Creatures of Charm and Hunger

by Molly Tanzer

  Putting the jar on a rock, Miriam took the veil knife out of her pocket along with the tin of tablets she’d created and a blue glass eye-dropper bottle of liquid general diabolic essence.

  Settling cross-legged on the bare cold ground, Miriam put the pastille beneath her tongue. She gradually became aware of the sensation of distance, though in a different way than perceiving how far or near something external to herself was. Looking down, she saw her body, still on the earth. She raised her hands, but the hands that moved were not solid flesh, but rather ones made of mist or something yet more insubstantial. She flexed her fingers, watching them move with her spirit’s eyes.

  Just as her body waited below her, the physical knife rested on the earth. When she picked it up, however, the blade’s spiritual double came away in her hand. She raised it to her arm, contemplating steel and flesh.

  By her wrist was a small indentation in her spirit-flesh, where she’d shaved off a sliver of spiritual skin on her first try. The area looked raw, like a healing wound, and oddly some pale charcoal-colored smoke could occasionally be seen drifting from it. She wondered if that was the shadow-soul the book had mentioned. She hoped not; it seemed to be dissipating, and she felt anything soul-related really ought to stay inside of her.

  Surely it would heal. Disturbing as it might look, the book had said that souls regenerated over time.

  To a point. What that point was, it hadn’t said.

  Miriam felt the bite of the blade as she sliced into her spirit-arm—not as pain, but neither did she enjoy the sensation. Thankfully, she didn’t need to take off much.

  Miriam took a deep breath. The bit of her spirit she’d sliced was turning to vapor. She inhaled it, concentrated on one of the earthworms—and instead of exhaling, her whole world changed.

  Miriam spent a few bizarre but incredible moments tunneling through the compost, seeking, consuming, wriggling, eliminating. When she felt her hold on the creature weakening, she allowed herself to withdraw.

  The cut she’d made on her arm was weeping more of that odd smoke. Miriam watched it, a bit mesmerized, until the pastille wore off and her spirit settled back down into her flesh.

  Her success was exhilarating, but she couldn’t celebrate too much. Literally—she was too exhausted to do much of anything. She was so tired, in fact, that she fell asleep reading in her favorite chair in the Library. She had gone down there to get a book, just a little light reading before bed, and the chair had just looked so nice.

  She awoke thinking it was morning, but after a moment she realized it was still the middle of the night, and that whatever she was hearing was not bacon frying in the pan. A message was materializing over the Basque Lens Nancy used to receive Library requests and to send pages and passages out in turn, burning into the stack of paper left on its surface just for that purpose.

  As much as she didn’t want to, Miriam knew she needed to get up and go to bed properly. She stood, wincing as she stretched her neck left and right. Her left leg was a bit tingly, so she ambled over to the desk. It was tidy, just like everything else about Nancy and the old farmhouse.

  Miriam’s eyes fell upon the paper atop the Basque Lens.

  Dear Jane,

  That was how it began.

  Miriam found out how the letter ended, too.

  Dear Jane,

  As always, I was filled with indescribable joy upon receiving your letter. Long ago I gave up the dream of being any part of your life as you grew up, so it is always a delight to hear from you. I am also pleased to hear Nancy is well. Edith naturally passed along news of you both, but I’m elated to have more frequent updates.

  I am sorry to hear you are still feeling frustrated with your Practical. I know we have been dealing with one another as equals, but you must let me play the father here when I say that these things take time, Jane! You are neither expected nor encouraged to hurry your way through this part of your training. Diabolism is an art, and art is a slow thing. The point is not to hurry. But if I may be so bold, I sense you are not hurrying away from childhood and your apprenticeship so much as other things. This I understand, but I must caution you: it will be hard for you to give up one without the other.

  As I write these things to you, my Jane, I detect a hesitation in my hand. I am afraid of being misunderstood. I wonder, would you consider a more direct form of communication? It would not be difficult for us to arrange a face-to-face meeting through this very Basque Lens. Consider it—if you would look in Modern Mirror Methods by J. Bunnell, you will find a recipe for a wax that, if you rub it onto the glass, will allow us to see one another and converse as if we were sitting in a café together. It is more work for you, I know, but the materials are easily obtained. Selfishly, I hope you say yes—I have only seen photographs of you, after all, and the last one was not so recent. And I might be more helpful when it comes to your Practical if we could really converse, instead of in this remote and stilted manner.

  Your affectionate father,

  Patrice Durand

  Miriam had been groggy before she started the letter, but she was wide awake by the time she finished it. Jane’s father was alive—and they had a secret relationship!

  Surely this was the hand of Edith at work. That woman would not rest until she’d stirred every pot.

  But Edith’s attempt to upend the status quo at the old farmhouse—however justified it might be—wasn’t the only thing occupying Miriam’s mind. Far from it. Buried within this letter was not merely this shocking revelation about Jane’s personal life, but also very possibly the solution to her problems.

  Cleaving to another creature required being able to see that creature—not, as far as Miriam could tell, being near it.

  That wax might be the answer to her troubles. She needed that book . . .

  Nancy was an early riser, though she did not usually go down to the Library before making breakfast for the girls. That meant Jane would likely steal down here soon, in order to retrieve her secret message before her mother spied it.

  Knowing she had no time to delay, Miriam slipped off her shoes and padded in her stocking feet to the card catalogue. It was but the work of a moment to locate the listing and a moment more to scurry to the location of the book. There it was, bound in black leather with silver lettering on the spine: Modern Mirror Methods.

  Miriam took it down from the shelf.

  She felt badly, stealing upstairs with it, knowing Jane would soon be looking for it. But Jane only needed the book to talk to her long-lost parent more conveniently. Miriam’s need was genuinely urgent. She was trying to discover whether either of her parents were still alive at all.

  11

  * * *

  THANKFULLY, THE PASSAGE MIRIAM NEEDED was short and easily copied. The book was back on the shelf not a day after she’d removed it, and as far as she could tell, Jane had never missed it.

  A few days later Miriam looked for it again, just to see. The book was gone, so clearly Jane had ended up wanting it—but Jane seemed intent on doing whatever she would do without ever whispering a word about it to Miriam.

  She wasn’t whispering any words about it at all, come to think of it. Jane had a habit of always muttering to herself about her work, and sometimes going so far as to ask Miriam’s opinion or her mother’s advice to work through difficult concepts. But not anymore.

  It made Miriam wonder just what Jane was up to these days—beyond speaking with her father. Was her friend truly preoccupied with work in the wake of her Test? Perhaps something the Société would frown upon?

  Miriam wished they could talk about it, but that was impossible. Intimacy required balance, and she couldn’t tell Jane about any of her own plans.

  That’s why Miriam was alone when she took it upon herself to trek to Hawkshead on the next fine day—specifically to the forge at the Red Lion. She was glad when no one batted an eye when she mentioned it; her out-of-doors experiments with a duck, worms, and most recently a fish had made it less remarkable w
hen she made the announcement that she needed some air.

  “I think I might go all the way to Tarn Hows,” she said, a lie that was an excellent excuse for being gone as long as she would be. The lake was quite a ways off, so Miriam tucked an apple in her pocket for verisimilitude. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, but the good weather won’t hold for more than a day or two this time of year.” Her voice felt strained and uneasy to her ears, but Nancy didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s quite cold,” said Nancy. “Are you sure?”

  “I can always turn around.”

  “Just make sure to bundle up.”

  Jane’s only reaction was to look away when Miriam caught her staring with that curious but also suspicious expression in her eyes.

  Miriam had many reasons to wish the silence between her and Jane wasn’t so oppressive, but that day her concern came admittedly from a vain and selfish source: she would have liked to ask Jane to do her hair the same way as she had the day of Edith’s arrival. She settled for tying back her waves with the bright blue ribbon Jane had used, consoling herself that any further change would likely make it too obvious that she had an interest beyond the professional in talking to Sam.

  The kiss of sunlight upon Miriam’s face was warm and welcome, but the wind was still wintery, and the damp was not the sort that encouraged things to grow. She set out across the field toward Tarn Hows, but once she was out of sight of the farmhouse, she doubled back to intersect with the road to Hawkshead, also avoiding their gossipy neighbor, Mrs. Fielding. Whenever a car or cart passed her by, Miriam pulled up her hood, worried a neighbor would remark to Nancy if she was seen walking alone into the village that day, but it was a risk she had to take.

  From Modern Mirror Methods, Miriam had learned that a “magic mirror” like the Basque Lens in the Library was not silvered glass set in a frame—it was a series of layered armamentaria that mimicked a mirror’s reflective surface. Miriam had been disappointed but unsurprised to find that she could not simply go into town to buy herself a mirror. She’d have to get one specially made and ensure various dried and powdered diabolic substances were forged into the metal.

  Good thing she knew a blacksmith . . .

  Miriam cut around the edge of town to come at the forge on the bias. Lost in her thoughts, she shrieked when she almost ran into Sam as he pushed a wheelbarrow around the side of the building.

  “Why, Miriam!” he exclaimed. “What did you want to do that for?”

  “Do wh-what for?” she stammered.

  “Scare me like that!”

  Miriam blushed, to her horror. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Hmm,” said Sam. He seemed skeptical—but he was just teasing. “What are you doing, then, if you’re not trying to scare me?”

  “I—I need something made, at the forge I mean, but it was such a fine day I walked around and—”

  It occurred to Miriam that she’d never spoken this much with Sam ever, and definitely never alone, as they were now. It was thrilling—not just because she was talking with the handsomest boy she’d ever seen in her life, with his fawn-colored hair and his soft beard that had just started to really come in; it was also a welcome respite from thinking only about her project or the simmering tensions of the old farmhouse.

  Sam smiled at her kindly, and though beforehand she’d been shivering from her walk, now she felt warm.

  “Is that so? Let me load up this wood, and you can come inside and tell me all about it.”

  “Want help?”

  “With the wood?” Sam grinned. “Surely these logs are too heavy for you.”

  “No, they’re not!”

  “Pssht. How could you pick up anything with those scrawny arms!”

  Outraged, Miriam set to helping him load up his wheelbarrow with split logs, their breath puffing in the thin sunlight.

  When they’d finished, Sam surveyed their effort with a critical eye. “Not bad,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

  Miriam realized he’d been teasing her again, and she stuck out her tongue.

  Sam stuck his own tongue out at her, and she giggled. “Come on, let’s warm up with a cup of tea. Tell me what you need so badly that you came into town on a cold day like today to get it.”

  “I need a mirror,” said Miriam, as they entered the forge. It was blessedly warmer in there. She liked the smell, too, of hot things—metal and wood, warm sawdust and water.

  “A mirror?” Sam shook his head as he began to unload the wood. “That I can’t make for you. You have to have a special kind of glass.”

  “Oh, I have the glass,” lied Miriam, wishing she’d come up with some other way to describe what she needed. She didn’t need a mirror per se, just something slightly concave, with a handle. “It’s the frame that broke.”

  “Odd,” said Sam. “Usually it’s the opposite.”

  “It was a very old frame,” said Miriam hastily. “Anyway, the glass is a circle, six inches around, and it’s about a quarter of an inch thick, so I’d need a rim around the edge that deep.”

  “Did you bring the glass with you?”

  “No, I didn’t want to take it out of the house.”

  Sam nodded. “I wish I could see it myself though. It was six inches exactly?”

  “Exactly,” said Miriam. This was a lot harder than she’d anticipated. “I measured it across in several places.”

  “You always struck me as a careful sort,” said Sam. He wiped his brow now that they’d finished up. “You know I can’t really do anything too fancy, right?”

  “It doesn’t need to be fancy, just functional.”

  “Ah, so it’s for you!” he crowed, as if in triumph. “I’ve been puzzling over whether you wanted it for yourself or as a gift for Jane. At first I thought it must be for Jane, as of the two of you, I’d say she’s the one to spend her time staring into a looking glass, but she’d also want something finer than I could make her.”

  It felt bad, being compared to Jane and judged the sloppier, even if it was true.

  “I mostly make horseshoes, you know,” said Sam after a moment. “But if you really don’t care how the piece would look—”

  “I don’t!”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” Now came the hard part. Miriam took the bag of powder out of her pocket and set it on the table. “I need you to put this into the, ah, hot—molten—metal you’ll use.”

  “What is it?”

  Miriam had forgotten to come up with an excuse, but Sam took her pause as embarrassment.

  “It’s not my business,” he said. “It might weaken or discolor the metal is all.”

  “That’s okay,” said Miriam. She was certain it would not, but of course she didn’t tell him that.

  “I’ll make sure it gets in there,” Sam said. He picked up the bag and hefted it in his palm. “All of it?”

  Miriam nodded.

  Task completed, body warmed, Miriam had no need to tarry longer—but she also had no idea how to take her leave of Sam. She was saved by the return of his father.

  Mr. Nibley was not much like his son—their hair was of a color, but he was a stern man with big muscles and a big beard and a big frown. He came in through the door clearly expecting to find his son at work, not sitting and talking with a girl.

  “Where are we at with those nails, son?” he asked.

  “Very nearly finished,” said Sam, after tucking the bag into his apron pocket. He was flushed, but whether it was from embarrassment over not being done with his work, or his father’s failure to greet their guest, Miriam could not say.

  “We’ll settle up later,” said Sam, as he showed her out. “I’ll get it done as quick as I can, I promise.”

  “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble,” she whispered, as she stepped outside.

  He winked at her. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be all right.” And after rolling his eyes back toward where his father waited, he shut the door.

  Miriam
turned away, but she paused when she heard a raised voice from within—Sam’s father. The window of the forge was cracked to let in a little fresh air, and from that sliver of space she heard exactly what Mr. Nibley said so loudly:

  “If you’re going to trifle with the local girls in my place of business, I’d prefer if it wasn’t with the village Jew.”

  The village Jew.

  How stupid of her, to think that she could ever truly escape the prejudice that had brought her here to begin with. She’d mistaken her neighbors’ silence on the obviousness of her identity as a lack of interest in it; now she knew that it was quite the reverse. They had just been too polite to mention their true sentiments toward Nancy Blackwood’s ward.

  She stumbled as she took a step back. When her foot came down not on the stoop but empty air, she yelped. When she recovered, through the window she saw Sam’s face. He was mortified to see her still there.

  Upset for a number of reasons, Miriam took off at a brisk pace toward her home, heedless of who might see her, her shoes squelching in the muddy ruts she was in too much of a hurry to avoid. She did not slow her pace until she was well beyond Hawkshead; her lungs, too full of cold air, screamed silently at her to consider them.

  She knew there was no reason to be terrified, but still she was. If they came—they would not come—but if they did, if they asked questions . . . If the Nazis won, she would be taken away, or killed right there in her own home—and Nancy and Jane too, for harboring her. Collapsing against a fence post, Miriam wheezed and choked as she recovered her breath.

  “Miriam!”

  Sam was flushed from rapid walking—and from anger, too, given his expression.

  “He’s an old fool,” said Sam. “I’m sorry you heard that. Most people don’t care.”

  Then he did something incredible, he took one of her hands in his and raised it to his lips.

  “I certainly don’t care,” he said.

  “Oh,” she gasped, confused to feel so good after feeling so afraid. She gasped again when he took her in his arms and kissed her—not on the hand this time.