Irregular Verbs Page 7

  “I’ve changed my mind,” the boy said, turning around to get back into the passageway. It was gone, the rough stone wall showing no signs it had ever been there. “I don’t think I want to go on an adventure after all.”

  “Let’s get you off to bed,” Mr. Jacoby said, putting a paw on the boy’s shoulder. “It’ll all seem better in the morning.”

  The boy shrugged off Jacoby’s grasp. “I want to go home,” he said, his voice cracking as he began to cry. “Do you hear me? I want to go home.”

  He was thrown into the wall by the creature’s paw, and raised a hand to his cheek to feel blood running from the deep scratches there. He had not known rabbits had claws.

  There were other boys there, boys who had been brought here as he was, and in time he learned a bit about why they were there. There was a war going on, that was clear, though none of the boys knew anything about who the sides were or what the war was about. The House was a good way away from the front, but not so far that it was not occasionally rocked when one side or the other started blasting.

  The war had been going on for a long time, so long that the whole country around was a cemetery—some graves the tombs and barrows of the honoured dead, others filled-in trenches where men’s bodies lay where they died. The boys’ job was to search these graves for weapons and armour that could be used to equip the men at the front. Sometimes these men would pass through the House—though they were not all men, and not all of them were even things Calx could have imagined if he had not seen them. He had learned to avoid them all, no matter how friendly they acted or normal-looking they looked: they lived in another world, one more brutal even than the House.

  Each day every boy was sent to work for either Mr. Jacoby or Mrs. Marmalade: Mr. Jacoby supervised the boys who searched the graves, while Mrs. Marmalade oversaw the keeping of the House. At night the torches were put out and the boys allowed a few hours’ sleep, but more often than not they would stay awake a while longer, savouring the only time they had to themselves. Sometimes there were fights, as boys lashed out at each other for the slights and insults of the day. Other times they would stay awake and talk, trying to preserve what memories they could of their other lives. Most often they talked about how they had come to the House.

  A boy called Skell was talking tonight. “It was a little blue mouse that got me,” he said. “Told me my parents weren’t my real parents, said I was really missing royalty. I was supposed to be the High Prince of the Vespertine Kingdom.”

  Calx rolled over, trying as every night to find a position in which he could not feel the stone floor beneath him. “I never even asked,” he said. He sat up and looked around at the other boys: the low fire in the mess room outside cast enough light that he could see their outlines, like shadows. “The Gnome with the Silver Key just said come with me, we’ll have an adventure.”

  Rufus laughed. He was one of the biggest of the boys, with red hair and freckles, and the nearest thing Calx had to a friend: they had each defended the other more than once in barracks fights, and it was Rufus who had taught Calx to keep his distance from the visiting soldiers. “Hard sell, you were,” he said. “Mine had me at ‘Hello.’ I never supposed there was anyplace worse than home.”

  In the morning the boy went out with Mr. Jacoby. They had to leave early, before sunrise: with the more recent battlefields nearer the House picked clean, they had to range further away to the bogs, a country of streams and damp earth that had been burial grounds since long before the war. In his right hand, as usual, Mr. Jacoby held a tarnished gold fob watch; the other held the end of a long silver chain. The chain was a leash, its other end looped around the neck of a wight.

  “The wight’s sniffed out a spell, down there somewhere,” Mr. Jacoby said. There was a dark pool that might have been a flooded pit grave, or else a blast crater. “You pull it out and bring it back.”

  Calx’s eyes flicked over to the rabbit, then at the creature whose leash he held. You couldn’t look directly at a wight: they had no shape, only movement, like gesture drawings done in charcoal. They were trackers, used to sniff out forgotten magic in the old battlefields—not to mention wayward boys.

  “We’ll be waiting for you at the House,” Mr. Jacoby said. He glanced at his watch and then turned, loping away at an unhurried pace and followed by the chained wight.

  Calx peered into the pool. Its water was opaque in the near-dark, but he knew there must be a dead person in it whose arms the wight had found. He took a moment to find a dry spot near the pool and then pulled off his shirt and pants, folded them carefully and placed them in the lower branches of a willow.

  He dipped his big toe into the pool, regretting it immediately; then he closed his eyes, took a half-dozen deep breaths and then jumped feet first into the water. It was even colder than he had thought, and he shuddered as he pushed his hands up against the water, forcing himself deeper. He counted in his head, steamboats for seconds the way his mother had taught him, to know when he should give up this attempt. Before long, though, he touched something solid, freezing mud squeezing itself between his toes. He crouched down and began to feel around the bottom of the pool, looking for whatever it was the wight had scented. There was something hard beneath the mud, armour or maybe a shield—though that probably meant there were weapons as well; he would have to retrieve them all before he could go back to the House.

  His fingers found the round edge of a shield, and he began to pry it out of the mud when something brushed his arm. At first he thought it was only a branch, but a moment later he felt it closing around his wrist. Blind in the darkness, he felt in the movement of water a shape rising up out of the mud; something that felt like needles roamed over his chest, searching for his neck.

  Calx let out a gasp and it rose in a stream of bubbles. With his left hand he reached for the arm of whatever it was that had grabbed him, but there was no moving it: he might as well have been trying to shift a tree trunk as it moved upwards towards his throat. He forced himself to count to keep calm, one steamboat, two steamboat, while his other hand dug desperately through the muddy ground for a weapon.

  He felt a hot pain in his palm, drew his hand back and then immediately reached out again to find whatever had cut him. The hand was at this throat now, not that he could breathe anyway. He cut his hand again, running it down the blade until it found the hilt; his fingers, numb from the freezing mud, scrambled to get a purchase on the weapon. Three steamboat, four steamboat . . . Finally it pulled free and he swung it at the arms that held his wrist and throat. The water slowed the blade, but by finding the space between the arms he was able to get enough leverage to cut at them.

  Immediately the hands released him; as quickly as he could he drew the sword close, so its point faced straight out and its pommel touched his heart. Then he drove it forward with as much force as he could muster before launching himself upwards. There was no air left in him to make him buoyant: unable to stop himself, he opened his mouth and breathed in a mouthful of water. He felt phantom touches on his ankles as he rose, afraid with each kick that the hands would grasp him again, but finally he broke the surface. He pulled himself to the shore, kicking furiously to get himself out more quickly, and then puked the rank bog water onto the ground.

  And then it was over. The water of the pool was smooth, as though nothing whatsoever had happened. He felt an urgent need to pee; he let out a bitter laugh—he was still conditioned by a dimly remembered rule against peeing in pools—then turned back to the water. His hand, though, wouldn’t let go of the knife. Awkwardly he used his other hand, sending the spray half into the water and half on the shore, and then held the knife up to examine it more closely. It was maybe a foot and a half long, with a slight curve to the blade, and despite its time in the water the steel still shone. The edge was wickedly sharp: the cut it had made in his palm was nearly a half-inch deep, though it was no longer bleeding. The hilt fit into his palm snugly, like
a prop sword moulded to the hand of an action figure.

  With difficulty he put on his shirt—cutting his right sleeve several times as he tried to pass the sword through it—and then his pants. He looked around. It was only a few hours since dawn, but the sky was already a dull grey: the sun had been used up in some great spell earlier in the war, and now like any other vet it rose unsteadily for a few hours each morning before settling back, exhausted, onto the horizon.

  As the terror and excitement of what had happened ebbed he felt he could not take another step, never mind walk the miles between here and the House. Better to play dead, then. There was no question of actually fleeing—where would he go?—but enough boys actually did die on these jobs that Mr. Jacoby would usually wait a day or two before sending the wights out after you. There would be a beating at the end of it, of course, but it would be worth it for a day and a night or more of nothing but sleep.

  Calx looked around, casting a suspicious glance at the still surface of the pool. The spot where he had left his clothes would be the most comfortable place to sleep, but it was too exposed: aside from the wights, there were any number of things that roamed the battlefields, and even this far from the front he might still be hit by a falling blast. He wandered around for a few minutes until he found a stretch of muddy trench where a stream had been dammed or diverted, and then crouched down to make sure it was deep enough to hide him. Out of reflex he lay down on his right side, but the knife in his hand made that impossible. He rolled over and curled himself up, the blade held tight to his chest like a teddy bear.

  A shock awoke him, a painful tingling that felt as though he were grabbing the prongs of a power plug. When he opened his eyes he saw a wight nose-to-nose with him: it touched him and he felt another jolt, forcing him to scramble away from it and rise to a crouch.

  “Heel,” Mr. Jacoby said from above him, giving the creature’s chain a yank. It stretched towards Calx and then receded, coming to rest at the rabbit’s side. “Did you think you could get away from us, boy?”

  Calx shook his head silently. He was not sure how long he had been sleeping, but he did not feel any better rested.

  “Come up here. Let’s see if you at least found something.”

  He climbed up the muddy bank, keeping his distance from the wight. His arm was very heavy as he lifted the knife up to show it to Mr. Jacoby.

  “What, did you get that down in the bog? Doesn’t look like much.” He reached out his paw. “We’ll see what the wight thinks. Here, give it—”

  Then Mr. Jacoby was lying on the ground, a bright red slash where his throat had been. The wight was screaming: as soon as the rabbit’s paw released the silver leash it took off, flowing across the bogs like water, like a shadow.

  Calx looked down at the knife. He did not entirely remember killing Mr. Jacoby, but he didn’t not remember it: anyway there was his blood on the blade. He reached up with his left hand to feel his scars, which were burning on his cheek.

  He thought for a bit about what had happened. He could not escape the fact that he still had to go back to the House: as much as he hated it, it was the only place he knew. Besides, he thought, he could not abandon the other boys. Now that he had something that frightened even the wights he could get them out of there: between the scraps that each of them had overheard there must be some way to take them safely away from the fighting, or even home.

  Crouching, he wiped first one side of the knife and then the other against Mr. Jacoby’s dirty white fur, until there was no more blood and the blade shone. Then he straightened up and started back towards the House. It was still light, more or less, when he got there, so he climbed up into a barren tree and half-dozed until all the lights were out. He had snuck outside enough times, either to get away from a fight that was heating up or just to pee, that he knew which door opened silently: inside was dark as could be, but his feet knew the way to the dormitory. He found Rufus by the sound of his snoring and gently shook him awake.

  “’S still dark,” Rufus said.

  “Shh,” Calx said. “It’s me.”

  There was a brief silence. “Calx?” Rufus asked. “Gone a long time. Jacoby just done beatin’ on you?”

  “Mr. Jacoby’s dead.”

  A longer silence. “Wha’d you mean, dead?”

  “I killed him. With—” Calx took a breath. “It was easy.”

  “What sort of bloody nonsense are you talking?” Rufus said. “D’you know how much trouble we’re going to be in? When Mrs. Marmalade finds out—”

  “I’ll kill her, too, if I have to,” Calx said.

  “You’re mad.” For a moment the only sound was Rufus’s breathing, fast and ragged. “Do you really think that’s all there is to the House, those two animals? The higher-ups will find out soon enough. You don’t know, I’ve seen them come through here. I know what they’re like.”

  “You don’t understand,” Calx said. “We can be free. We can all be free.”

  “You,” Rufus said wearily, “are mad.” Calx could hear him rising to his feet. “I’m going to go tell Mrs. Marmalade what’s happened, before we all get—”

  There was no sound at all for a long time, until finally Calx reached his left hand out in front of him. He could feel Rufus’s arm: it was still warm, but it was not moving. He ran his fingers over Rufus’ form until they touched blood, hot and sticky, and he knew he could not free the boys, could not live amongst them anymore. He could not go home. He stood up and went back out into the hall, where a dim light beckoned him to the mess room. The last embers of the fire still glowed, giving off just enough light to see by. He sat at the foot of the hearth and held the knife in front of his face, tilting it up and down to see himself fully. At last he recognized his reflection: it was what he had seen, sometimes, in the shields he had polished.

  Peter stepped out the door, closing it as slowly as possible. He held his breath as the lock clicked, but after a few moments had passed he decided no-one had heard it. It was a clear October night, the stars bright above and the air just starting to get cold: he felt a little overdressed in his quilted jacket and the hiking boots he had gotten for his birthday. He wondered, too, about the bag he had packed. The Elf with the Bells on His Shoes had not said anything about needing supplies, but then he supposed you could always use a flashlight and some peanut butter sandwiches.

  The treehouse loomed above him, looking much taller than it did in the day. He threw his backpack over his shoulder and climbed up, his heart racing. He couldn’t believe he was about to meet his long-lost twin brother—but hadn’t he always known, in his heart, that it was true—that there was someone more like him than Tyler, with his smelly shoes and his messy room and his incomprehensible baseball statistics? And, of course, to learn that he and his twin were wizards—but that their powers only worked when they were together—it all made perfect sense—

  He slowed his climb as a rank smell reached him. He swallowed and pulled his head up into the treehouse. In the moonlight he could see that the Elf with the Bells on His Shoes was there—but he had been cut nearly in half, his chest and belly opened like a zipper. He was hanging from one of the thick branches that supported the treehouse.

  Before he could stop himself Peter threw up, half-digested remnants of his dinner falling on the treehouse floor. When he looked up he saw something that looked like a scarecrow stepping out of the shadows. Its tattered shirt hung on its shoulders as though they were a wire hanger; its face was white, and its hair was caked into spikes with mud and blood. The knife in the scarecrow’s hand gleamed in the moonlight, and Peter pressed his thighs together to keep from peeing himself.

  “Why did you do that?” Peter asked. “He said I was—he was going to take me away from here.”

  The scarecrow stood still for a long moment, looking at Peter as though it knew him. “I did you a favour,” it said, and then it was gone.

  WHAT YOU COULDN’T
LEAVE BEHIND

  The client looked like all the rest, dressed for travel in cargo pants and a crumpled shirt, hauling his suitcase like a ball and chain. He was wearing the confused, overwhelmed look most of them have: dragging his steps, peering into each of the shop windows as though part of him knew that he wasn’t headed anywhere good.

  “Hey, pal,” I said. He glanced around, then over in my direction with a who-me look on his face. “Yeah, you. Looking for something?”

  He frowned. “Um, I—they say I’m—”

  “Dead. Yeah. Get used to it. Know what’s coming next?”

  He shook his head. “No, they—they just said, go on to Departures.”

  I jerked my head at the chair in front of my desk, and after a moment’s hesitation he sat down. I could see the relief on his face as he let go of his suitcase. “Pretty heavy, huh,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah. You know, I don’t remember packing it. Do you think they’ll let me take it with me?”

  “Don’t worry, you packed it.” I held out my hand. “I’m Beau Sutton—call me Buddy. Please.”

  “Adams. Roger Adams.”

  “Coffee, Roger?”

  He glanced over at the Starbucks, reached into his right pocket and drew out a pair of copper coins. “I don’t think I have enough money.”

  “My treat.” I unscrewed my thermos, poured us each a cup, then drew my flask out of my pocket, waved it at him. He nodded, so I unscrewed it and poured a nip into each of our cups.

  “Thanks.” Roger blew on his coffee, took a sip. “So, uh—what do you sell, here, exactly?”

  “I don’t sell. I’m a detective.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really? What kinds of crimes do you handle?”

  “Murders, mostly.” I took a long sip of coffee, hot and strong. “Yours, for instance.”

  Okay, I admit it: I time that to hit right when they have a mouthful of coffee. “What? No, no—I wasn’t murdered. I died from—I don’t know what from, but I wasn’t murdered. I died in the hospital.”