Later, while the boys were getting dressed, Komako Onoe lurked in the corridor outside their room, brooding. They weren’t supposed to be in the boys’ corridor, really; but Mr. Smythe and the other kids were down at breakfast, or already off to classes; and Miss Davenshaw need never know.
Fact was, Komako didn’t know what to think. They seemed ordinary enough, if there even was such a thing at Cairndale. But seeing the shining boy in the flesh, Marlowe, brought a rush of memories back to her. That night, when Jacob had returned, changed, violent, dark as the dust that radiated at his fists … She and Ribs had seen him, at a distance, in the dark, but not been able to get close, not close enough to talk to him. The baby he’d come to murder, or steal, she’d hardly seen, only heard crying sometimes in the night when the window was left ajar. But she’d seen the smashed cradle, she’d seen the shattered window the morning after. She’d blamed herself, since. Maybe if she’d managed to talk to Jacob, maybe she could’ve stopped him.
All this was in her as she waited for the boys. She could feel Ribs watching her face, watching the quick play of her thoughts in it. “We should take them to Miss Davenshaw,” she said quietly. “Now that they’re awake. She’ll be expecting them.”
“Or…,” came Ribs’s disembodied voice slyly. “We could just take a … detour. Give em a eyeful of the old haunt, so to speak. Find out all their secrets, like.”
Komako blew out her cheeks, impatient. “We’re not taking them to the Spider, Ribs. No.”
“Loch’s a lovely sight, this time of day. Could be fun—”
“No.”
The Spider was their name for what slept in the monastery ruins. The glyphic. He never woke, it was said, not fully, and was so ancient, he’d grown into the roots of the wych elm that soared out of the old stones. It was said just to brush his skin was to see truth. The Spider located the lost children, in his dreaming; but far more important, he kept the orsine sealed fast, containing the dead, keeping all manner of evil on the other side. If something were to happen to him, the orsine would rip open; the dead would pour through into this world. No one could say what that would mean, but they’d learned enough to glean it wouldn’t be pretty. The Spider’s presence sheltered the very walls of Cairndale from creatures like Jacob, like the drughr. Disturbing him was strictly forbidden.
Which meant Ribs, of course, had already done it. Ribs with her sneaking, her poking about. No one else had dared. How often she’d gone, Komako couldn’t guess, but Ribs swore she’d never touched his skin, never dared that.
There was a thrump as Ribs, still invisible, leaned into the wall. She cracked her knuckles, one by one by one. “That Charlie’s handsome. I mean, in a scared rabbity kind of way.”
“Don’t be coarse,” said Komako. She pulled her long braid forward.
“You think it too. I seen it.”
“I don’t trust him. You shouldn’t either.”
“You just don’t trust nobody. I known bad sorts all me life, Ko. He ain’t one.” Ribs sniffed, then added mischievously, “Trust ain’t half hard, you know. Just one touch by the Spider, an all sorts of gibberish’d come out…”
But just then the boys emerged from their room, hair mussed, eyes still sleepy, both dressed in the collared shirts and gray waistcoats given to all the boys at Cairndale, Marlowe’s sleeves too long and flapping, Charlie tall and rail-thin with his bony wrists sticking out from his sleeves and one hand pinching up the waist of his trousers. Komako raised an eyebrow at that, and Charlie saw it, and all of a sudden he was looking with great interest at his shoes.
She glowered, to keep from smiling. So easily embarrassed, that one. The copper skin on his face and throat was so smooth and flawless, it almost glowed.
“I want to see Alice,” said the little one, Marlowe. “Can we go find her, please?”
Ribs’s voice answered. “Aw, she ain’t even waked up yet. You want to see old Davenshaw first, anyhow.”
Komako saw the boy glance, troubled, at Charlie. Both went quiet. She understood wariness, she understood fear. She’d been in Scotland nine years now and still felt it, though Tokyo, the old theater, her beloved Teshi, all of it had faded, faded into sepia, like an old daguerreotype. Oh, there were mornings yet when she’d wake with her throat sore, the dream of her sister’s small hand in her own still real, still warm, and the ache she felt as it all was sucked down over the edge of sleep, as if being taken from her again, was almost unbearable. On such mornings she wanted to cry. Someone so small and so good shouldn’t be ripped from the world, not like that. Mostly, though, Komako had grown used to Cairndale; she’d smoothed out her English easily; she’d grown close with Ribs and with Oskar. True, the weather was gray and chilly; true, the food was heavy and sour; true, the clothes were stiff and impractical. Her hands were still red and chapped. But Cairndale was not the only world; she’d grown up in another, a world of cruelty and hurt; and she was glad for the shelter of this place.
As, in time, would Charlie and Marlowe also be.
They passed the other boys’ rooms, doors standing open, beds made tight and not an object out of place. She glanced at Charlie and Marlowe as they went along the corridor, down a narrow servant’s staircase, on their way to Miss Davenshaw and the schoolroom. It was strange to think they’d confronted Jacob, that they’d seen him and even fought him. They still seemed so … innocent. She herself hadn’t seen Jacob in years. She thought of him sometimes, mostly as he’d been in those first days in Tokyo, and on their sea voyage out of Japan—the quiet sadness in his eyes, the kindness, the calm silences as they stood at the railing together, watching the sun sink into the sea. He’d taught her how to control her talent, how to draw the dust in a way that cut her less, that eased the chill in her wrists. It had been a distraction, she knew, had known it even then, still reeling from the loss of her sister. She’d been grateful for it. But even on that first leg of their journey, along the coastline of China, before his vanishing, she’d seen how withdrawn he was becoming, how little sleep he could find. Mr. Coulton had seen it too, she knew. And then, at Cairndale, her new life had begun: lessons with Miss Davenshaw, arithmetic, literature, penmanship, geography. Her friendship with Ribs. The history of the orsine and the nature of talents. Practical classes of how to work the dust and how to control it.
Until, of course, that terrible night, when Jacob had returned, and what he’d done to those poor children at the river, and going after that baby like a man possessed, that baby who was here now, improbably alive, grown, the famous shining boy.
Through the glazed windows she could see rain. The daylight in the corridors was dim. They were nearing the schoolroom when Charlie caught up to her, asked about her talent. “You didn’t ever say what you do,” he said. “Your talent.”
Komako studied him. Her covered hand was on the door pull. And then something in her, some stubborn thing, that same thing that pushed everyone away, and that Ribs was always telling her not to give in to, that same unhappy part of her looked Charlie square in the face and saw the openness in him and turned sharply from it.
“You know that thing that attacked you on the train?” she said. “Jacob Marber?”
Charlie nodded.
“I’m like him,” she said flatly.
She didn’t pause to see the effect of her words, didn’t have to. She knew it would be disgust or revulsion or something like it. So she just opened the door angrily, and went through.
* * *
Except it wasn’t disgust, or revulsion, or anything like that. Charlie heard the pain in her reply and knew it for what it was, shame, because he’d felt it too, all his life, and he just felt bad for even having asked the question at all.