Elementary

by Mercedes Lackey

  Hyr obliged, whisking up and down her lush body. When he swirled back into his bottle again, Mme. Goltier drenched herself with her signature scent. The lady leaned forward and embraced Aurelia, surrounding her in a heady, sweet cloud. “Ah! I feel myself again. Mlle. Aurelia, I am forever in your debt.”

  “It is for France,” Aurelia said modestly. “The House of Rupier would never let her down.”

  “In her name, then,” Mme. Goltier said, highly amused, “I gratefully accept your service.”

  • • •

  “Will the danger to Mme. Goltier pass?” Aurelia asked after she had informed her master of the evening’s events in the safety of his hidden workroom the next day.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” M. Rupier said, toying with a jar of priceless musk. “That is the risk she takes. You should be proud of her, as I am of you.”

  “I am . . . though she intimidates me. We have so little in common.”

  M. Rupier laughed. “She intimidates me, too! But I am grateful to have one such as her to protect the rest of us. It does not matter what the shape of the bottle, my cherished apprentice, but what good God pours into it.”

  Aurelia agreed. “In that, there is no deception.”

  Fly or Fall

  Stephanie Shaver

  Zephyrs once enticed Aurelia with secrets; now they left her alone. She briefly wished that she could summon them into her kitchen to cool it down, then immediately cast the thought aside and cursed herself for thinking it. No more. Never again.

  Chicago shouldn’t be this hot, not this late in autumn, but the weather didn’t care what should or shouldn’t be. She’d flung open the back door and done everything she could to minimize her time at the cookstove, but even so, the kitchen was hotter than the seventh circle of Dante’s Hell. When this was over, she vowed to take a bath. And if she had to go jump in Lake Michigan to do so, well, she’d take that chance.

  “How are you feeling, Miss Foster?” Aurelia called as she pulled the charlotte russe from the icebox and prepared to unmold the pudding by setting a plate over it.

  “I feel fine, Miss Weiss,” Alice Foster responded. And she did sound fine—better than Aurelia, in fact, and in no way affected by the sweltering heat of the kitchen.

  Aurelia glanced over to where Alice played with her doll by the pantry door. Mrs. Foster had assured Aurelia that she’d find a nursemaid for her only child soon, but “soon” had yet to happen. Instead, Mrs. Foster saw to her daughter’s lessons and upbringing, and on nights like this—when entertaining dinner guests—Alice was sent to the kitchen. It wasn’t a burden on Aurelia; Alice usually took her dinners in the kitchen regardless, and she was a good child. Mostly.

  “Just a little while more.” Aurelia said a little prayer and gave the pudding mold a ringing thump. It slid out with no trouble, and she allowed herself an undignified grunt of satisfaction. “I’ll get you your dinner shortly.”

  “That’s okay,” Alice said, stroking her doll’s hair. The cloth poppet had been decorated to look like her—golden yarn for hair, blue glass buttons for the eyes. “I’m playing with my friend.”

  The pudding was the capstone on what had been a challenging meal. The Fosters were entertaining visitors doing work for the World’s Columbian Exposition coming next year, and at least one had informed Mrs. Foster only a day before the dinner that he would “rather avoid meat.” The season was late, but Aurelia had thrilled to the challenge. She’d broiled mushrooms and glazed them with wine, prepared a cold potato omelet española, and cracked a can of French peas, which she’d seasoned heavily with butter and chervil. Other delights wove their way through the courses: crisp lettuce drizzled with Roquefort dressing, split artichokes with drawn butter, and a plate of fresh cheeses. The relish platter was a foregone conclusion, piled with her five favorite homemade pickles. She’d even given up some of her precious half-sours, as the guests were all from New York City, so she thought they might like a taste of their hometown.

  And there’d been meat, of course. She’d sent out platters heaped with raw oysters on ice, garnished with lemons from Florida. On another platter she’d put boiled calf’s tongue over a bed of spinach. A side of dark mustard and pickled onions had gone with that course, along with thin slices of rye bread. At the meal’s heart was a larded tenderloin of beef carved tableside by Oscar, the house butler.

  She finished the charlotte russe with dollops of sweetened whipped cream, and blew the pudding a kiss as it was carried out to the dining room’s boisterous crowd.

  Victory. That’s what this felt like. The rush and panic of food service was enough to drive all the worries out of her mind. For a few moments she stood there, wiping her hands on her apron, feeling confident and sure. Like she’d finally run far enough to escape her curse.

  “Very well. Alice,” she said, turning around, “it’s time for your—”

  The girl lay on the floor, thrashing.

  Alarm welled up inside Aurelia. She bolted over to find Alice’s eyes rolled up in her head and her hands clammy. Aurelia heard the door from the servant’s hallway scrape and turned to see Julius, the butler’s son, standing there.

  “Find Mrs. Foster. Quickly,” Aurelia told him, and he dashed off.

  Moments later, Grace Foster arrived, moving as quickly as her petticoats would allow her. She knelt by her daughter, a glass bottle in her hand. The many jeweled rings on her fingers flashed as Mrs. Foster swiftly uncorked the bottle. Aurelia caught a brief whiff, like incense and alcohol. Mrs. Foster measured out a teaspoon of syrup and extended it to Alice.

  “No—” the girl moaned, but the moment her mouth opened, her mother stuck in the spoon and held it there, waiting until Alice swallowed.

  “She’ll be all right,” Grace said calmly, tucking aside a stray strand of golden hair that had dared to escape her tightly coiled bun. “Julius, would you be a dear and carry Miss Alice to her room?”

  The young man nodded and picked up the semiconscious girl, her limbs flopping limply at her sides.

  “She hasn’t had her dinner yet, Mrs. Foster,” Aurelia said as Julius carried her down the servant’s passage, toward the flight of stairs that led to her room on the third floor. “Should I make her up the usual? Milk toast and broth?” After an episode, Mrs. Foster always wanted her daughter fed invalid food.

  But Grace shook her head. She looked weary and drawn, nearly as pale as her sickly daughter. “She’ll be dull after taking the Soothing Syrup. Best let her sleep, Miss Weiss. If you could have something prepared for the morning, though, that would be ever so kind of you.”

  “Very well, Mrs. Foster.”

  With her evening unexpectedly cut short, Aurelia grabbed a bottle from the pantry, then sat down on the back doorstep and unlaced her shoes. Toes wiggling in the open air, she opened the bottle of ginger beer and took a long sip. She was too hot and weary to care who saw her.

  The sun had long since set, leaving only the ambient glow of gaslight from the Foster mansion’s windows. The gardens were an enigma of smudged outlines, darkness upon darkness.

  The kitchen door banged, causing her to start. She twisted mid-sip to see Oscar entering with a stack of finger bowls.

  “Ah, Miss Weiss,” he said, setting the silver bowls in the copper sink. “Our guests send their regards. One asked if you had ever lived in New York?”

  She swallowed her ginger beer, aware that her cheeks were burning slightly. “I did once,” she said. “Why?”

  “Something on the pickle tray,” Oscar said. “He said he had only seen the like there.”

  So the half-sours had been appreciated. She felt a certain pride in that—and relief that the question entailed nothing more.

  When he’d gone, she gazed out over the darkened garden. Tonight’s work may have been done, but tomorrow’s required her to set out a few things. She needed to soak salt cod and beans and
start the day’s bread rising. Finishing her drink, she climbed to her feet and turned to go back inside.

  The dishes began to rattle.

  Aurelia froze in the doorway, heart hammering, mouth dry. The hum and vibration of glass, china, and metal surrounded her. The old fear filled her as she waited, ears straining, terrified of not hearing it—

  In the distance, a train whistle blew. Her shoulders drooped with relief. One day she wouldn’t have this involuntary reaction every time a door banged or the railroad that ran too close to Prairie Avenue sent a locomotive barreling down the line. One day, the feeling of freedom wouldn’t be so fleeting, or so easily demolished. One day she could start having a life.

  Maybe in a year.

  Maybe in ten.

  Probably never.

  Straightening her spine, she headed to the pantry to start scooping out flour for the bread.

  • • •

  In her dreams . . .

  . . . she entered the opium joint with the sylphs and the zephyrs swirling around her. The cheap wall hangings fluttered. The proprietors backed away, fearful.

  In her dreams . . .

  . . . she pointed, and the gleeful children of Air set forth, knocking over pipes and snuffing open flames, sending the poisonous smoke swirling both up the stairwell and out the basement windows.

  In her dreams . . .

  . . . there was no question of her Mastery. The zephyrs obeyed. The sylphs whispered in her ears. And Millicent knelt at her feet, sobbing, begging to be let back in. To be forgiven.

  That was, ultimately, how she knew it to be only a dream. Millie had never begged.

  Aurelia drifted awake, allowing the dream to float away. She opened her eyes on her spartan bedroom in the Foster mansion. A bed, a dresser, a chest, a nightstand, and a washstand. Nothing as sumptuous as what she’d grown up with, but she found she didn’t really miss all the frills and ruffles. She’d rather have a kitchen packed full of tools than a bedroom trimmed in eyelet lace.

  She washed up, then put on her shirtwaist and skirt and wandered into the kitchen, her hair untidily tucked into a bun. Oscar sat at the long table in the middle of the kitchen, polishing silver in the predawn light.

  “Good morning, Miss Weiss,” he said, setting down the tureen he’d been working on.

  “And to you, Mr. Pannier,” she replied, walking over to wash her hands in the sink. “Would you like me to start some coffee?”

  “I would rather tea, if you do not mind.” His English was faintly stilted. Despite a decidedly French last name, Oscar Pannier had emigrated from Germany to escape discrimination for being a Jew. Aurelia rarely heard him speak German—usually only when he was frustrated or angry. Two things that Oscar rarely exhibited.

  “Of course not,” she said, shaking droplets off her hands. “I’ll have it going in a moment.”

  Oscar snapped his fingers, recalling something important that had slipped his memory. “Mrs. Foster asked that you stop by the chemist and procure a fresh supply of Soothing Syrup for Alice. They are on the dregs of the last bottle.”

  Aurelia remembered that one pungent whiff of the medicine that Mrs. Foster had given Alice last night, and a shiver ran down her back.

  There was a reason she’d been dreaming about Millicent.

  The only people in the kitchen were Oscar and her; indeed, they were probably the only ones awake in the house at this hour. Even so, she lowered her voice for what she had to say next.

  “I don’t like that . . . that nostrum, Mr. Pannier,” she said. “Isn’t she long past teething? Don’t you think it’s odd that we have to keep giving her more and more?”

  When next he spoke, Oscar’s voice had lost its warm familiarity. “Is Alice your child, Aurelia?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then do as your employer requests, my girl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But as she set about getting the morning meal ready, Aurelia could feel an idea forming in her head. And by the time the house had awakened to plow through plates of her biscuits, codfish cakes, eggs, and bacon, she knew what else she’d need to buy when she was out and about.

  • • •

  Aurelia sniffed the mostly empty bottle, then touched one small drop to her tongue. Bitterness flooded her mouth. Yes. No doubt. The aroma alone gave it away—Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was little more than adulterated laudanum.

  It was said that the poison was in the dose. If so, Aurelia could think of no dose of opium that was not poison. Her sister’s downfall had only confirmed this notion. That such a substance should be marketed to children was despicable.

  She also knew herself to be alone in this thinking. Women like Mrs. Foster didn’t deliberately poison their children. Aurelia suspected Grace even thought she was doing Alice good.

  Aurelia sat on her heels in the pantry, eyes closed, the flavor rolling in her mouth. There was nothing quite like the earthy-incense bouquet of opium, so reproducing it would not be easy—if possible at all. Then again, an exact duplicate might not be necessary; her nose, she knew, was far more discriminate than most, and Mrs. Foster and Alice probably wouldn’t detect a minor difference.

  Sugar was added to the nostrum to offset both the opium’s burnt bitterness and the sting of the alcohol in which it had been dissolved. The bitterness could be likened to a tincture of blessed thistle, a common enough decoction for nursing mothers, and of no harm to a child. But what she really needed was something to ease the transition as Alice’s body was weaned off the drug.

  She had found such an herb once, in her old life. She knew it by scent rather than name: burnt and green. And finding it hadn’t been easy, despite her knowing where to go. She’d been to nearly every shop in Chicago’s thriving Chinatown before she’d found it. She’d watched as the herbalist poured a mix of charred leaves and sticks into a waxed bit of paper, thumping the jar to get the last of it out. Now she shook the contents of that packet into a blue glass jar half-filled with strong spirits. She capped the jar and shook it violently. The herbs would need a week to extract, and then she could strain and set about using the resulting tincture.

  She heard movement in the kitchen and poked her head out to find Alice opening the door to the cookstove and peering inside. Aurelia cleared her throat, and Alice spun about, a guilty look on her face.

  “Checking my cookstove for small cakes?” Aurelia asked.

  Alice grinned. “No,” she said. “I was looking for my—” She began to cough, great, wracking spasms that tore at her lungs and turned her even whiter than she already was.

  Mrs. Foster suddenly appeared, looking annoyed.

  “Alice!” she said sharply. “What are you doing in here?” She looked to Aurelia. “I’m sorry, Miss Weiss. My daughter needs to learn to not be underfoot. Come here, young lady.”

  Alice recovered from her spell and closed the cookstove door, then reluctantly walked over to her mother. Grace gave Aurelia a short nod before herding her daughter out, one hand on the back of the child’s neck.

  When they were gone Aurelia walked over to the cookstove, opened the oven door, and peered inside.

  Empty.

  Well, what did you expect to find? she thought as she shut it. Salamanders?

  Still, Alice was a very peculiar—but sweet—child. Aurelia had to wonder what it was she’d been looking for.

  Aurelia went back to the pantry for some jam jars and pickles. She thought of her sister, who had never been so good at making preserves, but had composed the most beautiful cakes and pastries—partly because she’d employed Air spirits to whip her egg whites rather than spending the time and effort to do it herself. Despite being very well off, Aurelia’s grandmother had used her kitchen for teaching magic. The discipline of following recipes combined with the intuition to adjust them translated neatly to magic, as did the grueling ho
urs spent in too-hot kitchens. Aurelia had loved it. Millie had hated it. It was probably why she’d been the first to test her magic—the sooner she got out of that kitchen, the happier she’d be.

  But she failed, Aurelia thought as she separated eggs, putting the whites in a shallow pie plate. And I didn’t fail, but I didn’t succeed. I just . . . didn’t finish.

  Fly or fall, her grandmother had always said. But Aurelia had picked neither.

  The crash of glass and a scream broke her reverie.

  Aurelia hurried down the servant’s hallway, poking her head out the foyer door. Two people—Mr. Foster and Oscar—stood in the foyer. Shards of crystal glinted on the floor.

  “Good heavens, a hair more and it would have hit me!” Mr. Foster was saying.

  “You are sure you are all right, Mr. Foster?” Oscar asked.

  “Quite! But I can’t say the same for our bank account once we fix this. We’ll need to replace that gasolier, and preferably before next week’s soiree. Mr. Pannier, could you—”

  Aurelia retreated back to the kitchen.

  There was a rational explanation for this, she told herself. Sometimes, things fell. It didn’t mean—

  It couldn’t mean—

  She looked toward the pantry, where the blue glass jar was.

  It didn’t mean anything. It was just a coincidence. She needed it to be a coincidence.

  Just for a few weeks more.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, the “coincidences” refused to cooperate.

  After inspection, Julius had proclaimed that the gasolier’s ceiling hook had come free of the joist it had been bolted to.

  “Must’ve been too heavy,” he told Aurelia one day as she whisked fresh cream into lofty peaks. She’d nodded and then went back to ignoring him, keeping her mind as far from the mysterious accident as she could take it.

  Once the herbs had extracted into the spirits, Aurelia faced a new challenge: getting to Mrs. Foster’s bottle. Which would require her to somehow access Mrs. Foster’s purse. She wished she was better friends with Agnès, Mrs. Foster’s personal maid, but Aurelia’s overtures had failed to build any friendship between them. Like Oscar, Agnès was originally from Europe—France, in her case—but unlike Oscar, her grasp of English was not terribly strong. She kept to herself.