by Ami McKay
Eleanor did not obey.
Poor thing, thought the bird. How tired she must be. The world is too much with her.
The raven was not alone in his concern.
As Perdu sat and wished for the company of his mistress, two shadowy beings stood at the foot of her bed. They, however, wished for Eleanor to remain asleep.
At first blush, the strange creatures might’ve been mistaken for a pair of guardian angels. Made from equal parts memory, mischief, goodwill and longing, they belonged to an ancient order of Fay who involved themselves exclusively with the fashioning of dreams. Eleanor, who’d never seen one face to face, had been taught to refer to them collectively as the Dearlies, a name her mother had assigned to them in hopes that her daughter might take kindly to the peculiar creatures and their work.
“Is that truly what they’re called?” Eleanor had asked, when she was nose-high to her mother’s hip.
“No,” Madame St. Clair had answered, “but they must keep their true name a secret from the dreamers they assist. A person may read or write the name, but if they speak it, they’ll never dream again.”
Flitting to Eleanor’s side, one Dearly took hold of the edge of her blanket with its nimble fingers. Then stealing under her covers, it laid its head on her chest.
“What are you doing?” the second Dearly asked, following close behind.
“Hush!” the first Dearly scolded. “I’m measuring the space between her heartbeats.”
“Why for?”
“To calculate her willingness, to see when the time is right.”
“To give her the dream?” the second Dearly inquired. To this point in his life (short by Dearly standards, yet biblical by mankind’s), he’d only been allowed to tend to the dreams of dogs. He’d been terribly good at it, though, earning himself the name Twitch, on account of his ability to inspire a great deal of tail thumping, whimpering and muffled yelps in the canines under his care.
“Yes, of course, to give her the dream,” the first Dearly replied. “We’ve only got one chance to get it right.” This Dearly was called Bright, due to her vast intelligence, and because whenever demons were about, she glowed with a vibrant blue light.
Plucking a whorl of lavender from the stems tied to Eleanor’s bed, Twitch went about the business of preparing the air so the woman’s dream might take. Chewing on the flower’s buds until his breath was laced with their scent, he readied himself to send the aroma through a tiny clay pipe pointed in Eleanor’s direction.
“Move closer,” Bright instructed with an impatient wave of her hand. “She hasn’t got the nose of a Chien de Saint-Hubert.” Always aware that a person’s surroundings are what prepare the mind for dreaming, Bright used every trick she held in her practical, sturdy rucksack of a brain to assist her in her work—from casting bits of spider’s silk on Eleanor’s eyelashes to clipping the wings off a fly that buzzed too near. Just as a master mason takes great pains in constructing a wondrous cathedral, so too did Bright take the utmost care in crafting Eleanor St. Clair’s dream. She checked the loft of Eleanor’s pillow and cooled its surface by fanning it with her wings, determined that this night, above all others, her charge’s sleep would be held together with flying buttresses of stone, rather than wattle and daub.
“How will we know if it’s worked?” Twitch interrupted, now sitting cross-legged atop a bedpost, puffing away on his pipe.
“We won’t,” Bright answered, shaking her head, “not until we do.”
“In a second, in a minute, in an hour, in the morning?”
“Not until we do.”
“All will be well,” Twitch announced, in an effort to bolster his wavering confidence. “This will be good, my friend, you’ll see.”
“You shouldn’t say such things,” Bright said with a sigh. “And don’t count yourself my friend just yet. A wise Dearly never speaks of success.”
Rolling his eyes, Twitch teeter-tottered his head. “What’s the harm, I say. It’s never hurt me yet.”
“There are other forces at work besides ours,” Bright warned. “Don’t forget that.”
Like Perdu, Bright had been with Eleanor since the day she was born, and she, too, was worried that something had come between the wise-woman and her dreams. What else could explain Eleanor being stuck in her sleep, night after night? Bright figured the trouble might have been caused by the grief that still lingered in Eleanor’s heart over a love affair that’d gone wrong, not to mention the overall harried nature of her life. Recently she’d started talking in her sleep, sighing over holding too many secrets and mumbling complaints against the landlord. Whatever the cause of Eleanor’s distress, Bright was determined to carry on as best she could. If only she could speak to Eleanor directly, she’d tell her that she was truly sorry for her troubles. Grief, regret and demons were among the most difficult problems to banish, as they had a terrible tendency to hover between a dreamer and her Dearlies. Madame St. Clair had always blamed such troubles on the Devil, claiming, “Satan never sleeps. He stays awake so he can order his demons to mix more straw into the wheat.” Bright didn’t know much about the Devil, and believed him to be more invented than real, but she understood quite a lot about demons. They were evil, occasionally smart and always happy to interfere with people’s dreams.
“Will she remember the dream when she wakes?” Twitch asked.
“If we’ve done it right,” Bright replied.
“Do you think she’ll tell the bird?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.”
“Will it do what needs to be done?”
“Dreams aren’t bound by wants or needs. Dreams do as they please.”
The vision Bright tucked inside Eleanor’s mind was simple, elegant and brief. Meaning to transport the woman far from her cares, Bright conjured a hill in the dark of night, surrounded by an ancient landscape that Eleanor had never seen, yet knew in her blood. At the top of the hill a great bonfire burned, built from an enormous scaffold of twisted sticks and branches. Its flames climbed high into the night sky, hissing and crackling, and sending up sparks. Overhead the moon looked helplessly on as moths dove and spun and sizzled to their deaths.
Perdu was there, too, perched in a craggy yew tree, just steps from the fire. Spreading his wings and opening his beak, he let out a surly caw. The glow of the fire shone in his eyes, and smoke curled from his tongue.
Before long, a young woman entered the dream, approaching from the shadows. Circling the fire, she sang a tune under her breath, much like a child who wished to banish her fears.
May you rise with the sun, ready to make hay.
May the rains come at night to wash your cares away.
May you sleep with the angels sittin’ on your bed.
May you be an hour in Heaven a’fore the Devil knows you’re dead.
Bending low, she crouched in front of the fire, her pale skin and copper-coloured hair illuminated by its flickering light. With a curious sense of calm she reached out her hand and plucked an ember from the centre of the flames. Cradling it in her palm, she turned and held it out to Eleanor.
“You must help her,” Bright whispered in Eleanor’s ear, mimicking her mother’s voice. “Two is good, but three is better. She is the first of many.”
Before Eleanor could act, the girl was consumed in a tumult of flames. When the fire threatened to devour Eleanor as well, Perdu flew from the tree and covered her eyes with his wings. With that, the vision was gone.
“Is it done?” Twitch asked, hovering over Bright’s shoulder.
“Yes,” Bright answered, “it’s done.”
Twitch snuck behind Perdu, steadied himself on the raven’s tail and yanked hard on one of the raven’s feathers. “Ready or not, it’s begun!”
Flapping and spitting, Perdu let out a loud squawk.
Eleanor woke with a start. In her confusion she thought she smelled smoke, but soon realized a gust of wind had whistled down the chimn
ey pipe, kicking up a sudden whirl of cold ashes in the room’s iron stove. Sitting up, she struck a match, lit a candle and tried to hold on to what was left of her dream. To her dismay, all that remained was the sensation of feathers brushing against her cheek, a fleeting glimpse of the girl’s face, and the overwhelming sense that no matter how hard she tried, she’d always be too late to save her.
“Douce?” Perdu said with a gentle coo. Douce, his name for her, from the French meaning soft, gentle and sweet (generally reserved for things such as melodies, candies, animals, cakes and sometimes little girls).
Eleanor beckoned to the bird and said, “Come here, old friend.”
Perdu cooed again, and hopped to her side.
Tenderly stroking the tiny feathers that graced the top of the raven’s head, she asked the bird a question she’d often asked her mother in her youth. “How old is Perdu?”
“Older than you,” the bird replied with a throaty chuckle.
Her mother had sworn a thousand times over that it was Perdu who’d taught Eleanor to speak. “He’s older and wiser than you and me and all our mothers.” Eleanor had never imagined her mother’s words could be true, even though she’d always wished them to be.
“Was that you?” she asked her pet. “In my dream?”
Perdu gave a solemn nod.
“Did you see the girl clearly?”
He nodded again.
“Don’t forget her,” Eleanor said. “Remember the girl.”
Cocking his head, Perdu repeated her instruction. “Remember the girl.”
As Eleanor returned Perdu to his perch, the Dearlies looked on from behind a coal scuttle, waiting for their chance to leave.
“You should apologize to Perdu,” Bright said, wagging her finger at Twitch. “Tell him you meant no foul.”
Twitch gave her a confused scowl. “Why should I?” he asked. “He’s just a harmless bird.”
“He’s not harmless,” Bright warned, her cheeks turning blue. “And he’s no bird.”
The Girl Who Knows.
ADELAIDE THOM BEGAN the day by readying herself to read the minds of others. Dressed in an elegant day suit of blue watered-silk (bustle high, waist cinched, lace cuffs buttoned around her wrists), she seated herself at a small dressing table near the window in her room. She recited no incantations, cast no summoning spell. The only rituals the young seer performed were pinching colour into her cheeks, tugging a comb through her hair, patting rouge onto her lips.
Gone were the trappings of her days as a sideshow sweetheart on the Bowery—the wild, unruly Circassian curls, the fine embroidered robes from “the Orient,” her image and the moniker ZULA MOTH printed on countless posters and cartes-de-visite. Easy come, easy go, she thought as she stared at a faded photograph pinned above her looking glass. I’ll never see that girl again.
Her work at the Palace of Illusions had been a clever deception, invented by the theatre’s owner, Mr. Thaddeus Dink. Each night before Adelaide would come out on stage, the impresario had rapped his cane on the boards and exclaimed, “From the depths of a squalid slave market in the dark heart of Constantinople comes a girl so alluring, so mysterious, you’ll wonder if she’s real. I implore you, dear friends, to pinch yourselves—you’re not dreaming. Once she’s in your presence, who knows what might occur!”
Adelaide’s enormous halo of curls had been achieved by washing her hair with stale beer. The costumes she’d worn had been fashioned by a seamstress who’d dressed wax figures at the dime museum next door—General Washington crossing the Delaware, President Lincoln at his moment of death, Bloody Mary seated on her throne, Joan of Arc tied to the stake. Even Adelaide’s stage name was only half hers—and that half had questionable origins as well, supposedly whispered to her father by a mythical pear tree that’d once stood at the corner of Thirteenth and Third. Call the child Moth, the twisted tree had said to him, its branches bending low, leaves brushing against his ear. The tree was long gone, as was her father, so she couldn’t query either of them. Had she ever believed the tale to be real? Yes, when she was little (and sometimes still, whenever a rare south wind rustled through the leaves of the locust trees in Madison Square Park). Whether the tale was true or not didn’t matter much anymore. Adelaide was simply glad to have one pleasant childhood memory to call her own.
By the age of thirteen she’d been sold three times over—first, by her mother as a lady’s maid, then by a brothel madam as a child whore, then by Mr. Dink as a Circassian Beauty—all in the space of a year.
She’d fought hard to make her way from the run-down tenement where she’d been born to the rooms of a well-appointed suite on Gramercy Park, but her struggles hadn’t ended there. On New Year’s Day 1879, her life had taken a devastating and tragic turn, leading her to move house and change her name again. She’d chosen Adelaide, because she’d thought it to be a more respectable form of “Ada” (the name her mother had wanted to give her at birth), and Thom, because she’d wanted a name that would remind her of who she’d been without giving herself away.
Surveying her reflection in the mirror she said her name aloud as if it were an invocation to a prayer. “Adelaide Thom,” she whispered, savouring the sound of it as it tumbled off her tongue.
Adelaide next rehearsed her smile. Eye soft, lips together. Yes, that looks best. Something that’d once come so naturally now required effort. Putting her hand to her face, she traced the taut, wormy borders of her misfortune, a sinewy web of scars that ran from nose to ear, brow to chin, down the left side of her face. Where her left eye had been was a hollowed wink, a gruesome puckered dimple. With the tip of her finger she gave her cheek a gentle nudge in an attempt to return it to its proper shape. This was to remind herself of how she wished to appear—less crooked, more sincere.
“Half past eight and all is well!” Eleanor’s voice echoed up the stairs. This was her not-so-subtle way of letting Adelaide know she was about to open the shop. On this particular morning, however, the cheerful greeting was swiftly followed by the din of shattering crockery.
“Merde!” she heard Eleanor exclaim, followed by the sound of a stomping foot.
“Everything all right?” Adelaide called.
“No worries,” Eleanor replied. “I’m fine. All’s well.”
With that, Perdu let out a shrill whistle. “Top off the pot!” he cried. “Top off the pot!”
“Quiet, you insufferable heap of feathers!” Eleanor scolded. “This is your fault, for not letting me sleep.”
The bird gave a penitent coo.
Adelaide stayed put listening as Eleanor took up her broom and swept the remains of a broken teapot into a metal dustpan. With each rattle and scrape, the left side of Adelaide’s mouth quivered, eventually finding its way into an uncontrollable frown. Would the day ever come when she’d no longer be unnerved by the sound of something shattering? Even when a clumsy child dropped her penny-lick on the pavers, or a young rough tossed an empty bottle to the gutter, she could not curb her reaction. Worst of all were the times when the sound occurred only in her mind. Holding her breath, she waited for the memories that came along with the sound to pass, knowing they wouldn’t leave until she’d relived them.
She’d been standing on the sidewalk in front of her house on Gramercy Park, waiting for a hansom cab. Normally, she would’ve waited inside until the driver called at the door, but she’d been invited to a New Year’s soiree at Delmonico’s and she didn’t want to be late. Pulling her wrap around her shoulders, she’d bowed her head against the brisk wind. She hadn’t noticed the young woman in the hooded cloak coming at her, clutching a bottle.
“Fucking witch!” the woman had cried, throwing vitriol in Adelaide’s face.
In the next instant Adelaide felt the acid burning her flesh, she heard the bottle breaking. The last thing she remembered was the woman’s figure slipping out of sight.
If she believed in God, then she might’ve also believed that what happened was punishment for her sins. How ma
ny transgressions had she committed in her short life? God only knew. Lusting, thieving, lying—she’d done more than a bit of each. Or maybe what she’d been punished for was living an unconventional life. She was a New York woman through and through, rather than a lady. She did as she pleased, went where she wanted. She laughed immoderately, adored the music of Offenbach and shunned the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She rode by herself on streetcars and elevated trains. She went to the theatre, the opera house, the concert hall—alone. She took strolls through the fashionable (and unfashionable) parts of town, unattended. She’d had her share of rivals, but she’d done her best to ignore them—sideshow performers who’d resented the fact that she’d been “made” a freak (and a beautiful one at that) rather than born one, soothsayers and skeptics who’d tried (and failed) to uncover the secrets of her trade, jealous wives who’d resented her failure to share their addiction to domesticity.
Thank heavens her attacker had been caught and promptly shuttled off to Blackwell’s Island. The cruel madwoman turned out to be someone she knew, but barely—a magician’s assistant who’d briefly been part of the sideshow and then was cut loose. Adelaide couldn’t say what she’d done to incur the girl’s wrath. She couldn’t remember ever getting in her way.
If not for the kind soul who’d promptly come to her aid—washing her face with snow, helping her to her feet, getting her swiftly and safely to Bellevue and into a surgeon’s hands—who knows what might’ve been her fate? She’d been told that as she lay on the table of the operating theatre, a wondrous, inexplicable thing had occurred. After the morphia, ether and iodine, after the skillful plucking of her eye and the careful stitching of what little eyelid remained, after the tidying of the remaining flesh of her cheek, she’d died on the table. Evidently the shock of it all had done her in, and the surgeon, finding no pulse, had instructed his assistant to note the time. No sooner had the young man reached into his pocket to retrieve his watch than Adelaide had gasped and jerked back to life, causing the doctors assembled around her to startle and scratch their heads. She’d laughed when she’d first learned of it, relished the thought of their puzzled faces. How perfect that she should give her greatest performance on such a stage, with her blood weeping into the sawdust strewn about the floor.