Nieve did not dine on the charred, gristly, stinking, and still-smoking lumps of Gowl that the elderly deiler servant, Weazen, dumped onto her plate from a platter that was almost as big as Weazen herself. She refused to touch anything on the table, including the water (was it water?) and sat motionless, watching Elixibyss dig into a fresh, raw python with gusto.
“Not hungry?” Elixibyss enquired, fork aloft and waving a bloody chunk of snake in the air. “You’ll have to finish every crumb on your plate before you leave the table, you know.” She smiled. “That’s what mothers always say.”
“Not my mother,” Nieve said, watching her closely.
“Naturally.” The smile faltered a little. “I’m different.”
Nieve couldn’t agree more. How had she done it, this impersonation? Some impish trick? She supposed it could be an illusion of some sort. Or theft, an identity theft that was actually physical. But what did it mean for Sophie herself? If this . . . this creature, had taken her form – and it was so very much like her, disturbingly accurate – then where and in what form was she?
“My mother wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Nieve said.
“Oh, flies!” Elixibyss waved a hand, the one holding the knife. “Overrated. No flavour. You’re right, I definitely wouldn’t do that.” She wound a strand of snake innards around her fork like a piece of spaghetti.
“You have blood on your chin,” Nieve said.
She looked up sharply at Nieve, nettled, but then cleared her throat and said, with a little laugh, “Dear me, how gauche.” Snatching up her napkin, she gave her chin a vigorous wipe. “Daughters can be so critical.”
She wants me to believe her, Nieve thought, incredulous. They really do think I’m stupid.
“If you’re my mother,” she said, trying to sound genuinely inquisitive, “where’s Dad, and why are we here, why aren’t we at home?”
Elixibyss gripped her cutlery. “Questions, questions! Children ask so many questions, don’t they? Well, figure it out, Nieve. That fool Sutton isn’t your father . . . and Sophie isn’t your mother. She’s my sister. You’re not blind are you? You can see how perfectly I resemble her! The truth is you’re my child. Mine!” She paused to let this revelation sink it. “They were minding you for me.”
“For twelve years?”
“Time flies. I’ve been busy.” She slammed her cutlery down on the table. The knife blade quivered like a tuning fork and the fork itself spread out its tines like a hand fending off a blow. “If you must know, that meddlesome old granny of yours kept trying to stop me from fetching you.”
Good old Gran!
“So you’re saying Gran is your mother?” This was getting to be more incredible by the minute.
Elixibyss made a face. “One doesn’t always get the mother one deserves.”
Nieve made no response, only thought that somewhere, buried in this foul heap of lies, was a glimmer of truth. But what was it? Before she was born, there had been an Aunt Liz, an older sister of her mother’s, who had died, but surely not . . . .
“The boy has been very useful in that regard. Bringing you here to me . . . oh yes, I hope you didn’t think he was actually helping you.” Elixibyss cast a sly look at the covered cage. “He’ll do anything to get at that little treasure in the gold box. Anything. ”
“I don’t believe you.” Nieve followed her look. Not a whimper out of Lias, not a sound.
“Plenty of time for that, if belief is your thing. You’ll see how trustworthy he is.” She turned back to Nieve, her dark eyes – Sophie’s eyes – intent. “Oh, we’ll have such fun . . . fun and games, I can promise you that. Now that everything is progressing so nicely, we’ll be free to live where we prefer. Our ancestral home here, or abroad. Yes . . . the darker it grows, the freer we’ll be.”
“What does darkness have to do with it?”
“Because I can’t tolerate light!” She pinched her brow with her long pale fingers. “It gives me migraines. I’m highly sensitive, as I’m sure you can tell. Sunlight hurts my eyes. And it makes everything too hot! On top of that it also makes things grow, and my dear, you simply wouldn’t believe the racket things make while they’re growing. Noise, noise, noise! Dead things are much more agreeable . . . so soothing.” The Impress reached for the candy dish that Weazen had set out before her. The dish was heaped high with what Nieve had thought were mints, but now realized were pills, a lot like the kind Sophie herself took whenever she had headaches, which, now that she thought of it, had been often.
As Elixibyss stuffed a handful of headache pills into her mouth, Nieve slumped in her chair, all at once felled by exhaustion, hunger, dismay. And fear. That too, it twisted and coiled within her, as if she’d been the one to eat a snake. But she wasn’t going to let it show, wasn’t going to give this, whatever she was, the satisfaction.
“My dear child, you’re tired! Time for beddy-bye. I was so looking forward to playing some games. Checkers. Crokinole! I’m a marvel at that, a champion! Much better than you. No question, I’d slay you, blast your markers clean off the board, obliterate them, pulverize them to . . . ahem . . . but I tell you what, I’m such a softie that I’m going to let you finish Gowl tomorrow. We’ll have leftovers! You will, anyway. Weazen will show you to your room. But before you go, I have something for you. Something that will let me keep a watch over my darling girl and keep her safe. Now that I have you here, I simply can’t keep my eyes off you.”
As Nieve mounted the wide, dusty stairs, following behind Weazen, the ring that Elixibyss had slipped onto her forefinger blinked in the dark. When she raised her right hand to look at it, she saw it radiating a sickly sulfur-infused light. Presumably the kind of light the Impress could tolerate, being a “nightborn thing,” as Lias had called her. Even shadows need some light to exist, don’t they?
The instant she’d passed through the doors of the dining room, Nieve had tried to pull the ring off, but the band resisted, tightening as she tugged at it. The more she tugged, the more it tightened, squeezing her finger painfully until she gave up. It looked like the rings Sophie and Dunstan Warlock had been wearing, only this stone was even more lifelike, a moist eye with a dark, gold-flecked iris roving in its setting like a real eye in a socket. She was keenly aware of it as she climbed the stairs, cold and heavy on her finger.
Although Weazen carried a candle, and some spherals from the dining room had tagged along, she still found it difficult to make out what this part of Bone House was like. It smelled fusty and slightly rotten, like a damp and mouldering basement, and she guessed from the hollow, echoing sounds their footsteps made on the stairs that the place was empty, not much in the way of furniture or carpets. There were some portraits on the wall at least, for she saw some elaborate, gilded frames as the floating spherals crisscrossed above her head. But when she stopped to look at one in passing, holding the ring up for light, she saw that the frame contained a mirror, not a painting. The ring winked coyly at its own reflection, and gave Nieve’s finger a painful pinch when she dropped her hand.
They progressed slowly upward, Weazen huffing as she mounted the steps. Observing her creaking around during dinner, Nieve wondered at her age, and thought she had to be ancient. So old that her wrinkles had wrinkles. But not so old that her wits had deserted her. She served Elixibyss, true, but Nieve got the impression that she was in no way subservient. Like Lirk, it wouldn’t do to cross her. A glob of jam? Nice fate! Well, she wasn’t going to shed any tears over what had happened to Murdeth.
Up to this point, Weazen hadn’t uttered a word, so Nieve was surprised to hear her say, in her raspy deiler voice, “Remember, miss, she can see you, but she can’t hear you.”
They had reached the landing of the second floor. Keeping her head averted from Nieve, Weazen continued, “Times she sleeps, too, while she claims not to. This way, miss.” She turned left and advanced down a narrow hallway, while the spherals, unable to tempt Nieve to take a headfirst plunge over the banisters, whirled off in the opposite direction.
Nieve, following, whispered, “Can she see everything?”
“Most everything, depends.”
“Depends on the ring?”
“Aye, take care with that. She’s not to see us talking.”
They passed several closed doors before Weazen stopped at one, and, clutching the doorknob awkwardly with her bumpy, arthritic hand, gave it a twist. She entered the room ahead of Nieve, hobbling over to a nightstand, where she set the candle. Then, with what seemed like sleight-of-hand, she produced a small jar from out of her apron pocket, along with a waxed paper package, and slipped them into the nightstand’s drawer.
“Salve for your neck.” She addressed this to the wall. “And summat to eat.”
Nieve continued to hover on the threshold of the room, gaping at it. She had expected to be lead into an empty cell, sterile and cheerless, without any comforts whatsoever. What she saw before her almost made her weep.
The illumination was dim, but she had no doubt that what she was seeing was her room, her room from home! It had been copied down to the last detail – the desk with its peeling decals, the birds’ nest and fossils perched on the bookshelf, the tattered dictionary, the hooked rug on the hardwood floor (flooring complete with scorch mark), even the baseball bat leaning against the nightstand. Copied or stolen? The only thing that was different was an oddly-shaped rocking chair that had been shoved into one corner. And the window. Her window at home didn’t have steel bars on it.
“I . . . thanks so much.” The deiler’s offerings had been as unexpected as the room. She moved cautiously toward the bed, observing it more closely, running a hand over the comforter, her old blue dinosaur-patterned comforter from when she was little. It shouldn’t be here, even though she was desperate to dive under it and hide.
“You’re very kind, Weazen.” Unless the salve and food were poison, but she didn’t think so. “I’m starving. I promise I won’t let her see.”
“Don’t worry, miss, this room, it’s mirror-made. Except the chair, that’s real enough. Good night.”
“Is it night?” Nieve sank down onto the bed, spirits, already low, sinking with her.
“Always,” Weazen responded, face still averted as she left the room and quietly closed the door behind her.