The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  “A kindness to the old-timer, I suppose,” Russell said. “Been here—five years now, or near enough. So they don’t ask me to shift around.”

  “They haven’t made you lance-jack,” Edward said, the words coming out before he could consider all the reasons a man might not have received promotion, of which he would not care to speak.

  “I couldn’t,” Russell said, apologetic. “Who am I, to be sending off other fellows, and treating them sharp if they don’t?”

  “Their corporal, or their sergeant,” Edward said, a little impatient with the objection, “going in with them, not hanging back.”

  “O, well,” Russell said, still looking at the teapot. “It’s not the same for me to go.”

  He poured out the tea, and offered some shavings off a small, brown block of sugar. Edward drank: strong and bittersweet, somehow better than the usual. The teapot was homely and common. Russell laid a hand on its side as if it were precious, and said it had come to him from an old sailor, coming home at last to rest from traveling.

  “Do you ever wonder, are there wars under the sea?” Russell said. His eyes had gone distant. “If all those serpents and the kraken down there, or some other things we haven’t names for, go to battle over the ships that have sunk, and all their treasure?”

  “And mermen dive down among them, to be counted brave,” Edward said, softly, not to disturb the image that had built clear in his mind: the great writhing beasts, tangled masses striving against one another in the endless cold, dark depths, over broken ships and golden hoards, spilled upon the sand, trying to catch the faintest gleam of light. “To snatch some jewel to carry back, for a courting gift or an heirloom of their house.”

  Russell nodded, as if to a commonplace remark. “I suppose it’s how they choose their lords,” he said, “the ones that go down and come back; and their king came up from the dark once with a crown—beautiful thing, rubies and pearls like eggs, in gold.”

  The tea grew cold before they finished building the undersea court, turn and turn about, in low voices barely above the nasal breathing of the men around them.

  IT SKIRTED THE lines of fraternization, certainly; but it could not have been called deliberate. There was always some duty or excuse which brought them into one another’s company to begin with, and at no regular interval. Of course, even granting this, there was no denying it would have been more appropriate for Edward to refuse the invitation, or for Russell not to have made it in the first place. Yet, somehow, each time tea was offered, and accepted.

  The hour was always late, and if Russell’s fellows had doubts about his company, they never raised their heads from their cots to express it either by word or look. Russell made the tea, and began the storytelling, and Edward cobbled together castles with him, shaped of steam and fancy, drifting upwards and away from the trenches.

  He would walk back to his own cot afterwards still warm through and lightened. He had come to do his duty, and he would do it, but there was something so much vaster and more dreadful than he had expected in the wanton waste upon the fields, in the smothered silence of the trenches: all of them already in the grave and merely awaiting a final confirmation. But Russell was still alive, so Edward might be as well. It was worth a little skirting of regulations.

  HE ONLY HALF-HEARD Russell’s battalion mentioned in the staff meeting, with one corner of his preoccupied mind; afterwards, he looked at the assignment: a push to try and open a new trench, advancing the line.

  It was no more than might be and would be asked of any man, eventually; it was no excuse to go by the bivouac that night with a tin of his own tea, all the more precious because Beatrice somehow managed to arrange for it to win through to him, through some perhaps questionable back channel. Russell said nothing of the assignment, though Edward could read the knowledge of it around them: for once, not all the other men were sleeping, a few curled protectively around their scratching hands, writing letters in their cots.

  “Well, that’s a proper cup,” Russell said softly, as the smell climbed out of the teapot, fragrant and fragile. The brew, when he poured it, was clear amber-gold, and made Edward think of peaches hanging in a garden of shining, fruit-heavy trees, a great, sighing breath of wind stirring all the branches to a shake.

  For once, Russell did not speak as they drank the tea. One after another, the men around them put down their pens and went to sleep. The peaches swung from the branches, very clear and golden in Edward’s mind. He kept his hands close around his cup.

  “That’s stirred him a bit, it has,” Russell said, peering under the lid of the teapot; he poured in some more water. For a moment, Edward thought he saw mountains, too, beyond the orchard-garden: green-furred peaks with clouds clinging to their sides like loose eiderdown. A great wave of homesickness struck him very nearly like a blow, though he had never seen such mountains. He looked at Russell, wondering.

  “It’ll be all right, you know,” Russell said.

  “Of course,” Edward said: the only thing that could be said, prosaic and untruthful; the words tasted sour in his mouth after the clean taste of the tea.

  “No, what I mean is, it’ll be all right,” Russell said. He rubbed a hand over the teapot. “I don’t like to say, because the fellows don’t understand, but you see him, too; or at least as much of him as I do.”

  “Him,” Edward repeated.

  “I don’t know his name,” Russell said thoughtfully. “I’ve never managed to find out; I don’t know that he hears us at all, or thinks of us. I suppose if he ever woke up, he might be right annoyed with us, sitting here drinking up his dreams. But he never has.”

  It was not their usual storytelling, but something with the uncomfortable savor of truth. Edward felt as though he had caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye of something too vast to be looked at directly or all at once: a tail shining silver-green sliding through the trees; a great green eye, like oceans, peering back with drowsy curiosity. “But he’s not in there,” he said involuntarily.

  Russell shrugged expressively. He lifted off the lid and showed Edward: a lump fixed to the bottom of the pot, smooth, white, glimmering like a pearl, irregular yet beautiful, even with the swollen tea-leaves like kelp strewn over and around it.

  He put the lid back on, and poured out the rest of the pot. “So it’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be all right, while I have him. But you see why I couldn’t send other fellows out. Not while I’m safe from all this, and they aren’t.”

  An old and battered teapot made talisman of safety, inhabited by some mystical guardian: it ought to have provoked the same awkward sensation as speaking to an earnest spiritualist, or an excessively devoted missionary; it called for polite agreement and withdrawal. “Thank you,” Edward said instead; he was comforted, and glad to be so.

  Whatever virtue lived there in the pitted iron, it was no more difficult to believe in than the blighted landscape above their trenches, the coils of hungry, barbed, black wire snaking upon the ground, and the creeping poisonous smoke that covered the endless bodies of the dead. Something bright and shining ought not to be more impossible than that; and even if it was not strong enough to stand against all devastation, there was pleasure in thinking one life might be spared by its power.

  THEY BROUGHT HIM the teapot three days later: Russell had no next of kin with a greater claim. Edward thanked them and left the teapot in a corner of his bag, and did not take it out again. Many men he knew had died, comrades in arms, friends; but Russell lying on the spiked and poisoned ground, breath seared and blood draining, hurt the worse for seeming wrong.

  Edward dreamed of sitting with Russell: the dead man’s skin clammy-grey, blood streaking the earthenware where his fingers cupped it, where his lips touched the rim, and floating over the surface of the tea. “Well, and I was safe, like I said,” Russell said. Edward shuddered out of the dream, and washed his face in the cold water in his jug; there were flakes of ice on the surface.

  He went forward
himself, twice, and was not killed; he shot several men, and sent others to die. There was a commendation, at one point. He accepted it without any sense of pride. In the evenings, he played cards with a handful of other officers, where they talked desultorily of plans, and the weather, and a few of the more crude of conquests either real or hoped-for in the French villages behind the lines. His letters to Beatrice grew shorter. His supply of words seemed to have leached away into the dirt.

  His own teapot was on his small burner to keep warm when the air raid sounded; an hour later, after the all-clear, it was a smoking cinder, the smell so very much like the acrid bite of gas that he flung it as far up over the edge of the trench as he could manage, to get it away, and took out the other teapot, to make a fresh cup and wash away the taste.

  And it was only a teapot: squat and unlovely except for the smooth, pearlescent lump inside, some accident of its casting. He put in the leaves and poured the water from the kettle. He was no longer angry with himself for believing, only distantly amused, remembering; and sorry, with that same distance, for Russell, who had swallowed illusions for comfort.

  He poured his cup and raised it and drank without stopping to inhale the scent or to think of home; and the pain startled him for being so vivid. He worked his mouth as though he had only burned his tongue and not some unprepared and numbed corner of his self. He found himself staring blindly at the small, friendly blue flame beneath the teapot. The color was the same as a flower that grew only on the slopes of a valley on the other side of the world, where no man had ever walked, which a bird with white feathers picked to line its nest so the young, when they were born, were soft grey and tinted blue, with pale yellow beaks held wide to call for food in voices that chimed like bells.

  The ringing in his ears from the sirens went quiet. He understood Russell then finally; and wept a little, without putting down the cup. He held it between his hands while the heat but not the scent faded, and sipped peace as long as it lasted.

  The teapot is unremarkable in itself: a roundbellied, squat thing of black, enameled iron, with the common nail-head pattern rubbed down low over the years and a spout perhaps a little short for its width; the handle has been broken and mended, and the lid has only a small, stubby knob. Dr. Lambshead is not known to have used the teapot, which wears a thin layer of grey dust, but a small attached label indicates it was acquired at an estate auction held in Ireland circa 1957.

  Lot 558: Shadow of My

  Nephew by Wells, Charlotte

  By Holly Black

  As an auctioneer, I can tell you that there are only two things that make buyers bid on a piece. They want it for the money or they want it for the story.

  And even when they want it for the money, it’s the story that keeps them bidding as the numbers spiral higher and higher, past the reasonable limit they set, upward, to sweaty and exultant triumph. A young man looking to invest in an artist whose name he mispronounces—but knows is worth a lot—might actually be sold on his own story. Born in a grubby apartment to parents who never finished college, but look at him now—look at all that art on his walls—what a man of taste he must be! Or maybe he’s sold on the story of the artist himself, who died young and in debt—a tragedy that our investor finds romantic from his penthouse apartment with park views. Or perhaps it is the story of the piece itself that evokes a single memory—the tilt of the neck on a beautiful girl our investor never got the courage to approach but still burns for in his fitful dreams.

  Well, take a look at this next piece and see if its story appeals to you.

  Take a good, long look.

  It might appear to be a contemporary found-object sculpture, with its speaker-heart and diamond eyes. You might guess it came from a gallery in SoHo, but this piece actually dates from the turn of the century.

  The artist, Charlotte Wells, was born in a logging camp in the northeastern part of Maine. Her father was a cook. He and his wife lived in a ramshackle cabin with their three children—John, Toby, and baby Charlotte.

  In the winter, food was scarce, and that February had been worse than most. When a black bear was spotted, the loggers tracked it back to its lair and shot it for meat and the warmth of its pelt. As they made ready to drag the dead bear’s body back to camp for butchering, they realized it wasn’t alone in the cave. A bear cub cried weakly for its mother.

  Not sure what to do with it, the men brought the cub back to camp and dumped it in the snow outside the cook’s cabin. The bloody flesh of its mother was brought inside, along with her pelt. Young Toby and John found it and begged their mother to let them keep the little bear.

  Eric Orchard’s “Portrait of a Bear Unbound (with speaker)”

  “There’s no food to spare,” her husband warned.

  “Nonetheless,” said Mrs. Wells and nursed the bear cub along with Charlotte.

  Mrs. Wells would rest each of them on opposite hips, as though they were twins. It got to be that the bear seemed like just another baby, even sleeping beside Charlotte in her crib, thick fur tickling her nose and teaching her his bestial scent.

  They had to call him something, so Mrs. Wells named the bear Liam, after a cousin of whom she’d always been fond.

  Liam followed Charlotte around, never wanting to be parted from her side. When she began to crawl, he tottered around on all fours. When she began to walk, he stood up, too, much to the consternation of Mr. and Mrs. Wells.

  Charlotte’s first word was “Mama.”

  Liam’s first word was “Lottie.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Wells were surprised, but pleased. Liam turned out to be a quick learner. He had trouble holding an ink pen, and although his penmanship was to be despaired of, he was very good with sums.

  And when Charlotte was given a bear-fur cape, made from the pelt of Liam’s bear mother and lined in velvet as bright red as droplets of blood in snow, he did not mourn. He barely seemed to recall another life. And if sometimes he grew silent or withdrawn, Charlotte quickly jollied him out of his sulks with some new game.

  If Liam and Charlotte were inseparable as children, they were even closer in adolescence, always climbing trees and playing games and pulling at one another’s hair. But Liam never seemed to stop growing. Mrs. Wells had to use curtains and bedsheets sewn together for his shirts and trousers. Shoes were hopeless. And no matter how much food he ate, Liam’s stomach was always growling for want of enough. He gulped down huge portions of soup, drank the whole kettle’s worth of tea, ate an entire loaf of bread at a time, and, on at least one holiday, devoured an entire haunch of salt-cured venison.

  By the time he was fifteen, he towered over Mr. Wells and could carry a felled tree on his back. His strength was so great he could no longer control it. One afternoon, while playing a game of tag, he reached for Charlotte, and instead of touching her shoulder lightly with the pad of his paw, he slashed her cheek with his nails.

  She screamed, blood soaking her dress, and soon the whole camp was gathered around Liam, looking at him through narrowed eyes. A few had brought rifles.

  “He didn’t mean to,” Charlotte shouted, burying her face against his fur.

  The crowd dispersed slowly as she wept, but not before Liam saw in each of their faces that they were afraid, that they had been afraid for a long time. He would never be one of them. Mrs. Wells saw it, too.

  “Liam,” Mrs. Wells said, later that night. “You can’t stay here anymore. It’s not safe.”

  “But Mother,” said the bear. “Where will I go?”

  “Perhaps it is time for you to be among your own people,” said Mrs. Wells.

  He looked around the far-too-small kitchen, where even if he hunched over, the tips of his ears scraped the ceiling. He touched the stool that creaked underneath him and glanced across the table at the tiny, bird-boned woman with the silvering hair. “I do not know their ways,” said Liam.

  Mrs. Wells stroked his cheek like she had when he was small. “Then go to the big city down east. All manner of folk live
there. All manner of different customs. Maybe there’ll be a place for you, too.”

  Liam nodded, knowing that she was right. “I will leave in the morning,” he said.

  Mrs. Wells packed up cheese, bread, apples, preserves, and sausages for his journey. Mr. Wells gave Liam five shiny dollar coins to get him started. John gave him a fishing pole so he’d be able to catch some lunch any time he wanted. Toby gave him a Bible and a flask of the strong liquor they distilled from potato peels. It wasn’t a small flask, but in Liam’s paw, it might as well have been a thimble.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” Liam asked. “Won’t she come and kiss me good-bye?”

  “She’s taking this very hard,” Mr. Wells said. “Feels responsible.”

  “Is she very hurt?” asked Liam, thinking of the marks on her face. Wondering if they would scar. Wondering how it would be for her if they did, for she was thought of as a great beauty and much admired. Would that change?

  “She’ll get better,” said John. “Lottie knows you didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  “And we all know she’s not vain,” said Toby, which made Liam feel even worse. Toby’s mouth lifted on one side. “I wager you’ll always be her favorite.”

  “Tell her,” Liam said in his deep, growling voice. “Tell her that I will write.”

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Wells, neither of them mentioning that mail took ages to find its way up to their town.

  He embraced them, one by one. He tried to be as gentle as he could, tried not to crush them against him, tried not to press his nose against their necks as he drew the scent of them into his lungs one final time.

  Then, sack of food tied to the fishing pole, fishing pole slung over his shoulder, Liam started the long journey south.

  He walked for half the day, stopping to eat everything Mrs. Wells had packed for him. His stomach hurt less, but self-pity still gnawed at his gut.