Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room)

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

“I thought only people could have ghosts. Don’t only people have Anima?”

  Lord Axacaya laughed. “It’s a common misconception, pequeña, but you shall learn otherwise.”

  The enormous door, wide enough to admit a pushing throng of people, was closed. That didn’t stop Lord Axacaya; he strode forward and walked right through it. I hesitated, for that door looked very real and very hard. Then I forced myself to move onward, trying not to flinch, closing my eyes just before I reached the point of impact. But there was no impact, just a waft of something soft on my skin, as though I passed through a curtain of gauze. When I opened my eyes, I was standing at the top of a magnificent marble staircase. At the bottom, dark water gleamed. And beyond that was a wide glass wall through which I could see the silvery shadow of the open ocean.

  Lord Axacaya was already going down the marble stairs, and I hurried to catch up.

  “Where is the denizen of Bilskinir Baths?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “You are inquisitive, aren’t you?” He sounded amused.

  “I want to learn.”

  “So I see—watch that step.”

  I watched that step, and put my foot down into a bright spurt of pain. “Pigface Pogostick!”

  “What’s wrong?” Lord Axacaya turned back.

  “I think I stepped on a piece of glass.” He knelt, coldfire light blooming around his hands, casting his eyes into shadow and making his gold butterfly lip-plug glitter. He bent his head, and I saw, through the golden haze of his hair, the thin blue lines of a tattoo etched on his scalp. I tottered and put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself, and his skin was hot beneath my hand.

  “It’s just a little cut,” Lord Axacaya smoothed one finger along the slice on my heel, tracing the thin line of blood and smoothing the pain away. The snake tattoo on his arm wiggled, as though it were a real snake coiled around his arm. I shivered at his tickle, which felt as flickery as a snake’s tongue. He gently wiped the blood away with a hank of his hair, and I no longer felt pain or chill, but something much more fun.

  “Is that better?” His face was so close I could see that his eyes were not completely black. In their depths a blue spark shone, tiny but bright. When I had met him once before in Elsewhere, his eyes had been bright blue, the color of the desert sky.

  “Why are your eyes black?” I blurted.

  “Shall I tell you?” he asked teasingly. “I think I shall, though few others know. Once, when I was not much older than you, I was burned alive.”

  “Burned alive!” My stomach flipped in horror. “But how, then, do you live?”

  “The inferno I was cast into was made not of ordinary flames, but of a voracious coldfire. The coldfire did not consume me, though it settled into my flesh so that even today I can feel its heat. And it burned away my vision. I am blind, Flora.”

  “Blind! But how do you get around so well?”

  “There are more ways to see than with your eyes, Flora. And now I see much more than I ever did when I had ordinary vision. It was a fair trade.”

  It didn’t seem like much of a fair trade to me, at all. In fact, it was a horrible trade. I thought of never seeing the sunshine again, or Flynn’s silly face, or the color purple. Surely no trade could possibly make up for that—could it? You have to give to get, said Nini Mo. Losing your sight wasn’t a little thing—and yet, it had helped make Lord Axacaya the magician he was today. Powerful enough to be blind and yet to still see. And to hide this blindness from everyone. Maybe it had been a fair trade.

  Lord Axacaya smoothed a lock of hair back from my face, and his touch made me shiver.

  “The Art of Magick requires great sacrifices sometimes, Flora.”

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  He released my foot and stood up. “Ayah, so it did. Come.”

  I followed Lord Axacaya down the stairs. It was hard to believe that he was blind. He moved so fluidly, so surely, with never a footstep wrong. But then, he’d said he could see more than I could. I really wanted to know what those visions were.

  Every ten or so steps, the staircase leveled out into a wide landing. The hall was overrun with foliage; vines clung to the walls, thick with enormous flowers that filled the air with a heavy peppery fragrance. Trees grew along the edges of the stairs, their branches tangling overhead, so that the high ceiling was lost in a hazy lattice of leaves. The hot, wet air was hard to breathe.

  Lord Axacaya said, “The Baths were destroyed before I came to Califa, so I never saw them when they were open. But they are glorious, aren’t they?”

  Glorious and also a bit overdone, I thought. Plus, too wet. My dryness was rapidly turning soggy again. Huge green eyes glittered on the landing ahead of us and I pulled close to Lord Axacaya, only to feel foolish when I realized that the glow came from the glass eyes of an enormous stuffed walrus. The walrus was perched on a rock, its mouth open in a roar, tusks gleaming.

  I said, “But why have we come to the Elsewhere Baths? Why can’t we just go to the ruins of the Baths themselves? Isn’t the Loliga there?”

  “She is, but she’s hidden, guarded all around by various sigils, booby-trapped. Here, I can disable those sigils, so that I may visit her. I left the sigils undisturbed in the Waking World, to ensure that no one else might find her and try to meddle with her.”

  Ahead of us lay the enormous expanse of a pool, its surface black and flat. We reached the bottom of the staircase; the next step led directly into the water. A framework of metal struts arched over the expanse, supporting a high glass ceiling; directly across, the glass formed a transparent wall, and the edges of the pool lined up so perfectly with the ocean that they appeared to form one contiguous body of water. I stared at the ocean. There was something strange about it, and it took me a minute to realize that it too was flat, with not a ripple marring its stillness. And silent, too. No boom of surf, or thunder of waves. Silence as flat as the water’s surface.

  “The Salt Pool,” Lord Axacaya said. “Bilskinir’s glory. The true ocean is right there, but people preferred to bathe in a facsimile in which they were in no danger of being stung by jellyfish or eaten by sharks. To stay in the shallows where they could not drown. Most people want to stay where it is safe.”

  “Most people are dull and boring,” I said, and he turned toward me and smiled.

  “Are you most people, Flora Fyrdraaca?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m bored all the time, and it’s horrible. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being bored.”

  “Somehow I don’t think there is any chance of that, pequeña. Anyway, the Salt Pool allowed people to believe they were being daring. See—” I followed Lord Axacaya’s point. A long slide swooped down from the second-story gallery that overhung the south end of the Salt Pool. “And rope swings, too. And, of course, a denizen to fish you out if you ran into trouble.” At the north end of the pool, a lifeguard hut was perched on stilts, but it looked forlorn and empty, the denizen long gone.

  At the edge of the Pool, Lord Axacaya paused.

  His Command flared like a star, Words twisting and turning around themselves, forming a long sparkling fuse of coldfire. This fuse darted down and jacked into the water as neatly as a high diver, its glitter extinguished. The water again lay flat and black. Then, after a few seconds of stillness, the water began to churn, and the darkness swirled with an iridescent pearly light. The glow grew stronger, and the water began to froth and foam. A wave sloshed over the steps, wetting my feet, and I stepped back.

  A huge blue eye, the size of a small wagon wheel, peered up at me.

  Twenty-Three

  Shifting Colors. More Tentacles. A Threat.

  I GASPED AND CLUTCHED at Lord Axacaya. I had not imagined that the Loliga was quite so enormous. Her body was easily as big as a barouche; her limbs—six short arms and two longer tentacles—stretched the length of three teams of horses. But other than her size, she looked exactly like the small squids that y
ou see at the fish market. Those, though, lie dead and lifeless on a slab, their skin dull and gray. The Loliga’s skin was translucently white, dappled with purple shadows, and her eye glowed.

  “The Loliga,” Lord Axacaya said. “An etheric egregore of the ninth order trapped into the form of a giant squid. Don’t be afraid, Flora. She won’t hurt you.”

  “She tried to grab me before,” I protested.

  “She will not harm you as long as I am here. She is sorry to have scared you—see how her skin flushes? That is her way of communicating. She is offering her friendship. Be sporting and offer her your friendship in return.”

  Never let them see you flinch, said Nini Mo. So I knelt down and reached out with a tentative hand. I expected the Loliga’s skin to feel slimy, but instead it was satiny smooth. Lavender streaks bloomed under my fingers, then slowly shaded to amethyst.

  “She is very sorry she tried to hurt you,” Lord Axacaya said. I could feel his heat as he leaned over me, and a lock of his hair brushed my shoulder in a shivery way.

  “How do you know what she is saying?”

  “I spent many years looking for her and, when I found her, much time learning to communicate with her. Now we understand each other very well, the Loliga and I.”

  As he spoke, a long pearly tentacle enfolded out of the water and wiggled toward me. My nerve evaporated, and I scurried behind Lord Axacaya, putting him between me and those suckers.

  “She will not hurt you, Flora. I promise. Come, accept her friendship.” He tried to push me forward.

  “She’s trying to grab me!” Despite Lord Axacaya’s reassurances, I had a very strong feeling that the Loliga didn’t like me. Her tentacle was flushing a blackish purple—the angry shading of a bruise.

  Lord Axacaya said soothingly, “No, she’s not. Remember, I am here to protect you. I will never let anything happen to you, pequeña.”

  I was still afraid, but I relented, not wanting him to think me a baby I cringed as the tentacle touched my face, glided over my hair and shoulders. The caress was light and easy, however, and when the tentacle didn’t try to grab me, I felt slightly reassured. The brilliant blue eye was staring at me, its color deep and vivid as a clear noontime sky. Suddenly my fear was subsumed by pity. I knew what it was like to be trapped, to feel abandoned and alone. It’s a horrible feeling, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  The tentacle left me and undulated over to Lord Axacaya to gently pat his shoulder. Though the gesture made me uneasy—that tentacle was awful close to his neck, and I’d bet it could pop his head right off without much effort—he didn’t flinch.

  Lord Axacaya said, “The sigils that bind her are weakening, Flora. Not enough to free her, but enough to allow her to fight against them. Her reach extends into the City’s Current, and the earthquakes that threaten the City are caused by her struggles. If she is not freed, she’ll tear the City apart, destroy us all.”

  My triumph at being right that the Loliga was the cause of the City’s rumblings was blotted out by the horrific images filling my head: the City in flames, in ruins; Mamma, Poppy, Udo, the silly dogs, crushed, squashed, burned, dead.

  “You can’t let her destroy the City! You have to free her! Undo the sigils or something!”

  “The Loliga is trapped not by one sigil, but a series of sigils created and charged by Georgiana Segunda and then fused into one extremely strong Binding. Some of the small sigils have already unraveled. Others are fraying. But the fuse remains strong. The Loliga has slack enough to struggle, but not enough to escape.”

  “But couldn’t you just undo a few more of the small sigils, enough to let the Loliga slip out? Nini Mo escaped from the Virreina of Huitzil’s dungeon by using a sharpened toothbrush and an Intersection Sigil to cut through the bars of her cell and then squeeze through.”

  “Did she now?” Lord Axacaya answered. “If only it were that easy. The fuse remains strong. It would take a long time to untangle the sigils, and even longer to try to figure out the method Georgiana used to bond them together. We do not have that much time.”

  “Won’t she stop struggling if she knows we are trying to help her?”

  “She cannot wait. We cannot wait. The Loliga gestates—”

  I broke in, astonished. “You mean she is pregnant? How can an egregore be pregnant?”

  “Now is not the time, Flora, for a lecture in praterhuman reproduction habits. Let us just stipulate that the egregore was carrying a child when Georgiana trapped her—perhaps Georgiana didn’t know, or maybe she did not care. Now the egregore—the Loliga—is close to the end of her term. Soon her labor pangs will begin. Her struggles will increase, grow uncontrollable. And those struggles will destroy the City, leave her and her child trapped forever in the wreckage of the City.”

  The poor Loliga! The poor little Loliga baby! I leaned down again and patted her side. “We can’t let that happen! But what can we do?”

  “There is one hope. Georgiana used a Gramatica Word to fuse the sigil together. The problem is I don’t know which Word she used; she was too clever, and disguised it too well. Every Gramatica Word has an antonym, an opposite. If I knew what Word she used, I would know its opposite, and use this knowledge to reverse the fuse, release the Loliga. And for this, I need your help.”

  Lord Axacaya needed my help? “But what can I do? I don’t know anything at all.”

  “You know quite a bit, Flora. Don’t sell yourself short. And in this case, it’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

  “Who do I know?”

  “Paimon, the denizen of Bilskinir House. As you know, all good adepts keep close records of their magickal workings. If we can get a look at Georgiana Haðraaða’s Diario, I believe we’ll find the answers we seek. But her Diario is at Bilskinir House, under Paimon’s stewardship, and I fear that Paimon and I are not friends. I have tried to get him to allow me access to the Diario. But he has remained silent to my entreaties. Perhaps he thinks he is a strong enough denizen to stand firm, no matter what destruction the Loliga inflicts upon the rest of us. Or perhaps, with his family gone, he no longer cares if he is destroyed or not. I do not know. Anyway, he ignores me. But now the Goddess, may she consume us all, has sent me a solution. In the last fourteen years you are the only one Paimon has allowed entry into Bilskinir House.”

  “Me and Udo,” I said, in fairness to Udo, even if he didn’t deserve such kindness.

  “But it was you to whom Paimon offered friendship. He helped you before; perhaps he will again. At least he will listen to you, which is more than I could get him to do. Will you ask him for help? It is our only hope.”

  The big blue eye still stared fixedly at me, still angry but also full of entreaty. The poor egregore, lured and trapped, eventually forgotten and left to rot, unable to protect the new life within her. Fighting against her bonds, growing more and more desperate. And at last, destroying us all as she tried to bring forth the new life she had created.

  Didn’t Nini Mo say a ranger had a duty to free the oppressed? She wouldn’t allow the Loliga to remain enslaved, and she wouldn’t stand by and allow her City to be destroyed, along with everyone and everything she loved.

  And although it probably wasn’t exactly the best time to be thinking of myself, I couldn’t help but consider my own ambitions. If I helped Lord Axacaya out now, he’d owe me one. If I impressed him with my initiative and daring, he would see I would make an extremely worthy pupil.

  As though reading my mind (and maybe he was, in which case I should be more careful about my thoughts), Lord Axacaya said, “I know your ambitions, Flora. I know that you desire to be more than your family demands. In your own way, you are as trapped as the Loliga.”

  “It’s not fair!” I said, looking at the Loliga lying watchful in the water. Maybe my cage wasn’t as obvious as hers, but it was a cage just the same. “It’s not fair at all!”

  “You must follow your own Will. What is your Will, Flora?”

  “It’s my Will to b
e a ranger, not a soldier! And I want to learn Gramatica!” The words popped out. “Will you teach me?”

  “Learning Gramatica is not something to be undertaken lightly. It gets into your blood, into your bones, into your Anima and changes it. You have seen the changes it has wrought on me.”

  “I’m not afraid. And I’m not a child. I understand the consequences. Will you teach me? Please?”

  He didn’t answer, and I was afraid I had gone too far. But if you never ask, the answer will always be no, Nini Mo said. In the pool, the Loliga’s tentacles began to writhe, frothing the water into foam.

  Then Lord Axacaya said, “I must consider the implication of such an alliance. When all this is over, we shall discuss it again. We do not have much time, Flora, a day or two only before her labor begins. We must act swiftly. Will you go to Bilskinir and ask Paimon for his help?”

  “Ayah, I will,” I said, and Lord Axacaya smiled and kissed my hand.

  Twenty-Four

  Waffles. In Pig. Judge Advocate General.

  THE SWIM BACK FROM Bilskinir Baths seemed shorter, or maybe I was just more prepared. We didn’t surface at Woodward’s Gardens, but in the reflecting pool in the courtyard of Casa Mariposa, Lord Axacaya’s house. A thin pink dawn was beginning to edge the sky. I grabbed a cab and made it back to Crackpot Hall and to my room, via Valefor’s helpful hidden stairs, before full light. There, I crawled into bed and a sleep so deep and dark that I didn’t even dream.

  When I woke up, a plate of waffles and a pot of coffee, not quite cold, stood on my desk. My door was no longer locked, but I didn’t think for a minute that Poppy had lifted my confinement. Still, at least now I could get to the potty, and I wasted no time in doing so. When I reached for the tooth polish, I realized that Mamma’s toothbrush was back on the brush stand.

  Mamma’s boots were discarded at the threshold to her room, the pieces of her uniform were tangled on the floor, and her pistol lay on her bedside table. Her bed was strewn with snuggly dogs, who growled and shifted when I bounced up, but Mamma herself was invisible under a mound of blankets.