Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  I tried to ignore the unease nagging at the back of my mind as I helped Bram and Minnifer with their chores. Once the triggles had finished their stitchery, we brought them out to the farthest corner of Pragast Wood to be released. Then we gathered mushrooms and berries from beneath the castle wall, and played tennis on the overgrown court, or tried to, though our rackets had no netting and we had only pine cones for balls. Finally we went down the valley to Hackenden village for groceries, shuffling through the frosty grass and blazing autumn leaves, and visited all the nicest shops. Folk pulled their children away when they saw us, and a few even crossed themselves and grew pale, but I hardly noticed.

  Something is about to happen, I kept thinking, over and over again. Something is about to change, and there’s no going back now.

  It was evening by the time we returned to Blackbird Castle. The sun was peering moodily through the trees, like a red face through the bars of a prison. We were laughing as we came up the front steps, breathless from the cold and very hungry, pushing through the front doors. . . .

  Mrs. Cantanker was waiting for us in the hall.

  “Children!” she said, smiling down at us. She had changed into a peacock gown—splendid blue and purple and emerald satin—but she looked frazzled somehow, her grin too wide, her bejeweled fingers tapping quickly at her skirts. “I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. He arrived just an hour ago and will be staying with us for a little while.”

  She stepped aside, revealing a small, knife-ish sort of man standing just behind her. He wore black riding boots and coattails cloven like the hoof of a goat. A slightly dirty polka-dot foulard had been knotted under his chin.

  “Hello,” he said, ignoring Minnifer and Bram and smiling a very foul yellow smile at me. “What a lovely house you have, Zita Brydgeborn.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I recognized him at once: it was the man I had glimpsed during my first week in Blackbird Castle, the one Mrs. Cantanker had let trundle off with a wheelbarrow full of paintings and silver. Up close, with those coattails and gleaming black boots, he looked rather like a postilion or a jockey. He wasn’t badly dressed, but he struck me somehow as a grubby, unwholesome fellow. His skin was terribly pale, as if he had powdered it. His lips were red and shiny. He had the look of the men who loitered outside pubs and card dens, the ones who smoked too much and drank too much. He continued to smile at me, spinning an ebony cane against the floor like a top.

  “Who are you?” I asked, Bram and Minnifer and I huddling together like frightened birds. “Did my mother know you?”

  “They’ve met,” Mrs. Cantanker snapped. “Not that it matters. Do not forget, Zita, that I am your guardian, and I will make the decisions in this house. I have spent months of my precious life teaching you the ways of witches while you whittled away at my last nerve. Now show a little gratitude. At the very least, show some manners.”

  I bristled. A voice in my mind was screaming, telling me to shove them both out the door and lock it behind them. But I felt cowed by their smiles and their hard, glittering eyes. I stole another glance at the man. With a start, I saw he had approached me very silently and was standing only a foot away, twirling his cane and admiring the grand hall. A cloud of some dark herbal perfume hung about him like a pall, and I could smell the cold of the outdoors on him too, and something a bit like chimney smoke.

  “Gartlut’s the name,” he said, in a voice that was ever so elegant and refined, a voice that did not match his horrid yellow teeth at all. “And I assure you, Miss Zita, I’m no stranger here. In fact, you might call me a very old friend.”

  “Don’t say anything,” I said, pacing to and fro beneath the stargazing cupola. Minnifer and Bram were sitting atop a heap of cushions, looking anxious. Vikers was perched in the thicket of brass rods holding up the glass, surveying all three of us skeptically. “Don’t even nod your heads unless you’re sure it’s safe to do. I’m going to tell you everything I’ve found out, and then we’re going to make a plan.”

  I told Bram and Minnifer everything, then, about the vision I’d gotten from the treskgilliam tree, the blue rings with the spiders in them, and my fight with the fangore. I told them about the ghost of my old nanny, my memories of the Butcher of Beydun, and the whispers of Magdeboor’s return.

  “And as for Gartlut,” I said. “A very old friend, my foot. He’s no stranger here because he’s been visiting in the night and stealing the silver. I saw him. He was making off with paintings and all sorts of treasures. And Mrs. Cantanker let him.”

  Bram and Minnifer were silent. Once again they reminded me of strange dolls, their legs trailing down the heap of cushions, their faces blank and sad. What was inside those enchanted heads? What would they tell me if they could? I wished I could help them, not just make them promises but really help them. I wished I were a powerful witch, and I wished Blackbird Castle had not fallen so far, that I hadn’t returned only to have all the weight of its ruins placed on my shoulders.

  “Can we go to Mr. Grenouille?” I wondered aloud, lying flat on the carpet and staring up at the stars. “Or to that other witch family in Manzemir? What if I told them everything I just told you?”

  Minnifer giggled a weary, bitter giggle. “They wouldn’t know what to do. And they wouldn’t believe us either.”

  “Then we’ll need proof,” I said. “Unassailable proof that Mrs. Cantanker is part of a dastardly organization that is trying to bring high-ranking dead back from the spirit realm.”

  “But how will we get this proof?” Bram asked. “How will anyone ever believe us before it’s too late?”

  I sighed. In the blue bowl of the sky, the stars looked like some splendid, glittering meal that a giant scullery maid had forgotten to wipe away. They seemed very far away, winking and shining, and not caring at all for the troubles of an orphan and her friends. They made me feel adrift again, the way I had at Mrs. Boliver’s and at the orphanage. I felt as if I were floating, surrounded by nothing but woods and ghosts, the looming mountains and the soft, indifferent gaze of those far-flung little lights.

  And then I glanced over and saw that Bram and Minnifer had slid off the pile of cushions and had joined me on the floor. Even Vikers had flown from his perch to stand grimly next to my head.

  “It might seem impossible,” said Minnifer. “But you’ve been worse places than Blackbird Castle, haven’t you, Zita? And so have we.”

  “Anyway, it just seems impossible,” said Bram. “But it’s a witch’s house, after all, and nothing’s ever quite what it seems. We’ll find a way, or we’ll try until there’s no trying left.”

  I smiled at them. And we lay under the cupola and the vast starry night, discussing our predicament, while below us the castle creaked and groaned, as if it wanted to join our rebellion, as if it had sensed the new inhabitant scurrying in its guts and did not approve of him at all.

  Winter crept slowly through Pragast Wood, prowling around the castle, reaching frosty fingers between the thick velvet drapes, chilling our feet when we woke in the morning and freezing our noses at night. By the end of November, it had arrived in earnest, lashing the windows with snow and sending tiles and weather vanes tumbling down the steep roofs. Lightning and thunder shuddered in the sky above the mountains. The trees could be heard creaking at night, their high, thin voices echoing across the gardens. Minnifer, Bram, and I battened down the hatches, spending as much time as possible by the great fire in the servants’ hall.

  My lessons with Mrs. Cantanker stopped altogether. She paid no attention to me or the servants, and spent all her time with Gartlut, giving him tours of the various strange and magical rooms, sitting in the cozy armchairs in the High Blackbird’s study with piles of books around their feet, and sometimes disappearing for hours at a time. The household ghosts barely showed themselves anymore, cowering in corners and watching all this unfold with alarm.

  In my mother’s study, the fish that looked like they were on fire sank to the bottom of the a
quarium, fading until they looked like lumps of coal. And as for the purple-winged moth, Mrs. Cantanker had carved it open. I crept into the tower room one evening to find it on a table, its golden blood draining into tubes for a potion. I’d been too horrified for words and had taken it out into a courtyard and buried it in the snow.

  There was no cheer in the castle as we approached Christmas—only dread, as if some great terror were looming just around the bend. I could not yet make out its shape, but I could see its shadow stretching toward me. Sometimes I thought the shadow was Gartlut’s. Sometimes I thought it was Magdeboor’s. And sometimes I thought it was my own shadow that terrified me so, or the shadow of someone very like me, who I did not ever want to meet.

  As for Gartlut, when he was not with Mrs. Cantanker, he was snooping. I could always tell where he had been because he had the bad habit of spitting on the floor, and would leave a nasty, glimmering trail wherever he went. I saw him out in the woods sometimes, or in the High Blackbird’s study, his boots on my mother’s desk. I hated him. Vikers hated him. Bram and Minnifer hated him most of all, and a shadow passed over their faces whenever he was near.

  Gartlut seemed to hate us too. He showed it in the roundabout way some people have, lavishing far too much attention on us whenever our paths crossed. He would want to discuss the weather, or ask us what we thought of the rooms we found ourselves in, whether the ceilings were well painted or ugly, and always he would find some small way to insult us or tip us ever so slightly off-balance. Meeting him was like meeting a cloud of buzzing insects on a hot summer day: you inevitably came out the other side feeling grimy and a little bit startled. One night he wandered into the servants’ hall while we were eating supper, swinging his ebony cane and smirking. Our conversation broke off and we picked awkwardly at our food, waiting for him to go away.

  “The cake was ghastly, Bram,” he said, and Bram stared at him in surprise. “And Minnifer, dearie, I thought I told you I wanted my socks mended with little red roses, and it simply looks like the yarn caught the pox, red blotches all over them. It’s shoddy work, really. Lazy work.”

  I shot out of my chair. Bram had worked hard on the cake, and Minnifer was too busy with Mrs. Cantanker’s endless list of chores to be mending anyone’s socks with roses. But both Bram and Minnifer remained seated, very still, looking down at their plates, their faces pinched and pale.

  “You don’t need to talk to them like that,” I snapped. “They’re doing you a favor, and they don’t owe you a thing. Anyway, I tried that cake, and it was the best cake you’ll find in the world.”

  Gartlut looked at me with amusement, one ink-black eyebrow arched. “The world?” he said. “The whole world? And what would you know of the world? You spend so much time down here with the servants that soon no one will be able to tell the difference. Ysabeau and I might sack you by accident.”

  My face reddened. I dug my nails into my palms, feeling like a thorn bush sprouting out of the floor. “You,” I said slowly, “have no right to be doing any sacking. And neither has Mrs. Cantanker. And if the work Bram and Minnifer do isn’t good enough for you, you can leave.”

  I wished I had better words. I wished I could make Gartlut feel small and hurt, the way he had made Bram and Minnifer feel. But Gartlut only flashed his hideous smile and plucked a pastry from a platter, popping it into his mouth.

  “That’s no way to treat a guest,” he said, chewing while he spoke and blowing crumbs all over the tablecloth. “But of course there were no fine airs or good graces locked up in those lovely bank accounts you inherited, were there? One never inherits the things one truly needs. One must find those all by one’s self. And I don’t think you’re nearly clever enough to do that.”

  My face grew redder still. I wanted to fly at him and beat him over the head with a pan, but he was already turning away, flicking crumbs at me from his fingertips.

  “Do not be so proud, little witch,” he said. “And do not be so insolent. We all go to the same place one day, and we meet all sorts of people there who we never expected we’d see again. I’d watch myself.”

  Before I could retort, he left us, slipping out the door and closing it softly behind him.

  That night I lay awake, listening to an owl hooting in Pragast Wood. The moonlight streamed in brightly, casting strange shadows across my comforters.

  “That’s no way to treat a guest,” Gartlut had said, but he was no guest of mine. I was the guest now—no, less than a guest, an intruder—and both Gartlut and Mrs. Cantanker took every opportunity to make me feel it. I washed my own clothes and did my own ironing, and I was never asked to eat with Gartlut and Mrs. Cantanker in the Amber Room. Sometimes, when I walked past and saw them inside, whispering and laughing and reading their pamphlets in front of the fire, Mrs. Cantanker would rise and close the door in my face. I told myself I didn’t care. I didn’t want to spend a single moment with them anyway. But at the same time, it was horrifying to be made a stranger in your own home. I might have demanded my place. Now I feared it was too late.

  I thought of running away. It would be easy enough to pack my things, take a handful of jeweled trinkets from Greta’s study and sell them in the valley for a train ticket. I could go anywhere, buy a smart new dress and get a job in some great city where witches and ghosts seemed very far away. But it would only be seeming. I could not unsee the sights I had witnessed here, or unlearn the danger. I would still glimpse the darting will-o’-the-wisps, the ghostly cats, and the occasional hulking moorwhistler, and I’d remember all the spirits pressing against the veil, and all the work the Brydgeborns had done to preserve the balance of things, all of it ending with a little witch who had decided to run away. . . .

  I looked at Vikers, dozing atop my bedpost, then righting himself abruptly, bristling his feathers and puffing out his chest. I thought of Bram and Minnifer down in the servants’ hall, sleeping by the fire. They were all doing their part to set things right.

  No, Zita, I told myself firmly. You’re not giving up. It was easy to begin things, easy to end them too, but to make everything in between make sense . . . that was the challenge.

  I let out a great puffy sigh and sank back into my pillows, staring up at the little painted cornflowers on the ceiling, the clouds and winged beasts. My gaze followed a blue ribbon, from painted hand, to knuckled tree branch, to the beak of a blackbird. And suddenly a memory slipped into my mind. It was just a soft thing—early spring, bright sunlight streaming through tree branches, Teenzy running after sticks, and my parents walking with me, my hands in theirs—but it calmed me, soothing as a gentle balm. The locket was warm against my skin, and I wrapped my hand around it, remembering my mother and father.

  They would have fought for Blackbird Castle, I thought. And they would have wanted me to fight for it too. I wanted more from life than dusting for Mrs. Boliver. Well, I’ve got it now, and so I’m going to rescue my family, break Bram and Minnifer’s enchantment, reestablish Blackbird Castle as a beacon against the darkness—

  I was just beginning to feel utterly determined and full of righteous fury when I heard the sound of someone passing quickly by my room. I sat up abruptly. Then I crawled out of bed and tiptoed across the cold floorboards, opening the door a crack. I was just in time to see a globe of light vanish around the corner at the end of the corridor, along with the rustling plumage of Mrs. Cantanker’s dressing gown.

  Without a second thought, I darted out of my bedroom and followed, quick as a hare. Mrs. Cantanker’s footsteps never slowed, nor did she look back over her shoulder. She swept past the doors to the greenhouse, the Parlor of Psychosis, the Room of Marble Heads, went up a flight of stairs and down another. And then I recognized where we were: the picture gallery, the one where Minnifer, Bram, and I had stood all those months ago, peering up at the painting of Magdeboor. Mrs. Cantanker went to its very end, raising her candle high. She whispered a word. . . .

  I froze. There were the blue stairs again, the panel slightly ajar
. Without a moment’s hesitation, as if she’d done it a thousand times, Mrs. Cantanker hitched up her dressing gown and began climbing toward Magdeboor’s forbidden chambers.

  I waited for her to scream, to come galloping back down chased by a swarm of weeshts and ghouls. But all I heard was the wind rattling the windowpanes and the sound of her footsteps echoing away. The realization that I was alone in the gallery crashed over me like an icy wave. I shuddered, drawing my nightgown around me. Then, avoiding Magdeboor’s sharp black stare, I turned and fled back to my room.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WE were not idle the following weeks. In fact, our secret rebellion became quite busy now that winter was keeping us indoors. One morning Bram slipped a bit of star root into Mrs. Cantanker’s and Gartlut’s coffee, and then, while they snored facedown in their eggs and bacon, we searched the High Blackbird’s study, Mrs. Cantanker’s suite of rooms, even the little writing desk in the training hall.

  We were hoping to find the sinister pamphlets Mrs. Cantanker read, letters to the spirits of the underworld, detailed modi operandi scribbled in journals, admittances of soul eating and summoning fangores for sport, and anything at all about the League of the Blue Spider and their plans to call the Dark Queen from beyond the veil. I entertained fantasies of bringing a great heap of proof to Mr. Grenouille and plopping it onto his desk in a cloud of dust.

  But though we searched high and low, we found nothing. The writing table in the training hall had been swept clean, the High Blackbird’s study as well, and as for the many drawers in my mother’s great desk, they could not be opened at all. Their bulbous eyes had closed, lids pinched tightly shut, as if they were all wincing in pain.

  I began to think increasingly about the blue staircase, about Mrs. Cantanker’s skirts whispering away into the gloom. Was that where she and Gartlut were hatching their plans? I saw the stairs from time to time, at the end of passageways or half hidden in the corners of rooms. One evening I came across them in the corridor next to the pantry and stood for a moment, staring up them. I thought I heard sounds drifting from somewhere high above, the murmur of a distant wind, and oddly enough, the lapping of water.