Auraria: A Novel (45 page)

“You can hear Dasha Pavlovski in any palace from London to Lisbon!” said Holtzclaw, swelling with pride. “But only here at the Queen of the Mountains can you witness a spectacle like this! A sensation for the eyes, the ears, the heart, and the mind that will leave you breathless and thoughtful and eager to return again and again for encores. Without further ado, I introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen—Auraria’s native star, our own singing tree!”

Holtzclaw burst into a frenzy of applause, which was not echoed by the audience. Perhaps the crowd hadn’t heard him clearly. But they could not fail to remark upon the coming wonder. A tree leaned its branches from the wings into view of the audience, and a rustle ran through its leaves. Its roots skittered across the stage gracefully as it pulled itself up to the spotlight. The branches dipped low to the ground in an imitation of a bow.

The sound that the tree produced was like the call of birds or, more precisely, the gurgling noises of drowning turkeys on the hillside. Then it shuddered, pardoned itself for the inauspicious start, which it blamed on the misty and chaotic atmosphere of the ballroom, and lit into “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” in a rich baritone voice. It was not one of the Old Songs; Holtzclaw had thought a jaunty folk lyric might be a more tempered introduction.

The tourists had seen many remarkable phenomena at the Queen of the Mountains. And yet these happenings could have been artifice. The purple fire that burned over the kitchen the previous night could have been a chemical trick. Strange rains of peaches and fish could have been dropped from hot-air balloons or shot out of cannons. The flying tablecloths, dancing in the air, could have been controlled by wires. The automatic instruments and roving spools could be clever clockwork automata. Even the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin could have been a sham—it was large enough to host a team of puppeteers.

But those who tried to find the artifice in the singing tree were challenged by the thinness of its limbs, the grace of its swaying movements, the skittering of its roots, and the way its leaves shuddered in perfect anticipation of every swelling note. It had the purity of a living, musical creature. It was simple, guileless, beautiful, and beyond this sublunary world.

“Burn it with fire!” called an enraged baroness from beneath shepherdess trappings. Other blood-filled shouts joined with her battle cry. A wet thud hit the stage; a love-apple burst into juice. Table legs were broken into torches, lit from candelabras and sparking electric lights. Contrary calls to peace and quiet were overruled—Abigail and her allies could not quell the tourists’ rising rage. The tree uprooted itself and fled for the door, swaying to avoid missiles and embers.

“Wait, please!” said Holtzclaw, lifting up his hands.

It had been too much, too soon. The tourists, addled by moonshine and claret, were now called upon to believe in something truly supernatural. They had endured a molasses boiling dance and spouting springs and automatic banjos and all the other tricks for the sake of novelty. But they could not forsake their beloved Dasha Pavlovski for the strangeness of a singing tree.

Chapter Thirty

When the riot of tourists, in pursuit of the singing tree, exploded into the night air, their hot ire was instantly cooled by a wind blowing from Lake Trahlyta. In the ice-rimed water splashed a thousand silver figures. The orb of moon hanging in the sky was dull and ashen; the moon’s light had relocated, temporarily, to the face of the lake. A congress of moon maidens had come to bathe in the mingled mineral waters. The hum of their language and songs, at a distance, merged into a faint buzz, no louder than a hive of fire-bees or the hum of electric lights.

The singing tree took advantage of its pursuers’ confusion. Throwing root over root, it reached the edge of the forest and was lost among the limbs.

Tomatoes and torches were dropped to the ground. The tourists shielded their eyes against the glow of the lake. They rubbed their hands and blew into their palms against the cold. Moonlight enveloped the Maiden of the Lake. The completed funnel and its stunted sibling trembled as the moon maidens crashed against its hull. The boat was a dark macule against the silver mirror of the lake.

Some of the gala-goers trickled down the lawn, toward the waters. At the head of the expedition were the members of the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society. There were enough maidens to make married men of a generation, if only the maidens could be lured to land.

Holtzclaw wrung his hands. What would happen if the tourists met with the moon maidens? The singing tree had provoked a riot, and the moon maidens could provoke much worse. A gold-hunting frenzy. A mass hysteria of disbelief. Or worst of all, the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society could succeed at snagging some of the moon maidens into fashionable marriages. Ten thousand moon maidens would be carried from their beloved valley and healing springs. If every city had its moon maidens oozing gold into any waiting hand, who would remember Auraria? Who would remember the Queen of the Mountains?

A disheveled figure pushed through the mess of guests toward Holtzclaw; the figure assailed him with loose, ineffective fists. Holtzclaw grabbed the man by his shoulders and shook him, to give him some sense. The man raised his head, and Holtzclaw recognized the face of his employer. His face was prickled with whiskers and stained with distress.

“Holtzclaw, they’ll ruin it all,” said Shadburn. He hurled his shoe—its mate had been lost—at the moon maidens, but it fell far short of its target. It landed near Almeda, the Reader of Mysteries. Shadburn slumped onto the lawn.

“Ms. Thompson, please,” said Holtzclaw. “Take care of him. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”

Abigail, her enflamed hair sputtering and dying in the cold night, took Shadburn by the hand and lifted him up to his feet. He looked up at her with wet eyes. “We’ll get you cleaned up and settled down, Hiram,” said Abigail as they stumbled back toward the Queen of the Mountains, leaning on each other. “We’ll get you something to eat.”

Princess Trahlyta was standing next to Holtzclaw. Her golden dress had been replaced with her traditional blue homespun garment. “I told them not to come,” she said, “but they were excited to hear the singing tree. They wanted to try this tremendous bath that you built.”

“They are pests,” said Holtzclaw. “Beautiful lunar pests.”

“They think they can show up where ever they wish. Bathe wherever they wish, as often as they wish, and that there will be no lingering effects. They don’t know how much work I must do to clean up after them so that the water will be clean the next time. Now they are spoiling my work. The cold will stop the workings of the deep, scouring currents. It will dull the appetites of the wild wonder fish. And my scouring brush will not work as I mean it to.”

“And their freezing and splashing will weaken the dam,” said Holtzclaw.

“Yes, weaken it too soon.”

“I can scare them away,” said Holtzclaw. “A loud noise will shoo them. A stick of dynamite.”

She shook her head. “A stick of dynamite is such a little thing, James.”

“What can you offer instead? A thunderclap? An earthquake? A volcanic spew? Could you arrange any of these?”

“Not a one. My great roar is yet to come. I suppose it will have to be dynamite. Would the moon maidens hear it all the way up the fingers of the lake?”

“If it is placed right,” said Holtzclaw.

“Then go, Pharaoh!” said the princess. “For our common goals.”

Holtzclaw dashed to the storeroom, all the while fumbling with his keyring—needlessly, it turned out. The door to the storeroom was unlocked, as was the cherrywood box that held the dynamite. Inside, there were only two sticks left. Did they really use so much to blow up the springhouse the night before? He paused just long enough to swallow a draught of Effervescent Brain Salts to quiet the complaints of his knees and hurried on.

When he came over a line of boulders, he saw the fractured and scarred rock that marked the former site of the Hag’s Head, which the hydrocannon had carved into a solid-rock resonator. A few months of weather had begun to heal the wounded hollow. Spongy moss grew over the northern faces of boulders. Scrubby laurel rooted in the muddy tailings.

A green light filled the hard cleft that had been the Hag’s chin. As he crept closer, he saw Emmy, the mushroom girl, scratching at the ground, just where Holtzclaw had meant to place the explosives. Green lights whizzed around her head, over her hands, and through her hair.

“I’m looking for a truffle,” said Emmy. “They are the best mushrooms.”

“This isn’t the place for a truffle,” said Holtzclaw. “They grow under trees, not under rocks.”

“I know,” said Emmy. “I thought this one was different. What are you planting?”

“Nothing that will grow,” said Holtzclaw.

He took Emmy’s hand and led her from the hollow, and then he scooped her up and ran. The princess was ahead of them, somewhere. She bent back the branches so that they could fly.

The earth turned over on itself and shook off its long sleep. The explosion thundered through the valley, magnified by the natural amphitheater in the rock. Emmy wailed; she clapped her hands over her ears, and Holtzclaw pressed her close against him for safety and reassurance.

The echoing roar of the dynamite lessened with each reverberation, and in half a minute, it had faded to a whisper. Holtzclaw set Emmy down on her own feet. Together, they walked to a rocky outcrop that had a view over the lake.

The moon maidens were gone. Above, the moon sputtered like a lightbulb coming alive, brightening to its customary silvery glow. On the surface of the lake, gold colors shimmered like stars. Sparks were still falling from the sky. Some embers were more powerful than others; when they fell to earth, they sounded like metal clattering on stone.

Holtzclaw caught something before it rolled away. It was a gold coin. He picked up another from a puddle. On its obverse was the image of a bumblebee. There had been a cache of coins under the Hag’s Head, and Holtzclaw had blown it into the sky.

Emmy pulled at Holtzclaw’s hand. Sleep tugged at the corners of her eyelids. She wanted him to take her home, to her gravestone. She didn’t care to search for coins, and neither did he.

#

The lawn around the hotel was deserted, and the corridors and halls held only the bored shadows of liveried staff. Dan slept beneath a pile of napkins. Cannie piloted a broom across the empty dance floor. Ephraim and Flossie gathered candy wrappers, ends of tickets, shreds of dance cards, and discarded handkerchiefs—they bickered over their value before discarding them in waste bins. Moss rinsed out glasses; Bogan wrung out rags. Arma and Gertie swept, collected, and sifted. Mountains of food turned brown and tepid. Abigail, a thin wisp of smoke smoldering from her hair, stacked automatic banjos to the side of the stage, where they still plucked the notes to “Sourwood Mountain.” Enormous tablecloths rolled themselves away.

“Where are our guests?” asked Holtzclaw. “Not in bed, are they?” It was too much to hope.

“They’ve gone for gold,” said Abigail. “They’ve taken every soup bowl, every spoon. When the tourists realized what was floating across the water and falling from the sky, there was a pandemonium, to make the singing tree riot seem like a child’s tantrum. Expensive clothes were ruined. One poor lady had her hair pulled off; it would have hurt her more if it weren’t a wig, but still, she had stuck it to her head with glue. Now there are rich people running all over the hillside, thinking that they’ll strike it richer.”

“What about the staff?”

“We know better than to chase loose flakes with such a crowd stirring up the waters. The colors are too few and scattered. There’s no money in working anything before it’s settled. We’ve lived in this valley for a very long time; we have some sense.”

Holtzclaw waited and watched from the veranda, looking over the lake and the spots of lamplight that flickered over the mountainside like fireflies. Many were clustered at the dam; they must have reasoned that coins and colors would be carried to the earthworks by the current.

At some late hour, a cold rain started to fall in fat, heavy drops. The turn in the weather did not dampen the seekers’ desires. Only weariness turned them back, in proportion to their passion. Through the night, a thin stream of dispirited tourists returned to the hotel. Swiss girls and Scottish lassies were sweaty and mud-stained. Highlanders, fishermen, clowns, and bumpkins were torn and sagging. Shepherds and shepherdesses were soaked to the skin. Nearly all were empty-handed, and those who had found a coin or a few flakes were saddened that they had not found more. They kept their bowls and spoons, and in the morning, Abigail could serve only toast, for want of cutlery.

Chapter Thirty-One

All the next day, the rain fell. The paths around the hotel were abandoned and the mineral baths were empty. Emmett’s stage wagon was stained with spilled drops of that sensory-enhancing remedy, Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Wine Draught. Shattered bottles littered the ground.

Out on the dam, there was a buzz of activity, despite the cold, constant rain. The tourists had raffled off land claims by lottery. Three dozen smallholders dug with spoons and ladles that they had stolen from the kitchen. They scooped sand into china bowls and the crowns of fine silk hats, trying to pan out nuggets; their poor technique left them with nothing.