“What kind of pain?”
“Hard to describe. It’s not permanent, though, so you don’t have the fear that comes with mutilation torture. It’s not the worst but it’s definitely not the best either. Takes about a week to build up the tolerance to get a guide. On average.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, trying to mentally prepare myself and not knowing how. “Tell me what to do.”
He shook the candy dish and the fox. “These two totems belong to a specific ancestor in Kaliah’s line and appear in at least one whorl together, according to your girl. You need to graft to these totems at the same time inside one of their whorls. You get it?”
“No.”
“You will. Now, this is gonna cause so much pain that the cackle you have inside you that’s from Kaliah will get permanently imprinted with the ancestor of these totems. And when you mix that with your own cackle . . . presto, this ancestor become alive like Frankenstein, sentient, but only while you’re in season. It’s called forging the Ghost. Now Kaliah told me this ancestor’s her great-grandaunt, Zelda Sinclair. Supposedly a famous taxidermist and thief. But I never heard of her.”
Lou brought out the stash of bloom and frowned at how much was missing but said nothing. I sat down at the table, the totems in front of me, and caught the bottle he sent sliding toward me.
He said, “Most people think the only way to break a graft and come back from a whorl without leaving a corruption behind is to ride the Ghost. But forging the Ghost, or the pain from trying to, those can both bring you back. Just don’t get lost in the ancestor’s life story and lose your purpose, and you’ll be fine. You don’t want to get in the habit of leaving corruptions behind. Corruptions are bad, okay? Any questions?”
“Why are they bad?”
“First off, they muck up whorls, so that’s no good. Second, you leave too many behind and you lose your mind.”
I lost my breath. By my count, I had left ten corruptions in whorls already. “How many is too many?”
“Depends on the person. A couple hundred usually before your family starts noticing a change. Couple thousand after that before you’re a different person.”
I remembered the fighting whorl I’d entered. How many corruptions of Brad were in there? A hundred at least. Maybe that was why I didn’t like him why he was such an evil dude. Maybe he’d been a stand-up guy before that.
“You got two totems,” Lou said. “Graft to one first—doesn’t matter which. Once you're inside its whorl you find the totem you grafted to and the other totem and you graft to them both while you’re in the whorl. So if you’re in the candy dish whorl you find the candy dish and the fox and graft to them both at the same time. Capeesh?
“I think so.”
“It’s a different kind of pain than riding the Ghost, but if you stick with it, you’ll be fine. It’s just gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.”
I could barely handle the voices that shot through me when I stubbed my toe. Now I was going to feel worse pain?
Lou put his hands on the table. “Relax. You’re not getting out of this trouble without taking risks, and this is going to be the least risky thing you do before this is all over.”
I thought of Em. I thought of May. I thought of my mom. I thought of Kaliah imprisoned in Arampom. And for them, I dropped bloom and began muttering my Pictionary poems to a stuffed fox.
Chapter 10
AWORKSHOP MATERIALIZED AROUND me with dead creatures hanging from the walls in various poses: a hawk on its perch, an owl mid-swoop, a martin on its hind legs, a squirrel upside down on a branch. Against the far wall, a mountain lion and a black bear stood facing each other. I sat at a workbench, a yellow light shining from above my head and strange tools strewn out in front of me beside yarn, wire, small bleached bones, glass eyes, a steel stand, and a fox pelt.
I was in a Skill Whorl, which meant there was likely a spiky disc called a Quick in my heel, and if I tapped my foot, I could easily find the thread of pain this whorl was built on without the use of Foundation Gestures. But I wasn’t here to learn how to stuff a fox, and by the lack of corruptions in the room, I gathered Kaliah’s family wasn’t interested in the skill either.
Diverging from the loop, I stood and searched for the candy dish. Right away, Zelda’s identity began seeping in, accompanied by feelings of security, acceptance, love, all tempered by the pain of the Quick as I walked around the room, pain that lessened more and more the farther I got from the workbench. I resisted Zelda’s identity by focusing on my task, but a few drops still made their way through.
She’d been an only child with doting parents. I saw memories of her with friends. She liked to stand out, to shock, to be spontaneous. She loved the news, loved politics. She was a suffragist, even though the other mobiak women ridiculed her for being one. Mobiak women had all the power they wanted. They didn’t need the vote, but if they decided they did, they wouldn’t march in the streets like fools. They’d just take it with poison. Zelda knew that, but she wanted to support the human women, the barrens. She wanted them to have power too.
I searched the whole room for the candy dish, in drawers and boxes, behind and under furniture. It wasn’t here. I tried to open the door but it was jammed. I tugged hard, and it came free, swinging open fast, sending me stumbling backward. Roiling blue mold was all that was behind
