“I don’t care about scars,” Clem said, straightening up in her chair. “Thank you. The pain is entirely gone.”
“The arms now,” Wister said, walking around her. Gertie and Meg shuffled around also, each leaning unabashedly close. “A little more room, please.” They each shifted back an inch. As Wister examined Clem’s arms, she frowned. “What does this say?”
With visible reluctance, Clem stacked her arms so that the words became legible.
“?‘Two days…stones’?” Gertie read. “What does that mean?”
Clem stared down at the crude writing. “I’m not sure. The message was interrupted.”
I sent her a strong sense of warning mixed with indignation. Of course she knew! Had not Maxwell just told her exactly what the message meant?
“Maybe a designation?” Meg asked, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
“Don’t be absurd,” Wister said. “It is clearly a threat. Something will happen involving stones…today. This was written two days ago.” She was staring hard at Clem, who glanced up briefly to meet her eyes but said nothing. “I think that when I’m done with these arms, I should make a protective casting. Does that seem warranted?”
I sent a rush of approval. Clem nodded. “Yes. I suppose that would be wise.”
“Good,” Wister said. Once again, she traced a careful shape around the cuts, and the letters disappeared like frost on a windowpane in full sun.
Clementine left Keel House as dusk was falling. The walk took her back along Derby Street, northward on Hardy Street, west on Essex Street and then across the square. She carried three new books in the satchel. Her steps, I could see, were hampered by the practice she had done earlier with the greaves. She was not quite hobbling, but she walked slowly.
Derby and Essex Streets, not to mention Washington Square, are heavily trafficked, but Hardy Street is a quiet stretch, entirely residential, and as Clementine paced along the sidewalk, she found herself on an empty street. A quaint red house with black shutters to her right had window boxes filled with thyme. Smokecurled up from the brick chimneys. (Inside, an old woman sat napping in an armchair.) Beside it stood a small yellow house with round windows and goldenrod planted on either side of the door. (Inside, a girl was changing a baby’s diaper.) A gray cat resting on the stone doorstep looked up, alert, and whisked out of view as Clem approached. She heard, then, what had startled the cat: a clattering sound behind her. I sent her an urgent warning, pleading with her not to ignore me. She stopped and turned.
The stones had come for her.
It was a cluster of perhaps twenty or thirty, skittering along the road behind her. Most were small, like plums, and a single stone alone would have posed little threat. But together? Drawn into the air as the pine needles and papers had been? Wister’s protective casting would only do so much. They would be devastating.
Quickly, without the encumbrance of a human form, I cast my gaze over the length of the street. Nothing. I looked between the buildings, searching in the overgrown autumn gardens and behind the piles of fishing nets. Still, I could find no culprit hiding in the in-between spaces.
I returned to Clem’s side and considered the peril of her situation. The stones would launch at any moment. What could I do? Would she not take refuge in a nearby house? I felt a wave of desperation at my uselessness; I could do nothing to protect her! If only I could have stepped between her and the stones, I would gladly have taken the blows on her behalf.
Frantically, I sent her another warning, as clearly and sharply as I could. But far from dashing to the yellow house and banging on the door as any sensible person would, Clementine took a deep breath and set her feet firmly on the cobblestones. The stones rose into the air. They seemed to hesitate for a moment,considering, before they began clumping together, making a rough sphere. They jostled against one another, pushing and nudging to fit, until they gathered into a shape that approximated a human head: holes for the eyes and nose, a slit for the mouth. I was astonished. What was this?
Clementine reached into her satchel with efficient movements and withdrew the bandages that had covered her arms until that morning. She shook them out, two long banners of cloth. Then she frowned. “Say that again,” she commanded.
The stones had spoken to her in a sibilant whisper so quiet that I’d taken it for the sound of the waves a mere block away. “Stay,” the face hissed. The slit of the mouth moved awkwardly, the lower stone hanging like a broken jaw. “Stay away from her.” I was perplexed; I’d expected the stones to assail her, just as the papers had in the courthouse, just as Maxwell had warned.
“Make me,” Clementine said, her voice hard. She shook the banners once more, saying,“Atar,”decisively. The bandages hung in the air for a moment, limp and soft, and suddenly they extended, swooping toward the stones with a feline leap, lithe as hunters. The stones burst apart from one another, fleeing, but the wrappings seized and held them, snatching them out of the air like butterflies caught in a sharp paw, then yanking them down to the ground. They struggled, shifting and tugging inside the fabric, and then abruptly stopped.
Clem took a few steps closer. She looked down dispassionately at the bundle of bandages. Now there was nothing there, no enchantment or malice: only still stones and inanimate cloth. She reached down and shook out the bandages, tumbling the loose stones into the road.
My anguish tipped abruptly into giddy relief. She’d done it! Of course she’d done it, my capable Clem, who knew moreenchantment than all the Commonwealth students combined. I sent her a torrent of appreciative affection; if I had been there in person, I would have thrown my arms around her. The slightest curve of a smile graced her lip. “You underestimated me,” she said quietly.
Yes, yes, I had! I would gladly admit as much. She turned away and kept walking down Hardy Street, folding the cloths with a thoughtful expression. She reached the corner of Essex Street, where the foot traffic was heavy, and she walked slowly the rest of the way home, frowning all the while.
PART IVArmor Assembles
Clem: September 13 1888
Dear Mother,
Of course I forgive you. I understand your wish to protect us. We must do ittogether—that is what I mean. And no; I have not changed my mind. If anything, I am more determined than ever. We will strike at thecisne’s heart, and it will be a terrible blow.
Something unexpected has come to light. I have thought all this time, as I told you, that the spirit counseling caution at every turn was Father. Today I had reason to think otherwise. Speaking with Wister, I asked her why a spirit would wish to become a thew, and she said, among other things, that the spirit might wish to right a wrong. I felt an unmistakable sense of agreement that wasnotmine. The same thing happened when Wister said, a short time later, that having a thew would greatly increase my powers.
Father would never respond in that manner. He detests thews. And not just because of you, Mother. What I mean is that he considers all thews a kind of perversion, a distortion of what is natural. Whenever Rosie or I expressed amazement for some creation of thew-magic, he would shake his head and say,“Las muertas deben descansar.”He found all thews, their very existence, abhorrent and unnatural. I find it impossible to believe that in the spirit realm he has changed his mind.
Do you see what this means, Mother? It means someotherspirit has been haunting my steps. Some other spirit who knows thecisnesand wishes to see them struck down. Who are they? Whoever they are, they may be able to help.
