The Unfinished World (23 page)

Set was sure his huge house must have a secret room somewhere. He spent hours knocking on the walls to see if they were hollow, trying to peer behind bookcases, pressing every knot in the fireplace to see if something would happen. He had wriggled
behind one of the bookcases in the library when he heard footsteps, and he stilled and silenced himself. He wasn't sure if what he was doing was punishable or not, but he didn't care to find out; Pru was a firm believer in corporal punishment and he still feared the switch.

Set heard two sets of footsteps, one light, one heavy, and then Oliver and Cedric talking—no, arguing.

We should tell him, said Cedric. When he's old enough to understand.

Tell him what? asked Oliver. That he was dead and now he isn't? What can it matter to him?

It's not right, said Cedric. And it's my fault. You can't come back from death, not really.

Set did, said Oliver, and he sounded as angry as Set had ever heard him.

Cedric seemed oddly cheerful. Suit yourself, he said. But it's cruel, if you ask me, not to let him know. Not to tell him what he is.

And what is he? shouted Oliver. Set flinched as something made a loud smashing noise. One of the busts on the bookshelves? A vase?

Don't get sore at me, said Cedric. I'm just trying to be honest, stop hiding what's plain.

Set had no idea what they meant, but it gave him shivers and made his toes curl. It made his hollow place feel wider and emptier than ever. His knees were beginning to ache from being pressed up again the bookcase, and the dust back here was in his nose and mouth and eyes, and he hoped they would leave, soon, before he sneezed or coughed.

So am I, said Oliver, forcefully. He seemed to be walking away from the bookcase, and then the footsteps stopped. It doesn't help for him to know, when he can't do anything about it.

But maybe we
should
do something about it, said Cedric. I just thought—and then footsteps, heavy and light, heading out the door and down the hall together. Set sighed and slid out from behind the bookcase, his knees pulsing with pain and pressure. He saw the little plaster bust of King George IV that usually sat on the fireplace mantel. It was shattered in a hundred jagged pieces all over the hearth rug.

Just to be quarrelsome, Inge often asked the governess, Why do we not learn Irish?

The governess always shuddered. Because it is a heathen, filthy Roman Catholic language, she would say.

But Father is Catholic, said Inge. After Inge was born and her mother died, her father had converted to Catholicism, though no one else had. Hannah said it was because their mother had been a Catholic, and their father wanted to make sure he found her in heaven. The mustachioed governess said it was because their father was under the influence of the demon lord himself, though she said it in a whisper and never when Father was around.

Albert said it was because Father was sad and lonely, and people who are sad and lonely seek comfort in strange places. Inge didn't know much about religion—though she said her prayers each night like she was taught and went to church on Sundays with Cook—but she didn't see what could be comforting about it. If she had a religion, she supposed it would be the Having of Adventures. It would involve trials of wisdom and courage, with long quests for magical objects, and one would worship in far-off lands, where natives heaved spears at one another and prayed to strange gods in fiery temples. Inge's village church was the last
place in the world she'd think to Have Adventures. The church was damp and gray, and the Book of Common Prayer was boring, and the vicar was a hundred years old and asthmatic, forever coughing and wheezing his way through endless, wandering sermons. Inge sometimes wondered, sleepily, what would happen if he just dropped dead during the Eucharist. Was another ancient vicar stowed in the closet with the vestments, just in case?

But Inge's father did a lot of things that the governess was at a loss to explain, and converting to Catholicism was just one of them. The governess could not explain why he would not let the farms to new tenants, or why he let the land lie fallow and wasted. Nor could she say why he sometimes went to Belfast, and why he always came back sorrow-eyed. She did not know why he voted against Home Rule but had an angry admiration for the Nationalists, for their blasted courage and convictions, he said. The only thing she could say—indeed took great pleasure in the saying of it—was why Inge's father had not smiled nor laughed nor touched his youngest daughter since the night her mother died.

The jumble of Oliver's cabinet held a few genuine treasures. The shelves were lined with gold doubloons, books plated with silver, crowns set with rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Directly under the figure of the snake, at the tail end of the cabinet, perched a meticulous jade miniature of ancient Chang An. And plenty of other goods fit for a lord lay buried under the most mundane items—a stuffed lizard with a necklace made of pearl, a medieval manuscript serving as a hiding place for a small, famous lost diamond.

But as Set grew older, his favorite object of fixation shifted from the bright shiny coins and jewels and became, instead, an egg. A fossilized egg from the moa bird, a creature extinct since the fifteenth century. Large, cream-colored, and solid as rock, it fascinated Set: a manifestation of endless possibility. He didn't know what a moa was, but he pictured all sorts of creatures—a small dragon, perhaps, or a brightly colored bird, large as the flying dinosaurs. He was obsessed with the idea that a life could be caught out of time forever, spared the fate of the rest of its kind. He would sit before it on the footstool, and sketch the egg, the thatched nest underneath, and make lists of the creatures it might contain.

Oliver found him at it one afternoon, and unlocked the Cabinet for him. He lifted the egg, put it into Set's outstretched hands. Humans overhunted them, he told Set. They looked like emus, or kiwi. Do you know what those are? Set shook his head, no. I'll show you, said Oliver, and he went off to the library, left Set holding the egg. Set was certain he felt it moving about. It made him nervous. He was sure he would drop it and a dragon would fly out.

Oliver came back with an important-looking book bound in red leather. He thumbed through until he found a faded illustration of a strange bird. Thick-legged, gray-brown, long-necked, incapable of flight—thoroughly disappointing, as far as Set was concerned. He handed the egg back to Oliver, no longer interested in its lost potential. Oliver laughed. You're unhappy, he said. I've ruined your object for you.

Set nodded, close to tears. What was the point of dreaming up new dragons now?

Oliver smiled, and knelt beside Set. You know, it's taken me many years to collect all of these things. It is a part of me now, the best part, perhaps. Oliver's beard quivered, and Set remembered being very little and watching that little triangle dance upon his brother's chin like a sail in the wind. Just like all of his siblings, Oliver seemed changeless.

Why did you? asked Set. It was the right question. Oliver's beard dipped and he showed a rare, shy smile to his small brother.

Because of the mystery, said Oliver. I find an object—it's a blank, or nearly one. And then—and then I have the pleasure, the
exquisite
pleasure, of finding the object out. What it is, where it's from, when it's from, what it does, or says, or was. Who might have loved it, and lost it, you see? What it meant to someone or something, long or near ago.

Am I a mystery? asked Set. Do I belong with the spirits?

Oliver shifted in surprise, then smiled. He kissed the top of Set's head. This is your world, too, he told Set. You belong here. Set was not so sure about that. He loved the cabinet, but he also loved motorcars and moving pictures and the momentum of modern life. Why don't you go to museums, like Cedric? he asked. Why keep these things here?

Oliver laughed. This is more than a museum, he said. These cabinets are live things, can't you feel it? These aren't Ced's dead relics, dug up and put on display for the learned. These are the things that matter to me; this is the strange wide world, right here, and he gestured at the long wall of cabinets. Well, the unfinished world, anyway. As much of it as I could fit into Mother's parlor without her scolding, he said, and unfolded himself from the floor in an elegant gesture.

Set had made a list once, of all the things he knew about Oliver.
He rolled it up like a parchment and tied a blue silk ribbon around it and gave it to Desmond for his birthday. To Set's surprise, the big man began to weep when he read it, fat tears landing on the page and smearing the careful ink.

It's the best present anyone has ever given me, Desmond told him. Desmond put Set on his lap while he and Oliver sang the happy birthday song, and Oliver gave Desmond a silver pocket watch, and Desmond kissed Oliver and ruffled his pretty black hair. You're so good to me, he said. What a damned waste.

Why a waste? asked Set later, alone with Pru. Why doesn't Oliver marry Desmond?

Pru's face went as red as Desmond's, and she shook her head. You don't understand anything at all, she said.

Things About Oliver

Mustache that dances

White teeth

Quite small

Curiosity cabinet is for mysteries

Calls Pru “Mother”

Has a pony

The pony is named Maria

Loves Desmond

Loves paintings of battles

And ladies singing loud

On the nights the wind howled fiercest through the manor, making the windowpanes shudder and the spiders scurry back into
the wainscoting, Inge left her drafty bedroom to wander the wild grounds. On these nights, everything seemed to quicken and jump, jittery and glimmering in the savage moonlight. These were heathen nights, full of half-magic. On these nights, Inge was on the lookout for a faerie circle or a forgotten spell, or perhaps a doorway to someplace else entirely.

One of these nights, when she must have been about ten or eleven—old enough to be brave, young enough to be foolish—Inge had climbed out onto the roof to watch the stars light the shivering grass. She saw, so close it was like a small fire, a star plummet to earth just outside the village. She held her breath until it was down, then raced to find it.

She scoured the ground for any fading light until—yes,
there
, just outside the old blacksmith's barn, a small flickering lump in the overgrown grass. The damp was already killing it. She put a scratch down the paint on the side of the barn to mark the spot, then ran to the house to find a jar. But by the time she was back, the little star's light had gone out for good.