Liesl & Po (7 page)

The Lady Premiere took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and counted to three. As always, when she felt her anger bubbling and rising inside of her like a hot, dark dust, the smell of cabbage and damp socks seemed to rise up too. It was the terrible, choking smell of the house in Howard’s Glen, floating out of the past to torture her. . . .

She pushed the thought quickly out of her mind. Those days were over, dead, buried. She had made sure of that. Instead she imagined her closets lined in deep purple velvet, and all the beautiful jewels glittering on her shelves, and the ninety-two pairs of shoes she had lined up neatly on beautiful oak shoe racks, and it calmed her down somewhat. Her things—her rooms—the whisper of silk sheets and the murmurings of an attentive staff—protected her from the trials and idiocies of the outside world.

“Do you have the counterfeit box?” the Lady Premiere asked more calmly, opening her eyes.

The alchemist nodded.

“Give it here.”

He hesitated for only a second, then passed over Mr. Gray’s mother’s wooden jewelry box, which Will had accidentally taken from the table.

The Lady Premiere said to Mo, “Guard, open the gate.”

Mo moved obediently to the hand crank and began slowly winding open the gate. The Lady Premiere strode quickly toward the street, then paused, turning back to the alchemist, who was still shaking his head and muttering something about “unofficial” and “ruined.”

“Well?” she said. “Come along.”

“Me? You want me to go
with
you?” The alchemist forced a laugh. He would never admit it, but he had always been a little bit afraid of the tall, thin, somber Mr. Gray, who kept company with the dead and knew all their secrets. “But I couldn’t possibly—at this late hour—quite out of the question—the demands of my profession—”

The Lady Premiere fixed him with such an evil stare that he stopped short and shrank further into his large coat. She returned to the courtyard, walking so slowly and deliberately she reminded Mo of an enormous cat.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” she said softly, and Mo shivered. The gentleness in her voice was the most terrifying of all. “I am the Lady Premiere in this city, and I asked you to deliver me the most powerful magic in the world. Instead you deliver me this—this—this—” She held up the wooden jewelry box and whipped open its lid. A little bit of gray ash floated off in the wind. “This
dirt
. This
worthlessness
.” She snapped the lid closed again, so close to the alchemist’s nose that he flinched.

“Until you find me my magic,” she said, leaning closer to the alchemist, “you will not be leaving my sight. Not for one second. And if I find out that this is all part of some big plan—if I find out that there
is
no magic . . .” She laughed humorlessly, her eyes glittering. “Then there is certainly no magic strong enough to help you. Do we understand each other?”

“There is magic,” the alchemist squeaked. “I swear. The greatest I have yet produced.”

“Good.” The Lady Premiere pulled away. “Then we go to find it.”

“But what about the boy?” the alchemist said. “Do we just let him go?”

The Lady Premiere had already turned and started for the street again, her long fur coat swirling around her ankles. “Do not trouble yourself about the boy,” she said. “I have spies and guards and friends all over this city. He will be found. And when he is found, he will be . . . handled.”

The way she said the word made the hair on the back of Mo’s neck stand up, as though he had been tickled there by a dozen insect legs.

“Now come!” the Lady Premiere commanded, without looking back, and the alchemist scurried after her. Mo could hear their footsteps long after they vanished into the fog and he had closed the gates behind them, breathing a sigh of relief.

“All clear,” he whispered, stepping back into the stone hut and ducking down to peer under his desk. But the little dark space was just that—dark, and totally empty. Mo straightened up, scratching his head again.

“Where on earth . . . ?” he started to say, out loud, before noticing that the cat door was rocking slightly on its hinges with a
tap-tap-tap
-ing sound.

Mo got down clumsily on his hands and knees, lifted open the cat door, and squinted out.

He looked just in time to see the boy with no hat round the corner at the end of the alley, and then disappear from view.

Chapter Seven

IT WAS WITH A SENSE OF RELIEF THAT PO SLIPPED
back into the Other Side after its conversation with Liesl. Bundle seemed relieved too: The ghostly animal skipped happily in front of Po, flickering in and out of other objects they encountered, exploring, turning flips in the air, expanding suddenly into a shapeless black cloud and then re-forming itself, trying to make Po laugh.

But Po was still thinking about Liesl. The ghost had not meant to lie to her, but the lie had come, and with it, the stirrings of feelings and attachments long forgotten. Even after Po was back on the Other Side, feeling the dark pulse of the endless starry night all around it, slipping away on the gentle sighings of the wind and floating between black valleys and cold dark stars, the ghost could not shake the memory of Liesl’s face, or the way she had trembled ever so slightly when she said,
Tell him I miss him
, or the look she had given Po after it had lied to her: a naked, happy look, like the face of the dew-coated moonflower that grew in abundance on the Other Side, white and crescent-shaped. Something about the girl moved something in Po, twisted the airy tendrils of its being in a way that had long become unfamiliar.

We mustn’t go back to the Living Side anymore, Bundle
, Po thought to Bundle, and felt Bundle’s animal mind think back a simple agreement. Bundle agreed with everything Po thought. It was a very loyal pet.

It’s just not right
, Po said.
It’s not natural. We are dead, after all. We don’t belong there.

Mwark
, came the noise from Bundle’s mind, which Po knew meant,
Okay
,
yes, you’re right.

And the live girl will be fine
, Po thought.
She was fine without us before; and she will be fine now.

Mwark. Whatever you say; of course.

I’ll miss the drawings, though
, Po thought.

Bundle was silent, turning floaty flips ahead.

Whether Bundle had once been a dog or a cat was, at this point, impossible to say. Sometimes, in the natural inquisitive tilt of its head, and the twitchiness of its tail, and the prick of its ears, it seemed very cat. Other times, due to its tendency to follow Po around everywhere and yelp excitedly at every shooting star or wisp of cloud dust, it seemed much more dog.

But whatever it was, one thing was clear: Bundle was a natural explorer. It liked nothing better than to discover some new and twisted corner of the universe, and then, suddenly, to disperse—blending momentarily into the new place, the new space, whatever it was, and returning to its loose and shaggy shape whenever its curiosity about the new thing had been satisfied. Since it could no longer smell or look or touch, it could learn only in this way: by blending.

When Bundle was tired, it liked to disperse into Po. Bundle could not climb into Po’s lap because Po had no lap, so instead it climbed inside: It curled up inside of Po’s Essence, and Po walked for a time with the secret knowledge of this other thing, this other being, glowing at Po’s very center like a star burning in the middle of darkness.

Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this—the absorption of another, the carrying of it—was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had once left behind.

Let’s go to our place
, Po thought to Bundle.

Mwark
, Bundle thought back.

Bundle and Po skimmed over the top of a glowing, moonlit hill and came to a place where black water ran between soft, pillowed, cloudy hills: a quiet, secluded place, and one both ghosts knew well, and came to often.

There was another ghost sitting by the river, however, and Po stopped short. Bundle let out a small yelp of surprise. This was Bundle and Po’s secret spot, exactly one third of the way between the endless waterfall and star 6,789. Po had never seen another ghost there, not one single time.

The new ghost had its back to Bundle and Po, and it was muttering something. It must have only recently crossed over, as even from the back its silhouette was very defined, and very clearly that of a man.

As Po drifted closer, it heard the man saying, “If I could only get back to that willow tree. I’m sure then I could find my way home. Fifteen feet from the tree is the pond, and up the short little hill is the house, where little Lee-Lee will be waiting with her mother. . . .”

Po was stunned. All the atoms of its being flipped simultaneously in a funny direction, so the ghost shivered from the inside out. Po had not been kidding when it told Liesl that the chances of seeing her father again were next to impossible: And yet, here her father was. In Bundle and Po’s secret place, no less.

Po was so surprised it made a sharp whistling sound, and the ghost of Liesl’s father started, and turned around.

“Oh, hello,” the ghost of Liesl’s father said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

Po refrained from pointing out that ghosts stepped soundlessly, since they did not have solid feet to walk with. The man was obviously brand-new, and confused. His contours were extraordinarily clear; there was only the tiniest bit of smudging around his hair, making him appear to be wearing a dark hat. He brought his hand to his cheek and swiped.

Po had never seen a ghost cry before. There were no actual tears: just quivering little dark spots, like shadows, that pushed apart the atoms of Liesl’s father’s face, temporarily revealing the starry sky beyond. Ghosts, even the newest ones, just weren’t held together very tightly.

“What are you doing here?” Po asked Liesl’s father. Bundle drifted forward cautiously. The ghost-animal did not fully blend with Liesl’s father, but it wrapped itself around the man’s feet, a kind of ghostly version of smelling.

“I appear to have gotten lost.” Liesl’s father shook his head and looked down at the shaggy shadow-pet massed around his feet, and then up at the flowing black dust of the river, and the spinning planets beyond the massive white hill-clouds. “I seem to have been wandering forever, and I can’t find my way back. . . .” He trailed off, squinting at Po. “Who are you?”

“My name is Po.”

“I’m having trouble seeing you clearly. I must have left my glasses at home.” Liesl’s father patted the front pocket of his shirt, which was still there in silhouette, but barely. Clothes faded first on the Other Side. They had nothing to hold them together at all: no soul, no Essence, no Being. Clothes were just things, and things scattered into nothing quite easily. “My name is Henry Morbower. Perhaps if you came a little closer . . . ?”

Po floated a little closer, knowing it would not help.

“Ah, yes, that’s better,” Henry said, obviously lying, and then gave a little frustrated shake of his feet. “I seem to have stepped in some mud earlier,” he said.

“That’s not mud,” Po said. “That’s Bundle.”

Henry squinted. “What?”

“Bundle. Bundle’s just gotten around your legs. Bundle’s an explorer. That’s why I think it might be more dog. On the other hand, it really likes the constellation Pisces—fish, you know. So maybe it’s a little more cat.”

Henry said, “Er, yes—quite. Of course. I see.” Although of course he did not see. He kicked more emphatically with his feet. Bundle detached from around his legs and drifted back to Po.

“That’s better now,” Henry said, and Po heard Bundle think
Riff
, which was a sound of disapproval. “Do you and, er, Bundle come this way a lot? Do you know this area well?”

Po thought of a tree shaking its leaves in the wind, and as the ghost thought this, about the shaking tree, it managed to shrug. “About as well as anybody knows it, I guess.”