Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  Once I’d eaten and Mr. Grenouille had inquired after my travels and my life so far, he said, “Now. I suppose we might talk business? There is much for you to catch up on.” Mrs. Cantanker raised her eyebrows and blinked down at her kippers and toast. “You say you remember nothing of your early childhood. I suppose you wouldn’t. You were so tiny when . . . when you left. But you are aware that yours is one of the last great families of witches on the continent?”

  “Mrs. Cantanker told me,” I said. “I didn’t really believe it. Of course I’ve heard about witches, and Mrs. Boliver once took a train to visit one about her gout. But they seemed awfully important and far away. I never would have thought they’d have anything to do with me.” I set down my fork and squinted at the lawyer. “Mr. Grenouille, what happened to the Brydgeborns? Where are they?”

  “Well . . . ,” said Mr. Grenouille, plucking at his shirt cuffs and avoiding my gaze. “They’re here. In the castle.”

  My hand twitched, rattling the silverware. Here? But Minnifer had said they were dead! A wild hope sprang up inside me. How lovely would it be if my welcome last night had been a strange little joke and my family was waiting for me, and I would meet them soon!

  “She doesn’t understand,” said Mr. Grenouille to himself. “She will have to see.” Then he turned to Mrs. Cantanker and said, “Ysabeau? Will you open up the dining room?”

  Mrs. Cantanker looked at us both with an air of grave and graceful mourning, as if we had asked her to perform some terrible task. Then she rose and glided toward the door, taking a chatelaine from the folds of her gown. A great many keys in all shapes and sizes hung from the velvet tassel, tinkling quietly. “Follow me,” she said.

  We crossed the hall to a pair of tall gilt doors. Mrs. Cantanker unlocked them and pushed one open. Beyond was a dark cavernous space. The drapes were drawn over the windows, and only the faintest bit of morning light shone down through the leaves and detritus on a skylight high above.

  “They’re in here,” said Mrs. Cantanker grimly, standing aside. “Please, step in. Join them.”

  I shuddered, peering into the room. Cobwebs had made empires of the chandeliers, linking them together with bridges and roads, gossamer threads leaping from gilded vaults to crystal branches, gray veils enshrouding the windows. I brushed one aside and trod carefully forward into the gloom. My feet sank into centimeters of dust, soft as velvet.

  I heard nothing, not a breath, only the occasional sound of doves cooing and rats scuttling in the walls. I approached the table. A terrible stench brushed my nose, and between the high backs of the chairs, I saw rotting heaps of food, a tower of furred blackened fruit, a sagging cake, a leg of ham swarming with flies and glistening beetles. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand. . . . And then, with a start, I saw them: the Brydgeborns, sitting upright at their places.

  They seemed to have melted, like candles, all over the chairs and the tablecloth. Drips of a waxy blue-gray film hung suspended from their fingertips, from noses and black brocade sleeves. But the substance was only a cocoon. The figures beneath it were flawlessly preserved, peering out as if from under the ice on a winter lake. A tall woman with a hooked nose sat at the head of the table. On her left and right were a bespectacled boy and a girl several years older than me.

  I approached the girl’s chair slowly, revulsion and curiosity overtaking me. I could see her clearly through the strange veil. She had golden hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were wide open—green as pine needles—and her lips were quirked into an odd little smile, as if her death had come as no shock to her. I reached out to touch the substance that had enshrined her. It was as hard and cool as marble.

  I turned, staring in horror at Mrs. Cantanker and Mr. Grenouille, who stood silhouetted in the doorway. Then I fled the room, dust and cobwebs billowing behind me as I made my escape.

  “What happened to them?” I whispered, once I was back in the comparative brightness of the hall. “How did they die?”

  Mrs. Cantanker closed the door, locking it firmly. “Ephinadym mulsion,” she said. “A very nasty spell. Kills its victims instantly, filling every pore, every organ and vein with an indeterminate substance that cannot be broken, cracked, or melted. One minute the Brydgeborns were sitting down to an excellent dinner . . . and the next they were dead. They had no chance to defend themselves.”

  I stared at the closed door. “That was my mother? My mother, brother, and sister?”

  “They would be your adopted brother and sister, if you are who you claim to be,” Mrs. Cantanker said. “John and Greta Brydgeborn were not Georgina’s true children.”

  “Zita was her first and only,” said Mr. Grenouille quietly. “I’m sorry you had to meet them like this.”

  I swallowed, my heart aching. I had not known these people. But I should have. I should have known them my whole life, and now I never would.

  “Most of the servants fled when they discovered what had happened,” said Mrs. Cantanker. “They knew the implications.”

  “What implications?” I asked.

  “The implications of such a spell having been performed in this house, of all houses. A house that was supposed to be a bastion against the dark arts. The implication that something crept in, past the woods, past the salt and iron and ancient wards, and killed one of the most powerful witches in the world, all but ending her bloodline.”

  “So you’re saying they were murdered!” I said. “And they’re just sitting in there? Shouldn’t we call the constable—?”

  “The constable?” Mrs. Cantanker tittered into her hand, a gesture I thought stupidly childish for one so elegant and refined. “And how would the constable help us? Handbills on lampposts? Ads in newspapers? ‘Wanted: a pernicious murderer, well versed in the casting of intricate thousand-year-old spells’? Save your bright ideas for your diary, little girl. The enemies of the Blackbirds are not the sort the mortal world has any sway over.”

  I stared at her, stung by the disdain in her voice. “But who did it?” I asked. “How did the murderers get in, and what if—?” I stopped before the words spilled out. What if they’re still here?

  “Zita,” said Mr. Grenouille, coming forward and taking both my hands. “I know you’re from Cricktown, so your knowledge of the politics of witchery and the netherworld is patchy at best. But it’s very unlikely the murderer was human. Or even alive. There are only a few things powerful enough to perform such a spell, and none of them reside in the lands of the living.”

  I blinked, feeling lost in that great hall, the checkerboard tiles at my feet, the painted wings of the blackbirds forming a crown above my head. Mrs. Cantanker watched me, the keys tinkling in her hands.

  “You mean . . . ,” I said in a small voice, “You mean the murderer was a ghost?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Grenouille. And then he took out his pocket watch and consulted it ceremoniously. “But you needn’t trouble yourself now! Oh no. Plenty of time to be troubled later. I’m delighted to say I’ve drawn up all the papers, and we’ll have you installed as the new mistress of Blackbird Castle in a blink, just this way, hurry hurry!”

  I felt numb to my fingertips as they led me away from that dreadful room. But even in my daze I heard them whispering to each other, Mrs. Cantanker’s voice low and prickling.

  “Let us not get ahead of ourselves, Charles,” she murmured. “I’ll not risk a false Blackbird in this house, not with the consequences so dire.” She turned to me, her head cocked, and it made me think of the monstrous blue jays in Mrs. Boliver’s garden, how they watched their struggling prey before pulling it to bits. “First, before anything else, we shall have to perform the test.”

  Chapter Four

  WHAT have I gotten myself into? I thought as we once again traversed the great hall, Mr. Grenouille scurrying from black tile to black tile like a tiny, anxious beetle, Mrs. Cantanker flowing ahead like a stormy waterspout far out at sea, and me clumping after them in my sensible shoes and borrowed finery
, feeling ever more anxious and out of place. First witches, then murder, and now a test?

  I’d been taught to read at the orphanage. I’d devoured every line and scrap of writing in that chilly old place, and sometimes I’d even crept into the Mother Superior’s office while she was snoring at her desk and stolen the books from her shelves. I knew all sixty-seven ways to prepare the most tasteless, unappetizing porridge possible, and also how to fix a wool-spinning machine if it jammed, since those had been the Mother Superior’s favorite things to read about. But that was where my education ended. I didn’t suppose I’d do very well at this test, whatever it was.

  “Ysabeau, please,” Mr. Grenouille said, breathless in his efforts to keep up. “Do you have any idea how long I searched for this girl? She is the Brydgeborn heir, I guarantee it—”

  Mrs. Cantanker waved the lawyer’s words away. “She’ll have to prove that first, Charles. Don’t be gullible. If she doesn’t have the talent, what’s the point? We might as well dress up one of the goats in petticoats and call that the heir of the Brydgeborns.”

  “What sort of talent do I need to have?” I asked, and Mrs. Cantanker gave Mr. Grenouille a pointed look as if to say, See?

  Then she swept up the stairs, skirts rustling. “We’ll go to the Vine Room. That should be an excellent test of her ability.”

  “Ysabeau! Do you think that wise—”

  “Aristotelian,” snapped Mrs. Cantanker, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

  “Ysabeau, I must protest. If she fails, she will be ripped limb from limb! Or worse!”

  “What could possibly be worse than being ripped limb from limb?” I started to say, but Mrs. Cantanker interrupted.

  “Excellent! Then we’ll pack her up in a hatbox and send her back third-class cargo. It’ll save her the cost of a full-fare ticket.”

  I let out an indignant gasp. Mrs. Cantanker smiled widely over her shoulder at me. “I jest, of course,” she said, though I was sure she didn’t. “Oh, all right. We’ll go to the High Blackbird’s study. But don’t think you’ll be able to fool me, girl. There will be no reward for trickery, and you’ll find you’ll rue the day you became a Blackbird for fine jewels and pretty dresses. A true Blackbird is graced with cunning, sly wits, a sharp tongue, and the power to repel the evils of night and fog. But! In return, they bear a great burden and are feared by both the living and the dead.”

  Mr. Grenouille shook his head, but he could not bring himself to protest this claim. I looked between them, becoming more confused by the second. I had traveled here to be reunited with my family, not to become a witch. . . .

  We went up a monstrously grand staircase carved from wood so dark it appeared almost black. A reddish sheen glowed in its grain, as if blood ran deep in its veins. The entire thing was built to look like a twisting dragon, the banister scaled, the spindles fashioned into claws and folded wings. We turned up another staircase and another, each one becoming progressively narrower and less ornate. No guests came here, I supposed, no one who needed to be cowed by grand halls and dragon staircases. I felt strangely honored.

  Finally, at the top of the steepest, narrowest stair of all, we arrived at a large tower room. A beautiful stained-glass skylight dappled everything in petals of blue and green light, and every inch of the space below was filled of wonders: I spotted an aquarium filled with fish that seemed to be on fire. A golden cage in which slumbered a fuzzy, purple-winged moth the size of a small dog. A table covered with ingenious contraptions and bottles and curling glass tubes. I wandered, awestruck, past a sumptuous globe, taller than I was, with many little black crosses piercing its crust. Some were solitary, far out among the wastes and woods, but most stood in huddles around cities and towns. And when I looked up, I saw bookshelves, rising foot after foot, breathtaking cliffs of stories and secrets going all the way to the roof. Even the pillars were filled with books, little brass pegs running up them so you could reach the highest shelves.

  I gasped. I’d never seen so many books in my life, not at the orphanage and certainly not at Mrs. Boliver’s; she bought novels twice a year and let them molder under her coffee cups. Here there were enormous grimoires bound in oxblood- and verdigris-colored leather, books with tasseled placeholders, locked with coiling salamanders. There were rows of encyclopediae stamped with gold. There were rather dirty, unassuming volumes no larger than chapbooks that looked as if they had traveled through fire and mud. I wanted to peek inside every one of them and run my fingers over the soft pages. I wanted to sit on the floor and read every line, every ancient, exciting tale.

  Mrs. Cantanker went to an enormous desk and seated herself behind it, observing me imperiously. Small pewter picture frames littered its surface, no doubt displaying members of the Brydgeborn family, but they had all been snapped facedown.

  “I’ve got just the test,” she said, lifting a large silver dish out of a drawer and setting it on the desk. Next she brought out a knife and an odd sort of fork.

  “Are you a witch too?” I asked, and she smiled oddly and raised her chin, a gesture halfway between bitterness and pride.

  “I have some knowledge,” she said, standing and filling the silver dish with water from a mossy spigot in the wall. Then she cut several strands of rosemary and milkweed with the knife and threw them into the water, along with a few flakes of ash, swirling it all together with the fork.

  “Look into the dish,” Mrs. Cantanker commanded. “There is a spirit in this room. If you have talent, the scrying dish will reveal its whereabouts to you. If you have none . . .” She set down the knife and fork on a snowy linen napkin and folded it over them. “If you have none, Mr. Grenouille will return you to whichever vile alley he dredged you from. All clear?”

  Mr. Grenouille mumbled something apologetic and fiddled with a button on his waistcoat. I frowned and peered into the glistening waters. I hoped I had talent. I hoped I would see something. But I saw only the ornate ceiling, curved like a fish eye across the bottom of the bowl. I looked up at Mrs. Cantanker, my heart pounding. She was staring at me, a sly glimmer in the depths of her gaze.

  I returned my attention to the bowl . . . and then I saw it, high in the rafters—a small, crouched shape. I caught the vague outline of an arm, a leg, all diaphanous, as if made of the most delicate gray mist. The figure wasn’t moving. It looked as if it were hiding.

  “It’s in the corner,” I said, in an awed little whisper. “Up there. It’s very still.”

  “Hah!” Mrs. Cantanker exclaimed. “Charlatan! I knew it!” She swept toward me, suddenly terrifying and huge, her mouth stretched into a rictus grin. “There is no spirit in this room. They cannot get past the wards of the High Blackbird’s study. You did well until now. Wearing the young mistress’s clothes, trying to make us all think you belonged in fine silks and ribbons. But I told you there’d be no fooling me.”

  “What?” I looked back into the water in a panic. What was she saying? The spirit was still there in the rafters. But it was no longer immobile. It was drifting, curling like a thread of smoke among the beams. It was a girl.

  Mrs. Cantanker gripped my wrist and twisted it cruelly, dragging me toward the door. “Mr. Grenouille, she is an imposter. I’m sure you tried your best, but she is not who we were searching for. I suggest we throw her out, or take her to the Vine Room, which is still an excellent option—”

  All at once a light bulb in the wall, encased in a metal cage, flared red, washing the room in a glaring, bloody light. Mrs. Cantanker froze.

  Mr. Grenouille squeaked. “The spirit lamp,” he whispered. “Ysabeau . . . there is something here.”

  I wrenched myself from Mrs. Cantanker’s grasp and stumbled back to the bowl. The girl in the rafters was growing clearer by the second. I saw a pair of eyes materialize, glowing like twin moons. Then the hint of a beautiful gown and strands of golden hair, all of it moving slowly, as if underwater . . .

  “That isn’t possible,” Mrs. Cantanker hissed, staring around the room. “They cann
ot get in!”

  She raced to the desk and jerked open a drawer, hurling a handful of salt into the air. Then she ran for the dish, her hands gripping its edges as she stared into it. I knew at once she couldn’t see the girl in the rafters. Whereas I had just realized I could see the ghost, dish or no. She was writhing, stretching down toward us. Toward me.

  “Kaithus!” Mrs. Cantanker bellowed. “Kaithus mihalit!”

  The shape recoiled, her hair flaring out behind her. I thought I recognized her face. Green eyes, like pine needles.

  Then it was over. The red lamp extinguished. The dish of water overturned, and silvery liquid flooded silently across the desk. Mrs. Cantanker looked at me, breathless. Mr. Grenouille extricated himself from the drapes with whose help he had tried to make himself invisible. “Is it gone?” he whispered. “Are we safe?”

  “Safe?” Mrs. Cantanker practically shouted. She strode across the room, scanning the ceiling with a jewel-lensed pair of opera glasses. “A spirit got into the High Blackbird’s study. Of course we’re not safe.”

  “But there are spirits everywhere in the house,” Mr. Grenouille said. “What does it—”

  “There are no spirits in this part of the house!” Mrs. Cantanker roared, and Mr. Grenouille flinched so violently I worried he’d thrown out his back. “The old inhabitants know well not to enter here, and no new ones can get past the wards in Pragast Wood.” She wheeled about to face me. “What are you playing at, hmm? What have you smuggled in under all that mangy hair?”

  “I didn’t bring anything with me,” I snapped. “You told me to find the spirit and I did, so I don’t see why you’re angry with me.”

  Mrs. Cantanker glared at me. I glared back. Seeing a ghost should be a momentous occasion in anyone’s life, but Mrs. Cantanker had managed to ruin it entirely. I was about to tell her what I thought of her when Mr. Grenouille stepped between us.

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s gone now,” he said. And then his weak little face began to beam, and he threw up his hands in a cheer. “There can be no doubt now! You, Miss Zita, are a Blackbird. Oh, your mother would be so proud. And to think she missed you by such a small margin. . . .”