A Most Magical Girl Read online

  Annabel removed her boots and stockings and dress. She opened her traveling trunk and found her nightdress and her brush. There lay all her pretty things, all the things from her other life. Her sweet straw bonnets and her good dresses. She looked at them sadly. Outside, she could hear London: horses’ hooves and carriage wheels, the lowing of cattle and the rumble of trains, ringing bells and shrieks of laughter, and, somewhere, someone wailing.

  She found her little jewelry box. It was black, highly lacquered, and once, a long time ago, Annabel had had a vision in it.

  You have a secret you try to keep from the world.

  In the black lacquered box she had seen a funeral procession on gray streets, with a small coffin carried by old men, and she had watched it with interest for some time. She remembered it because she had told her mother, who had clutched Annabel’s tiny hands.

  “Annabel, close your eyes if you see such things,” she had demanded. “Close your eyes—promise me—and turn away.”

  She opened the box now in the little attic room. Inside winked her mother’s diamond brooch. It was star-shaped and glittered on the blue velvet. It made her feel so sad that she could not breathe. Her mother had given it to her just before she left.

  “But why?” Annabel had cried. “You don’t need to send me away. I promise I won’t look in puddles again. I promise.”

  But her mother had shaken her head.

  “I will send word when I am to return,” she replied, and took Annabel’s pretty face in her hands. “Be brave.”

  “Mother,” Annabel said now.

  The candle dipped its little head.

  Annabel took the star brooch from its box and blew out the flame. She lay down on the bed, and the wind and rain crashed against the little window. She thought of her long-dead father and how he had not been at all who he was meant to be. It hurt her head, so she wondered about the strange girl Kitty instead. She hoped she was somewhere safe and dry. Then she held the star brooch to her cheek and closed her eyes.

  The wild girl did not sleep at first. The weather lifted her spirits. The wind banged and clamored and called up and down the lanes. The world was restless and full of speaking.

  Kitty walked. She walked and rested and walked again. She knew all the cobbled streets and the grand thoroughfares. She knew all the worn Thames steps and all the jagged alleyways. She listened as she went. She could hear all of London on a night like this: the taverns and theaters, the organ-grinders and the balladeers, and, hidden in amongst these sounds, a wizard singing to the rain and the wild lamenting of faeries.

  She wanted to listen to the trees again. The old willow in Regent’s Park, thrashing its head, and the grand old lady hornbeam in Knightsbridge, whispering and shivering in her leaves. As the moon came up and peeked its head through the rain clouds, the great yew in Totteridge called far across the streets to the yew in Bromley, its old voice full of dirt and rain and greenery. She knew they were worried. Something was afoot, and she thought of what it might be as she walked. A great fire or a flood or a dragon coming. It had happened before. She knew such things.

  She crept into Highgate Cemetery. The place was full of thieves, but she was swift and quiet in her worn little boots. She took refuge in a mausoleum and waited. She could smell the faeries, even in the rain. They smelled of honey, but she knew they were not sweet. They were nothing like the way people drew them or carved them into pretty statues. They spat and wailed and sang, with their sticky dresses bulging over their swollen little bellies and their nails sharp as sewing needles. Everything about them was enough to vex you. She would wait for near dawn, when they were drowsy.

  She thought of Miss Henrietta’s new girl, the pretty one who saw things in water. She didn’t look at all magical or smell it, that one. She had a strange smell, that Annabel, blank as a page without a story on it yet or like sunlight and clean sheets. And pretending she saw nothing when she saw something, all right—something that made her turn white and nearly wet her pants! Kitty smiled in the dark at the thought of it and then began to hum a little song that she had taught herself.

  It started deep down in her toes, and she hummed it up and coughed a heart light from her mouth. Kitty was full of magic that she did not understand. The light was blue, daylight blue, and it pleased her, hovering there all shimmering and spittle-covered in the dark. It was the size of her fist, and she blew it up and down with her breath, just above her nose.

  She called them heart lights because they came from inside her, and the place they came from seemed near her heart.

  She knew they were part of her. Had always known it.

  Part of what was inside her—not her shell, which she knew would one day break in the cold and rain. The outside of her would break like the beetle shells she found and kept or the dried body of a blackbird chick fallen from its nest but that she knew was somewhere else, still flying. Her heart light would not die.

  She swallowed her heart light, and the mausoleum grew dark. She closed her eyes to listen to the rain.

  By the time the wand was empty of its power, Mr. Angel had raised three shadowlings. They swept up the stairwell after him, softly rustling and whispering. In the machine room he commanded them to be still. They were just as his ancient books described: dreadful things, made of nothing yet brimming with wickedness, sleeping shadows brought to life with his dark magic.

  They tittered and hissed when he came too close.

  They changed their shapes—tall and thin one minute, stout the next. They joined together in the shape of a great tall man and towered over him so that he shivered.

  “Down!” he yelled, and they were three again in an instant.

  They were made of shadow, some parts ink black, others gray. In their darkness there were yawning mouths and empty eyes. On their fingers there were solid silvery claws. They showed them to Mr. Angel; they rattled and clacked them at him, rustled and hushed. When he reached out to touch one, his hand felt nothing, and they made an angry sound like the wind in long grass.

  “Pass through the keyhole,” he commanded of one, which sped off and slipped itself small through the tiny space, then returned again.

  He took his top hat from the chair. He threw it upward and shouted, “Destroy!”

  They were upon it, shredding it with their empty gray mouths and their wicked clicking claws in seconds. A fine film of hat remains drifted slowly to the floor.

  The machine made a loud disgruntled noise behind him. It was hungry. It huffed a loud sigh with its bellows, and Mr. Angel smiled his strange lopsided smile.

  “Follow,” he said to the shadowlings, who clung together now in a black pile. They seemed fearful of the thing.

  Mr. Angel went slowly up the staircase that wrapped about the moon funnel and ended in a small platform on the roof. Morning had come, and the shadowlings shrank themselves to hide in the folds of his cloak. He gazed out over the rooftops, at all the mean streets scratched upon the poor earth for miles and miles. All the inns and taverns and churches. All the poorhouses and asylums. The factories retched their first smoke into the sky. The great looms jiggered and clacked.

  He felt the shadowlings shiver against him.

  “When my wand is filled again, I will raise more of you,” he said. “And in two days’ time, at full moon, I will have an army. It will be the end of good magic. We will take the city.”

  “A young lady rises early, opens her windows, and delights in the pleasures of an industrious day.”

  —Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

  Annabel chose her rosebud-patterned town dress, which Isabelle Rutherford had said was the prettiest dress in the whole world. It had dainty short lace-edged sleeves, and it fastened with pearl buttons. Each button was a challenge. She was used to Mercy buttoning and tying and straightening and brushing. She had never once, in all her life, dressed herself.

  She braided her hair, all the ringlets quite fallen out. There was no looking glass. When she opened the door, s
he found Miss Henrietta waiting for her on the landing. She scowled at Annabel’s choice of dress. She scowled even harder when Annabel smiled as pleasantly as she could.

  “We do not lie in bed once the sun is up,” said Miss Henrietta Vine. “There are chores to be done, chamber pots to be emptied.”

  Annabel was to tiptoe into Miss Henrietta’s room to empty her chamber pot in the mornings. Miss Henrietta showed her how. She was not to make a sound. No loud clanking or clinking or sloshing. It seemed Miss Henrietta Vine could not tolerate even a small amount of sloshing. Annabel wondered after Miss Estella. Where was she, and who emptied her chamber pot?

  “Miss Estella has her maid, Tatty,” said Miss Henrietta, even though Annabel had not uttered a word.

  In the kitchen Miss Henrietta instructed her quietly on the starting of the fire and the making of the special yellow tea. All these tasks were to be performed silently in the first pale light of dawn.

  “Now you must gather up my dresses and take them to my dresser,” Miss Henrietta said. Annabel looked at them, faintly glowing where they were draped. “I will not be able to wear them for some time. At least, not until the magic diminishes.”

  Annabel wondered what would happen if Miss Henrietta put one on now. Perhaps she would start to float. Perhaps her feet would lift off the ground and there would be nothing she could do about it. Perhaps she would float out the back door and up into the sky. That would be Miss Henrietta gone, floating away over London, never to be seen again.

  “You are loud and reckless with your thoughts!” shouted Miss Henrietta, again as though Annabel had spoken the words. She shouted so loud that Annabel jumped on the spot, her cheeks flushing, and she began to quickly gather up the dresses. They were warm from their night beside the fire, and she burrowed her hands into the pile as she carried them up the stairs.

  After the dresses had been folded and put away into drawers, there was sweeping to be done in the shop.

  “Goodness me, child,” said Miss Henrietta when Annabel began to dab at the floor. “Have you never swept before?”

  “I h-h-have,” stammered Annabel.

  She hadn’t, except once at Miss Finch’s Academy for Young Ladies, when she’d played a poor girl in a play, which she was sure didn’t really count.

  “Here,” said Miss Henrietta, showing Annabel how to sweep.

  The shop was cluttered, but the marble floor was surprisingly clean. Miss Henrietta made a great show of emptying the dustpan, which contained nothing.

  “And when you are done,” she continued, “you will turn the sign over and open the door to let some air and sunshine in.”

  Annabel did as she was told, although she was quite certain that no one would ever visit the horrid little shop. She looked at the front window and at the golden letters, which from inside spelled Annabel said the words to herself, silently, and thought they sounded quite nice backward. There was indeed sunshine, and it made her feel happy when she opened the door.

  “Bearberry leaf,” said Miss Henrietta when Annabel had finished.

  “Bearberry leaf?” said Annabel.

  Miss Henrietta opened a small drawer in one of the specimen cabinets and extracted a box containing several plum-green leaves. She motioned for Annabel to stand beside her at the counter and handed her gold forceps.

  “Listen well,” said Miss Henrietta. “Bearberry leaf is used for many things, for diseases of the bladder and for water-logged hearts and also for some minor skin complaints. Some say if you burn it and grind it and sprinkle it on your shoes, it will take you to your one true love. I personally don’t believe such nonsense. The leaf is also used by certain therianthropes, and there is a Mr. Huxley, a member of the society, who lives in Hampstead. He requires a small amount on a regular basis so that he may change himself into a wolf. Today is the day I prepare Mr. Huxley’s bearberry leaf.”

  Annabel, poised with the gold forceps in her hand, laughed nervously.

  “It is no laughing matter,” said Miss Henrietta. “Today is the third Thursday of the month, and that is the day that I must deliver him his new supply. He is old, like all of us in the Great & Benevolent Magical Society, Annabel. It will not do to keep him waiting if there is a wolf inside him to be let out.

  “Take five of the plumpest leaves,” she continued. “These have come by steamer from a very special tree in Manitoba, via Nova Scotia, and cost Mr. Huxley not much less than the price of gold, so it will not do for one to be dropped on the floor or squeezed too hard by the forceps.”

  Annabel looked at the leaves. They seemed too fresh to have come all that way. Miss Henrietta was tricking her. It was some kind of test—she was waiting to see what Annabel would do.

  “When I am gone to deliver Mr. Huxley’s parcel, sit behind the counter and touch nothing,” said Miss Henrietta. Annabel thought Miss Henrietta’s voice sounded strange. It was lower and croakier than normal. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Miss Henrietta,” said Annabel.

  Miss Henrietta watched her with her brilliant blue eyes.

  She did not look impressed. There was a new chill in the room. Miss Henrietta took the forceps, which hung limply in Annabel’s hand, and plucked up five leaves. She folded them quickly into a parcel and tied them with string. Annabel looked away from those eyes and at Miss Henrietta’s hands and then at her dress, which was dark and shiny and suddenly rustling. It was a strange noise, and it filled her ears. Annabel wanted to look away from the dress, back to her great-aunt’s eyes, but found she couldn’t.

  She looked at the dress, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not shift her gaze. The noise of it, now a cracking and a chafing, grew. She wanted to cover her ears. Feathers, she thought, for that was what she saw instead of dress: midnight-black feathers. A wing stretched and then folded, and one of the black buttons of Miss Henrietta’s dress was now a wild black eye watching her intently, curiously.

  Annabel cried out, stumbled backward. There was a crow. Its claws clacked on the countertop, and it turned its head to watch her with its dark eye. Before Annabel could scream, it picked up the parcel in its beak and flew swiftly through the open door. It sailed across the street and up into the sky.

  Black feathers. Annabel’s only coherent thought. Black feathers. She wanted her old life back. She wanted to rush out of the shop. She wanted to run until her familiar pretty streets appeared. She wanted her old self back, who only had to worry about her dresses and whether she would have sugary apple cake or custard pie for pudding. She would have everything back the way it was and never look in a puddle again. Her eyes stung with tears, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not stop her bottom lip from trembling. It was wrong to cry, but she put her head in her hands and began to weep.

  There were many ways a young lady might stop tears, and she had learned them all at Miss Finch’s Academy for Young Ladies. She could fix her gaze on some distant object; she could press her handkerchief delicately to her nose and think of a field of flowers. She did neither of these things. She sat on the stool and cried loudly because her life was terrible. She cried because since arriving she had washed clothes and swept floors and been shouted at. She cried because her mother had sent her to this horrid little shop. She cried because her dead father hadn’t been a sea captain after all, even though at night her mother had told her stories about his seafaring life. She cried because Miss Henrietta Vine was the meanest relative a girl could ever have and she had just turned into a crow.

  She let the tears drip off her nose. She was Miss Finch’s worst nightmare. But she felt better for crying, and gradually the tears lessened. She wiped her cheeks with her hand because she had forgotten her handkerchief. She sat on the stool and swung her legs. It was strange that young ladies should never cry, she thought, when crying actually made them feel better. Crying was considered to be ugly, yet her limbs felt heavy now, pleasantly heavy, and she felt calmer.

  She looked at the wand lying on the countertop. Miss Henrietta
had called it the Ondona. She touched it rather timidly but, after what had happened with the dresses, did not pick it up. She didn’t want to cause any more trouble. She sighed very loudly and opened Miss Henrietta’s ledger. It smelled peculiar—vinegary—and the pages were heavy and tea-colored. They crackled beneath her fingers. The last entries were for almost three years previous, when Mr. S. Worth had paid his account in full for the purchase of two candles and Lady Pansofia Swift had ordered a new broomstick. They confirmed her theory that no one ever visited the little magic shop. She wondered if Kitty would come again. She wished she would. She was used to having other girls, Isabelle Rutherford especially, not just herself, for company.

  Annabel was turning the page when she heard footsteps. She was certain someone had entered the shop, but there was nobody to be seen. She jumped down from the stool and moved from behind the counter.

  She heard two more footsteps. Yes, the definite shuffle of feet upon the ground.

  “Hello,” she said. “Who’s there?”

  A low chuckle.

  “Miss Vine has a new girl, I see,” said a voice quite close, so that Annabel jumped back in fright.

  “You should make yourself visible!” shouted Annabel. “This instant. It’s rude.”

  There was a whoosh of purple satin and black serge, and a man appeared, his dark cloak falling around him. He held a long dark stick in his hand.

  Annabel had never seen anyone like him before.

  He was very tall and a little crooked at the top. He bent forward halfway up, as though he were bracing himself to walk against the wind. His luxurious black hair fell in waves around his face, and his skin was as white as a funeral orchid, as though he never, ever saw the sun.

  “Oh,” she said, even though she knew it was rude. It slipped out. She retreated behind the counter, away from him.

  “I am Mr. Angel, wizard,” he said. His voice was slow and deep. “Miss Vine might have mentioned me.”