“What am I going to do about this gown?” I ask.
“What do you mean? You’re going to hang it up where you found it.”
“But it’s a wreck!”
“Well, it wasn’t made for crawling in the dirt.”
“Thanks. I know that.”
“Just do as I say.”
“Hang it up? Isn’t there someone I should give it to? There’s a woman in town….”
Silence.
“All right, then.” I pull the gown off over my head and go to the closet—that amazing closet—and hang it on its hanger. Turning to leave, I notice a tiny point of light floating past. Then another. More tiny lights sail by. The closet is growing brighter! I stare at the gown, now swarming with lights, like a thousand golden bees! It reminds me of my mother’s magic tricks.
“Mother?” I listen. “Mother, are you here?”
No sound but the vague whisperings of a thousand lights nibbling and mending. Soon there are fewer of them. Another minute and the last one blinks away, leaving the shimmering gown, a sheath of pale blue satin, perfect as the first moment I saw it.
I back out, unable to take my eyes off it.
“Did you do that?” I ask the shell.
No answer.
I climb into my own clothes—plain dress, floppy bow—hopelessly childish. I’ve got to stop letting Miss Porlock pick my clothes.
With the shell under my arm, I head down the corridor and into the Mirror Maze. The pattern has changed since this afternoon, but I understand the principle of the thing and, after a few false starts, get through.
Before long, I’m at my own door.
Uh-oh. The person I least want to see.
“Where have you been?” Uncle Asa demands, getting up from the sofa. He looks pale.
“I—”
“Never mind. Something has happened.”
“The black rose! You did it?”
“No. Nothing to do with that.”
He’s having a hard time saying what it is. At least it doesn’t seem to be about me.
“Is it that terrible?” I say.
“Did I say it was terrible?”
His face tells me it’s pretty terrible.
He stares at me grimly. “I was on the roof tonight. I saw her.”
“You saw—”
“I saw your mother! She’s back!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
First thing in the morning, Janko appears and takes me to the laboratory. Asa doesn’t look up as I come in, so I just stand there. Finally, I can’t help myself: “You’re sure it was Mother?”
He glances at me, quick and sharp, then goes back to packing fertilizer around the base of a dying rose. “Of course I’m sure. It was her gown. The way she moves. Everything.”
I step closer. “But where is she now?”
He stops puttering, leans against the workbench. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Not in her rooms?”
“We looked. The lock was broken into. It must have been her. She didn’t have a key, obviously.”
“No, I guess she wouldn’t have.”
“I had the whole staff searching. Didn’t you hear them bumping around?”
I don’t say anything more. Why don’t I? Why don’t I tell him the truth?
My silence is a lie. Am I afraid of his anger? Yes. But something else. I’m like the prisoner who’s found a sharp object in her cell. It may be useless, but until I know more, I’ll keep it in my pocket. My quiet lie.
I have to get out of the castle. I’ve got to see Peter Underwood (still can’t say the word father), but I’m stuck. In fact, for the next six hours, I’m forced to help Asa with his failing experiments. He’s quiet, answering questions with grunts, asking for tools by pointing. Still rattled by last night.
Rattled, not happy. His sister returns from the dead, and he’s not happy about it.
Asa takes off his gloves and drops them on the table. “It’s not working,” he says, frowning at the latest grafting experiment. “There’s something we’re missing.”
I could have told him that weeks ago.
“There’s another test I want to try, but we can’t do it today. Here, help me with this.” He has me wash out the tubes and replant one of the rosebushes at the end of the table. After that, I can go. Not where I want to. I can go to my chemistry lesson with Miss Porlock.
I find her in my sitting room, poring over her Latin dictionary. She closes it quickly and lays it on top of another book, a fat, leather-bound thing with a split spine. “Hello, dear!” she says brightly. “You’re finished early!”
“Uncle Asa let me go. What are you reading?”
“Just something your uncle asked me to translate. His Latin isn’t very good.”
“Let me see.”
“My dear, I’m afraid your Latin isn’t up to it, either.”
“It’s that book, isn’t it? The one that Strunk brought up. Uncle Asa said he hadn’t ordered it.” I pick it up and finger the Gothic lettering, the gold leaf mostly gone. “What does the title mean?”
“Compendium Magisterium? Just what it sounds like, a magisterial compendium.”
“Miss Porlock.”
“It’s a collection of instructions on various subjects.”
“Anything on black roses?”
I detect a flinch before she answers. “That’s the part your uncle wants me to translate.”
I hand it back. “So translate it for me.”
“Cisley, really. That chapter is twenty pages long. I’ve just started.”
I take one of her ginger cookies and snap it in my teeth.
“Anyway,” she says, sipping her chamomile, “we have more important things to talk about, don’t we? The periodic table?”
Count on her not to forget.
After Miss Porlock has tortured me sufficiently with the elements of helium, argon, and radon, she gathers her books and heads to her room, leaving the ginger cookies to tide me over till dinner. Wish I had Elwyn to feed them to.
I open the door and listen as the last tour group of the day shuffles past. Is this my chance? I’m in my usual clothes, so I wouldn’t draw attention from people who think they’re seeing my mother. I look down the corridor, then hurry and join the crowd as they start down the staircase. Still no sign of my keepers, just that tour guide up front giving the history of the chandeliers.
I’m nearly to the bottom before I spot Strunk, arms folded, staring up at me. One of his white-fringed eyebrows twitches.
“Hi, Mr. Strunk.”
He speaks not a word, merely points a pudgy finger upward.
“I was just going to the kitchen. Mrs. Quay is saving me some scones.”
“You need to be upstairs. I will alert Mrs. Quay about the scones.”
“Thank you, Mr. Strunk.”
Slink. Slank. Slunk. Up to my room again.
Twenty minutes later, dinner arrives under a silver cloche. No scones. I nibble my nut-encrusted flounder and stare out over the darkening firth. Night coming, and I still haven’t figured a way to get out of here.
“Why don’t we take a stroll down to your mother’s rooms?”
I whirl around. There sits the conch on the night-stand.
“Now?”
“When better?”
I take another bite of roast potato and slip a warm roll in my pocket. One of the footmen, I notice as I step out, has been stationed by the top of the staircase. That’s new. Don’t tell me they don’t trust me!
I give him a wave and head to the right. An innocent stroll. The maze offers fewer challenges to me these days, now that I understand the principle. It’s just irritating that I have to deal with it at all. I’m soon in front of Mother’s door.
“Why don’t we do your hair again?” says the shell.
“Really? Why?”
No answer.
I sit at the vanity. Playing dress-up is fine, but I’ve got places to go. Still, when the last comb is in place, I can’t he
lp marveling. Is this really Cisley Thummel?
“Yes, it is,” the voice says.
I hold the shell up. “How did you do that? You read my mind!”
“Did I? Maybe you read your own?”
That stops me.
What’s in my mind? My own thoughts? Someone else’s? When I’m in this room, I hardly know. I decide to do a test. “So,” I say, “tell me what I’m thinking now.”
Silence.
“Really, tell me. I want to know if you can read my mind.”
“You’re thinking about that book.”
That’s right! I’m thinking about that fat old Latin book Miss Porlock’s so secretive about. “That’s amazing!”
“Not really. You know we don’t need words.”
I take that in. It’s true; this is no ordinary talking shell. “I bet,” I say, “you even know what’s in the book.”
“Only the good parts.”
“The parts about the rose.”
No reply.
A thought suddenly strikes me. “You sent that book, didn’t you?”
“Now, how could I do that?”
“I don’t know, but you did.”
“I may have whispered a word to a receptive ear.”
“What receptive ear?”
“Don’t bother your head. Let’s take a peek at that gown again. See how it looks on you.”
I give the shell my hardest stare and speak into the point of the spiral. “I know you have a reason for this. Do you mind telling me what it is?”
“You need a passport. A way to go in and out without your uncle’s seeing you.”
“Won’t he see me?”
“He will see your mother.”
“Ah.”
“Now go.”
I don’t question. Anyway, I love that soft waterfall of satin. I run to get it. As before, it forms itself perfectly to my body—tucks, buttons, and clasps. I feel electric.
“Now,” says the shell, “you’re ready to go visiting.”
“But how?”
“The same way he came to visit your mother.”
My eyes widen. Underwood visited Mother? Here? “Show me!”
“You’ve never been all the way to the back of the closet, have you?”
“No,” I say, “I haven’t.” I leap up, grab my talkative friend, and run into the closet. Dimly lit gowns whisper among themselves, passing secrets. Are they talking about me? I venture on, no end in sight. An infinite aisle of dresses stretches ahead.
I notice a movement in the distance. It’s someone hurrying toward me! She comes closer, slows as I slow. The aisle narrows to a mirror. The closet does end after all. It ends with me.
“It doesn’t really, you know,” says a voice close by.
I look at the shell. There it goes again, reading my thoughts. “It doesn’t?”
“Touch your heart.”
A strange request, but I’ve learned to listen when the shell tells me something. I place my hand over my heart.
“No.” The tone is impatient. “Touch your heart in the mirror.”
I gaze at my reflection, at this strangely glamorous self, half me, half Marina, and reach out and touch its heart.
The mirror slides aside.
The way ahead is dimmer, almost dark, but this is no time to hesitate. I follow the continuing corridor. Dusty, empty, no clothes brushing against me. I’m not sure about this world behind the mirror.
Soon the floor begins to tilt downward, slightly at first, then more steeply. I have trouble standing and can barely see where I’m going.
A muffled voice.
“What did you say?”
“I said, sit down or fall down.”
I sit.
The floor here is waxed to a high polish and curves in a spiral. I start sliding. What little light remains shows me a narrow staircase to my left, hugging the circular wall. Then all light is gone, the tilt gets steeper, and for seconds I careen through darkness, finally bumping to a cushioned stop. My heart beats madly as I look from nothing to nothing.
Slowly, my eyes adjust. A thin right angle of light tells me a door’s in front of me.
“Everybody out,” says the shell.
A little wobbly, I get to my feet and push open the narrow door to a gust of salt air and the pounce of waves. The moonlit beach stretches below me.
“Wonderful!”
“Have a nice visit.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Leave me here, inside the door. That’s it.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s not safe out there for breakables. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“All right.”
Moments later, shoes in hand, I race barefoot along the wet sand toward the cabin of Peter Underwood.
Chapter Thirty
“There! See her? She’s come back!”
“That ain’t her.”
“It’s a ghost, like they said.”
“What’s wrong with you? It’s the daughter! Can’t you see?”
A knot of workers pauses below the bluff to watch me coming. The night shift, I’m guessing, on their way to the glass factory, and they don’t look pleased to see a fancy young lady in a ball gown skipping about on the beach.
“You’re right,” says one as I pass. “It’s the crazy daughter.”
“Hi, everybody!” I call. No one answers.
They don’t know how keen my sense of smell is. Ground-in grime, scorch marks, and chemical stink ride the light breeze.
That and something else: the smell of resentment.
I start the climb to the painter’s cabin. The workers are almost invisible now, diminished in darkness. Except for the gleam of moonlight glancing off their caps, you’d think they didn’t exist.
To Uncle Asa, they don’t.
I’m breathing hard by the time I reach the top. No one in sight. A dim glow from the window is the only sign anyone’s here. There’s a man in there who believes he’s my father. He also believes I’m my own mother.
I knock on the door. No answer. Knock a little louder. Nothing.
I push the door two creaks and step in. A kerosene lamp by the bed haloes the painter and Cole’s mother. Underwood is propped in sitting position, but his head is back and his eyes closed.
Mrs. Havens slumps in her chair, snoring.
I smile to think this could be a painting by Underwood, the celebrated artist.
Don’t wake them.
Most of the cabin is dim to dark, but I see well enough to look through the paintings against the wall. There are dozens. Strong, confident work, I can see that. There’s the one of me on the seawall with Elwyn. The more I look at it, the better I like it. The painter gave me a look I wish I had—the visionary peering into the distance, or the future, or something. Visionary with Lobster, he could call it.
Imagine what it must have meant to him, seeing the girl he thinks is his daughter—to want to paint her, capture her, but not approach.
Why didn’t he just come up to me? I wouldn’t have bitten him.
Elwyn might have.
He stayed away, but close.
Mrs. Havens’s snore becomes a snort that wakes her up. She rubs her eyes roughly and squints them open. “Oh Jesus, Mary!” she cries, seeing me.
“Hello, Mrs. Havens.”
“I thought you was a ghost!”
“You’re not the only one. Some men down on the beach thought I was Mother.”
“Likely, in that outfit.”
“I don’t think they cared for me.”
She grunts.
“What?”
“I’m still working on liking you myself.” She adjusts her shawl around her shoulders. “You come to see the patient, I expect.”
I look over at Underwood.
“Whatever that awful mess the Gypsies brought him,” she says, “it’s bucked him up pretty good. I wouldn’t go near it, myself.”
“I don’t blame you.”
�
�He’s starting to mind it. It’s how I know he’s better.”
As if he knows we’re talking about him, Underwood fidgets and opens his eyes. He looks confused, but then sees me. “You’re back!”
“No,” I say quickly, “it’s not me. I mean…”
He cocks his head.
“I mean, I’m not Mother.”
Come on, Cisley, you can make sense if you try.
I glance over at Mrs. Havens.
“Mr. Underwood,” I say, “do I look like Marina?”
He looks closer. Closer still.
“You really don’t recognize me?”
I know you’ve only seen me from a distance, and dressed differently, but…
“You painted me. With the lobster?”
His eyes widen and clear. He sits up straighten. For seconds, he says nothing, just takes me in.
Say something. Why doesn’t he say something?
“Is it possible?” he whispers.
I nod vigorously. “I’m Cisley.”
A quick sunrise of pleasure. “Marina’s daughter!”
I swallow hard. “And…yours?”
His eyes suddenly brim. Then mine do, too. I take a step toward him. He raises his arms. I fall into them.
“My girl,” he murmurs. “My little girl.”
Warm tears drop on my neck.
My throat tightens off speech. What would I say anyway? Father? Dad? I’ve never spoken such words in my life.
What do I do with a father?
I pull away and look at this man, this father. His lined face glistens from the edges of his eyes to the slightly trembling corners of his mouth.
God knows what my own face looks like, streaked with tears and makeup.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says.
That actually makes me laugh. “Must be the dress.”
“Marina’s?”
I nod, still gulping tears. “A long story.”
He lays a quiet hand on mine. “I think we both have long stories to tell.”
Chapter Thirty-One
On my way out, I practically knock into Cole, just coming in. He looks at me oddly. Must be the hair. I keep forgetting what’s on top of my head.
Finally, I manage a “Hi!”
He sweeps his own out-of-control hair back from his face. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Actually, I’m going.”
“Oh.”
“Well,” I say brightly, “I’ve got to get some things, don’t I? I can’t very well go around wearing a ball gown all the time!”
A Bitter Magic Page 13