by Karen Foxlee
The wizards nodded encouragement and murmured softly.
Annabel looked at the glass that she held in the palm of her hand. She felt very self-conscious.
“Empty out your mind,” whispered Mr. Crumb. “The way Miss Vine taught you.”
Annabel wondered how they knew such a thing. She imagined her cup, which wasn’t fancy this time—more of a dark earthenware mug, which surprised her and made her shudder. She looked at her thoughts that were in it. Number one, it felt good to say truthfully that she did see things in puddles, but, too, it made her feel very afraid. Afraid like being in a blustery wind that was going to tear her feet off the ground and blow her away. Number two, there was Kitty. She was never out of mind. How she was standing there, waiting to take her back to the magic shop, even though Annabel could tell she wanted to run away. Number three, could she really be expected to go on a journey all alone to retrieve a wand? She’d never done anything like that before. She’d only been on organized expeditions and trips to the country with her mother. She felt the wizards shifting on their chairs. Her cup seemed to always be very full.
But finally she felt her mind grow quiet.
She looked into the glass.
Part of her told herself to look away, so she knew she was right. She knew she would see something. She felt the cord that joined her to the sky, even though she was indoors, inside, warm beside the fire.
She saw shadows moving in the glass. Annabel leaned closer, and a small moan escaped her lips.
It was murky in the glass, like looking through a smudgy window. There were things flying. Shadowy winged things. A swarm of them against a pale gray sky. She watched them, and she wanted to look away. She watched them and wanted to see closer. They were birds. They were men. They were shadows. Her vision took her down suddenly, as though she were flying above. In the dim murkiness she saw the dark Thames first, a jumble of streets, then the magic shop and Miss Henrietta, her blurred face looking up at the sky, her mouth opening in terror.
Annabel dragged her eyes from the glass, covered her face with her hands, and breathed one great breath.
“What did you see?” the Finsbury Wizards asked in unison.
Annabel told them.
“Her talent is strong,” said Mr. Bourne.
“She sees the immediate future well,” said Mr. Keating.
“The seeing glass and her vision may help her somewhat on her journey,” said Mr. Bell. “But time is of the essence. Mr. Angel has raised more shadowlings. His magical machine must be growing in power.”
Annabel did not like the sound of somewhat. Somewhat meant not entirely. Not exactly. If she was lucky. The Finsbury Wizards were full of somewhats and perhapses. She thought wizards should be more exacting in their magic. She had finally seen a shadowling, and she did not like the look of it at all.
“You do not seem aware, young Annabel, of the wondrous magic that is inside of you,” said Mr. Bell. “It is not your fault, of course. You have been taught to believe otherwise. But you have your seeing glass.”
Kitty sighed softly near the window.
“Your mother was once the youngest and most able—why, she had her very own wand, the Lydia,” said Mr. Bell.
“But she gave it away to the Witches of Montrouge,” said Mr. Crumb, and all the wizards shook their heads slowly.
“She turned her back on magic,” said Mr. Bell. “But she has made the proper decision and sent you to us, and in time perhaps she will come, too.”
“But…,” said Annabel. She pictured her mother far away, and her heart ached again. A real ache. She hadn’t known hearts could hurt so much. The wizards looked at her thoughtfully.
“But why did she turn her back on magic?” asked Annabel. “And why did she tell me…lies?”
Their faces looked infinitely sad.
“Please,” said Annabel. “What happened after my father was hit by the carriage?”
Daughter of the Great Geraldo Grey.
Mr. Bell cleared his throat. “Now, then,” he said. “Hen and Ettie never got over Vivienne going against their will, but your mother loved your father. There was no doubt of it. When he died so suddenly, she was wretched and wild with grief and she wanted him brought back.”
“But how?” said Annabel.
“There is no good way, Annabel,” said Mr. Keating very quietly.
“What is gone is gone, and that is the way of life,” said Mr. Crumb.
“But there was Mr. Angel, once of our brotherhood, the very youngest, expelled for the wickedness that grew in him slowly but surely over the years,” whispered Mr. Bourne. “He, dear Annabel, had made…a resurrection machine.”
“Your mother, Vivienne, took the body of her husband to Mr. Angel’s dark mansion,” said Mr. Bell. “And we do not know what happened there, but afterward, when she emerged from the house alone, she turned her back on all magic forever.”
There was silence in the little warm sitting room.
“And now you must both return to the shop quickly,” said Mr. Bell. “If what you see is true, then the shadowlings are afoot and Mr. Angel is beginning to raise his army. He is a dangerous and damaged man, Annabel. He wants to rule everyone. Hen and Ettie will put the map in you.”
In me, thought Annabel, like a spoonful of tonic that Mercy sometimes gave her. And to hear their names as such, as though they were girls. Then she realized that the wizards wanted her to stand, and Mr. Bourne very timidly held out the broomstick for her, which was disappointing because she had thought perhaps they’d go home in a carriage.
“But I thought I was to deliver it to you,” said Annabel.
“The broomstick is yours,” said Mr. Bell most kindly.
She looked at it and worried. What if she couldn’t stop it again and she went in through the glass of the magic shop? That wasn’t the kind of thing that Miss Henrietta would tolerate. Yet she also felt relieved when the broomstick was in her hand, and it shivered in response to her relief, an old friend.
Mr. Bell nodded to Kitty, and Kitty glared at him from under her dark eyebrows.
“When all is done, young Kitty,” he said, “you must fetch us some more of the magnificent brownie tea. There are not many girls like Kitty anymore, young Annabel.”
And he looked at Kitty with such sadness and tenderness that Annabel had to look away.
They were guided down a long hallway, where, in the gloom, a grandfather clock showed it to be early evening. Annabel tucked the ruby-red seeing glass into her bodice. She felt the broomstick, which she was becoming increasingly fond of, tremble against her.
“Above all, be good, Annabel Grey, for all of good magic depends upon you tonight,” said Mr. Bell, and then the door was open and she and Kitty were deposited once again into the dark.
The moon rose and shone like a dirty coin through the fog. Mr. Angel listened to the Dark-Magic Extracting Machine. He listened to its inner workings, churning and grinding, winding and unwinding. Sometimes it stopped. Sighed. He remembered what was at its black heart, the first sorrowful thing, and that made him smile.
He stood and fed the machine black-bordered paper taken from a widower’s desk, a flogging strap stolen from a home for waifs. Six feathers stolen from the museum, from a bird long extinct. The machine took deep breaths, sucked these objects, one by one, down the length of the room. A chief mourner’s sash. Blackwork embroidery. A long-gone baby’s booties, kept for years in a bottom drawer.
Mr. Angel raised his monocle and peered at the dark-magic gauge. The needle pointed to two-thirds full. He took the Black Wand and filled it, bracing himself for its force.
He strode down the stairs.
He turned his two footmen to dust because they stood in his way.
He went into empty bedrooms and raised shadowlings from long-unopened wardrobes. One, two, three of them. He strode down the stairs and into the library and raised them from behind the black velvet curtains. He swept them up the stairwell and ordered them beside the others t
hat swayed like dark candle flames. They rose and fell at the sound of his voice.
He held up the handkerchief Annabel had cried upon. The shadowlings rustled and whispered to each other in their strange airy voices. He let them sniff at it, and their long claws came out, wanting.
“The machine was made first with the tears of the mother.” He spoke softly. “And now it shall be complete with the sad little daughter. One more day, and the full moon rises.”
They grew tall then, the shadowlings, stretched themselves upward, and made an angry noise like buzzing hornets.
“Fly now, shadowlings,” he said. “Bring me Annabel Grey.”
And they were off; they were flying, all of them, in a stream toward the ceiling, sliding themselves up the steps past the moon funnel, slipping into the rusty moonlight and away.
“A lady should walk demurely in the streets. She should pay little attention to that which does not involve her.”
—Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)
In the street the fog was brown as mud, thick and choking. Annabel looked at the broomstick and then at Kitty.
“Don’t deny you enjoyed it,” said Kitty.
“I didn’t,” said Annabel.
“You lie a lot for a young lady,” said Kitty, and she laughed her wild little laugh that made Annabel’s skin prickle. “It were like being a bird.”
But the trouble with broomsticks, thought Annabel, is that they’re undisciplined and stubborn.
They straddled it, but nothing happened.
“Go,” said Annabel, but it stayed where it was.
“Up,” said Annabel, but it refused to take off.
“I insist,” she demanded, but it would not move an inch.
Yet when Annabel thought of Miss Henrietta in the ruby-red seeing glass, the broomstick shot into the air without warning. They had to grapple as they wobbled, and hold on for dear life. They soared up through the stinking fog; they rocketed past roofs and chimney tops; they broke through a cloud and into the night sky. This time Annabel did hear Kitty let out one long screech of delight that was most unladylike.
Through the fog they glimpsed Parliament and palaces, parks and avenues, and St. Paul’s, deep below, like a toy discarded at the bottom of the sea.
“We must go down soon, good broomstick,” said Annabel, but it only lurched wildly in response and curved playfully around a steeple.
“Now, then,” she soothed, “we mustn’t smash anything at Miss Henrietta’s shop.”
The thing bucked so wickedly that they nearly fell off in midair.
Annabel decided the best thing to do was to tell it she didn’t want to land at all.
“Let’s fly all night!” she shouted to it. “All the way to the sea and definitely not to the magic shop.”
The broomstick hesitated, waggled its twig tail disconcertingly, and then zoomed forward.
“What’s that?” shouted Kitty. “Look!”
She pointed toward the horizon, where, through the clouds, the near-full moon was rising. A clump of dark shadows moved there. Annabel wanted to speak, but fear seemed to have stolen her words.
She knew what they were.
They grew clearer in the sky, those dark winged things. They came closer. The wind picked up the sound of their voices and threw it across a distance. They sighed one single word. Annabel.
“Quickly, we must away!” shouted Annabel finally. “Quickly, dear broomstick!”
Now was not the time for stubbornness. She thought of Miss Henrietta’s upturned face again in her vision, and the broomstick plunged suddenly. Their skirts flew up into their faces, and they plummeted at such speed that Annabel was sure they were about to die. They screamed in unison. Screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed until the broomstick stopped and, with utmost politeness, lowered itself gently through the fog until a street appeared, with Miss Henrietta standing outside the shop looking anxiously at the sky.
“Hurry! Mr. Angel has sent shadowlings,” said Miss Henrietta, and she rushed them into the shop, locking the door. She grabbed the Ondona from the countertop and pointed it toward the window. Out on the street the shadowlings descended slowly, like black angels.
Annabel stared at them and could not move. She heard Kitty’s breath quicken beside her. They were shadows, it was true, but they constantly changed their shapes. First they were tall, thin men in top hats, peering through the window, and then they shrank themselves down to eerie gray copies of Miss Henrietta holding up her wand. Finally they formed themselves into a black mass pressed against the window, black wings beating like a swarm of moths’. Their claws, their only solid parts, drummed and scratched on the window glass.
Miss Henrietta raised the Ondona and closed her eyes. She closed her eyes for so long that Annabel wondered if she knew what she was doing, but then her great-aunt shouted.
“Benignus!” she cried.
She fired the word and the wand at the window. A great golden light grew there, and the shadowlings drew back, swept upward, disappeared.
“They do not like the light,” she said, “but it will stop them only for a little while. Quickly, follow me.”
They took the left-hand door through the magical storeroom, which seemed to be humming softly to itself, as though worrying about a complicated problem. Annabel looked at Kitty and saw that her eyes were also wide with wonder. They rushed down the stairs behind the large brown door, Miss Henrietta in the lead, the candlelight rushing down the wall beside her.
Miss Estella was propped up in her bed with a look of wild excitement on her face. “Look at her, look at her,” she cried. “The most magical girl, as magical as can be. And the betwixter girl as the one who will help her on her way.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Kitty. “I took her to the wizards and back. That’s all you asked for.”
“But you saw the shadowlings, Kitty!” cried Miss Henrietta. “You know enough of such things, and the handbook itself says the youngest and most able of the Great & Benevolent Magical Society should have a companion on the journey to retrieve the Morever Wand.”
“Don’t care what no stupid book says,” said Kitty, and she stayed near the door, as if she might run away.
“Sit on the bed,” Miss Henrietta demanded of Annabel. “We must sing the map into you now.”
“Has she got room in her?” asked Miss Estella.
“Enough—hopefully enough,” said Miss Henrietta, and she took one of Annabel’s hands in her own and placed the other on Annabel’s forehead. Miss Estella did the same, and as she did so, she let out one of her wild shrieks, which Annabel would have responded to with a startled jump if she could have.
But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t move at all.
She was completely paralyzed by her great-aunts’ hands.
A light began to fill her, a terribly bright light, and then a sudden rushing, piling, screaming, pushing source of energy. It was as though her head were a little bottle and it was being filled with a raging river. She wanted to cry, Stop! but she could do nothing.
Into her went the streets of London, the well-tended, paved, pruned, manicured streets of her childhood and also the wilder ones, the jagged, rotting tenements and staggering lines of slums. Into her went the streets that petered out into the fields and the cemeteries and the woods that she had never known, pushed and shoved and squeezed into her mind. Old churches and new churches and railway stations and factories and cathedrals and charnel houses and mansion houses and hospitals, until she thought she would explode. Then sewers, suddenly, and tunnels and rivers rushing loudly in her ears, and stone stairwells turning and corkscrewing down into darkness.
And into her went several catacombs, pressed down deep inside her until she could bear no more, and into her went dimmer places, the roots of the great trees of London—she saw them—and deep, dark places with holes at the bottom leading to blacker places still. She looked down, and she saw, where the hands of her great-aunts lay
upon her skin, lines appearing.
She looked at them in horror, but there was nothing she could do. The lines appeared upon her left palm first and then spread out—the lines of passages and tunnels and stairwells. Strange words appeared, and arrows and dotted lines and chutes and chambers and, here and there, wild, lopsided writing.
She felt the lines growing over her skin, traversing her arm—caverns and cliff tops and sudden abysses—and they snaked and crept slowly up her neck and onto her left cheek, unstoppable.
“There, now,” said Miss Henrietta, and they released their hands from Annabel. They looked at her and couldn’t hide their dismay.
“I do not remember it being told as such,” said Miss Henrietta.
Annabel turned her left arm, heavily mapped, this way and that.
“It is what it is, what it must be,” said Miss Estella, although she seemed terribly shocked.
Annabel stood then and moved toward the dressing table beside Miss Estella’s bed. She stared at herself in the mirror, at the lines and passageways and chambers drawn all over her arm and face.
“What have you done to me?” she wanted to shriek.
She would have, if not for the crashing sound above and the sound of a rushing wind outside.
“Quick—latch the door, Kitty!” cried Miss Henrietta.
Kitty had the latch down just as a great pressure thumped against it.
Annabel…, sighed the shadowlings outside.
Their voices slipped under the door, and Kitty backed away, her eyes on the floor. There was a thin darkness spreading through the crack.
Annabel turned back to the mirror. She felt as though she moved within a dream. She stared at her ruined face. Surely her mother had not wanted this. Surely her mother had only wanted her to learn how to look in the specimen cabinet or perhaps how to see in her glass.
But there was no choice.
Be brave.
There was no choice, and everything was changed, and everything was different.
Be good.
I am Annabel Grey, she thought. The seeing glass was tucked safe in her bodice. The map was on her and in her. The broomstick was in her hand.