The Ever Breath (16 page)

“You’re a turn-mouth!” Artwhip cried.

Truman had never heard of such a thing—someone with two mouths.

“It
is
you!” she said sharply.

Artwhip looked around. “I guess it is me.”

“You are but a breath-body.” Her second mouth moved quickly, the words tripping from her lips. “Your soulcase is in grave danger. Be careful! Death watches!”

Artwhip froze. He looked stricken with fear.

“It’s okay,” Truman said. “Come on. Just keep going. She probably says that to everyone!”

Truman pushed Artwhip on and they started walking more quickly, turning down aisles at random. They made so many turns that Truman no longer knew which direction they’d come from.

“Haven’t we shaken everyone on our trail by now?” Truman asked.

“Yes, but…”

“Are we lost?”

“Not exactly. It’s just that I don’t quite know where we are.”

“That’s called being lost.”

“Hmm …,” Artwhip said.

He turned around abruptly and there, at his side, was an old man holding an aged accordion.

“Which way is out?” Artwhip asked. “Do you know?”

“I was going there myself,” the man said. “I need a bit of help. I’ll show you the way if you’ll each take one of my arms and help me out. I have a carriage waiting.”

Artwhip looked at Truman, who shrugged. Truman was keeping an eye out for the bogwoman in her hooded cloak.

“That’s a deal,” Artwhip said. He hooked one of the old man’s arms and Truman hooked the other. They helped steady him.

“Turn left at the end of this aisle,” the old man said. “Have you had a lovely time tonight?”

“Lovely isn’t the way I’d describe it,” Truman said.

“I don’t like these places,” Artwhip said.

“There’s a lot of madness tonight. What with”—he lowered his voice—“the new charges thrown at Cragmeal. Public Enemy Number One.”

Artwhip didn’t say a word. Truman knew that he wasn’t supposed to talk about Cragmeal.

“Some of the people might feel safer if he’s caught,” the old man said. “But there are many, many who would feel lost and beaten without a king, even if he has been gone so many years.”

“I guess you’re right,” Artwhip said, trying to sound neutral on the matter.

They walked past a stand where someone was selling brine-boiled nuts that smelled so good that Truman’s mouth watered. His hunger must have shown, because the old man stopped. “May I buy you two bags of nuts?” he asked. “As payment for seeing me safely out of the ruckus.”

“No, no, that’s not necessary,” Artwhip said.

“I’m allergic to nuts,” Truman said, but it was more of a habit than something he actually believed true. He hadn’t sneezed or coughed or wheezed or swelled up or felt itchy or nauseous since he’d arrived here.

“I insist,” the old man said. “I had a very good night. I’m quite a good music maker, you know. Lots of patrons.” He
pulled out a purse of coins and ordered two bags so quickly that they didn’t have time to protest. Not that Truman would have. He wanted the nuts.

The music maker handed each of them a bag—warm and already a little oily.

They walked a bit farther down an aisle and, finally, there were the tent flaps. Truman’s knees trembled. He knew what might be coming.

They stepped out into the wintry air. The street was just as he remembered it from the snow globe. It was quiet and empty. Snow covered the ground, and it was still coming down. And there was the straggly dog in the cage, but now that Truman was in the scene he could tell that it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf.

“I’ve got it from here,” the music maker said, and he pointed to a carriage, parked just a bit farther down the road. Truman looked over his shoulder, keeping an eye out for the woman in the hooded cloak. “Before you go,” the music maker said, “I have to tell you that you remind me of my lost son.” He gazed at Artwhip.

“Oh,” Artwhip said.

“He labored to breathe from birth, but he’d be about your age, had he lived.”

“I’m so sorry,” Artwhip said.

Truman felt bad for the old man, but he was nervous. “We have to get out of here,” he whispered to Artwhip.

“Do you mind if, well, this is a strange thing to ask, but I’d like to put my arm around you as a father would a son,” the music maker said. “To see just how tall my boy would
have been, just what his shoulder would have felt like under my broad arm.”

Truman tugged on Artwhip’s shirt.

“Well,” Artwhip said, holding the bag of warm, oily nuts to his chest. “I’m kind of in a rush—”

“Ah, well, don’t worry then,” the old man said. His eyes filled with tears. “You have a busy life. I know that.”

“No, no,” Artwhip said, sucking in a breath. “It’s fine. But, you know, just for a moment.”

And so the music maker smiled and reached up and put his broad arm around Artwhip’s shoulders. For just a split second Truman remembered the hug Artwhip’s father had given Artwhip in the restaurant, a strong embrace, so sad too. And then Truman thought of his own father—what it was like to be hugged by him at the end of a long day. He suddenly remembered exactly what his father’s aftershave smelled like, even when it was masked by the fried-food Taco Grill smell. And, for a second, he forgot about this strange world and the Ever Breath. All he remembered was being at home—with his mom and his dad and Camille.

And then he looked back at the tent and saw the woman in the hooded cloak, and he grabbed Artwhip and yanked his arm as hard as he could. Artwhip staggered backward and cried, “Ow! What was that?”

And the music maker lifted his hand, revealing a small dagger. “Sorry,” he said. “Had no choice in it! If you don’t die, I’ll be in terrible trouble.”

Artwhip pulled his own dagger from under his shirt, but it slipped from his hand onto the snow. “You’re T.T.S.?”

“No! Just the hired assassin!” His dagger trembling, the man took a few steps toward Artwhip. “You’re going to die, right?”

Praddle sprang, her teeth bared, and bit the man’s leg. He swung his leg around and kicked her off. She landed hard in the gutter.

Truman scrambled forward and grabbed Artwhip’s dagger. He stood in the street, pointing it at the man. “Don’t take another step!” he shouted.

“I had to do it!” the music maker cried. “The Ever Breath is hanging in the balance! Please die!” And then he gave a sad finger-wiggling wave, and Truman noticed that the wave had something wrong with it. The music maker was missing a finger—his pointer was gone. Not even a little stub remained. Truman’s mind flashed on the museum he’d seen his father bound up in, and the missing finger wearing a strange ring preserved in a glass case. The nine-fingered music maker turned quickly and started running down the street. He was light on his feet, not that old at all.

Artwhip lay in the snow not far from the caged wolf, who was growling. Truman scrambled to his side.

“Nicely done,” Artwhip said. “You scared him off.”

“I don’t think I’d have known what to do if he’d come at
me
.” Truman held the dagger out to Artwhip.

“You hold it for me for now,” Artwhip whispered. A snowflake landed on his cheek and melted. “He’d have done me in for certain, but you were here. Thank you.” Artwhip’s shirt was already spotted with blood. Truman’s hands were shaking. He wasn’t sure what to do. Praddle sat by Artwhip’s shoulder and meowed.

“You’re really bleeding,” Truman said.

“Just a small wound,” Artwhip said, but he looked pale and frightened.

All at once the woman in the hooded cloak was at Artwhip’s side. She was breathless. “Get a flesh tailor. Quick!” she said to Truman.

“A flesh tailor?” Truman said, deciding the woman was not the threat he’d thought she was.

“Erswat.” Artwhip said softly. “You came back.”

She lifted his shirt. “You need a flesh tailor. It’s serious.” She took off her shawl, and as she used it to stanch the blood, Truman saw webbing, thin and fine, between her delicate pink fingers. “What happened to him?” she asked Truman.

“He was stabbed by this man with an accordion,” Truman said. “A hired assassin!”

“I don’t need to be stitched up! I’m fine,” Artwhip insisted, but when he lifted his head he looked dizzy.

“Maybe we need Coldwidder,” Truman said. “Maybe he’d know what to do.”

Artwhip shook his head. “Not him!”

The wolf growled in his cage. “Back when I was a jarkman,” the wolf said, “we didn’t get stabbed in the streets and lose our daggers. In the old days we battled at Bull’s Noon or got charred by fire beasts. But never this foolishness.”

“He really doesn’t need to hear that now,” Truman said.

Artwhip winced. “It’s true. I got stabbed by a plain old music maker and I’d even had a death warning. I’m worthless!” He let out a moan.

“Go get Coldwidder,” Truman said to Praddle. “I want to stay here with him.”

“Go fast, mewler!” Erswat said.

Artwhip shook his head, but he didn’t have the strength to fight it. Praddle took off like a shot.

Erswat was taking a tincture out of her pocket. Using a dropper, she dotted the wound with a blue liquid. “This will speed his healing,” she explained.

Three locust fairies buzzed around over their heads amid the snowflakes. Artwhip sighed. “More locust fairies.”

“Go away! Shoo!” Erswat said.

Truman waved his hands in the air and they zipped up overhead and hovered.

“I have to go,” Erswat said. She then began to cough so loudly it seemed to rattle her whole body. “I have to make my way back to water. But if he needs me, call to me.”

“Call to you?” Truman asked. “How?”

“Why, through the water, of course,” she said, laughing a little, as if Truman had been joking. “Just call to me!”

“Oh. Of course!” Truman said.

The bogwoman put her hand on Artwhip’s forehead and started coughing again. Despite her apparent suffering, she seemed to want to stay longer. “Keep your eyes open,” she said. “You must be quiet and still.” She wiped the damp hair from Artwhip’s eyes and pointed up at the sky. “Snow blossoms,” she said. “Just look at all the blustered snow blossoms coming down!”

And then she stood up, curtsied to the two of them, and headed down the street.

Truman took Artwhip’s hand and looked up at the night sky. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, hoping it was true. But even as he said it, he heard his voice quaver.

A group of loud men wearing kilts over furred legs came barreling out of the tent, singing, “Oh, but I love her, Rosamund Rose! Oh, but I love her today!” They swayed like drunken bulls. “Tomorrow’s not clear! But with a song in me ear, I love Rosamund Rose today!” They slid around in the slick snow, and, arm in arm, kept each other up until one went down and the others followed. The largest of them landed next to the snow globe, which in the confusion had been left on the snowy street. He picked it up and shook it. “Whose is this?” the man shouted.

“Over here!” Truman said.

The man popped up and skidded over on his wobbly legs. “Oh, my Rosamund Rose!” he sang, handing Truman the globe. “Tomorrow’s not clear! But with a song in my ear …” He linked arms again with his buddies and they wobbled on down the road.

Truman held up the globe. There was Ickbee’s hut surrounded by trees, and there, among the trees, were dim lurching beasts—baboonish, short, and muscular, with broad hunched backs and wide lower jaws, long snouts, and close-set eyes. Fangs, yes—they had long white fangs.

And there was a figure looking out the window, just as there had been the last time he’d seen Ickbee’s hut in the globe. But this time the window looked crooked, as if being weighed down by the hut, which seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Through the crooked window, he saw a face. This time it was not an old woman with mewlers on her shoulders.

It was Camille, wearing a blue woolen hat and clutching a hammer to her chest. And for some strange reason, he
heard her voice in his ear—a soft but insistent whisper.
Truman, where are you? Where have you gone?

But how could he hear her? She was stuck in a globe—in the past, the present, the future? Truman didn’t know for certain, but still he whispered back, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

And Camille’s face in the snow globe looked startled. She glanced around and then up at the sky as if she’d actually heard him and was looking for the source of his voice.

“I know where my sister is,” Truman whispered to Artwhip. “I know where we have to go from here.”

“Erswat’s shawl,” Artwhip said dreamily. “She forgot her shawl.”

Binderbee had made his way over hoof divot and wagon rut and through tall grasses, and was now skirting the bog. The snow was deep for him and the trip was slower going than he’d expected, but still he hurried as fast as he could. The wind, strong and sharp, came in whirling gusts. It cut through his vest and chilled his bones, and every once in a while it whipped up so fast that Binderbee was afraid an air current would lift him right off his feet.

What would his father think of him now? Out in the weather, Binderbee Biggby of the Elite Biggbys on a quest for the Ever Breath itself. He imagined his father telling him it was an uppity quest for a mouse, even a Biggby, but smiling just the same, proud of him. His father had been dead for some years now. He had died in a wheezy makeshift house on the weedy edges of town. His soulcase had given out, letting his soul loose in the world.
His soul could be with me right now
, Binderbee thought.
Right now!
This was a comfort.

He stopped to catch his breath, gazing at the bog. He could see the writhing paths of sea serpents, and downstream,
on the far bank, a bog-horse was nuzzling her two small dragon like bog-colts, with their scaly skin and wobbly legs.

He could see, too, the mud-slick homes of the bogmen that lined the far shore. Half in the water, half out, the homes looked as if they were settling into a stew of peat and silt. Near one of the houses, he saw a shape moving in the distant fog, and then another. They were bogmen, rising from the brown water, lifting their silt-silken arms and pulling themselves up on land. There were three of them, slick and shining black and wet, soaked to the very bone. Two had fish that they placed in a bushel basket on the shore. Then Binderbee heard a woman start to sing—a bogwoman—and he knew he should clap his hands over his ears. But it was so beautiful, he couldn’t.