A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,9

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, she 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