Such Wicked Intent (13 page)

As if exhausted, it retreated into a corner and made itself as small as possible, a dense black ink splotch.

“It’s getting fainter!” said Elizabeth.

“I think you’re right,” Henry agreed.

The thing was fraying at the edges, unraveling into smoky tendrils.

“The sunlight harms it,” I murmured.

“Let it die!” Henry said.

As it continued to diffuse, it became butterfly-shaped, and I
caught, just for a moment, a glimpse of miraculous colors on its wings.

“Wait!” Immediately I sheltered the glass jar with my body, and then wrapped a napkin around it.

“What’re you doing?” said Henry.

“It’s one of the butterflies! From the spirit world!”

“But how?” Elizabeth demanded.

“The one that was helping me in the caves. It must’ve come out with me. It
came out
with me!”

Very slowly Henry said, “How could something from the world of the dead come into ours?”

I looked into the jar. Protected from the sun, the creature had composed itself and regained some of its intense blackness. It poured itself around the inside of the glass. I inhaled sharply. It was unmistakable.

“Do you know what this is?” I said, grinning up at the other two. “This is the last ingredient we need to grow Konrad.”

I
TOUCHED THE HANDLE OF
K
ONRAD
’
S BEDCHAMBER, LEANED MY
forehead against the wood. A deep breath, and then I entered and shut the door soundlessly behind me. It was almost completely dark, for the curtains were drawn tight, with only a faint penumbra of light around them.

For a moment I imagined the other world beyond this one, the one in which Konrad resided. Briefly the room seemed to shimmer, about to reveal itself to me in all its guises through history, but then it solidified into the undeniable truth of here and now.

We hadn’t changed anything in his bedchamber. No one could face it, not yet, that final resignation. And if this endeavor of mine was successful, there’d be no need of it.

I needed some part of Konrad. Neither Elizabeth, nor Henry, nor I had been able to contemplate venturing to his crypt and desecrating his body. But then I’d realized we wouldn’t have to. The cave writings had told me that all that was required was some part of him that had once been living. Surely it wouldn’t matter how large or small.

On his chest of drawers I found his brush, and from the bristles I began to pull as many of his hairs as I could.

I heard the bedchamber door slowly opening, and I whirled, the brush still clutched guiltily in my hands.

On the threshold stood my mother, a hand lifted to stifle a scream.

“Konrad?” she gasped.

“Mother, it’s me, Victor. I’m so sorry to startle you.”

I rushed over to her, pocketing the brush, and helped her to the nearest chair. She was still in her night robe, even though it was near noon.

“I mistook you…” It took her a moment to regain her breath.

I didn’t like to look upon her, for my beautiful mother’s cheeks were hollowed, and her normally lively eyes dulled.

“Let me help you back to your bedchamber,” I said.

“Your father thinks it only makes me worse to come here, but I need to. I still need to. And you do too, clearly.”

She took my maimed hand and placed it between hers. Her skin had a papery feel to it, her bones and tendons more prominent than I recalled. I was terribly worried about her but dared not say anything. Voicing my fears aloud would, somehow, make them far too real and frightening.

“Does it still pain you, your hand?” she asked.

“Not very much at all,” I lied.

She looked about the darkened room. “Almost every night I dream of him. And sometimes we talk. What I would give for just one more real conversation.”

Before I could stop myself, I said, “If I could bring him back for you, I would.”

“I know, Victor. You try so hard.”

“Father thinks—”

“Your father thinks you’re rash and headstrong, but he told
me he’d never known anyone show such love and devotion to a sibling.”

“He said that to you?”

She nodded. “Every day I’m thankful for you, and Elizabeth, and William and Ernest, and one day I won’t wear this grief so heavily, but that day… seems a very long way away.”

I kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her. “You should rest,” I said.

“All I do is rest,” she replied wearily, and then formed her face into a brave smile. “Are you taking Konrad’s hairbrush as a keepsake?”

I swallowed uneasily. “Yes. I want it for my own.”

And I need it, to bring him back, for all of us.

*   *   *

The work cottage stood on the farthest reach of our property, at the edge of an unused pasture that bordered forest. Beyond the crude door was a dirt floor, plank walls, no windows—a place to give laborers shelter in bad weather, a place for unused stone and fence posts, shovels and rusting saws.

On the crude wooden table we placed the lanterns we’d lit, and closed the door. Carefully I set down the jar containing the butterfly spirit. It had spent a day and night in my room, carefully hidden, like some strange insect a guilty boy keeps from his mother. It swam along the inside of the glass, then grew legs and scuttled about, then sprouted black wings and fluttered, batting itself against the lid, its entire being bent on escape.
Soon enough,
I thought.
Soon enough you can come out and start your work.

From my breast pocket I took the vial of Konrad’s hair and set it on the table.

I looked at Henry and Elizabeth. “We will do this,” I said.

Henry nodded. “Yes.”

I saw Elizabeth take a deep breath, but her gaze was steady as she nodded. In the church that day, before the painting of Jesus and Lazarus, she’d made her decision, and she’d never been one to back down. “What do we do first?”

“Well, it’s… fairly straightforward,” I said. “First the hole.”

I passed Henry a shovel, and plunged mine into the dirt floor behind the table. Working together it was a quick enough job. The hole was shallow, no more than a foot deep, and six in length.
A crib,
I thought.

But it looked more like a grave.

At its bottom the earth was moist and claylike. Elizabeth pushed back her sleeves and knelt. She took several handfuls of thick mud and started working away, fashioning a torso, pinching off a head, then arms, then shaping the lower half into two legs. She used the tip of her little finger to make indentations for the eyes and then traced a mouth. Watching, I had a sudden memory of her as a little girl, sitting in the courtyard garden, making shapes in the soil with a stick, her brow furrowed with concentration.

I couldn’t help laughing. “I can’t see you taking such care over me,” I said. “Two splats of mud, and away we go.”

When she looked up at me, her eyes were wet.

“You’ve done a fine job,” I told her, my voice softening. I knelt down beside her. “Here.” I helped her smooth the outlines of
the little mud creature, as though this would give it a greater chance of becoming perfect, of becoming Konrad. Our fingers touched and, for just a split second, lingered, as though remembering something. Then she pulled back her hand to continue her work alone. I stood and watched.

“How long will it take, before it grows to its proper size?” Henry asked.

I conjured up the stone book’s searing chain of images—the sun chasing the darkness across the twitching body of the mud man. “I’m not sure. It was a good number of days. Six, perhaps?”

“And then?”

“We’ll give the body a drop of the elixir and enter the spirit world.”

“But wouldn’t the body appear in the spirit world too?” asked Henry. “And then we’d have two Konrads?”

From the floor Elizabeth shook her head, frowning. “The body won’t enter. It has no spirit, and it’s our spirits that inhabit the land of the dead.”

“Precisely,” I said, though it had taken me some time to puzzle this out myself. “The body will wait in the real world for Konrad’s spirit to claim it.”

“But how will Konrad find his body without a talisman?” Henry asked.

This I’d already considered. “Before we enter, we’ll put some talisman in the creature’s fist, and when we enter the spirit world, the body won’t be there but the talisman will be. I’ll need your help now, Henry.”

We returned to the table.

“We need our butterfly spirit to bind with Konrad’s hair,” I said.

Henry took up the jar with the spirit and peered inside. “The moment we unscrew this lid…”

I nodded. “It’ll try to escape onto one of us, me most likely. It seems to prefer me.”

“Your irresistible charm,” said Henry.

I chuckled nervously. Everything suddenly seemed unreal. Were we really doing this?

“Is our mud creation complete?” I asked Elizabeth.

She nodded and came to the table.

I handed Henry the vial of Konrad’s hair and took hold of the jar with the butterfly spirit. “I’ll slide open the lid just a touch, and you jam the end of your vial inside and shake out the hair—quickly, mind.”

“I’m ready,” he said, removing the small cork from the vial.

The moment I put my hand atop the lid, the spirit became still at the bottom of the jar, attentive, coiled. I unscrewed the lid and held it firmly in place for a moment, while Henry positioned the vial. He nodded, and I slid the lid an inch to the side.

Henry darted the vial into the gap but didn’t even have time to shake out the hair. In the blink of an eye the spirit sprang into the vial, where it stretched itself long and spiraled in a frenzy round and round the strands of Konrad’s hair.

“What do I do?” whispered Henry.

“Stay still, stay still,” I hissed. “Elizabeth, the cork!”

She snatched it up from the table. I pulled back the jar’s lid so she could reach inside with her slim hands and jam the
cork hard into the inverted top of the vial.

“Thank goodness,” I breathed. Trapped inside, the spirit hungrily twined with Konrad’s hair until it was difficult to tell them apart. Henry’s hands were shaking slightly.

“What’s the best way to put this inside the mud creature?” he asked.

“Let’s do it now while it’s occupied,” I said. The spirit was still ecstatically entangled with Konrad’s hair.

Swiftly we moved to the hole, where Elizabeth knelt and pressed her thumb deep into the center of the little mud creature’s torso.

I seized a small handful of clay, ready. Henry held the stoppered vial against the cavity in the mud man’s chest.

“Look at it,” Elizabeth said, pointing. The spirit had bundled itself and Konrad’s hair into a small compact ball. It pulsed darkly.

“Open and pour,” I told Henry.

He yanked out the cork and shook the vial, and the hair and the spirit rolled out and into the mud creature. Instantly I pushed some clay over the top, sealing the cavity. Elizabeth added a little more, smoothing it. Then we pulled back our hands and just stared.

It was only mud, just a sad little mud baby made by children.

“Will this work?” Elizabeth whispered.

“Yes,” I said fervently.

After a few minutes we left the cottage, secured the door with a padlock, and started the walk back to the château, all our hopes and fears carried silently within us.

*   *   *

We’d just entered the main hall, our hands still damp from washing them at the stable pump, when Dr. Lesage appeared, coming down the main staircase.

“How’s Mother?” I asked.

“Oh, her spirits seem improved today. She said she had a nice chat with you earlier.”

“May we visit her?” Elizabeth asked.

“She’s taking the rest she needs right now,” said the doctor. “Don’t look so grave, Miss Lavenza. She has no disease of the body. Time will be her cure, I have no doubt.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Elizabeth.

The doctor turned to me. “And I’m glad to catch you before I leave, young sir. Your parents wanted me to have a quick look at you.”

“But I’m not ill,” I blurted, and regretted it, for I’d sounded almost guilty.

“I merely want to examine your hand,” the doctor said with a reassuring smile. “Your father said he still sees you wince from time to time. Is it giving you pain?”

Elizabeth and Henry left us. We went into the empty dining room, and I sat by the window while the doctor bent his head to examine the ugly stumps of my severed fingers. His forehead bore liver spots, and there was dandruff among his thinning hair. He seemed older than I remembered. His hands were pleasantly warm, and I felt my shoulders relax.

“The wounds are healing well. There is no sign of infection or disease.”

“It was never the wounds that hurt,” I told him.

“No. You feel the pain where the fingers once were, yes?”

I nodded.

“And the pain, how is it?”

“It comes and goes.”

“It is not so unusual as you might think. I have heard of cases where the severed limb continues to give phantom pain for some time. The body remembers its injury.”

“Time will be my cure too, then,” I said. “Mother hasn’t been worrying about me, has she?”

“No, no,” he said. “How is your sleep?”

I almost smiled. If he only knew how deeply I had lately slept—as deep as death itself.

“Fine,” I said.

His elderly eyes regarded me kindly. “I’m not concerned only about your hand, Victor. Your grief is another matter.”

I looked out the window. I did not want to appear weak. I did not want to give anything away.

“I have no doubt,” he said, “that you will heal. But there are things that might speed it. You appear to me pale and rundown. Your father says you’ve been skulking about the house.”

“I’ve just been out for a long walk,” I protested.

“Excellent. I recommend more of the same. Summer seems not ready to leave us quite yet, and I advise you to take full advantage of it. Daily outings. Plenty of fresh air. Walk. Ride. Row. Sail. Take your meat bloodier. And I will leave you an opiate, with instructions to take it only sparingly, and for no longer than three weeks. It will ease your pain, and help you sleep.”