“I don’t know.”
“She’s cunning. You shouldn’t trust her. Tell me where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fool. She’s going to kill you. To save herself, she’s going to drain you dry. Now tell me where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Get up here, Caliph.”
Caliph’s body had shrunk. He was small now, only a child, and his bones had readjusted. He wasn’t a mess anymore. The pain had faded into powerful discomfort. He climbed from the darkness up onto a stool built just for him and looked across a high laboratory table at his uncle. Nathaniel smiled unpleasantly and used a medical probe to poke Caliph in the chest. “What do you think of that, eh?”
Caliph winced but didn’t talk back.
“That’s shuwt tincture,” said Nathaniel. “It hits you like a hammer, doesn’t it?” He grinned.
Caliph didn’t know what to say.
“You can’t speak,” said Nathaniel, “because you’re not really here. You’re six years old.” Caliph looked across the disheartening scene on the table. There was a dissection tray between them with a small creature lying on its back. Nathaniel handed him a forceps.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” said Caliph. Then he realized his mouth hadn’t moved. He was thinking the answer … not really talking.
“Fine,” said Nathaniel. “We’ll find her. Now pick up a cotton ball.”
Caliph obeyed. He remembered this. He remembered doing this exactly. He had been here before, when he was young.
“Clean up that bit of mess there,” Nathaniel snapped.
From the other side of the table Nathaniel basked in the silvery, wooden light that poured in from the backyard. Huge windows like display cases for insects cut up vignettes of branches and sky. The trees looked distorted through hundred-year-old glass.
Nathaniel’s hair floated above his forehead as he drew Caliph’s attention back. “Pay attention boy, help me open it up—see how they move?”
Caliph set down the forceps and used his fingers to hold back the sticky warm flaps of skin while Nathaniel placed a narrow reed into the rodent’s mouth. He inflated the tiny pink lungs with his own breath. The thing was still alive. Caliph watched its heart, no bigger than his thumbnail, pulse slowly under an anesthetic spell.
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Nathaniel said. “What’s the point?” He stabbed a probe into the rodent’s brain; the legs twitched twice and the heart wound down. His uncle laughed. “Useless,” he said.
Caliph let the flaps of skin close over the broken toy. He felt like crying but he didn’t. He was not in charge of his body. He felt his stubby legs climb hurriedly down the stool. His heart was racing. He was running out of the laboratory, just as he had done when he was six.
“That’s what she’s going to do to you!” Nathaniel called out to him, laughing.
Caliph ran away.
The hallway outside his uncle’s laboratory was wide and tall. As he ran, the strip of carpet down the center began to hiss. Parts of it came up and tumbled around his feet. The hallway grew taller and taller as he ran toward his bedroom door. The carpet got deeper. There were tumbling shapes around his legs. Leaves.
Fallen leaves rattled and crunched around his shoes as he ran. The ceiling disappeared into a partly sunny sky. He was surrounded by trees.
Caliph’s legs lengthened. He strode up to his bedroom door, which was no longer his bedroom door, and lifted his knuckles. He scowled. Hesitantly, he knocked:
The door had a rounded top and a small leaded glass window. The blue paint covering its solid construction was cracked but clean. The door belonged to a cottage surrounded by orange and red leaves. Some of the leaves made leathery noises at his feet. The cottage’s wooden shingles released a drizzle of water that missed him by inches. He looked up. White skies punched with blue indicated the weather was clearing. Sunlight set the trees on fire like entire books of matches. He inhaled and smiled. It smelled like rain.
The door swung open. Its motion sucked one of the leaves across the threshold with a swirl that brought it to rest against the stiletto heel of a fine black boot. His eyes moved up from silver toes to faded dungarees to chic cashmere. Sena smiled at him like a bolt of lightning.
“You came!” she said as if surprised.
He felt sheepish. “Yeah, I didn’t have … I mean,” he shrugged, “I wanted to see you.” He remembered her handwriting, unpretty and boyish. An envelope, an invitation, had come to his box. Or had it? Had this happened before?
“Come in.” She stepped back and let him walk into the cottage. The smell of sweet mint enfolded him. He recognized it as the smell of the liquid he had drunk.
“How was the trip from Desdae?” she asked.
“Good. I took the Vaubacour Line from Maiden Heart to Crow’s Eye.” He felt her fingers stroke the back of his head.
“I’m surprised they let you go.”
“Who?”
“Your secret guards.”
The memory arrived so quickly that it felt fabricated. “I snuck out through the attic,” he said. “After dark.”
“Clever boy.” Her smile flexed around the words. “What can I get you?”
“Something to drink,” he said. “That’s quite a climb.” He sat down at her kitchen table even though he didn’t feel tired. The small heavy trestle that supported him was gray and gashed from tools.
“Five thousand feet, give or take,” she said as she opened the icebox. She pulled out a jar of dark cloudy liquid and poured him half a glass. “Loring tea,” she explained, then filled it with ice, sugar and heavy cream exactly as he liked.
She set it in front of him. He said thank you. She smiled and turned to wipe off the countertop.
He lifted the drink and noticed a shape in the middle of her table. A red dark shadow more than a book. He felt as if he should have been surprised. “My uncle’s book.”
“If you say so.” She sat down across from him.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It hasn’t been his in a long time.”
“You’re right,” he said.
He downed the whole glass of tea. He was incredibly thirsty. Sun from the windows hit pans and kettles hanging overhead, reflecting burning copper pools into the kitchen’s depths. Sena leveled her eyes at him. “I need to tell you something. But we can’t let him hear. You have to keep it secret. No matter what happens. You can’t repeat what I’m going to say.”
Caliph’s attention riveted to her eyes. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?” It was like an echo.
There was a timing problem. When had this happened? But he felt reflexively warm inside. He choked slightly. Then smiled. The smile spread. He saw it mirrored on her face, a slow but definite upwelling of happiness that pushed both corners of her lips up. And the issues of when and how … where this had happened … all faded into dull unimportant doubts. He was overjoyed. This meant they were together. For real. They had a future.
Caliph had wanted this for so long.
Maybe it was foolish to interpret this as some kind of cement that would hold them together, keep her from disappearing, but he did. Somehow this made everything official.
He leapt from his seat and moved around the table to sit beside her. The fashionably cut cashmere obscured her waist. He began to suspect what it was hiding. But no. He put his hand under the delicate wool, against the smooth warmth of her belly. There was no sign. He looked at her face, confused, but her smile didn’t waver.
