The boy entered the schoolroom, out of breath. He had a string tied around his finger and he was wrapping and unwrapping it nervously.
It was then Charlie saw, squeezing in behind, a second figure, a hulking shapeless thing. It could have been the boy’s shadow except it was massive and solid, or nearly so; it seemed in fact to be the consistency of jelly, shuddering slightly as it moved, but marbled and slick like raw meat: a faceless thing that turned its faceless head this way and that, as if trying to see whatever Oskar was seeing. Yet it had no eyes to see by, nor ears nor lips nor mouth nor nose. Flies buzzed around it; a reek of turned meat entered the room and lingered. Beside Charlie, Marlowe caught his breath. But Charlie had no time to wonder at the thing, at the—what had Ribs called it?—the flesh giant; for Oskar had been sent with a message.
Alice had woken up at last.
19
HOUSE OF GLASS
Marlowe and Charlie, Charlie and Marlowe.
They were what Alice had, now.
She was kneeling in the grand foyer of that manor house, as if to receive some sacrament, while the two boys came to her, and she took them into her arms, and she held them to her heart.
She could have held them like that forever. But there was much to discuss; and after Mrs. Harrogate had taken her leave, the boys walked Alice carefully, worriedly, back up to her room. They were wearing identical white shirts and gray waistcoats and gray trousers, unfussy, ill-fitting. She hated the anxious tenderness of it, but was grateful too. She would not meet the girl who had run in first until the following day; nor any of the other young talents, the girl who could disappear, the boy with the flesh giant. Instead she and Marlowe and Charlie remembered Coulton; they grieved him, Marlowe steadfastly refusing to talk about Brynt; and together the three of them, that first night, went out onto the lawn after moonrise and held hands and said a prayer in memory of their dead.
Not everything was sorrowful. Cairndale’s crooked halls, its labyrinthine interior, the drift of voices and old persons disappearing around corners, all of it made their first days there eerie and lovely, somehow, as if they had stepped inside a children’s story. They stood on the stony beach of the loch and peered across at the island, and the ruined monastery, the golden tree growing up out of the stone ribs. Alice herself slept, and continued to heal.
And on the third morning, as she was rising from her breakfast, she was informed that Dr. Berghast wished to see her.
She was taken by a servant through a rear corridor and outside to a glasshouse, domed and built of wrought iron, its thousands of little panes steamed over and opaque. Constructed against one side of the carriage house, with a bare sandstone patio facing south, it looked, she thought, more like a delicate landlocked ship than an orangery. Across the lawns she could see the stables, and far beyond that, the low stone wall marking the property.
The first thing Alice noticed was Mrs. Harrogate, waiting for her in the entrance, the bandages taken off her ear. Harrogate’s face still looked battered, her eyelid marbled but no longer swollen.
The next thing she noticed was Mrs. Harrogate’s outfit: a checkered cloak and a matching hat, a small traveling case clutched in both hands. She was leaving for London.
Last of all she noticed a powerful-looking man down one aisle, white-bearded, wearing a leather apron with pockets, whom she at first mistook for a gardener. A gray-and-white bird hunched on his shoulder. He was bent over a little iron cart, repotting a seedling of some kind. But under his apron he wore a black suit and a crisp high collar, too fine for such work.
“Oranges, Miss Quicke,” he called. He nodded up at the trees beside her, his hands still working the soil in the pot. “And we have strawberries also, for consumption in January. The heating is the difficulty. I am told they construct boilers now that can run all the night through, far more efficient than steam.” He glanced up at her. His eyes were a startling pale gray, as if lit from within.
Alice, uncertain, shot a questioning look at Mrs. Harrogate.
But Dr. Berghast, for that’s who he was, only beckoned her closer. The joints in his wrist and shoulder popped softly as he did so. “A visitor once came to Heraclitus for advice and was embarrassed to find him warming himself in a kitchen. Kitchens, you see, were undignified spaces in ancient Greece. But Heraclitus only said, ‘Come in, come in, do not be afraid. There are gods here too.’”
Just then the bird on his wide shoulder made a strange clicking noise and Alice saw, with some alarm, that it was made out of bones. An iron brace like a kind of armor held its delicate vertebrae in place. Its sleek feathers were stark against the armor.
“Ah,” said Dr. Berghast, observing. “I call it a bonebird. A curious creation, hm?”
Alice, still staring, nodded.
“They were made for us by a bone witch, many years ago. We use them for messages. More efficient and reliable than the Royal Mail.” He glanced sidelong at the creature on his shoulder. It clicked, tested its grip. “The lady who made them has, sadly, passed. But these wondrous things just keep on going. They are ninety-six years old, now. Older than the revolution in France.”
Its eyeless sockets seemed to peer directly at Alice. She suppressed a shudder.
“Mrs. Harrogate informs me,” said Dr. Berghast, “that you wish to know about Adra Norn. You should know, I have not heard from her in a long time. I do not know even if she is still alive. We are of an age, she and I; and that would make her very old indeed. But I will tell you what I can.”
“How did you know her?”
“It is a small community of scholars, Miss Quicke, who share my … interests. Everyone knows everyone else. Adra and I wrote to each other for years, sharing theories and research. We did not discuss personal matters. It has been many, many years since last I saw her. That was in Marseilles, at a gathering of scholars interested in the intersections between science and religion. I, of course, approached the subject biased by science. Adra thought otherwise. But there was nevertheless much common ground between us. We both of us, for instance, believed in the invisible world.”
“What is that?”
“It is not a thing, Miss Quicke. Merely an acknowledgment that what we see is not all that there is.” Dr. Berghast scooped out a hollow in the black soil of the pot, pressed a seed in with his thumb, like a raisin into dough. “Adra believed holiness involved separating herself from the corruptions of the world. She believed if she could receive true grace, she could perform miracles.”
“Like walking out of a fire.”
He nodded. “Not, you understand, a very reasonable supposition, from a scientific point of view.”
Alice gestured at the bonebird. “I’ve seen a few unscientific things myself, now.”
“But not miracles, Miss Quicke, never miracles. Miracles are monstrous by their very nature, they are contrary to the laws of this world. The talents are entirely natural. Marlowe and Charlie are no more evidence of God’s hand in the world than you are, or I am.”
“For some, that’s enough.”
“For some.”
Alice studied the man’s unlined face. He could have been forty, despite his white hair. But she knew he was much older than that. “You’re telling me Adra Norn never walked out of that fire?”
“I find it unlikely. Do you not?”
“I was there. I saw it.”