A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,76

he like? Where did they meet? Did he have fair hair or black hair? She needed to ask her mother these things, and now she would never have the chance. The machine up above let out a long, thin wail, and the walls of the house shivered. Mr. Angel’s eyes widened with pleasure.

“Now, one evening not long before you were born, the Great Geraldo Grey had a terrible accident. He said good-bye to Vivienne and set off for the theater, and perhaps he was not watching where he was going or perhaps he was thinking of your imminent birth. We shall never know. But he stepped in front of a coach on the Euston Road and it was the end of him.”

Annabel’s mouth was open. Her heart quite stopped.

But it couldn’t be the end of him. She’d only just met him in the story.

Mr. Angel laughed his soft, papery laugh at her distress, and the shadowlings mimicked him.

“Vivienne heard the commotion. All the traffic was stopped on the Euston Road. Dear Annabel, how she wept over his body, lying there in the dirt and manure. But in her wild grief she remembered something. She remembered the story of me, Mr. Angel, banished by the Finsbury Wizards for my resurrection machine. Do you know what that is, Annabel?”

Annabel shook her head.

“A machine that can bring those who are departed back to life. I had tried it several times on rabbits, several more on cats, but never on a human soul. Shall I explain its workings?”

“No, thank you,” said Annabel.

“It was a simple matter of dark magic, necromancy, and steam,” he said, ignoring her. “The soul can be called back—but getting it to stay in the body is another matter. With the resurrection machine, I was trying to fix that.”

Annabel wanted to know how her father spoke. How he walked. How he laughed. However hard she tried to stop them, two tears slid down her pale cheeks.

Up above, the machine bellows sighed.

“There was a knock at my door, Annabel, and there stood Vivienne Grey with her newly departed husband, the Great Geraldo Grey. The perfect human subject for my machine. Up the stairs he was carried by two footmen, and into the machine. Shall I tell you what it looked like?”

“No, thank you,” whispered Annabel again.

“It was a little like a coffin and a little like a bed, with the subject attached to various tubules by way of needles. The tubules were attached to various receiving bells, and it was all completely powered by steam.”

Annabel wished she couldn’t hear. She wanted to know how her father danced, how he listened, what special tricks he could do. If he was a good man. And now she would never know.

“Your father was attached. The engine ignited. The pistons fired. His soul was called back, and thus my first human subject’s resurrection was a success. The Great Geraldo opened his eyes, Annabel Grey.”

Hafwen gazed up at the stars as she and Kitty walked on the heath. She gazed up so much that she frequently bumped into Kitty, who cursed her in a new way each time. She called Hafwen a grubby worm-eater, a fat piece of dragon cake, and an onion head. Hafwen listened, and each new name made her gray-toothed grin grow. Kitty could not help but laugh.

“But how would Annabel Grey have such a star?” Hafwen asked.

“How would I know?” said Kitty. The laughing had made her cough.

“Where did she pluck it from? Which part of the sky?”

“I don’t know, you big greasy buffoon,” said Kitty, and she bent down and coughed until she could spit into the grass. By the moonlight the spittle was dark.

She closed her eyes, and her heartbeat was very loud in her ears.

On the heath there was a grass that shone a certain way beneath the moon, lit up all silver along its edge. Since she was small, she had called it the moon grass. She had seen one hundred full moons or more, she thought, though she couldn’t say for sure, not knowing her age or her beginnings.

She didn’t have a mother the way Annabel Grey did. She did not have great-aunts or a long-dead father. She had London Town. The lap of the heath where she had often slept, the cluttered-up streets, the wild dark tenement heart. Yes, the city was her mother, a confounding, beautiful mother, with her lonely churches and warm stables and flowing park skirts.

Kitty touched the moon grass, and she coughed and