This particular man, our roamer-hero, had been buried clutching a box. I don’t know what was in it. I never opened it. But the box itself was a thing of artistry, the kind of box meant to hold miracles, or magic, or perhaps even a single miraculous, magical memory. It’s important to know, at the outset, that the box was there, in the dirt and the decay beneath the nettles. But Pantin didn’t know it; he hadn’t so much as an inkling that the grave itself was there, much less that in the grave—or what was left of it—the bones of a hero held a maybe-miraculous box.
The thief didn’t know it either—not at first. But that’s getting a bit ahead of the story.
Another thing they say—those mysterious voices that say things that get retold in tales like this—they say that iron behaves badly in a graveyard. And of course, when they say this, they mean not just any iron, but the old, wild kind, the sort that can change its shape when you’re not looking. The kind that, sometimes, at sunset, doesn’t care whether you’re looking or not. In those moments, if you are looking, you can see the old iron dance in the last warmth of the day. But of course, you’ve all seen that before. Except possibly Mr. Tesserian—you’re not from Nagspeake, are you?
No, I thought not. Anyhow.
They say that old iron behaves badly in the gardens of the dead. I think the truth is more complicated. Still, it is true, at least, that Nagspeake does not build graveyards where old iron is to be found in abundance. However, people looking to hide graves do not always have options for where to put them. The hero’s grave wasn’t in a place that spilled over with old iron, like the Quayside Harbors, or Shantytown, but the iron was there, for eyes that knew how to look for it. Pantin’s red house stood at the edge of a wood, and the wood was peppered throughout with lampposts and lanterns in places where there was not so much as a trail needing light. Sometimes, in the evenings, the lamps and lanterns would open up and let their lights out to roam like feral creatures. Some nights, the woods were thick with wandering will-o’-the-wisps.
Pantin and his neighbors called them bonelights. I do not think they ever learned where they came from. But you, Maisie—I would like you to know that, should you ever find yourself lost in the woods, and should you encounter one of those lights, you may say to it, “You once showed a lost boy back to the road. Would you please help me find my way?” For the lights did once help Pantin when he was very lost in the woods, though that is a different tale.
Yes, there was a good deal of iron in the woods. Even the red house was not entirely empty of it. The house was tall and narrow, of a sort that would’ve looked much more at home in a town than at the edge of a wood. Perhaps there had been a bit of town there once. Or perhaps, Pantin sometimes thought, the town was coming, and his house had simply gotten there first. It had old iron in its walls and its foundations, and there was an iron rain gutter that ran all the way around the roof, with a spout at the corner nearest Pantin’s own window. That corner also had an iron gargoyle that changed its shape every few nights. Ever since he had been very, very small—much smaller than you, Maisie—Pantin had thought of it as his particular friend and confidant.
Which is another thing you might do well to remember, Maisie. Old iron listens when you speak to it. Old iron hears.
Three families lived in the house. On the first floor was the old man who played a guitar and lived with a dog named Joy; on the second, a mother and her twin daughters, Poppy and Tulip; and on the top floor, Pantin and his parents. And, of course, beside the house was that very old, very crumbly wall with its garden full of very tall nettles.
One day, a thief came.
He came first, as they so often do, in the guise of—oh, dear, I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Masseter, but I’m bound to say that he came to the door in the guise of a peddler. One rather like that Drogam Nerve in your story, Master Colophon, bearing books full of things that could be bought unseen and delivered later. I do seem to remember that this particular man had catalogs from a company called Morvengarde, though perhaps I’m mistaken. I imagine those names—Morvengarde and Drogam Nerve—look much the same on paper, and my eyes have never been sharp.
I am trying to recall the name the thief used. It reminded me of mathematics, somehow. Trigonometry? No. Trigemine. That was it. Shocking blue eyes, he had. I recall that well. But now I’m losing the thread.
The thief came to the front door and went up the stairs, knocking on the door to each flat. And at each door, when it was opened, he showed his books full of things to wish for. Then he explained that his job was not simply to sell, but also to buy.
“To buy what?” the man with the dog asked.
“Oh, all sorts of things,” the thief said. Trigemine’s master would pay good money for objects of value, and many things were more valuable than people realized.
“How valuable?” asked the mother of the girls named after flowers. Her job did not pay well, I think, and she often came up a bit short of money.
“Well, it depends on the object,” the thief replied, taking a single round brass jeweler’s loupe from his waistcoat pocket. How would it be if he had a look about, to find an example?
“All right,” Pantin said curiously. He was alone in his family’s
