Wax (14 page)

Dud fiddled with the radio. Then snuggled the radio.

Poppy got back into bed.
Harmless enough,
she thought, the tranquil voices of NPR lulling them both to sleep.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Poppy.”

“Mmm?”

“Wake up.”

“No, thank you.”

“Pop-
py.
”

Pop-
py
groaned and fumbled for her phone, squinting at the bright screen. “Dud, it's three thirty-two in the morning. I know you're new to the concept of sleep and all, but this is what's known as an ‘ungodly hour'​—”

“But the candle is talking.”

She switched on her bedside light.

“Come again?”

Dud, still stuffed into the sleeping bag in the closet, pulled open the wooden door and waved at her. “I mean, not talking like we're talking,” he said, holding up the flickering candle. “But when I smell it, I can hear someone talking in my head a little. She says ‘my doll' a lot.”

Poppy frowned. “Maybe you were semiconscious when she was sculpting you, so you have early memories of her voice. Or maybe you fell asleep and you were dreaming.”

“Or maybe the candle has
special powers,
” he said with awe.

“Yeah, maybe. But I really need to get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay. You can read it in the morning.”

“Read what?”

“The candle.”

“What?”

“The writing in the candle.”

“The . . . what?”

Dud disentangled himself from his sleeping bag, walked across the room, and handed Poppy the stone candle. She peered inside.

The wax had burned down about half an inch, revealing tiny, painstakingly carved letters that had been etched into the inside of the tube. The melted black wax had filled in the engravings, making them easy to read against the white stone.

“Holy
crap,
” she whispered, jolting herself into an upright position. “It's a message!”

Dud sat down on the bed next to her. “I thought you really needed sleep.”

“I am willing to make an exception for a hidden message carved into the inside of a candle that can only be revealed by the burning of the wax, which is only the coolest thing I've ever seen.” She squinted at the letters. “Madame Grosholtz must have written this​—​she's the one who gave it to me.”

“What's it say?”

She pulled a magnifying glass out of the drawer of her nightstand​—​“Thanks again, Grandpa”​—​and began to read the tiny writing aloud:

“IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THAT MEANS I AM DEAD.”

Poppy looked at Dud, then read on, turning the candle as the writing spiraled downward.

“I KNOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A CLICHÉ, BUT IT IS TRUE. AT LEAST, I HOPE IT IS TRUE. I HOPE I AM DEAD. I HAVE WANTED TO DIE FOR MANY YEARS NOW. IF I HAVE ENTRUSTED THIS CANDLE TO YOUR CARE, THAT MEANS I HAVE ENTRUSTED YOU WITH MY STORY. IT IS UP TO YOU WHETHER YOU ACT UPON MY WARNINGS OR NOT.

 

“I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU CHOOSE. BECAUSE I AM DEAD.”

“It's Madame Grosholtz, all right,” said Poppy.

“THEREFORE, CONSIDER THIS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT​—​AND CONFESSION​—​OF ANNE-MARIE GROSHOLTZ. OR, IF IT”

That's where the words stopped, the unmelted wax blocking the rest from view.

She blew out the flame. “Maybe we can chisel it out.” She reached for her X-Acto knife, tapped it into the wax​—​

The blade instantly snapped.

“Whoa.” Ever the prepared crafter, she had a spare ready to go​—​but that one broke too. “This is, like, a superwax or something,” she said, tapping it with her finger. “Hard as a rock. Madame Grosholtz must have been some kind of mad wax scientist.”

A mad wax scientist with a death wish,
she thought.

So many questions. Was Madame Grosholtz really dead? If so, how had she known that her death was imminent? Had she known when she gave Poppy the candle? She must have, if she intended for Poppy to read her will, but that would mean Madame Grosholtz would have had advance notice of the fire. But if that was the case, why hadn't she tried to stop it? The studio, all those beautiful works of art . . .

That poor woman.

So many questions, and so many potential answers​—​answers trapped inside this candle. “I guess we have to let it burn if we want to read the rest.” Poppy relit the wick, placed it on her nightstand, and flung herself back onto her bed with a groan. “How am I going to fall asleep
now?
”

Within seconds, she was snoring.

∗ ∗ ∗

Poppy had not realized how exhausting it would be to infiltrate a mysterious candle factory, stumble upon a talented yet batty genius, adopt a scientifically impossible being, concoct a parentally tolerable lie, incur the suspicion of the police, eat a banana split, and discover a lost will and testament all in one day, but when she opened her bleary eyes the next morning and looked at the time on her phone, she saw that it was already noon.

“Don't judge, Simba,” she told her poster, disentangling herself from her sheets. “I had a rough night.”

She sat up.

Remembered that she was supposed to have a roommate.

Noticed that the closet door was open.

And Dud was gone.

“Oh, no.” She staggered out of bed as the remainder of her brain switched on. “No. Bad.”

She pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed her phone, and hurried downstairs, listing the various ends Dud could have come to.
He melted. He escaped. He jumped out the window and got hit by a car. Someone mistook him for a candle and lit his hair on​—​

“Fire in the hole!”

An unlikely display greeted Poppy as she walked into the living room: Dud kneeling on the floor; Owen holding a box of Cheerios and winging them one by one at Dud's face; and Mr. and Mrs. Palladino sitting on the couch, applauding.

“Hi, Poppy!” Dud grinned at her. “We're throwing breakfast.”

She turned to her parents. “Why are you allowing this to happen?”

“It's a
traditional
island
tradition,
” her father explained in a tone that suggested she was being offensive. “Every morning the villagers wake up and toss food into one another's mouths.”

“Dad. They're not seals.”

“Well, that's what he told us!”

“Is that what Dud told you, or what Owen told you after you'd already caught him flinging cereal around the living room?”

“Dud, I apologize for our insensitive daughter,” her mother said. “You go right back to your culture.”

Dud tried to give Poppy a conspiratorial wink, but he had not yet learned how to wink, so he just blinked both of his eyes shut really hard.

“And we're all okay with this. Sure. Why not.” Poppy shook her head in disbelief. “What are you guys doing here?” she asked her parents. As yoga teachers, Sundays were usually their busiest workdays.

“Classes were canceled,” her mother said. “The studios at the spa smelled too much like smoke from the fire, so they're taking a day to air them out. And lucky us​—​we get to spend some time with the newest member of our family!”

Poppy rolled her eyes. They landed on the painting of the pissed-off peacock.

Then slid below the peacock's feet, to the artist's signature.

No, not his full signature​—​his initials.

“Oh my God, that's it,” Poppy whispered to herself. “AMT! She signed him, like a work of art! AMT is her name. Her initials. Anne-Marie . . .”

Luckily, no one was paying attention to Poppy as she paced back and forth. Owen had turned on some terrible children's music, and now he and Dud were prancing around the room, singing,
“I can walk from here to there, I can walk most anywhere!”

“But her name was Madame
Grosholtz,
” Poppy continued, frowning, pacing. “There should be a
G
in there somewhere. Unless they're someone else's initials. But why would she carve someone else's initials into him?”

Maybe Dud was based on someone from Madame Grosholtz's past. A teenage crush. Or​—​
oh,
Poppy realized with a crushing dread​—​maybe her son? Her
dead
son?

Poppy hadn't thought about it before. Did Madame Grosholtz have a son? The candle factory was supposedly a family business, so it must have been handed down to the next generation. Unless the business was her husband's? Was she married?

How much did Poppy even know about Madame Grosholtz?

In retrospect, she realized that it was ridiculous that she hadn't thought of it earlier. She tapped the letters into her phone, her fingers shaking. All she'd had to do was Google the name Grosholtz, and bam: there she was, first on the list of search results.

“Poppy?” Dud said, pausing his shenanigans. “Are you okay? Your face is doing a lot of things.”

It was, but Poppy couldn't help it. Because the woman staring back at her from the screen​—​the woman who was most definitely Madame Grosholtz​—​was here labeled with a different name, along with a brief description:

Anne-Marie “Marie” Tussaud was a French-born artist of German descent who became known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussaud's, the wax museum she founded in London.

But it was the next line that really made Poppy's eye twitch:

Died: April 16, 1850.

11

POPPY BOOKED IT UPSTAIRS, TAKING THE STEPS TWO AT A TIME
and nearly knocking over the stone candle as she grabbed it from her nightstand and read the words that had appeared overnight:

THEREFORE, CONSIDER THIS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT​—​AND CONFESSION​—​OF ANNE-MARIE GROSHOLTZ. OR, IF IT PLEASE YOU, BY MY OTHER NAME: MADAME TUSSAUD. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME. I AM MILDLY FAMOUS. I SPENT DECADES SCULPTING FIGURES OUT OF WAX, AND I BECAME WELL-KNOWN FOR IT. I AM PROUD OF THE WORK THAT I DID IN MY LIFE.

 

I AM NOT PROUD OF WHAT I DID AFTER MY DEATH.

Poppy's stomach gave a lurch.

YOU SEE, CREATING ART​—​CREATING REAL, GOOD ART​—​IS A LONELY PROCESS. MANY HOURS ALONE. IF YOU TALK, IT IS ONLY TO YOURSELF. AND MAYBE TO YOUR WORK. AFTER A WHILE, THE WORK BECOMES YOUR FRIEND. AND AFTER A LITTLE WHILE MORE, THE WORK SEEMS TO COME A LITTLE BIT ALIVE. SO WHY NOT . . . ALL THE WAY ALIVE? ENTER: LES CIRES VIVANTES.

“The living wax,” Poppy whispered.

IT IS SOMETHING I HAD BEEN EXPERIMENTING WITH FOR YEARS. I CAME CLOSE A FEW TIMES. TWITCHING MUSCLES. BLINKING EYES. BEATING HEARTS. BUT THEY NEVER STAYED ALIVE FOR LONG. I DIDN'T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT MYSELF​—​I COULD FEEL MY BONES GROWING OLD AND WEARY. ONE DAY MY EYES FELL UPON A SELF-REPLICA I'D SCULPTED, AND I FOUND MYSELF WISHING I COULD INHABIT THAT WAX DUPLICATE OF MYSELF. I'D NEVER DIE, NEVER GET ANY OLDER. I COULD GO ON SCULPTING FOREVER.

 

I DARE NOT SET DOWN HERE​—​NOR ANYWHERE ELSE​—​HOW I DID IT. THAT KNOWLEDGE IS LOST TO THE AGES, AND I PLAN TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT I GOT RIGHT TO WORK SCULPTING ANOTHER SCULPTURE OF MYSELF​—​A HOLLOW ONE THIS TIME. I WAS ABLE TO DISTILL MY SOUL INTO THE FORM OF A FLAME AND LIGHT THE HOLLOW FROM WITHIN, HOPING TO ANIMATE IT. AND TO MY SURPRISE, DELIGHT​—​AND MUCH LATER, HORROR​—​IT WORKED.

 

FOR SOME TIME, THERE WERE TWO OF US​—​THE ORIGINAL ME, IN THE FLESH, AND MY WAX DUPLICATE​—​A CLONE THAT CONTAINED ALL MY MEMORIES AND PERSONALITY, BUT ITS OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. THE REAL TEST CAME, OF COURSE, A FEW YEARS LATER, WHEN MY EARTHLY BODY FAILED ME AT LAST. I TOOK MY LAST BREATH, CLOSED MY EYES​—​AND OPENED THEM ONCE AGAIN IN MY NEW WAX BODY. OUR TWO FLAME-SOULS MERGED, AND I WAS WHOLE ONCE MORE.

 

I HAVE EXTENDED MY LIFE THUSLY EVER SINCE. WHEN ONE HOLLOW BECAME DAMAGED OR WORN OUT, I WOULD CREATE A NEW ONE, LIGHT IT WITH MY FLAME-SOUL, AND JUMP INTO MY NEW BODY. OF COURSE, SEVERAL CANDLES THAT WERE LIT WITH THE ORIGINAL WERE AT ALL TIMES BURNING SAFE WITHIN MY HOME​—​IF ONE WENT OUT, I HAD MANY BACKUP FLAMES WITH WHICH TO RELIGHT.

 

MADAME TUSSAUD HAD LONG SINCE “DIED,” IN THE TRADITIONAL MANNER OF SPEAKING​—​THERE WAS A FUNERAL, IT WAS IN THE PAPERS​—​AND SO I TOILED AWAY IN RELATIVE OBSCURITY UNDER MY MAIDEN NAME, SCULPTING AND WORKING AND REDISCOVERING THE JOY OF THE ART THAT I'D LOST AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF MUSEUMS AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. BUT PEOPLE

That was as far as the wax had burned.

Poppy's phone rang.

She jumped.

“Jill!” she shouted into it. “Madame Grosholtz was Madame Tussaud, and she's been alive for over two centuries because she made herself immortal using wax duplicates!”

“Um,” said Jill. “Sorry, wrong number.”

“Jill.”

Poppy slowed herself down to an intelligible speaking speed and explained, to the best of her ability, what she'd learned. “So you're telling me,” Jill said patiently, “that the woman you met at the candle factory was not in fact a real, live, walking, talking, sculpting, staring
descendent
of Madame Tussaud, but the actual dead, buried, dearly departed Madame Tussaud herself.”

“Yes. That is what I am telling you.”

“Like, what​—​a ghost?”

“No, not a ghost. I'm saying that she was real
then,
and she's real
now.
Or she
was
real now. Well​—​not now. Now she's not anywhere.”