The Unnaturalists

I try once more to say the words, to tell him what Charles has done to me, but all that comes are tears.

He pushes away from me clumsily, saying, “My lady, I must beg your leave. My new wife awaits you in her chamber.” My face burning with shame, I curtsy and hurry up the staircase until the turn shuts him from my sight.

Mistress Lucy is shedding her wedding dress and petticoats like a musty chrysalis when I enter the room.

“So?” she says, catching my hands. “What do you think of him?”

“Hmmm?”

“Come, come now,” Mistress Lucy says, collapsing on the bed in her chemise while the chambermaids struggle to pull off her stockings. “I want to know!”

“What do you think, my lady? You’re the bride, not me.”

Mistress Lucy crooks her arms behind her and stares into the puffy canopy overhead. “He seems a bit shy . . . rather inept, as if he’d never been around women at all.”

“He does have three sisters,” I say, casting about for something to occupy me. I start by picking up bits of wedding finery from the floor.

“Yes, but that’s not the same thing. Oh, leave all that, will you? Come sit for a moment.” Lucy raises on her elbows, patting the bed beside her.

I comply, though my stomach may crawl up my throat and betray my nervousness at any moment. For once, I am glad of not having had any breakfast.

“I mean, I wonder . . . do you think he kisses well?”

I choke, but instantly cover it with a fit of coughing.

“Oh, dear,” Mistress Lucy says. Her head nods under the weight of its coiffure like a listing ship. “You’re not taking ill, are you? I suppose you have been forced to exert yourself a good deal lately. You’re terribly flushed.”

I shake my head and manage what I hope is not a weak smile. “Just so much excitement! Your wedding and . . . the masque . . .”

And remembering past kisses with your husband. I choke again in absolute horror at myself.

“Oh, I know. It is terribly exciting, isn’t it?” She flashes that radiant smile, and my heart aches.

She gestures me to come closer, and when I hesitate, she puts her arm around me and draws me close. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

I’m terrified that she somehow knows what’s just transpired between me and her husband. But what she says is even worse. “Charles has said he has special plans for you after the masque, your clumsiness at tea notwithstanding.”

I stiffen. I think I know exactly what those special plans are.

“I think he would make a wonderful match, don’t you?” she asks. She lifts her head to look at my face.

“I d . . . don . . . I don’t . . .” I stutter.

“Oh, come now,” she says. “I think Charles would be perfect for you. He shares your interest in those unnatural creatures, saints know why, and will probably be in charge of the Museum once your father’s gone. A marriage between two Unnaturalists seems quite . . . natural, don’t you think?” She giggles at her own pun.

I sit up and try to hold back my tears. I sincerely doubt that Charles has any intention of marrying me, nor do I want him to. I’d rather he sucked my soul into the cursed jar than be his wife. Once, I would have had no problem speaking my mind about such a thing. The irony now is that I literally can’t say a thing in my own defense.

“Oh.” Lucy sits up and hugs me as I rock and hiccup at the edge of her voluminous bed. “My goodness, I never took you for a girl given to hysterics.”

She pats me on the shoulder and stands up, stretching.

She brings me her silver snuff box. She sniffs a bit of myth herself and then offers it to me. But I can no more bring myself to sniff up fairy bones than I can unseal my tongue.

“It’s all right,” I gasp. I pull the handkerchief from my bosom and dab at my face. I’m sure my cosmetics have been utterly ruined. Lucy confirms this when she orders a maid to touch me up. She looks at me as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with me, but I pull myself together as best I can and help the maids dress her for the ball. Lucy has gone back to her usual love of feathers with this gown, and she sighs happily when the maids remove the roses in her hair and affix a bejeweled spray of kingfisher feathers instead.

I try not to see the maids laying out her negligee for her wedding night as we leave the room in a cloud of scent and feathers. I am not going to think about it anymore. There is more important work I have to do. I have made up my mind. When the Manticore is brought out of the Refinery, I will free her and take her to the Beast in the Well. I’m not sure how I’ll fare without magic, but perhaps she’ll be able to protect us long enough to get us there. I pick at my gown as we descend.

Nervousness translates into hunger for me and by the time we’re allowed to proceed to our places, I’m so hungry I feel I could eat an entire horse by myself. Luckily, the feast will be held before the ball, in the same Great Hall where the wedding took place earlier in the afternoon. We shuffle around, waiting to be allowed inside, and the smell of exotic foods is close to making me either faint or scream. I chatter aimlessly with Father and Aunt Minta, only half-listening to what they say, when suddenly the herald’s trumpet rings.

“Her Most Scientific Majesty, the Empress Johanna! Her Heir, the Princess Olivia!” he cries.

I freeze.

Though the Empress had been invited as a matter of course, none of us expected her to actually attend. She hadn’t responded to the invitation. She never leaves the Tower. So, why has she left now?

It can only be one thing—the Manticore.

Places are made for them hastily. The entire seating chart will be thrown off, and, more importantly, House Virulen has lost face for not being prepared for the Empress’s surprise arrival. Lucy’s dark eyes glitter against her pale face. She’s livid. Her smile is terribly forced as she curtsies low before the Empress.

The Empress says a few words to my mistress and then she and the Princess lead our procession into the banquet. I watch Olivia follow her mother like a ghost. I can no longer see the spell that binds her lips, but I feel a kinship with her nonetheless. When her eyes find mine as we’re settling ourselves, we gaze at each other in wordless sympathy.

Dish after dish is brought in—roasted peacock recovered with its original gorgeous skin and tail fanned out, suckling pig with everlights in its eyes and a golden apple in its mouth, a whole python coiled around a towering pastry. There are other cuts of meats that shimmer with their own light as they’re carved—haunch of Satyr, tentacles of Kraken. I had heard that the Lords sometimes still eat Unnaturals at high feasts, but I never really believed anyone would, as fearful as they are of all things Unnatural.

What comes next has made me ill from the first time I heard of it during the wedding planning. A fleet of servants bearing glass-covered dishes with napkins carefully placed over the top file out along the table. I watch one eager lady whip the napkin off, and the stricken form of the flambéed fairy under the glass makes me gag. I think of Piskel hidden safely in my room and hope he remains so.

I know what comes next, but I watch helplessly as one person after another drapes the napkin over their heads, spears the tiny form on a silver fork, and lifts it to their mouth under the napkin. The sound of tiny bones crunching is almost more than I can bear.

I am just about to hurry my poor appetizer into my napkin and shove it under the table when someone takes me by the arm and drags me from my seat.

Charles.

“It’s time,” he says. “Let’s go.”

I nearly stumble as he pushes me out of the hall, out onto the veranda, and toward the old house Refinery.

“What are you doing?” I try to turn and kick him in the shins, but get tangled up in my dress and the sliding of my shoes.

“The Manticore is being uncooperative,” he says. “I am guessing she will only allow you to bring her into the Hall.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I won’t do it.”

“You will do it, or I will force the bishop to wed us right now. I think you know there are worse things than having one’s soul trapped in a jar.”