to as well.

  Her father tickled her and put her down, and she ran away, laughing, her feet flying beneath her.

  “Emily, sweetling, come here now and let me braid your hair.”

  It was her mother, soft and young and gentle. Her face was kind and tired. Emily had a strange feeling that she’d seen that face in a mirror looking back at her. But Emily didn’t look like that when she looked in mirrors. Emily was five, and she was small and brown and she had already lost two teeth.

  Mama was sitting in her rocking chair, and she had an ivory brush in her hand.

  “I hate having my hair braided,” Emily spat. “I don’t want to.”

  “Come, you can’t run around with your hair flying around your face,” her mother chided. “And your hair is so pretty! Like mine, look. Look, we have the same hair. And I always wear my hair in braids to keep it nice.”

  Grudgingly, Emily came to sit in her mother’s lap and submitted to the torture of having her hair brushed. Her mother’s hands, though, were gentle and the brush moving over her scalp made her feel sleepy. It made her think things she didn’t want to think about. She clenched a handful of her mother’s skirt in her fist, feeling the softness of it.

  “Mama,” she asked, “when is it the full moon again?”

  Emily felt her mother’s body tense.

  “Why do you ask that, sweetling?”

  “I don’t—” Emily paused and reconsidered. “Vas doesn’t like it when the full moon comes.” The big dog, who was laying on the floor at their feet, raised his head when he heard Emily speak his name. He stood up and put his nose under Emily’s hand. She petted him. “Vas doesn’t like it when you have to stay in your room.”

  “I’m sorry that Vasilly doesn’t like it when I stay in my room,” Emily’s mother said, the brush still moving gently in her hand. “But Mama has to stay in her room when she’s feeling ill.”

  “People yell a lot when they’re sick,” Emily said matter-of-factly, but it was really a test, to see what her mother would say. But her mother said nothing, just sectioned Emily’s hair into two parts and began braiding, pulling the long hanks of hair together tightly as she worked down.

  “He only stays five days,” Emily stated the fact with precision and finality. “Five times that the sun goes up and down. And then he’s gone.”

  Mama’s hands stopped braiding. They lay heavy against Emily’s head. Emily felt them trembling slightly.

  “That’s right,” Mama said. “Five days. Five days he’s here, and then he’s gone. You’re a very smart girl, Emily.”

  “So when is it, Mama?” Emily asked, after a long time of her mother not saying anything, a long time of Mama’s hands still against the back of her head. “When is he coming back?”

  “Very soon, sweetling,” her mother said, and there was a terrible apologetic sadness in her voice that Emily hated. “Very soon.”

  And then, Emily was in her father’s lap, and he was holding her tight, rocking her. One ear he pressed against his shoulder, the other ear he kept covered with his big hand so she could not hear the screaming.

  “Let … me … out!”

  The voice coming from the other room was her mother’s voice, but not her mother’s voice. There was nowhere they could go in the house where they could not hear the screaming, and now it was winter, and too cold to go outside, where there was snow swirling. There was a big fire in the fireplace. It glowed orange and red, and sometimes the logs in it fell apart into shimmering, shattered embers. Emily could see the snow through the frosted windows, little bits of white reflected in the candlelight.

  “I know you’re out there, you and that brat of yours! You think you can lock me away forever? One day you will be careless. I will find a way out. Oh, and when I do … when I do! That will be such joy, Lyakhov. I can hardly wait.”

  Her father began humming—a low soft tune that resonated from his deep chest and filled Emily’s ear. She concentrated hard on listening to it, trying to block out the terrible words that rang through the house from behind the locked door upstairs, the sounds of things being turned over, things breaking and shattering.

  “I’ll kill her in front of you first, that mewling brat, that squealing little get of a Kendall. And I won’t let you die, I won’t allow you to die, until she’s cold on the ground in front of you in a pool of her own blood …”

  And Emily closed her eyes, and listened to the humming as hard as she could, until her father stood up abruptly, still holding her in his arms. His face was dark and horribly sad and he did not smile.

  “Emily, devuchka, come with me.”

  He quickly bundled her in her coat and shoes, put a scarf around her neck and a hat on her head, and they walked out of the house, into the swirling snowy darkness until they came to the barn, where he set her on a bale of hay. Even though Emily was very cold, and the barn was very dark, she was glad to be away from the screaming.

  Shivering, she watched him light a lamp. It gave a thin yellow flame. He came close to her, setting the lamp beside her.

  “I want to show you something,” he said, his breath frosting white. He spoke to her in Russian, the language he always used when it was something important. Some secret the two of them shared, something secret that Mama should not know, for Mama did not know Russian. He pulled something from inside his coat, something that gleamed in the low light. He showed it to her. It was two sticks made of silver—the kind of sticks her mother wore in her hair. But she had never seen Mama wearing them before. They were so pretty. Emily reached out to touch them with her finger.

  “It is very important that you keep this secret.”

  Emily listened very hard, looking into her father’s face, and then at the hair sticks.

  “These are very special things. There is writing on them. It is called Faery Writing. The writing says something very important. There are people, friends of mine, who will need to read this writing.”

  Emily looked at him, confused. She didn’t understand, so she listened harder.

  “We may have to leave soon, Emilichka.” He used her
baby name. It made her feel very small and very grown up at precisely the same time. “We may have to leave and go see my friends. Maybe it will happen that you find them and I don’t. If you do, you have to tell them that there is a secret written on these hair sticks. A dangerous secret.”

  “Will Mama go with us?” Emily asked. She was still confused. He was talking about going somewhere but he hadn’t said where, and he was talking about friends, but he hadn’t said who. How was she to know who his friends were? What if they were going someplace she didn’t like? She shivered more, her small bones rattling, and it was only partly the cold that made her do so.

  “My friends are Russians, just like me. You will know them because they are called the Sini Mira.”

  “Sons of the Earth,” Emily said, in English.

  Her father nodded, smiling at her. His smile was like a new-kindled fire; it warmed her all through her body. But it vanished so quickly, it was almost as if it had never been there.

  “That’s right,” he said. “It is very important that they get these, Emilichka.” He touched her cheek, let his warm hand linger on her face. “And there’s another important thing for you to remember. You must never tell Mama. You must never tell her about the Faery Writing. Promise me, Emilichka. Promise me that you will never say a word to her.”

  “I promise,” Emily said, the cold around her seeping into her body like darkness, swallowing her up, swallowing her whole …

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Return to the Institute

  “Miss Edwards! Miss Edwards!”

  Emily stirred slowly, her entire body heavy as a sodden quilt. She felt too long and stretched out. There was an arm before her eyes; it was long and slim, like her mother’s arm, but then she wiggled her fingers and the fingers of the arm wiggled, and she knew it was her arm. Her own arm, no longer short and chubby but long and slim, and there was her other arm … it was strange, dead, made of some kind of white stone, and those were her feet in the boots so far away.

  “Da?” she said tentatively, and her own voice vibrated in her chest strangely, low and resonant. “Da, where’s Mama? Is she better yet? When will she come out?”

  “Miss Edwards?” Miss Jesczenka said again, and her voice was full of real concern. “Miss Edwards, are you all right? Why are you speaking Russian?”

  Emily sat up, looking around at the unfamiliar room, bright morning sunlight streaming through the tall windows. She wrapped her arms around herself, terrified.

  “Da!” she screamed, looking around wildly. She did not know where she was. This was not the farm, this was nowhere she knew. Had they already gone? Had they gone to find Father’s friends?

  “Emily,” Miss Jesczenka said, wrapping her arms around Emily’s shoulders and holding her close. Despite her soothing presence, there was a firm, clear note to her voice. “Emily Edwards, listen to me. What has happened? What is wrong?”

  Emily Edwards.

  She was Emily Edwards, Pap’s girl.

  She looked around herself again, strange tendrils reconnecting in her mind, stretching toward one another like the fingers of lovers through the bars of a jail cell …

  She was in a hotel.

  She was twenty-five years old.

  She let her eyes travel over the flowered carpet and up to the table beside the bed, where she saw a blue bottle, capped with iron. She reached up and grabbed it. It was half full, its contents murky and swirling. She turned to look at the woman who was kneeling by her. Miss Jesczenka, that was her name. Miss Jesczenka from the Institute.

  “I’m all right,” Emily said, in English. Her voice sounded strange and unfamiliar to her. She was in a hotel in Boston. She’d come to Boston to meet her grandmother, Mrs. Kendall. Emily was a Witch, and her grandmother hated Witches. “I’m all right.”

  “What happened to you?” Miss Jesczenka said, looking at the bottle in her hand. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.” Emily tucked the bottle into her pocket. “I … fell asleep.”

  “On the floor?”

  Emily did not answer.

  “I must have been dreaming,” she said, pulling away from Miss Jesczenka and climbing to her feet. She felt so tall, a monstrous version of herself. There should be a fire, and snow outside the window. It should be cold. There should be screaming, but she was glad that there wasn’t.

  She felt for the hair sticks her father had given her, but she did not have them.

  “My hair sticks,” Emily said, looking around herself feverishly. “Where are they?”

  “They’re packed with your things,” Miss Jesczenka said, looking up at her. “They’re safe. Don’t worry.”

  Emily brushed a hand across her eyes.

  “Faery Writing,” she said, under her breath, hardly realizing she spoke the words aloud. “Very important. Remember, Emilichka.”

  “Faery Writing?” Miss Jesczenka said. “Miss Edwards, what are you talking about?”

  Emily stopped, blinking. The warmth of the room surrounded her, and she looked down at Miss Jesczenka. The woman’s face was full of worry. She was not screaming. She was not the one who had been screaming. The one who had been screaming was dead. Emily swallowed hard, looked around the room some more, slowly reorienting herself. She was twenty-five years old. Her mother and father were dead, long dead, and she had drunk her memories of them.

  “What is Faery Writing?” Emily said.

  “It’s an old-fashioned kind of magical code,” Miss Jesczenka said, her tone vaguely puzzled. “No one uses it anymore. It was used quite a bit during the war, but since then, it’s been superceded by better types of encryption. I believe there are still a few Faery Readers around Chatham Square, back in New York, but—”

  “I want to go back to the Institute,” Emily said firmly, staring into Miss Jesczenka’s soft brown eyes. “I have to see Mr. Stanton.”

  “That’s not a good idea right now,” Miss Jesczenka said.

  “I don’t care,” Emily said. “I have to see him.”

  Miss Jesczenka stared at her for a long time.

  “All right,” she said finally.

  They took the afternoon train from Boston—one that would not arrive in New York until late that night. Miss Jesczenka had suggested that they wait until the next morning to depart so they could arrive at a decent hour, but Emily insisted on leaving immediately. She wanted to get away from Boston, away from the choking congestion of Witch hunters and the Sini Mira that she imagined all around her. Ever since she’d sampled the Lethe Draught, she’d felt paranoid and twitchy, as if every shadow contained something horrible within it. She remembered the revolvers she’d once carried, the comforting heavy weight of them in her pockets. She wished she had them now.

  Explosions of memory kept detonating within her. A whiff of stewed cabbage made Emily remember a time her father had cooked dinner, and she’d refused to eat because she didn’t like cabbage. She’d never liked cabbage. Now she had a hundred new memories of hating its sulfury smell and nauseatingly slippery texture. It was so disorienting that Emily often found herself falling silent in the middle of a conversation, freshly experiencing pieces of her past.

  If Miss Jesczenka noticed this change in Emily, she didn’t comment upon it. But she did press Emily for details of her meeting with her grandparents as they clattered over the iron tracks toward New York.

  “They are Scharfians,” Emily said. “The Reverend Kendall is a great friend of Brother Scharfe.”

  Miss Jesczenka looked horrified. “Did he put you out of the house?”

  Emily nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Jesczenka said, laying a hand over Emily’s. “Truly I am.”

  Not as sorry as Emily felt. But the disastrous encounter with the Kendalls and their prejudices was, oddly enough, the furthest thing from Emily’s mind at the moment. She was still trying to sort out the gout of memories she’d recovered the night before.

  She understood now why Pap had said her mother was evil. Remembering
her mother’s voice, her soft gentle voice in the service of Cowdray’s filthy words, made Emily feel helpless and small. How desperately she’d wanted her mother to get well. How deep the sorrow in her small, remembered heart. How she wished she could speak to her mother one more time, just for a moment, and tell her that she understood now, even if she couldn’t understand then.

  Emily sighed, pushing back her thoughts of her mother. They were too raw, too painful to examine for very long. She thought instead about the hair sticks and about what her father had said; that they contained an important secret, which must have been why Mrs. Kendall hadn’t recognized them among her daughter’s other things. They’d never belonged to Catherine Kendall at all. And the secret that her father said was written on them probably had something to do with the important work he’d been doing with his mentor in Russia. Work important enough that Warlock murderers would chase him halfway across the world to destroy it.

  Emily and Miss Jesczenka arrived at the Grand Central Depot just before midnight and took a carriage uptown to the Institute. The building blazed with gaslights; it seemed that even in the darkest night, they kept all the lamps lit. The light revealed dozens of men clustered around the outer walls of the Institute, men in dark overcoats with notebooks in their hands. They stood chatting companionably, smoking cigarettes, taking furtive swigs from hidden flasks.

  “Reporters,” Miss Jesczenka said. There was an equal measure of delight and dread in the word. “I hardly know whether to hope they are graduates of the Institute, or to hope they are not.”

  The carriage pulled up at the gate that guarded the drive to the Institute, and a young gatekeeper approached. His face was held hard, in a manner that suggested he’d had to send a dozen people packing already that night. But when Miss Jesczenka leaned forward from the shadows of the carriage to speak to him, his manner became one of attentive respect.

  “Who is your Sophos?” Miss Jesczenka demanded of him.