Creatures of Charm and Hunger

by Molly Tanzer

  Jane was surprised to hear that Miriam was ever capable of such childish mischief, but she didn’t want to interrupt with a comment. Miriam was clearly telling her this story for a reason. “What happened then?”

  “He watched where we were going. We walked the wrong way and then a very long way back as my mother scolded me for being so irresponsible and reckless and selfish. We were to have had a special dinner that night, my mother, my father, my aunt, and me, but instead we ate at the train station and spent the night there. I slept sitting up between my parents, and in the morning the last thing my mother said to me was ‘Just try better to keep your head in difficult situations, Miriam. There won’t always be someone around to rescue you.’ ”

  “That’s all she said to you?” Jane asked. Miriam had never spoken much about her home life before coming to England; Jane now understood why. “Not ‘I love you,’ or ‘Be safe,’ or—”

  “That’s what she meant,” said Miriam, almost defensively. “I know she did. She kissed me, and so did my father . . . but neither said they forgave me, and I was too afraid to ask. That was the last time I saw them alive—and that was their last memory of me, too. I could never write them back when they wrote to me. I could never tell them that I’d listened, that I’d changed. Because I did change, Jane! I tried to rescue them . . . and when I realized I couldn’t, I tried to avenge them . . .”

  Jane kicked off her shoes and slid into bed next to her friend, holding her as she’d used to when they were small.

  “Edith would have told them what a wonderful young woman you’d become. She must have been in touch with them for a time.”

  Miriam nodded. “I know; I’ve thought that too, but I wanted to tell them. I wanted . . .”

  And she was crying then, sobbing into Jane’s cardigan as they held one another. Jane cried too, for Miriam, for the world—and for her mother, who might be just as lost.

  How long had Jane coveted the approval Nancy lavished upon Miriam; how long had she resented Miriam’s ability to take joy in it, when she, Jane, was so overlooked. Now she realized how selfish she’d been. Her own desire for approval was one thing, and Nancy’s refusal another. But none of that had to do with Miriam. Frankly, it sounded like Nancy’s admiration had been something new to Miriam; perhaps her friend’s relationship with her own mother had been as fraught as Jane’s was with Nancy.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jane. She meant to say a lot with that apology, and it seemed Miriam understood.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said. Jane squeezed her tighter.

  * * *

  MIRIAM HAD FALLEN ASLEEP, but Smudge was sitting up when Jane got back. He had an expectant air about him.

  “Did you miss me?” asked Jane, speaking to the cat as she always did. “Here I am. Miriam and I got to talking, like we used to. It was nice.”

  It was all true. Jane thought she saw Smudge relax as she undressed for bed and shimmied into her nightgown.

  But she saw something else too: Smudge’s shadow also stared at her with impossible, narrowed eyes—eyes that disappeared the moment she turned around to give the cat a good-night kiss on the nose.

  28

  I need time alone in the Library.

  MIRIAM SCRAWLED THIS ON A SCRAP of paper before heading downstairs the following morning and passed it to Jane while Smudge was licking his paws to clean his ears. Jane glanced at it, nodded, and then surreptitiously threw it in the compost bin before dumping spent tea leaves atop it.

  When Smudge felt sufficiently groomed, he arranged himself upon the table, his eyes closed, his feet tucked under his body. He purred softly to himself as Jane bustled about, getting breakfast ready. He looked exactly like a happy cat on a cold morning. Thinking about what he really was gave Miriam a chill.

  “Good morning, Mother,” said Jane, as Nancy wandered into the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” said Nancy. “How are my sweet little girls?”

  Miriam nodded. Jane said, “Oh, fine. I think you and I ought to go into the village today to get a few things in anticipation of our visitor.”

  “I can’t, I’m sorry,” said Nancy. “I’m just too busy. Duty calls.” She smiled a doll’s smile.

  “Mother, you must come.” Jane’s tone made even Miriam sit up a bit straighter. “I need help. There are many things to be bought, and I can’t carry them all myself.”

  “Miriam will help, won’t she?”

  Jane scoffed at her mother. “Help? Look at her,” said Jane, pointing at Miriam, and Miriam couldn’t take offense. Jane was right. “She’s sick! Do you really think she could walk to the village and back, much less help drag the wagon?”

  Nancy seemed rather taken aback by this stern speech. It was not Jane’s usual way to treat her mother with contempt.

  “You’re right, Jane,” said Nancy. “Of course I’ll go.”

  Jane relaxed and went back to stirring the porridge, looking grimly satisfied.

  Miriam didn’t risk meeting Jane’s eyes, lest Smudge be scrutinizing her through those deceptively serene slits, but she was so impressed with her quick-thinking friend—and eager to have unfettered access to the Library. Her limited success of the previous day had been due in part to not wishing to pull certain titles while she might be observed.

  For that reason, she had Jane take Smudge along with her, too—a request whispered over the splashing that came with doing the dishes.

  From her reading, Miriam had discovered that it might indeed be possible for a diabolic shadow to be a separate being, a separate consciousness from its body. They shared one will, however, dashing Jane’s hope that “cat-Smudge” was different from “shadow-Smudge.”

  Miriam hadn’t told her—not yet. She didn’t want to have a row about it. Instead, on her own she contemplated the question of what, exactly, was hoping to take over Nancy’s body; would it be the smoky, blank-eyed being that crept along the walls and baseboards? Or was it whatever lurked within the soft gray kitty cat that had sat like a fuzzy loaf of bread on the edge of the table during breakfast, practically beaming at them all?

  Toward the end of the meal, Smudge had sauntered over to try to lick grease from Jane’s plate, and when she’d shooed him away, he’d knocked her mug off the table with a deft paw to express his scorn. Jane and Miriam had lunged too slowly, and the crockery had shattered on the floor—

  It came to her, then, as Miriam wiped a dish dry: a way they might be able to trap Smudge’s shadow.

  Her father’s devil-trap.

  Miriam would need to figure out how to mend it. But once she did, she could ensnare the shadow, and Jane could bind it to Smudge as carefully and inclusively as she had bound Smudge.

  Once the Lord Indigator was secure and forced to obey, they would have time enough to figure out what best to do with it. Jane could command it to pretend at feline shyness during the visit. Then, after Patrice had departed, they could figure out how best to fill the hole in Nancy’s spirit that her demon had created. Given this highly dangerous and wily demon’s interest in her, they’d need to do something, and quickly.

  But she was getting ahead of herself.

  Miriam watched as Jane herded Nancy and Smudge out the front door and into the summer sunshine. Once Miriam had seen Smudge’s shadow stretched out across the early grass for herself, she went inside to enjoy having the whole Library to herself.

  But where to start? The strike chain would aid her once she narrowed it down . . .

  Miriam thought back to her childhood, to her father’s office, the wingback chair he sat in when he’d held her on his lap and told her all about the devil-trap.

  “Long ago,” he’d said, “your ancestors and mine were forbidden from making graven images. But as the Jews came to know Babylonian and Assyrian diabolists, they saw the wisdom of their ways, and even began to use them.”

  Her father had a book in his hands. It was open.

  “That’s what they thought a demon looked like,” he said, pointing at a
n image of a woman with sharp teeth and long, wicked claws.

  Miriam had liked the picture of the demon, with her big fangs and her scales and her mane of curly hair—but what was the name of the book? She tried to recall it, allowing herself to go deep into the memory, recalling the scent of her father’s pipe tobacco, the spice of his aftershave.

  The title was All of the Arts of Man, and it had been in Hebrew. With that, Miriam was able to hunt it down in the card catalogue.

  It was an old book—they were mostly old books, true, but this one was older still. In fact, the copy of All of the Arts of Man in the Library was much older than her father’s—it was a scroll in a dusty gold case, wedged in among more traditional titles.

  Miriam slid the scroll off the shelf. With it came several round silver bells that had been set atop the case just out of sight. They jangled as they fell to the floor and continued to ring out merrily as they rolled around Miriam’s feet. Miriam stared at the sight in wonder until the hairs rose up on the base of her neck.

  This was an alarm.

  An alarm set by Smudge. These were the missing bells from his collar. She remembered Jane complaining about how he’d kept losing them . . .

  Miriam looked up, and there was Smudge—or, at least, Smudge’s shadow. It was sitting in between the bays, stretched out over the floor, long and lean, as if Smudge himself sat there casting it. It was inscrutable and motionless; even the tip of its tail was still.

  Miriam could tell its eyes were fixed on her.

  She didn’t scream, but she was terrified. She’d seen Smudge’s shadow come to life before, yes, but then it had been minding its own business. Now, it was here, and it knew what she was about.

  The shadow shrank as it peeled itself off the floor to stretch, back arched. Miriam tensed, unsure what to do. She didn’t know how to defend herself against this being.

  But the shadow didn’t come for her. Instead, it sprang away down the aisle. Miriam raced after it; she saw it skittering toward the stairs, and in that moment she understood exactly what it was doing.

  Miriam had forced the demon’s hand. It would find Nancy and do its best to finally possess her.

  There wasn’t a choice to be made, not really. Miriam could not allow this demon to take control of a human body. But the only way she could think to prevent it was to get there first.

  Possessing a Master diabolist ought to be impossible—their demon companion was supposed to prevent such a thing, not enable it.

  Miriam had no idea how fast the shadow might reach Nancy, so quick as she could, she made her way out of the stacks and up to her room, clutching the scroll to her chest. But as she prepared everything, she tried to think through her actions carefully. She couldn’t afford to lose her head in this crisis. She’d promised her mother she wouldn’t.

  Miriam would just have to scry Nancy and cleave to her. She’d use her soul to fill the void within her mentor, leaving no room for the Lord Indigator. After, they’d still need to deal with Smudge and his shadow, and for that, they’d need the scroll and, presumably, the shards of the devil-trap.

  Miriam cast about, thinking as fast as she could. She settled on a simple solution: she put everything she thought she might need in the center of her bedspread, tied it up carefully, and lowered it out her window with the belt from her robe.

  Miriam turned her attention back to her desk. There lay the veil knife and the mirror, and the ball of diabolic energy she’d taken from Dr. Querner’s Dark Lab. It was time.

  Only then did Miriam pause to take a breath. She understood the urgency of the situation, but Miriam also sensed these would be the last moments she would ever spend in her own body.

  Badgerskin had warned her that it was possible to take too much, to cleave too often. Miriam didn’t think she had, not yet. Her sense was if she let her spirit regenerate, over time she could still heal. She could come back.

  Unfortunately, things being what they were, she couldn’t do that now.

  Jane had accused Miriam of being careless with her life—which had been undeniably true in the past. She’d been prepared to die each time she sent her spirit abroad . . . so why, now, did she suddenly feel so reluctant? Her death would be in the service of preventing something as terrible as a weapon.

  Before, she’d been prepared to die. Now perhaps the difference was she knew she would. There was no way Miriam’s body could survive losing what she would need to sacrifice for this.

  Once upon a time, Miriam had been chilled to consider the similarity between the act of cleaving and the Jewish myth of the dybbuk. Now she would voluntarily become one. Her body would die, and she would stick herself to Nancy, and after they bound Smudge, and the threat was past, Miriam would let go and . . . and she didn’t know what would happen after that.

  No use wasting valuable time lamenting it. This was a price she had to pay. She had an obligation to protect the world if she could.

  Miriam tucked the last of her sublingual tablets under her tongue before turning to the sphere of diabolic energy. She hoped she was right and it was full of something she could swallow.

  She hoped, too, that it wouldn’t explode when she cut into it with the veil knife.

  It didn’t. It oozed like lava. It tasted queerly of oysters, which just made the texture more repulsive. She swallowed it all.

  Feeling sick to her stomach, Miriam set Jane’s strike chain atop the mirror. She assumed Jane and Nancy would still be together. As the strike chain sank in, Miriam felt her spirit detach.

  A scene in the mirror appeared: Jane pulling the wagon with Nancy walking next to her.

  Miriam took another deep breath. No more dawdling.

  She looked down at her blighted spirit, at the place where her foot should be and her many gouges deep and shallow. All were oozing that black smoke.

  This time, would need to carve away something not only big, but important.

  She’d settled on her liver. It was a vital organ for anyone, but for diabolists even more so—likely, early natural philosophers’ obsession with the organ had to do with its role in processing diabolic matter.

  Miriam had consulted a book on anatomy before beginning, and it was with some degree of confidence that she took the veil knife in hand and angled the blade up before inserting it below her right bottom rib. Like the other times, there was no pain, only the emotional disquiet that came from knowing she was injuring herself.

  She sawed and sawed. When she felt there was a sufficient opening in her spiritual body, she set aside the knife to reach inside herself. She winced; she could feel things in there, bone and objects with less identifiable textures, but eventually she located what she thought must be her liver. She couldn’t simply reach in and remove it; it was attached, of course, so she used the veil knife to carve away whatever spiritual sinews secured it.

  Gazing upon the organ after removing it, Miriam felt a change within herself—a change she somehow knew was in her physical body, but significant enough that her spirit experienced it too. She felt like a house at night, after someone had just turned off the last lamp in the last room.

  She was fairly certain she’d just died.

  Not for the first time did Miriam feel a strange sort of pride in how well she was able to push aside fear, rage, and sorrow. She barely felt anything as she contemplated her death. She only felt the pressure to keep going—to do the right thing, no matter the cost.

  She remembered Jane’s words about what Miriam’s parents had intended for their daughter. This surely wasn’t it, but she hoped they would be proud of her for saving Nancy. And probably more people than Nancy, if Smudge’s shadow’s actions were to be taken as a bellwether of what he might do with a free human body.

  It won’t be in vain.

  The thought came to her in much the same way as she always imagined her demon would one day speak to her.

  With her eyes on the image of Nancy within the mirror, Miriam inhaled the dissipating vapor that had been her sp
irit’s liver.

  On previous attempts, Miriam had experienced resistance as she joined with her host. Not this time. Either Nancy had been so very hollowed out by her demon, or there was so much diabolic matter coursing through Miriam that she was able to control Nancy absolutely and effortlessly. And more comfortably, too. With Nurse Franzi, or any of the creatures she’d inhabited, they’d all felt strange; Nancy felt nearly as familiar as her own skin.

  “Mother?”

  Miriam took a moment to look around. She was in one of the muddy fields between the old farmhouse and the village. Bright sunlight was making her eyes water. She was about six inches taller and much heartier.

  Smudge was sitting primly in the sunshine, watching them both very carefully.

  Miriam had, naturally, paused in her march back to the farmhouse upon taking possession of Nancy. She felt sick, and dizzy—which had never happened before. But all those other times, she’d had a body to go back to.

  “No,” she said, but with Nancy’s voice. “It’s me, Miriam.”

  Jane stared at her like she’d grown a second head. In a way, Miriam supposed she had.

  “The shadow, it’s coming,” Miriam said. “That’s why I’m here. I couldn’t figure out a better way to stop it. Not on such short notice, at least.”

  Without warning, another consciousness, separate from her own but still a part of it, intruded into Miriam’s thoughts. The only thing that stopped her from fainting was the memory of her Test. But it was far odder than that had been—less like being spoken to, and more like having an image projected directly onto her mind that she understood entirely, and all at once.