Cinders and Sparrows

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Cinders and Sparrows Page 10

by Stefan Bachmann


  “How interesting,” I said under my breath, slipping the scissors from my belt and hiding them behind my back. I spotted a newly budded twig, fresh and green and easy to snip, and stole around the trunk where the tree could not see me. I raised the scissors to the twig . . . as interested as I was in having conversations with magical objects, and as used to the concept as I had recently become, I was also in rather a hurry.

  “In rather a hurry, are you?” said the tree, and with a start, I realized its eyes had moved and were now wide open, gazing pointedly at my brandished scissors. They were sap-colored eyes, polished and smooth as amber, but they were not rheumy or sleepy. They were alarmingly keen and intelligent. “And I’m sorry my tales make you want to plug your ears. You know, you ought to listen when your elders speak. You just might learn something.”

  I gulped. Had the tree read my mind?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, tucking the scissors hastily behind my back. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  The tree’s gaze softened. “Do not be sorry, little bird. One is allowed some rudeness when one is very busy. I know what danger this castle is in. I know what creeps around its edges, testing with tireless fingers the wards placed upon the windows and the stones. And I know what darkness is already inside it, lurking at its very heart. I was told you would be arriving soon. You seek to perform a waking spell, hmm? The one with blackberry branches clipped of their thorns? Silver scissors and an Anchor? A good spell, that. And I see you are uniquely qualified to cast it. A girl like you, who has been to the places you’ve been . . .”

  My heart thrilled at the tree’s words, but then I remembered myself and said, “I’ve not been anywhere, sir. Just Cricktown and the orphanage.”

  The tree raised its mossy brows. “But you are mistaken! You have traveled far and wide, and seen many things. You have even gone to the lands of the dead.”

  I almost dropped my scissors. “The lands of the dead?”

  “Oh, yes! Your mind does not remember, but your bones do—your skin and your veins and your heart. A body does not forget dying.”

  All at once, a root caught me around the ankle. Something sharp pricked my stocking, and a bright golden light flooded me. I was not afraid. But suddenly my muscles deserted me and I slumped, feeling myself slip away from my body and float up like a breath of air, out of that cozy little chamber and into an endless, velvet blackness. . . .

  My hand is in someone else’s, very cold, with long yellow nails. I am so tired. We are walking through a dark land, cinders heaped into drifts around us, ash falling like snow. Every few steps I see a black iron cage, half buried in the soot. Skeletal fingers reach from them, pincers and claws, and the tentacles of moorwhistlers and phantasms, grasping blindly for some trace of light or comfort. . . .

  The image blurs and changes. I see us from afar, me in my white pinafore, glowing like a little lamp amid the shadows. I am hand in hand with the Butcher of Beydun. He leads me through desolate woods, ruined towns, ever closer to some glowing red light.

  Again, the vision shifts: I am back in the lands of the living, standing on the doorstep of the orphanage. My white smock is sooty, my hair full of twigs. At the end of the lane, a wispy figure flickers away into the dusk. And now I am rising, up, up over the orphanage’s chimneys, with a sound like flapping wings. Higher and higher I fly, until I can see the whole orphanage from above. The little girl is let inside. The door closes. . . .

  Years pass, the flowers in the fields blooming and dying and blooming again. And then there is my mother, splendid in a wide-brimmed hat and black veil. She arrives in an onyx coach and knocks on the very same door through which I’d gone.

  “A Brydgeborn?” I hear the nun’s voice echoing up into my ears. “Of the Brydgeborn Blackbirds? Madam, we have no such child here. This is a place for the lost and unwanted, not the scion of a powerful family.”

  My mother goes away again, but others come, some of them with blue spider rings glinting on their fingers, or tiny spider-shaped patches stitched to their collars. They are all looking for me, but they don’t find me. The nuns always turn them away. “A Brydgeborn here? What notions!”

  And now I am zooming back toward the castle. I glimpse myself standing in the glowing room, the tree’s branches snaking around me, and I hear its wooden voice creaking. “To wake anything, to break any curse, one must have seen both sides, the living and the dead. And you, my dear, have seen both. You are much more than you think you are. But beware, for those around you are much more than you think they are too.”

  I came to my senses with a start. The tree had let me go. The little room had gone quiet, all the pointy leaves fallen still. And in my hand was the twig, as new and green as spring.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE weeks stretched on, October dying in a fizzle of embers, and November dawning gray and chilly as rain-soaked washing. My lessons became intolerably boring. “Copy chapters five through seven of Hiram Ninnypin’s Simulacra,” Mrs. Cantanker would order, enthroned behind my mother’s great desk. Then she would sip black tea and read her sinister little pamphlets, while I puffed out my cheeks and set to work, copying pages upon pages of a book I was sure had been written by a swarm of rats with ink on their feet.

  Once my daily lessons ended, I continued the search for my Anchor. Sometimes I brought Bram and Minnifer with me. We made a game of it, running up the many staircases of the castle, playing hide-and-seek or tag and only narrowly avoiding the odd cursed corridor, the sudden swamps that gurgled up between the floorboards, and rooms such as the Parlor of Psychosis, whose mirrored walls would show you a little girl who was not really there and who would lure you into an endless maze of silvered glass.

  I spent my evenings in the kitchens, playing cards, snapping beans, or chattering with Minnifer and Bram while we mended Mrs. Cantanker’s mountain of pillowcases. And every night I stayed up late in Greta’s secret library, the wind slithering like a great cat against the window, Vikers diving at any triggle that dared poke its head out of a crack, and me wrapped in feather comforters, rose-scented candles flickering all around, reading of ancient myths and heroic deeds and searching for any reference at all to Anchors, and to a spell called ephinadym mulsion. It was all very fun and interesting, until I remembered I was going to die soon.

  Almost none of the books told me anything helpful. I began to wonder if deadly curses were not a respectable topic to write about, and I also wondered how you were supposed to break them if you couldn’t read about them in books. But one night, just as I was about to give up for the day and go to bed, I found a reference, a single entry in a battered black volume called Sturmangel’s Book of Forbidden Spells.

  “Ephinadym mulsion,” I read, burrowing into my comforter.

  A dreadful enchantment, deemed illegal by the Great Greenleaf Charter and henceforth used only by the most devious of dark witches. It is a gateway spell—which is to say, it requires the sacrificing of three souls to the lands of the dead in the interest of bringing another soul into the lands of the living, allowing it to pass back and forth freely. Last known use: Magdeboor III of the Westval Blackbirds performed the spell in order to bring one of the high-ranking dead to Westval, a king of the underworld with whom she had become befriended during her travels there.

  My heart beat faster.

  The curse is a tricky one to cast, and for legal reasons, the process will not be detailed here. Even more difficult, however, is breaking it—that is, reuniting the souls with their bodies—which can only be attempted by those who have walked both the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Furthermore, the curse breaker must have a deep bond with the ones she wishes to rescue, and must care for them deeply, for no death nor dark magic can be reversed without love.

  It was eleven o’ clock on a Saturday morning, and I’d just collapsed onto my bed, dejected and confused from another fruitless wander through the castle, when something heavy landed on the pillow next to me. Vikers followed a momen
t later, nudging me gently with his beak. I rolled over and saw that he had fished Greta’s book out of the chimney again.

  “Do you want me to read more fateful proclamations about how doomed I am?” I asked, pushing myself up on my elbows. “Because I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you, not right before dinner—”

  Vikers pecked at my hand, as if to say, “Your dinner is not the current priority,” and I squeaked and said, “All right, goodness . . . ,” and lifted the book, flipping to the unburned pages. Once again the words surfaced from the paper, little t’s and i’s bobbing up like driftwood. But this time the words they formed were random, confused.

  Teeth

  River

  Thorns

  Beydun

  And then, clearly and decisively:

  Greta? Greta? Has the other one found her Anchor?

  “She hasn’t,” I said bitterly. “But I’ll have you know she has blisters on both her feet from walking about looking for it, so she’s certainly trying.”

  Vikers let out a low caw.

  Walking about? the book wrote in looping, slightly befuddled script.

  Blisters? You showed her your study, did you not? And you left it there for her, did you not, along with the waking spell? So she’s found it! She’s found it and she’s well on her way to preparing for the battle ahead!

  The battle ahead? I glanced toward the tapestry. “But I only found the spell, not the Anchor! I’m not ready for any battles!”

  Both Vikers and the book of all things were silent for a moment. Vikers eyed me sideways. Then, suddenly, the book snapped closed and open like a mouth, and a row of huge ink-splattered words appeared in the middle of the page:

  WELL, GO LOOK FOR IT, YOU NUMPTY!!!

  I gasped and leaped out of bed. Then, with Vikers on my shoulder, the book of all things under my arm, and a candle to light my way, I headed into the passage behind the tapestry.

  You could at least tell me what I’m looking for, I thought angrily, glancing around the secret library. There were a thousand things in here, and any one of them might be a magical token capable of binding me to all that was good in the world. But at least I had only one room to search now instead of the hundreds in Blackbird Castle. “I suppose there’s only one thing to do,” I said, rolling up my sleeves.

  First I threw out all the musty flowers, pulled down the garlands, collected the dried sprigs of lavender and yellow bull’s-eye from the herbology cabinet, and trooped with them down the servants’ staircase and into a desolate courtyard, where I threw them in a heap. Once the study had been utterly deflorested, I climbed the stepladder and swung around the perimeter of the chamber so that I could open the window and let in the bracing air.

  Then I organized the many baubles and artifacts, and all the witch’s tools, lining them up carefully. I lifted each one in turn, hoping for some rush of unearthly fire to kindle in my fingertips, but all I got was a splinter.

  I didn’t dare bother the book of all things again. Instead I collapsed on the floor to think. I glanced about the chamber, which was now organized and dusted to within an inch of its life. “No Anchor,” I said to Vikers, who had alighted on my shoulder. “Nothing.”

  Vikers didn’t answer, only perched very stiffly and severely, like a guard dog. He was watching a small hole in the ceiling. It looked much like the one in my bedroom, and the ones in the ceiling in the corridor that Bram had been stuffing. A faint cooing was threading out of it, along with a skitter of mortar. It was almost as if a tiny miner was digging about with an even tinier pickax.

  I watched the hole, wondering what was up there. And then, all at once, I heard another sound and looked down to see a little lumpen figure peering around a cauldron. It was plump and powdery gray, like a mushroom, and its eyes were glossy black.

  A triggle!

  It wasn’t frightened. It stepped out of the shadow of the cauldron, bobbing across the floor toward me. Then another one popped from behind a pile of books, and another scuttled down from the crack in the ceiling. They congregated, squeaking to one another in small, high voices.

  Vikers flew up to the top rung of the ladder and began to caw threateningly. But I didn’t see what his trouble was. I thought the triggles looked rather adorable. I wanted to pick one up and squeeze its soft little arms and tickle its chin.

  “Hello!” I said, scooting over the floor toward them. “What do you want?”

  They froze and turned to look at me, a bit accusingly, as if I had interrupted them. Then one of them crept forward, its head slightly bowed, peeking up at me with its great black eyes.

  “Oh, you are sweet,” I said, crawling a little closer. “What are you, hmm? A ghost of some sort?”

  The triggle gave a little mew. Behind it, the others tittered. I reached out with one finger, and it reached out its own arms, like a child asking to be held. I leaned down. Greta’s skeleton key slipped from my collar, dangling in front of the triggle’s face. And no sooner had it caught sight of the key than its eyes widened, and it snatched the key from around my neck, darting away over the floor and giggling wickedly.

  “Excuse me!” I leaped to my feet. “Give that back!”

  But the triggles only laughed and dispersed like beetles before a broom. They tossed the key to one another, flashing, just out of reach of my flailing hands. I charged after them, smacking one of them very hard. It was like hitting a dusty pillow with a broom: a puff of green spores exploded out of it, and it went hurtling through the air and into the drapes, which it slid down, landing in a heap on the floor and looking quite dead. A moment later, it hopped up again and darted away, cackling maniacally.

  One of the other triggles yanked on the hem of my skirt. Then four of his compatriots shoved the armchair into the back of my knees and I collapsed into it. By the time I had recovered, the key was darting very fast toward the hole in the ceiling.

  “Vikers!” I shouted “Don’t let them get away!”

  With two beats of his wings Vikers reached the hole, hovering in front of it menacingly. The triggle with the key took one look at him and turned with a shriek, running across the ceiling in the opposite direction. Vikers extended a talon, almost casually, and snagged the key’s silver chain. The triggle kept running, not realizing it was going nowhere. Then, like a grouchy old fisherman, Vikers began reeling it in.

  I dragged the stepladder over and started up it. The triggle holding the key shrieked ever more desperately, unwilling to let go of its treasure but unable to flee. Other triggles, popping from behind candles and books, shrieked too, in commiseration. And then I reached the ceiling and plucked the key from the triggle’s grasp.

  “No,” I said sternly. “Bad triggle. This is not for you.”

  It hung its head, still standing upside down on the ceiling. The others began to mope and whine, sounding like nothing so much as a bunch of spoiled babies. As I climbed back down the ladder, they reached out their hands for the key, weeping piteously. But Vikers flapped his wings, herding them into a pack, and they silenced, eyeing his scythe-like beak mistrustfully.

  I wondered how many other things they had stolen from this room, how many other shiny objects they had scuttled off with . . .

  And then it dawned on me: the triggles! The triggles had stolen my Anchor! Greta had led me to its hiding place, and her book had told me where it was, and perhaps the Anchor had been in the secret room. But what if it was the exact shade of shiny and glittering to make a triggle want to snatch it? Now the only question was—where did triggles take their stolen bounty?

  I whistled for Vikers and set off to find Bram.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I found Bram in the kitchens, ferrying baskets of onions, sides of ham, and cones of sugar out of the pantry in preparation for dinner. “Oh dear,” he said, before I’d even begun my story, which made me think I must look fairly frantic.

  “Oh dear what?” Minnifer demanded, poking her head up from her mountain of pillowcases. She clambered
out from among them, and they both hurried over, squinting at Vikers and me.

  “It’s the triggles,” I said. “The triggles have my Anchor!”

  “The triggles?” Minnifer whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “Almost positive. I know where it was supposed to be, and it wasn’t there, and I caught a whole passel of them rummaging about—”

  “Little wretches!” exclaimed Minnifer and Bram at once, and then Minnifer said, “We’ve got to get it back,” with such conviction I thought she might be about to don a helmet and take up a sword.

  “Do you know where they hide the things they snatch?” I asked, my heart thumping. “I thought you would, Bram, since you’re always after them, and I just hope they haven’t put it somewhere unreachable like under the floorboards or—”

  But Bram and Minnifer were already pulling me out of the kitchen and down a corridor, their work forgotten.

  “They’ve got little troves all over the castle,” said Bram. “Sometimes they like to move them about, especially if they feel they’re being watched. But they’ve got one main spot.”

  “Amsel’s Tower,” said Minnifer. “North wing.”

  “The burned one?” I said, dashing along with them, Vikers clutching to my shoulder for dear life and letting out a squawk of indignation at all the excitement.

  Bram nodded. “We’ll go through the forest. It’s safer than climbing through all that rubble. There’s a place where Pragast Wood creeps right up to the edge of the castle, and that’s where the tower is. Looks like a broken finger. I’ve cleared it out twice, but the triggles keep filling it up again. . . . Here, put this on.”

  We had entered a little room, green cloaks on pegs, heaps of baskets, and rows of high black boots on the floor. Bram stuffed one of the cloaks into my arms and began pulling on a pair of boots. Vikers flew up to the gas lamp and perched there, watching us.

  “Mrs. Cantanker will have a fit if she sees us with you and not at our work,” said Minnifer, pulling on her own boots. “But we’ll take you to the crack in the wall, and we’ll keep watch while you go into the tower, and if Mrs. Cantanker sees us we’ll just pretend we were out mushroom picking.”

 

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