Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) (6 page)

“My eyes are too green. I can’t stand the way they stare in my face,” Poppy said, as though that was an explanation.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Valefor muttered.
“Look on my face, I have become death, murderer of calm.”

Poppy turned his head sharply, noticing Valefor for the first time. “What the hell are you doing down here?” Val shrank behind me, wavering.

“If Buck catches you out, she’ll cut you up and use you for a raincoat,” Poppy warned.

“Hold still, Poppy,” I ordered. He was shaking so hard that I kept smearing the Madama Twanky’s Cut-Eze on his shirt instead of his arm.

“Ouch, careful with that stuff, it burns.”

“Good on it,” I said. “Serves you right. Who’s going to clean up all that mess now, Poppy?”

“Make your little friend do it. After all, it is
his
House,” Poppy said sarcastically.

Valefor snorted. “Hardly anymore. Your darling lady wife locked me up in the Bibliotheca Mayor, and this is the first time I’ve been out in I don’t know how long.”

“How
did
you get out?” Poppy asked.

“Poppy,” I said, before Val could get me in trouble, “you should go back to your Eyrie and lie down for a while. I’m sure you’ll feel better, then—”

“Watch him, Flora,” Poppy interrupted. “He is bound to spit and that’s going to burn. I warn you.”

Whatever
that
meant. “Ayah so, Poppy, don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

Poppy shambled to his feet. “You’d better get back to the Bibliotheca before Buck gets back, Valefor.”

Val sniffed. “I am not afraid of Buck.”

Poppy looked at him somberly. “You are the only one. And you are a fool.”

I
COULD HELP YOU
clean up,” Val said, trailing behind me as I went downstairs to the kitchen to fetch a broom and let the dogs out.

The dogs slunk out of the mudroom dejectedly, then slunk off into the garden. Flynnie pressed up against my legs sadly and pushed his head into my hand to be petted. I hugged his solid meaty bulk, and he licked my face before squirming free to follow his sibs into the darkness.

“How can you do that? I thought you were diminished and without any ability.” I got the broom and a garbage sack out of the mudroom, and Val followed me back up the Below Stairs.

“I am still weak, it’s true, but you have lent me enough to allow me some freedom. So now we are friends and I stick by my friends.”

The Garterobe of Resolution was a wreck. Shards of glass winked like fallen stars on the floor and in the bathtub. The sink was full of tooth powder and bath salts, and the walls and ceiling were stuck with soggy toilet paper. F
OR
T
HIS WE ARE
S
OLDIERS
was scrawled in red lip rouge across one of the walls. Even if I got the mess cleaned up, I could not replace the mirrors before Mamma returned. Both Poppy and I were going to be in big trouble.

“My beautiful loo,” Val moaned, peering over my shoulder. “My beautiful loo. Do you have any idea how long it took me to make those mirrors? Weeks of utter concentration and focused desire. And the tiles—oh, the energy to make them the most perfect shade of bleachy blue, after which I was almost invisible with exhaustion—now all cracked, and filthy, too. Hotspur made a mess, but he didn’t have far to go. Don’t you ever wash the bathroom floor, Flora Segunda?”

“Well, can you do something about the mess?” I demanded, ignoring his crack. Valefor might not be afraid of Mamma, but I was. I did not want her to see this mess and say that I had not watched Poppy closely enough. “Well, if I were to have more Anima—”

“How much?”

He grinned at me hopefully. “Not a lot, just more. What did you have for dinner tonight?”

“General Chow’s tofu.”

He wrinkled his long nose. “I’m not that fond of such spicy food myself, but all right. It’s better than nothing.”

“But be careful,” I said. “You almost made me pass out last time.”

“I’ll be sweet as pie,” he promised. His lips brushed mine and then parted to take my breath. A slow tingle started in my toes and wiggled its way upward, as though my blood had turned fizzy.

“That’s enough,” I said, breaking away. “You are making me dizzy.”

Val grinned. “Ah, I feel so much better, you cannot believe it!”

His hair, I realized, was not black. It was dark purple-blue, the color of a damson plum, and little threads of silver sparked in the thick curls now springing around his shoulders.

“Just clean this place up, Valefor. It’s late and I have to go to bed. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

“You are a busy one, aren’t you?” Valefor said. “Always rushing from here to there and there to here. You ought to just slow down and enjoy life. It’s short enough as it is without you hurrying.”

Ha! As though there was anything about life to enjoy. “Clean it up. Now!”

Valefor flourished a long finger.

When the sparkly purple Invocation faded, not only was the Garterobe of Resolution tidied up, but it was actually clean. The silver taps gleamed and the porcelain sparkled. The broken loo chain had been replaced, Mamma’s cut-glass bottles were lined up neatly above the bath, and the towels were soft and fluffy. The mirror showed my astonished face and Valefor’s smug smile.

“See how helpful I can be?” Valefor said happily. “The mirror is not exactly the same, of course. I don’t have enough for that, but I don’t think Buck’s subtlety will extend to noticing the difference.”

Valefor
was
helpful. While I let the dogs in, he whisked about the Below Kitchen, humming Gramatica under his breath and wiggling his fingers. When he was done, the kitchen was so clean that it almost sparkled. The copper pans hanging from the ceiling shone like stars, the stove glowed like a polished black pearl, and the floor looked clean enough to eat off.

“There we are! Let’s have popcorn!” Valefor said when he was done.

“I thought you didn’t eat food.”

“Well, I don’t eat to live, but sometimes it is fun to live to eat. Come on, Flora, tra-la-let’s have a party! Oh please, let’s!”

“I have to go to bed.”

“Pah! Bed! There’s time enough to sleep when you are dead, Flora.”

“I am tired.” Dealing with Poppy is exhausting and sick-at-heart-making, and now I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and stay there a week. It was a relief to have the mess cleaned up, and popcorn was tempting, but I still wanted my bed.

“You are a stick, Flora, that’s what you are, an absolute stick,” Valefor said.

I did not give in, but Valefor would not give up. Still begging, he followed me as I turned down the lights, banked the stove, and went upstairs. He leaned over me as I stopped by the Stairs of Exuberance, to listen for noise coming from Poppy’s Eyrie. (Dead silence.)

“You are
bugging
me!” I shouted, after I had shut my bedroom door in his face and he had floated right through, anyway.

He looked hurt. “But I thought you liked me.”

I threw my boots into the wardrobe and pulled my nightgown out from under my pillow. “I just need to go to bed and get some sleep. And I can’t do that if you are following me everywhere. Can’t you leave me alone?”

“I told you, Flora, we are connected now, and I can go where you go, at least around the House. I will be very quiet,” he said, sitting down on the settee. But of course he wasn’t. He chattered on about this and that, and that and this. Having someone around to clean things up was nice, but I could see now that it had its cost.
The meal’s not free if you still have to leave a tip,
Nini Mo said.

“...and a shame that a Fyrdraaca should be sleeping in a broom closet—”

“This was a broom closet?” I interrupted. My room is not fancy, but it’s not tiny, either. It has a fireplace surmounted by a mantel carved with cunning little monkeys, two big windows that overlook the kitchen garden, a cushy settee, and a banged-up wardrobe big enough to play house in. Sure, it is messy, but that was nothing against the room, only against my interest in keeping it tidy.

“Well, not this room. This room was, I think, where I stored extra toilet brushes or something; I don’t remember. Anyway, I mean there—” Valefor pointed to my bed. “That closet!”

At first glance around my room, you wouldn’t see my bed at all, and you’d think maybe I slept on the settee. But then you would notice a set of doors on one wall, and when the doors slid open, there was my bed, tucked inside a little alcove, all snuggly and secret. I love my bed; when the doors are closed and you are pillowed down into your comforters with a dog at your feet, you are hidden and no one can get you. Had my bed been a broom closet?

“See how it is that the Fyrdraacas are constrained,” Valefor said. “I am as wide as the sky when it comes to space, and here the Fyrdraacas are, crouching in utility rooms. Even your kitchen is just an extra kitchen I made in case some guest brought his own cook, and these rooms, all of them, spare servants’ quarters for spare servants, and here you are living as servants in them. Or in your case, a slave, Flora Segunda.”

Valefor was right. Why were we living in servants’ rooms, like servants? Because we couldn’t get to the rest of the House without the Butler. Whom Mamma had banished. Another thing to hold against her, I supposed. But not tonight. “I really have to go to bed, Valefor,” I said. “Are you going to shut up or shall I kick you?”

“All right, all right!” He settled down on the settee and began to read one of my Nini Mo yellowback novels. I climbed into bed, pulled the door mostly closed, and put my nightgown on. The dogs had already settled in, and they shifted around to make room for me.

“Must you throw your clothes on the floor?” Valefor asked without looking up from his reading. He waved one hand and my stays and chemise drifted upward, then floated over to the wardrobe, tucking themselves inside. My kilt and pinafore wafted into the dirty-clothes bin, and my pullover flitted over to Valefor, who put down the yellowback to receive it.

“There’s a giant hole in the elbow!” he said, accusingly. I’m terrible at darning. I can sew fine, but somehow when it comes to knitting, my stitches get muddled. Valefor smoothed the sweater between his palms, and when he held it up, smugly, the hole was gone. “You are welcome!”

“Thank you, Valefor.”

“You
are
welcome.”

“Well, then, if you are going to stay, at least turn the lights down.”

The lights dimmed accordingly, and I slid the bed door shut and snuggled into the nest of dogs. Flynn squirmed his boniness between my feet, and Flash and Dash curled together against the wall. The sheets were doggy warm, but they could have smelled fresher.

I lay there and let the darkness overwhelm me. Sometimes it is very hard not to sink. Udo calls this feeling the little black ghost in my head, and while sometimes its wheedling is muted, I can never quite completely pull free of its influence. Sometimes it seems as though there will never be an end. Poppy will continue to be drunken, Mamma will continue to be gone, and I will march off to the Barracks and fulfill the Fyrdraaca family destiny, which is nothing but ruin and sorrow.

“Why are you crying?”

My heart jerked, and I lifted my head. The dogs hadn’t moved, but Valefor’s eyes, faint coldfire sparks, glimmered next to me.

“Pigface Psychopomp! I think I just lost ten years off my life.”

“Fyrdraacas die young, anyway,” Val said. “Where’s your nightcap?”

I wiped my eyes on the pillowcase. “Go away and let me go to sleep.”

“But you weren’t sleeping,” he pointed out. “You can’t sleep and cry at the same time. And if you cry yourself to sleep, you’ll only wake up with a headache tomorrow morning.”

“I wish you would mind your own business.”

“This
is
my business. I mean, I’m the House Fyrdraaca and you are a Fyrdraaca, so that makes it my business. Besides, you are getting my sheets wet. If anyone should be crying, it’s me, over the decline of our family. Once so numerous and distinguished, oh, we had generals and lawyers, artists and statesmen, we were the beauty of the world, and now down to four Fyrdraacas, and none of you particularly distinguished compared to the Fyrdraacas of old.”

He was a snapperhead, and for a savage sudden minute, I wished he’d stayed in his library and rotted. Cold feet squirmed against my ankles and I yanked away. Flynn growled and crawled to the other edge of the bed.

“Aw, finally, toasty. I get so very cold,” Valefor said. “I remember when your great-great-great-grandmother Idden Fyrdraaca made this comforter. She cut up captured battle flags to make the quilt pieces, and when it was finished, she stuffed it with the hair of her enemies. Took her four years to get enough to fill the quilt. That’s why it is so nice and warm.”

Ugh! I had come across the quilt, brilliantly colored and crazily sewn together with bright swatches of silk, in one of the huge clothespresses in the laundry room. It had been on my bed ever since, and it was very warm, but I resolved now to burn it in the morning.

“Don’t you have to get back to the Bibliotheca?” I asked hopefully.