This New & Poisonous Air

by Adam McOmber

  Illinca crept along the black hall, not afraid of ghosts or devils but of the maids—Dark and Light—who’d probably pinch her if they found her and tell her more cruel things about their dead Missus. She reached the oaken door at the end of the landing, the one through which she’d seen Herr Adle disappear earlier and knocked softly enough, making sure she’d wake no one else. A rustling came from within, and finally the door opened to show a crack of face, but the man who looked out at her was not Herr Adle. This person had straw-colored hair and a mole on his chin. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Is Herr Adle in the room?” Illinca said.

  The straw-haired man looked at her. “Who?”

  “Herr Heinrich Adle, the visitor,” she said. “This is his room.”

  The man seemed angry now. “I can assure you that this is no one’s room but mine. Are you one of the maid’s children?”

  She stepped back. Her feet were bare and the floor suddenly felt very cold. The man opened the door wider to peer at her, and in the shadows beyond him, Illinca saw Herr Adle’s pumpkin-colored cloak hanging from one bed post. “Are you not his friend?” she whispered, “the one who invited us to stay? Is that not his cape?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed as if what she’d said was completely mad. “If you’re through with your games, little girl,” he said. “I’d like to return to my sleep.” He slammed the door, and she refused to jump at the frightening loudness of the sound. Illinca walked the halls, fearing that Herr Adle had abandoned her, an idea that made no sense. Why could he play such a cruel joke? At a time of such uncertainty, there would be no advantage to duping a child. The maids seemed to know him and he’d certainly entered that room only a few hours before. His pumpkin cloak even hung on the post. So what had happened to put things so out of joint? She looked for clues in the house, but found only a large wooden clock in a room full of dusty books, some of which were larger than even her mother’s Bible. The clock had eyes painted on its face, two staring orbs, and in the darkness they were first her mother’s soft eyes and then her father’s. She put her arms around the big clock and held it, feeling it tick against her narrow chest, like her own heart beating.

  Illinca remembered a story her father had told her about a man who could change his shape at will, becoming an animal and then a man again. “He was a kind of devil, to be sure,” her father said. “He couldn’t live like a civilized person because he was always turning into a bird or a wolf or a bat and fleeing into the countryside, and when he turned back into a man, he never looked the same as the man he’d been before.” She wondered if Herr Adle was a thing like that, a changing demon, though part of her knew better. Only darkness and her own fear made her think such things. If Herr Adle changed, he did so in nature, not in form.

  When the dark maid woke her at dawn, Illinca asked if Herr Adle had abandoned her. The maid crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Of course not, stupid child. If he left you here for me to wipe your ass, I’d go after him myself and wring his neck. The last thing we need is another brat bawling about her cough and rash.” She found Herr Adle seated at the table in the pressed metal room, eating a breakfast of boiled eggs and bread. When he saw Illinca in her new dress, he acted like she was the daughter of the king, bowing to her and helping her into her own chair. She watched him carefully, not asking about the man she’d seen the night before. Instead, she checked for any trace of blond in his dark hair or the shadow of a dissolving mole.

  THAT DAY, THE CARRIAGE WAS HALTED on the road near a marsh, and when Illinca saw who’d stopped them, she felt like a hand was at her throat. The King’s Dogs, wheezing through their leather muzzles, ordered the carriage driver to dismount and open the door, hurrying the poor man along with their cudgels. They could certainly see Herr Adle and Illinca plainly enough through the glass, just as she could see them, and once the door was opened, one of the Dogs, who had a yellow crust built over his left eye said, “No one is to be on this road.”

  Herr Adle leaned against the brass handle of the carriage door and said, “I’m taking my daughter to her mother in the south. We understand the restrictions, but I’m afraid if I do not get her there soon, they’ll never see each other again.”

  The Dog glanced back at the other riders who were having a conversation of their own and then examined Illinca with his good eye. She tried to smile, which is what she thought a daughter of nobility would do. “You both should be imprisoned,” the Dog said.

  “The open countryside has become prison enough for us all,” Herr Adle said with poetic air, then he gave a mild cough, and the Dog drew back, blinking in surprise.

  Illinca started coughing too, as hard as she knew how, putting her hand over her mouth and attempting to appear frightened by the force of her expectorations. The Dog withdrew, circling his horse with the others. “Be certain not to stop along the way, imbeciles,” he said. “The Mortality spreads, you know?”

  “I’m well aware,” said Herr Adle, waving a hand dramatically, as if to draw air to his lungs.

  The carriage door closed, sealing Herr Adle and Illinca in shadows of mutual understanding. “Is that why you need me?” she whispered. “To play a fake daughter for you?”

  “Among other things, dear. Your services are not limited, but certainly men with daughters in tow are a more sympathetic lot,” Herr Adle said. “Especially sick little daughters. Good work on that piece of dying, Illinca. Even without my coaching.”

  “What if we’re stopped again?” she said.

  He touched the top of her small hand, stroked its veinless surface. “Then we’ll repeat the game of sickness. Hone our work, as good performers do.”

  “My father says those horsemen work for the king,” she said.

  Herr Adle sighed. “No one really works for the king anymore, dear. We’re on our own.”

  “Not us though,” she said. “We work together.”

  He patted her. “That’s right, and don’t worry, Illinca. You won’t be harmed. I’ll protect you. You have my bond.” Then he coughed once more, even though they were all alone, and there was no one for whom to put on a sickness show. The beads on the dead girl’s dress felt suddenly too tight against Illinca’s throat. “I thought you were pretending that,” she said.

  He waved his floppy hat. “Merely the aftereffects of stage play. The world is right. Now take your nap.”

  But when Illinca closed her eyes, she saw only the red comet of a rash running between her mother’s breasts, and now too she could hear its roar.

  That night, instead of going to another fine home, they stayed in a broken-down inn, partially blackened from an old fire and run by a crude-looking woman who’d cut her gray hair short, probably due to a case of vermin. There was a small tavern room with a bar of pine wood, and the woman kept an oddly dressed doll next to her while she worked. She seemed to recognize Herr Adle, and when he and Illinca were in the midst of eating an awful dinner of pickled ham and a loaf of hard bread, the barmaid asked, “Didn’t you have a different girl with you the last time you was here?”

  Herr Adle stiffened. “Keep to your business.”

  The barmaid squinted at them both, and Illinca thought her small pink eyes were piggish. “Least my business is of a clean sort,” the maid said.

  “You have obviously not taken a night’s repose in one of your stinking rooms if you labor under that delusion,” Herr Adle replied, turning his back on the crone.

  “Is it true?” Illinca whispered. “Did you travel with another girl before me?”

  He nodded absently, gnawing on a bite of greasy meat.

  “And she too played your daughter?”

  “That’s right, dear. But the Mortality took her some months ago.” He raised the brass cross that hung around his neck and kissed the hole at its center. “I buried her in a pretty place beneath some willows.” He coughed quietly into the back of his hand so the barmaid wouldn’t hear.

  “Did she give you the Mortality?” Illinca asked, wanti
ng to put her hand to his forehead as her mother had once done for her, but as she had not been allowed to do for her mother.

  “No one gives the Mortality to another,” he said. “It simply is. The plague’s in every element except fire, which won’t tolerate it. At any rate, I am not diseased.”

  “But you have the cough.”

  “I have a cough. Not all afflictions of the throat are the black death.”

  Illinca watched the barmaid pace, cradling her doll and cooing to it. “What was the other girl’s name?” Illinca said finally.

  He looked pained to recall, the crease in his face growing deeper. “She didn’t have a proper one, but I called her Petal because she was soft.”

  “Petal,” she repeated, committing herself to remembering that name, so the girl who lay beneath the willows would not be entirely lost. Then quietly, she said, “And did this Petal have a father you promised to deliver her to?”

  “Illinca,” Herr Adle said sharply. “I mean what I say about taking you to find the Irontooths.”

  She pushed her plate away, not angry but full of new understanding. Herr Adle made use of girls to create cover for his own activities, his visiting. Whatever the lie he’d told Petal, she’d taken it with her to the place beneath the willow trees, and yet knowing this did not make Illinca hate Herr Adle or even fear him. In fact, she imagined Petal had been happy, much as she was happy now. If girls were necessary to Herr Adle’s free movement about the country, then they were significant to him, even precious, in a way. Being necessary to someone was not unlike being loved.

  After dinner, Herr Adle took her by the hand and led her to a room where a filthy mattress lay on the floor stuffed with damp straw. He slept next to her that night, very close, almost holding her, and she was glad to have him there. She awoke before dawn to starlight drizzling through the open window and found that the dusty blanket had been thrown back and Herr Adle was gone. Slipping out of bed, she cracked the door and peered into the hall. A few doors down, a man with red hair and skin blotches (not the black boils, at least) stood smoking a reed pipe and talking to another man who slouched like a drunkard. The man with blotches noticed her first and gestured. “There’s the one he travels with,” he said of Illinca.

  She was frozen, unable to close the door or even slip back into her room.

  “Maybe she might be of some use in his stead,” said the drunken man.

  The blotchy one laughed. “Tight fit, that one. But I suppose after a few rounds she’d loosen up.”

  “Or we could do some fancy knife-work,” said the drunken man. “Age her a few years with artistry.”

  Illinca finally found the strength to close the door against their laughter and then sat with her back to the splintered wood. Her heart beat so hard against the door, she was afraid the men would hear it, and she could not say how she fell asleep again, reclining there, barring entrance to the room. In the morning, she roused herself, and once she realized no breakfast would be served, she gathered her things and went out to the black carriage, where Herr Adle sat bundled in his cloak. Only his eyes and the tip of his nose were visible, though, by his posture, she could tell his illness had worsened in the night. She reached into her folded skirt, feeling around for the right creature, and finally produced the one whose arms and legs were fused to the wooden wheel. She handed it to him and said, “For you.”

  He studied the thing with less than normal amusement.

  “I found a meaning for it,” she said. “It’s not just a toy—it’s like you. Always turning but unable to leave the wheel.”

  He half-smiled at the carving.

  “Who were those men in the hall last night?” she said.

  “Those?” he said, then coughed hoarsely. She had to wait for him to finish . “Those are the ones I see if no one better wants to employ me. I’m sorry if they scared you, dear.”

  “It’s all right.” Illinca clicked the heals of her shoes and said quietly, “Nothing to fear, sir. Nothing to fear at all.”

  They traveled on, sometimes sleeping in the carriage, sometimes in a convenient place they found. Illinca no longer asked about her father, instead centering her questions around the topic of Herr Adle’s health. They made three more visits, two at fine houses and one in a place that was no more than a cave with several naturally formed rooms, as dank and unlivable as any Illinca had ever see. A gray-haired woman lived there with a tall man whose skin was white as cream. The old woman offered to let Illinca inhale some powders that she said would make the dead visible to her. “I don’t need the dead,” Illinca replied. “Not while I have Herr Adle.”

  “Your friend is sick,” the old woman replied. “You’ll surely need powder soon to see even him, little one.”

  “I’ll soon need powder to see everyone,” Illinca responded. Herr Adle would have laughed, but the cave woman did not.

  “You know what your friend is, don’t you?” she asked.

  “A visitor,” Illinca said, firmly. “We visit together.”

  Now the cave woman grinned. Illinca turned away. She knew, of course, what Herr Adle was. She’d even come upon him lying naked with one of their hosts. His eyes had been closed at the time, and he didn’t know she’d seen. Certainly, she didn’t need to hear a mad old woman provide a vulgar name for his work. It was what he had to do to survive.

  She left the cave and found the white morning sky so big and full she thought it might crush her, and then when she saw Herr Adle lying on the side of the road like some discarded baggage, and she knew she had been crushed. Illinca ran to him and tried to remove the pumpkin cloak which he’d pulled over his face. “Don’t touch,” he said, which set off a fit of coughing. She hadn’t seen her mother get so ill, as her father had kept the two of them separate, hoping to protect Illinca from the disease. “Where’s the carriage?” she asked. The road outside the cave, as far as she could see, was empty.

  “The old driver took it,” Herr Adle whispered. “I couldn’t pay him or fight him for it anymore.” His legs were crumpled beneath him, bent oddly at the knee. Illinca looked back to the cave where the hag woman was with her powders and the pale man. There was no help to be found there. “Let me see what’s happened,” Illinca said, pulling at the cloak again, hard enough this time to force Herr Adle to release his grip. A black boil had appeared at the base of his neck, and the whole of it seemed to be pressing at his throat, as if a creature was trapped beneath the surface of his skin. The pressure made it hard for him to breathe, and Illinca forced herself to remain still and watchful as Herr Adle’s very essence seemed to struggle for escape. She thought again about her father’s story of the shape-changing demon. Whatever remained constant in such a creature, whatever ghost haunted its core, was what wanted out of Herr Adle now.

  “How does it look?” he asked, pressing his square, clean fingers against the boil.

  “We need to clean it,” she said. “I can get some water. I think I saw a pond.” But she wasn’t sure that she’d actually seen a pond, or more correctly, she’d seen many ponds, but had there been one within walking distance of the cave? When Herr Adle looked at her, she saw that the possibility of a pond didn’t matter. “Illinca, it can’t be cleaned.” He coughed again and this time pinkish liquid spilled from between his crooked teeth. She stooped to clean his mouth with the hem of her dress, but he pushed her away. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said. “I was acting so selfishly. I’d never heard of the Irontooths. But you know that, don’t you?”

  She crouched. “Everyone’s heard of the Irontooths. Stories of their strength precede them.”

  “I lied because I needed you to travel,” he said.

  “And you thought you’d be well,” she said. “You thought we’d be well. We were angels, remember?”

  “I was never that.”

  She sat down next to him in the cold dust of the road. “What did you do for Petal when she was sick?”

  “Sang to her,” he said.

  Il
linca tried to think of a song but realized all she knew were graver’s chants, so instead she said, “I’ll make a show for you instead. Something to look at.” She fetched her folded rag dress from the dead girl’s valise, took out all the wooden creatures and began placing them in a careful circle around Herr Adle’s crumpled form. As she placed each, she gave it a name. “This is Candle Flame because of its eyes. And this one is Cunt because it has no proper manners. And here are Dark and Light, the devil maids. Here are Fat Cap and Reed Pipe. This is Knife Blade and Willow Tree.”

  The features of Herr Adle’s face seemed finally at rest. “I know their names, dear,” he said. “I know all of them.”