Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

  The change that came over Mrs. Cantanker was immediate. “Upstairs,” she said, her face going cold as marble. “Preparing. It’s about time you arrived, Charles. You missed an absolutely delightful feast last night in celebration of the dawn of our new age. The entire league was here.”

  I stole a look at the stairs. An enormous horned head formed the newel post. It was scaled and gilded, its jeweled eyes almost closed. “Wake the dragon stairs . . .”

  I reached out, trying to brush a hand over its snout, but Mr. Grenouille jerked me back. “I was waylaid,” he said, and up in the chandelier, a goblin snickered and began to swing back and forth, causing a rain of crystal beads to fall onto the tiles. “Am I the last?”

  “Yes. And we might not have waited another day.”

  “You might have waited another year if I’d not come up when I did,” snapped Mr. Grenouille. “Precious Zita was about to head off into the wild blue yonder, and then where would we be, hmm?”

  “The spirits would have caught her before she was halfway through the woods,” said Mrs. Cantanker coolly. “We are taking no risks, not now.” She tipped her face up toward the ceiling, a dreamy, wild look in her eyes. “Magdeboor is waiting. Her feet are in the water, her gaze turned to these bright shores. We shall bring her back, smuggle her into the lands of the living . . . and you,” she said, turning to me sharply. “You, I will thankfully never have to see again. I’m sick to death of you. Every day, every moment, I spent shepherding a servant girl through the hallowed traditions of witchery. . . . It made me want to scream.”

  “You did scream,” I snapped. “A lot. And I don’t know why you bothered teaching me anything, if you were just going to get rid of me.” Anger boiled up inside me, and I could feel my cheeks growing red. I ceased to struggle against Mr. Grenouille’s grasp and stood as straight as I could. “Why am I still alive if you hate me so much?”

  Mrs. Cantanker sniffed. “Oh, you’ll see. Very soon, Zita, all those years of work, all those secret meetings, dukes and lowly scullery maids sitting together, the wolves with the sheep, the League of the Blue Spider plotting to bring Magdeboor back . . . it’s all about to be worth it. She will shatter the borders between life and death. She will restore the witches to their former glory, not those elegant, puffed-up creatures we have today, but true witches, strong and merciless and above all laws. No more pandering. No more playing nice.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “What makes you think that will have anything to do with you? You’re not even a witch!”

  Mrs. Cantanker’s eyes flashed. For a moment I thought she might throttle me on the spot. But then she seemed to regain control of her features and smiled a brittle smile. “Did the servants tell you? I knew I ought not to have spared them. . . . But yes! So what? I’m not a witch, not in the traditional sense. I cannot see the dead. I can do only the most primitive magic.”

  Her voice became a snarl. “But listen well, Zita Brydgeborn, before you dare think your ratty little self above me. I worked and I toiled to become what I am. I made myself strong and clever, cleverer than any of the others, cleverer than your mother. And was I ever good enough for your lot? No! Because I was not born into the proper family. Because I did not have the right blood. Well, guess what, Georgina,” she spat, as if my mother were standing in the hall with us. “I found my own path, despite your urgings, despite you saying I should become a professor or a polite little historian. ‘Don’t go that way,’ you said. ‘Don’t go places that will lead you into darkness.’ But the darkness takes everyone. The darkness wasn’t too good to have me.”

  She spun, her skirts swirling. She was still dressed in the bloodred gown from the night before, only it was in need of steaming and ironing, and her hair was falling out of its pins. Her voice was venomous as she paced the checkerboard tiles. “It will all turn out in the end, though. Who do you think Magdeboor will be beholden to when she returns? You and your ilk, who have kept her imprisoned in the underworld for centuries? Or me, who freed her? I think I will reap quite handsomely for my labors, thank you very much. And all the lazy witches of this world in their gilt drawing rooms and summer mansions, and the fat old kings who think themselves above us, and everyone who ever laughed at me when I failed. . . . They will be dead.”

  Her fingers were knotted in front of her, so tightly they’d turned warped and bloodless. Her eyes glittered. I imagined her suddenly as a child, red-haired and freckled, a frightened girl at some illustrious magic school, unable to perform even the simplest spell, unable to see the ghosts that tickled across her forehead or hung menacingly behind her in the dark. This was what had grown in that bitter, lonely soil: a magnificent creature, but so full of vengeance and hate. For a moment I felt sorry for her.

  But only for a moment. “I’ll never help you summon Magdeboor,” I said. “You can kill me if you want, but I’ll not bring her back.”

  “Oh, Zita,” said Mrs. Cantanker, and all around us, the lingering beasts and spirits began to chuckle and laugh, horns bobbing and black eyes flashing. “It’s too late for that. You’ve already summoned her! You, our last little key to Magdeboor’s locks and chains. You broke them open one by one. Banish a ghost whose sins on earth are not yet forgiven? You did that in the Black Sitting Room on your very first day. Change the natural course of the weather for no reason at all? Done. Kill a fangore for sport? Done. All of these things are very much forbidden to an honorable witch. But then you wouldn’t know that, would you? Because you’re nothing but a housemaid, all dressed up. . . .”

  Except I’m not, I thought. Some things just are, and I’m a Blackbird.

  Mrs. Cantanker approached me and lifted my chin, exactly as she had on the night I’d met her. I had been frightened then, awed by her flashing looks and grandeur, but I was not fooled by those things now. I knew what she was, and I looked her coldly in the eye.

  “So proud,” she murmured, digging one long red nail into my skin. “But what are you really, Zita? Cinders and sparrows. Cinders and sparrows, where I am fire and crows. You are no match for me. We have one more task for you, one more key to twist. And then I’m afraid your usefulness will have entirely run out.”

  She turned to Mr. Grenouille, who was leaning against the dragon-head newel post, his elbow poking its eye, watching all this unfold with amusement.

  “Lock her up,” Mrs. Cantanker snapped. “Well, this time, so she can’t escape. And then meet me at the mausoleum. Magdeboor returns tonight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE dungeon where I was to spend my final hours was little more than a damp, mossy cave. A well covered with a rusting grate stood at its center. A barred window pierced the wall high in one corner. And who should be standing in its cold, pale light but Bram and Minnifer, side by side in their crisp black uniforms. They watched, their faces solemn, as Mr. Grenouille shoved me into the cell. “And stay there!” he said, wagging his finger at me like a stern schoolmaster. Then he locked the gate with a ring of keys and scuttled away.

  I kicked the bars once, soundly, with the heel of my shoe. “Hello,” I said, tossing a brief, contemptuous scowl at the servants who were not really servants but who could be practically anyone. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are we doing here?” Minnifer crept toward me and laid a hand on my arm. “Zita, what happened—?”

  I shrugged her off. “You tell me,” I said. “Did you run away and betray me as I soon as I was out of sight?”

  Minnifer’s mouth fell open. Then she hurried back to Bram, casting a suspicious look at me over her shoulder. “D’you think she’s possessed? I think so. Probably by a weesht. Probably it caught her as soon as she went up those stairs, and now it’s walked her back from the dead like a puppet on a string. Look at that scowl.”

  “I’m not possessed by anything except maybe a headache,” I said. “Now tell me who you are and why you’re down here.”

  “They found us,” said Bram. “They came trooping along the gallery, bo
ld as brass.”

  “And so we ran,” said Minnifer. “But not fast enough. Those lavender sachets didn’t do squat against Gartlut and Mrs. Cantanker. They had us thrown down here. We’re prisoners too, don’t you see?”

  “I don’t know what you are,” I said. “But you’re not servants, and you haven’t been here for ages like you said. I don’t know if anything you’ve told me was true, or if you were ever really my friends.” I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying. “Just tell me, and please don’t lie. Who are you really?”

  For a moment there was no sound but water plinking on stone. Then Bram took a deep breath. “We’re John and Greta Brydgeborn, apprentices of Georgina Brydgeborn, formerly of Oglethorpe Orphanage, North Hackenden, and since the arrival of Ysabeau Harkleath Cantanker-St. Cloud, servants at Blackbird Castle.”

  My poor brain, still recovering from being struck by a brick, wobbled inside my skull. “You’re who?” I managed at last.

  But they weren’t paying any attention to me. They were staring at each other, and then Minnifer said in a surprised voice, “Nothing happened! Bram, nothing happened!”

  “Nothing did,” Bram agreed. “D’you suppose it’s worn off?”

  “Or someone pulled the stitches out—”

  Minnifer squealed. Then she gathered a lungful of air and said very quickly, as if expecting her lips to clamp shut at any moment, “Ysabeau Harkleath Cantanker-St. Cloud is an evil villainess who’s scheming to end the Brydgeborn line and bring back the Dark Queen Magdeboor.”

  Bram and Minnifer exchanged glances. Minnifer looked up at the ceiling and clicked her jaw about in an exploratory fashion. And then they were both jabbering at full speed, and it was all I could do to keep up.

  “We were hexed,” said Minnifer. “We couldn’t say our true names, or tell you anything about the fate of the Brydgeborns.”

  “We couldn’t say a word to warn you,” said Bram. “About Mrs. Cantanker or Mr. Grenouille or anyone. But we tried. That’s why we left clues, and why Greta’s book of all things was in the chimney, and why we gave you the skeleton key.”

  “You gave me the skeleton key?” I exclaimed. “No, you didn’t! Greta’s ghost did. And that’s what doesn’t make sense. She was helping me, but she’s also evil and in league with Mrs. Cantanker.”

  “Greta’s ghost?” Minnifer shook her head. “You mean Flora Wheeler? Oh, she most definitely was not helping you. She managed to get into the castle during the last hiring, but she was never on our side. You might have thought her and Mrs. Hanguard and that gardener boy were royalty, the way they treated the other servants. And yet there she was, weaving her dark schemes right under all our noses. She didn’t give you a thing. She had a skeleton key when she was a servant here, and you probably saw her ghost snooping about with it, spying all over the place and threatening the household spirits with nasty punishments if they helped you. But it was us that slipped in and gave you the last of the skeleton keys while you were sleeping. It was so cold in there that night, goodness. I still remember. . . .”

  “Because she was there,” I said. “Greta—I mean Flora—was in the room, and so was Teenzy, and . . . she was following Teenzy! Teenzy showed me the library, not her.”

  Minnifer’s eyes lit up. “You saw Teenzy?” She sighed. “I haven’t seen her in ages, but I thought she might be helping, too. We took care of her after Georgina brought us here, and when Teenzy died, she didn’t leave. We always thought she was waiting for you.”

  Poor Teenzy. Poor all the good ghosts and magical creatures of Blackbird Castle who had watched it fall into disrepair at the hands of these devious people. But it was making sense now. Flora Wheeler had simply been another villainess, working with Mrs. Cantanker and Gartlut and all the members of the League of the Blue Spider. She’d infiltrated the castle along with the other false servants, been sacrificed at the dining room table, and then continued her wicked work as a ghost. I’d thought she was on my side, and I’d also thought she was better than I was because she’d looked the part and seemed ever so witchy and glamorous. But she’d been a servant too, and the whole time, a little bit of my real family had been in the kitchens, helping me as best they could.

  It’s like it doesn’t know she’s dead, I had told Minnifer the morning after I found her book of all things. Because Greta wasn’t dead. Greta—the real Greta—had been next to me the whole time, mending pillowcases and trooping about with buckets.

  I ran to Minnifer and hugged her, and then Bram, so tightly it was their turn to go rigid like a pair of hat stands. “I’m sorry,” I said, stepping back and grinning ear to ear. “I’m sorry I thought you were wicked. But I’m so happy you’re here, and that you’ve been here all along. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Are you witches too?”

  Minnifer guffawed. “That depends on who’s asking. The villagers would say yes, since we’re very odd. And Georgina did do her best to prepare us once she realized you might not . . . well, you know. But Bram kept sneaking off to the kitchens to practice his consommés and croquembouches, and once I discovered the secret library it was over for me too. A cozy room full of interesting books is a dangerous thing, let me tell you. Anyway, we never really got the trick of herding ghosts or fighting moorwhistlers, and no birds ever bothered showing up for us either. Once Mrs. Cantanker arrived, we were done for.”

  “Speaking of which . . . ,” Bram said, casting a worried look toward the window. A long, low howl emanated across the gardens, followed by sharp bleating cries and what sounded like animals crashing through Pragast Wood.

  “Right,” said Minnifer. “Look, Zita, we’ll tell you everything we know, but we’d better start finding a way out of here if we’re going to survive. You start over there, and Bram, you search there, and I’ll see about the well.”

  We dispersed, investigating every cranny of the dungeon. Minnifer rattled at the well’s rusting grate. I scratched around the edge of a loose stone to see if it might reveal a hidden key or a secret door. It revealed only a toothy, many-legged worm that reared up and hissed at me, and I replaced the stone quickly.

  We talked while we worked, our whispers bouncing from one corner of the cell to the other. Every few minutes the waistcoated goat creature came clip-clopping down the stairs to peer at us unsettlingly, and our conversation would break off and we would lean against the walls, looking innocently at the ceiling. But as soon as he had gone we would resume, Bram and Minnifer telling me of the evils that had befallen Blackbird Castle.

  “It started when you vanished,” said Minnifer. “Probably it started long before, but that’s when everyone began to see it, like those tiny sprouts that pop up out of the soil from old, old roots. The League of the Blue Spider has been around for a hundred years. It’s a whole passel of people wanting Magdeboor to come back from the dead and return the witches to their former glory. But they needed a Brydgeborn for that. And they needed to get past Pragast Wood.”

  I thought of the nanny in the Black Sitting Room. A path of salt, a door of ivy. The Butcher of Beydun out in the trees, waiting for me.

  “They did get past Pragast Wood,” I said, pulling with all my might at the grate covering the well. It came off in my hands, and I squinted into the seemingly bottomless pit below, wondering at our chances if we tried to climb down it. “They kidnapped me right from under my family’s nose. So why didn’t they summon Magdeboor back then? I suppose my mother was far too clever to be tricked the way I was, but they might have raised me up to be the perfect little villainess. Why let me go?”

  “Your mother made a great sacrifice,” said Bram. “The day you were taken, she knew at once what was happening. She went into the underworld and made a bargain with Magdeboor: in ten years’ time, she would hand herself over. She would give up her powers and not stand in Magdeboor’s way. And in return, Magdeboor and the Butcher were to release you at once.”

  I remembered suddenly the sparrows in Mrs. Boliver’s chimney, how the m
other bird sacrificed herself to the flames burning her nest. To the very last, she’d fought, though the fire was too hot and the smoke too thick. My mother had done the same, traveling into the underworld and promising her own life so that I could live. It hadn’t been a wise deal. One daughter was not worth all the evil Magdeboor would spread throughout the world. But somehow, my mother had decided I was.

  “And Magdeboor agreed?”

  “Of course!” said Minnifer. “What were ten years when she’d been imprisoned for so long? But Magdeboor did not promise to release you anywhere near Blackbird Castle, and your mother had not anticipated such dishonorable deeds. The Butcher let you go, casting a spell so that no one could find you, by magic or otherwise, until the ten years had passed. You lived your life far away from Westval, and Georgina searched and searched for you, hoping to find you and train you in the arts of a Blackbird before it was too late. But she never could.”

  “And then?” I asked. “What happened then?”

  “Then Mrs. Cantanker arrived. It was sure as clockwork, sure as thunder after the lightning. The ten years ended and she swept into the castle, an emissary of the Dark Queen herself. She forced Georgina to give up her powers. And who was left to stand in Magdeboor’s way then? Only a lost daughter who didn’t know the first thing about witches and was really quite clueless about just about ever—Oh, pardon me.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I was.”

  “That’s when everything got really bad,” said Minnifer. “Georgina managed to convince Mrs. Cantanker not to kill us outright, but this was almost worse. Our hex forbade us from running away, and we couldn’t tell anyone anything either. We tried to send a cow down into the valley with a message written on its hide, but not even that worked. It all came out gibberish, and who knows if anyone even found the cow. . . .”

  “Oh, anyone did,” I murmured, thinking of Betsy Gilford and her tales. She hadn’t been wrong, and neither had the coachman—strange things did happen in Blackbird Castle. But they were stranger than the villagers of Hackenden could ever have dreamed.