The Unnaturalists

by Tiffany Trent

  I hope that I will either be dead or far from here before I’m called to conjure up heirs for Lucy and Bayne.

  At last, the hairdresser finishes his work and we carefully install the shadowspider veil over Lucy’s hair. I lead her from her chambers and down the back stairs to the family chapel where her father waits for her. She says nothing further to me about heirs or magic or my demeanor.

  Because of the large number of guests, the wedding is to be held in the Great Hall. A makeshift altar is draped in cloth-of-gold on the Lord’s dais. The bishop waits in his white robes beneath the oriel window of the Saints praising the Ineffable Watchmaker’s winged clock. At the sight of us in the chapel, the musicians strike up the procession, and everyone goes silent. I snatch the bouquet of flowers waiting for me and march down the aisle. Bayne is already waiting at the altar. He turns when I arrive. I look away from the mute appeal in his eyes.

  From the crowd, Father and Aunt Minta catch my eye. Lucy invited them as a special favor to me. I smile, but I know my smile is strained. Then I see Charles. He’s staring at me, a slow smile growing on his lips as if he knows my thoughts. I turn my attention to another window, the one in which Saint Pasteur smites the Demon Byron for his licentious poetry. I stare at it until the image is burned behind my eyelids—the great Saint in his armor piercing the loathsome Dragon-tailed poet. My stomach growls for want of food.

  Lord Virulen limps down the aisle beside Lucy. He brings her to me, and I take her up on the dais because it’s too difficult for him to manage. His shuffling gait reminds me of the poor wraiths—all those souls stolen by Charles for his hideous jar.

  Then, Lucy weights me down with her giant bouquet. I pass both hers and mine to the maid nearest me, and then escort her up to Bayne. Her gown slides like a heavy, red snake behind us.

  The line of his shoulders is tense as he takes her hand from mine. Our fingers touch for just a minute. What I see in his eyes makes it difficult to breathe. But I lay her hand in his, and I turn and go back to my place. I barely hear what the bishop says nor their responses in return. I seem to hang somewhere suspended beyond it all, drifting above the ceremony like a little, dark cloud.

  The end comes before I’m ready for it. Lucy’s train slides by me and I realize I must pick it up. I direct the maid nearest me to grab the other end; we follow the couple down the aisle, showered with blood roses and good-fortune ribbons. My ears buzz with the ringing of the chapel bells. I stand in the receiving line, while person after person congratulates the newlyweds. I’m itching to get out of this dress, even though I know I will just be exchanging it for a ballgown for this evening’s masque. I greet people mechanically, a smile so false plastered across my face that it’s a wonder my lips don’t fall off.

  At last, though, familiar hands press mine.

  Father and Aunt Minta come to tell me how beautiful I look, to chastise me for not writing more often. Lucy allowed me to invite them as a special favor to me, for all that I’ve done for her, she’d said. I look at Father, my throat full, longing to tell him everything, sure that if he only knew the truth, he’d change course or at least banish Charles from the Museum. He’s looking at me with consternation, as if trying to read my thoughts and wondering why he can’t. I open my mouth, but then comes that stumbling block, the stuttering.

  “You will come to see the unveiling of the Grand Experiment, won’t you?” Father says. “Charles here says you’re getting on splendidly. Surely they’ll let you come away for a day?”

  And then there he is, The Wad himself, decked out in all his ridiculous finery. I can’t figure out how a mere Scholar like him could afford such, but I’m sure a person who can suck out people’s souls has no trouble finding the resources to procure a fine suit. He’s wearing more brocade than Bayne!

  “I’m certain I can manage to steal her away. But she’s such a busy little thing, aren’t you? So busy in so many things. Hopefully soon she won’t have to be quite so busy,” he says, leering. Again, that terrible odor washes over me. I can’t figure out how anyone can endure the smell, but no one else seems to mind. He’s making fun of me. I back up without getting too far out of line and nod.

  They’re swept along down the line, but not before Father gives me that worried look again.

  After the receiving line, I’m called to attend Lucy as she’s changed into her ball gown. Late afternoon sunlight blinds me from the end of the hall as I hurry through the wing reserved for the Grimgorns. My ankle caves and my shoe goes flying just as I mount the stairs toward Mistress Lucy’s chamber at the end of the hall.

  Bayne comes down the winding stairs, ostensibly having escorted his new wife to her chambers, just as I’m bending and sliding my foot back in my shoe.

  “My lord,” I murmur.

  “Miss Nyx,” he says, moving past me. And then I catch at his sleeve.

  He stops, presenting me with a glacial, lordly gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, the words scraping from my throat. I drop my hand from his arm as though I’ve touched a neverdoor. He nods and sets his foot on the next stair, but my voice pulls him back.

  “Must it be this way between us?” I ask. “I wanted . . . that is . . . I had hoped . . .” I frown and shake my head. “I didn’t know it was you; I swear it!”

  The sorrow in his eyes hurts. I have no idea how I’ve managed to cause so many catastrophes in such a short period of time, but this is almost the worst of them. He looks down at his shoes.

  “I did not do this to hurt you,” I say.

  “Then, why . . . ?”

  I try once more to say the words, to tell him what Charles has done to me, but all that comes are tears.

  He pushes away from me clumsily, saying, “My lady, I must beg your leave. My new wife awaits you in her chamber.” My face burning with shame, I curtsy and hurry up the staircase until the turn shuts him from my sight.

  Mistress Lucy is shedding her wedding dress and petticoats like a musty chrysalis when I enter the room.

  “So?” she says, catching my hands. “What do you think of him?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Come, come now,” Mistress Lucy says, collapsing on the bed in her chemise while the chambermaids struggle to pull off her stockings. “I want to know!”

  “What do you think, my lady? You’re the bride, not me.”

  Mistress Lucy crooks her arms behind her and stares into the puffy canopy overhead. “He seems a bit shy . . . rather inept, as if he’d never been around women at all.”

  “He does have three sisters,” I say, casting about for something to occupy me. I start by picking up bits of wedding finery from the floor.

  “Yes, but that’s not the same thing. Oh, leave all that, will you? Come sit for a moment.” Lucy raises on her elbows, patting the bed beside her.

  I comply, though my stomach may crawl up my throat and betray my nervousness at any moment. For once, I am glad of not having had any breakfast.

  “I mean, I wonder . . . do you think he kisses well?”

  I choke, but instantly cover it with a fit of coughing.

  “Oh, dear,” Mistress Lucy says. Her head nods under the weight of its coiffure like a listing ship. “You’re not taking ill, are you? I suppose you have been forced to exert yourself a good deal lately. You’re terribly flushed.”

  I shake my head and manage what I hope is not a weak smile. “Just so much excitement! Your wedding and . . . the masque . . .”

  And remembering past kisses with your husband. I choke again in absolute horror at myself.

  “Oh, I know. It is terribly exciting, isn’t it?” She flashes that radiant smile, and my heart aches.

  She gestures me to come closer, and when I hesitate, she puts her arm around me and draws me close. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

  I’m terrified that she somehow knows what’s just transpired between me and her husband. But what she says is even worse. “Charles has said he has special plans for you after the masque, yo
ur clumsiness at tea notwithstanding.”

  I stiffen. I think I know exactly what those special plans are.

  “I think he would make a wonderful match, don’t you?” she asks. She lifts her head to look at my face.

  “I d . . . don . . . I don’t . . .” I stutter.

  “Oh, come now,” she says. “I think Charles would be perfect for you. He shares your interest in those unnatural creatures, saints know why, and will probably be in charge of the Museum once your father’s gone. A marriage between two Unnaturalists seems quite . . . natural, don’t you think?” She giggles at her own pun.

  I sit up and try to hold back my tears. I sincerely doubt that Charles has any intention of marrying me, nor do I want him to. I’d rather he sucked my soul into the cursed jar than be his wife. Once, I would have had no problem speaking my mind about such a thing. The irony now is that I literally can’t say a thing in my own defense.

  “Oh.” Lucy sits up and hugs me as I rock and hiccup at the edge of her voluminous bed. “My goodness, I never took you for a girl given to hysterics.”

  She pats me on the shoulder and stands up, stretching.

  She brings me her silver snuff box. She sniffs a bit of myth herself and then offers it to me. But I can no more bring myself to sniff up fairy bones than I can unseal my tongue.

  “It’s all right,” I gasp. I pull the handkerchief from my bosom and dab at my face. I’m sure my cosmetics have been utterly ruined. Lucy confirms this when she orders a maid to touch me up. She looks at me as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with me, but I pull myself together as best I can and help the maids dress her for the ball. Lucy has gone back to her usual love of feathers with this gown, and she sighs happily when the maids remove the roses in her hair and affix a bejeweled spray of kingfisher feathers instead.

  I try not to see the maids laying out her negligee for her wedding night as we leave the room in a cloud of scent and feathers. I am not going to think about it anymore. There is more important work I have to do. I have made up my mind. When the Manticore is brought out of the Refinery, I will free her and take her to the Beast in the Well. I’m not sure how I’ll fare without magic, but perhaps she’ll be able to protect us long enough to get us there. I pick at my gown as we descend.

  Nervousness translates into hunger for me and by the time we’re allowed to proceed to our places, I’m so hungry I feel I could eat an entire horse by myself. Luckily, the feast will be held before the ball, in the same Great Hall where the wedding took place earlier in the afternoon. We shuffle around, waiting to be allowed inside, and the smell of exotic foods is close to making me either faint or scream. I chatter aimlessly with Father and Aunt Minta, only half-listening to what they say, when suddenly the herald’s trumpet rings.

  “Her Most Scientific Majesty, the Empress Johanna! Her Heir, the Princess Olivia!” he cries.

  I freeze.

  Though the Empress had been invited as a matter of course, none of us expected her to actually attend. She hadn’t responded to the invitation. She never leaves the Tower. So, why has she left now?

  It can only be one thing—the Manticore.

  Places are made for them hastily. The entire seating chart will be thrown off, and, more importantly, House Virulen has lost face for not being prepared for the Empress’s surprise arrival. Lucy’s dark eyes glitter against her pale face. She’s livid. Her smile is terribly forced as she curtsies low before the Empress.

  The Empress says a few words to my mistress and then she and the Princess lead our procession into the banquet. I watch Olivia follow her mother like a ghost. I can no longer see the spell that binds her lips, but I feel a kinship with her nonetheless. When her eyes find mine as we’re settling ourselves, we gaze at each other in wordless sympathy.

  Dish after dish is brought in—roasted peacock recovered with its original gorgeous skin and tail fanned out, suckling pig with everlights in its eyes and a golden apple in its mouth, a whole python coiled around a towering pastry. There are other cuts of meats that shimmer with their own light as they’re carved—haunch of Satyr, tentacles of Kraken. I had heard that the Lords sometimes still eat Unnaturals at high feasts, but I never really believed anyone would, as fearful as they are of all things Unnatural.

  What comes next has made me ill from the first time I heard of it during the wedding planning. A fleet of servants bearing glass-covered dishes with napkins carefully placed over the top file out along the table. I watch one eager lady whip the napkin off, and the stricken form of the flambéed fairy under the glass makes me gag. I think of Piskel hidden safely in my room and hope he remains so.

  I know what comes next, but I watch helplessly as one person after another drapes the napkin over their heads, spears the tiny form on a silver fork, and lifts it to their mouth under the napkin. The sound of tiny bones crunching is almost more than I can bear.

  I am just about to hurry my poor appetizer into my napkin and shove it under the table when someone takes me by the arm and drags me from my seat.

  Charles.

  “It’s time,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  I nearly stumble as he pushes me out of the hall, out onto the veranda, and toward the old house Refinery.

  “What are you doing?” I try to turn and kick him in the shins, but get tangled up in my dress and the sliding of my shoes.

  “The Manticore is being uncooperative,” he says. “I am guessing she will only allow you to bring her into the Hall.”

  “I won’t,” I say. “I won’t do it.”

  “You will do it, or I will force the bishop to wed us right now. I think you know there are worse things than having one’s soul trapped in a jar.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t care what you do!”

  He shakes me. Hard as he did the night he silenced me with that wretched kiss. I can’t figure out how a boy who’s only a few inches taller than me and slender as a snake can have such strength. “I can make you, you know. And it will be far more unpleasant than the spell I used to seal your lips.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but then he puts his hand over my lips and says a word, a single, vicious word. My lips fuse into a solid piece of skin. I cannot say a thing, and I cannot open them. I can hear my own muffled screaming in my head as he drags me to the Refinery doors and unlocks them one-handed.

  “Now, unchain her and make her follow you to the Hall!” He pushes me so hard that I trip over the broken marble and fall to my hands and knees again before the Manticore. My reticule slides from my wrist and tumbles directly between her paws. The steel hoops of my skirt bite into my knees, but I daren’t move. She’s crouched over my neck, growling.

  I can’t say anything as her iron breath makes goose pimples of my flesh.

  Pleasepleaseplease, I think at her. Hoping that she can release me. Hoping that she knows how to bring the magic back or can at least show me the way.

  Her teeth are at my throat and for one moment, I’m afraid perhaps this has been her intent all along, that she’ll dupe everyone and their hopes for me by eating me alive here in the twilight.

  Then my lips split and I can open them and breathe through my mouth. And speak.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  She laughs a low, feline laugh.

  I stand and bend to unhitch her chain. In one swift motion, she lifts my reticule. The silk dissolves and I see a mirror, a pot of lip stain, and my handkerchief slide down her throat. She clamps her iron teeth around my toad.

  “No!” I cry.

  She bites down on it hard, and it dissolves with a sharp green flare. I’m suddenly lighter, as though I’ve sloughed off a heavy skin. The Manticore smiles and winks at me.

  Charles, who’s lurking in the doorway, laughs. “I see she disposed of the dampener. Doesn’t matter, though. Your powers won’t help either of you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say. I’m still looking into the Manticore’s eyes, wishing I could speak to her.

  “It�
�s a dampener,” Charles says. “Families with known witches or warlocks in their bloodlines use them to suppress the gift.”

  “You mean . . .” I whisper, more to the Manticore than to him.

  “Your father has known all along what you are.”

  My gut wrenches. I feel like I might fall down again. Memories flash with ever-increasing clarity—Father’s concerned looks, being expelled from Seminary, whispered conversations outside my door, Father telling me to carry the toad with me as a good luck charm, all those sylphids singing to me in that exhibit long ago . . .

  The Manticore nudges me as if to remind me we have work to do.

  I inhale as deeply as I’m able. “Yes,” I say.

  She gazes at me with her great eyes and silver smile. I understand now why Athena went to her death bold and unrepentant for what she did. If it comes to that, I will do the same. Energy dances all around the Manticore and in and out of the ivy—threads of nearly invisible light—and I know I have but to reach out and weave it into whatever shape I need.

  I nod, leading her through the door. Her claws click on the marble, then go silent on the mossy steps.

  Charles turns. I see the dark thing inside him; it’s curled around his heart, an evil homunculus gnawing through his chest.

  And at that moment, as I watch the last shreds of his humanity disappear, I understand. “You fool,” I whisper to him. “You let the Grue eat your heart in exchange for its power.”

  He raises his hand to cuff me again, but thinks better of it when the Manticore growls.

  “The witch is clever,” he says. “Charles offered me something I could not refuse. And we will both soon have what we desire.”

  “What?” I ask. “What is worth destroying everything? For that’s what you’ll do if you let her die.”

  I turn to the Manticore. “Why should you abide by the Law if he doesn’t?”

  She stays silent.

  He looks at us with dead eyes and a truly gruesome smile. “Not so clever,” he says. “Come.” He turns. I consider leaping on him and trying to kill him with my bare hands. But even though I have the magic back, I’ve no idea how to use it or if I’m strong enough to overcome him. I’m pretty certain I’m not. The Manticore paces behind me, the ticking of her heart like a metronome counting out my steps. Her iron breath is colder on my back than the oncoming night. She needs me.