Mak Genggang threw the ball in the air. It described a silver arc, glinting in the sunlight, but when it ought to have begun falling to the ground, it stopped, and hovered mid-air.
“Oh!” said Prunella, forgetting her thumb in her delight.
The light shining out from the orb gave the carvings on its surface the appearance of being traced in fire. The minute flowers and animals, the graceful loops and swirls, all shone forth brilliantly.
The orb began to sing in a woman’s voice: a quavering contralto, deep, throaty and rough, as though she had worn her voice thin with shouting. The words were unfamiliar. Prunella did not understand the language, but she thought suddenly:She is very angry. I wonder why?
She felt the stones stir in the pouch tied under her skirts. Prunella pressed down upon them with her hand, thinking she must be mistaken—but no, the pebbles which had been so still even at the edge of Fairy were wriggling. It was as though she had a pocket full of beetles.
“Oh!” said Prunella, now in dismay.
“There,” said Mak Genggang. “It is the blood that does it. I don’t suppose you can make out anything she is singing? The song is an enchantment, that is clear, but she might have had the sense to include a translation spell. Why, child, what are you about?”
Prunella had caught the orb out of the air. She rubbed it against her skirt, and was relieved to see the blood come off. The song began to waver. When she had wiped it clean the voice died away entirely, and the treasures went still in their pouch.
She had found the secret of awakening them.
“I don’t wish to alarm the servants,” said Prunella hurriedly. “What they would think if they came in to find a flying orb warbling at us!”
“I expect they would not think anything at all,” said Mak Genggang. “They seem idiotish creatures. Not a one of them understood me when I desired them to take me to the Society of Unnatural Philosophers.”
If Prunella thought her subterfuge had succeeded, however, she was wrong. Mak Genggang continued:
“It is only natural that you wish to keep the secret to yourself. Well, now you know how to call it forth, and may listen to your mother’s voice at your leisure.”
“My mother?” said Prunella.
“Did not you hear her?” said Mak Genggang. “It was very improvident of her not to have taught you about your singing orb. If she was going to the trouble of enspelling it so it could only be unlocked by your blood, she ought to have enciphered a message within your veins while she was at it, so you would know how to use the orb when you were old enough. It is a mother’s duty to teach her daughters about the uses of blood, particularly a magical daughter.”
“But why do you say it is my mother?” said Prunella. She could not recall, now, if there had been anything familiar in the weary voice, singing in an unknown tongue.
“Why, only a mother can store secrets in the blood of her children—that is to say, an unscrupulous witch may do anything with anyone’sblood, but that is a very evil magic, and attended by all manner of fell consequences. Did not you say you had the orb from your parents?”
“Yes,” said Prunella. “But it was my father who gave it to me.”
“A man, casting blood magics?” scoffed Mak Genggang. “You may as well say the English King loves Janda Baik, and has nothing but our good at heart! There never was a man but was frightened of blood magic—the magic in a woman’s blood, most of all. For what is more potent than a woman’s blood? I am sure mine has saved me many a time in my dealings with the spirits!”
Prunella was only half-listening. The idea that the orb belonged to her mother—that it was her mother’s voice, and no stranger’s, she had heard—was so novel that it was only with difficulty that she abstracted herself from her thoughts. Mak Genggang was repeating her name.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Prunella.
“I said, since the servants seem not to know whether their heads are in the air and their feet on the ground, or whether it ought rightly to be the other way around, you will have to take me to these thaumaturges,” said Mak Genggang. “That is what I came to tell you, before we were distracted by your orb.”
“Why do you wish to see the unnatural philosophers?” said Prunella, puzzled.
“I don’t give a fig for them,” said Mak Genggang. “It is the so-called sultan I wish to see, and the sky says he is with them. At a party, forsooth! I know what he is doing; he is begging from the British, thinking he will return laden with cannon enough to blow me and all my women to paradise. But he will find Mak Genggang is not so easily outdone! I should like to see what spirit he has for merriment once he knows I am come.”
Prunella had started to say that she did not know where the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers was, but her interest was piqued by the mention of a party. “A party, at the Society? But thaumaturges are infamous dancers, Henrietta says.”
But as she spoke she recalled the reason why Henrietta had had an opportunity to see thaumaturges dancing. It had been a great event,thegreat event of the year at the Society. Henrietta had attended it in her first Season, and she had been full of it for weeks afterwards when she returned to the school.
“The Spring Ball!” Prunella exclaimed.
“That is what the sky called it,” said Mak Genggang.
Prunella put aside the troubling mysteries of her inheritance with relief. She would return to the orb and the treasures later—for now there were more pressing concerns to be thought of.
“I long to see the Spring Ball!” she said. “Henrietta said it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen, and she has been to dozens of parties. Are you going? What shall you wear?”
