by Kaye Chazan
Aelister counts the gems on the coat of the jack of hearts. “Ten,” framed in silver. “Sixteen,” framed in black. “Five,” golden diamonds. “Eight,” red ovals on the device across his chest. “Eighty. Four hundred eighteen.”
Numbers flood him, all of them laden with meaning. He knows how many fragments his cast has shattered into, how many pieces the bone is still in, how many bricks make up this building and how many stones frame it in the street. There is still more beneath that, ground into the earth between and below the cobblestones, and Aelister knows their names and loves and meaning. London burns: Its fire is dwarfed in Aelister’s sun, as bright as the stars overhead, and theirs is the only number Aelister does not know.
But he could know it. He could count the stars, if he asked them very nicely to stay still.
“Go,” Aelister says, and the sunlight scalds his teeth and the sockets of his eyes. “I don’t care where you go, or what you do. You will not touch me.”
For one moment, even the beams of light are as still as stone.
When they flicker back to life, the murderer is gone.
Aelister finally catches his breath. There is a great deal of steam or smoke in it, more than he realized. He coughs, and sinks along the wall, as if he is only falling asleep beside a warm hearth.
Aelister wakes on a thin springy bed, as stiff and unyielding as the ones at school, and then he remembers he doesn’t go to school and doesn’t want to. One must forgive him for that being the very first thing he says—“I don’t want to go to school”—though one must also forgive the nurse at his bedside for laughing.
“Of course not, dear,” she says, uncovering her mouth, “not in your condition. Why, we don’t even know what school you go to.”
“I don’t,” Aelister says. His voice is hoarse, and his throat raw, and his headache worse than it has ever been. “Where am I?”
“The London Hospital,” the nurse explains. “The police brought you in a few days ago. They found you when they were chasing after Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Oh, you have been out cold as a corpse, dear! Jack the Ripper. That’s what he’s calling himself in his letters to the brass. He sent the police postcards, can you believe it? The cheek. He killed two ladies the night we found you, poor souls, it’s a wonder he didn’t get you, too.” She takes Aelister’s hand, and pats it, and where the cast had been, there is now only a simple linen dressing. “Now, they’ll be wanting a few answers of you. Do you remember your name?”
Aelister does.
But that is not the name they want to hear.
“Edward Alexander Crowley,” he says. It is not precisely a lie, but as true as this world requires of him.
“Good, good,” the nurse says. “Then let’s see about getting you home. You do have a home, don’t you?”
Leamington nears, and the first signs of autumn are showing on the very edges of the leaves. Aelister leans his head against the glass of the window as the train pulls in. The sky is overcast, but the clouds are white instead of grey, and the air the clearest Aelister has breathed in several months.
He holds the rabbit’s foot in his hand, strokes his thumb over the paw-pads and claws. The Duke did not come to see him in the hospital, and when Aelister asked after his whereabouts, the police laughed and said there was no such royal with a house in Islington. And after that, Aelister saw no point in asking just who the Prince of Wales plays baccarat with once a month. In the end, he only confessed to having run away, and now, here he is.
More police, the local branch, are waiting with his mother outside the station. He cries, and wipes his arm on his bandages. She holds him and kisses him, and then promptly boxes his ears, which he knows he rather deserves. He sits quietly and allows her to yell at him for the entirely of the carriage ride home, and hangs his head and nods at all of her rhetorical questions, and keeps his hands folded around the rabbit’s foot.
Once he’s in his room, he unpacks what little he’s brought back from London. The pouch, the foot, and the cards, all fifty-one of them, slide neatly into his desk drawer. He changes out of his traveling clothes, and finds the shirts in his wardrobe a little too narrow across the shoulders and the trousers an inch too short, but he will hold off on asking for new ones until his mother notices. He is barred from using his inheritance until he completes his schooling. He hates it, though he understands why they would do such a thing.
Supper consists of foods his mother knows he enjoys, but not his favorites, and he is sent up to bed shortly thereafter. He avoids asking about school, and his mother does not bring it up either, and since it is already a ways into October, he has no idea what will be done.
So imagine his surprise when his mother wakes him up at dawn and tells him in a tone that brooks no argument, “Get dressed for school.”
“I haven’t a uniform,” Aelister says.
“You don’t need one. Just be tidy. Your teacher is already here.”
Confused as he is, he crawls out of bed and washes up, puts on a decent suit (and remembers to leave the bottom button of his waistcoat undone), and comes downstairs to the parlor.
“Hello,” says the tall woman in the doorway. She wears a peaked covering on her head, like the women at Aelister’s father’s old Brethren meeting hall, and a plain blue dress with no bustle. But for all that plainness, she is young, and her smile is white and wide, curling down from a straight nub nose. Her eyes are as bright as the Actor’s, and the Duke’s, and the lady in gold’s. “You may call me Miss Catherine,” she says. “I’ve been sent to be your tutor.”
“Sent?” Aelister asks, and makes a little bow. “From London?”
“No,” she says, and her smile grows wider and wider.
The End
House of Cards
By Amanda Ching
Across the pasture, down the road, the gravedigger whistled as he made his way from his cottage to the grounds. There was much to do, now that the ground was soft and loamy. It hadn't rained in quite a while, so he wouldn't be waterlogged when he worked the soil, digging up the old bodies to make way for the new ones. It was a mess that people didn't like to see or know about, but they paid good money to bury their dead in a place that hadn't any room for them. And unless there was a big stone or statue there, no one was the wiser.
It wasn’t something he thought too hard on, or worried too much about. He had children to feed, after all.
The wind picked up as he swung his pail, stuffed with meat and bread and some cheese; Molly was good to him, always had been, never bothering to wonder why he'd left his comfortable groomsman job over at the Liddell place years ago, before he'd met her. She didn't mind that he dug up dead bodies and buried them. It was good work, and it would never stop. Positions in houses came and went, but people would always be going tits up.
If he squinted, he could see a bit of blue dart across the grass up by the estate; little Alice was out, skiving off lessons, no doubt. He couldn’t blame her. Afternoon like this, with the thin rays of sun peeking through the clouds, and the birdsong wafting through the air, he wanted to be chasing rabbits, too.
He climbed over the wooden fence at the back of the cemetery and cut across it to reach his hut, just a little shed where he kept all his tools. The grass was dark velvety green, as if the bodies housed under it gave it nourishment that it couldn't find elsewhere.
The gravedigger jogged across a few rows, trampling right over the graves themselves. People who came to the cemetery for grieving or sightseeing could bother with superstition, but he had things to do. Mister Cooper down the road had finally pegged out, and he'd need something grand.
There was a small shake and he staggered; it felt as if the ground had quaked, as if something was moving under the earth. He froze, hands splayed, and glanced about at the ground, but there wasn't any more movement.
Once the earth was still for a few seconds, he double-stepped it towards the hut, trying to spy little Alice's dress off in th
e field. It wasn't right for the ground to be all a-shaking. The earth could open up and swallow her whole.
He was still searching, hand to his eyes to shield out the sun, when he he fell in the hole. He tumbled down, Molly's muslin-covered pail spilling ham and cheese everywhere in the filth, and he landed feet-first in the splintered coffin. He tossed the pail up onto the surface, trying to preserve as much food as possible, and then hauled himself out of the muck. When he was back safe on the grass, he pulled a rag from his pocket and covered his mouth, wondering how he hadn't noticed the smell before.
The ground was undisturbed, but sunken, as if it had simply caved in; as if something had disappeared from there overnight. He'd fallen into the emptiness of the grave and its coffin, and when he looked closer, he couldn't see bones of any sort.
The cheese cat on the cutting board had been picked at and nibbled on, starting with the tail, and as Mary Ann carried the next load of dishes to the sink, she glanced at the disembodied head grinning at her. No one ever wanted to cut into the head. She'd have to slice it up until it was unrecognisable and serve it that way. Else she could leave it for Samuel's tea tomorrow; they were less finickety about dismembering things downstairs.
The family dishes were already done and the silver had been counted, but she had still to scrub the soup pot and the roasting pans. Later, Mrs. Liddell would be wanting tea, and the young ladies would need to have their tonics before bed. Then she would get a head start on the fires for the morning and finish the last of the mending (Miss Liza had torn another petticoat climbing the fallen tree in the north pasture).
Mary Ann surveyed the kitchen as she rinsed the last of the plates and wondered when Samuel would be back. He'd gone into the village to fetch more coal, and here it was gone on seven o'clock and he wasn't back yet. His tea was drying out on the hob.
She finished the dishes and dried her hands, then popped the lid on the orange marmalade and swiped a finger in, sucking it off her skin as she peered out the window into the near dark.
"Mary Ann," said a voice at the kitchen door, and she whirled, setting the jar back on the shelf. Mister John appeared, one hand on the doorjamb, the other holding a brandy snifter. Ah.
"Sir," she said, wiping her fingers on her apron.
"Excellent supper tonight," he said, eyes looking everywhere but her. It wasn't like him to come down here—to speak to her in general. He stared at the shelves by the back door, lined with dry goods in jars, and then the coal hob behind her, and finally, the table with its assortment of odds and ends—cheese head, marmalade, the last wedge of unfilled stotty, and three spools of thread.
There was nothing to say but, "Thank you, sir," really, so she said it. He just stood there, waistcoat unbuttoned, cigar stub clipped between two fingers, rest of the hand holding the snifter. One lock of his smoothed hair flopped down into his eyes.
"Do you have a great deal... do you have a great deal of work for the rest of the evening?"
She felt her eyebrows rising, and part of her wondered if he was having some sort of fit. Daisy Dell over at the Coopers’ had told her that right before his collapse, Mister Cooper had run about the servants' quarters shouting, “Who are you?" to everyone, including a quite handsome water basin.
"A bit, sir," she said. "Nothing out of the ordinary.”
He sipped from his brandy, and the movement sent a waft of cigar smoke across the room. "When Samuel returns, have him wait until tomorrow to unload the coal," Mister John said, breaking the tip of one pointed ear from the cheese cat head and popping it into his mouth.
She opened her mouth to reply, but he shrugged and closed the door behind him before she could weakly call out, "Good night, sir.”
An hour later, tea was delivered, tonic administered, and Mary Ann finished the last of the dishes, mended the petticoats and ironed them, stowed away her sewing items, and snuffed the candles. She pulled the pins from her hair as she made to get ready for bed.
On her way out of the dark kitchen, she bumped the table, sending the cheese flying. It dropped to the floor and rolled away. Mary Ann lit a few lamps and cast about for it, but the thing was nowhere in sight. Sure as daylight, she'd find it all moldy and gone in a week or two.
As the birds all departed in squawking and general disarray, Alice cast about for someone to implore, but all that was left was a flurry of molted feathers and a few half-eaten comfits. Things here were so very odd, and the slightest word could cause the greatest fuss.
"Oh, I shouldn't have mentioned Dinah," Alice thought, shaking her pinafore.
There was a scuffling noise from behind her and Alice turned to find a small otter walking towards her, its hands clasping an open oyster shell.
"Oh excuse me, but might'n't I trouble you to look in here?" said the Otter, who passed her the open shell, careful not to spill the water in its basin.
Alice held the empty oyster shell in her hand and peered into the small pool of water inside, but it only showed her reflection. "Why, what shall I be looking for?"
The Otter peered over her shoulder at the rippling image. "Oh, there you are! And a clickety-click!" It reached out with one paw and snapped the shell closed with a clack, then snatched it from her hands. "Thank you so very much!" it called as it turned and ran down the shore.
"My, everyone here is so strange!" Alice said to herself. "I shall be pleased when I get to the splendid garden, and things start to make sense again!"
The Queen of Hearts smacked the Knave's hand. "They're not ready!"
The Knave pulled his hand away from the tarts and shook his abused digits with a one-eyed scowl. The Queen was about to offer to take off his head when there was a clatter outside in the vestibule. It had to be that Rabbit. He was late beyond measure, just when the Queen had an invitation for him to deliver. As it was, she'd had to send a Footman to the Duchess, and they never made it back in one piece.
"Let him in, so I can cut his head off," the Queen said. She rather wished she did the actual head-offing sometimes. It was true that there were people who did that, but she couldn't help but think that it would be satisfying. It seemed that no matter how many heads she ordered to be doffed, more grew back. If she were in charge of executions, there would be some blessed change.
The aces pulled aside their staves and let in a small Otter, which scurried into the room on two legs, bobbing its head and occasionally licking the oyster shell it held in its paws.
"Your Majestery, I have something to show you! I took a phonograph!"
"A photograph," corrected the Knave, whose eye was roving back to the display of baked sweets again.
"No, a phonograph. With the—"
"Show us," the Queen said. It would be easier just to let it show them whatever it had than to listen to the idiots argue with each other.
The Otter smacked the shell it held in its hands a few times, and then pried it open at the seam, turning it by the hinge to show the Queen a small puddle of water in the bottom shell that trembled as it tried to steady it.
"And what am I supposed to be seeing?" she asked, looking at her rippling face in close-up. Or, rather, just parts of her face: It was too small a shell to hold all of her, obviously.
The Otter looked at the water and shook its head. "Well, she was here a minute ago," it grumbled. "I made the clickety noise and everything." It closed the shell up and shook it, then tried to pry it open again, but found that it had to bash the seam with a small pebble it kept in its trousers for just such a purpose.
The Queen was about to order its head off out of sheer boredom when the Otter lifted its snout and twitched one side of its whiskers. "What say I tell you wot I took a phonograph of?"
The Queen opened her mouth, but the King interrupted. She had forgotten that he was there. "Yes, that would do nicely."
"A little girl," the Otter said. "Possibly a very large balding duck." It waved a paw and clicked the empty oyster shell. "This high, sometimes, sometimes more, I dare say, or a little less."
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"A little less?" the Queen asked.
"Oh my yes, what with all of the sweets she carried in her pockets," said the Otter, combing its whiskers. "In fact, I managed to—"
The Queen rapped her fan on the Otter's head. "What does this little girl-possibly-balding-duck look like?"
The Otter waved its hands and opened and closed the oyster shell a few more times, once bashing the thing on the floor before remembering where it was. "Oh, I think she might be made of straw, or else otherwise stood too much in the sun, for her head is all yellow-like."