A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,36

with all that writing,” she said at last.

“You shouldn’t say such things,” said Annabel.

“They have,” Kitty said. “I never saw a girl all written over with words and lines.”

“Stop it!” cried Annabel.

“Let’s see what the map shows,” said Kitty, and she made her heart light small and hovered it just over Annabel’s hand.

“Will you help me, then?” asked Annabel.

“I will help you find your way,” said Kitty, and her stomach growled, and she thought of her lost evening. “You would never find it on your own.”

In Islington there was a tavern where the music had stopped. On the chairs there were piles of dust, and on the floor there were more. Mr. Angel kicked at them with his shoe. He raised the Black Wand and admired it. He was more powerful than any man had ever been. He was sure of it. He was full of darkness and ruin, and he laughed and wiped terrible tears from his eyes.

He walked the streets submerged in his strange magical fog. London was filled with disgruntled sounds. Out on the Thames, foghorns lamented and anchored boats rang their bells. Men cried frantically to one another at the great intersections, guiding carriages with lanterns that barely pierced the cloud. It was a sooty, stained, drowning London.

He raised seven shadowlings in dark lanes. Seven more that had been sleeping for centuries in the cloisters of a great church. He sang them up, Umbra, antumbra, from sewer grates. He raised them up, and they gasped their first breaths. He commanded they carry him to the magic shop, and they seethed and writhed and grew themselves into the shape of a chariot. With their claws, they made a seat for him to sit upon. They carried him off the dirty road and up into the sky.

“Annabel Grey?” he said to Miss Estella and Miss Henrietta where they lay. “I need her. When I feed her to the machine tomorrow night at full moon, its power shall be complete. I will raise my dark army.”

Of course they would not tell him where she was.

The shadowlings crowded around the trapdoor to the secret river, though. The light from the Ondona still burned there.

Mr. Angel looked on the two old women sadly. He tut-tutted softly under his breath.

“You think she can save you?” he said quietly.

He aimed the Black Wand at the light and extinguished it.

“Good magic is finished,” he said. Then he bent down and unlatched the door and let the shadowlings beneath.

“If a young lady finds herself vexed by passengers of ill-breeding, she should turn toward the window to admire the view.”

—Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

There was constantly changing weather on her face. It seemed to Annabel that most often Kitty frowned or looked ashamed, but sometimes brief outbreaks of sunshine appeared, tiny half-smiles accompanied by the little wild cackle, so filled with pleasure. There was a tiny smile now as Annabel watched the orb that hung between them.

“I don’t understand what it is,” said Annabel. “I mean to say…where does it come from?”

“Here,” said Kitty, frowning, and she pointed to her chest. “Inside me.”

“But who taught you how to do it?” she asked.

“None did.”

“But what kind of magic is it?”

“How should I know? My magic,” said Kitty.

There was the little smile again, quickly replaced by a frown as she leaned forward and took Annabel’s hand. She dug her dirty fingernail into the skin, marking the path. The line began on Annabel’s left palm, and both of them knew it was the magic shop, the dark stairwell, the ladder to the secret river.

There was a maze of lines that spread away from the entrance, tiny tight lines showing the underground river coiled and corkscrewed deep beneath London. And then on the fleshy part of Annabel’s hand there was a wider space and three arches drawn in a fine, magical hand.

“This is where we are,” said Kitty, touching the place where the three arches were. “And there is only one way we must choose.”

They had been in the little boat for some time, and yet the line had only twisted across Annabel’s palm. She knew about map scale from geography. The map stretched over her forearm, along her upper arm, and onto her neck and face. Under London was not only stinky but very big. Kitty ran her finger from the first arch along a path that stopped at Annabel’s wrist. A dead end. She traced the path from the second arch. It snaked to the opposite side