by Eli Brown
Clover screamed, pressing herself against the trunk of the tree, as the Badger crept under the canopy.
But just when the Badger was close enough to bite, the shadows shifted. The Badger hissed as the Heron snatched it up. Clover watched through the branches as the Badger squirmed in the bird’s blazing beak. The hide went first, then the bones turned to ash. Bits of scalding metal fell around the Heron’s feet. Just like that, the vermin was gone.
Now the Heron was peering into the branches where Clover was gasping. It had already grown larger. It spotted her with comet eyes.
Clover ran as the Heron strode right through the crab apple tree, flaming branches tumbling aside.
As she ran, Clover pulled her bandanna over her mouth. The air was choked with smoke. Over her shoulder, she saw the Heron lower its frame into a full run, closing the distance with a few strides. It was now as tall as she was.
Clover stumbled downhill toward what she hoped was a river. But the creek held only shallow puddles. She followed it into an algae-slick gorge, the Heron trailing closely. Clover dashed toward a leaning log, hoping to find safety on the other side of the natural bridge.
Before she made it over the log, the Heron leaped across the gorge, cutting her off. It was huge now, as if the sun itself had fallen to the earth. It opened its beak with a piercing howl and flapped its wings, sending a baking wind that buckled the bark of the surrounding trees. Clover fell backward, rolling off the log and landing hard on the rocks below.
“Help!” Clover screamed. “Someone, please!”
With the Heron peering over her, Clover felt like a minnow, doomed in the muddy shallows. The air scalded her lungs. She rolled toward a boulder, scrambling for shelter, but the Heron’s blazing claws slammed into the mud beside her, blocking her escape with a blast of steam. There was nowhere to go. Clover knew this was her last living moment.
The Heron plunged its searing beak into Clover’s heart.
Clover tried to scream but was paralyzed with pain.
The Heron stabbed her twice more, its head like a blacksmith’s hammer striking sparks in a forge. But, despite the agony, Clover’s heart refused to stop.
There was no blood, no smell of burned skin. The Heron cocked its head, perplexed, and tried to pierce her again, but its beak merely vanished into Clover’s chest. It flapped its wings furiously, letting out another long, haunted howl.
Somehow, Clover was alive.
Just as the Heron was about to make another attack, Willit appeared, a smoldering Match held between his teeth.
The iron box that the Ember had come from dangled on the end of the chain he was twirling. Before the Heron could turn on him, he swung the chain hard and knocked the Ember right out of the bird’s chest.
The blazing bird sputtered like a poorly made candle, then disappeared into a tower of white smoke. The Heron was gone.
The Ember hit the ground and immediately started smoldering, building toward another incarnation of the Heron, but Willit scooped it into the box before it could kindle. He latched the box, shaking his singed fingers, and looped the chain into his belt. Clover tried to get to her knees as he pulled out a long knife.
“That’s another wasted Match, kid. I don’t need bullets to take off your kneecap, but it will hurt more this way.”
“What do you want with me?” Clover wheezed. She was too rubbery with shock to run.
“It ain’t me who wants you.”
Just as Willit grabbed her ankle, Hannibal slammed into the side of his head, a flurry of spurs and feathers.
Willit wailed, smacking at Hannibal, who clung to his hair like a fury. Willit made a blind stab at Hannibal but missed, cutting a red line above his own eyebrow. He cursed as blood spilled into his eyes. The chain and iron box fell from his belt as he stumbled toward his horse, Hannibal still leaping viciously at his back. A bugle sounded just as Willit spurred his horse away, frantically wiping blood from his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Hurrah!” Hannibal cried. The Rooster was winded but clearly thrilled by the events of the day. “A hard-earned victory!” he crowed.
“But how?” Clover touched the places where the Heron had hit her, feeling for cauterized gashes. But her skin was whole; she could feel no damage at all. Her shirt was singed, but there was not a single mark on her skin.
“Pure gallantry!” Hannibal shouted.
“I should be incinerated,” Clover gasped. “Like that Badger, like those men.”
“But you have lived” — Hannibal laughed — “to fight another day! You see, you are more than a match, indeed you are the answer to the Heron problem. You’ve proved your value as a key asset —”
“Shh!” Clover said, hunkering into the gulley. They weren’t far from the road and might be heard. Clover’s terrified flight had brought her in a broad circle back toward the site of the smashed wagon. She buttoned her jacket over her ruined shirt and grabbed the chain Willit had dropped. The box containing the Ember was the size of an apple, groaning and pinging like a kettle without water.
Clover and Hannibal crept up a small embankment, pulling the Ember box behind them, and peered through a hedge of winceberry bushes at the wreckage on the road.
The wagon was obliterated. The trees nearby had been stripped of their bark by the force of Susanna’s tantrum, and some had been completed toppled, muddy roots clutching at the air. But it was very still now. The poachers were nowhere to be seen.
Clover whispered, “Keep watch,” and stepped toward the road.
“Are you mad?” Hannibal whispered.
“We have to get the oddities.” Clover said. “We can’t let the poachers have them.”
The smoke from the brushfires clouded the road. Clover found her haversack half-hidden under a crate. She moved carefully toward the wreck of the wagon.
Hannibal tugged at the hem of her pants, saying, “Those poachers are only temporarily discouraged. They’ll come back —”
“Hush! There she is.” Clover pointed to Susanna, who was clambering over the splintered planks of the wagon. The Doll picked up a rifle, bent the barrel like a length of licorice, then slammed it into the ground, shattering the stock. Susanna dropped the gun and tottered in a dazed circle, looking for something else to destroy. She seemed, finally, to be losing steam. She had not escaped unscathed. One of her arms hung by a few stitches, and wads of wool were visible in the holes in her belly. One button eye hung loose, giving the impression that she was weeping. Her fury seemed to have ebbed, and now, she was sifting through the debris, looking for something specific.
“She wants the cigar box,” Clover said.
When Susanna saw Clover, the Doll squared her shoulders for a fight. She picked up a length of timber and looked ready to beat Clover to a paste.
Clover began to sing, “Susanna, don’t be sore; the rain will stop by morning.”
The Doll took two furious steps toward her, but Clover crouched as she had seen Mr. Agate do, holding out her hands and singing, “Susanna, don’t you cry; the clouds are only snoring.”
“You’ll be torn to pieces!” Hannibal whispered.
But Clover kept singing. “Susanna, don’t you fuss; the morning bird is singing.”
The Doll stopped short. She dropped the splintered beam, looking suddenly like a baby in need of a nap. Clover held the side pocket of her haversack open. Susanna took a tentative step toward the bag, peering inside. This was no cigar box.
“Susanna, don’t you fret; the daffodils are blooming.”
The sound of a bugle again, closer now, and horses on the road startled them. Susanna gave Clover one more mistrusting glance, then climbed into her sack. Clover fastened the leather ties and leaped behind the bushes with Hannibal. She ducked just as Willit, Bolete, and two remaining poachers came galloping past. They spurred their horses around the wreckage and beat a hasty pace up the road.
“But our haul!” Bolete wailed.
“We’ll return for it,” Willit shout
ed, “when I get more bullets.”
The poachers disappeared into the forest.
Only a few breaths later, their pursuers, half a dozen armed men, arrived with a flurry of hoofbeats. They were led by none other than Aaron Agate. A few of them raced after Willit and Bolete while Mr. Agate pulled his horse to a stop and took in the catastrophic scene. He was wearing his old explorer’s clothes, a bearskin cap and tasseled leather jacket. He held a rifle comfortably under his arm, but he was no longer the young adventurer from the journal.
Here was a shadow of what the Society had been, the brave league riding to protect the unusual.
Mr. Agate dismounted with a grunt. “What happened here?”
“Susanna happened,” Clover said, emerging from the bushes.
“Oh, Clover, you’re alive!” Mr. Agate embraced her before sorting through the wreckage. He found the cigar box, split and damp with horse urine, but Susanna wasn’t in it. He shook the box, looking terrified. “But where is she?”
Clover felt a little kick as Susanna made herself comfortable in the bag. Suddenly, Clover didn’t trust Mr. Agate. She knew he meant well, but then, Clover’s father had meant well when he told her to throw the Ice Hook in the lake. She slung the bag over her shoulder and lied, “Gone, I guess.”
“Gone where?”
“Into the forest, I suppose.” Clover knew she should give Susanna back to Mr. Agate, but the forlorn way the Doll searched for her cigar box made Clover feel protective of her. The Doll was no safer with Mr. Agate than she was with the poachers.
“God help us all,” Mr. Agate wheezed.
Hannibal had wandered off to talk with a man wearing a deputy badge on his hat.
“At least the Heron is contained,” Clover said. “Something as dangerous as that . . .” She handed Mr. Agate the chain with the iron box attached. “That thing is a monster.”
“But you are . . . unhurt?” he asked, looking at her singed clothes.
“I can’t explain it.”
Mr. Agate shook his head as he gazed at her. “When you’ve been in the company of oddities as long as I have, you stop hunting for explanations and learn to live with wonder. Now, marvelous child, the poachers will be back as soon as they see how small our party is.” A chill wind sent oak leaves spinning into his hair as he watched his comrades picking through the ruin. “We really must hurry.”
Clover touched the base of her neck where the Heron had tried to incinerate her heart. The skin there was still warm but unblistered. “How did I survive? Was it something my mother did?”
“Miniver’s notebooks burned along with everything else,” Mr. Agate said. “We cannot know what her final experiments were. What the fire didn’t consume, the witch picked over like a crow in the midden, just as we are now . . .” He trailed off, crouching to examine a crystal inkwell briefly before shoving it into his pocket. “The last of the great collections, dashed in the dust!” He swept his arm across the wreckage as if it were Clover’s fault. “Tragic loss!”
“But why did the poachers . . . What am I . . . ?” Clover’s words stopped coming.
Mr. Agate wasn’t listening anyway. He let out a moan and fell to his knees, cradling the cracked Teapot in his hands. He was trying to fit the grinding shards back together, dribbles of steaming tea pattering through his fingers. Clover suddenly pitied the old collector, weeping for tea. All of the intoxicating marvels seemed a heap of useless trinkets to her now. Clover had a glimpse of the madness her father had warned her about. She pressed her gritty palms against her eyes, her head swimming. Nothing made sense. And yet her father’s last words had been very clear. In the fever of her confusion, Clover clung to them. They were all she had left.
“I promised I would guard the bag,” she announced. Saying it aloud felt good. “Smalt has it. I’m going after him.”
Mr. Agate shook his head. “Smalt is extremely dangerous, a scorpion in a suit. No, you and the Rooster must stay with us. We’ll keep you safe.”
“Safe? You let the poachers carry me away like a Christmas cake!” Clover said.
“It was that or a bullet through the eye.” Mr. Agate said. “We’ve caught up with you now, haven’t we? I didn’t see anything in that bag worth risking your life for.” When he looked at her, Clover saw tears in his eyes. The poor man was sitting in the ruin of his life’s work.
“Father wouldn’t lie to me,” Clover said.
“Even if there is an unknown oddity in that bag, it is gone now,” Mr. Agate said slowly, the kindness in his voice strained, as if explaining to an exasperating toddler. “The malice of that Hat has hollowed Smalt out. There can be no happy ending where that wraith is concerned. I am sorry, but that’s the truth of it. We can, however, still salvage some of this. Oh, treasures strewn about like so much garbage!”
“I swore I would protect it,” she said softly, grateful for something to hold on to. “A promise is a promise, Mr. Agate.”
Mr. Agate and the other men began to throw objects into burlap sacks: a tin pipe flattened to a dull blade, a brass knocker still attached to the oak slab cut from a door. With every piece, Mr. Agate emitted a pained gasp.
“We should go right away if we’re to catch Smalt,” Hannibal said.
Hope caught in Clover’s throat. “You mean you’ll come with me to Brackenweed?”
“Most certainly, brave girl. Escorting you is a privilege, and since I must make my reports in any case . . .”
It felt fitting, in a strange way, to be setting off once again to the music of Hannibal’s proud prattle.
“Clover, don’t wander off,” Mr. Agate pleaded, but Clover ran through the woods with Hannibal beside her.
Night felt like an ocean that Clover was creeping at the bottom of. When they could no longer see the road, they made camp in the shelter of a crumbling roadside altar. It had been abandoned long ago, and it was impossible to say what saint or ancestor people had been praying to there.
Clover fished blindly in her haversack until she found her oil lamp. She hesitated before lighting it. After the Heron, Clover didn’t want to start even the smallest fire. But she was not ready to sleep in complete darkness. Constantine had given her the lamp on her twelfth birthday and said, “A doctor does not squint in the smoke of tallow candles. Whale oil is expensive, but it burns bright and clean.”
At least it used to. Now the wick, dampened by lake water, sputtered. In the quavering light, Clover spotted piles of scat and upturned earth that suggested wild pigs used this place more often than people did.
As Hannibal investigated the shadows, Clover watched the tongue of flame lapping the air. On an impulse, she passed the end of her braid quickly over the lantern.
Her hair didn’t burn. She held it directly over the fire, waiting for it to curl and smoke. After a minute, the end of her braid was glowing, each strand red-hot, but still it didn’t burn. She put her little finger in the flame — and gasped. It hurt, but she forced herself to hold it there for five full seconds, then twenty seconds, then pulled it out to look. No charring, no blisters, no inflammation of any kind.
“But why?” she whispered, feeling her sanity shudder. Of all the things she had seen since beginning this terrible journey, this deviance of her own flesh was the most terrifying.
“Something is wrong with me,” Clover said to herself. “Those poachers knew it. Why didn’t I?”
“The perimeter is safe!” Hannibal strutted into the light, making her jump. “Now, before we discuss that battle and our noble future together, what victuals shall we fortify ourselves with?”
“There is no more bread pudding,” Clover said, grateful for the interruption. She set the lamp at a safer distance and focused on simpler things. As she removed the handkerchief from around her neck, moths fretted above the lamp, and Hannibal hopped up, picking them out of the air. It was how a rooster ought to behave, but it struck Clover as ridiculous. Still, she wished she could eat moths.
Clover folded the edge of the cotton
over the blade of her pocket knife and cut until she had two small squares of cloth. She pulled a sturdy thread from the scorched part of her shirt. Then she found the needle she carried in a little leather sheath, perfect for mending during long bedside vigils.
“What is that you’re doing?” Hannibal wanted to know.
“I’m going to operate on Susanna, if she’ll let me.”
“On the Doll? You are courting disaster!”
“She was shot helping us escape,” Clover said. “Didn’t you see those holes in her belly?”
“She wasn’t helping us escape. She was turning the forest into kindling.”
“Who wants to walk around with a hole in their gut?” Clover asked.
Taking deep breaths for courage, she unfastened the brass clasp of her haversack’s side pocket.
“Your ear is still bleeding from that poacher’s knife,” Hannibal warned, hurrying behind a stone to watch from a safe vantage. “You may be fireproof, but you’re not indestructible!”
“Come on, you little thing. Let me see you,” Clover cooed.
The Doll pouted in the cozy corner of the bag, her doughy arms crossed over her wounds.
Clover gave the bag a shake and began to sing: “Susanna, don’t be sore; the rain will stop by morning.”
Susanna finally climbed out of the pocket, eyeing Clover warily. She held one hand over the yellowing wool of the wounds.
“Normally I’d give you some willow bark tea, but I guess we can skip that,” Clover said, patting her knee. “Can you set yourself here?” Clover knew to keep talking, because it gave a patient something to focus on instead of the needle. “I’d clean the needle with brandy, but I don’t think you’re in danger of blood poisoning, are you?”
Clover used her finger to gently nudge Susanna across her thigh. “Don’t watch. Just look at the lamp and think of good things.”
Clover held her breath as she made the first stitch. The cotton swatch was frayed at the edges, but Clover made tight loops. Susanna lay still, her button eyes shining in the flickering light.