Darkwood (12 page)

“Who are her people? … Must have jumped in outside Gorgetown … stocking-feet! Did you see …a dark sign … nonsense, Serena.”

Annie leaned back and let the words pass over her. The cushions on all the chairs were covered with intricate flower designs, petals overlapping petals until they blended together into swirls of color. Annie held one of the pillows in her lap to study it. You wouldn't notice it the first or even the second time you looked, but in the midst of the flowers Beatrice had sewn a pair of eyes and the pointed, watchful face of a cat. The cat seemed to be hiding somehow behind the pillow, waiting to pounce. Annie couldn't help turning the pillow over, but of course there was just the plain fabric backing. She traced the stripes on the cat's face with her finger.

“Ah, you've spotted him.” Beatrice set down the tray she was carrying and came over to Annie. “That's Sunshine Maxmillian Beaugriffe.”

“Beaugriffe Maxmillian Sunshine!” Serena hollered from the kitchen.

Bea rolled her eyes. “There may have been a small dispute during the naming process. Not everyone notices him in there, you know. Only people who love cats.” She frowned. “Or perhaps embroidery. Or I suppose a person could love both cats
and
embroidery.”

“Is he still here?” Annie asked, looking around hopefully.

“Oh no, dear. Sunny lived with us for nineteen years and spent every minute of his life asleep on that chair.”

“Asleep on that chair or in my foxgloves—or rather, on my foxgloves,” Serena said, and set down an immense wooden tub in the middle of the room.

“Do you have a pet?” Bea asked politely.

“I, they weren't … but I had, I did …” Annie felt ready to cry again.

“Oh my dear child!” said the sisters in unison. Bea took Annie's hand in hers. “Tell us. What is your name, and how is it that you are so alone?”

Annie looked at their faces with their duplicate expressions of concern and felt a sudden urge to tell them everything. She struggled with herself for a moment, then said simply, “My name is Annie. I have a message for the king, and I'm going to the palace to give it to him.”

The women exchanged a glance. Annie couldn't blame them. Standing on the riverbank, her plan had made perfect sense: tell the king that Gibbet's men were stealing from the Drop and the king would arrest the men, close the mine, and rescue Gregor. Spoken aloud, the words sounded worse than ridiculous.

The twins were conferring in whispers. Bea opened her hand to show two white ringstones. Annie had left them in place of the eggs.

“Are these yours, dear?”

Annie shook her head. “They're yours. My fare, for the trip. Room and board.”

Serena started to say something, but Annie cut her off. “I have plenty. Look.”

She reached into her pocket and drew out a fistful of the stones. Bea made a strangled sound and turned away. Serena, pale, her hand trembling, pressed Annie's fingers closed over the heap of ringstone.

“I don't want to see those again in this house. But you stay here with us and have something good to eat, and then I'll take you east, as far as Magnifica. Bea, give the stones back.”

“No! They're for you.”

“We could not … stones like these are …,” Serena began, but Beatrice frowned at her.

“Very well. These two we will keep. Now, for pity's sake, let's eat.”

Annie ate and ate and ate. She ate more than Serena, who was trying to reduce, and more than Beatrice, who was trying to plump. When she had finished her eggs, Beatrice fed her bread pudding and milky, sugary tea. Finally, Annie set down her fork. She yawned.

“A bath, then bed,” Beatrice said decisively.

While Beatrice brushed the tangles out of Annie's hair, Serena emptied kettleful after kettleful of steaming water into
the tub. She mixed in salts and a powder that smelled of rosemary. The steam from the bath and the soft tugging of the hairbrush made Annie drowsy. She had just nodded off when she heard Beatrice give a little gasp, then try to cover the sound with a cough.

“What is it?” Annie asked, alarmed.

“Oh, I'm so silly. It's only—were you hurt? I've heard that white hair will sometimes grow from a wound …” She trailed off, embarrassed.

Annie turned to face her. “I don't know what you mean.”

Beatrice studied Annie for a moment. Her own face relaxed. “Let me show you.”

She got up and disappeared into her bedroom. When she returned, she was holding two small silver-backed mirrors. One of them she handed to Annie.

“You hold this, yes, just like that, and I'll hold the other. Now, keep still.” She took hold of Annie's hair with her free hand and wrapped it around her wrist, lifting the mass so that the back of Annie's neck was bare. There, just at her nape, was a thick streak of white. It wasn't ugly, exactly, just … strange. Annie peered into the mirror, trying to get a better look.

“I don't know where that's from. I've never seen it before, but that's not a place I usually look.” She giggled a bit at this, and Beatrice giggled too.

“No, I suppose you wouldn't.”

The sisters retreated to the kitchen while Annie bathed. Annie was grateful for the privacy, not because she was shy, but because of the mortifying layer of grime that collected on
the surface of the water even before she began to scrub. When she was finished, Beatrice brought her one of her own clean nightgowns and combed out her hair a second time.

At last Beatrice led Annie to a tiny room under the eaves. It reminded Annie of the garret, except this room had a neat little bed and dresser and white curtains drawn tight against the darkness.

Bea had offered to wash her dress, but Annie refused. Now she found it carefully folded at the foot of the bed. The bed was covered by a quilt woven with a pattern of flying birds. Among the birds Annie placed the lock of blond hair, the white ringstone she had stolen from Uncle Jock, the rock she had meant as a gift for Gregor, and Page's book. The two handfuls of ringstone from the pit she set slightly apart. They were not as brilliant as the stone Gibbet had given Uncle Jock, and opaque where that stone was almost translucent. What would they buy? A palace? A city? These were her treasures, but there was something awful about each of them. Quickly she hid everything again in her dress.

That night she dreamt of birds. A crowd of ravens sparring with a hawk. The red bird separated from the rest and flew toward the forest.

Scritch, scritch
.

A bird was at the window, knocking at the glass with its beak.

Scritch, scritch
.

Two birds, scratching the glass with their talons.

Annie realized that she was awake, the birds flocking on
the quilt set in motion by the flicker of the candle at her bedside.

Scritch, scritch, scritch
.

The sound was not angry, or even impatient, just persistent. And—Annie sat up straight—familiar.

She opened the window, just a crack, and immediately felt pressure on the other side, pushing it wider. And then there he was, his big square head followed by the whole long length of him. Close on Izzy's heels, so close that their bodies overlapped, orange and brown, brown and orange, came Prudence.

The twins were beside themselves over the cats. Serena fed all three of them milk and eggs for breakfast, and Bea offered to comb their fur as she had Annie's hair. Of course Izzy would have nothing to do with it, but Prudence sat politely for a few strokes. She looked ragged and lean and a little wild. Where had they been?

The day passed peacefully. Serena locked herself in a room she called “the magic shop” at the back of the house. Occasional clanks and screeches issued from behind the closed door, and twice Annie heard what she could have sworn was a rooster. When Serena emerged for lunch her fingers were coated with silver dust.

Annie sat on a cushion on the floor, helping Beatrice wind spools of thread.

“This is the ninth shade of green! How do you remember all the names?”

“Oh I don't, dear. I used to try, because it seemed like fun, naming them all.” She held up a spool of dingy white thread.
“This might be ‘bone,' but then what's this? ‘Bleached bone'? and this? ‘Jaundiced bone'?”

Annie giggled.

“Needless to say I got tired of that pretty quick. Now it's just green-one, green-two, and so on. Serena can tell you how I run around the house calling, ‘Where's my pink-54? Where's my yellow-99?'”

“Will you be coming to Magnifica with us?” Annie asked shyly.

“I'm afraid not, dear. It's Serena who likes to go traipsing around the countryside. Can't stand the thought she might miss something, a market, a festival.” She laughed and waved her hand around the room. “Not much happens here, so who can blame her? But I like it. In any case, it would take a good deal more than Magnifica to get me out of these.” She wiggled her toes in their embroidered slippers. Serena had a similar pair: blue instead of green and twice as large.

“Don't you like it there?”

“Oh, it's silly I suppose, after all this time, but I can't help thinking of the miners.”

Annie's breath caught in a hiccup. “Miners?”

“No one's ever told you about the mine? About how Magnifica came to be?”

Annie shook her head.

“Well, it's not a nice story, dear. Do you want to hear it? Yes? Very well.”

Beatrice began to work the pedal of the loom with her foot, her voice blending with its gentle whir.

“Not long after ringstone was first discovered in Howland, a group of prospectors traveled west to see what they could find. They made their camp, and in the morning each man set out in a different direction. Among them was a man named Terrance Uncton. As he walked along, Uncton stumbled over a rock poking through the dirt. On the rock was a round, shiny patch of ringstone, gleaming like the skin on a bald man's head.

“At first he thought it no great find, a few inches of ringstone at most, enough for a belt buckle or perhaps a serving dish. But as he cut into the rock he discovered that the shiny patch was only the top of a column that extended far underground. For weeks Uncton kept his discovery a secret, but as he dug farther, the column grew thicker. When it reached the thickness of a man's body, Uncton realized he would need help. But first, with his sharpest chisel, he carved the words ‘Prop. of Tr. Uncton' into the top of the column.

“The prospectors followed the column down, twenty, fifty, a hundred, then two hundred feet deep, until they came to the ringstone's mighty root. They broadened the mine and built entrances and exits, pulley systems and trusses. They built an entire underground network of catwalks and tunnels along which the miners could travel for days without ever coming to the surface.

“So much dust blew up from the bottom of the mine that nothing grew for a quarter mile in every direction from the mine's entrance. Barracks sprang up to house the miners, and it was not unusual for a child to come in after playing outdoors covered with yellow dust. The prospectors and their
families settled around the mine and grew rich, though none more than Terrance Uncton. From there the city grew.

“The ringstone in the mine lasted a long time, but as the column was cut closer and closer to its base, getting at the stone eventually came to be more trouble than it was worth. The air at the bottom of the mine was thin and the ringstone harder and more difficult to cut. At last only the poorest men ventured down. They breathed air through hoses threaded down the mineshaft and scraped at the stone with homemade chisels, often staying below ground for weeks at a time. When a miner had collected enough ringstone to satisfy him he blew three times on the whistle he wore around his neck. A man waiting at the top would turn the great wheel to which the miner's waist-rope was attached and haul the miner to the surface. Before he left the mine, the miner paid thirty percent of his take to the man who hauled him up.

“One day the mine collapsed in on itself. A hundred years' worth of trusses, rigging, planks, wheelbarrows, spades, hoses, dirt, and rubble fell into the hole, burying the miners at the bottom and closing the mine for good. Above the roar of falling earth the man at the mine entrance heard the shrilling of dozens of whistles. Then the earth moved beneath him and he, too, along with his wheel, disappeared into the hole.”

Beatrice fell quiet, and for a long time the only sound was the whir of the spinning wheel. Then that faded, and Annie looked up to find Beatrice watching her.

“Can you still visit the mine?” Annie asked, feeling she should say something.

Beatrice gave an odd smile. “Of course not, dear. That's where they've built the palace.”

They rose at dawn the next morning. Bea was the sort of person who always looked wide-awake, but Serena …

“Tea, Beatrice!”

Beatrice handed her sister a cup of hot tea. Serena swallowed the tea in one gulp and held out the empty cup. “Tea, Beatrice!”