Silverblind (Ironskin) (22 page)

This dress seemed much better than the lacy rosebud one. It was chartreuse silk, with a fitted bodice and short flared skirt. Jack watched with amusement as Dorie’s cleavage recontoured itself to fit. “That’s a terrible shade for a blonde,” Jack said. “Or it should be. Except your skin even changes—did you know that? Picks up slightly different undertones.”

“Oh?” said Dorie indifferently.

“Only an artist would notice, I suppose,” said Jack. She tossed her paint-spattered trousers on her bed. “Every time I paint you I have to adjust the colors I use for the underpainting. You’re like the perfect model for someone to never get bored with—if you liked sitting still, that is.”

“Stella’s the perfect model,” countered Dorie. “After your eighteenth job of the day all you want to do is sleep in an armchair. Although I could really go for that, too.”

“Yes, where were you last night?” said Jack. She had taken all her bracelets off for painting, and now she loaded them back on.

“With Tam,” said Dorie reluctantly.

Jack wheeled around to look at her. “As Dorie? Or as Dorian?”

“Dorian,” she said. “Except then I was also at Helen’s house as Dorie, and he saw me. As me.”

Jack was shaking her head. “And you didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No.”

“Ugh. Dorie. This kind of thing never ends well.”

“Ugh, I know!” Dorie had two nice-ish pairs of shoes and she dug them out of the closet. “Navy heels or copper flats?”

“Flats,” said Jack. “How is he? I haven’t seen him since he left for University.”

Dorie shrugged. “He’s written a book. He works at the Queen’s Lab.” We’re kind of doing something we’re not supposed to do, and I don’t want to drag you into it if I don’t have to. “Are we ready?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “Since you don’t need to do any hair or makeup. Seriously, how do you do that?”

Dorie groaned as she popped Woglet in the leather handbag and pushed out the door. “Oh, honestly, Jack, after however many years you know it’s not on purpose. I don’t even want to talk about hair and makeup. It’s a relief being Dorian, you know that?”

“As long as you can stay in his shape.”

“It’s getting easier. Your sketch helps.”

“Good!”

A couple of boys whistled as they went past and Dorie remembered that as a girl she dampened her aura, shrank back, fell away. Of course, when you were walking next to a tall girl with a fiery red dress and mile-long, satiny-dark legs, you might not be able to fall away. Boys were going to whistle no matter what.

“I think…,” Dorie said slowly. “I think after this is all over, and I can just be a girl again, I want to be a different girl. Even if it’s more work to stay in a different girl shape.”

“Go on.”

“It’s like … who I am on the inside has never matched with my outside, you know? I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Changing to Dorian was the first time I ever started to like what I saw.”

“Do you mean you want to stay a boy?” Jack said neutrally.

“No,” said Dorie after consideration. “No, I’m a girl inside. Just a different girl.” She turned to her friend. “I wondered if you would help me make a sketch.” The heat was ebbing as the sun sank behind the buildings. The sky was the perfect fading blue of a late summer twilight. “I’m not artistic like you. I cobbled Dorian’s face together out of memories and your life-drawing sketches. I want you to help me create a Dorie I would like being. One who looks a little like my parents. One who’s got her choices written on her face, for good and bad.”

“I’d be honored,” Jack said seriously. “But when you say your parents, do you mean—”

“I mean my dad and my stepmum. Yes. Not genetically accurate but … yes.”

“It’s a plan,” said Jack. She shook Dorie’s hand as they arrived at the club. “I’ll use that photo on your desk and come up with some ideas for you.”

Dorie undampened her aura as they walked up to the front of the line. “We’re here on behalf of The Supper Club,” started Jack, but the sturdy bouncer waved them through before she could finish. In short order they were installed at a tiny table near the kitchen, with a decent view of the performing space. Dorie didn’t realize how starving she was until Jack told her to order whatever she wanted.

“I think staying a different shape takes it out of me,” said Dorie. “I eat like a horse as Dorian. Or I would, if I could find enough dandelions.”

“What have we been doing to ourselves?” said Jack. “The artistic life—maybe it’s just not worth it. Look at you, having to make choices between selling off wyverns and paying the rent. Me selling dirty pictures. How is that artistic integrity?”

“We’ll make new plans,” said Dorie. “Refuse to compromise. Never surrender.”

“Oh, I dunno,” said Jack. “Life is full of compromises. Maybe art is, too. Maybe this whole thing is foolish.”

“No,” said Dorie firmly. “The bright side here is working for your aunt—”

“The man—”

“will
free
you from having to compromise your art. This is a temporary setback. You will work for your aunt for a bit and whatever business skills you learn will be useful if you want to open your own gallery.”

Jack perked up a bit. “There’s that.”

“You’ll have your artistic breakthrough on the weekends, that’s all.”

“Week
days,
” Jack pointed out. “Club hours.”

“And I get paid in two weeks. A lot can happen in two weeks.”

Jack took a deep breath. “I won’t jump off a bridge tonight, then.”

“Or marry some doughy millionaire.”

Jack laughed ruefully. “I don’t think that’s ever an option for me. The millionaire would be followed shortly by the bridge.” She pulled her sketchpad from her satchel and set it on the table. Her pencil touched down as the first player, a thin cellist with long hair and beard, entered. “All right, Mr. Cello,” she said. “Do your worst.”

“Worst,” unfortunately, turned out to be predictive. One cellist, two “musicians,” and four drinks later, Jack had a sheaf of mocking cartoons but nobody to hire for her aunt. Additionally, the screeching of the cello had started Woglet yodeling in harmony, and Dorie had had to step outside until that act was over. Now he was curled on her lap on a napkin, deigning to eat bits of chicken from her plate.

“Well, that was a waste,” said Jack.

“Hardly,” said Dorie. “Your aunt gave you money for dinner and musicians have been comping our drinks all night.”

“Cheers,” agreed Jack, clinking her empty glass against Dorie’s.

As if alerted by the motion, the waitress appeared behind them and deposited two more drinks at their table. “From the cellist,” she said with a knowing grin.

“It’s amazing how fast the word gets around about who we work for, isn’t it?” said Jack. Under her breath: “Too bad the cellist was so lousy.”

The waitress rolled her eyes. “And you don’t have to listen to him every time there’s an open night.”

“Tell me,” said Jack. “Is it worth sticking around for anybody else? Between the cellist, the drummer, and that girl who was singing and accompanying herself on harmonica…”

“It has been dismal, hasn’t it?” agreed the waitress. “It’s usually much better. It’s the summer curse—beautiful nights make people busk on street corners or chuck it all and go to romance. But the next guy is good, I promise. He doesn’t come often—has a real career I gather, unlike most everyone here who wants to ‘make it.’ Stay for him and you won’t be sorry.”

“Sure thing,” said Jack, lifting her full glass. “Have to, don’t we?”

“She was cute,” said Dorie, as the waitress left.

“Not my type,” said Jack.

“Not Steeeella,” said Dorie, who was feeling tipsy.

“Hush, the pianist is coming on.”

“If he’s anything like the cellist a little noise would improve—” Dorie started to say, but then she saw the pianist and stopped, mouth open.

Tam.

“Wait, isn’t that—?” said Jack. Dorie flapped her hand at her to hush.

He was in the same sort of clothes he wore every day—canvas trousers, boots, that battered leather jacket. He had, thankfully, taken off his explorer hat, and his sun-streaked hair was wild.

The cellist had worn a suit. The harmonicaist had worn an evening gown. Yet no one laughed. Quite the opposite—quiet settled over the noisy club.

In the silence one finger fell, striking the ivory keys precisely, and the note rounded and shaped itself through the silent air. Another, another, and then both hands were pulling an unfamiliar melody from the keys. Unfamiliar—and yet not; as it stretched and pulled like taffy into the air the crisscrossing melody pulled familiar memories into her mind—the forest, the wyverns, the eggs. Standing in the clearing with Tam and watching the wyverns swoop down to the nest. And then the melody took another turn and it began creeping along, guilty and ashamed. Stealing and thieving, and next to her Jack shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

Dorie was feeling pretty uncomfortable, too. This was how Tam felt, she could tell. This was how she felt. Eggs for research—a step up from Malcolm. Stealing them for the ironskin. A step up again, perhaps. And still you felt guilty.

Well. Tomorrow would tell them if they could return the new wyvern chicks back to their families. That would make up for a lot.

She sat in silence—the whole nightclub did, even Woglet—until he was finished, and then there was a sea of applause. He was last—how could anything top that?—and the waitress said, he’s too good for us, you know, and Dorie agreed, while Jack just sat and stared past her sketchpad with no sketch of Tam.

Jack was silent as they left, tramping home through the darkness. Finally she said, “It felt like he just reached into your head and pulled something new out of it.”

“Sure,” said Dorie, who did not really understand the artistic process, but understood that Jack liked to think about it. “I had no idea he liked to play the piano. I don’t remember him doing that.”

“Play
and
compose,” pointed out Jack.

“And write contraband books, and do field work better than anyone except me. Makes you wonder what else he’s hiding.”

“We’re all hiding something,” Jack said. “You don’t talk about being half-fey.”

“Jack! Hush.”

“And when you’re a boy you don’t talk about being a girl.”

“Please be quiet, or I’ll—”

Jack talked over her. “It’s not just you; it’s me, too. How often do I go around telling people I like girls?”

“Our friends wouldn’t care.”

“Oh, our friends. You mean the rebellious artsy anti-culture types? We live in a bubble, Dorie. Get beyond that and people would throw me out of their living rooms.”

“Really?” said Dorie. “I mean, maybe if you were being all forthright and saying to folks ‘I want to kiss girls’ over and over. But like you could move in with Stella and be old maids together and no one would ever bat an eye. You remember our aunts’ friend Frye, right? We used to play dress-up in her attic? Well look, she’s been living with some lady singer for a dozen years now.”

“And they still just call each other ‘friends’ in public,” said Jack. “That’s a separate issue, that two women in love aren’t even considered dangerous enough to lock away, like two men are.”

“Ugh, I don’t even get your point,” said Dorie. “You can slide under the radar. Aren’t you glad? I mean, look at Stella. She can’t hide being
dwarvven
. She has to face it every day, that stools aren’t big enough and some bigots are still anti-
dwarvven
. Et cetera.”

Jack wheeled on Dorie. “Yes. She has to live as who she is. That’s what I like about her. Can you imagine Stella hiding anything about herself?”

“No,” said Dorie. She couldn’t help but add, “Which means she probably doesn’t like girls, you know.”

“Dammit all,” said Jack. “I know that. After ten years, don’t you know I know that? Who cares about love, though. I’m on the verge of something important. An artistic breakthrough.” She seized Dorie’s arm. “You can’t live a lie and expect your art to be truthful. This is the integrity we were just talking about. You can’t hide things. It all has to pour out, just like your cousin in his music. I could hear a story in there, you know? I always thought that was bollocks, getting stories out of instrumentals, but tonight I could hear it. He’d done something he regretted, and he’s still thinking about it, so much later. Who can’t resonate with that?”

“That might just be universal,” agreed Dorie.

“I have to go home and paint,” said Jack. “I have to go right now.”

“Jack!” said Dorie. But Jack was gone, her heels click-clacking, her candy-apple dress disappearing into the night.

Chapter 10

DUSTING

Dorie is fifteen, and so is Tam.

Tam wants to hear what the fey themselves tell. Such a thing has not occurred to Dorie. She asks the fey about things that
are,
but Tam wants to know about things that
were
.

Dorie takes the guilt onto herself, but still. It is
Tam’s
choice to go into the forest with her.

Tam’s choice to meet the fey. To be surrounded by them.

To drink the blue liquid, when it is offered.

To stay.

—T. L. Grimsby,
Dorie & Tam: A Mostly True Story

*   *   *

“I’m still reading your book,” said Dorie to Tam. “Did the old lady in Middleford really say ‘opto-paralyze’?” It was early Saturday morning, and they were walking through the streets to the next ironskin, last two eggs safely in the incubator. They had already tracked down one ironskin at dawn, and then Tam had ferried the new woglet back to his flat to join a cranky Buster in his cage. Dorie had brought back the three eggs and not told Tam why she had taken them, and he had not asked. On the other hand, he had not volunteered any information about his extracurricular activities last night, so perhaps they were both hiding something. As soon as he told her he was a concert pianist, she would tell him that she was Dorie Rochart. That would put that off nicely.

Tam laughed. “No, ‘fascinate’ is the older, less scientific term.” The incubator was disguised in an old canvas bag; he shifted it from one hand to the other. “Crypto-zoology still doesn’t have a wide acceptance, even with the discoveries presented by the wyvern eggs. So you choose the words of your stories very carefully. I kept all the exact transcripts, of course. I included as much of those as I could. But sometimes I had to reinterpret for the scientific mind—if I wanted anyone to take this project seriously at all.”