Nieve

by Terry Griggs

  “Professor,” Nieve said, delighted. “You’ve mislaid much more than that. We’ll fill you in as soon as we can, but right now, it’s urgent, I have to ask you something.”

  “Ah, well then . . . certainly. Fire away, young lady.”

  “You invented a serum that turns people into, um, usable material, right? Doesn’t kill them, but . . . .” Might as well, she didn’t add.

  “Oh dear,” he said, abashed. “Yes, yes, an accident that was. Discovered it when I was working on a new formaldehyde formula. Got the idea from some old diaries that belonged to my great-great-grandmother. Alchemy, you know. Exciting result, I have to say, wrote a paper on it. No one in the scientific community believed it!” His face clouded. “But then this industrialist fellow got wind of it, wanted to put money into its development.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “Heavens, no. Sent him packing. Invention of that sort, dangerous really if you think about it.”

  Too bad he hadn’t! “So you invented an antidote just in case.”

  “That’s right. When the serum went missing. Funny that, can’t imagine what happened to it, really.”

  Nieve sighed. Everything she’d read about unworldly professors, including the leather elbow patches on their baggy corduroy jackets, appeared to be true. “Where is it, Professor Manning? The antidote, is it hidden somewhere in the house?”

  “Yes, indeedy. In a highly safe place.”

  “Where? We’ve got to know.”

  He gave her a crafty little smile, and tapped his broad forehead. “In here!”

  “Ah, I see. Okay, great, in that case could you–”

  “All I have to do is try to recall it. Hmmm, now, let me think . . . .”

  “Nieve, look at this.” While listening to the professor, Lias had been shining the flashlight beam on all the unusual odds and ends in the room, items, including a jar of powdered newts and a dried scorpion, that wouldn’t have been out of place at a witch’s garage sale. Standing in the farthest corner, stiff as a pole, was a woman practically buried in coats and jackets, several looped on the fingers of her upraised hands. A straw boater was hooked on one ear and a plaid scarf draped over the sharp tip of her nose.

  “My, my, what a handsome coat rack,” said Professor Manning. “Don’t recall seeing it in the lumber room before.”

  “That’s because she’s not a coat rack.” Nieve walked over and tugged the scarf off her nose. “It’s Mrs. Twisden. Molly Twisden.”

  “Most handsome,” murmured the professor dreamily of the tall, stick-thin and not particularly comely Molly. So lost in admiration was he, that he was completely unaware that the others were regarding one another in alarm.

  Nieve clutched the plaid scarf in her hand, listening to the sound of a car whining as it crunched down the gravel drive (ouch, ouch). This was followed almost immediately by the sound of a door slamming (whaaaa!), someone pounding up the front steps, then crashing explosively through the front door of the house, bellowing as they stormed through it.

  “Guess who’s here?” said Lirk.

  –Thirty-Three–

  Toehold

  “I have a bone to pick with you, Twisden!” Elixibyss was bellowing. “Wake up, you idiot!!”

  Bone-picking, a specialty of the Impress.

  Hearing her icy voice raised to a murderous pitch sent a shudder of apprehension through them all. It’s a wonder they didn’t run off and hide. Instead, Lias said, “Right. This time it’s mine.” With his hair standing straight up on his head, practically crackling, he darted out the door and down the stairs.

  “Lias, be careful!” Nieve called, and took off after him, still clutching the plaid scarf. “Kids,” Lirk grumbled, shaking his head as he reached into his pocket. In a moment he was still shaking his head, the only part of him still visible.

  A disturbing enough sight in itself, but not one to bother Professor Manning, who was lost in thought. “Molly,” he muttered to himself. “Now, wasn’t . . . Molly . . . .”

  When Nieve ran into the drawing-room on Lias’ heels, Elixibyss was busy throttling Twisden. She had him by the neck and was giving him a bone-rattling shake, while the unconscious audience that was gathered around the fireplace looked on and smiled happily (except Sutton).

  “She betrayed us!” she screamed. “You chose her, I should have known you couldn’t do anything right. Nitwit! Tell me that you’ve found that formula. Come on, tell me!”

  “No, he hasn’t,” said Nieve.

  Elixibyss dropped her hands from Twisden’s neck and spun around. She was wearing large bone-rimmed sunglasses, which sat askew on her nose.

  “Erk,” Twisden croaked.

  Elixibyss adjusted her sunglasses and hissed, “You! You little ingrate! Running away after all I’ve done for you! I knew you’d be here. Simpleton! You cannot, I repeat, you cannot get away from me.”

  “What have you done for me?” Nieve stuck out her chin, hoping she wouldn’t get it knocked off.

  “I let you live. I could have extinguished you in a trice.” Elixibyss passed a hand before the leaping flames in the fireplace and they vanished instantly, some few left flickered abjectly on the logs.

  “You let me live so you could use me.”

  “Naturally.” Elixibyss pinched her brow with her long fingers. As the sleeve of her gown fell away from her scaley arm, Nieve saw that she’d patched-up the hole in it with a Band-Aid. “Get with it, dear. That’s the name of the game. People have their uses, that’s how the world works. If you believe otherwise then you really are a simpleton.”

  “And you,” Elixibyss now turned her attention to Lias, who was slowly advancing on her, flashlight raised. “You are utterly useless. Think you can hurt me with that feeble little light? Ha! Think again, for once! Honestly, I’ve no idea why I’ve kept you around for so long.”

  “But he’s your son!” protested Nieve.

  “Stolen,” she said. “And a pain from day one, no matter how much I punished him.” She reached into the folds of her gown and produced the gold box. “But a pain for which there is a cure.”

  “Give it to me,” he said, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.

  “Oh, sure.” She gave the box a shake, rattling the contents noisily, then raised it high above his head. “Jump, Spot. C’mon boy! Grrrrrr,” she taunted.

  Nieve winced to see Lias humiliate himself. He dropped the flashlight and made a jump for it, which of course Elixibyss snatched away with a laugh. Whatever was in that box, he wanted it badly. “Give it to him,” she demanded, moving toward her.

  “Don’t touch me!” Elixibyss stepped back quickly.

  “Why not?” asked a woman who suddenly walked into the room. “You’re her mother, aren’t you? Don’t you want a loving hug?”

  The woman looked terribly pale and exhausted, but intent, and fierce. A fierceness Nieve recognized, because she so often felt it herself.

  “Mum,” Nieve whispered.

  “Go ahead, sweetheart,” Sophie said. “Give her a hug.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Elixibyss warned, backing up to the fireplace. She swept her hand over the grate and the flames leapt up again with a hungry roar. “You touch me and this box goes straight into the fire. And with it, my dear, goes your cousin’s life.”

  “Cousin? I don’t have a cousin.”

  “You do, Nieve,” Sophie said, regarding Lias sadly.

  “Spare me the sob story–” Elixibyss began, then stopped. Something caught her eye. In fact it almost plunged into her eye. “No!” she cried.

  Nieve heard it before she saw it. A curious kind of homemade spear whizzed by overhead and struck the Impress. It was made of a brass curtain rod, snapped in half, and was decorated with owl feathers. Malcolm’s arrowhead – the elfshot – was lashed onto its tip with a brown shoelace.

  “Get it out,” Elixibyss snarled, bent over and clutching at the spear, which had sunk into her forehead and was stuck fast. Her sunglasses tumbled to the
floor.

  “Bit gimcrack,” Nieve heard Lirk mumble, although he was nowhere to be seen. “Fixed the headache, heh.”

  As the Impress struggled to pluck the spear out of her brow, black smoke began to leak out from around the edges of the elfshot, as well as from around the loosened Band-Aid on her arm. Seizing his chance, Lias lunged toward her and made a grab for the gold box.

  “No you don’t, dog!” She whirled around and pitched the box into the flames.

  Lias dropped to his knees, shocked, and everyone began to shout and . . . bark?

  Artichoke, baying loudly, bounded into the room. Both he and Nieve dove toward the hearth at the same time. But, as she shoved past Mortimer Twisden, who was now fully alert, he caught hold of the tartan scarf still clutched in her hand and yanked her toward him. “You rotten interfering hoyden–”

  “Get your hands off my daughter!” Sophie sprang to her defense, but the weed seedling Nieve had picked up in the ditch, sprang even faster. It shot out of her pocket like a jack-in-the-box and sank its tiny, razor-sharp teeth into Twisden’s ear. He wailed so loudly that Sophie snatched up the fallen scarf and stuffed it in his mouth, saying, “Now Nieve, only you can do it. Embrace her.”

  “Mum, the box. ”

  “Artichoke has it.”

  Nieve cast around desperately, and saw that Artichoke, standing shakily by the fire, his fur singed and smoking, did indeed have the box clamped in his teeth.

  Smoke, deep black and toxic, was also pouring out of the puncture in Elixibyss’ forehead. She had the spear gripped firmly in hand and was crawling toward Lias, who was staring at her, as if mesmerized.

  Embrace her? Elixibyss? What a repulsive, sickening, bizarre idea. Why on earth–?

  “Please,” Sophie implored. “Do it!”

  Nieve glanced quickly at her mother, nodded, took a deep breath, and ran toward the Impress, arms extended.

  Elixibyss dropped the spear and scuttled backward. “Don’t touch,” she pleaded, “ . . . your mother.”

  It was the most difficult thing Nieve had ever done – and the easiest. Elixibyss could have been her mother’s twin, so closely and disturbingly did she resemble her. The iciness gone from her voice, she even sounded like her again, so much so that the softened and beseeching tone tore at Nieve’s heart. But the eyes, when Nieve looked at them, had changed. The whites and irises had melded into a smooth silvery metal, cold and frightening. Gazing into them for the merest moment, she caught her own reflection gazing back – a Nieve she never knew existed, didn’t want to know – before jerking her head away.

  Without hesitating, she reached out and grasped the Impress’ arms . . . and where she touched . . . she marked her. She left glowing handprints on Elixibyss’ arms, prints that stretched and spread rapidly engulfing them in light. Nieve gasped. The floor beneath was visible through them. The long-fingered light spread over her shoulder, down her back, and along her side. Elixibyss spoke a few faint words in that strange tongue Nieve had heard her use in the garden, and then she sighed once before the light consumed her body entirely, leaving behind a column of black smoke that wavered and dissipated until nothing was left of it but single hair-thin strand, twisting and writhing in the air.

  “Catch it!” someone shouted.

  Nieve turned quickly, thrilled, to see Gran. She was hurrying toward what was left of the Impress.

  Artichoke barked, dropping the gold box, and Lias grabbed it. It was his! But instead of clutching it protectively, as one might expect him to do, he immediately flipped open the lid and dumped the contents on the floor, as if they mattered not at all. Then he went after the wiry wisp of smoke. It twisted away from him, then shot back, twining around and around his wrist. He shook his hand free of it, and pursued it again, leaping after it, snapping the box’s lid, trying to trap the smoke inside. Once, twice, he almost caught it . . . but no, no luck, not this time. It swirled into the fireplace, plaited itself into the rising plume, a night-black strand among the lighter grey, and vanished up the flue.

  “No!” he cried, as Elixibyss herself had done only moments before.

  “Never mind, Lias. She’ll do you no more harm.” Gran had her arms around him. “Och, better mind me, though. Stepped on your toes.” She bent down and scooped up two small bones from the floor, which she then placed delicately on his palm. “Hang onto these, lad. Seeing as you’ve no shoes now. I suppose she stole those, too.”

  Lias nodded, speechless, staring at his long-lost treasure.

  “Gran.” Nieve was the next to feel Gran’s arms around her. “But, those bones are . . . toes?”

  “Aye. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it when he can. Good work, Nievy!”

  She shook her head. “Dr. Morys. Oh Gran, I didn’t mean to–”

  “Hush, pet. I’ve had word. Frances got a team to Bone House before it vanished altogether. He’s poorly, but he’s alive. Thanks to you.”

  Nieve wasn’t sure she deserved any thanks, but felt a tremendous surge of relief. And a rising excitement. “Gran, d’you know what? I can wake Dad up. And Malcolm, and everybody. I know how!”

  “That’s because you’re a cunning girl, love. Ah, here comes your mother. Looks like I’m going to have to share you.”

  Sophie was moving toward her, face alight, but didn’t quite make it. Someone else had come charging into the room. It was Professor Manning, red-faced and flustered, with one shoe missing. A rigid Molly Twisden was tucked under his arm and sticking out like a battering ram. Sophie had to leap aside as the professor hurtled her way, enthusing, “Eureka! I have it, the formula! There’s only one ingredient missing!”

  Mortimer Twisden, weed seedling still dangling from his earlobe like a kitschy earring, had just yanked the scarf out of his mouth and was about to start bawling again, when Professor Manning spotted Nieve. He turned sharply toward her, which caused Molly Twisden to whack her husband on the head with one of her sensible penny loafers. Much to her satisfaction when Molly later heard about it, she gave him such a sound crack that it not only knocked him off his feet, but knocked him out cold.

  “Young lady,” the professor exclaimed, bustling over to her.

  Nieve ducked, while Gran and Lias scurried out of his way. Artichoke yipped and danced away, too, then trotted over to Twisden to give his Pomeranian slippers a sniff.

  Professor Manning set Molly down, propping her up against the mantel. Then, getting down on all fours, he gave Nieve’s shoes a close study. “Hmm, aah, I thought so. Amazing, truly amazing.”

  “What?” Nieve laughed. The shoes were amazing, true. But at the moment they looked like nothing more than a bunch of tattered and wilted leaves clapped around her feet. That marathon run had been hard on them.

  Professor Manning stretched a trembling hand out and lifted up one of the leaves. Beneath it was a delicate white flower, freshly blossomed, which he plucked off and held up to the firelight.

  “Moly,” he said, quietly, reverently.

  “Awesome,” said Lirk, less quietly and a lot less reverently. “By the way, old fella,” he added, finally putting in an appearance, head first, with a twist of a grin on his twisted face, “here’s your shoelace. Came in nice and handy it did.”

  No one – not even Nieve – noticed as Sutton’s lips began to twitch and lift into a tentative, and genuine, smile.

  –Thirty-Four–

  Punchline

  Nieve was staying at Gran’s while her parents were in the city buying supplies for their new business venture. Both of them were sick of weeping for a living. Nieve hadn’t wanted to go with them in case someone recognized her – being famous had gotten to be really boring, really fast. After she’d awakened all those who’d been hypnotized, her picture had appeared in the city newspaper above the headline, FINGER-SNAPPING GIRL GENERATES LIGHT! Incredible, seeing as she’d dreamed that one up herself not that long ago, while never in a zillion years thinking it might actually happen.

  Professor Manning had credited he
r with discovering the antidote as well – a bit craftily, she thought, seeing as he didn’t want anyone to find out that he’d been responsible for the original body-numbing serum. While everyone who’d received the serum was being treated in the hospital, including the babies, he explained to the press that the affliction was a rare kind of virus, hinges immobilus, that, when it struck, twisted people into the shapes of armoires and tables and such. (Nieve was sure he’d made that up on the spot, while the unquestioning reporters eagerly wrote it down in their spiral notebooks. She’d do a little fact-checking if it were her.) Frances and Mayor Mary and Mr. Exley were singing her praises, too, although Mr. Exley was doing more squeaking than singing. Gran told her not to worry, that everyone would forget soon enough. Nieve hoped so. Alicia Overbury certainly seemed to have forgotten. After being liberated from the living wall and treated, she was back home and back to being her irritating old self.

  “Let’s see this famous finger-snapping trick of yours,” she’d demanded.

  Nieve only laughed and walked away.

  “Can’t do it, can you? Showoff. Smart Alec.”

  True, she couldn’t. After she had snapped and snapped and snapped until she thought her fingers were going to snap off (one thing, she’d become an expert at finger-snapping) and everyone had been wakened, the little daylight, the lux, itself dropped off her finger. It had floated in front of her for a few minutes, zipping around as if searching for something, then began to unfold before her eyes, stretching and expanding, growing bigger and bigger, until there was more daylight than darkness and gloom. Nieve reasoned that she couldn’t miss it, because it was everywhere.

  The days were getting colder, but there had been weeks of sunlight and beautiful, clear, starlit nights. She sometimes thought she couldn’t get enough of the sun, like Mr. Mustard Seed, who’d followed her to Gran’s. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she watched him through the kitchen window lolling in a bright patch at the base of the sundial, one contented cat. He seemed a lot bolder these days, and Nieve had to wonder if he’d gotten up to some mischief himself when that truant officer had broken into the house. Maybe the monster had a terror of cats, she’d never know. Just as she’d never know what exactly had happened to the others.