A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,77

coughed until her body felt quite hollow with coughing. From up high she looked back upon the city beneath the moon and was glad for its mothering.

Annabel Grey, she said to herself.

But the Totteridge yew called her name, and she wondered at that. The yew’s voice was much clearer now. Onward, Kitty, onward. She hummed up her heart light, half to frighten Hafwen, and when it came, it was the deepest green. She marveled at how easy it had come, as though the cage she kept it in, her body, had grown more fragile. It slipped out of her simply.

Hafwen peered at the light from the corner of her eye and looked worried. “Is it far, skinny?” she asked.

“No,” said Kitty. “Not far now, Hafwen.”

“If a young lady does not wish to join in parlor games, then she must occupy herself with a quiet pastime, such as needlework or reading.”

—Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

Annabel didn’t want to hear any more. She tried to think of the emerald-green ice skates, but her mind was used to that trick. It would not conjure them up. It said, Here is the story of your father’s last moments. Pay attention, Annabel Grey.

Mr. Angel pointed the wand at the long table and blasted it with purple light so that it disappeared into a pile of dust. The shadowlings writhed with amusement. All that was left was Annabel and her chair.

Mr. Angel walked slowly toward her.

“The Great Geraldo Grey opened his eyes, Annabel,” he said. “And he looked at your mother. He had been gone, Annabel, and now he had been returned. He looked at the tubules and the pistons and the way he was pinned to the apparatus. He looked at the great receiving bells that sat above him and had called his spirit back. Can you picture it?”

“Yes,” whispered Annabel.

“The horror of it?” asked Mr. Angel.

“Yes,” whispered Annabel.

“He was quite gone from this world and now returned. ‘Gerald,’ said your mother. ‘Gerald.’ And how she clutched at him. ‘Vivienne’ was his reply. ‘What have you done?’

“His only words, Annabel. ‘Vivienne, what have you done?’ The machine was new, Annabel, never tested on a human. He seemed filled suddenly with confusion and rage. He tried to sit, and the needles were ripped from his skin. ‘Vivienne,’ he said, reaching for her blindly, and she tried to calm him, Annabel. ‘Vivienne!’ he cried, for he could no longer see her. She held him by the hands. ‘Vivienne,’ he said, and then he fell backward and was gone.”

Mr. Angel watched Annabel. He watched the tears that slid down her cheeks. He watched the way she trembled. There were volumes of tears in the child. Tears of abandonment. Tears of confusion. Tears of loss. Tears of sadness. She tried to contain the ocean of tears, and it made her all the more pitiful.

“You tricked her,” she whispered. “You tricked my mother with your terrible machine. You made her think he would be back the way he was. She never would have done such a thing otherwise.”

“I gave her no such assurances,” said Mr. Angel. He gazed upon Annabel sadly. “I offered her my services; I told her there were no guarantees it would work. How she wept over him, Annabel. The Great Geraldo Grey—not so great after all. I gave her my handkerchief, of course, and when she left, when she ran from that room, she left it lying on the floor. It gave me an idea. That handkerchief and the glass tubules, the receiving bells. A new and more wonderful machine.”

Annabel did not want her father, whom she did not know, to have died not once but twice. She wanted him to be at home, at that very moment reading a newspaper or practicing magic tricks with cards. The tears would not stop. They slipped down her cheeks and dripped onto her hands in her lap.

“The machine, dear Annabel. Now is the time,” said Mr. Angel, and then to the shadowlings: “Guard her. I will prepare the machine for its last meal.”

As soon as he was gone from the room, the shadowlings drew closer. They slipped from the walls to stand about her in a circle.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said to them as they moved around her, their shapes blending and changing. They made themselves into copies of Mr. Angel peering down at her. “I am not afraid of you, do you hear?”

But she was. They breathed against her skin, and she flinched. They