Cinders and Sparrows

by Stefan Bachmann

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  She laughed. At her side, Gartlut laughed too, and then he began to sag, the Butcher of Beydun climbing out of him, long white arms extending like spiders’ legs from Gartlut’s mouth.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not. I do not kill witches unless they turn against me. Have you turned against me? Have not your works summoned me, and your blood brought me here?”

  “I brought you here,” said Mrs. Cantanker, scooting in front of me. “My queen, I did this. I brought back the Butcher too, your truest friend. All is ready—”

  “Quiet!” Magdeboor roared, and Mrs. Cantanker flinched as if she’d been slapped. Magdeboor turned slowly to look at her. “And who are you? Not a witch, I see.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Cantanker, in a tiny, tiny voice. “But . . . I did this. I did this for you!”

  “And yet you are not one of us,” said Magdeboor. “You have powdered your face and painted your hair with raven dye . . . but you are not one of us. You are that breed of creature that sticks like fleas to a dog’s tail, like lice to an urchin’s head. You cannot fathom power. You can only gather the scraps.”

  Mrs. Cantanker was shaking. “The darkness takes everyone,” she’d said. “The darkness wasn’t too good to have me.” But the darkness cared nothing for you once it had gotten all it could take. I wondered if she would see how foolish she’d been, if she’d abandon her horrid plans and help me instead. . . .

  “I am your faithful servant,” she whispered. “To the end.”

  Magdeboor nodded slightly. Then she turned away, dismissing Mrs. Cantanker as if she were no more than a fly. Magdeboor began circling me slowly, her dead eyes skittering over me. “Georgina Brydgeborn’s daughter,” she murmured. “The very last of our line. Your mother I do not care for. But you . . . You’re not much like her, are you?”

  “Don’t listen to her, Zita—” Mother started to say.

  Magdeboor snapped her fingers. All sound ceased, a shroud of fog enveloping us until there was nothing but me and her, facing each other.

  “I feel a fire in you,” she said, plucking at my hair. “Pride. Strength. Ambition. Some dark clay that might yet be molded. You see a road stretching ahead of you. You’ve no idea where it leads, but you know—somehow you just know—that you are destined for greater things. You’ve always felt it, haven’t you?”

  Had I? Months ago, I’d pressed my nose to the post coach’s window and wished only for a creaking garden gate and warm embraces. But I hadn’t known anything of the world then, hadn’t even dreamed of what I might have the power to do.

  “Zita?” My mother’s voice tore through whatever veil Magdeboor had constructed, stinging my ears. “Zita, don’t listen to her! She’s a bitter, twisted creature! She’s killed and maimed and hurt—”

  Magdeboor swept out one hand. The fog dispersed. Everyone in the room went hurtling backward and were pinned to the walls, their mouths shut tight. I was thrown back too, collapsing in a heap against the sarcophagus.

  “They don’t understand,” Magdeboor said, leaning over me. “They’re not real witches. They let themselves be locked in golden cages, pretty birds with clipped wings. And for what? To please the weak, worthless creatures of this world. Do you think that right, child? Do you think that fair?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, as Magdeboor whirled around me, the burning cold flowing off her, her glittering gaze fixing me like a needle through an insect.

  “Come now,” Magdeboor said, lifting me to my feet. “Of course it isn’t fair. We have the gifts to do more. To pass beyond the silly contrivances of life and to taste the wild freedoms beyond the veil. It opens one’s mind, you know, traveling there. It makes one see how stupid everyone really is. In the lands of the living, they want only to keep us small—the villagers in Hackenden, the kings of Westval, even my sisters. They want us to play by the rules so that everyone can get along. But they never tell you why you ought to care whether everyone gets along. If you’re a weak little thing, of course you must. You must cower and beg, and hope for the best. But I am not a weak little thing. Are you?”

  “No,” I said uncertainly. What was she trying to say?

  “Good,” she said. “And that is why I will give you a choice. Renounce this world, its pumping veins and heaving lungs. Embrace power.” She drew something up out of thin air: a book and a quill. “It’s not so very hard to do. I did it once, ages ago. Just give him a little drop of blood, sign a little book. . . .”

  “Him?” I whispered. “Is that the Butcher’s book?”

  “A noble creature, yes,” said Magdeboor. “A scion of the underworld, and ever so kind to his subjects.”

  I almost snorted. How stupid did she think I was? I’d seen what kindnesses she’d shown Mrs. Cantanker, and what kindnesses the Butcher had shown me. And yet she only half smiled again, seeming to read the disbelief from my face.

  “You think me mad. And yet if you join our ranks you will never be unsure again, never weak or cold like a mortal witch. You will give your life to the Butcher, as I once did, and you will become a dark princess. The power he grants is nothing to scoff at, and both the lands of the living and of the dead will cower at our feet.”

  “I’ll die,” I said.

  “In a way. But one spares oneself all sorts of troubles by dying.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t? Then you will live! But you will live as a sniveling housemaid, and you’ll always remember how you could have been so much more, but you chose not to.”

  My head was spinning. I wasn’t going to sign anything Magdeboor gave me. And yet one little part of me had been listening to her.

  “What about Mother? If I sign it, will you let her live?”

  Magdeboor looked at me sharply for a moment. Then her head twitched such a little bit, as if a thought had just flown into it, and she said, “Of course! You may do with her as you please. Think of it this way: You could be like your mother, if you signed this book. She too made a great sacrifice. A great sacrifice for a great reward. In the end, you could finally be like her.”

  Me? Like my mother?

  I took the quill from Magdeboor’s hand. Its tip glimmered, sharp and cruel, and Magdeboor enfolded me in her black cloak, the mist, the cold, and the fire swirling around me. My hand hovered just above the book, the quill pinched tightly.

  “Sign it, Zita,” she hissed in my ear. “What has life given you that you owe it anything at all?”

  My locket was burning against my skin, uncomfortably hot. What had life given me? I’d been cold and hungry for most of it. I’d worked my fingers raw, been screamed at by Mrs. Boliver, and then gone to seek my fortune in a haunted castle and nearly been killed on multiple occasions. I wondered what Magdeboor might teach me, what a magnificent creature I might become. Would I be rich and beautiful like Mrs. Cantanker, as powerful as the Dark Queen as herself?

  But then, from inside the locket, I heard a voice, gentle and sweet . . . my mother singing a lullaby. And suddenly the grand illusions vanished. I thought of my friends at the orphanage handing me the wooden comb they’d bought. I thought of Bram and Minnifer by the fire, Vikers, and Teenzy, even the kind old woman on the coach who had shared her plums with me. I thought of my mother going to the very bottom of the underworld to rescue me, my father searching for me until the day he died. . . . They had not done it for a great reward. They had done it because it was right and good. And perhaps they had been too good, too trusting, for they had failed. My mother had fallen for Magdeboor’s tricks, her promises, and her lies. But I had learned my lesson there.

  “Some things just are.” That was true. But in a witch’s house, nothing is as it seems. There was the outside of things and the inside, and I no longer believed in the outsides of things.

  I whirled and plunged the pointy end of the quill into Magdeboor’s arm, right at the joint in her armor. Then I wrenched away from her and ran, pelting across the tomb toward my sc
issors.

  Magdeboor screamed. I grasped the scissors seconds before I was sent flying backward, through the doors and into the icy darkness of the woods.

  “I gave you a chance!” Magdeboor bellowed, striding out of the mausoleum. “I gave you a chance to be strong! You think you can be kind and still be powerful? Well, you cannot.”

  That’s what she said, but I didn’t have to believe her. I stood shakily, brushing the snow from my cloak. Then I squared my shoulders, facing Magdeboor as she reared up in front of me. The bone knife was in her hand, its point still stained with my blood, but I did not flinch.

  “You had me kidnapped,” I said slowly, the words dropping like bitter herbs from my mouth. “You hurt my family and tricked my parents. I don’t know if I’m like my mother. But I’ll never be like you.”

  I lifted my hand. In it, my locket glowed bright as a silver star, pushing the red flames away and blowing the snow back in a great arc.

  “An Anchor?” Magdeboor laughed. “Oh, I’m terrified. What do you propose to do with that? You’re hardly old enough to be much of a Blackbird, and you’re all alone—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, raising the locket higher still. And then from far away came a sound. It began as a rumbling, a thunder in the ground. The snow trembled slightly. The woods creaked. Next came a roar, deep and bellowing, and the snap of branches. And then, slithering and pounding through the trees toward us, was a dragon. It still looked like a staircase, black wood and gilt, treads running up its back, and a banister too. But the red glow in its veins was brighter now. Its wooden wings were extended, its jeweled eyes open wide, rosettes of ruby and emerald. Running beside it was Teenzy, and following her were a hundred household spirits, the Bellamy ghost, even the seventeen bulldogs from the Library of Souls, and a certain Telurian prince in a tricorn hat, now free of his marble bust and looking very dashing indeed. In the sky above, Vikers let out a triumphant screech.

  Magdeboor’s eyes widened. I felt a glow in my heart, like fire, like sunlight on autumn leaves. It hadn’t taken me long to wake the staircase. I still had the treskgilliam twig, my Anchor, and my scissors. Rose petals and blackberry branches had been quickly procured, and Bram and Minnifer had helped me clip the thorns and lay them around the staircase. At first it had not responded. It had released a puff of smoke from its nostrils and curled up, as if to sleep some more. But I had given it a firm tap on its snout and said, “In twenty minutes you’ll be on your feet, please, and headed for Magdeboor’s mausoleum in the woods, is that clear? And not a moment longer, or you’ll have a new mistress, and she won’t be half as nice as me.”

  Now the dragon pushed between the trees and into the clearing, releasing another roar that set the moorwhistlers and weeshts to shivering. From somewhere close by, I heard Bram and Minnifer let out a cheer, and then I saw Minnifer dodging the grip of a specter, picking up her cudgel and swinging it wildly around her.

  “Get my mother!” I shouted to her. “Get her out of the mausoleum, chair and all if you have to!” Then I dashed up the stairs along the dragon’s back and situated myself behind its horns. Vikers landed on my shoulder, Teenzy climbed into my lap, cold and soft as a winter cloud. I whispered a kindly word into the dragon’s ear, and it reared up over Magdeboor, its wings blotting out the sky.

  “I’m Zita Brydgeborn!” I shouted down. “Last of my name. And you’re all trespassing.”

  The dragon pounced. Its tail slashed through the air, splintering trees. Magdeboor dove out of the way, her beasts scattering, flying into the woods and vanishing into tombs and the hollows of trees.

  But Magdeboor did not flee. She skittered up a tree, quick as a spider, the bone knife clutched to her chest, and there she began to speak quietly, her eyes pooling with red light. A high, whistling note rang through the woods—a call like the one I used to summon Vikers. Again the woods seemed to tremble and groan, the trees crackling with the approach of a massive shape.

  I had not expected to see another fangore in my life, certainly not one larger and more hideous than the one I’d conquered. But here one was, loping from among the trees, ten times the size of the last one, its belly fat with spirits, their faces squashed, bulbous-eyed, against its ropy vines and sinew. Magdeboor leaped from her tree and climbed onto its back, scaling its neck in seconds. And we faced each other in the clearing—a dragon, a dead thing, and two very different witches, one wrapped in shadows, the other wreathed in silver light.

  Magdeboor bared her teeth. “You might have lived,” she said. “Or you might have died a queen, and become a powerful, wondrous creature of the dark. But now you will die a housemaid, and there’ll be no mercy from me, no gifts or promises for your journeys ahead.”

  “I don’t want your gifts!” I shouted, but it was lost in the dragon’s roar. The fangore wailed in response, high and harrowing. And then I was hanging on for dear life as they charged each other across the clearing. I caught a glimpse of Minnifer and Bram fighting their way into the mausoleum. Then the two monsters collided, and I was nearly thrown from my perch.

  A clawed arm caught the dragon in the neck, heaving it to the side and leaving deep gouges in its polished black wood. Vikers and Teenzy leaped onto the fangore, attacking Magdeboor in a screeching frenzy of fur and feathers. My dragon regained its balance, its jaws opening wide. Something rumbled and boiled up the length of it, and then it blew a blast of red flame at the fangore, enveloping Magdeboor and turning the snow to rippling steam.

  But Magdeboor seemed to relish the heat, extending her arms as if sinking into a warm bath. The fangore swung at the dragon again, burning now. Wood cracked. Then Magdeboor leaped from her mount onto mine, her bone knife nearly taking off my head.

  I ducked, felt it singing over me. When she struck again, I gripped my silver scissors and caught her blade with my own, twisting it away.

  “So you’re not alone,” she spat, leering down at me. “But you’re still weak. Household ghosts, wandering souls too frightened to face the underworld, a handful of servants, and a witch who sacrificed her powers for nothing? Who would even want friends like that?”

  I would, I thought, gritting my teeth as she struck at me again and again. Then I rolled away from her, bouncing and falling down the stairs. Magdeboor flew after me like some vengeful bird of prey, dodging the claws and wings of our battling beasts. The fangore’s tail scythed through the air. I squirmed around onto my back just in time to see Magdeboor bending over me.

  She gripped me around the neck, lifting me right off my feet. Her gauntlet bit into my skin. My eyes bulged, and I gasped, clutching at her wrist.

  The dragon let out a horrible groan, as if it could feel my pain. It lowered itself to the ground, writhing, and the fangore loomed over us all, the souls in its belly howling wildly.

  Magdeboor began to drone on and on about Westval, and the spirit realm, and all the folk who had wronged her. But I had no time for her grudges. I looked past her, her face blurring, and caught the eye of one of the ghosts peering from the leaves of the fangore’s stomach. I managed a wink. It was a friendly wink, a wink that said, “I mean you no harm. I won’t attack you with scissors like I did the fangore in the training hall, or force you into formations like the toads on the castle lawn, or jumble you up and herd you along like the clouds in the sky. But if you help me, perhaps one day down the road, I will be able to help you too.”

  The ghost looked surprised at my wink. And then it winked back.

  “Why are you winking, mad child?” Magdeboor snapped, her fingers tightening around my neck. “Has the last of the Brydgeborns gone mad?”

  But even as she spoke, the ghost I had winked at began to wriggle and move among the other ghosts. Pointy elbows poked eyes, and pale feet stepped on faces, and then the fangore’s entire stomach began to roil, as if it had eaten something horrible.

  Magdeboor spun. “Stop that!” she shouted up at the beast. “Pull yourself together. Finish the dragon, and I will finis
h the girl—”

  But the fangore was not listening. It stood on its hind legs, clutching its stomach. The souls in its belly now seemed to be in full rebellion. Magdeboor stared at me in confusion. And then I knocked her squarely between the eyes.

  My shin struck the stair when I dropped, but I was up in an instant, shoving Magdeboor over the banister and running unsteadily for the dragon’s head. I reached it and stood between its horns, looking down. The wind blew open my cloak, baring the locket, which glowed bright and silver as starlight.

  In the clearing below, Magdeboor pushed herself to her feet. “What have you done?” she demanded. “What have you done to my fangore?”

  Souls were crawling from its mouth, dribbling down its chin. They skittered toward Magdeboor, tightening around her like a noose. Mrs. Cantanker emerged onto the steps of the mausoleum, staring in horror at the chaos in the clearing. The Butcher was careening toward Magdeboor, his long white arms outstretched. And there were Bram and Minnifer dragging Mother, chair and all, through the snow, the three of them watching me with looks of joy on their faces.

  Cinders and sparrows, I thought, and I felt the dragon beneath me, the ancient trees above me, and the wind in the sky. Or fire and crows? A witch? A housemaid? A Brydgeborn or an orphan? In that moment, none of it mattered. They were all words, lids for pots in a pantry. “Some things just are,” Mother had said, and in that moment, I simply was.

  The locket flashed. The wind howled, and Magdeboor screamed, the spirits closing over her, bony limbs carrying her back into the mausoleum and the buzzing red light. The Butcher, caught up in their flow, began to writhe and screech, his arms reaching helplessly toward the sky. And then Mrs. Cantanker and the other ladies and gentlemen were overrun too, and sped into the mausoleum, and the iron doors slammed shut.

  Magdeboor died for the second time the way I supposed people like her ought to die: dragged into the pits of hell by a swarm of ghosts and taking all her compatriots with her.

  When the last cry from the mausoleum had faded, the curse on Mother’s chair withered, and she stood. I ran to her and she held me tightly, while a crow, two former orphans, and a higgledy-piggledy army of household ghosts stood quietly by and watched.