by N. D. Wilson
“Why? Oh. Aren’t you hilarious. No. I didn’t wet myself, Brave Sister. But only because you inspire me. What’s all over the floor? It’s on your boot, too.”
Tiny drops of clear liquid were rolling through yellowing pages and ancient envelopes. Cyrus thumped to his knees. The drops were seeking each other, growing larger as they tumbled over shards of glass, through bunnied dust, and around Antigone’s boots.
A ball slopped off Antigone’s toe, swallowing a whole flock of drops, and gathered around her sole.
“I wouldn’t touch it,” Antigone said.
Cyrus extended a finger. “It looks like water.”
“It’s not acting like water. It’s acting like mercury.”
“I’ve never seen how mercury acts.” Cyrus poked it. The ball quivered and slid slowly away on its flat belly.
“That’s how it acts,” Antigone said. “But it’s silver, and it doesn’t go looking for itself.”
More tiny droplets tumbled past to join the ball. The bigger it got, the faster the smaller drops moved toward it.
Cupping his hands, Cyrus picked it up.
“Mercury is poisonous,” Antigone said. “In chemistry, Mr. Sampson said it can soak through your skin and kill you.”
“But this isn’t mercury,” said Cyrus. “This is water. Should I taste it?”
“You’ve been a little hard to deal with lately, so yeah, go ahead.”
Cyrus held the ball up to the light. Antigone pressed up beside him to get a look. Tiny particles of dirt and splinters of wood were floating inside it, but as they watched, all of the impurities rose to the top of the sphere, then slid down around the outside until they reached Cyrus’s skin.
It was cleaning itself.
“Wow,” said Cyrus. “Tigs, try something. Cup your hands beneath mine.”
Antigone held out her hands beneath her brother’s, and then Cyrus spread his fingers.
The liquid immediately slopped through and bounced into Antigone’s cupped palms.
Cyrus examined his fingers. “It feels just like water, but my skin’s dry. All the gunk is left, though.” He brushed off his hands and began scanning the rubble on the floor. A rectangular box lay open on its side. Glass was scattered around it.
Cyrus picked up the box. Inside, it was lined with red velvet and looked like the inside of an egg carton. A dozen baseball-size indents were set in two rows. One of them held half a hollow glass sphere. The rest were empty. A small, lined piece of paper had been tacked inside the lid.
“This is really weird, Cyrus,” said Antigone. “Look what happens when you break it in half.”
Cyrus glanced at his sister. She was cupping an egg-size ball of the water in each hand.
“They’re two feet apart,” Antigone said. “But they pull like serious magnets.”
Her hands slapped together, and a single large ball dropped to the floor and bounced like a doomed water balloon.
Antigone scrambled after it as Cyrus looked back at the list. Eleven names had been handwritten in a column labeled MEMBER. They had written their ranks in the next column, and the “date of withdrawal” in the next. The “date of return” column was completely empty. The last “date of withdrawal” was 1932.
“They need some librarians around here,” Cyrus said. “Some curators. Something. Somebody should be collecting late fees. Tigs, we can take stuff out of here. You just write your name down.” He closed the lid and looked at the top of the box. A typed label had been filled out with a sloppy fountain pen and then glued down.
“Tigs, it’s a fungus,” Cyrus said. He held out the box. “And it was collected by a Smith. That makes it practically ours.”
Slopping the ball from hand to hand, Antigone read the label. “Let’s go with Quick Water. The other ones sound evil.”
“Quick Water it is,” said Cyrus. “Give me half.”
Antigone splashed half her blob into her brother’s hands. He held it back up to the light.
It was clearer than any water he had ever seen. Clearer than air. And it did strange things with the light, like a fish-eye camera lens. Looking into it was like looking into a different room, a different world, spread out, bent, curving, but perfectly sharp. He raised it all the way up to his eye and tried to look through it. Shelves warped up toward the ceiling around … his sister?
Antigone screamed, and Cyrus jumped backward, tripped, and nearly fell again.
“Cyrus!” she said, covering her water. “We have to put them back. I saw an eye. The whole thing was magnifying an eye — an eyeball just sitting in my hand.”
“It spooked me, too,” Cyrus said, “but mine was looking at you. You were in mine.”
“What are you saying?” Antigone asked. “I was in yours? How?”
“I was looking at you. I looked into the water, and the room was all bent, and at first I didn’t notice that it wasn’t the right part of the room, but then I was looking up at you.”
“I don’t get it,” Antigone said. “More importantly, I don’t like it. We’re putting them back.”
“I was looking into mine and out of yours!” Cyrus said. “I mean, I’m guessing that’s what happened. That was my eye. Hopefully. Look again.”
Cyrus held his water up — farther from his face this time — and he grinned. His wobbling ball was dark. But then Antigone opened her hands. When her water’s quivering had settled down, there was her brother, smiling up out of her sphere like a bizarre cartoon — enormous-nosed and pencil-necked.
“Tigs,” said the cartoon Cyrus. “This is the coolest thing ever, and we’re taking it with us.”
The door banged open, and Cyrus and Antigone jumped.
Eleanor Eldridge glared at them. She was wearing a straw hat and had a heavy book bag slung over her shoulder.
“What do you two think you’re doing?”
Antigone slipped her water into Cyrus’s hand and jumped forward. “Sterling said we could look around.”
“Sterling,” Mrs. Eldridge muttered. “Don’t you go listening to Benjamin Sterling — he’s a man with a dirty soul, though he did tell me where to find you.”
She turned around. “Come along, then. It’s time we talked about your tutors.”
“Oh, we have the list,” Antigone said.
The old woman laughed. “Throw it away. You two may be the most unpopular Acolytes Ashtown has ever seen. Nobody wants to share a room with you, let alone share a lesson. And the club masters with their little white uniforms wouldn’t go near you for a triple fee.”
She glanced back at Cyrus and snorted around a half smile. “You surely won’t be getting any language help from the monks. But I’ve done my best and you should be grateful. Hop to, hop to! I’m not waiting.”
She hurried back through the door. Tucking balls of Quick Water into their pockets, Cyrus and Antigone jogged after her.
“Now,” she said when they’d reached the main hallway, “you’re on the list as having paid all dues — though I’m not sure how — so we’ll start with proper clothes. Keep up, keep up. I’ll explain things on the way.”
Mrs. Eldridge led them out the main doors and into the muggy summer morning. Dennis Gilly, sweating under his bowler hat, grinned at them as they passed. The far side of the lawn was busy with white-uniformed grapplers taking turns throwing and bouncing each other in the grass. On the gravel path directly at the bottom of the stairs, two boys were each working on a single bicycle with its own large umbrella propeller.
But Cyrus’s eyes were in the air.
He stopped and Antigone stopped with him. No more than fifty feet off the ground, six small, football-shaped hot-air balloons were engaged in a battle. Three of the balloons were white and three were red, but each was painted with a different symbol — Cyrus saw the ship, the snake, and something that looked like a bear.
The baskets were tiny, barely big enough for one person but each holding two. On the back of each basket there was a large fan, like something off a swamp boat. Mounted on the fr
ont, there was a small cannon.
From one of the baskets, two people had fallen and were dangling at the end of long ropes tied around their waists. A third person, a girl, had taken over their balloon. She was running the fan and the cannon by herself.
Mrs. Eldridge stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up at Cyrus and Antigone. She clicked her tongue and snapped her fingers. Cyrus didn’t hear. The balloons were circling each other, ramming each other, and firing brown lumps at each other that tumbled down to the ground.
One of the lumps bounced off a balloon and spun through the air toward Cyrus, thumping onto the stairs not six feet from where they were standing. It looked like a compressed loaf of bread.
“What are they doing?” Antigone asked.
“Nothing productive,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “It’s quite childish, though Journeymen have been doing it as long as I can remember. It’s a game of conquest. Board an opponent’s balloon and hurl him from the basket. They’re only supposed to fire stale bread at each other, though Sterling’s kitchen tends to provide it fresh. Now come on, and watch your heads.”
Cyrus and Antigone stumbled down the stairs. While they watched, two balloons collided. Bread and shouted threats were exchanged from point-blank range, and then the boarding struggle began, with fan-driven baskets spinning.
Antigone yelped as two bodies fell, bounced, and dangled — one from each balloon. The war above them raged on.
Cyrus and Antigone reached Mrs. Eldridge.
“No Keeper would agree to give you flight lessons,” she said. “But there aren’t many I would trust in a 1914 canvas and wood plane anyhow. Diana Boone has agreed to teach you both, but Rupe had her flying all night and she’s sleeping at the moment. Your first lesson will have to wait.”
Cyrus could feel Antigone looking at him. He bit his lip and fought back a smile. He was going to fly. The path began to circle the broad lawn.
“As for weaponry,” Mrs. Eldridge said, “well, that was worse. The best I could do was Gunner for your shooting, and he’s an Order washout — hardly ideal. But he can shoot, and no one will argue with that. Rupert Greeves will handle your fencing himself. He’s a master’s master, but good luck with scheduling, especially with all the trouble you’ve brought to his life. James Axelrotter, ‘Jax’ whenever he’s actually seen, might help you with zoology, though those requirements are ludicrous and infeasible — I intend to speak with Mr. Rhodes about it.”
“Where are we going?” Cyrus asked. They were lapping the lawn, heading for an iron gate. Beyond it, gray buildings hugged narrow streets.
“Outfitters,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “As I’ve already told you. I have yet to find anyone willing to give you occult or medical training — particularly when it comes to instruction in amputation — and you’ll have to depend on Greeves again for your fitness. Your choices are very limited in free diving, and I recommend Llewellyn Douglas — a sour old carcass of a man. You’ll find him on the jetty most days. I absolutely refuse to speak to him for you. I haven’t yet looked into your navigational options.”
She pushed through the gate and led them out. The gravel path widened.
“What about languages?” Antigone asked. Cyrus glared at her.
“I’m afraid that you’ll be stuck with me and I with you.” Mrs. Eldridge glanced back at them. “Which means it’ll be French and Latin. They’ll be the easiest. I know others, but I don’t feel up to trying to communicate them to you. It will be hard enough listening to you desecrate French.”
She had led them to a tall, narrow stone building. Now she pulled open the door. Cyrus and Antigone stepped into low light; cool, humming air-conditioning; and the smell of leather and oil and mold. The place was intensely cluttered. Shelves overloaded with boots, jackets, trousers, scarves, belts, and bags climbed twenty feet to the cobwebbed and vented ceiling. Dusty ladders leaned against the loads at odd angles. An old man was snoring in the center of the room, his feet propped up on a pile of leather jackets, a dead cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
Mrs. Eldridge whistled sharply and the man jerked upright, spitting his cigarette across the room.
“Two Acolytes to be outfitted,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “Smith, Miss, and Smith, Mr. Everything typical 1914 or older.”
The man scratched a stubbled cheek and squinted at Cyrus and Antigone. He was a man with eyebrows, or maybe they were eyebrows with a man. Ownership would have been hard to establish, and Cyrus couldn’t focus on anything else — the two fur hedges looked like they were trying to escape his face.
“Not possible,” the man muttered, shaking his head. “Heard about them two, but not possible.”
“Make it possible,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “I know you never throw anything away, Donald. Now get to it. They have a Latin lesson waiting.”
The man stood slowly, put his hand over his right eye, and looked the two Smiths up and down. Sighing, he turned and trudged away through piles of clothes. “Twenty minutes,” he said, “and you’ll get what I got.”
What the man got turned out to be a rather large mound of antique clothing. Mrs. Eldridge nodded and snorted her way through the pile until she’d cut it in half, sending up a storm cloud of dust as she worked. Finally, she pulled out two small bundles and handed one to Cyrus and one to Antigone.
“Get changed,” she said, and turned to the man with the eyebrows. “Have the rest pressed and baled and delivered to the stairway above the Polygon.”
The eyebrows bobbed. The man grunted. Mrs. Eldridge jerked open the door and stepped outside.
Hiding in a cluttered aisle, Cyrus kicked off his shoes and pulled on his new, very old pair of pants. They were brown faded to tan with large vertical flap pockets on the hips and horizontal flaps on the seat. And they fit.
Cyrus transferred his Quick Water and lightning bug out of his old pants and into his new ones, and then he moved on. He didn’t like the look of the boots. They were awkwardly tall, but they fit well once they were on, and they felt lighter than he’d expected. Two leather tongues and buckles cinched them tight against his calves. The faded and wrinkled shirt was collared, buttoned, and extremely pocketed. He left it untucked and examined his jacket.
Leather. Ancient. Oiled almost to the point of dripping. Creased and worn. It was hard not to love, especially with the patches stitched on the shoulders. On the left shoulder there was a simple round tricolor. The right held a yellow shield around a black boxing monkey. Cyrus smiled, tracing the embroidered animal with his fingers — this was his symbol. He’d stick it on everything if he could. He turned the jacket over. On the lower back, part of the leather had blackened in some decades-old brush with fire. Between the shoulder blades, Cyrus’s fingers found three holes. Bullet holes. Inside, the pale-blue quilted lining was stained red-brown.
“Cyrus! C’mon.”
Cyrus swung the jacket on — he didn’t care if it was hot outside — and hurried toward the door. Antigone was waiting for him, wearing improved boots and a jacket of her own — darker and longer than his and belted at the waist.
She smiled and put her hands on her hips. “Cool, right?”
Cyrus laughed. “Mine’s cooler. I think someone died in this one.”
He looked back at Eyebrows.
The old man was working on a toothpick now. He shrugged. “Good jacket to die in.”
Antigone grimaced, Cyrus grinned, and the two of them barreled out the door and into the heat.
Dan’s eyes sprung open. Sunlight was glowing through his blue curtain. He hadn’t been asleep. He knew he hadn’t. But his mind had stopped. Someone had stopped it. He could barely move his head, and the back of his skull felt open to the air. Rolling his eyes around the room, he could just see Phoenix in the chair near his feet. Today, the suit beneath his stained and yellowing lab coat was as black as his hair. His face was furrowed with thought, and he was drumming long fingernails on the arms of his chair.
His pale eyes drifted up into Dan’s.
“A very good morning to you, Daniel Smith.” His drawl was slow and flat, and he yawned into the back of his hand. “Forgive me.” He straightened in his chair, and then leaned forward. “I must also apologize for entering your mind without a formal invitation. You were sleeping, and as I believed we were friends, I thought it unkind to wake you for something so trivial as permission. But Daniel Smith, I’m afraid our friendship is already in danger. Friends help each other, and you seem to know absolutely”—his hands became clenched, bloodless fists; his voice sank and hardened its edge—“absolutely nothing about that which I need.”
Sighing, he massaged his eyelids slowly. “And now, unfortunately, I must befriend your siblings as well. Though I’m told that they, too, may not have what I need.” He lowered his hands and inhaled slowly. His face was full of regret. “If that proves to be the case, Daniel Smith, I’m rather worried that I may take off this lab coat. And when I take off this coat — I won’t tell a lie — things are liable to become heated.”
Daniel tried to twist, to see if his mother was still in the room. He tried to open his mouth, to lick his cracked lips, to speak. But his jaw was locked and his tongue was trapped inside his teeth. Where were Cyrus and Antigone? What had happened to them?
Phoenix grimaced, and then answered Dan’s thoughts. “Regrettably, they have been taken in by some rather unsavory characters. But I wouldn’t worry yourself about them. I’ve taken steps.”
Dr. Phoenix smiled — his almost pupilless blue eyes were looking directly into Daniel’s. He stood up slowly from his chair, his long, thin body towering over the bed.
“On a more scientific note, I must say that it is both remarkable and unfortunate how precisely your mind is cut from the Smith mold. I did once have the opportunity to study two of your aunties — terrifyingly dull examples of the same simple mental organization and total lack of imagination that you manifest, forgive me for saying. So much potential in Smith blood and Smith bones, but never realized.”
He paused, licking thin lips. His brow furrowed. “Would you expect your brother and sister to be more … intriguing? Do say yes. After all, they seem to have far more of your feral mother in them than do you. And your mother’s mind is truly a remarkable maze of striking images and animal desires — as one would expect, of course, from a woman raised as she was.”