A Mischief in the Woodwork Read online

  “How about it, Lady Siren?” he perked a proposal at me. I wondered when he had dreamed up that likeness. “As worthy as any nest? Maybe, even, a little bit better?”

  My response, when it came, was somewhat of a compromise. “You can catch a bird but you can't find one mangy nest?” I sent back, as unimpressed as I could manage.

  His eyes were knowing at this response – a knowing sky. Like an umbrella of knowing that hovered over me, bearing down on me, to all corners of the earth, even as I turned and walked away. Cloudless and all-seeing.

  It was there, reading over my shoulder as I trudged. I couldn't shake it.

  You can't shake the sky.

  *

  I sulked. Though my eyes would wander without my permission to the bird and its cage hanging like an ornament of cheer by the window, I ultimately sulked.

  I sulked clear through the week, as that charming token of redemption tweeted like fingernails on a chalk board in the house, winning me over as it grated on my nerves.

  It was a terrible reminder.

  And a lovely gift.

  *

  Needless to say, when I ought to have been donning my Albino skin for my recovered debut a week later, I was in no state to win Letta's approval.

  She had taken my sulking for incompetency.

  She thought I was still ailing.

  The irony smacked me in the face, but instead of sweeping it aside, I let it hang there with the stray locks of my hair. I'd done this myself.

  I could have groaned, but I wouldn't allow Tanen that victory. He had already been entirely too victorious.

  And I had the pet bird to show for it.

  “This is silly,” I said instead, to Letta. It did not sound like a protest. I wouldn't let it. It sounded like a fact.

  The fact that it was.

  “We can't afford any more pets, Letta,” I tried to reason with her practically, pointedly.

  “I don't imagine he'll come back with any horses, Vant. I wouldn't worry. There is not much out there.”

  My dream of elephants came back to me, distracting in its clarity, for I hadn't thought about it in awhile.

  But Tanen was looking at me.

  “Go on,” I bade with a sweep of my hand in exasperation. He took his cue and took his leave. I was not going to sit there and argue like a slighted child.

  But this wasn't about candy.

  It was about lanterns and chandelier crystals and birds.

  Much more serious stuff.

  So he hadn't seen the last of me.

  *

  I, on the other hand, had seemingly seen somewhat of the last of him. It came to my attention late the next day, when I realized he had been a bit reclusive since the morning. Not wanting to seem interested, I resisted asking around.

  But his presence, or lack thereof, was like a bite taken out of the day.

  Where are you hiding? I thought in mild frustration.

  I went about my chores, but found myself gazing in at the bird in its cage by the evening. He needed a name, but I had hoped not to be the one to give him one. I did not want to be attached.

  He was a mix of bright blues and yellows tempered by overlaying patches of more ashen feathers. He zipped from one wall of his cage to the other, making it swing on its hook, spilling seed shells as he chittered at me. He was lovely – there was no denying it – but as always, I tripped down my biased slant with this thought:

  How cruel of him to trap you this way. That Tanen is no good, is he? I ought to set you free...

  But I couldn't bring myself to.

  There was no logical explanation for it. I simply...didn't. I meant to, but I didn't. I left him there, and then fed him later on. I caught myself gazing at him again, too. He was very nice to look at, a blaze of animation in the room.

  “Her name is Modesta,” Tanen announced, striding in.

  He had a knack for appearing at certain times.

  I turned, startled and annoyed. “It's a he,” I corrected him to hide my startlement.

  “Oh?” he challenged

  “He's too brightly colored to be a girl.”

  “Well, for the record, if you were adorned in fancy bright colors, I would still think you were a girl.”

  “Thank you,” I said dryly. There was an itch on my back, nagging at me to ask where he had been. I scrunched the muscles around it, resisting. I did comb him for clues, though, as he had a seat and took his boots off his seemingly aching feet. There was nothing on him that gave off any hints, but he had clearly been abroad.

  “Modesto, then?” he proposed. “Or perhaps something generic? You decide; he's yours.”

  The itch abruptly transferred to my fingertips, and now it wanted to touch is boots.

  It was the first time an urge like that had ever taken me. What on earth did I want with his boots?

  His words filtered distantly into my head. He's yours. The way he said it, like a reminder. A reminder that he had been a gift.

  “Modo,” I said. It came out without any thought, for I was in a place where I didn't want to apply any.

  And, well, that's what happens when things are said without any thought.

  Tanen made a face halfway between sour and considerate, but it was entirely geared to humor me. “As the Lady Siren wishes.”

  My thoughts came out of his boots (a ridiculous notion in and of itself). “Stop with that.”

  He cocked an all too reasonably mocking brow at me as he stood to take his boots to the door. “If you can call the bird Modo, I can call you Lady Siren.”

  “Am I supposed to say 'oh, yes, of course you can'?” I shot at his back. “'It's a deal'?”

  “Or seal my lips,” he offered without sympathy, flashing me a smirk before disappearing into the other room.

  And I, being the mindless oddity that I was these days, thought of no retort better than 'his boots are unattended on the porch'.

  *

  There was no justification that granted me the mission, but it seemed I didn't require any. Minutes later, I had shirked witness and sought out his boots. I sat on the porch, and ran them through my fingers.

  It was mindless. I don't know what I would have done if someone had caught me. How I would have explained it.

  But it was no longer one fingerprint that bore the insignia of spider silk. It was all of them.

  My webbed fingerprints sifted through the particles that dusted the leather. They sorted them, mixed them, tasted them. A puff of the stuff stirred up into my face, and I choked on a vision of a dusty road, obscure from being kicked up. It faded from my mind, but there was still dust in my eyes, and as I blinked I saw snippets of other things. A slab of stone covered in powder. A pillar caked in dry mud. A doorway, traipsed by footprints.

  Then it was gone.

  I set the boot aside. Thank goodness no one had seen that.

  But what had I seen?

  The theory was that it had been wherever Tanen had been. But a dusty road, slab of stone, muddy pillar and sullied doorstep were going to be no fast indication. Those symbols were common ground in Dar'on.

  I sat back, frustrated. There was a restless feeling alive in me that itched for another fix.

  I shrugged it away, and pried myself up from the porch. It still hummed in my fingertips, but I flexed my fingers and took myself back inside.

  Then, feeling suddenly repulsed, I headed for the kitchen and washed my hands most vigorously, feeling irrevocably scarred from the task of being so readily immersed in a man's well-used boots.

  *

  Tanen melted into the countryside again the next day, and then the following day as well. Each time he returned, my fingers itched. I resisted handling his boots again, but that did not mean the urge wasn't there.

  Finally, since I seemed set on not simply asking him, I hatched a grand alternative notion; I would follow him. He had no business begging our sustained hospitality only to spend the days disappearing on secret errands rather than lending a hand around
his newfound refuge. He owed us here at Manor Dorn. I could not rest letting him dally about his own devices without confrontation.

  I awoke early, my boots already laced on, and kept my sensory graces peeled for signs of Tanen stirring. When it was clear he wasn't going to sneak away before anyone else woke, I rose to fix breakfast. It was ready by the time the others joined the living, and I was free to position myself for my treachery.

  When Tanen slipped around back and made his escape from the premises, I took up the painstaking chase.

  *

  It was a wide, open road, silent as the night, a taut line between my quarry and me – as if we both walked the same tight rope, and me, trying to be stealthy about it behind him. Surely he could feel my vibrations. My only hope was to stand still at a distance and watch, until he had nearly disappeared, before trailing after him.

  When he reached the city, I ran.

  I came to the gates too late to track his exact whereabouts, but all it took was recovering my breath to its normal capacity before I heard him.

  What I could only hope was him.

  At first, when I quieted, I was faced only with the packed emptiness. A great breath of powder whispered back at me, from where it coated everything like petrified snow in the heat. Then the whisper was cracked:

  A crumb of rubble spilled down a gulley. The hairs on my body pointed toward it.

  I moved.

  Tanen's grace among the rubble was decidedly decent for an amateur, I decided as I listened and trailed his crumbling scent. He could not match my silence, but he would not wake the dead, either. He would not be fooling any wardogs, but during the day he would avoid the most important hazard: causing a shift with clumsy feet.

  I was a little slower than he, ascertaining my silence in his wake, but I was confident I wouldn't lose him. He wasn't graceful enough for that.

  We were well into the jungle of city when my stealth was nearly sabotaged; climbing a steep ascension, I propelled my knee up next to my body to give me a nice hoist, and the fold sent a sharp pain into my gut. A sound halfway between a yelp and a gasp fled my lips like a bat from a cave.

  I cut it short, still wincing, and the pain written on my face doubled at the silence beyond my niche. I cursed myself, thinking I had just alerted Tanen to my presence.

  But I cursed him when I identified the source of my pain; one of the metal pieces lining my protective corset, jutting into my ribs from the position.

  Probably his plan all along, I grumbled to myself, always so pessimistic about his intentions. To skewer me.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the slight chafe of Tanen's passage resumed on the other side, and carefully unfolded myself.

  Practical indeed, I muttered inwardly about the garment. More like sinister. Grotesque. I am wearing a contraption.

  Never mind.

  Sweat trickled down my neck as I pulled myself upward and onward. It was sticky beneath my corset, and I did not look forward to peeling the article off at the end of the day.

  I huffed a piece of hair out of my face, my hands busy. Over my shoulder, I stole a glance at the sprawling mess of city below. It was quite a landscape from here, a sea of architecture. Pieces of it glistened, playing with my eyes. It seemed to go on forever. There were no edges, at this point; only haphazard boundaries. One of which: a shadowy ravine that snaked through it all, at the base of the slope that rose into this bluff. The rubble dropped off like a waterfall of shadow into that cracked void.

  It looked so deliciously cool down there, I thought for a moment at that strained, wistful height. I couldn't see another drink of shade for what seemed like miles.

  Then I was climbing again, drinking my sweat instead. Luxuries were only myth or illusion. Grit and sweat were real. They were my true lifeblood.

  My nails took on a dirty white as I went, packed with the sullied cake flour of the baking land. There was scarcely any grip on the powder-sleeted surfaces. I found myself being grateful for my spider-silk fingertips, for they seemed to reinforce my traction where it threatened instability.

  I paused for a moment at the spectacle of a striped, tube-like length of cloth protruding from the cliffside. Securing myself, I tugged at it. It was positively saturated with dust, but a majority of it rained away as I fussed with it, until it stretched and popped free into my grasp, and I found myself in possession of a single, wholly functional stocking. Shaking off some additional dust, I peeked around for the matching article. It was in the hollow next to where the first had been, intact as well.

  A refreshing bout of luck, I thought as I stowed the pair of stockings for later. One never knew what he would find out here.

  It was only another few meters to the top. Feeling optimistic, I pressed on. Foot- and handholds accommodated me like stairs now. I was almost there.

  At the crest, I pulled myself cautiously aloft. My gaze flitted past a quick flank of rubble and then was flung wide over the top, where the world opened up into a new arrangement.

  That's when I saw him. He was across the depression that lay on this other side, poking about the base of an erupting tower.

  The tower was like blackened, coppery bark and splashes of glowing, worn mahogany, serrated with texture and burnt with age, but polished by sun. It rose like a beast, and stood like an enduring tree next to its felled kin. It was miraculously unbroken. It's time had not yet come. But of course, it would.

  I made myself comfortable, settling in to watch what this fool young man did with his time there. After some more poking about, he did something I had not expected at all.

  He began to climb.

  Scaling the bluff of a crude heap of rubble was one thing, but Tanen had seemingly now moved onto a much greater challenge.

  What on earth does he think he's doing? I shifted to get more comfortable without noticing, my brow creased in wonder. This was going to be a very interesting show.

  After a few initial, failed attempts, Tanen found purchase. Painstakingly, he ascended past the first window. Respect pricked me like an annoying needle, but I still felt most comfortably warranted to label him a fool for the stunt.

  He seemed to get bottled up at one point, simply staying in one spot for a time, looking helpless. Only after a good few minutes of procrastination did he cast himself back down, resolving to start over.

  I found a place for my feet to stand, so that I was pressed in a fairly natural upright position against the bluff, where I could rest my forearms on the uneven ledge and prop my chin on my hands. It would have been an amusing position, I decided, if anyone had occupied the distance behind me: someone standing on the side of a cliff and peering over as casually and intently as a child peering over a countertop.

  Tanen made it a little farther the next time, and once he reached the second line of windows, their sills gave quite a boost and doubled his progress.

  I began a grueling guessing game, trying to dream up his possible goal. For the life of me, I couldn't imagine. Perhaps men simply got something out of climbing a tower with their bare hands. I had heard similar things. But surely this could not be that pointless.

  If he could climb a tower, he had better be matching the effort in the interests of Manor Dorn, and his new benefactors.

  My eyes swept up the tower, a wondering survey. Walls. Windows. Craftsmanship. Ledges. Gargoyles. A roof.

  Back down again.

  A roof. Gargoyles. Ledges. Windows. Walls.

  I was beginning to grow antsy, but this mystery wouldn't let my curiosity rest. I saw nothing of interest, but I couldn't believe that Tanen had been coming out here for three days simply to climb the thing, disappearing like some secretive gentleman on shady business just for a thrill that looked more miserable than anything.

  It was only after the fourth or fifth survey of the place that I saw it: something I wouldn't even have noticed if not for a terribly grasping sense of frustration and the tiny inkling of reference that remained lodged in my mind like one dusty piece of g
lass.

  On the shoulder of one gargoyle, between the snarling head and its erect wing, was a small disfigurement that didn't match the profile of the others. I could not see it for what it was, but a wayward string of logic clamored together a possible image:

  A nest.

  No.

  It couldn't be.

  Sense stuttered into dead beetles in my mind.

  Yet... I didn't know Tanen, so it very well could be, if possibility was truly weighed.

  That's when I allowed the first trickle of a very important thought to spell itself out in my head, letters and all:

  I don't know you, Tanen.

  Fact.

  Disgruntling fact.

  But then my distraction was warped the other way into focus, as the foolish young man reached a height that I could not ignore. He had reached that point between ground and sky that didn't look natural on a human, that made onlookers queasy in calculation. If he fell now...

  Sweat lined my throat, but I couldn't tell if it was outside or in. I watched, perched and uneasy, cheering him on and willing him down. It was a sour taste, stuck between those two.

  I realized too late that being queasy on his behalf did neither of us any good, and indeed was a kind of sabotage on mine. When I realized that my blood felt sick in suspense, I wisely decided to move up onto the ledge where I could sit, whether he could see me or not. It would be more stable than clinging to the bluff.

  But I was already compromised.

  I creaked upward on wobbly limbs, and the folly of not being able to take my eyes off of him at this point took its toll; I slipped.

  My breath was reeled out of me as I plunged into the rush of emptiness where my foot landed, any exclamation swallowed back down my throat, and as rubble buckled beneath me, I flailed off my perch and was caught immediately in the tide of a crumbling avalanche. The broken hillside fell away, dragging me down. A breathless shriek murmured from me, cold as water stuck in my lungs, as the world fell away.