Nieve (29 page)

Without hesitating, she reached out and grasped the Impress' arms . . . and where she touched . . . she marked her. She left glowing handprints on Elixibyss' arms, prints that stretched and spread rapidly engulfing them in light. Nieve gasped. The floor beneath was visible through them. The long-fingered light spread over her shoulder, down her back, and along her side. Elixibyss spoke a few faint words in that strange tongue Nieve had heard her use in the garden, and then she sighed once before the light consumed her body entirely, leaving behind a column of black smoke that wavered and dissipated until nothing was left of it but single hair-thin strand, twisting and writhing in the air.

“Catch it!” someone shouted.

Nieve turned quickly, thrilled, to see Gran. She was hurrying toward what was left of the Impress.

Artichoke barked, dropping the gold box, and Lias grabbed it. It was his! But instead of clutching it protectively, as one might expect him to do, he immediately flipped open the lid and dumped the contents on the floor, as if they mattered not at all. Then he went after the wiry wisp of smoke. It twisted away from him, then shot back, twining around and around his wrist. He shook his hand free of it, and pursued it again, leaping after it, snapping the box's lid, trying to trap the smoke inside. Once, twice, he almost caught it . . . but no, no luck, not this time. It swirled into the fireplace, plaited itself into the rising plume, a night-black strand among the lighter grey, and vanished up the flue.

“No!” he cried, as Elixibyss herself had done only moments before.

“Never mind, Lias. She'll do you no more harm.” Gran had her arms around him. “Och, better mind
me
, though. Stepped on your toes.” She bent down and scooped up two small bones from the floor, which she then placed delicately on his palm. “Hang onto these, lad. Seeing as you've no shoes now. I suppose she stole those, too.”

Lias nodded, speechless, staring at his long-lost treasure.

“
Gran.
” Nieve was the next to feel Gran's arms around her. “But, those bones are . . .
toes
?”

“Aye. I'm sure he'll tell you about it when he can. Good work, Nievy!”

She shook her head. “Dr. Morys. Oh Gran, I didn't mean to–”

“Hush, pet. I've had word. Frances got a team to Bone House before it vanished altogether. He's poorly, but he's alive. Thanks to you.”

Nieve wasn't sure she deserved any thanks, but felt a tremendous surge of relief. And a rising excitement. “Gran, d'you know what? I can wake Dad up. And Malcolm, and everybody. I know how!”

“That's because you're a cunning girl, love. Ah, here comes your mother. Looks like I'm going to have to share you.”

Sophie was moving toward her, face alight, but didn't quite make it. Someone else had come charging into the room. It was Professor Manning, red-faced and flustered, with one shoe missing. A rigid Molly Twisden was tucked under his arm and sticking out like a battering ram. Sophie had to leap aside as the professor hurtled her way, enthusing, “Eureka! I have it, the formula! There's only one ingredient missing!”

Mortimer Twisden, weed seedling still dangling from his earlobe like a kitschy earring, had just yanked the scarf out of his mouth and was about to start bawling again, when Professor Manning spotted Nieve. He turned sharply toward her, which caused Molly Twisden to whack her husband on the head with one of her sensible penny loafers. Much to her satisfaction when Molly later heard about it, she gave him such a sound crack that it not only knocked him off his feet, but knocked him out cold.

“Young lady,” the professor exclaimed, bustling over to her.

Nieve ducked, while Gran and Lias scurried out of his way. Artichoke
yipped
and danced away, too, then trotted over to Twisden to give his Pomeranian slippers a sniff.

Professor Manning set Molly down, propping her up against the mantel. Then, getting down on all fours, he gave Nieve's shoes a close study. “Hmm, aah, I thought so. Amazing, truly amazing.”

“What?” Nieve laughed. The shoes
were
amazing, true. But at the moment they looked like nothing more than a bunch of tattered and wilted leaves clapped around her feet. That marathon run had been hard on them.

Professor Manning stretched a trembling hand out and lifted up one of the leaves. Beneath it was a delicate white flower, freshly blossomed, which he plucked off and held up to the firelight.

“Moly,” he said, quietly, reverently.

“Awesome,” said Lirk, less quietly and a lot less reverently. “By the way, old fella,” he added, finally putting in an appearance, head first, with a twist of a grin on his twisted face, “here's your shoelace. Came in nice and handy it did.”

No one – not even Nieve – noticed as Sutton's lips began to twitch and lift into a tentative, and genuine, smile.

–Thirty-Four–
Punchline

N
ieve was staying at Gran's while her parents were in the city buying supplies for their new business venture. Both of them were sick of weeping for a living. Nieve hadn't wanted to go with them in case someone recognized her – being famous had gotten to be really boring, really fast. After she'd awakened all those who'd been hypnotized, her picture had appeared in the city newspaper above the headline,
FINGER-SNAPPING GIRL GENERATES LIGHT!
Incredible, seeing as she'd dreamed that one up herself not that long ago, while never in a zillion years thinking it might actually happen.

Professor Manning had credited her with discovering the antidote as well – a bit craftily, she thought, seeing as he didn't want anyone to find out that he'd been responsible for the original body-numbing serum. While everyone who'd received the serum was being treated in the hospital, including the babies, he explained to the press that the affliction was a rare kind of virus,
hinges immobilus
, that, when it struck, twisted people into the shapes of armoires and tables and such. (Nieve was sure he'd made that up on the spot, while the unquestioning reporters eagerly wrote it down in their spiral notebooks.
She'd
do a little fact-checking if it were her.) Frances and Mayor Mary and Mr. Exley were singing her praises, too, although Mr. Exley was doing more squeaking than singing. Gran told her not to worry, that everyone would forget soon enough. Nieve hoped so. Alicia Overbury certainly seemed to have forgotten. After being liberated from the living wall and treated, she was back home and back to being her irritating old self.

“Let's see this famous finger-snapping trick of yours,” she'd demanded.

Nieve only laughed and walked away.

“Can't
do
it, can you? Showoff. Smart Alec.”

True, she couldn't. After she had snapped and snapped and
snapped
until she thought her fingers were going to snap off (one thing, she'd become an expert at finger-snapping) and everyone had been wakened, the little daylight, the
lux
, itself dropped off her finger. It had floated in front of her for a few minutes, zipping around as if searching for something, then began to unfold before her eyes, stretching and expanding, growing bigger and bigger, until there was more daylight than darkness and gloom. Nieve reasoned that she couldn't miss it, because it was everywhere.

The days were getting colder, but there had been weeks of sunlight and beautiful, clear, starlit nights. She sometimes thought she couldn't get enough of the sun, like Mr. Mustard Seed, who'd followed her to Gran's. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she watched him through the kitchen window lolling in a bright patch at the base of the sundial, one contented cat. He seemed a lot bolder these days, and Nieve had to wonder if he'd gotten up to some mischief himself when that truant officer had broken into the house. Maybe the monster had a terror of cats, she'd never know. Just as she'd never know what exactly had happened to the
others
.

“Gone,” Gran had said, lips tightened. “But
not
forgotten.” Then she smiled just a little, and Nieve knew she was remembering Dunstan Warlock's comeuppance. The silver car, driven to distraction by Warlock (he
was
a terrible driver) and honking like mad (
bleep bleeping bleep!!)
, had chased him around and around Ferrets' driveway and finally chased him right out of town. He might be running still for all they knew. Nieve figured he could use the exercise.

She poured the boiling water over the tea leaves in the Brown Betty, then arranged it on a tray with the cups and saucers, spoons, milk pitcher and sugar bowl, and a heaping plate of oatmeal cookies crammed with raisins and nuts, Dr. Morys' favourite. Tray-laden and dishes clinking, she carried it carefully into the living room. Dr. Morys started to get up from his chair by the hearth to help, but Gran beat him to it.

“Jim,” she warned. “Rest! Doctor's orders.” She took the tray from Nieve and set it on the coffee table. “Lovely, Nievy.” Artichoke, dozing at Dr. Morys' feet, was immediately alert, tail thumping, and eyeing the cookies with interest.

“Megrims, eh Nieve.” He gave her a quick wink. “Cunning
and
bossy.”

“I'll say,” Nieve grinned. “But guess what, I looked that word up, megrim. It means ‘headache'.”

“Makes sense,” he nodded. “Given the ones I know.”

“
‘Whisht'
,” scolded Gran.

“Ow!” he pinched his brow theatrically.

Artichoke, meanwhile, delicately snitched a cookie from the tray.

“You know the stuff on Elixibyss' arm that I thought was moss?” Nieve had been doing some research for her own newspaper, now called simply
Lux
. “It's called grave scab, you get it from walking over the graves of unchristened babies, which also makes sense, because of what you told me about Elixibyss stealing Aunt Liz's form after she died.”

“Aye,” said Gran, grimly. “She was a fetch of sorts. They steal people's appearances, but I've never known one to steal a child. In a way, awful as it sounds, she saved Lias. Stillborn, or thought to be, he was buried with his mother . . . and yet, 'tis unco, he had a tetch of breath left in him.”

Nieve shuddered at the thought. No wonder Lias had such a fear of those bodies in the hospital. And it didn't help that Elixibyss had always kept him teetering on the edge of death itself. Even though Nieve had been told the story a few times now, she understood why Gran had to repeat it. Saddened and appalled by her daughter's fate, and her grandson's, she was still trying to come to terms with it. “I'd no idea that our Liz was expecting when she ran away from home, blind fool that I was. Nor any idea of what became of her. Your mother never got over it, either, Nieve, losing her older sister.”

“Then all this time later,” Dr. Morys added, “Sarah, Nora Mullein's daughter, comes along with news of Liz. Or what she suspected had happened to her, and her imposter's involvement with Twisden.”

As Sophie had explained it, Sarah was a law enforcer in the area of unnatural law-breakers, a kind of paranormal police officer. Nieve found this incredibly interesting and wanted to do a piece on it for her paper, but Sophie had said it all had to be kept hush-hush. Which is why she herself had been so secretive, not even telling Gran when Sarah had approached her for help. That, and the fact that she was skeptical of the whole investigation, until she realized the danger Nieve herself was in. The eye-ring had allowed Sophie to infiltrate
them
, but she hadn't fully understood its spying function. When she did, down the toilet it went. Let them spy
that
.

“I never seriously bought any of this superstition business before,” Sophie had confessed to Nieve only days ago. “Gran's hocus-pocus.”

Nieve knew that she was buying it now, seriously, because that's what her parents were doing in the city – stocking up on crystals and ‘magic' wands and pointy witch hats for their new store downtown.

“Junk,” Gran had grumbled when she heard about it, which Nieve had thought pretty funny, considering.

Too bad they couldn't locate any moly to sell, the plant that had provided the miraculous cure, not to mention the miraculous leafy shoes (which were no longer leafy, but back to being brown and dry and tucked into the crevice of Gran's mantel). Professor Manning had explained, however, that moly was extremely rare and only to be found in ancient Greece. Well, no one was going
there
to pick some, that's for sure.

Sipping her tea, Nieve glanced up at the clacking mantel clock, which was now keeping ordinary time – the best time there was, in her view. Soon, she'd join Malcolm and Lias, who were helping to clean up the store, getting it ready for the grand opening on Friday. Then on Saturday was the wedding at the newly rechristened Woodlands. Professor Manning and Molly Twisden were getting married! Everyone was invited, including Sarah, who was thrilled
not
to be getting married. Lirk was invited, too – he'd been asked to spin some discs – although Nieve wasn't sure if he'd show. After plastering on a special wrinkle cream that Professor Manning had invented, his face had turned bright blue. Malcolm told him that he looked like a Smurf, and Lirk had been so annoyed that he'd vanished on the spot. No one had seen him since.