Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

  That had been suspiciously easy. I peeked in the box; the memories stood like note cards, each labeled across the top in an odd, angular hand I took to be my mother’s. I leafed through them; they appeared to have ordered themselves chronologically. I pulled one out. It read Orma gets toasted on his 59th hatch-day across the top, but the rest of the page was blank. The title intrigued me, but I put it back.

  Some cards toward the back were brightly colored. I pulled up a pink one and was dumbfounded to see it wasn’t blank; it had one of my mother’s songs, in her spidery notation. I knew the song already—I knew all her songs—but it was bittersweet to see it in her own hand.

  The title was “My Faith Should Not Come Easily.” I could not resist; surely this was her memory of writing that song. The flakes had dissolved upon my tongue; I guessed the same principle applied. The page crackled and sparked in my mouth, like a wool blanket on a winter night. It tasted, absurdly, of strawberries.

  My hands dart over the page, a slender brush in each, one for the dots, one for the strokes and arcs, winding in and around each other as if I were making bobbin lace, not writing music. The effect is calligraphic, and highly satisfying. Outside my open window a lark sings, and my left hand—always the more mischievous of the two—takes a moment to jot down the notes in counterpoint to the main melody (with but a little alteration of the rhythm). That is serendipitous. So many things are, when we bother to look.

  I know his tread, know it like my own pulse—better, perhaps, because my pulse has been doing unaccountable things recently in response to that footfall. Right now it beats seven against his three. That is too fast. Dr. Caramus was unconcerned when I told him; he did not believe me when I said I did not understand it.

  I am on my feet, not knowing how, almost before the knock sounds at my door. My hands are inky, and my voice unreliable as I cry, “Come in!”

  Claude lets himself in, his face that shade of sulky that it turns when he is trying not to get his hopes up. I snatch up a rag to wipe my hands and cover my confusion. Is this funny or frightening? I had no idea the two could be so close.

  “I heard you wanted to see me,” he mumbles.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, I … I should have answered your letters. I have had to think very carefully on this.”

  “On whether you would help me write these songs?” he says, and there is something childish in his voice. Petulant. Which is irritating, on the one hand, and endearing on the other. He is transparently simple, this one, and unexpectedly complicated. And radiantly beautiful.

  I hand him the page and watch his face soften into wonder. My hands go straight to my chest, as if they could squeeze my heart and slow it. He hands the song back to me and his voice quavers: “Would you sing it?”

  I would rather play it for him on flute, but he clearly wishes to hear the words and tune together:

  “My faith should not come easily;

  There is no Heaven without pain.

  My days should never flutter past

  Unnoted, nor my past remain

  Beyond its span of usefulness;

  Let me not hold to grief.

  My hope, my light, my Saint is love;

  In love my one belief.”

  He stares at me during the last lines and I fear my voice will falter. As it is, I have barely enough breath left in me for “belief.” I inhale, but the air seems to catch on its way in, like the shudder of breath after tears.

  This emotion is maddening in its complexity. It’s like spotting difficult prey on the ground after a long day of fruitless hunting—there’s the exhilaration of an exciting chase mixed with the fear that it may all end in nothing, but there is never any question that you will try, for your very existence hangs on it. I am reminded also of the first time I dove from a sea cliff, keeping my wings folded until the last possible second, then scudding over the cresting waves, just out of reach of their foamy fingers, laughing at the danger, terrified by how close I had come.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. “I understand now that I made you very sad. That was never my intention.”

  Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable. Normally I could shrug at this, but today I need him to be truthful. Today is the beginning and the end. I reach across and take his hand.

  That jolt we both feel—for I see it hit him too—is like electricity, but that is a metaphor I will never be able to give him, a concept that cannot be introduced. One of far too many, alas, but I am hoping—no, gambling, betting my very life—that in the end it will not matter, that this, this thing between us, this mystery, will be enough.

  “Linn,” he says hoarsely, his jaw quivering just a little. He is frightened, too. Why should this be frightening? What purpose does that serve? “Linn,” he begins again, “when I believed you never wanted to see me again, I felt I’d stepped off a ledge and onto empty air: the ground was hurtling toward me at an alarming rate.”

  Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach. I have not adequately mastered the art, but his comparisons always move me with their precision. I want to cry Eureka!, but I settle for “I felt that too! That’s it exactly!”

  My other hand wants to touch his face, and I let it. He leans into it like a cat.

  And that is when I know that I will kiss him, and the very thought of it fills me with … well, it’s as if I have just solved Skivver’s predictive equations or, even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.

  And I have to laugh a little at this conceit, because I do not even understand the present, and there is nothing in the world beyond this kiss.

  The memory ended, ejecting me not into the garden but into real life: cold, hard floor; rumpled chemise; bitter taste in my mouth; alone. I was woozy, disoriented, and … and ick. That was my father she’d been kissing.

  I leaned my head back against the bed, breathing slowly, trying to fend off an emotion so terrible I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.

  For five years I had suppressed every thought of her. The Amaline Ducanahan of my childhood imaginings had been replaced by emptiness, a chasm, a gap the wind blew through. I couldn’t fill that space with Linn. That name meant nothing to me; it was a placeholder, like zero.

  With this single memory, I’d increased my knowledge of her a thousandfold. I knew how a pen felt in her hand, how fast her heart beat upon seeing my father, how beautiful sounds moved her. I knew what she’d felt; I’d been her and felt it myself.

  That depth of insight should have fostered empathy, surely. I should have felt some connection, some joy at discovering her, some warm, glowy resolution or peace or something. Something good, at least. Surely it didn’t matter which flavor of good?

  She was my own mother, for Heaven’s sake!

  But I felt nothing of the kind. I glimpsed the emotion from afar, saw how bad it was going to be, and squelched it so that I felt nothing at all.

  I hauled myself to standing and staggered into the other room. My little timepiece read two hours past midnight, but I didn’t care whether I woke Orma up. He’d earned a bad night’s sleep. I played our chord and then played it again a bit more peevishly.

  Orma’s voice crackled forth, unexpectedly loudly: “I wondered whether I’d hear from you. Why didn’t you come into town?”

  I struggled to keep my voice under control. “You weren’t worried, I suppose.”

  “Worried about what, specifically?”

  “One of my grotesques was behaving strangely. I intended to cross town in the dark, but I never made it. It didn’t occur to you that something might have happened?”

  There was a pa
use while he considered. “No. I suppose you’re going to tell me something did.”

  I wiped my eyes. I had no energy to argue. I told him all that had happened: Fruit Bat’s strange behavior, the vision, the maternal memories. He stayed silent so long after I finished talking that I tapped at the kitten eye. “I’m here,” he said. “It is fortunate that nothing worse happened to you when the vision struck.”

  “Do you have any ideas about Fruit Bat’s behavior?” I said.

  “He seems to be aware of you,” said Orma, “but I don’t understand why that would have changed over time. Jannoula saw you right from the beginning.”

  “And she grew so strong and perceptive that it was hard to get rid of her,” I said. “It might be safer to shut Fruit Bat away now, while I still can.”

  “No, no,” said Orma. “If he complies with your requests, he might be a resource rather than a threat. There are so many questions still unanswered. Why are you seeing him? How does he see you? Don’t squander this opportunity. You can induce visions: go looking for him.”

  I ran my fingers over the spinet keys. That last suggestion was a bit much, but cutting Fruit Bat off completely didn’t feel right either.

  “Maybe he’ll find a way to speak to you eventually,” Orma was saying.

  “Or maybe I’ll travel to Porphyry someday, track him down, and shake his hand,” I said, smiling slightly. “Not until after Ardmagar Comonot’s visit, though. I’ll be too busy beforehand. Viridius is a terrible taskmaster.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” said Orma, apparently thinking me serious. “I might come with you. The Porphyrian Bibliagathon is supposed to be well worth seeing.”

  I grinned at his library obsession and was still grinning when I crawled into bed. I couldn’t sleep; in my mind I was already traveling with my uncle, meeting Fruit Bat in the real world, and getting some answers at last.

  Between staying up late and rising early for my morning routine, I got far too little sleep. I stumbled stoically through my duties, but Viridius noticed me struggling. “I’ll clean your pens,” he said, taking the quill from my unresisting hand. “You are to lie down on my couch and nap for half an hour.”

  “Master, I assure you I’m—” A gargantuan yawn undermined my argument.

  “Of course you are. But we must have you at full capacity for the Blue Salon this evening, and I don’t feel convinced that you’ve been listening quite carefully enough to my dictation.” He scanned the parchment where I’d been writing down his compositional ideas as he hummed them. His brows lowered and he turned slightly purple. “You’ve jotted it down in three. It’s a gavotte. Dancers are going to be falling all over each other.”

  I intended to answer him, but I’d already reached the couch. It pulled me under, and my explanation turned into a dream about St. Polypous dancing a 3/4 gavotte with perfect ease. But then, he had three feet.

  That evening I arrived at the Blue Salon early, hoping I might pay my respects, meet Viridius’s protégé, and leave before most people had even arrived. I saw my mistake at once: Viridius wasn’t there yet. Of course he wasn’t; he would likely come late, the old coxcomb. I would get no credit for coming if I ducked out before he arrived. All I’d done was given myself extra time to feel uncomfortable.

  I’d always been useless at parties, even before I knew how much I had to hide. Large groups of semi-strangers made me clam right up. I anticipated standing alone in a corner shoving butter tarts in my mouth all evening.

  Even Glisselda wasn’t there yet; that was how stupidly early I’d come. Servants lit chandeliers and smoothed tablecloths onto sideboards, stealing surreptitious glances at me. I wandered toward the back of the salon, past the upholstered chairs of the formal sitting area, past the gilded columns, into a wide space with a parquet floor intended for dancing. Music stands and stools were piled haphazardly in the corner; I set them up for a quartet, hoping I was doing something useful and not merely eccentric.

  Five musicians arrived—Guntard, two viols, uillean pipes, and drum—and I set a fifth place. They seemed pleased to see me, and not altogether surprised that the assistant music mistress should be here, setting up. Maybe I could stand in their corner all evening, turning pages and bringing them ale.

  Wine, that is. This was the palace, not the Sunny Monkey.

  Courtiers trickled in, resplendent in silks and brocade. I’d worn my best gown, a deep blue calamanco with understated embroidery at all the hemlines, but what passed for finery in town felt shabby here. I pressed myself against a wall and hoped no one would speak to me. I knew some of these courtiers: the palace employed professional musicians such as Guntard and the band, but many young gentlemen liked to dabble in music on the side. They usually joined the choir, but that fair-haired Samsamese across from me played a mean viola da gamba.

  His name was Josef, Earl of Apsig. He noticed my eyes upon him and ran a hand through his wheaten hair as if to underscore how handsome he was. I looked away.

  The Samsamese were known for austerity, but even they outshone me here. Their merchants dressed in browns in town; their courtiers wore expensive blacks, contriving to be simultaneously sumptuous and severe. In case we Goreddis failed to recognize expensive cloth on sight, the Samsamese also spouted great tufts of lace from their cuffs, and stiff white ruffs at their throats.

  The Ninysh courtiers, by contrast, tried to incorporate every possible color in their outfits: embroidery, ribbons, parti-colored hose, bright silk peeking through the slashes in their sleeves. Their country lay deep in the gloomy south; there were few colors to be seen there, beyond what they carried with them.

  I glimpsed a Ninysh gabled cap in a vibrant green, worn by an elderly woman. She had thick spectacles, which gave her eyes a peevish, bulgy aspect; the heavy creases beside her wide mouth created the impression of an enormous, disapproving toad.

  She looked like Miss Fusspots, poor old darling.

  No, that was unquestionably Miss Fusspots. That glare could belong to no one else. My heart caught in my throat. I wouldn’t need to travel to Porphyry after all; one of my grotesques was standing right across the room!

  Miss Fusspots, who was diminutive, disappeared behind a grove of ladies-in-waiting but reemerged moments later beside a redheaded Ninysh courtier. I began to work my way across the room toward her.

  I didn’t get far, however, because at that very moment Princess Glisselda and Prince Lucian arrived, arm in arm. The crowd opened a wide corridor to let them pass, and I dared not cross it. The princess gleamed in gold and white, brocade encrusted with seed pearls; she beamed beatifically at the entire room and let a Ninysh courtier lead her to a seat. Prince Lucian, in the scarlet doublet of the Queen’s Guard, did not relax until the crowd’s adoring gaze had followed his cousin to the other end of the room.

  Princess Glisselda took the midnight blue couch, where no one else had dared to sit, and began chatting away to all and sundry. Lucian Kiggs did not sit, but stood a little to the side, his eye upon the room; he never seemed to go off duty. In the adjoining chamber, the musicians finally began with a pleasant sarabande. I looked for Miss Fusspots, but she had disappeared.

  “Others may doubt it was a dragon. I do not,” said someone behind me in a light Samsamese monotone.

  “Ooh, how awful!” said a young woman.

  I turned to see Josef, Earl of Apsig, regaling three Goreddi ladies-in-waiting with a tale: “I was part of his final hunting party, grausleine. We had just entered the Queenswood when the hounds scattered in all directions, as if there were twenty stags, not just one. We split up, some following north, some west, each group thinking Prince Rufus was with the other, but when we rejoined, he was nowhere to be found.

  “We searched for him until evening, then called out the Queen’s Guard and searched all through the night. It was his own dog—a lovely brindle snaphound called Una—who found him, lying faceless and facedown in the nearby fens.”

  The three ladies gasped. I had turned a
ll the way around and was studying the earl’s face. He had pale blue eyes; his complexion was without a single blemish or wrinkle by which to gauge his age. He was trying to impress the ladies, certainly, but seemed to be speaking the truth. I disliked jumping in where I hadn’t been invited, but I had to know: “Are you so sure a dragon killed him? Were there clear signs in the fen?”

  Josef turned the full force of his handsomeness on me. He lifted his chin and smiled like a Saint in a country church, all piety and graciousness; around him the choir of cherubic ladies-in-waiting stared at me and fluttered, silk gowns rustling. “Who else do you imagine could have killed him, Music Mistress?”

  I folded my arms, proof against charm. “Brigands, stealing his head for ransom?”

  “There’s been no ransom request.” He smirked; his cherubs smirked with him.

  “The Sons of St. Ogdo, stirring up dracophobia before the Ardmagar arrives?”

  He threw back his head and laughed; he had very white teeth. “Come, Seraphina, you’ve omitted the possibility that he spotted a lovely shepherdess and simply lost his head.” The heavenly host rewarded this comment with a symphony of titters.

  I was about to turn away—he knew nothing, clearly—when a familiar baritone chimed in behind me: “Maid Dombegh is right. It’s likely the Sons did it.”

  I stepped a little aside, letting Prince Lucian face Josef unimpeded.

  Josef’s smile thinned. Prince Lucian hadn’t acknowledged the disrespectful innuendo about his uncle Rufus, but he’d surely heard every word. The earl gave exaggerated courtesy. “Begging your pardon, Prince, but why do you not round up the Sons and lock them away, if you’re so sure they did it?”

  “We’ll arrest no one without proof,” said the prince, seeming unconcerned. His left boot gave three rapid taps; I noticed and wondered whether I had such unconscious tics. The prince continued, his tone still light: “Unfounded arrests would give the Sons more fodder and bring new ones out of the woodwork. Besides, it’s wrong in principle. ‘Let the one who seeks justice be just.’ ”