Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  I sat up with a start. Frost. Frost on the bedcover, frost on the walls, my breath forming clouds in the air. And clutched to my chest, just under the comforter, was the key with the ivory handle, its tines shaped like a leaf, its metal cold as ice.

  Chapter Ten

  I’D never looked particularly closely at the tapestry before. It was ancient and threadbare, lined with frayed yellow silk. One side was stitched with bright colors, a gathering of fine ladies and gentlemen dancing. The other side had the exact same number of figures, only they were skeletons, and all was dim and dark. The skeletons were not dancing. They stood still as piers in an ocean, their heads turned, watching the revelry in the lands of the living. I couldn’t tell if they were envious, sad, or angry, but it was clear that they were terribly interested in the dancing and brightness, and that the living were entirely oblivious to them.

  I lifted the thick fabric, my fingers brushing over a panel, three tiny brass hinges, a keyhole. . . . Like a knife into butter, I slipped Greta’s key into the lock. I felt the tines twisting, shivering. Then the panel swung smoothly inward and I was peering down a low stone passage, barely high enough for a child.

  I whistled for Vikers. There was no answer. He must have flown off to conduct whatever secret business crows do at night. I wished Bram and Minnifer were here, even the marble prince, anything to break the silence of that yawning black opening. Of course I could have closed the panel and run back to bed. But I was a housemaid—nosiness was part of my essence. So, lighting my candelabra and brandishing it in front of me like a weapon, I made my way into the dark.

  The passage was extraordinarily narrow. I pressed myself sideways, my feet shuffling through what sounded like leaves or paper. When I lowered the candelabra, I saw that the floor was entirely covered in letters, discarded toys, scrolls, and books. I went around a corner, then another, and then I ducked under a low-hanging lintel into a cozy little room. A leaded window shaped like a diamond resting on its tip looked onto the garden below. With a shiver I realized it was the one I had seen Greta peering out of, her pale face pressed to the glass.

  My skin tingled. Greta’s secret room! It was just as messy as her closet. I spotted glassy-eyed dolls, a life-sized painted rocking horse, a mountain of plush animals. Witchy things too—curious artifacts and treasures, little silver bells with mahogany handles, stacks of ancient coins, necklaces made of bones. Garlands of dusty ivy and laurel were draped along the shelves, and many candles, pink and lemon yellow, smelling of roses and citrus, dripped down their wrought-iron holders. In one corner there was a lamp hanging from a crooked wooden staff and a puffy armchair covered in violet upholstery.

  But mostly there were books. This was a secret miniature version of my mother’s library in the High Blackbird’s study. Just as in hers, the shelves went all the way to the ceiling. There was even a ladder on a brass track, though I suspected it could hardly move in this mess. I picked my way around the room, fingers brushing over the gold-lettered spines.

  Lunaline Mockshard’s Advanced Spiritism

  Banishment and Invocation, Book Seven

  How to Travel the Roads of Death and Return Unscathed—A Practical Guide for Young Ladies and Gentlemen by Absinthia Klarmp

  A bookstand stood in the center of the room, along with an inkwell and a quill. The book that was open on it was enormous, and when I lifted my candelabra I expected to find it full of symbols and mysterious magical references. But no . . .

  The sparrow, when it saw that it was not welcome among the beautiful yet flightless peacocks, wheeled up into the sky, where it found a small castle nestled like a jewel in the clouds. . . .

  I laughed in delight. It was a book of fairy tales!

  I felt as if I had won the best prize at the Cricktown fair. The key Greta had given me, the strange little book, and now my own secret chamber where I could retreat whenever the world or Mrs. Cantanker became too much to bear. I doubted Greta had led me here out of the goodness of her ghostly heart. Most likely she expected something in return. But the thought that even the spirits were helping me was a comforting one. And perhaps not just the spirits. “There are thirty-seven bedrooms to choose from,” Minnifer had said the night I had arrived. “But we thought you’d like this one best.”

  Had they known about this hidden chamber? I rather thought they had, and I felt a surge of gratitude for my secret allies.

  I walked through the little room, admiring Greta’s treasures, her scribbly watercolors and souvenirs from faraway lands. And then there was Teenzy again, just for a moment, perched atop the bookstand. She was gone as soon as I blinked, but when I approached, I saw there was something tucked beneath the book, half hidden under its back cover—a piece of paper, small and tightly folded.

  A Waking Spell was written across the top of it, and when I unfolded it, I found an old and hurriedly written recipe:

  To be placed around the cursed one’s feet:

  A ring of rose petals and rosewater mist to attract the soul’s return

  3 branches of blackberry bush, clipped of their thorns

  1 twig from the treskgilliam tree

  1 silver scissors bequeathed to a witch

  1 Anchor

  A waking spell? I thought. To wake up whom? But of course I knew. To wake up Greta. To wake my mother and John Brydgeborn, and to free them from their curse. Greta and Teenzy had led me straight to the answer. The rosewater and blackberry branches would be no trouble to get, and I had the silver scissors already. I had no idea what a treskgilliam tree was, or an Anchor, but I knew I was quite capable of finding out. I refolded the spell, tucking it carefully into my nightgown pocket. Then, loading my arms with as many books as I could carry, I tottered back to bed.

  It was very late by then, the grandmother clock on the wall clanging midnight, but I was far too excited to sleep. Everyone in this house—everyone but Mrs. Cantanker—seemed to be depending on me, and I was determined not to disappoint them. I curled up under my comforters, and in the dim glow of the candles, I began to read.

  The lands beyond the veil—ah, how little we know of these places, though we speak of them often. Those who have traveled there and returned to tell of it describe death not as a gray waste, as it is often imagined, but rather as a vertical labyrinth of caverns and gardens, woods and marshes, huge teeming cities, transportation systems, the great river, waterfalls, and villages of lost souls. At the top are green pastures and soft light for the good, and at the bottom, descending deeper and deeper in hellish rings and circles, are darkness, smoke, and clanking machines for the wicked. Most souls arrive somewhere in the middle. Some very bad ones are cast straight down into the depths, where the green light and foliage of paradise are but a distant dream. . . .

  The more I read, the more I began to realize Mrs. Cantanker was not a very good teacher. She was skirting vast swaths of history, telling me nothing about the heroic feats my family had performed, or of the high-ranking dead, or the names of the cities and geography of the underworld, or anything about breaking curses.

  I moved from book to book, admiring the illustrations and doing my best to sort out the words.

  Those in the darkest, most miserable depths of the spirit realm will always be striving to cross back into the lands of the living. They are drawn to its light and laughter like moths to lanterns. If they can escape their bonds, they wander, wailing, through the forests and villages of the dead, searching for a way to cross. Like wolves hunt rabbits, these warped spirits hunt for souls. And what better hunting ground than the lands of the living, where souls are bright and plentiful, and spatter the world like stars? Beware of deep caves and trees split by lightning, for that is where the dead crawl from. Beware of windows without curtains and lamps burning untended, for that is how they will find you, creeping closer, gathering in the shadows, wicked and hungry and so very cold. . . .

  I shivered, glancing toward my own windows and thinking how inviting they must look from a distance: glowing pinpr
icks of light, no doubt, warm and cozy, the spirits out in those dark woods caught like fish in a net, watching and waiting for when they might become untangled. I stood and pulled the curtains shut, then dove quickly back into bed. Then I undid the clasps on a large old book bound in purple leather, and began to search for references to a treskgilliam tree and an Anchor.

  There was nothing about the tree, not in the purple book nor in any of the encyclopediae but there were plenty of references to Anchors. It seemed to be one of the three elements essential to becoming a full-fledged Blackbird.

  First was her initiation: Could she see the dead? If yes, then everything else could be taught. Second was her animal servant. Vikers was mine, and just then he was sleeping fitfully by my side, dreaming crowish dreams and muttering. The third was her Anchor. All the witches in Greta’s romances and fairy tales seemed to have one, and it seemed to come in many forms—a Manzemirian chess piece, a bejeweled egg, a plain tallow candle, a black iris dried to a crinkle and pressed into a locket. The Anchor kept a witch from blowing away in great winds, or from being devoured by clouds of darkness, and in one story, it even seemed capable of reversing spells and bringing back souls from beyond the veil.

  My eyelids began to droop, the sentences stretching and twisting and biting their own tails. I didn’t have an Anchor, and Mrs. Cantanker had never so much as breathed a word about it. But that would have to change. Tomorrow the search would begin. I scratched Vikers’s head, and settling into my nest of pillows and books and sweet-smelling paper, I fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  EARLY the next morning, while the light was still a ghostly silver on the gardens and Pragast Wood was hazy with mist and frost, I rushed down to meet Minnifer. She was in the Hunting Room, scrubbing ferociously at the fireplace grate. I dropped down next to her, snatching a bristle brush from her bucket and setting to work as well. She looked at me as if I had just sprouted a second nose from my forehead, but I wasn’t about to stand and jabber while she worked, so we scrubbed at the filthy hearth together, and I told her about the night before.

  “You found the secret library?” Minnifer whispered when I had finished.

  “So you do know about it.” I rocked back on my heels, brushing the hair from my eyes. “I found a waking spell too. And Greta’s book, though it wasn’t a regular book. It wrote in itself, and it didn’t seem to . . . well, it didn’t seem to know Greta was dead.”

  “Poor thing,” said Minnifer, as if the book had feelings of its own. “It was her book of all things, you know. She used to carry it everywhere with her.”

  “Did she? What’s in a book of all things?”

  “All things, of course!” said Minnifer, giggling, and then Bram came in wearing a belt of tools to adjust the gas lamps, and Minnifer jumped. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, but her face had gone pale, any trace of mirth draining from it. “Look, Zita, we’re not allowed to talk about it, so don’t ask, and don’t try to make us. . . .”

  “It was Greta’s Anchor, wasn’t it,” I said, remembering what I had read the night before. The other Blackbird is here. She needs her Anchor. “Do you think . . . Do you think I have one?”

  Both Bram and Minnifer went very still. When Minnifer spoke again, it was as if she were feeling her way across thin ice, as if each word might plunge her into freezing waters. “You could look for it,” she said. “You could find it. Greta loved books, so that’s what hers was, but yours could be anything. A little dagger, a figurine, a brooch—something you’ve got a sentimental attachment to, or something bequeathed to you by someone you loved. It’s the most powerful of any witch’s tools, that’s what I heard, like a sort of lifeline. In the days when the Brydgeborns crossed over into the lands of the dead regularly, it’s what kept them bound to home, to family and light and all that’s good in the world. . . . But Zita?” Her voice became suddenly low and frightened. “Don’t tell Mrs. Cantanker any of this. Please? She’ll think we told you, and she’ll . . . she’ll . . .”

  “She’ll what?”

  Minnifer said nothing, only clutched my fingers so hard I felt she might snap the bones. “Or something terrible will happen,” Bram had said, the day in the corridor, and I had no doubt it was true.

  “I promise,” I said, pulling my hand away. “I won’t let Mrs. Cantanker hurt you.”

  But I did not promise not to look for my Anchor, and I left the Hunting Room at a run.

  Mrs. Cantanker was in a stormy mood when I arrived in the High Blackbird’s study. She wore a lovely gown of gray silk trimmed with emerald ribbons, but the hem was soaked, and little half-moons of dirt peeked from under her fingernails. Her face was paler too, and she had a windblown look about her, as if she had just come in from a walk. What has she been up to? I wondered. Rooting about in the woods?

  “Zita,” she snapped. “Read the chapter on herbal remedies for frostbite in Ostermunden’s Garden, and please don’t speak to me. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  I sat down with the book, my face expressionless. I didn’t know if she was the one responsible for enchanting Bram and Minnifer, and making them unable to tell me all they knew. She wasn’t a witch, after all, and she had been my mother’s friend, which must count for something. And yet Bram and Minnifer were clearly terrified of her. . . .

  My lesson was an endless exercise in chopping herbs at precise forty-five-degree angles and making sachets to ward against low-level weeshts and churchyard boggles. I ruined my recipe three times and almost snipped off my finger, my mind busy with different problems. I was glad when Mrs. Cantanker complained of a headache and sent me away.

  I went at once to the kitchens in search of Bram and Minnifer. They were gone, but there was a note dangling from one of the braids of garlic among the rafters, tied there with a blue ribbon.

  For Z: We’re down to the village for groceries. Be back in the afternoon. Please don’t—

  Here the note turned into a series of squiggles and dots, as if the writer had suddenly forgotten how to hold a pencil. The whole thing was signed:

  B + M

  Well, at least nothing bad had come from me asking too many questions about Anchors. I puttered about the kitchens, cutting myself slices of bread and cheese and eating them quickly. Then I whistled for Vikers, who had taken to responding to my calls almost at once, and together we set off through the castle in search of my Anchor. We journeyed through the formal rooms this time, and up the dragon stairs, which seemed to heave slightly under me, as if it were taking great, slow breaths. We pottered about in the sumptuous bedrooms that faced the front, the sitting rooms and dressing rooms. I ran my hands over everything, figurines to fire pokers, amphisbaena skins to zygadenes. I frightened household ghosts out of drawers and scolded with lavender the spirits who tried to frighten me. I opened wardrobes and put on hats, hoping one of them would make me into a real witch. None of it worked.

  It was evening by the time I gave up. I was almost back to my room, intent on unloading my witch’s equipment and going in search of dinner—a much more manageable quest—when I saw the blue stairs again. They weren’t at all where I had seen them last. Now they stood at the end of a small landing, peeking from behind a carved mahogany pillar like some shy yet sinister creature. They seem to be calling to me, coaxing me toward them. But no sooner had I spotted them, than something even stranger happened. The castle seemed to close itself over them, a panel slamming across them. The blue staircase’s dark recess was suddenly gone, and farther down the corridor, next to my room, another door creaked slowly open.

  A warm glow shone out of it, cozy and orange, as if a fire had been lit inside the room, and as I crept closer I glimpsed that great tree again, its branches snaking across the ceiling, its roots coiling beneath the tiles, sending them up in humps or shattering them altogether.

  I stepped in slowly, feeling as if I were in a dream. It was so quiet. A fire had been lit in the hearth, though there was no one there to enjoy it. And though the air was perfec
tly still, the tree’s leaves rustled softly, whispering like a thousand pointy tongues, coaxing me in a much sweeter language than that of the blue stairs. I picked my way over the roots, marveling at such a huge tree being squashed into a such a small room. And all at once, I saw that there was a face in its trunk.

  It seemed to have grown there naturally, and it almost looked like the face of an ancient man with brown and wrinkled skin, and a crackly green beard made of lichen. Its mouth was pressed into a crooked line, and its eyes were closed. Could it be?

  “Are you . . . ?” I whispered. “Are you the treskgilliam tree?”

  There was a slight sound—a tiny, tiny creak. The coals in the fireplace popped and shifted. Then the rustling of the leaves swelled, and a deep voice, like bark rasping against bark, said, “Treskgilliam? Is that what they are calling me these days?”

  I gathered my thoughts, sure this was another of the castle’s attempts to help me. Then I said, “I think it is. You see, sir, it’s like this: my family has been cursed, and the castle we all live in is in trouble. You do know you live in a castle, don’t you? Anyway, it’s a very wicked, complicated curse, and I’m trying to break it with a waking spell, and the waking spell calls for a twig. One of your twigs, to be precise.”

  “A waking spell?” The tree let out a languorous creak, and all its many leaves shivered again, the sound so silvery and bright it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. “I heard of a waking spell once. Ah, yes. Six hundred years ago, when I was but a little sapling, high in the hills of Westval . . .”

  It was all I could do not to sigh. I knew the tree’s character at once. Mrs. Boliver had been this way, and so had the marble prince, and Pater Ribbons, and half the ghosts in Blackbird Castle. They liked to talk, that was the trouble, usually about themselves, and even the slightest provocation could lead to hours of winding tales, some thrilling, and some so dull and pointless they made you want to plug your ears.