The Grimoire of Kensington Market

by Lauren B. Davis

  Smoke from Kyle’s pipe was thicker now, as was Srebrenka’s scent of cloves and sandalwood. A kind of fog hung low around the chamber’s ceiling, descending … impossible not to breathe it in, if one was to breathe at all. The room grew oddly bright, and the fountain no longer ran with liquid, but with luminous smoke. Even Badger was affected. He lay panting on his side, his feet twitching. The walls expanded and turned into richly panelled wood, hung with tapestries. The floor was covered with thick red rugs. A long table was set with golden plates, goblets, platters of roast pheasant, green grapes, poached trout, pickled beets, plump olives, creamy cheeses, salads with lettuce and apricots and walnuts, strawberry tarts, pecan pies and carafes of garnet wine.

  “Why not treat yourself to a little something?” Srebrenka said. “A little pheasant, an apricot? Help yourself, pretty Maggie.” Srebrenka poured a glass of wine into a golden goblet. It glowed. It smelled of violets and plums.

  Maggie’s mouth watered. She could taste it on her tongue. Other people were in the room now. Men with eyes like sapphires and teeth like pearls, women with cheeks the colour of peaches and lips like cherries. They smiled encouragingly. They purred their approval. Maggie wanted them to like her, to accept her as one of their own. Even Kyle. He stood among them, and was no longer thin and brittle and frozen. He was her little brother again, no more than thirteen, his hair curling around his ears, the mischievous grin on his face, his eyes bright and clear … Maggie reached for the goblet, but kept her eyes on Kyle. There was nothing wrong with him after all. It had all been a bad dream from which she was now awakened, here in this warm and well-appointed room. Look, see the glimmer in his eye. Her hand touched the goblet. It felt so oddly cold.

  “Drink a little, pretty Maggie.”

  Badger lay on the floor, panting. The way he was twitching didn’t seem natural, not even for a dog dreaming of chasing rabbits, or whatever it was dogs dreamed. He kept raising his head as though struggling to wake. Maggie looked down at her hand holding the goblet. Or was it? For a moment, it appeared more like a hollowed-out hoof, on a stem of leg bone. She heard something, from a great way off. Like a bird’s wings flapping. She stared hard at Kyle. What was that in his eye? He kept touching it, as though it bothered him. It made her own eye hurt, just to look at it. The faces of the people in the room shifted, melted and re-formed, but not in quite the same form. Their eyes were not quite so blue, their cheeks more bruised than blushing.

  “Drink up, I said.” The voice sounded vexed now.

  Maggie looked at the speaker. She knew this woman. But she didn’t look as she had a moment ago. Her hair was now black, with kiss-curls on her forehead, and now like a prism, full of fire, and now it was dull rust, and now it appeared as seaweed. There was something about dreams Maggie ought to remember. Things of importance depended on her remembering. Every thought flew away just as she was about to catch it. She stared hard at the woman and tried to focus. The woman aged, wrinkled, shrank, as her skin thinned and hung from her bones. Snow swirled around her.

  Maggie was very cold. She wanted to lie down and dream. How she craved it.

  The wing-flapping grew louder and Maggie remembered that such craving almost killed her once, a long time ago and very far away … She feared her chest would tear from the ragged shriek of craving building up inside … She hurled the goblet against the wall where it clattered and fell to the floor. As it bounced it flickered, oscillated, looked one second like a golden goblet spilling red wine, the next like the skeletal end of a caribou leg, spilling offal.

  “What a tiresome girl.”

  Srebrenka no longer looked like an ethereal spirit of the winter, but haggard and worn and ancient. Her hair was white and scraggly, her skin pallid, her fingers bony and sharp. A black shape swooped past Maggie. It circled Srebrenka and dove toward her. She whirled and covered her head.

  “What is that? What’s in here? What is that?” The shape flew at Srebrenka again. “No! You! How did you get in here? I do not permit it!”

  The flying and flapping caused the smoke to dissipate slightly. Maggie, from where she found herself sitting on the floor, watched as the ravens strafed Srebrenka. The woman held a long bone, and swung it around the room, trying to strike the diving, fluttering, zigzagging ravens. She kept screaming, demanding to know how they’d found their way in. What glamour had the birds worked, Maggie wondered, that Srebrenka hadn’t noticed them?

  “You should have killed them, you idiot!” Srebrenka yelled at Kyle. “Kill them!”

  “I can’t. They’re too fast, and I’m dreaming such a pretty dream.” The subject seemed to weary him.

  Srebrenka swiped and swatted but the birds kept coming. “Useless piece of dog shit! I should have left you in the snow to die like the others!”

  “I am not useless.” He sounded just like a little boy. “You love me. You’re not supposed to say things like that.”

  The birds cawed as Badger leaped into the fray, barking and jumping at Srebrenka. She struck at Badger and he yelped and jumped, snarling. She then drew back her arm and Maggie watched as the long bone she held came down in a great arc. She struck Kyle on the side of the head. It sounded like a rock hitting a hollow wooden bowl.

  Maggie screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE RUMPLED RAVEN LOCKED ONTO SREBRENKA’S head with his talons and pecked at her eyes as the other flew at her time and again, ripping and tearing the skin on her hands and face. Badger joined in and bit her legs and arms and belly. She shrieked and twisted and turned. She screamed but she could not shake them off. She stumbled and fell, blind and bleeding.

  Kyle had slumped to the ground near the fountain.

  Maggie stumbled to her brother and reached for him, but as her fingers met his he threw back his head and howled. She screamed as well for his flesh was so cold it burned. She pulled away as the ends of her fingers blistered. She knelt and called to him, but he convulsed, his back arching until it looked as though he’d snap in two. He let out a great cry and flipped over onto his belly, his hands clawing at the side of the fountain. Srebrenka groped for him, even as she fought the birds and Badger. She kicked at the dog and protected herself with one arm, pulling herself up to the lip of the fountain with the other. As she did, blood dripped from her wounds into the liquid silver, causing it to sputter and boil. Badger bit and tore at her belly and she shrieked, kicking more feebly. Maggie’s mind splintered into a dozen parts. She pulled at Badger, for surely Srebrenka was no longer a threat and she couldn’t bear to watch him savage her. The dog allowed himself to be pulled away, and then shook his head and whimpered. He stood panting and looking at her, his eyes hollow with fear.

  Maggie picked up her scarf from where it had fallen from Badger’s collar in the melee, and wrapped it around her hand to protect herself from Kyle’s frozen skin, and embraced him. The cold instantly shot through the fur she wore and the clothes beneath, into her skin and bone. She gritted her teeth and refused to let go. The birds kept up their attack, scratching and pecking. More blood fell into the fountain and then, her arms windmilling, Srebrenka tipped over and fell headfirst into the silver water. She struggled for a moment, and then was still, her head under the liquid. The ravens flew into the shadows.

  Kyle screamed. “My eye! My eye! I can’t stand the pain. Get it out, get it out!” He held his hands up at either side of his head and turned to Maggie. Tears, silver and thick, like mercury, flowed down his cheeks. She could see the shard, right there in the corner of his eye. “Take it out! Take it out!” he screamed.

  She wanted to but knew she mustn’t. “I can’t,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It won’t come out for me. It has to be you.”

  His face was that of some long-frozen corpse. He threw back his head and wailed like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. He tore at his eye until blood ran, and it joined that of Srebrenka’s in the fount
ain, drop by drop. He let out one final shriek and a small, shining piece of glass tumbled, as though in slow motion, from his eye to the fountain.

  As soon as it hit the surface of the liquid, something happened. The elysium began to change. Kyle fell backward into Maggie’s arms. His eye, where the shard had been, was torn and bloody. His skin was cold, but no longer burned her. She held him and watched as the liquid roiled. She pulled him away from the splashing. It appeared to thicken, to become prehensile, and it shifted colour. No longer silver. Darker. The colour of tarnished pewter, and then of wet driftwood, and then of coal. It pulled at Srebrenka’s corpse as though hungry for it, eager and impatient. It pulled her like a snake pulling a frog into its jaws, until she disappeared.

  Badger sniffed at Kyle and Maggie and whined. He looked unhurt but puzzled, as though he didn’t know what on earth had come over him. “It’s okay,” said Maggie, praying it was.

  Kyle seemed baffled. “Maggie?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Everything hurts.” The look on his face was one of indescribable grief. “What is this awful place? What have I done? Am I to blame for all this? Oh my God!”

  Maggie had no time to answer. The ground beneath them began to shake. A rumble rose from everywhere at once, and grew louder and louder, like eight freight trains coming from various points on the compass. Snow and ice tumbled down around them. Badger barked and barked.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Maggie.

  She dragged Kyle to his feet. His colour was better, but he was thin as an icicle and she feared he’d shatter if dropped. She could see no way out. The ravens had returned and flew in circles near the crumbling arches of the roof. The black liquid in the fountain churned and began to flow in reverse, so that it did not run down from the mouths of the ice bears, but ran up their sides, turning them black, making them look larger and more ferocious, and then encompassing them so they disappeared beneath the pitch. The liquid did not stop there but rose up in a pillar from the fountain, reaching with tarry fingers. The stench grew as the liquid swelled – of offal and blood and the sweet-sour tang of decay.

  Maggie sensed the liquid would reach the roof and then begin to fill the whole room until they drowned in its putrid grasp. “Do something!” she screamed to the ravens. To have come so far, to have found Kyle, and then to die here seemed impossibly unjust. Badger ran to the side of the wall where the bear had escaped and began digging, his front feet blurring with speed. The liquid ran down the walls and Maggie choked on the smell. She half carried Kyle to the wall. “Dig!” she said. “For your life, Kyle, dig!”

  She dug, scooping out ice and snow and flinging it behind her. The birds flew and cawed, avoiding the black gush. Kyle was weak and listless, his head lolling, his eyes rolling.

  They would die here.

  And then she felt something. A great weight, like a sledgehammer, pounded on the wall. She stopped her digging and put her palm against the ice. Yes. Someone was trying to reach them from the other side. The force was terrific. She pictured battering rams, catapults, some huge earth-moving machine. She pressed her face against the wall and it struck again, and the force knocked her back.

  “Badger, come!” she called. Whatever was coming through that wall, for good or ill, would crush everything in its way. Kyle had crumpled. She put her hands under his armpits and pulled him toward the stairs, away from the fountain, away from the fluid slipping slowly but inexorably down the walls. She called Badger again, her voice sharp with urgency, trying to break through his panic. He stopped digging, ran to her and put his tail between his legs.

  It was all she could do not to cover her face with her hands.

  In a great burst of snow and ice, and with a mighty, ear-piercing roar, the bear crashed through the wall. Maggie stood, ready to do something, although she had no idea what. The bear looked at her and Kyle and Badger and padded to them. He stretched his neck and opened his mouth. Maggie held her breath, sure Srebrenka has magically reasserted her influence over the beast but, instead of decapitating him, he picked Kyle up by the back of his jacket, as he might do a cub. He turned and bounded into the hole in the wall.

  The ravens squawked and flapped. “Badger! Come!” She ran, with Badger at her heels. She had to jump over a pool of black liquid in her path and Badger did the same. The liquid stretched toward them, searching, grasping. They dove for the hole, but instead of escaping to the outside, as the bear had done before, they found themselves in a tunnel. No sooner were they inside it then it closed up behind them, just as every path had done. The ravens swooped ahead. The bear’s rump was just visible before her. The tunnel twisted and turned and closed behind her with each step, forcing her to run or be buried. There should have been noise behind her, some sort of cave-in rumble, but there was nothing, just a terrible silence. Her breathing and the pounding of her feet were loud in her ears. The only light came from the strange white glow of the great bear plowing on ahead.

  And then, quite without warning, she was standing on a white plain, which stretched to the horizon. The bear had dropped Kyle and her brother sat between the bear’s forepaws, leaning up against one of them. The eye in which he’d had the shard was torn, swollen to hideous proportions, and blood trickled from both corners. Even so, he looked human again. Broken, perhaps, but human. His skin showed not a single silver swirl. Maggie approached, keeping her eye on the bear. Badger kept by her side, but his hackles were down and he did not growl. As she neared, the bear nuzzled Kyle. Kyle reached up and patted the bear under his great jaw. The bear made a low sound in his throat and licked the top of Kyle’s head.

  Maggie knelt beside him. “Oh, Kyle, your eye.”

  He patted his face. “Can’t see a thing out of it. But it’s funny. I see more clearly anyway. Everything,” he looked around, “is so sharp and clear. The colours so bright. I don’t even mind the pain.” He tried to smile. “It feels right to feel it, this kind of pain. I don’t remember much. Bits and pieces. But I have the sense of terrible things, and of doing terrible things.”

  The air smelled of metal, of blue ice. Maggie took his hands in hers. “You’re not to blame. Things were done to you.”

  “You know better than that. We who rode elysium have only ourselves to blame, especially for the pain we caused others.”

  Kyle’s voice was weak, but clear. It was too calm. Too much at peace. Maggie would not have him be soft to death, as Perchta had said. Not after all this. His hands were red, and mottled. He’d freeze soon. They all would. Even Badger was shivering. But where to go? Behind them was nothing but a huge mound of snow, and if ever there had been an ice castle, it was gone. Srebrenka? The fountain that was the source of elysium? Buried. Disappeared. Eaten alive by its own essence? Who knew? She only prayed it was gone for good.

  The wind blew up a swirl of snow, which danced across the surface of the plain like some sort of ghost before vanishing. The sky was a bluish dome, dotted with faraway stars. Her home might as well be on one of them. She stood up.

  “We can’t stay here,” she said.

  “There’s no place to go,” said Kyle. “And I don’t mind, really. I could go to sleep right here.”

  The bear, who no longer smelled of rotten seal meat, but had a clean scent, as though he’d rolled in the snow until all taint was washed away, nudged Kyle, first with his nose, and then with his paw. It spanned Kyle’s chest, but he used it gently.

  “I remember you. Hey, Fluffy,” said Kyle. “Good bear.”

  “Fluffy?”

  The bear pushed Kyle again. “It’s just what I called him.”

  The ravens fluttered down from wherever they’d been and settled on the top of the bear’s head. They began to chatter and run up and down the bear’s neck. The bear nudged Kyle and then turned to the birds and bobbed his head.

  “I think he wants you to get on his back,
” said Maggie.

  “Really?” Kyle looked into the bear’s face with his one good eye. “Are you still guarding me, you old furball?” The bear rocked back and forth and nudged him again. “I suppose I could give it a try.”

  The bear lay down on the snow, but in Kyle’s weakened state he needed help. Maggie let him use her hands as a stirrup and with him pulling and her pushing, they managed to get him seated high on the bear’s shoulders. The bear then turned and looked at Maggie and made a grunting noise.

  “Me, too, then?” The bear waggled his head. Badger would be able to keep up, if the bear went not too quickly. She climbed up. The bear was surprisingly comfortable. His fur was so thick, and so warm. She braced herself for when the bear stood and began walking, but nothing happened. The bear turned his mammoth head toward her and then to Badger and back to her. Well, it was the bear’s decision. “Come on, boy,” she said. “Jump!”

  Badger jumped, and she positioned him between her and Kyle. He seemed utterly calm, as though riding on the back of a polar bear was the most natural thing in the world. She squeezed Kyle’s shoulder and he half turned to her. “Are we going home? Will you take me home, Maggie?” He sounded about nine years old.

  “I hope so,” she said, hugging him around Badger. “But we’ll stay together now.”

  The bear began to walk, and then to trot.

  “Can you forgive me?” asked Kyle, keeping his face averted.

  “There’s nothing to forgive. It might just as easily have been me who got lost. And you would have come for me. I know you would have.”

  He said nothing. They both knew he probably wouldn’t have come after her if their roles had been reversed. But he might have. They would both, Maggie thought, cling to that. Maggie couldn’t help but notice Kyle’s strange affect, the way he oscillated between stiffness, almost as though he were an automaton, and a childlike fragility. It was doubtless the effect of his confinement, and the massive doses of elysium to which he had been subjected. He’d been walking in dreams and nothing but dreams for so long it would take him some time to return to himself, if he would ever truly be the man he’d once been.