The Real Boy (11 page)

Sophie tilted her head and now looked curiously at Oscar. And it was only when her expression changed that he realized what the one before had been telling him—the girl was frightened.

Oscar sucked in a breath. His chest hurt. He opened his mouth but could find nothing to say to her. He shook his head helplessly. He was not made for this.

“I’ll consult with Madame Mariel as soon as she returns,” Callie was telling the parents. She sounded so truthful when she was lying. “And then I will come back up. Please send word if anything changes.”

Callie motioned to Oscar. Time to go—though the boy was still flat and gray. Sophie’s face shifted back again, and she was holding Oscar with those frightened eyes as if trying to keep him there.

He could do nothing. He looked away.

When they left the house, Oscar, for the first time ever, was glad to see the blue sky. Next to him, Callie’s perfect posture had collapsed.

“Callie,” he whispered, “can you help him?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. She pressed her hands on her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

“You looked like you knew what you were doing in there!” The words came out too loudly.

She sighed. “I know many things, Oscar. I’ve assisted on hundreds of healings, and I’ve read a lot. But—”

“So, what’s
wrong
with him?”

“Well,” Callie said quietly, “his pulse is faint. His hands and feet are swollen and cold. And he’s just . . . weak, everywhere.”

It wasn’t what he’d meant. Oscar didn’t want to know the boy’s symptoms; he wanted to know what was
wrong
with him so someone could
fix
it and no one ever had to look like that again.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought the City was protected. That’s the whole point, magic serves the City, and so everyone is blessed—”

Callie’s face darkened. “Well, not anymore.”

CHAPTER TEN

Last Words

T
hey visited three more houses, and at each it was the same—a young child flat in a bed, parents with the shine gone out of them. A girl could not eat. A stiff-looking boy said he hurt all over, and as he talked his lungs seemed to be trying to yank the words back. And another had gone to sleep at night healthy but when he’d woken up he could not see or hear.

It was all wrong, everywhere, and so was Oscar. At each house, Oscar lingered in the shadows. He had nothing to say to the parents, to the children, to anyone. His body was there, but the real Oscar was tucked away somewhere else, somewhere dark with four walls and a ceiling and at least two cats.

He stayed in that place until, at the last house, the boy’s father—a tall, older man with eyebrows like cat tails—grabbed his shoulder. Oscar jumped as if he’d been pulled from a dream.

“You’re the magician’s hand? Caleb’s?” the lord said, voice just like his grip.

Oscar stiffened and nodded slightly.
Is there something I can help you with?

“You tell him he needs to come to the City. You tell him something’s very wrong up here.”

“He’ll come,” Oscar said. “I know he will.”

The man leaned into Oscar and held him with his eyes. “Do I have your word on that?”

“I—”

“Oscar,” said Callie quickly, standing up. “Why don’t you go wait outside? I want to talk to Lord Baker.”

A few moments later, Oscar was sitting on the front step in between two potted plants that looked like cypress trees in miniature. He eyed one. It was like there was a whole universe somewhere of inch-high people who lived in their own tiny little forest, and the City people were taking their trees for their own. The noise in his head buzzed steadily, and he pressed his arms as close into his chest as he could. It did not stop hurting.

Callie had been right to dismiss him. He did not belong here. And now Callie knew it, if she hadn’t before. She could have just told him what was wrong with the children and he could have made something for them—he could look at a list of ailments and know what to do (
comfrey, calendula, juniper berry
). Name a problem and his mind would sift through pictures of book pages, browse the pantry shelves, pluck from his memory bits of things Caleb had said, until the answer took shape in his mind. But when these problems took flesh and became people, people with wrong-colored faces and cold skin and grasping breath and unseeing eyes and faint words, the books and shelves and bits of things went away, and all that was left were scared little sisters and angry fathers and no answers, and Oscar had nothing for them.

When Callie came out, Oscar sprang up, nearly overturning one of the tiny-people trees.

“Callie,” he said, eyes stinging, “why am I here? Why did you bring me up here?”

“Oscar—” She blinked at him and then glanced at the house she’d just left. She took Oscar’s arm and led him down the stairs and into the street. “Don’t worry about Lord Baker,” she said. “Sometimes when people are upset about something, they take it out on the nearest person, especially if that person can’t get angry back. Do you understand?”

Not really.

“But you can’t make promises for Master Caleb, especially to City people. You can’t. All right? They’ll expect you to keep those promises.”

He nodded, pretending.

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Oscar, I brought you here because I thought you could help me figure out what’s causing all of this.”

“But I don’t belong here! You could have just
told
me—”

Callie shook her head. “No. There’s something underneath. More than we can see. And we can’t just look at all the different pieces. We need to put them together.”

That was the problem. He couldn’t look at anything but the different pieces.

“Oscar, listen to me. I wanted you to come because you might see something I don’t. I wanted your point of view.”

“On herbs?”

“On everything. Master Caleb’s not here and Madame Mariel’s not here and these children need us. The healer’s apprentice and the magician’s hand. We’re the best they have right now.”

“But—”

She held up her hand. “Yes, when Caleb comes back. But”—she leaned in—“he’s not here and we are and they are sick right now and I want to help them and I don’t know how. They need me and I can’t help them.” She put her hand on his arm. “Please help me.”

He could not say no.

Callie exhaled and started walking. “It can’t be a coincidence,” she said. “Something’s making these kids sick. The Baker boy can’t move his legs. The Collier boy’s muscles are stiff and he can’t seem to get enough air. The Miller girl can’t eat. Hugo—his heart isn’t working right. It’s like . . . like there’s something
broken
in each of them. But not the same thing. They’re sick, and . . . Oscar”—she turned to look at him—“
I don’t understand
.”

Her eyes were so big as she looked at him, and shining a little. He thought of Hugo’s little sister and her eyes and her red shoes and his utter lack of anything to give her.

“I—” Oscar said. As he stood there, wordless, his mind made a map of the streets they’d traveled, and the houses of the sick children rose up from them. He saw no pattern, but something must be there—a current running between the children, some invisible force traveling from one to another. Something dark was in that current, moving from child to child, altering itself as it moved so it couldn’t be named, let alone traced. All they had in common was that they were young children, and—

His head snapped up. “Callie, what if it’s the plague again?”

Callie’s eyes widened. “But,” she said, her voice a thick hush, “that was ages ago.”

“Before. But what if it . . . changed somehow? What if it can get around the magic?” It sounded so strange to say, but it was possible. One year you spread garlic all around the berry bushes and it keeps the monkey beetles away. The next year the monkey beetles decide to eat the garlic. Things have a way of getting around barriers when they want to.

“I don’t know,” Callie said. “Nobody ever talks about the plague. I don’t know anything about it; do you?”

“Not very much. But”—he looked at her cautiously—“I know where we can find out.”

It was the first time Oscar had ever brought anyone below stairs—it was the first time he knew of anyone going down there at all besides the magician, the apprentice, and the hand, and when he opened the door to the cellar, he half expected some force to push them back.

“It’s very dark in here,” Oscar said, taking a step down. “Be careful.”

In fact, the cellar had never looked so dark before. It was like the City had blinded him. He looked back to Callie to make sure she was all right. His heart fluttered like he was handing her a secret with each step—what if Caleb came back and found them? What if Wolf had never died at all and was just lurking in wait to catch Oscar doing something wrong? Or what if he
had
died and was still lurking in wait?

When they stepped into the cellar, something hurled itself at Callie—though it was not Wolf, unless Wolf had become small and fuzzy and orange after his death.

“Pebble!” Oscar said as the cat crashed into her legs. The kitten flopped on her back and rolled around in front of Callie as if Callie were catnip.

Callie’s face broke out into a smile as bright as all the lanterns up and down the hallway. She squatted down and rubbed Pebble’s belly. “Good kitty,” she whispered.

The cats multiplied around Callie—now Crow, and Bear, and even Cat. Callie’s smile broadened as they presented themselves to her, one belly at a time. Oscar had never seen them all like this; one person made them all come out of the shadows.

“Did you name them all?” Callie asked.

“Well, in a way,” he said. The cats had really named themselves.

He glanced over at his pantry. Someday, he would like to show it to her. But instead he motioned her forward into the hallway, shooting a look at Cat.
Master Caleb’s not back, is he?

Cat blinked back, unperturbed.

“This is incredible,” Callie said, as they walked down the long hallway. “There’s a whole world down here!”

When they got to the library Callie just stood in the doorway, mouth open. It was not Oscar’s. He had not conceived of it or built it; he was not even supposed to be in it. But still, Callie was marveling at it, and pride tickled his chest.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she breathed. “It’s like a library in a book!”

A book in a library. A library in a book.
Oscar let out a little laugh, and then coughed to cover it up.

Map yowled from his position on the chair, and Callie hurried over and gave him his due. The rest of them would come slowly, one at a time, and casually settle into different places in the library as if they had planned on being there anyway—except for Pebble, who didn’t do anything casually.

Oscar went over to the shelves. He was no good for Callie up there in the sunshine, blinking at some senseless jumble of bits. But down in the cellar, he could help.

He went to the Aletheian history section and pulled down the plague book. The little green book next to it fell over, so Oscar pulled it down, too.

“Here,” Oscar said, calling to Callie. “This is about the plague.” He indicated the thick book in his hand. “This one might be, too.”

Callie took the books and sat down in one of the big chairs. Map immediately jumped on her lap and flattened himself against her.

“I’m going to look at some of the plant-magic books,” Oscar said.
At the bits.
He could at least try to help the kids feel better. That would make Callie happy. But even the bits were jumbled in his mind now with baby fountains and horseshoe buildings and naked statues and miniature trees. He tried to take the muddle of the day and pick the important pieces out.
Weak heartbeat, swollen hands, cold limbs. Vomiting. Pain and breathlessness. Blind and deaf.

“That’s right,” Callie said. Oscar flushed—he hadn’t realized he had been thinking out loud. She leaned back in the chair, shaking her head. “I wish they had more in common. Then we’d know where to start. There’s nothing except they were all weak, and they all seemed . . .”

“What?”

She cocked her head. “I don’t know. They all seemed like something was . . . missing. Did you feel that?”

Oscar shook his head.

Callie shrugged. “Illness takes things away from people sometimes,” she said. She exhaled and started looking through the big book.

They worked quietly for a while, Oscar going through books hoping one of them would tell him what he was looking for. Every once in a while Callie would stop and tell him what she’d read. But none of it sounded like the country he knew—it was like hearing some tale of a far-off land. One Oscar did not particularly want to visit.

“The plague came from the continent—it came in on ships,” she told him. “Once the plague swept through the coastal countries, most of the islands stopped all trade and forbade any boats from coming in, to keep themselves safe. But the duke thought the magic would keep Aletheia safe.”

Oscar bit his lip. Wasn’t that the whole point of the magic?

“So,” Callie continued, “it started in the coastal villages in the west, children getting sick first.” She looked up at Oscar meaningfully. “Um . . .” She scanned down the page. “Fevers and rashes and weakness and vomiting. And then it just swept through the villages south of the river.”

Oscar sucked in his lips. There were no villages there now.

The map of Aletheia appeared in Oscar’s head. He saw it—the great expanse of the eastern country, and the river snaking up across the south and to the west, slicing off the Barrow and surrounding areas from the rest of Aletheia, and he saw the shadow moving in from the southwest.

“Everything starting dying all up and down the river,” she continued. “The whole western side of the island. Everyone was getting sick but the wizards. Even in Asteri.”

“But,” Oscar interjected, “I thought the plague didn’t last that long. Especially not in the City.”

Callie blew out air and motioned to the book. “It seems to have lasted.”

Callie read on quietly for a while more. The book Oscar had been studying lay open in his lap—he could read so much more on Callie’s face than in the pages in front of him.

“It spread over the whole island,” Callie said after a time. “Whole villages were dying. It wouldn’t stop until—” Her eyes grew wide and her mouth hung open. But her eyes kept traveling the pages. Oscar mashed his lips together and waited, counting silently to himself.

She looked up, finally. “Well, then the duke decided to institute a quarantine,” she said, her voice heavy. “As soon as someone showed signs of being sick, they were arrested and taken into Asteri and kept there.”

“Because it’s magic,” Oscar said. “To heal them.”

“No. No. The duke lived in the east then; the capital was there, all the people with money lived there. Asteri—it sounds like it was run-down. Filthy. So they sent people there. Not just people with the plague, but their families, too, in case they’d been exposed . . . and then . . . they locked them in. Oscar”—she inhaled and leaned closer—“the City walls weren’t built to keep people out. They were there to keep people
in
.”