The Deepest Night

“As you wish, love.”

“I wish you’d stay here and let me take care of this.”

“Nearly as you wish, then.”

Closer inspection of the statue in the square revealed that the man was holding up a spyglass. Since there wasn’t an ocean anywhere nearby, I assumed it was meant for the stars. Perhaps this was a learned place. Perhaps the people here had their own special kinship with the inhabitants of the heavens.

If I could have shivered, I would have. Instead, I glided toward a whitewashed stall along one of the streets displaying broadsheets and periodicals. A collection of men and women loitered in front of it, some of them smoking.

Armand and I mingled with the blue-gray miasma rising up from the cigarettes and cigars.

Most of the people were clutching the same edition of a broadsheet, talking to each other excitedly. I couldn’t understand what they were saying; then I glimpsed the broadsheet, and realized I didn’t need to understand.

Ein Drache! blared the headline.

Beneath it was an illustration of a monster. It was exceedingly scary, with bulging eyes and savage, needle-pointed teeth. Flames were shooting from its mouth. Its tail was some sort of a cannon, its wings resembled those of an aeroplane, and the entire thing appeared to be cut up into segments joined by fancy clockwork gears and machinery.

It was a mechanical dragon.

It was me.

I sank closer, caught between outrage and flattery.

I hoped my eyes didn’t bulge like that. I knew they got the rest of it wrong. But still, there I was. Soldiers had been drawn at my feet, firing up at me bravely.

That company from the village. Those soldiers who’d run. That’s who they were supposed to be.

I was so enthralled with it that when the man I’d been hovering over folded up the paper and tucked it under his arm, I was annoyed. I moved over to the next man, who was still reading, and only then noticed that Armand was missing.

I made myself go still. I wanted to shoot upward, around. I wanted to fly, and fly hard. But if he’d been overcome and had to Turn back into his human shape somewhere, I needed to find him without drawing anyone’s attention.

I inched away, away from the stall. I went as thin as I dared and cast out my senses, searching for him.

People everywhere. Horses and carriages. A smattering of automobiles. Dogs, cats. Stoves stoked hot for dinners. Lives lived behind closed doors, the war so far away. The forest so near.

For some reason, I kept envisioning pastries. Delicious berry-chocolate-vanilla-pear-plum-cream pastries …

No, I need Armand.

Yeasty dough. Crumbly crusts.

Armand!

Apples and icing.

Strudel.

There was a bakery at the opposite end of the square. It had a garish orange awning and spotless windows that gleamed. Figures moved around inside, lost to shadows.

One of them had to be Mandy.

I flowed to the doorway, seeped through a crack between the door and the jamb. A man in an apron stood behind the counter, a young mother with a child attached to each hand before him, perusing trays of bread. The smaller child was bouncing on her toes and squeaking something in a treble, eager voice. Her free hand was pointing at the iced strudels, and bloody Armand was nowhere in sight, not as smoke or a boy or anything.

But he was here. I could feel him.

The baker reached over the counter to hand the little girl a bite of sweet. She accepted it with another happy squeak.

Below them, I realized. Below me. That’s where he was.

I examined the floorboards, which seemed too tightly set to slip though. Would there be a basement down there? A door leading to it?

The answer was yes to both. Off to the right behind the counter was the door, slightly agape. I hovered against the ceiling a moment, judging, then—as the baker was handing a sweet to the other child, and the mother was settling her chosen loaf into her basket—I zipped past them, squeezing through the gap of the door.

Tight wooden stairs, no lamps or any light but for what came from a single small window up near the ceiling. I flowed down into the chamber, which I realized must be where the baking was done. There were vats of flour and molasses and salt, bowls of dough rising with dampened cloths covering swollen tops, an icebox, and an oven in the wall composed of blackened bricks and a blackened iron door.

Metal contraptions that looked like the scaffolding back at Tranquility hugged the walls, only these were filled with the baker’s wares, everything from bread to cake to … strudel.

Armand was leaning against one of the racks, watching me with glowing blue eyes. The bruise on his head was more vivid than ever. A small puddle of bile near his feet had been concealed with a cloth.

I told you so seemed both mean-spirited and insufficient. Perhaps I’d try Next time you might listen to me. Or Not as easy as you thought, is it?

I Turned to girl. Before I could speak, the door above us opened—but a bell rang at nearly the same instant, accompanied by footsteps. Another customer must have arrived.

The door swung closed.

Armand really did look wretched. Although he was attempting to hide it, I could tell that the rack was holding him up. Chiding him now would be unsporting, I supposed.

So, instead, I reached out and took a pastry. It was one of the cream-filled ones, puffy and round. I tore off a piece of it and placed it in my mouth, never taking my gaze from his. I ate it like that, bite by bite, until it was gone.

Then I took another.

He straightened, swallowing. He removed a puff from the shelf beside him and copied me, eating it, looking at me, neither of us saying a word, until we’d each had five of them and the glow had faded from his eyes.

Then I wanted some water. There was a sink and faucet beneath the window. I found a measuring cup, blew away the layer of flour inside it, then carefully, carefully, turned the spigot.

Water trickled out. I filled the cup, drank, filled it again, closed the spigot, and carried the cup to Armand.

He accepted it. A dab of filling dotted the corner of his lips. I wiped it away with my thumb before he drank; he held still for that, unsmiling. His skin felt prickly with whiskers.

Something happened then. Something that started in my hand, the one that had touched him, and spread in a tingle up my arm. It was hot and heady, almost dizzying. It shook me awake to the fact that I wasn’t the only one without a stitch of clothing on. And that we stood only inches apart, and his lips were so warm and we were wreathed in the aroma of molasses and freshly baked bread and if I took one step, even a small one, our bodies would brush.

And I didn’t know what would happen after that.

Armand lifted his hand, drained the cup.

“Better?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“Think you can Turn?”

He nodded again.

“Last one to the lodge is a rotten egg,” I said, and made certain he flew just ahead of me the entire way back.