by IGMS
She wasn't telling me because she was heartless. She wanted to take me in until I left for my Aunt Claire's back East in the Spring. It would take at least a season to grieve.
It was, truly, a pity.
From the way she said it, I knew her compliments to Daddy about my grace, about my tender eyes, about my silken black hair, so much like her own, had been strokes of a blade on a whetstone.
I ran away at nightfall.
Crouching among the short pines below tree line, I peered back at the shacks and buildings of camp, their outlines like so many boulders painted with cold moonlight. I darted for the train snaking along the Banner River on the valley floor.
Rounding a granite outcropping, I almost stepped on you. You made a breathy little noise and startled me.
At first, I mistook you for an abandoned baby. But you were smaller, more like a baby mouse, pink and hairless with dark, swollen eyes you couldn't open, tiny limbs reaching out for a kind touch.
Daddy had said little wizards lived in the mountainside woods. He said that was how he had ended up with me. He had found me, too. I had been a little wizard. I just couldn't remember the magic I had in me -- I would one day, maybe. It was the way he told it to make me feel better that Momma had died of a swift sickness before I could remember her. School teacher Strobel had told me about it, told of how strong Daddy was to stick it out with me. His word trumped Daddy's. But seeing you, I felt I had betrayed Daddy by smiling at him like he was making fun.
When I picked you up it felt like God had crawled inside my skin and was trying it on to see if I still fit.
I wrapped you in my blanket, hid you in a hollow behind spiny brush, then returned to camp.
I was too old and too far gone; I had grown into the world. I couldn't remember the wizard I had been.
I was going to make it different for you.
Four things I knew:
One: Anyone who saw you other than Madame Blye and Old Jain would take you away and put you in a home for lost children. There, you'd forget the big wizard you had been before too much magic had stripped your mind bare and shrunk your body.
Two: If Madame Blye saw you, she'd take you and rear you and put you to work beside her man Big Roy.
Three: For the right price, Old Jain would keep anything secret.
Four: When reared back into the big wizards they had been, little wizards can perform miracles.
I went to Madame Blye's house for working girls. In those days, it was a multi-storied jumble of mismatched additions extending from a barracks-like dorm. I told her I'd very much like to take her up on her offer. I couldn't stay in Daddy's shack. She said she had visited the shack the night before. No one was there. She had been afraid I had fled before proper respects were paid. She was glad I hadn't. It would've been a shame. Daddy's eternal rest aside, I lived in the real world. After being released at the end of the month, Daddy's final pay would've languished on the mine's books until it was marked as abandoned. A girl alone like me could use that pay. Daddy wouldn't have wanted his hard work to go to waste. I was making the right choice to wait for it.
I told her she was generous and thoughtful.
She smiled and said I must be hungry and tired, then had Big Roy show me to my room on the side of the house opposite where the girls worked, the newest addition. The door struck the bed when opened. The room was windowless and drafty, big enough for a sleigh frame bed with cushioned mattress, nightstand with candle, and a standing oval mirror. No sooner had I looked at my growling stomach in the mirror than Big Roy delivered a meal the likes of which I hadn't seen except for when Daddy cleared new tunnels leading to rich veins of gold. Big Roy left, closing the door behind him.
A contented swoon overcame me once I finished eating, and I fell asleep. Throughout the night, heavy boots dragged across floorboards in the hall. Strange shifting lights from foul-smelling chemical lanterns reached through the gap under the door and almost touched the bed.
In the morning, I asked Madame Blye about the noises, the lights. She said though my room was far from where work was done, the men who frequented her services roamed the halls. They didn't consider much off limits, but I shouldn't worry. She had a special eye on me. And there was always Big Roy.
Stories told about Big Roy:
Big Roy has never spoken. When spoken to, he only understands Madame Blye. They have a secret language, which so closely mimics common language it's indistinguishable. It's tonal. Pitch has something to do with it. And body language. Timing, too.
Big Roy does whatever Madame Blye tells him to do. When he has no instructions, he sulks about the house looking for her. If he can't find her, he works himself into a dither. It's like he's playing a game of hide and seek with serious consequences. Once worked up, he can only be calmed with lullabies. His favorite is Still, Still, Still.
During a fight in which Big Roy killed three men, he was stabbed a dozen times. He was acquitted on grounds of self-defense; he was unarmed. At the men's funeral, Madame Blye spoke for Big Roy and said he felt bad it had all happened like it did. Before the judge, his face, like his body, was broad and strong and challenging, as if his skin stretched over unchanging stone. Everyone who saw his face during the fight was dead, so no one could say whether his expression had remained unchanged then, too, like it was before the fight and at the funeral.
Big Roy never limps. Or coughs. Or sneezes. Some say he never blinks, but that's an exaggeration. He blinks when you blink.
A working girl named Sally once tried to thank Big Roy for throwing out a drunk who had flown off the handle due to an unfortunately timed giggle. She took down Big Roy's overalls and was confused by what she saw. She quashed her repulsion -- men are built in all manner of ways -- and did her best with her hand, then her mouth until Big Roy left without becoming aroused. The next day, Sally was gone. Madame Blye told the other girls Sally had been sent down the valley to the salvation home for girls who had gotten themselves into a situation. Sally never returned.
Big Roy eats rock candy all the time and his teeth never go bad. Madame Blye buys it for him. He's not allowed to handle money. He's no good with it, doesn't understand it. When he has it, he gives it away or loses it.
The pines around Old Jain's shack grew so thick that it couldn't be seen from Madame Blye's house for working girls. Only when a plume of steam rose from Old Jain's liquor still was it easy to pinpoint. Even then, the trees and berms and boulders and streams had a way of leading one's eyes and one's mind in the wrong direction. On the ground approaching it, the effect was claustrophobic, with the only safe passage leading away from Old Jain's.
When I returned to the working house after searching for the right path, Madame Blye eyed my wet boots, torn dress, and the muck caked under my fingernails. I told her I had needed time alone and a long walk to think about things. Her nose flared as though scenting my trail on me.
By the end of the week, her interest had grown so acute I resolved to take you with me during my next foray. I couldn't wait until I found a safe route. There were none. The routes I hadn't tried were so dangerous that if I were to have died, it would've been a gentler mercy for you to die with me than for you to dehydrate and starve to death while swaddled in a hollow.
It is enough to say that I was not much hurt, and you not at all, though I was certain at times my footing would plunge us into dark recesses, only to find the rocks and hummock as firm as my certainty that they'd provide my last steps on Earth.
Old Jain's shack looked like it had crashed down the mountainside in an avalanche, then decided to stop and rest and crumble awhile before it continued down to the valley floor. Old Jain opened its door as soon as I saw it. She looked like she had made the same decision to wait and crumble awhile.
She said I should come in. She couldn't turn me away now that I had come so far. Yes, she'd take my child, but there was a price, and if I didn't pay it, she'd eat the child, bones and all. I didn't see any children running around her place
, did I?
I showed you to her before introducing myself. Her voice sharpened with excitement. She asked where I had found you and how long I had you and a welter of other questions she garbled half in a language I didn't understand, then apologized. She hadn't seen a real little wizard for a very long time, and had forgotten herself, like it was old times.
I told her I had been hiding you and keeping you warm and dry. The hollow you were in muffled your cries. I had been sneaking away and feeding you milk and cream from the food Big Roy brought me.
Old Jain bolted into her shack and returned with a small bottle of dark green liquid, which she poured into your mouth. It smelled like swampy frog legs. You became violently ill and pale and spat up with horrible retching noises. I yelled at Old Jain for poisoning you. She said it was for the best; the convulsions would pass. Trembling, thinking I had protected you only to deliver you to a hateful old harridan, thinking perhaps I should grab her bottle and drink the rest, I held you to my chest, and your convulsions passed. Color returned to your cheeks.
I told her you were mine, I intended to keep you, and she shouldn't try that again. Old Jain said it was unlikely she could hurt you without hurting herself. She hadn't found you. I had, although it was probably more the other way around, a joke in which I didn't find much humor. She was a queer sort of woman. She had lived alone so long I had a sense that her protective shell of self-preserving thoughts could be trusted, if not the words she used to express them.
I pleaded would she help me. I could no longer hide you in the woods. Madame Blye had grown interested in my long walks, and might begin accompanying me to talk things over before I did anything rash. If she did, she'd keep me away from you, and you were so small.
Old Jain's face scrunched with a grave expression of thought. She said I was so young, the girls didn't normally come so young, did I know what I was doing?
I told her about my hopes of teaching you the world again and rearing you back into a big wizard so you could raise Daddy from the mountain. Together, we'd leave Coppers Rest. Daddy never wanted this to be his final resting place.
She asked if I was prepared for such a thing.
I told her it didn't matter if I was prepared, I was going to do it with her or without her, but with her, it'd be easier. And hadn't she said she'd take my child when she opened the door?
She was silent for some time, and I felt I had made a mistake by trying to be rough with her.
She said she was old and it had been a long time since she cared for a little wizard. Last time, it hadn't gone so good. I said I'd pay her, and her expression became calculating and sad. I told her I'd do anything, name her price.
We agreed, price to be named later. She wanted to think on it.
Stories told about Madame Blye:
As a child, Madame Blye flew until taught not to by her parents. She has since forgotten how. Still, when walking on snow she leaves no footprints.
Madame Blye can't get pregnant. Some say it is because a snake slithered inside her and bit her womb. Of those who say that, some say it's still in her. If she didn't always wear her whalebone corset cinched so tight, she'd allow it room to move and grow, perhaps to burst free. She is never seen wearing anything but clothing that conceals all but her demure hands. Often she wears gloves, too, and big, fancy hats with wide, curvy brims adorned with raven feathers. Others say she was born infertile, yet grew so beautiful that men couldn't help themselves from a very young age. They say it was their ardor which led her to her line of work, since she couldn't stop their advances, only manage them.
Every year, Madame Blye selects one of her house's clients and personally attends to him. She is a screamer. Though the miner she selects always looks pleasantly dazed for weeks on end and babbles when asked what it was like, mentioning maybe the scent of burning strawberries or a sound nobody else heard during the act, like tolling bells, there is always concern when the act is in progress that someone is getting murdered.
Madame Blye knows the first poetry ever written and sometimes recites it under her breath.
Big Roy was Madame Blye's first client. He stays with her as a form of apology. She keeps him because it hasn't sufficed.
Madame Blye can give a man an orgasm just by looking at him. She taught some of her girls the trick. It doesn't always work. When it does, the men are so effusively shamed they return day after day to pay and prove their virility.
Madame Blye once said she thought about being a miner, but decided working on her back was the easier way to get the gold out of the mountain. Besides, there are deeper things than gold.
The price Old Jain and I agreed upon was no less than everything Madame Blye would let me keep. If I didn't pay it, she'd know. How, she didn't say, but I felt it prudent not to cross her even in thought that could lead to suspicion.
I told Madame Blye I'd need as much money as I could muster for my trip back East. I wanted to work. She said working for her wouldn't be proper. Her house had a reputation. I said I understood. She sat beside me on my bed and regarded the mirror as if her reflection looked out at her, not the other way around. She explained in great detail what men who spent twelve, sometimes twenty-four hours underground hired her girls to do. The least of the things they performed made me second guess raising you back into the world. The worst made me lightheaded. Madame Blye called for Big Roy to bring a cold towel and hot cup of licorice tea. She asked did she need to repeat any part of what she said? I said thank you, but no. She looked glad for it, as though she disliked explaining it to me, but I suspected it wasn't the descriptions she found distasteful, rather it was the honesty. She said I should be aware of what others would think of me for lending my labor to her establishment, for small things like beating the rugs or opening the curtains to the morning light, what they might suspect of me even now.
I told her I'd need to take some long walks to decide. She asked if I'd like Big Roy to accompany me, for protection. He wouldn't understand me if I talked to myself. I told her no, thank you; I needed to be alone-alone.
Old Jain looked cross when I explained to her why I had nothing to give her those first couple weeks. She said it had been a long time since she ate a little wizard. They fought going down and tasted gamey. Also, the indigestion. But that wouldn't stop her. I said it wasn't my fault. I explained to her about Daddy's final pay, which was scheduled to be released at the end of the month. Madame Blye would count it, and apologize that it fell short of the expenses incurred while boarding me. Then she'd act like she saw something in me, like I had known and taken advantage of her. It was all part of her plan. She intended to put me to work in her lineup, like she had with the other girls whose Daddies died digging for gold. Then, I'd be making money. But things had to take their course. Madame Blye had to talk herself into it, had to think I deserved my lot.
Old Jain looked sad, and asked if I was sure I wanted to go through with it. She didn't usually renegotiate, but if I wanted, I could back out of the deal before things got out of hand. She said she'd dispose of you humanely, out of sight, and I wouldn't be responsible. I told her I already was responsible, and if I was the kind of person to constantly renegotiate my convictions, I'd end up at Madame Blye's working house anyway, but not on my own terms. She said Daddy must've been quite a man. I asked her please not to talk about him. She said she wouldn't, but she needed something more than stories to show I was acting in good faith.
I told her I'd bring something.
Back in camp, the door to Daddy's shack hung open. The one room had been rummaged through by looters, left bare to the walls. Wind whistled down the stovepipe where it protruded down from the ceiling and opened to the sky. Only the last book Daddy had bought me lay on the floor, half its pages missing. What remained was the first half, which I had already read. I brought it to my room in Madame Blye's. Big Roy greeted me as though he wanted to say something. His quiet, embarrassed gaze lingered on the book like he recognized it and it worried him. Madame Blye escort
ed Big Roy away, then returned and asked what I had. I explained to her that it was all that was left from Daddy's shack, a silly story book about things that weren't even real. She nodded and said it was unfortunate that people could be so cruel, but I had to learn to live with it.
The route to Old Jain's hadn't grown easier with practice. When I eventually reached her and presented the book, tears streamed down my face. I told Old Jain the book still told a story, just not all of it, and I didn't mean to ruin it. It was all I had. She accepted it with kind solemnity and said I shouldn't worry. All I had was all she asked.
Stories told about Old Jain:
Old Jain lived in the mountainside woods long before the haul from Coppers Rest grew so large it couldn't be ignored, back before it had been named to hide it from would-be claim jumpers. She had a husband then. He had been the first man to join the mine operation, and the first to die for it in a cave-in. On dusky nights, she can be seen on the high snowfields basking in the moonlight directly above where his body resides in the mountain. She leaves no footprints and can make herself look like a boulder if you look too close.
For each glass of the liquor she distills, Old Jain controls how many fights it'll contain. It's in her recipe. To minimize their occurrence, it's best to remain on her good side and never say anything bad about her. Her hearing is excellent. She can walk on tiptoes for miles. Still, there have been bloody, drunken rows for no identifiable reasons -- no one admitted to bad-mouthing her. After them, people loudly talk about their bruises and pains, so Old Jain can hear and add an equal measure of songs and laughter and kisses to her next batch.