Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) (24 page)

“Unconnect us, Valefor. Right now. Wherever you are going, you can go alone.”

“Oh, but I can’t, Flora Segunda. We are intertwined now; it’s beyond my control, and there’s nothing I can do.”

“How could you let this happen?” I demanded.

“Me!? I am
weakened,
Flora—I could not help myself! You are the magician; I am just the denizen. It is your responsibility to take precautions!” The hands were still wringing, but his eyes narrowed into gleaming slits, and I saw that his hands weren’t really wringing as much as they were snapping with an audible crackle.

I stared at him. I should have been angry, but somehow, suddenly, I didn’t care.

“You are pernicious, Valefor. Now I see why Mamma banished you,” I said dully.

“Pernicious! After all I’ve done for you, Flora Segunda, you are so ungrateful. All you wanted were your own little comforts, no true thoughts of Valefor, poor Valefor, you only pretended to be my friend. You never cared for my needs at all, so it seems to me that you only deserve what you are getting, faithless Flora!”

“Leave me alone, Valefor, just leave me alone.” I lay my head down on the table, not caring if I got butter or broken glass in my hair, and closed my eyes. If I vanished, then none of this would matter anymore. No Catorcena, no Barracks, no Mamma, no failure.

“But, there is hope, Flora,” Valefor said, eagerly. I felt him pat my hair hesitantly. “There is hope; we must not despair. You can save us still—”

“I don’t care, Valefor,” I said, without opening my eyes or lifting my head. “Just go away.”

“But Flora, don’t you want to redeem yourself? We haven’t much time, but if I were restored, then I would be strong again and happy again, and so would you be, too, because we are connected. We are in this together, Flora!”

“I do not care,” I repeated. “Go away, Valefor.”

The little pats on my hair became little tugs, and I tossed my head against his grip. “Come on, Flora, just because you must be so morose doesn’t mean that you should take me with you. Think of someone other than yourself for a change—”

I tugged away and stood up, knocking the chair down. Valefor hovered over me, his eyes white, his teeth white, his fingers long and pinchy.

“Leave me alone, Valefor, just go away and leave me alone!”

He tried to get in my way, but he was too insubstantial to make much of a roadblock. I pushed my way through him and ran outside.

V
ALEFOR DID NOT
—perhaps could not—follow me. The sky looked like milky tea and the moon was a swirly smudge just above the tree line. The gate to the back garden was open, and I went through it into the tangled wilderness beyond. Valefor had bragged quite a bit about the marvels of his gardens—how perfect his hedge animals, how tall his cypress trees—but as with the rest of Crackpot, there was nothing left of the glory but the brag itself. Without his care, the foliage had become a tangle of branches, and the grass high and hiding. A small footpath beat its way through the wilderness, and I could just make out its trace through the gloam, leading toward the Sunken Puddle, Crackpot’s ornamental pond.

Just beyond the gate, at the edge of the Puddle, stands the grave of Barbizon, my great-grandfather Azucar Fyrdraaca’s war horse. Her memorial is a statue so energetic that it seems as though Barbizon herself had turned to hard stone in the sudden act of curveting: She balances on muscular back legs, while an extended front hoof forever slices up at the sky, her teeth bared.

I sat down on a rock and stared up at Barbizon’s shadowy bulk. The story goes that when my greatgrandfather Azucar fell at the Battle of Creton’s Harm, mortally wounded, Barbizon stood over him, keeping his enemies at bay with slashes of her sharp iron hooves, until at last my great-grandmother Idden fought her way through the rough din and helped Barbizon drag Azucar from the field. That, says Mamma, is true loyalty.

Something nosed against my leg, and I started, alarmed, before I realized it was Flynn. Dear darling Flynnie. I leaned over and squeezed him, and suddenly my emptiness was filled with a giant black sorrow, piercingly sharp. Now I was choking on tears that seemed to rip from my throat, leaving the taste of blood behind. Each breath I took cracked my heart a bit more, so that darkness spilled upward, outward, tearing my insides to shreds.

Flynnie’s warm wet tongue lapped against my cheeks, slurped at my tears. He didn’t care that I was a failure, an idiot, a baby. He loved me, anyway, no matter what. But who would feed him when I had entirely disappeared? Who would make sure Poppy didn’t give him chocolate or leave the gate open so he could run into traffic and get squashed? Flynn squirmed, and I let him go, reluctantly. The sky had gone a thin pink—dawn at last—and Flynnie stood at point, quiveringly alert.

A gentle mist rose from the Sunken Puddle’s surface, floating gently upward like cigarillo smoke. A small dark shape was moving fluidly across the water. Valefor, in his garden brag, had sworn three ancient turtles lived within the pond’s deep, green waters, but if that was a turtle head, it was the biggest darn turtle head I had ever seen. And a big turtle could have a big head, but it would not stand up and clamber out of the water on hind legs, nor would it be tall and skinny Or so white, either, like pale gleaming bone.

“Poppy! What are you doing?”

“Swimming,” he answered, shaking himself like a dog. Flynn bounded up upon him, and he pushed the bounce down. “Could you hand me my towel? It’s on that rock.”

I tossed him his towel, then picked up the pack of cigarillos that fell out of its folds. He wrapped the towel over his shoulders, awkwardly, and sat down.

Mamma had warned Idden and me never to swim in the Sunken Puddle, but that was one warning she didn’t need to make. I had never had the slightest desire to go swimming in it. The water smelled like yuck and Goddess knew what icky things swarm within its sour, green depths.

“You shouldn’t swim in the pond, Poppy.” I sat next to him and snuffled my nose against my sleeve, but he didn’t notice that, or the catch in my throat. Would he notice when I was gone? “You might get tangled in the weeds and drown.”

“Not in this water. It’s too buoyant. It’s not really water, anyway. It’s the Current, bubbling to the surface. If you dive down deeply enough, you can breathe the Current like air. It is marvelously refreshing, Flora—you should give it a try—you look like you need a little pick-me-up. It’s delicious.”

I ignored Poppy’s crazy talk. I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I should have gone back in the house, but I didn’t have the energy to move.

Poppy put a cigarillo to his lips and muttered something under his breath. There was a small glitter of coldfire, followed by a long exhalation of smoke.

“Was that Gramatica, Poppy?”

“Ayah,” he answered, sounding pleased. “Ayah, it was. I don’t know much, but I know enough to light a few fires and to maybe make it rain, if I’m on a roll.”

“It’s forbidden for soldiers, Poppy, you know.”

“So is forgery, darling, and that comes in handy sometimes, doesn’t it? Anyway, Flora, you needn’t sound so self-righteous. You got Gramatica words in you, too. I can see them floating around inside you—and not just little ones, but big fat bright ones, the kind that burn. Once Gramatica gets into your blood, you know, you can’t ever get it out. It grows and changes you, if you don’t take care.”

A tiny shiver ran through me. I remembered the Oatmeal Word—it had sprung into my head and out of my mouth, yet I could have sworn that I had never heard or read it before.

The little winkie cigarillo butt flew through the darkness and plopped into the water. “You know that if ever the Fyrdraaca family is in true trouble, Barbizon is supposed to come to life and to our rescue, just as she did for Azucar.”

“Ayah, Poppy, I’ve heard the story.”

“Well, I often consider that I’ve sat here many times, and often felt in true trouble, and yet Barbizon has never leaped to my aid. So you know what that makes me think?”

“That’s it’s just a story?”

“No, no. That my trouble is never true trouble. And things, though I think them bad, are not really so.” Poppy turned his gaze back from Barbizon to me. “You should have a swim, Flora. You look as dead as winter grass. Come on. We shall jump from the Folly roof, and it shall do you great good.”

The Folly is a summerhouse that sits right at the pond’s edge, like a cupcake on stilts. For generations, Fyrdraaca kids have used it as a clubhouse, but I hadn’t been there for ages. Now, I glanced toward its shadow. “It’s much too high, Poppy.”

“Nayah, not at all; it’s perfect. You have to run, of course, to clear the gutters and the patio deck below. But it’s like flying—just wonderful. The arc of the air and the smack of the water. And then the pull of the Current.”

“It sounds painful.”

“Ayah, but deliciously so. Come on!”

He grabbed my hand and yanked, and I was so surprised that I didn’t yank back but came right off the rock. During the War, Poppy was wounded, and during his captivity he was tortured, and so one of his arms doesn’t work too well and he limps badly. But there was no weakness in his crazy, hard grip now, and I couldn’t get free.

“Poppy!” I protested, bushes whipping at me as we ran down the path, Flynnie bounding behind, barking his approval, the rat dog. We bumped up the Folly’s front steps and into the musty interior. At the stairs, I took advantage of a solid banister and grabbed, with a sudden strength that I hadn’t had earlier when I was deep in my despondency.

“Come on, Flora, don’t be a stick,” Poppy said, pulling harder. I clung, and he tore, and because he had me with his good hand, he won. We thumped up two flights of stairs, and my protests did not weaken Poppy’s grip at all. When Poppy threw open the attic door, the dust our feet had raised gleamed like fog in the pink dawn light that spilled in through the open casement window.

“Last one in is the Man in Pink Bloomers!” Poppy crowed.

I gave one last yank, breathless from our hurtle up the stairs, and got free.

“Poppy, please don’t—”

He turned toward me, and by some weird trick of the pale light and the streaky shadows, his face looked like a skull, bleached and grinning a white bony grin. “You have to burn in order to shine, Flora.” He pounced with a grip as hard as iron, yanking me into his run, and I had to follow or fall. The windowsill bruised my knees as Poppy pushed me over. I flailed about, grabbing empty air, and then I was jumping.

Immediately, my jump turned into a fall and then my fall turned into a plummet. The night blew by in a blur of shadowy trees, the sharp edge of the Folly roof, Poppy’s loud shriek:
“Cierra Califa!”

I hit with such a smack that all the air sucked right out of my stomach, and then I was twisting, turning, choking. Burning cold water weighed me down, pulling at me. In the darkness I could not tell which way was up toward air, which way was down toward death. My lungs swelled, my throat burned, and pressure roared in my ears. The compulsion to breathe forced my mouth open, and suddenly I was sucking in water.

A cloud of pinkness lit up the darkness, surrounding me in a nimbus of light. A thick syrupy warmth flooded my mouth, soothed my throat, a yummy goodness that tasted like apples and nutmeg, vanilla and ginger. I wasn’t drowning anymore. I felt buoyant, almost frothy, as though my blood had been replaced with bubbly excelsior water. The water—the Current?—felt as warm as bathwater, curving over my body, caressing away all pain and tension. Other colors swirled in the pinkness—cerise, celadon, azure, umber, violet—and shapes, too, tremulous and serpentine. Below me, the light swelled into a brilliant glow of pinkness as bright as fire, and irresistible. I dove down toward this brightness, feeling the Current tingling and buzzing around me, but then my motion was arrested by a hard grip to the ankle.

I kicked the grip off, twisting and flailing, turning to see Poppy hanging in the Current beside me, as radiant as a star, his eyes glowing like green lamps. His movements were languid and graceful, with no sign of injury or crippling.

“Not yet.” His lips shaped the words, and I could hear them as clearly as if we stood on dry land and he had whispered into my ear. “We must go back.”

He grabbed my hand and began to pull me to the surface, which hung above us like a black ceiling, featureless and dark, and though I struggled and pulled, once again I couldn’t shake free. The pink light was fading, and suddenly I was again choking on icy cold water, sputtering and panicking as my lungs began, again, to burn—and then my head broke the surface, and Poppy was pulling me to shore while I choked and coughed and splashed.

For a few seconds all I could do was lie on the sand, like a beached dolphin, spitting pond water and coughing, while a frantic Flynn licked my face and Poppy crouched next to me, laughing.

He crowed, “Did I not say? Oh, the Current is so sweet! I told you it was divine!”

“I almost drowned!” I pushed Flynn away and sat up, trying to spit the nasty taste from my mouth. “You could have killed me!”

“You can’t drown in there, Flora. I told you, it’s not real water; it’s the Current. Do you not feel divine? Do you not feel better?”

Actually, now that my lungs were clear again, I did feel better. I felt drained and loose-boned, but better. Flynn pressed against me and I hugged his solid warmth. The air seemed less cold and the dark less dark, though perhaps that was just dawn coming on. The trees above me and the surface of the lake seemed edged in a pinkish glow, and my brain felt soothingly calm. For a few minutes I had forgotten about Valefor, forgotten about Boy Hansgen, forgotten about everything. Now I remembered, but somehow it didn’t all seem quite as hopeless as it did before. My clothes felt heavy and wet, and yet that wasn’t so bad, either.

“What was that light in the water, Poppy? Was it really the Current?”

“Oh, ayah. I told you, the wellspring of this lake is the Current. If you dive down to the very bottom, you can slip through the cracks into the core of the Abyss. All the Great Houses have their foundations in the Current, don’t you know?”