CANIS MINOR
CANIS MINOR
WHERE ARE THE BOWS?”
“Bows?” Hetty echoed, her bland smile fading at the girl’s words.
Making dresses for spoiled young misses, especially ones visiting from the South, was not something she wanted to do anymore.
But Hetty needed money. She needed any money she could slip into her pocket if she was going to make another trip to find her sister. This dress that the little miss wanted was worth three times Hetty’s regular work. For that much money, Hetty would remake the dress in a night—but not with bows.
“There are no bows. They should be there. Not big ones, but here and here.” Clarice pointed to places that would ruin the elegant lines of the dress.
The young miss looked at Hetty expectantly.
Hetty cleared her throat, searching for the words that wouldn’t get her tossed out of the hotel room.
“They wouldn’t look good there,” she said finally.
“You have no imagination for that, clearly.” Clarice took her wand and waved it in the air. Garish orange bows appeared like mushrooms on the bodice and underskirt. “Ah, much better.”
“I suppose this could—” Hetty began.
“I don’t like this color.” Clarice held up the underskirt. “It’s too dark. It should be lighter. How about pink?”
“The underskirt is to complement . . .”
“There is pink in the trimming.”
“To tease out the colors!”
Clarice swung her wand around. The tip was near enough to Hetty’s face that she could see the grooves in the wood.
Hetty’s words caught in her throat, for this was what her old mistress did before she activated the collar around Hetty’s neck.
It took all of Hetty’s strength to keep from pressing a hand to her neck to prove the metal ring was long gone and only her scars remained.
“This is not what I wanted.” Clarice’s voice pulled Hetty out of her memories. The girl tapped her wand on the bodice. “Did you put any of your Primal magic in this?”
“No,” Hetty lied, urged on by a stab of anger at hearing the offensive name for Celestial magic. There was magic in the stitches, but only a basic preservation charm, to keep the color from fading and strengthen against minor tears. Now she wished she hadn’t even bothered.
“She wouldn’t do such a thing.” Clarice’s Yankee cousin, Elspeth, finally looked up from her book. Her reassuring smile did not have an audience. If there was anyone to blame for Hetty being in this room at all, it would be Elspeth. The older girl fancied herself an abolitionist simply because her family hadn’t owned slaves since her grandfather freed them in his will. When Hetty arrived at the Grand Laurel Hotel, Elspeth led her inside through the front doors and paraded Hetty about to the scandal of the other hotel guests. The girl’s antics even drew the attention of the hotel staff, as well as the servants attending to their employers.
“Primal magic is harmless,” Elspeth said. “It can’t be complicated, since the practitioners hardly have the wits to make it do anything. They learned magic from us, after all. None of the Africans I’ve seen at the zoo know anything like this.”
“What do you know? I’ve seen them in my daddy’s fields, jumping and spinning around—they’re doing something.” Clarice turned to Hetty. “I hear there is magic that lets you communicate with the dead! Can you do that?”
The girl beamed at Hetty, and Hetty promptly forgot all about bows and dresses.
She was free, Hetty reminded herself. She had run away and made it to freedom. She returned to the South by her own choice and made it back up north with others, safe and sound. She’d lost everything and forged a new life. The words of this spoiled young miss were nothing compared to all of that.
“There is a way.” Hetty dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “But it’s a taboo.”
Clarice’s eyes grew as round as the moon. “You can talk to the dead?”
Hetty clutched her hands to her chest and made a show of rubbing them over and over, as if she were afraid to do even that. “Miss Reeves, I shouldn’t say such things. It ain’t proper. Or safe.”
Clarice’s chin went up. “You will try. If you want to be paid.”
“Then all I can say . . .” Hetty kept her speech stumbling, to make it seem like she was terrified of her own words. “All I can rightly say is, don’t go whistling by a grave. Any kind of noise stirs bones, but whistling calls to them. It brings them here. And they want to hear what you have to say. Try not to do it while wearing another’s shoes.”
Clarice swallowed and her eyes trailed down to the dainty things on her feet. The same shoes Hetty had overheard belonged to the girl’s dead sister.
“Shoes?” Clarice said in a very tiny voice.
“Anything, really. But shoes most of all. Because they tell where you have been and what you have done.”
Hetty might have said more to spook the girls to next Tuesday, but a door snapped open and a maid came back into the room.
It was Sarah, an enslaved woman not much older than Hetty. Wearing a homespun dress dyed ink black, and white gloves. Her hair was hidden under a cap. But the first thing anyone saw about her was the silver collar around her neck.
“Miss, Mr. Adam Thompson is here—”
Clarice let out a squeal, far away from the fright she had been in moments before. The girl bounded toward her cousin.
“I knew he would show up!” Clarice gleefully clapped her hands together. “I told you he would!”
“Maybe he is here to see me!” Elspeth teased.
“Well, if he is, he’ll soon cast favor to me.” Clarice batted her eyes. Moving toward the door, both girls had already forgotten about Hetty, the dress, and the payment for Hetty’s work.
Hetty thought of calling after them, but knew better.
She would be expected to wait if she wanted her money. The silly girl probably even expected the bows to be put in place in her absence.
Bows! Those ugly things!
Hetty snapped her fingers.
The eyesores vanished in a flash of light.
A barely suppressed squeak behind Hetty reminded her that she was not completely alone.
Sarah had stopped tidying the room. Her eyes were locked on Hetty as her hand clenched around a dusting rag.
Hetty had waited all week for this gaze.
It was the reason she stretched the work on the dress and suffered the chatter of the young misses.
“I’d never seen magic like that,” Sarah whispered. “So quick, so bright. I guess that’s what you learn up here.”
“No, I taught myself.” Hetty pulled at her shirt collar, revealing the ring of scarred flesh. Scars that came not from just wearing a collar but from the punishments she suffered from using magic.
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Yes,” Hetty said, answering the unspoken question. “I was just like you. Do you want to be like me?”
Hope flared in Sarah’s eyes, but it died like rain dripping on a candle. “I can’t.”
“You can. You can choose. I have friends in place ready to help.”
Again hope flared before Sarah shook her head. “It’s not just me.”
“Family,” Hetty said with sudden understanding.
“My babies.”
“Back on the Reeves Plantation?”
“At a nearby farm, close enough I can walk on Sundays to see them. Two girls. If I leave with you, I’ll never have them in my arms again.”
“Not if we bring them to you.” The promise rolled off Hetty’s tongue without a moment’s thought. “The little heiress is here for how long?”
“Quite some time. There was a scandal back home,” Sarah said faintly.
“Then you stay, we bring back your children, and then we all leave together.”
Sarah gazed at Hetty with a dizzying amount of disbelief. “Is that possible?”
“As possible as the sun rising the next morning!”
On that note, Hetty slipped out the room.
She found the laundry cart that Darlene Needham had left for her. Taking ahold of it, Hetty pushed the cart toward the lift and squeezed it and herself inside.
When the lift arrived in the laundry room, Hetty steered the empty cart around the corner. Darlene stood just out of sight, folding and sorting linen. She didn’t stop even as Hetty fell into place next to her.
Darlene lifted the topmost layer of clothes. After staring down at the empty cart, she glared up at Hetty as if Hetty had ripped a lace shawl in half in front of her.
“Where is she?” Darlene asked.
“She has children,” Hetty whispered. “She won’t leave without them. I promised to bring them north.”
Darlene cut her eyes at Hetty. “Bernice won’t like this. It’s not the plan.”
“Who cares what she’s planning. I don’t work for her.”
“I do. Why do you think I’m working in this hotel? I was put in place to help any servants who want to flee bondage. And it’s not an easy task. It takes careful planning. There are things in place right now, and your foolish promise has ruined everything.”
“Not yet.”
Darlene was not impressed. “If we wait even ten days there might be trouble.”
“I’ll bring her children back in less time.”
“Will you?” Darlene looked over the rim of her glasses, giving Hetty the same dismissive glance she made when Mrs. Evans first brought Hetty to properly meet the rest of the Vigilance Society members. The one that dismissed Hetty’s adventures as luck and saw her as a nuisance instead of help. “You’re only here to gain information about your sister. Are you saying if you learn about her location today, you’ll still help Sarah?”
“That is an unkind question!”
“Maybe, but it’s a fair one. Don’t worry.” Darlene wrenched control of the cart from Hetty. “Someone else will take care of this.”
Someone probably could, but when Hetty had made that promise it wasn’t on a whim. She was going to bring Sarah’s children back and get the family to freedom. Hetty just needed assistance, and from someone more helpful than Darlene Needham.
A jingling bell hanging above the blacksmith’s door announced Hetty’s entrance.
“Back here. If it’s urgent I can—” Benjy looked up from the bench and his face folded into a scowl. “What do you want?”
“How do you know I’m not just here to talk?” Hetty came to a stop at the table, eyes on the items waiting their turn to be fixed.
Benjy waggled the hammer in his hand at her, irritation coming off of him in waves. “You don’t turn up here without asking for some sort of favor.”
“I do not!” Hetty pouted.
Benjy shut his eyes, grumbling like an old man. “I don’t have time for your nonsense today!”
Although he was merely the blacksmith’s apprentice, Benjy had the run of the shop overseeing all the fixes and creations that came out of the forge. The only problem was that no matter how good his work was, he didn’t look like the blacksmith people expected. Too young, too easily distracted, and too willing to give opinions on things no one cared about.
Mrs. Evans had said something about him having potential, whatever that meant. Hetty didn’t dare ask. The older woman had this funny notion in her head to play matchmaker. Which should have been annoying, but Mrs. Evans was all gentle about it, considering anyone else would have forced them to get married when they returned to Philadelphia after months of traveling together. Instead, Mrs. Evans only teased that Benjy might be sweet on her. But Hetty had her doubts about that, since nearly every time they talked he shooed her away like an annoying fly.
Hetty tapped the lantern sitting on the table as she tried to figure out the right words. She had only one chance to ask this right before he ripped her words apart. “It’s not a favor but a question—”
“Don’t touch that!”
Hetty made a show of moving her hands away and then turned them over. The Libra star sigil flashed and the lantern floated into the air next to her.
She looked at him pointedly, and he said nothing but gave her a look that could curdle milk.
“I need your help,” Hetty said as she placed the lantern back on the table. “There is a woman who needs passage north. It’s been arranged for her, but she won’t leave without her children. They are down in Tennessee. I need to get there and back here in ten days.”
“You want my help?” he scoffed, turning to a dented teakettle. He swung his hammer down on it hard enough that the clash rang in the air. “Take a train.” He went on to strike the poor teakettle a few more times, the resounding clangs taking the space of whatever angry words he had. Hetty sighed, uncertain if this was better than being fussed at.
Then he stopped mid-swing. “No, that won’t work. You need to move quickly and quietly. The children are blackmail.” He blinked. “Who is this woman that you would press on the heels of time for such a task?”
“Someone who needs help,” Hetty said. Seeing his skeptical expression, she added, “If I do this, I’ll get information about my sister.”
“That’s your objective with everything,” Benjy said. But he was no longer thinking about her as he spoke, having moved on to the problem at hand. “I think I might know a way to get there in less time. You won’t like it, though.”
“I doubt that.”
Instead of explaining further, he pointed upward.
Hetty tilted her head back. Above them was a basket the size of a wagon hanging from the ceiling. There was something metal next to it that looked like a lantern. But it was only when Hetty saw the fabric tied up next to it that she realized what it was.
“An air balloon!” Hetty exclaimed. “Did you steal this? No, I don’t care if you did! How fast does it travel?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking if it’s safe?” Benjy asked. “Or if it works?”
“If you put it together it has to work, and as for being safe, well, I trust you.”
He blinked, and for a moment Hetty thought she’d said the wrong thing.
It was occurring to her that in her eagerness to keep her promise to Sarah Jacobs and prove Darlene wrong, she forgot one small thing.
She hadn’t asked if he wanted to take part.
It was one thing to ask him for ideas. Quite another to ask for more help than that.
But she couldn’t operate this air balloon on her own. And if she was being honest, she couldn’t head back south on her own either. Nor did she want to.
It was easier to have someone with her to watch the road and guard her back, but she couldn’t ask. Not when he hadn’t been brought into the fold with the Vigilance Society. Not when they weren’t truly friends.
Then, to her surprise, something that never happened before occurred: he smiled.
“Safe isn’t quite the word I’d use, but it will fly,” Benjy said. “There is a small hole in the balloon envelope. If you sew it up, we can leave by nightfall.”