The Cabinet of Earths

by Anne Nesbet

  “Oh, Maya!” said her mother. “You poor girl. Leave those books and go walk around the block or something. It’s almost five, anyway.”

  At five she was supposed to meet Cousin Louise.

  Cousin Louise!

  But she did not want to see Cousin Louise. Some part of her really, really didn’t want to see Cousin Louise.

  In fact, so much irritability was crawling about under her skin that when her mother leaned over to give her a kiss, Maya actually flinched.

  “Maya, what’s up with you? Something wrong? Tell me about it, dear.”

  “I can’t,” said Maya. “I’m sorry. I’m late. I can’t”—and the impatience pulled her like a very taut string, right out of the apartment and down the stairs.

  Because there it was, the source of all that impatience and irritability: She knew now—she knew!—she could save her mother. The thing is, when you can do something, you get itchy, you get impatient, you feel you must. Before time runs out, or the tide changes, or the train leaves. And there were things she had to do, or it was all no good. Going back to see the foremost Fourcroy, for example. It was awful, but she had to arrange things with him somehow, for her mother. After that, it would be all right. The Cabinet was waiting impatiently. The Cabinet was beautiful, and it would be all right.

  And no one could know anything—anything—about it. She could not say a word.

  She was late for Cousin Louise, who was sitting alone at her café table, no coffee before her yet. Of course. The waiter wouldn’t even come by without Maya there; that’s why Maya was always so careful to show up on time. Until today.

  Her bad mood had swallowed her up. She poked at her drink viciously with her spoon and wouldn’t even look up at Cousin Louise for the longest time.

  “Well,” said Cousin Louise eventually, her voice as level as ever. “I gather you are no great fan of the passé simple. Nevertheless.”

  I am being unreasonable, thought Maya, but somehow she couldn’t stop being unreasonable. Unreasonableness seemed almost to be pouring into her from elsewhere, into her and through her and drowning out everything else.

  The purple-eyed Fourcroy. He was the one who could take the mortality right out of a person’s mother, extract it, and bottle it up. And then it would be Maya’s job to keep that bottle safe, Maya and the Cabinet of Earths. . . .

  “—Fourcroy,” said Cousin Louise. Maya looked up in surprise. Cousin Louise seemed to have been speaking already for some time.

  “Not as young as he seems,” said Cousin Louise. “I’ve thought it over, and I’m sure. Our unlucky family! Always the same man. Can it be? Untouched by time, eternally young—”

  “Immortal,” said Maya, and then her mouth clamped shut, and she couldn’t speak at all.

  “Well, now,” said Cousin Louise. “Immortal? That seems very unlikely.”

  How had the word even slipped out? Because it was definitely a slip. It was almost talking about the Cabinet itself, to say something like that. Maya sat up a little. Something was waking up in her, something buried under-neath all the static of her unreasonably bad mood.

  She looked up at Louise and made the only sound she could make at that moment, a sort of tight-lipped hum.

  “Maya?” said Cousin Louise.

  And Maya took the bottle her drink had come from and held it up like an idiot, right in front of Cousin Louise’s face. And made that foolish sound again.

  “Maya, no need to grunt,” said Cousin Louise. “The word is bouteille. Noun, feminine. And in any event, please don’t wave the poor bottle about. You can put it down.”

  “Yes,” said Maya. She could speak about soda. “Yes, exactly. Bouteille. F-f-f-f—”

  But there she got stuck again.

  “Fourcroy,” said Cousin Louise, and though it was hard to tell, she seemed almost to be thinking about something.

  The waiter, misunderstanding, had already brought another bottle of soda, and had, what’s more, ignored Louise’s instructions to take it back. Maya put her finger on the bottle, on the cool beads of water condensed on its side, and thought very hard about soda so she wouldn’t get stuck again.

  “So. You are saying: the immortal Fourcroy,” said Cousin Louise, and she leaned back a little in her chair. “Did I get that right?”

  “Yes,” said Maya, patting the bottle of soda, just to be safe. “Thank you.”

  And then they ran through some verbs, all the same.

  Maya was still sitting there mulling things over after Cousin Louise left—just noticing that the irritability had let up a bit, like an ache once you finally take the medicine your mother keeps offering you—when she looked up and saw Valko coming her way and smiling.

  “Hey, have some of this,” she said to him, and pushed the extra bottle his way.

  “What’s up?” he said, plopping into Cousin Louise’s chair. “You look pretty thoughtful.”

  “Families,” said Maya. “Heredity. You know.”

  “Test isn’t until next week,” said Valko.

  They were studying genetics in their biology class. Maya had tried to force her way through the biology textbook, but it was a hard slog. And her mind kept wandering off.

  Let’s see. If your great-great-grandfather’s sister is, say, a witch, and then data is missing for a few generations, and then your mother is clearly not a witch, though admittedly a little bit quirky around the edges, and then experts in the area of witchness tell you you are a witch, even though the only evidence for that so far is making miniature Cabinets of Earths and nearly being swallowed alive by the big one—well, the only solid genetic conclusion you can draw from all that is this: magic is recessive.

  But what about luck?

  “My Cousin Louise says we’re an unlucky family,” said Maya to Valko. “Do you think that’s possible? Unluck-iness is a trait, like brown hair?”

  “Brown hair is very lucky, though,” said Valko. “Keep that in mind.”

  Maya took a final sip of her soda and shook her head at him.

  “Seriously, though,” said Maya. “Look at everything that happened to Cousin Louise’s family. Squashed by a church! And before that, the war! And now, the way she lives. So maybe she’s right.”

  “We-e-ell,” said Valko, settling back in his chair in a comfortable way. “What do you think? Do you feel particularly lucky? Or unlucky?”

  That was so much exactly the problem that Maya could only stare at him for a moment while a sudden storm went twisting and howling through her mind.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Because that’s the thing: How can you tell? If your mother gets cancer, that’s bad. But if she gets cancer and so far is still alive, what’s that? Lucky or unlucky? It feels so very much like it must be one of those things, luck or unluck. Only you just don’t know which. Not yet.

  And then the Cabinet, too. Or being a Lavirotte. How could she know yet whether she was lucky or unlucky, to have been chosen that way by the Cabinet of Earths? All of those things tangled together.

  Her hands were hanging on to each other so tightly her fingers ached.

  “But some people are luckier than others. You know, like my brother,” she said. “People just want to help him or be around him. And you know what—I did feel lucky the night we went to that party. Like everything in the universe was pretty much on my side, for a change.”

  Valko grinned at her.

  “Surprisingly fun, that party,” he said. “As far as the science of luckiness, though, I don’t know. We’ll have to keep thinking about that one.”

  Indeed. There was only one way to figure out for sure whether the Lavirotte branch of the Davidsons was genetically unlucky: research.

  “Hey, Mom,” Maya said that evening. “Tell me more about Louise’s family. About what happened to them during the war.”

  Her mother looked surprised for a moment, and then sighed.

  “Oh, Maya, they all died, I’m afraid. During the war, when the Nazis occupied France
. It’s a terrible story, really! The father was a Jew from Argentina, the mother I think had some role in the Resistance, if the stories are true, and in the end they all died—except for Henriette, of course, who grew up to be Louise’s mother. Henriette survived because she went to live with her cousin’s family, with your grandmother, that is, out in the countryside somewhere. But her parents, her baby sister, they were hiding with relatives in Paris. Someone turned them in. And all three of them died.”

  An unlucky family, thought Maya. She felt sick inside, imagining that little girl Henriette, far away, not knowing where her family was, never hearing any news, and all the time having to pretend nothing was wrong, out in that village with Maya’s grandmother.

  “How come you never told me any of this before?” she said.

  “Because it’s so sad,” said her mother. “It’s hard to have to admit to your own children, when they’re little, how sad the world can be.”

  “It’s not just sad,” said Maya. “It’s awful.”

  Her mother traced a thoughtful pattern on the tablecloth with her finger: a loop that faded very fast into tentative wisps, into nothing.

  “I guess it’s up to us to save what we can,” she said finally. “That’s why my mother tried so hard to adopt Cousin Louise, I think, after the accident in the church. There wasn’t much of the family left. Maybe someday it will be your turn to be brave and save someone you love. Who can say?”

  Maya’s mother stood up because the buzzer was ringing; James and his father were back from the park.

  “Well, and that reminds me that I’ve been intending for ages to invite Cousin Louise to tea—”

  So there it was. The impatience washed back over her, rising like a prickly tide: Maya had to go back to the Salamander House, however hard it might be. Because given this strange chance of hers, she could not, could not, waste it: She had to do whatever it took, if whatever it took might save her mother.

  But there was a slight problem with that: Her brain kept rebelling.

  She would get as far as the avenue Rapp, and then something would happen—she would remember some other errand she had to run, or her mind would flash back to what it was really like, sitting in that living room with the young Fourcroy looking at you with those purple-blue eyes. And once she was at the intersection, hesitating a little, and there, suddenly, was the friendly face of Valko.

  “Hey there, Maya,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got this errand to run,” said Maya, but she could feel her resolve crumbling away.

  Valko waited a moment.

  “Yes?” he said. “So can I come along?”

  In Maya’s whole life, only her crazy dog Boofer had ever looked quite as hopeful and expectant as that. It was like some leash suddenly snapped, pulling her right out of her sorry mood. She couldn’t help herself: She smiled.

  “I wish you could,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t think I can do it now, anyway.”

  Valko gave her a sharp glance.

  “No?” he said. “Then you want to come along with me? I’m not going anywhere in particular. My feet just wanted a walk.”

  They walked down the rue Saint-Dominique, past bookshops and bakeries and the thick-walled church with maybe the best name in Paris (“Saint Pierre of the Big Pebble”) and all the way to the open grassy spaces of the Invalides before Maya could even really say anything at all. But Valko didn’t seem to mind. He seemed perfectly comfortable to be strolling along with Maya at his side.

  Whereas Maya’s mind was a dusty jumble of worries. She wanted to talk, she needed to talk, she longed to talk, but there was just so much she couldn’t—could not—say.

  She said, “It’s about my mother.”

  “Oh,” said Valko, and for a moment he even put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. Just a moment, but the warmth of it kept spreading through her. “Is she doing all right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maya. That was the truth. How much more she could say, though, she didn’t know. All she could do was dive in, as best she could: “But that’s why I have to do this—I have to go back to that Fourcroy, the one in the Salamander House. He can help her. I have to get him to help.”

  They were across the wind-blown lawns of the Invalides, back in the narrow street again, passing bars and art stores and government buildings. Valko stopped in his tracks for a moment, his eyes widening with surprise.

  “Wait a second. What’s he have to do with anything?”

  “He can help my mother,” said Maya.

  “How? Because he’s rich?”

  Maya looked at him unhappily: She had reached the edge of what she could say. It was like walking right into a wall. And on the other side of that wall was Valko, friendly and kind and deserving better than this.

  “It’s not about money,” she said. “I have to go ask him something. I wish I could talk to you about it. But I just can’t.”

  Valko gave her another look, and then the little street widened into a boulevard, and people with shopping bags began jostling by. He moved a little closer.

  “Okay,” he said. “But you know he’s creepy, right? You should take me along.”

  “I wish I could. I wish I didn’t have to go at all. I wish I could explain it all so you’d understand.”

  “Hey,” said Valko. “It’s your mom. Of course you feel bad.”

  So then she had to root around in a pocket for a tissue, and that slowed them down for a while, but when her eyes were clear again, they kept walking. It was easier, somehow, to be moving along the sidewalk together. It’s a lot harder to feel awkward and stuck when you’re walking.

  “At home you must have friends you can talk to,” said Valko.

  “Well, yeah,” said Maya. “There’s Jenna. She’s really great—you’d like her. She’s always so clear about everything. I mope, but Jenna knocks sense into me. And then there’s my dog. He doesn’t mope, either.”

  “I don’t think you mope,” said Valko. “Hey, look where we are.”

  They were by a very old fence. And through it, you could see the remains of some ancient structure, crumbled walls and all. And another building rising in Gothic swoops above the ruins.

  “See? You know what those are? Roman baths. Thousands of years old. From before Paris was even Paris. And on top of them they built that medieval building there. It’s a museum now. But you know what?”

  He pointed through the bars of the fence.

  “My theory is that that’s kind of like me.”

  “What?” said Maya. She figured she’d heard it wrong.

  “Well,” said Valko, grinning again. “I’ll tell you, but if you laugh at me, I’ll cry. So here’s my theory. You know how I was born in Bulgaria and then lived everywhere else on the planet, a few years at a time? Every time I move somewhere new, it’s like starting all over. New language, new school, new friends, everything changes. But somehow it’s still me, just a mixed-up, composite, mish-mashy me. See? It’s like those buildings there: the current Valko, the older Valko, and somewhere under everything, the ruins of Bulgaria!”

  Valko’s hand punctuated those words with a great swoop through the air, and his other arm gave Maya’s shoulders a hug, and all in all, Maya felt better, just at that moment, than she had felt in days.

  “Getting late,” he said. “And there’s still the whole walk back. Need to make a call on my phone?”

  Maya’s mother didn’t believe in cell phones. Well, that is, she believed they existed, all right, but she also believed her children shouldn’t have them until it had been absolutely, definitively proved that cell phones did not cause cancer.

  “I think I’m okay,” said Maya. And inside her there was an exclamation point on that: Okay! Because just for that minute, anyway, she really was.

  It still had to be done, though. She still had to talk to the purple-eyed Fourcroy about hourglasses, bottles, and saving her mother.

  The next afternoon she actually tripped over
the shopping bag of the old lady slumped on the bench nearest to the salamander door before turning tail and starting to walk away, her heart dark with frustration

  But someone was calling to her, so Maya stopped in her tracks and turned around. It was the old lady with the shopping bag Maya had just tripped over.

  “Oh,” she said, guilt leaping up in her. “I’m sorry!”

  It was a very ordinary old lady, a slumped and bland little creature with pale eyes and gray hair. But she did not seem too angry about the bag Maya had knocked about. She was staring at Maya, and something in her face, in the blandness of it, reminded Maya of something.

  “Why do you want to go in there?” she said to Maya. “You keep walking by, and stopping, and walking by again.”

  “My uncle lives there,” said Maya.

  “They are wicked people, the ones living in there,” said the old lady in her dull and inconsequential old-lady voice.

  “I’m sorry,” said Maya again (about the bag). She had turned to go, but that nagging sense of seeing something familiar held her back for a moment. “Why do you say that?” she asked all of a sudden.

  “I know they are wicked,” said the old lady. “They did this to me.”

  But her hands didn’t so much as twitch to give an indication of what the “this” that had been done to her might be.

  “Now I’ve come back to Paris, though,” said the old lady. “Everything in it has changed in the last fifty years, believe me. Except them. I came here to see.”

  “Oh,” said Maya. Tomorrow she would have to be braver than today. Tomorrow she would have to come striding up to the door here and go in, absurd or not. She picked at the snag at the edge of her thumbnail, trying to smooth it all out, and the old lady shifted her weight a little on the bench and kept talking, as old people sometimes do.

  “—The chair may even still be there,” the old lady was saying. “Who knows? Stay outside, stay safe. Better that way.”

  “Oh!” said Maya, the old lady on the bench before her suddenly snapping into focus. “The chair? What chair?”