Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  I nodded, chewing at the end of my tight new braid and watching Mrs. Cantanker closely. She was very beautiful and clever. I wished she didn’t think me such an unworthy creature, because I would have liked to be friends with her.

  “You, however, are not allowed to be so ignorant. A Blackbird must see as wide and far as anyone ever has. You must see life and death in all its sordid complexity. You must see what others cannot.”

  She went to a tasseled cord in the corner and pulled it. A black velvet curtain parted, revealing a painting framed in a tangle of gilt holly and ivy. The painting was very dark, full of curling blue and green shadows. I could just make out two figures standing on a riverbank, offering some tiny glimmering object to the darkness. And on the other side, terrible creatures lurked, angry faced and many armed, claws and snouts and dozens of glaring eyes. The whole scene gave the impression of a nightmare—a vast roiling swath of darkness in which things swam that were not known on earth, in which things sank and were never seen again.

  “Here you have it,” said Mrs. Cantanker with a flourish. “A Blackbird guiding a spirit into the underworld. Once the spirit’s been sent on its way with all the proper equipment and words of encouragement, it’s unlikely to come back. But if they have nothing, not even a little light, well . . . The lands of the dead are a dangerous place, full of all manner of monsters. And all of them eat souls if they can find them.”

  She went on like this for some time, telling me about the various responsibilities of a witch, how much one could charge for one’s services, and where to buy the best pointy shoes in all of Westval. By eleven o’ clock, I had added a tool belt to my heap and several velvet pouches of herbs, each with a tiny brass emblem attached to its drawstring (“So you know which herb is which, even in the dark,” Mrs. Cantanker had explained). I’d also been told to read a chapter in an apricot-colored volume that looked suspiciously like a children’s book, and been practically drowned in terms and facts, which Mrs. Cantanker threw at me like a cook who has spotted a rat in her kitchen. My head was beginning to feel very full.

  “. . . and that was when the great witches of old conquered Erasteraf and made it their stronghold,” Mrs. Cantanker finished. She put away her brass pointing stick and consulted a pocket watch. “Now. It’s almost lunchtime. But before I let you go, I’m going to bring you to a very particular room in the house. The Black Sitting Room. There, you are going to meet a spirit. And you are going to banish it.”

  I thought of the red lamp flaring, the golden-haired ghost in the rafters. I also thought banishing anything at all sounded well beyond my abilities. But the marble prince had said it was all about pretending, and I wanted Mrs. Cantanker to think me serene and unflappable, so I nodded capably and followed her to the High Blackbird’s desk.

  The back of the desk was full of drawers in different shapes and sizes, triangles and circles and rectangles fitted together like puzzle pieces. Each drawer had, instead of a keyhole, a great wobbly eye that swiveled to and fro and followed your every move. Mrs. Cantanker knelt before one such eye—an anxious blue one shot through with red veins—and spoke a very angry word to it. The eye darted about, then closed beneath its wooden lid, and the drawer sprang open. Inside were coins of various sizes, neatly arranged on black velvet. Some were green with verdigris, some rusted, some thick as butter biscuits.

  “Every ghost requires safe passage through the Kingdom Between,” said Mrs. Cantanker, slipping several coins into a small purple purse. “That is why villagers put coins on the eyes of corpses, or tuck a jewel into an apron pocket or under a tongue. A vial of tears from a loved one or a letter from a sweetheart can also do the trick. But for our purposes, coins are the quickest and most efficient method for sending a ghost on its way.”

  She handed the purse to me and I took it slowly, knotting it into my belt.

  “It seems silly that a ghost should care about money,” I said, weighing the purse in my palm. “What’s to stop it from wandering into a bank vault and getting all the money it needs? It could buy first-class tickets right through the Kingdom Between!”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” Mrs. Cantanker snapped, so coldly I regretted my words at once. “The coins are symbolic. It is the gesture the laws of the spirit realm require, not the gold or silver. It is the generosity, the idea that someone in the lands of the living wants a soul to pass into the further veils and was willing to give up the necessary amount. Do you think stolen coins will offer any protection there?”

  I shook my head, looking down at my shoes.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Mrs. Cantanker. “Now, as I was saying . . . a coin is only one tool of an educated witch. Name the others mentioned in the chapter you read.”

  I cleared my throat. “A cross of ash on my forehead will forestall any sort of possession. Rosemary . . .” I thought for a moment. “Rosemary attracts, lavender repels, wormwood cloaks from unwanted attention. Rose petals spark affection in ghosts, and violets inspire overwhelming longing.”

  “Very good,” said Mrs. Cantanker. “And if the spirit attacks?”

  “I . . .” My fingers fiddled with the sleeve of my dress. “I don’t remember. I don’t think it . . .”

  Mrs. Cantanker’s lips curled upward. “Not to worry! I’ve been told it’s not a particularly dangerous spirit.”

  She glided toward the door and I hurried after her, out of the study and along a narrow corridor squeezed beneath the sloping eaves of the house. Halfway down it, we stopped in front of a plain wooden door.

  “Here we are,” Mrs. Cantanker said, opening it with a key from her chatelaine. “Yesterday you met a spirit from afar. Now you will meet one in more . . . snug quarters.”

  “Isn’t it a bit soon?” I said, not serene and unflappable after all. “It’s my first day, and I know hardly anything—”

  Mrs. Cantanker’s smile widened. “Sometimes, Zita, it is best not to know too much.” And before I could open my mouth again, she pushed me into the room and locked the door.

  Chapter Eight

  AFTER I’d gotten the letter from Mr. Grenouille, I had allowed myself to daydream about long-lost mothers, castles right out of fairy tales, crackling fires, and teetering cliffs of food. Not once had my daydreams involved being locked in a room with a ghost.

  The Black Sitting Room was small and stuffy and very, very dark. Its walls and sloping ceiling were paneled in black wood. The chairs were upholstered in black silk. The mantel was draped with a black velvet coverlet, and all the knickknacks and decorations were made of jet or onyx or polished coal. The paintings were so old and dim they looked like black canvases nailed to the wall, though when I peered closely at them, I could just make out the whorled branches of trees barely visible in the paint.

  I took several steps into the room, my new shoes squeaking. The air smelled sour, as if the window hadn’t been opened in years. Beneath that, I caught the stomach-turning whiff of sickness—oil from unwashed scalps, and the faintest hint of tinctures and peppermint salve for the ill.

  I froze, glancing about. Mrs. Cantanker is just outside. She won’t let anything awful happen to me. But then I recalled her comment about the Vine Room and sending me back to Cricktown in a hatbox, and I gulped.

  I turned a full circle, my hands clenched at my sides. Then, with a start, I saw I was not alone. A veiled woman stood in the corner. No breath, no warmth came from her. She added no weight to the room, nothing but a strange loneliness, and even when I looked directly at her, I had the odd impression that I was glimpsing her from afar. Her pale, waxen hands were knotted tightly in front of her. Her eyes, almost invisible behind her black veil, glinted.

  I stared at her, my breath escaping in white clouds. The air was suddenly bitterly cold. I saw now that what I had taken for the gleam of velvet was frost, coating the cushions and chairs.

  “Give the spirit a coin,” Mrs. Cantanker ordered through the door, and I jumped. “Ignore anything it tries to tell you.”

&
nbsp; I nodded sternly and opened the little purse, eyeing the coins inside. “I suppose you want something so you can cross over?” I whispered to the ghost, choosing a copper farthing and holding it out to her. “Here you are. Go on, ma’am, it’s all right!”

  The spirit remained motionless. I took a step toward her. Then she twitched and whimpered piteously, and I drew back with a start. My teeth were beginning to chatter, and I could sense the end of my braid freezing where I had chewed on it.

  “Not enough,” I said to myself. And then louder, for the benefit of Mrs. Cantanker, “I don’t think it’s enough!”

  Mrs. Cantanker tsked through the door. “Greedy thing. Try one of the pewter coins. Those usually work. They look shiny, but they’re quite worthless. Hurry up!”

  I wanted to hurry up. The ghost was becoming more agitated by the second. She looked back over her shoulder, as if there was something behind her. There wasn’t, of course, not that I could see anyway, but then, she wasn’t quite here or there. She was partway in-between, and when I squinted, I could just make out a dark landscape stretching away, misty marshes and still waters, and far in the distance, an unwavering red glow.

  I held out another coin, a thick pewter one with the face of a saint on it. This one caught the ghost’s attention. She seemed to peer at me more closely, though she still seemed a thousand miles away.

  “Zita?” she said in a thin, dry voice. “Zita, is that you?”

  I flinched back, staring at her in horror. “You know my name?”

  “Of course I know your name! Oh, child, I have not seen you in such a long time.”

  Mrs. Cantanker rapped sharply on the door. “Do not let it trick you,” she said. “Banish it!”

  But I could hardly move. The room was cold as winter, cold as the orphanage dormitories in December.

  “I was surprised when they told me you’d survived,” the spirit said. “No one ever survives him. Not the Butcher of Beydun.”

  I recovered my poise as best I could and stepped closer to the ghost, lowering my voice so that Mrs. Cantanker could not hear. “How do you know me?” I whispered. “And what do you mean, I survived? Who is the Butcher of Beydun?”

  But the ghost wasn’t listening. She began to cry, her hands hovering in front of her face.

  “Zita . . . Zita, I have done such terrible things.”

  I wanted to pat her thin, heaving shoulders. I thought about giving her my handkerchief, but I wasn’t sure it would do any good. “It’s all right,” I said gently. “Whatever you did, I’m sure it’s not so bad. We’ve all done terrible things at one point or another.”

  “But I’ve done worse,” she wheezed. “Tell me, child, what is the cost of betrayal? What is the punishment for one who has been disloyal to a family that wished her nothing but good?”

  “I’m . . . not sure,” I said. “I’m a bit new to all this, to be honest. But I know that if you take this coin, you’ll be able to move on, hopefully someplace nice. Don’t cry. Take the coin! Take the whole purse!”

  The ghost continued to sob and tremble. “You would let me go? After all I’ve done?”

  “Of course!” I said. “There’s no point in you staying here. It must get awfully gloomy in this little room, with no one to talk to.”

  Slowly, her sobs subsided. She took the purse from my hands, her touch so cold and sharp it made my skin sting. “Thank you, child,” she whispered. “Thank you!”

  I smiled halfheartedly, feeling a sudden pang of worry at giving the ghost a full purse of coins. She bent over it and began counting the money greedily. “If I may ask,” I said quickly. “Why do you need such a lot of coins to cross over? What did you do?”

  She looked up sharply. “I was a nanny in this house,” she said, and suddenly she did not look quite so old and fragile. She was smiling, her yellow teeth crawling with worms and beetles. “They think I am here because I took all the little golden statues from the Tiny Queen’s Throne Room and stashed them at the bottom of my drawer. But I did something much, much worse.”

  I gulped. “Wh-what did you do?”

  Her black eyes flashed, pinning me with blood-chilling intensity. “I sold a child to the Butcher King. A child who was my own ward. I built a door of twigs and ivy for him to pass through. I made a path of salt and iron for him to walk on. And then I watched from behind a tree as a little girl in a white dress scampered toward him.”

  My head swam. Blood pounded in my ears. “You did that? You let him take me away?”

  “Oh, you flatter me, Zitakins, but don’t give me all the credit. I was only one small piece in a great big scheme. They want him back, you know. They want the Butcher of Beydun to return, and the Dark Queen with him. And for that they need you. I have no idea how you escaped the first time, how you managed to claw your way out of the darkest depths of the spirit realm. But mark my words, dearie, you will not be so lucky again. He knows you’re here. He’ll be arriving soon; I heard it on the roads and byways, from the dead near the river. You should not have come back.”

  The spirit was fading, jangling the sack of coins and snickering.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “What great scheme? What do you mean?”

  The ghost sneered. “Goodbye, Zita. Let us hope our paths never cross again.”

  She dove at me, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. Mrs. Cantanker flew into the room, her opera glasses held to her eyes and a sachet of petals ready in one hand.

  “What happened?” she demanded, peering about. “Is it gone? Did you get rid of it?”

  And then she looked at me, standing shocked and purseless, and her face darkened. “Where’s your purse? Stupid girl. Did you give it the whole thing?”

  I remained mute, my head brimming with questions.

  “You did, didn’t you? What sort of half-wit gives away an entire purse of coins to a common ghost? And what sort of witch—”

  She went on like this for some time, but I wasn’t listening. I had not been kidnapped all those years ago. I had been sold, bargained away by a wicked nanny for some dark purpose. And then, somehow, I had escaped. But how?

  We returned to the High Blackbird’s study, and as I stood shivering and rubbing warmth back into my hands, I made up my mind. Mrs. Cantanker could call me all the names in her arsenal. She could toss me into haunted chambers to her heart’s content. But my family was frozen; Bram and Minnifer were perhaps under some sort of enchantment too; and I was likely on some dead thing’s dinner menu. I had work to do, and things to fix, and while I didn’t feel at all qualified to fix any of them, all the qualified witches were busy attending feasts and speaking at assemblies.

  The day stretched on, the light from the tall windows turning to honey, then amber, then red, and still we were in the study. Mrs. Cantanker screamed at me, making me feel small and foolish. “Lead, then copper, then pewter! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times!” I kept my chin up, and I’m proud of that, but there is no satisfaction in seeming something you know you’re not. I felt dreadful, and when she at last dismissed me, I went straight to the servants’ hall and slouched at the table, pouring out all my troubles to Minnifer and Bram.

  Bram was at the stove, presiding over a range of bubbling pots and deliciously steaming pans. He didn’t say anything, only raised his eyebrows from time to time and nodded.

  Minnifer was much more sympathetic. “Yes, she’s not very nice, is she? But Bram made you a lovely supper, and I baked an apricot tart, and if that doesn’t cheer you up I’m afraid there’s no helping you and you’ll have to resign yourself to a life of misery. D’you like apricots?”

  “I love apricots.”

  “I win,” said Minnifer, turning to Bram, and Bram sighed.

  Bram and Minnifer were always betting about things. “Are you a gambling man?” Minnifer had asked me at breakfast, and I’d said “No,” because I wasn’t, and she lifted her chin and nodded, like someone who’s just observed something puzzling yet deeply interesting. I regre
tted saying no, because I think she was asking if I wanted to be in on their bets. Would the dough rise or not? Would the specter of the lady above the door to the butler’s pantry be friendly today or rude? Would the triggles try to steal anything from the silver cupboard and if so, pitchers or teaspoons? Sometimes Minnifer won and sometimes Bram won, and then they’d leave something for the other on the table, usually a biscuit, or a ribbon, or a bundle of red berries.

  Today, Bram gave Minnifer an extra helping of chocolate mousse with her potatoes and chicken pie, and we all sat down with our plates. We ate heartily, the wind murmuring against the leaded windows like a bitter uninvited guest, occasionally flinging twigs and leaves against the panes. It occurred to me that Mrs. Cantanker was waiting for me in the Amber Room, all alone in front of the piles of food Minnifer had brought up, but I didn’t feel sorry for her at all.

  “Tell me more about my mother,” I murmured when we’d cleared away the dishes and were sitting by the fire again, plates of apricot tart on our knees. “Tell me what she was like.”

  “Oh, she was lovely,” said Minnifer dreamily. “And awfully powerful. She once conquered an entire army of weeshts who had found their way into the lands of living through an outhouse. And she did it with only her silver scissors and a rosemary lure! If you didn’t know her, she might’ve seemed very grim and serious, but if you did . . . well, she couldn’t have done enough for you. She was ever so generous, Georgina Brydgeborn was, and she cared about everyone, every person she met, and every ghost . . . and every orphan too.”

  “Was she the one who brought you here from the orphanage?” I was relieved to hear my mother was lovely, not like Magdeboor or Mrs. Cantanker. I hoped someone would speak of me that way one day, that perhaps I had inherited some of my mother’s loveliness.