Deep Is the Fen, page 5
Wouldn’t Da have said something?
I asked him about it only once. I’d only just learned to look threadwise—the ability came on me at around the same time I got my first period. Ma told me not to tell anyone about it, and I hadn’t. Except Teddy and Sol, of course.
When I looked threadwise at Da after he came back from the Frater House, I’d seen a glimpse of that brownish shadow. Like no mettle I’d ever seen before. Then it was gone.
“Da?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
He nodded with a slightly vague smile. “A little tired, duckling.”
“Da…do they do magic? The Toadmen?”
A frown passed over my da’s face. “Of course not,” he said. “It’s just a club. A social thing. Nothing more.”
There was something in his tone that made me sure I wouldn’t get anything more from him. So I didn’t ask again. But over the years, I’ve seen it again and again. Always just a faint shadow. Always after Da comes back from the Frater House.
It’s a curse, I’m sure of it. Something the Toadmen do to their members—I don’t know why.
But I know it’s dangerous.
And now it’s coming for Teddy.
I’m overwhelmed by a need to wade into the stream and snatch the bone from the water before it can get to him. But I find that I cannot move. Instead I watch, as the roiling mettle slowly makes its way against the current, up the burbling rocky stream and into the pool, where it swirls around a few times in its own current, then starts to head inexorably toward my Teddy, whose own bright mettle reaches and twines together with it.
Nothing good happens in this place. I want nothing more than to run away and forget about Toads and bones and witches.
And then it’s done. The moon comes out from behind the clouds and I can see properly again, without looking threadwise. Teddy wades out of the pool, and I turn my back so I don’t embarrass him any further. I hear the crunch of bracken under his feet, and the heavy fall of cloth as he puts the wool coat back on. Then he’s by my side, and I turn to look up at him, the moonlight glinting in his eyes, a grin on his face.
He holds out his hand to show me the yellowing bone. It’s a delicate, narrow horseshoe, no bigger than my thumb.
“I guess I’m in,” he says.
“Is that it?” I ask as we wander up the path and out of the Hollow. “You’re a Toad now?”
“Not quite.”
I nod. “The ceremony tomorrow evening at the Frater House.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Caraway Boswell told me.”
“Why are you suddenly talking to Caraway Boswell? You hate him.”
“I know,” I say. “But he followed me around the fair all day today until I agreed to go to some family dinner with him this weekend.”
Teddy looks at me, sharply. “This weekend? And you said yes?”
I shrug. “I don’t know any details.”
“Huh.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head. “Never mind. Look, I get why you’re concerned. But you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to get into any trouble.”
“I just wish I understood why you want this so much.”
“The Toadmen know what I can do,” he says. “The charms I make in the forge. They say they can teach me more.”
“What do you mean, more? Are they going to teach you covenant magic?”
I already know the answer to this question. There’s no way what the Toadmen are doing is covenant magic—the hundred simple spells still permitted after the Treaty of Goose Spring.
He shakes his head. “There’s so much more to learn, Merry,” he says. His eyes are shining. “I want to know it all.”
We’ve left Mwsogl Hollow behind, but I feel more uneasy than ever.
Teddy’s always been interested in magic, far more so than any good Candlecott resident has any right to be. But he never seems to worry about it, the way I do. People thinking he’s a witch. Getting in trouble with auditors. I want to be a supportive friend, but I just wish he’d be more careful. I’ve tried to explain it to him—the way the thought of magic makes my skin prickle and my gut churn. The way it conjures the sound of cackling witches and Ma’s rasping breaths, just before she died.
There’s nothing in the world that scares me more than magic.
So why does Teddy want it so much?
Teddy wraps his arms around me. He’s still shivering, and his cheek is fish-cold against my forehead.
“I’m worried about you,” I mumble into his shoulder. “I just don’t see why everything has to change.”
“Change isn’t always bad,” Teddy says, his voice gentle. “Sometimes change can lead to great things.”
But he’s wrong. Nothing good will come of this. I’m sure of it.
3.
Da is in the henhouse when I wake up, fussing over his girls. Hot mash every morning, followed by dust baths and a series of enrichment activities that include a chicken swing and a xylophone. He’s chattering away to each of them, and they cluck fondly back and follow him around, starry-eyed and adoring. Chickens are Da’s gift.
The girls scatter as I approach, eyeing me suspiciously. I have no gift for chickens, and they know I’m the one who takes their precious eggs away every morning.
“Mornin’, duckling,” says Da, beaming at me. Clearly the glow from winning his tenth poultry prize hasn’t worn off yet.
I kiss him on the cheek and then turn to pull the wire egg basket off its hook.
“Da,” I ask carefully. “What made you want to become a Toadman?”
If Da is surprised that I’m asking about Toad stuff, he doesn’t show it. He reaches down to the brooder and scoops up a fluffy chick, which peeps cheerfully at him. “I’ve been a member since I was eighteen,” he says with a shrug. “All my friends joined, and so I did too.”
“What did Ma think of it?”
Da chuckles, gently stroking the chick with his thumb. “She never liked it,” he says. “Said you could never trust a Toad. But they were so good to me after she left us. Like an anchor keeping me from setting adrift.”
After Ma fainted that first time, she grew weak and pale. I could see with my thread sight that her mettle was growing dull and thin.
“It’s the witch’s curse,” she muttered, over and over. “Nothing to be done.”
Then one day I went up to bring her a cup of tea and I knew, straightaway, that she was gone. Her mettle was still there, but it was different. Broken, her strings snapped. Not living mettle anymore. It was the mettle of something that was once living. The mettle of memory. Of significance. Of things passed. Ma was gone.
I remember how lost Da was without her. How his eyes didn’t crinkle in a smile, not even when he was in the chook shed. He turned all gray and limp, like a stranded jellyfish. But he smiled when he came back from the Frater House. It felt like being with his friends brought a little life back into him. So I kept my promise to Ma and didn’t tell him about my thread sight. Didn’t tell him about the brown shadows I saw around his mettle.
The chick in Da’s hand has fallen asleep, its little head snuggled into the crook between his finger and thumb. The mother hen Gwenhwyfach watches on and clucks approvingly.
I take the basket over to the nesting boxes and grope around for eggs.
“Were you scared to join?” I ask over my shoulder. “I hear the initiation ritual is pretty intense.”
Da’s forehead crinkles apologetically. “You know I can’t talk about that, duckling.”
“You don’t need to tell me what happened,” I say, sliding two pale blue eggs into the basket. “I just want to know if you were scared.”
Da’s frown deepens, and he peers at me searchingly. “Who’s been talking to you about Toads?” he asks.
“Caraway Boswell,” I say.
The next nesting box is occupied by Gliten, a gorgeous golden-laced Barnevelder with a sharp eye and an even sharper beak. She growls at me in a most unchickenish way.
“You’d best keep away from that one,” Da says.
“Gliten?” I ask. “Or Caraway?”
If Da has dirt on Caraway, I want to hear it.
Da chuckles. “Gliten is all bark and no bite. And she lays a lovely speckled egg.”
I steel myself and reach under Gliten’s fluffy bottom, and am unsurprised to find that Gliten’s bite is, in fact, just as bad as her bark. I swear and suck on the injured finger.
Dad tsks at my language. “You’ll turn the eggs rotten with that tongue.”
“Tell that to Gliten,” I say, glaring resentfully at the chicken, who glares right back.
Da slides a hand under Gliten to retrieve her eggs. Of course for Da, Gliten is as calm and serene as the moon.
Da carefully places the eggs in my basket, and I take a moment to admire them all together. Brown speckles, shell pink, pure white and pale blue. My stomach rumbles.
“You were going to tell me why Caraway Boswell is an untrustworthy weasel,” I remind Da.
He takes the basket from me. “I don’t think I was,” he says. “What was it that caused that spat between you yesterday?”
My cheeks burn with shame as I relive it. I close my eyes and see the sardonic lift of Caraway’s eyebrow as he licked jam and cream from his top lip.
“Nothing,” I mutter. “Or at least, nothing important.”
“It didn’t look like nothing.”
“He started it.”
Da’s expression grows serious for a moment. “The Boswells are a powerful family,” he says. “Best not get on their bad side.”
Thurmond Boswell is the director of thaumaturgy at Ilium, the biggest magical corporation in the country. Powerful doesn’t even begin to cover it. Perhaps agreeing to go to the Boswell family dinner wasn’t the best idea.
“Is Caraway’s father a Toad too?” I ask.
Da doesn’t answer. “I know Caraway might not be easy to get along with, my love. But if you can’t speak to him without getting into a row for the whole town to witness, it might be best if you just stay away from him.”
I had visited Goody Bhreagh the previous afternoon. Brought her a basket with eggs and flowers and a bottle of elderberry wine. I’d apologized profusely, and she had been gracious and kind, which made me feel even more wretched.
“I’m sorry I ruined your big moment, Da,” I say in a small voice.
Da shrugs. “You didn’t,” he says. “The only moment I cared about was seeing Peggy Ross’s face when I unfurled Bran the Blessed’s tail.”
He chuckles at the memory, and I decide that he’s right. Caraway is bad news, and I’m definitely not going to his family dinner. Whatever sneaky, weasel reason he has for wanting me there, it can’t be for my benefit.
In the last nesting box, Cigfa, a white silkie, is sitting proudly on a clutch of nine eggs.
“How’s she doing?” I ask Da.
“Good,” he replies. “As far as I can tell.”
He crouches down next to her and gently strokes her fluffy feathers. She makes a contented croaking noise.
You can candle an egg with a torch in a dark room to see the baby chick developing, but I can tell a lot more from looking at the mettle. The insides of the eggs are swirling with it, coalescing around a dense knot of silver about the size of a walnut. I smile to myself. Of the nine eggs, eight are developing well—three cocks and five pullets. But in one, the mettle has turned limp and thin. It’s still there—there is mettle in dead things too, in rocks and bones and dry twigs. But it’s different, the way that Ma’s was on the day I found her in her bed.
Once I figured out what I was looking for, it became easy to tell a male chick from a female, just by looking at the mettle. There’s a different cast to it, a different energy. It’s a useful trick, especially for breeds that are difficult to sex. With many, we wouldn’t know otherwise until a bird either crowed or laid an egg. Da reckons I have a knack for chicks. I can’t tell him how I really know.
It’s harder for humans, of course. To see what makes us male or female or something else entirely. It’s complicated—everything about our mettle is complicated. Take Sol, for instance. He was born with parts that made his parents think he was a girl, and they treated him like one until he was old enough to explain otherwise. But when I look at Sol’s mettle, I can see that he is a boy. Perhaps if his parents had been able to see him threadwise, they might have understood him a little better. Even Teddy, who is as masculine as they come, is more complicated than he seems on the outside. The kind of affinity he has for magic—it almost never shows up in men.
“Time for breakfast, I think,” Da says, straightening up. “What do you feel like?”
I laugh in response, because he already knows the answer. In our house, we eat a lot of eggs.
“Will you be home for dinner tonight?” I ask.
Da shakes his head. “No, duckling. You’ll be okay on your own?”
“Of course.”
I don’t need to ask him where he’ll be going. There’s only one place that Da goes. It’s the same place that Teddy will be going tonight.
* * *
—
THE PHONE RINGS AS we’re eating our eggs.
Da answers, then hands the phone to me wordlessly.
“Hello?” I say into the receiver.
“Morgan.” Caraway’s voice is no less annoying through a telephone. “As promised, I’m calling with details for this weekend.”
I glance at Da, then slide around the corner so he can’t hear. “Deal’s off,” I tell Caraway. “Teddy is still joining the Toads.”
There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. “I held up my end,” he says at last. “I told you what you needed to know. If you couldn’t pull it off, that’s your problem.”
I remember what Da said.
It might be best if you just stay away from him.
“The deal,” I remind Caraway, “was for you to tell me how to stop Teddy from joining the Toads. What you told me didn’t stop him, so I will not be going to your family dinner.”
Another long silence. Then a sigh. “Meet me outside the Frater House at seven,” he says, and the line goes dead.
I return to the kitchen and sit back down at the table.
“What was that about?” Da asks.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Just school stuff.”
* * *
—
THE FRATER HOUSE CROUCHES on the edge of town, squat, ugly and the color of a dried-up puddle. Like a toad, I guess. It has no windows, because good people forbid anyone should be able to get a glimpse inside. Six stone steps lead up to a bare wooden door under a portico supported by two gray columns. The carved stone crest of the Toadmen sits at the top of the portico—the Ghost Toad and the Howling Toad flanking the crowned king.
Caraway is nowhere to be seen.
I’m not really sure I should be here at all. Teddy would be furious. He asked me to trust him, and I do. I just don’t trust the Toadmen.
“No girls allowed, Morgan.”
I reply without turning around. “Bite me, Boswell.”
Caraway is dressed in the black garment that all the Toads wear when they hang out—buttoned broadcloth from neck to ankle, with frilled white sleeves spilling out from the shoulders. His cuffs are heavily embroidered and beaded with intricate designs. His head is bare of the silly bonnet that I’ve seen them wear, and it’s probably the glamour, but he somehow manages to make the silly robe look elegant.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Am I going to burst in on Teddy’s initiation ceremony like a jilted lover at a wedding?”
Caraway raises an eyebrow. “You won’t stop the initiation,” he says. “If he caught the bone last night, everything else is just a formality.”
“Then why am I here?”
“I want you to see what they do. So you understand.”
I stare at him. “You…just want me to watch?”
He nods.
“But how? You just said girls aren’t allowed.”
He winks at me. “There’s a back door,” he says. “Leads into the kitchen. Go through and head down the corridor at the end. There’ll be some big wooden doors. Go past them and through the next door on the right. I’ll meet you there.”
I bite my lip. I want to see inside the Frater House. I always have. Then I’d know for sure what kind of shady business the Toads are up to. But…Teddy will be mad if he finds out.
It’s like Caraway can read my thoughts. “Take this,” he says, pressing a plastic packet into my hand. “Nobody needs to know you’re there.”
Then he glides past me and up the stone steps. His hand on the doorknob, he hesitates a moment, and then says over his shoulder, “Be careful.”
Then he disappears inside.
I look down at the plastic packet.
It’s a glamour patch. Hush is stamped across the front, with An Ilium Product underneath in smaller letters.
We’re simple, here in Candlecott. Glamour patches are for city folk—people who shop at giant malls and wear heeled shoes and do all sorts of other ridiculous things to pretend they’re anyone but who they truly are. I haven’t worn a patch since I was little, when you’d get novelty ones in children’s birthday party bags.
I peel it open, remove the plastic backing, then stick the patch onto my bicep, underneath the sleeve of my T-shirt. I don’t feel any different, but I’m sure it’s working, making me unobtrusive, so that I blend right into the background of any scene.
