Oddity

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Oddity Page 25

by Eli Brown


  “It shouldn’t be,” Constantine said. He paced in a tight circle on the Persian rug.

  Miniver clasped her husband’s hand, stopping him. “During the war, you stanched the blood, but I saw the smiles on the politicians as they walked to church in their unstained silks, holding gilded canes. Wars are born in the hearts of men like that. They will never stop.”

  “I treat the body in front of me —”

  “And you miss everyone else! The world suffers. How many elections, how many abolitionist meetings, how many clinics have we seen, and still: war, plague, slavery, corruption! And at the end, grinning death waiting to swallow all. Why should the innocent suffer generation after generation when we have the tools to change it?”

  Constantine, his jaw clenched, gestured to the riot of equipment on the table. “But this alchemy . . . witchcraft. The audacity —”

  “It was audacious to make a tea out of the foxglove flower.” Miniver’s eyes pleaded with him to understand. “But in that poison was a secret cure for galloping hearts, which you use to save lives. Some audacious surgeon was the first to cut out a tumor, the first to inject medicine directly into the veins. It takes vision and courage to —”

  “This is not medicine! You’ve already offended nature.”

  Baby Clover had dropped her spoon through the slats and whimpered, wanting it back.

  “Oh, nature! Nature gave us cholera. Nature gave us measles. What do we owe nature?” Miniver was flushed, but she spoke slowly, clearly, as if to a child. “It took years for me to make the tiniest amount of Thread. The Pestle could cure illness, but I found the secret to magnifying its power. This rabbit cannot be killed by any means. I’m talking about the end of death, Constantine. I might not build the entire bridge, but someone must set the first stone.”

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

  “You’re not talking to me,” Miniver said. “You’re standing in my way.”

  Constantine watched her kneel to put the rabbit back in its cage.

  “I worry, Miniver.” He took a step toward her.

  Miniver stood. Her face was determined, but her voice was gentle. “Didn’t I worry when you rode through the battlefields? When you disappeared for weeks into Indian plague camps? But did I ever stand in your way?”

  As they faced each other in silence, Clover warbled in her crib as if deciding between laughter and tears.

  Constantine turned and left without another word, closing the door behind him.

  The sound of the Pendulum filled the room. Miniver didn’t return to work until she heard Constantine’s horse galloping away. With a sigh, she picked up her journal and had just dipped her pen in the inkwell when the door opened again, startling her.

  But it wasn’t Constantine this time. It was a young man with a wild look in his eyes. He had a full head of hair and no hat. He wasn’t twitching or scratching, but it was Willit Rummage.

  Miniver was surprised. “It’s late for a delivery.”

  “And yet the delivery is here,” Willit said, holding out a wooden box with a broken seal. “Loyal Willit works day and night.”

  “You’re drunk,” Miniver said. As she reached for the box, Willit snatched it away as if he were teasing a child.

  “Where is Constantine?” Miniver asked.

  “Ridden off into the darkness. I’ll bet he’s gone to sleep with the injuns again.”

  “They have the pox,” Miniver said. “He goes where there is need.”

  “What of my needs?”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Only enough to give me the guts to say what’s right.” Willit opened the box and pulled out the Pistol. “And do what’s right.”

  Miniver stood composed; the only sign of fear was the trembling of a muscle in her neck.

  “I know what this is.” Willit shook the Pistol. “I may not be learned, but I ain’t dumb. The things I fetch for you are worth a pile of money.”

  “You are paid well to deliver my packages. It is not your business to open them or —”

  “But I opened this one, didn’t I?” Willit said. “I can’t be your fetching man no more, knowing what I know. My heart has grander intentions. I aim to marry you, Miniver.”

  Miniver’s chin lifted. “Shame on you! I am a married woman. My child is sleeping right there in that crib.”

  “Wake, children everywhere!” Willit shouted. “Wake! Your mothers are meddlers!” Willit knocked the handle of the gun along the rungs of the crib. “She’s tinkering with things she ought not tinker with!”

  “Hush! You’re out of your mind,” Miniver scolded.

  “She tinkers with a man’s heart!” Willit took a step toward Miniver, and she took two steps back. He bent down and took the rabbit from the cage. “Look here, children! She keeps the rabbit locked in its little jail, the poor thing. Have you got my heart in here as well? What is this?” Willit pulled a blue thread from the rabbit’s ear.

  Miniver screamed, but it was too late.

  The rabbit shriveled in Willit’s hand. In seconds it had become a lifeless husk of shedding fur, its ears stiffening to leather.

  Baby Clover began to wail. Willit stared at the bundle of hide in his hands, the yellow teeth pointed as daggers. His voice sounded weary when he said, “Oh, Miniver.”

  “You’ve ruined years of work,” Miniver said, her voice trembling. “But . . . we can discuss an increase in your pay —”

  Now Willit pointed the Pistol directly at her and said, “Didn’t you hear me? Grander ambitions!” He stuffed the dead rabbit into his jacket pocket.

  Miniver swallowed. Then she said, “Perhaps I haven’t treated you with the . . . regard you deserve. Naturally I owe you a bonus for your loyalty. Not just a bonus, but an oddity. A powerful one. A priceless one. It ought to belong to you.” Miniver reached behind herself and found a battered Matchbox. She opened it and pulled out a single Match.

  Willit squinted at it. “What does it do?”

  “I’ll show you.” Miniver struck the Match on the table and disappeared.

  Instantly, she reappeared behind him, snatched up a candlestick, and clubbed him so hard that the candlestick bent.

  Willit fell to his knees, hollering, but he held on to the Pistol. He staggered up again, bleeding from the scalp, and grabbed the box of Matches. Miniver rushed at him, pushing him right through the stained-glass window. Willit fell two stories in a rainbow of glass.

  Even as they heard the thud of his body on the ground, Miniver pulled Clover from the crib and threw open the door, starting for the stairs. At the bottom stood a hulking shadow.

  Bolete hollered, “What’s that commotion? Should I come up now?”

  Miniver retreated back into the study and locked the door. She turned in three terrified circles, holding Clover to her chest. They were trapped.

  From the street below, there was a shot, and the bullet lanced through the broken window. It looped about the room like a beam of light, smashing Miniver’s experiments. Glass shattered, wood splintered. Miniver screamed and fell to the ground, covering Clover with her body as her life’s work broke around her.

  By the time the bullet had lodged itself in a table leg, the room was a disaster. Dark oils and strong-smelling fluids were spattered on the walls. The Pendulum was a ruined ring of tin. The Frog hopped across the glass-strewn floor. Miniver was checking Clover for injuries when something volatile caught fire. The explosion blew Miniver to her belly and lit the walls.

  The room was blazing. The curtains flapped like dragon wings. Miniver and Clover screamed. The air was an acrid haze, and the door was blocked by a burning bookshelf. Miniver huddled in the corner, trying to wrap Clover in her skirt to protect her from the smoke.

  In the middle of the room, a whirlwind of smoke was gathering into the shape of the Heron. Miniver found the blacksmith’s tongs in the wreckage and snatched the Ember up before the Heron could manifest. She thrust the Ember into the Teapot. A geys
er of steam erupted. She tried to use the steam to extinguish the fire, but the room was already an inferno, blistering the wallpaper. There was no escape. Baby Clover screamed as if she were already burning.

  Through the smoke and steam, Miniver saw something moving on the floor and grabbed it.

  She waited for Clover to scream again. When she did, Miniver dropped the Frog into her daughter’s mouth. With fierce resolve, she held the baby’s jaw shut until Clover had swallowed it.

  “Hush, little baby,” Miniver wept as she sang, “don’t you cry.”

  And when a wave of heat rolled toward them, scorching Miniver’s face, baby Clover squirmed away and crawled through the flames, wailing but unburned. Miniver tried to follow, but the heat beat her back. Her hair caught fire, and she whirled in desperation. “Clover!”

  Seeing no other exit, she ripped the sheet off the Mirror, revealing a reflection of her study before it had become an inferno, everything in its place and placid. There was a safe world waiting for her on the other side. She tried to find her daughter one last time, but her eyelashes singed and her skin blistered. In agony, Miniver dashed through the Mirror. But she was only halfway through that passage when another explosion shattered the glass. Miniver shattered with it, her body splintering. Two Minivers screamed. One burned. The other watched with wild eyes.

  The Seamstress pulled off the Gloves. Clover was in the dim cavern of the present, with shriveled, shattered Miniver, both of them weeping.

  Nessa stood by warily.

  The vermin huddled, chirping uncertainly in the shadows.

  “You saved me,” Clover said to her mother. “The Frog protected me, but how did you . . . ?”

  Miniver pulled her matted hair away from her neck. Through the shifting images, Clover saw a stitch of blue Thread through Miniver’s earlobe. “We did what I had to do.”

  Clover hugged her mother again as they both shook. Through the willow frame of her mother’s bones, Clover felt the broken heartbeat, sometimes faint, sometimes doubled, sometimes silent as a hollow tree.

  Miniver hugged her daughter, and for a moment, Clover felt the undying strength of her mother’s arms.

  “It was grief that baffled us. We’ve been trying to find our way, trying to put the pieces back together, but . . . it was all tangled. We remembered that there was hope in the Frog . . . hope in the Frog, but . . . Where is the Frog?” She pulled back, her eyes lit with rage, the embers of that old fire. “Bring me the Frog! Bring me —”

  The vermin tittered, roused to the command.

  “It’s me, Mother.” Clover guided her mother’s cheek until Miniver was seeing her again. “I’m right here.”

  “Oh dear . . . I’m sorry.”

  “No more vermin, Mother, please.”

  Miniver looked into the shadows where her creations twitched.

  “Of course you are right. What do we need them for?” Miniver smiled. “Help us with this,” she said, and the vermin rushed forward. “Not you,” she said. “We’re asking our daughter.”

  Clover and Nessa helped her dismantle the vermin manufactory, unstrapping the Churn from the table, winding the Thread into a ball, and sheathing the Shears.

  Nessa pointed at the skein of Thread. “Isn’t that what Auburn has been hunting for?”

  With a surge of clarity, Miniver grabbed a lamp and tipped the burning oil into the basket of Thread herself. Years of work crackled brightly and was gone in seconds.

  “We can’t let them re-create the process,” Clover said.

  They continued disassembling the workshop. Miniver stopped occasionally, bent in pain or staring into the darkness with glimpses of horror, sorrow, and anger floating separately across her face.

  “We burned to death,” Miniver said. “We escaped unharmed. Which world is true? The Mirror wants us to forget. The shards cut us when we try to remember. But we found ways to remember you. We found ways to . . . persist.”

  Then, wanting to seize this moment of clarity, Clover heard herself ask the question behind all the others, the question that had pushed her to confront Smalt, pushed her across the Wine Marsh and up the crumbling mountain: “Did you love me?”

  “Even when we forgot our own name,” Miniver said, her eyes clearing. “Even when our mind scattered like a fallen wasp nest. We . . . I never stopped looking for you. I tried to tear this wretched world apart to find you.”

  Clover looked at the vermin, twitching and foul, and saw them, just briefly, as agents of love, misguided and toxic, but tireless.

  “Father’s love was like a cage. Yours looks like a pack of savage beasts.”

  “No family is perfect,” Nessa said. “What is all that stuff in those other rooms?”

  “Have we been introduced?” Miniver turned to Nessa with menace smoldering in her eyes.

  “You didn’t ask for an introduction when you stole my tooth,” Nessa muttered, backing away.

  “Nessa is a friend,” Clover said.

  “It was a milk tooth, wasn’t it?” Miniver snapped. “Didn’t it grow back?”

  “No!” Nessa shouted.

  “One of your vermin caused an accident,” Clover said softly, “and killed Nessa’s uncle, a good man whom she loved.”

  Miniver turned with sudden ferocity toward her vermin, who scattered into the darkness. Then she composed herself, brushing her hands down her front as if dusting flour from an apron. “How can you forgive something like that? Our nightmare spreads. There is no way to undo the things we’ve done. The other rooms hold oddities, Nessa. You must take something, a token of my regret. Any of my treasures are yours. Pets, fetch me a few.”

  Several vermin dashed into the tunnels, eager to please their mistress, and returned with broken items.

  Miniver held up a cracked jug. “This is a milk pitcher that cannot hold milk! And here, a rare gem, a pair of spectacles that make vision worse!” She put the spectacles on. Her shattered eyes multiplied into stars. “And this beauty, the perfume bottle . . .”

  “But those aren’t oddities,” Nessa said. “That’s just junk.”

  The cracked bottle trembled in Miniver’s hands. “Is it? Of course it is. We get muddled, you see . . . We haven’t slept since the fire. The Thread won’t let us sleep.”

  Clover wished she could go back to that rose-lit room and save her mother, save them both. But there was no way to turn back time. Clover found the pocket watch in her bag and handed it over. “He kept this, Father did. Can you tell me why?”

  Miniver held the timepiece with a trembling hand. “This was the first gift we gave him, while we were courting. Our handsome Constantine was always late. It made our father frown. We told Constantine, now you have the time, you have no excuses.”

  “Celeritate functa,” Clover said. “Be prompt.”

  “He hadn’t had it but three weeks before it got smashed during a ruckus with the Indians. It never worked again.”

  “He carried it until the day he died,” Clover said. “He carried you too. He didn’t know how to save you, but he never let you go. What happened after the fire?”

  “It was like waking from a nightmare only to find you’re still dreaming. We had wandered away from the flames. We were broken in two, one lost and one dying. So we took our own imperfect medicine. We went looking for you. Wandered. We made helpers. We only made them to find you, and to get ingredients for Thread to make more helpers . . . to find you . . . to find the Frog . . .”

  “Not just that,” Clover said softly. “You also made the Flea.”

  Miniver’s face split into rage, then sorrow. “Yes, we made the Flea. For him. But we’re too tired now for revenge.”

  Suddenly she went pale and toppled. Clover caught her. Miniver’s face swarmed in the lantern light, confused.

  “It’s me. Clover. It’s your daughter.”

  Relief brought Miniver’s face together, and Clover saw joy making her whole for just a moment before the pieces scattered again like minnows.

  �
�I can’t lose you again,” Miniver said.

  “We’ll get you home,” Clover said. “Start working on a cure.”

  “There is no cure. Look at us! It was only hunger to see you that kept us going. This is where we . . . where I want to stop, looking at you, my shining daughter.”

  “We’ll find a cure —”

  “No more experiments. No more mischief. I am tired, dear Clover. So tired. I finally have what I want; let me keep it. I have found my girl.”

  From the Walnut shell in Clover’s pocket came the sound of muffled explosions. Willit was still alive. He’d taken Bolete’s half of the shell, and by the sounds of it, there was a battle brewing nearby.

  “They are coming for the oddities,” Clover said. “What can we do?”

  “What is left to do? I have done it,” Miniver said, slumping to the floor. “Oh, child, can’t I sleep? Do me this favor, will you?”

  Miniver lifted her hair again, revealing the strange earring made of blue Thread. “Can you get it for me? You’ve broken my fever, cleared my eyes. Smart and brave, marvelous girl. More than a mother deserves. I don’t want to become . . . muddled again. I want to keep your face clearly in my mind.”

  Clover pinched the Thread between her fingers but couldn’t make herself pull it. Her breath seized in her chest. “When we get you home . . .” She sobbed.

  “My home is here.” Miniver touched Clover’s heart. “The Mirror will never let me go. The flames . . . the Thread will never. You must do this for me.”

  “I can’t!” Clover’s hand trembled.

  “Set me free.”

  Then Constantine’s steady hand was holding the Thread too, his silent strength supporting Clover. With one last sob, Clover leaned down and gave her mother a kiss on the forehead.

  “Such a mess,” Miniver said.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll clean up,” Clover said through her tears. “Rest now.”

  Clover pulled the Thread from Miniver’s ear. The stitched body dissolved first, sloughing to ashes, and for a blessed moment, Miniver was singular, unburned and whole in her daughter’s arms. Then she dissolved too, scattering like moonlight through a glass of water. Clover’s arms dropped, empty, as shimmers of her mother lit the cavern like dandelion seeds in the wind.

 

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