The Real Boy (13 page)

“Don’t worry!” said Oscar.

Callie’s head snapped toward the lady. “He’s speaking figuratively.”

Oscar frowned. He was being quite literal.

The lady took a step backward, shaking her head. “The plague is back?” she breathed. Her face was a mask of fear.

“We don’t know,” said Oscar. “It only
might
be back.”

“Oscar!”
said Callie. Her voice was like a falling guillotine.

Oscar blinked at Callie and took a few steps back. Callie shook her head at him, very slightly. It hit him like a kick.

Callie turned her attention back to the boy, righted the stool, and sat down. The boy seemed to have grown even paler and was looking at Oscar like Oscar himself had brought the plague.

“Now,” Callie murmured, “can you tell me how you feel?” Jasper’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head.

Callie studied him for a moment, then leaned in. “Do you think you can say something?” she asked. “Can you tell me anything?”

The boy opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a low, inhuman groan. His eyes popped.

Callie was so totally absorbed in the boy, for her there was nothing else in the room, in the marketplace, in the universe besides him. There wasn’t even an Oscar who had so much whirling around in his head that he could barely stand still and all he wanted to do was tell her about the trees.

A flash: a reflection in his head, a whisper from the past. A picture of a smaller Callie and her brother, a little-boy version of Callie herself, all eyes and hair, but in some sickly wrong color. Maybe he had a rash, too; maybe he looked like something was missing, too.
Illness takes things from you,
Callie had said.

Oscar inhaled. “You need to heal him because you couldn’t heal your brother!”

Everyone stopped to gape at the words as they hung in the air. Callie suddenly looked as sickly as the boy in Oscar’s imagination. She was blinking rapidly, and her mouth hung open.

The boy’s mother exploded from the corner. “Who is this boy? Where is Madame Mariel? Where is Master Caleb?”

Callie’s face went blank. She stood up carefully. “Oscar,” she said, brushing off her apron. “You can go now.”

Oscar turned and fled. As he left the shop, he heard Callie’s voice carrying from the back room.

“I’m sorry,” she was saying. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Oscar ran back to the stop, chased by the invasion of darkness. He headed into the back room and then lost the will to go any farther.

History told lies; someone was murdering wizards and prowling along the outskirts of the marketplace; Oscar’s whole world was in bits. Sickness was haunting the City, though the wizards had given their lives to ensure otherwise. The magic was failing, and so was Oscar. Everything he said, everything he did, everything he thought and felt, it was all wrong, and he never should have left his pantry.

If he hadn’t, no one would ever have looked at him the way Callie just did.

Then, in the darkness, a wisp of light tickled at Oscar. He was in the kitchen of the most powerful magician in a generation. If another magician was doing this, it couldn’t be a coincidence that he or she was only attacking when Caleb was gone.

Another magician could not be more powerful than Caleb. Whoever it was, Caleb could find him and stop him. Caleb would do it. If he only knew what was happening.

Maybe Oscar could do nothing else against the ineffable dangers of the world, maybe he was useless and broken and all wrong, but at least he could try to figure out exactly where Caleb was and how to get a message to him. He was Caleb’s hand; he could do that much. And then everything would be better. Caleb could even help the City children—all the parents were asking for him anyway—and then Callie would be glad.

Caleb would want to know, anyway. He would want to know all these things. He was the magician, the closest thing to a wizard they had.

So Oscar got up, went down the cellar stairs, then strode right through the main room into the hallway and to Caleb’s workroom.

This was very much against the rules. This was so against the rules that Caleb had never even had to tell him the rule in the first place. But the world was changing under Oscar’s feet, all the rules were changing—why not this one as well?

He would want to know. He’ll be glad I told him.

He entered the room and walked around slowly, turning on every lantern he could. Cat stood in the doorway, thumping his tail.
Do not go astray, little mouse.

The room was several times larger than Oscar’s bedroom and was filled with shelves and cabinets, a worktable and tools, a desk with all kinds of books and notebooks on it. And everywhere, vials and tubes and jars and tools and strange machines and contraptions. It all hit Oscar at once, and he had to take a step back.

No. There had to be something, some letter or diary that indicated where Caleb might be and how to get in contact with him. Oscar took a deep breath and stepped forward, trying to focus on one thing at time. There were more bookshelves in here, lined with thick, old-looking books with black covers and strange gilt titles in a language Oscar didn’t recognize. Even looking at them made him feel like ten spiders were running up and down his skin.

Cat thumped his tail again.
If you were a kitten, I would drag you out by the scruff.

Hanging on the wall above the worktable were all kinds of tools. Oscar recognized a few woodworking and engraving ones, but the rest were completely outside his experience. On the table a few more tools were scattered among a pile of wood scraps.

Underneath the table were two large clay jugs—one labeled
Plaguelands Dirt
, the other, simply,
The Sea
. There was a cabinet next to the table, and Oscar opened it up to find a large assortment of weapons. He closed the cabinet. The next one was filled with animal traps. The next with odd-colored potions.

On one table sat test tubes, vials, and some device made of a mounted cylinder and, beneath it, a glass lens. Above the table were jars of strange fluids, plant clippings, bugs, spiders, hair and fur, and some bits of small rodents. There was even one rat cut into perfect halves. Oscar’s eyes fell on a dead sparrow, and he looked away.

Oscar should not be in here. He should leave.

But still he stayed.

On the wall above the writing table was a series of drawings. Figures of people, made of ovals and rectangles and joints, and next to them some small drawings of children’s faces, perfect like dolls.

He opened up a notebook. Dated entries, Caleb’s handwriting, but not any language Oscar knew. Some sketches and scribbling. Oscar flipped through the entire book and then the next. It was all the same: chaos.

A small book on Caleb’s desk had a series of diagrams of the human body in it: first a drawing of a naked person, then on the next page it was like the skin had been stripped off and the body was all muscles, then on the next, bones, then organs and a great network of veins.

Underneath that was a ledger with a few pages of entries. Names, dates, and a number of coins Oscar could not even fathom.

Some spell work, perhaps. Or all those mysterious imports. The names were familiar somehow—perhaps Caleb had told Oscar something about the ledger, but Oscar was too stupid to remember what.

The desk drawer was filled with letters—some in Caleb’s hand, but most not. And these were all written in another language, too.

Nothing was here, no place names, no plan, no carefully thought-out note left for Oscar about where to reach him in case of emergency.

Oscar looked around the room, feeling panic tugging at him. This had been his last hope of helping. Now all he could do was stand around and let the world fall apart.

Thump
. If you were a kitten, little mouse . . .

Oscar’s eyes fell on a small shelf in the back of the room, lined with jars. He stepped closer. The jars were filled with some thick liquid and all labeled with names of different animals—
goat, pig, horse, deer, bear, ape,
along with some Oscar had never heard of. And the last—Oscar picked up the jar and held it to his lantern to look more closely—
human
. He dropped the jar. It did not break. And that was good, for if it had, he would have been covered in blood.

Oscar took three steps back. But the room was not done with him yet; the blood had called to him, and now something else was calling.

Oscar stepped three paces away, to a dark corner of the room. And then he looked at the rug beneath his feet, bent down, and pulled it up.

A square door was cut into the floor, about as long as Oscar himself. It was so well masked by the floor that most people would have missed it, but it was the sort of thing Oscar noticed. And the door wanted to be opened. So Oscar opened it.

Under the door was a compartment in the floor, and inside that compartment was a strange figure. Oscar held up the lantern.

It was a doll. Or like a doll. Made of wood. About a foot smaller than Oscar, the size of a small child. Its limbs were jointed at the elbows and knees. You could tie strings to the doll’s body and make it walk..

Oscar reached down and picked up the doll’s arms. They bent, just as human arms should. Slowly, carefully, he picked up the doll and cradled it in his arms.

Its head was nothing, just a head-shaped block of wood. Its limbs flopped and its waist rotated slightly as he picked the doll up. The wood felt warm and hummed just the way Block did. It called to him, like something familiar and lost.

He looked into the doll’s faceless face. He bent the head around. It moved, but the neck was stiff.
Wooden.

Yes, the wood gave Oscar the same combination of peace and yearning that the wizard trees gave him when he put his hands on them.

But how had Caleb—

The truth slapped Oscar on the cheek. It was not some new magician cutting down the wizard trees. It was Caleb. Caleb was cutting them down and using the wood for magic.

The spells from
Magic and the Mind
popped up in Oscar’s head: a spell to implant memories. Living Enchantments. The Breath of Life.

And flashes: the boy from today laughing and pointing. The villagers and their faces when he’d asked about the trees. The sickrooms and Oscar in the shadows. The shop:
Orphan
,
simple
,
odd
,
not right
. Caleb’s voice:
You are an odd little boy.
Wolf:
Do you know what a freak you are? You don’t even know where you came from, do you?
And the shadows of the past:
Look me in the eye, boy.
And the feeling, always, of living in a different pocket of air from everyone else, not knowing how to break through it. And this, the aloneness, pressing down on his chest, the most constant company of his life.

And the look on Callie’s face today.

And then he understood:

I am made of wood.

I am made of wood.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Magicians

T
here is a way the truth hits you, both hard and gentle at the same time. It punches you in the stomach as it puts its loving arm around your shoulder.
Yes, I am terrible to behold,
the truth says.
But you suspected it all along, didn’t you? And isn’t it better, now that you know? Now, at least, it all makes sense.

So Oscar cradled his brother for a while, and then put him back in the compartment and closed the door.

Caleb had made him, enchanted him, given him life. Maybe Caleb had made him just to have a hand.
Loyal, works hard.

Lord Cooper, Sophie’s father, in the shop last week:
Might I ask, how long do you remember being here?

Maybe none of Oscar’s past was real. Maybe he’d never been in the Home at all. No, he couldn’t have been. That’s why the memories were so hard to grasp. They had all been planted, like a lily in a vegetable garden. Oscar could have been made five years ago, or even more recently still. Who knew what in his past was real? He was a blank page.

Maybe Oscar had been the first, the experiment. Maybe Caleb had learned from his mistakes and his next one would work better. Maybe that one would not be odd.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Nothing was real; nothing was sure. His memories were phantoms, his past a lie. He took the cat from his pocket and gazed at it. The cat hummed and buzzed. They were kin. No wonder he felt more comfortable with the trees than with people.

How strange to leave the boy—for Oscar was sure the doll was destined to be a boy, like he was—under the floor like that. Still, he was just a wooden doll—whatever Caleb would do to give him life had not happened yet.

Wolf:
He can do things no one’s ever done before.

Mister Malcolm:
There is danger in small enchantments. Small enchantments make us dream of
big ones.

Oscar’s mind went blank; his head began to roar. His skin felt like it had thinned into tissue paper. Even the air against it hurt, threatened to break through. Really, it was amazing his body and all its systems worked as well as it did; Caleb was a most marvelous magician indeed.

Oscar stayed huddled up as tightly as possible for hours. Cat stopped thumping his tail and came in to sit by him, but even his purrs felt like an assault. Oscar couldn’t help it. There was nothing at all to him besides his heart and that roaring and this frail, tissue-like skin.

Gradually, as morning began to dawn, his body regained its memory of how to be a working boy again.
Yes, your mind works. Yes, your skin can survive this air. Yes, your heart will stay in your body. Yes, your muscles work, and so do your joints, while we’re at it. Yes, you are a creature that thinks and moves and walks and even talks, though you don’t enjoy it very much. You may be a doll, but you can do these things.

Oscar picked himself up, walked out of Caleb’s studio on his working legs, and shut the door with his perfectly articulated hand.

It was all quiet now—his whole body, his mind. Everything felt very still; it was unlike anything he’d experienced. He felt like a lantern with no light. All he had to do was walk up the stairs, feed the cats, go get water, do his chores. He swept the shop and dusted the shelves, in case any dirt had accumulated overnight. He surveyed the store and set to work restocking whatever needed restocking.

His routines had always felt right. And now he knew why. He had been made to do them.

And then, noise in all the silence. A knock on the kitchen window.

Callie.

He opened the back door but stood in the doorway.

Callie’s face looked wrong. He did not understand it. Her eyes were red, and she looked like she was half ghost. He had learned some of her expressions, but he did not know this one. He had to learn what other people simply understood—and now he knew why. This understanding was a human ability, and Oscar did not have it.

“May I come in?” she asked, voice low.

Oscar could not come up with a way to say no, so Callie moved past him and then stood in the kitchen. She did not say anything. Neither did Oscar.

“Is there anything you want to tell me, Oscar?” she said, after a while.

I am made of wood.

“No?” She folded her arms. “Oscar,” she said, speaking in almost a whisper, “I know you haven’t had a lot of experience with . . . people. But you have to think before you talk. When people are sick, your job is to make them better, not insult and scare them. You . . . you have to think about how the things you say might make other people feel.”

A human ability. Oscar did not have it.

Callie was looking away now, holding herself close. “And you have to be careful,” she said, voice wavering. “What you said to me, it was . . . not right. When you say the wrong thing, when you hurt someone, you tell them you are sorry. That’s what you do. You could have come by later, and you didn’t. Now I’m standing here in front of you, and you haven’t even said you’re sorry.”

“I am sorry,” Oscar said.

“We’re going to have to talk more about how you need to be with sick people. It’s delicate, and—”

“No,” Oscar said.

“No what?”

“No. I am not going to visit another sick patient. I must tend to the shop.” He motioned to the things on the counter. Stiffly.

She narrowed her eyes, “Oscar, are you angry? Because—”

“No,” he said.

“I need to talk to you about something,” she said.

“I have to work,” he said.

She took a step back. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t need help anymore, Callie,” he said. “Or rather, I can’t be helped. It’s not going to work. Ever.”

“What about the children?” Callie said. “They’re sick.”

“They don’t need my help,” he said. “It’s not what I’m for.”

Callie put her hands on her hips. Her mouth dropped. She shook her head so slowly.

And then she blinked. Twice. And her eyes were shining again.

“Callie,” Oscar said quickly. “There is just something wrong with me, that’s all. And it can’t be helped. I . . . I wasn’t made right.”

“So,” she said, her words clenched like a fist, “you don’t want me to come anymore?”

What was he supposed to say? He did want her to come. But nothing he wanted was real.

“I see,” Callie said, after he did not answer. Then she shook her head slowly and strode to the door. When she got there, she turned around, eyes flashing. “I got a letter last night. From my village healer. That’s what I came to tell you. He said Madame Mariel never came to call again. He said my parents moved away two years ago. After my brother died. My brother died. He never got better at all.”

Oscar stared. Callie put her hand up to her eye and wiped a tear away. His wooden heart broke. “You were my only friend, you know,” she said.

And then she left.

Oscar looked at the floor.

It would have been nicer, if Caleb had made him so he didn’t feel things.

He looked at the herbs on the counter, then at the awaiting shop. It was almost time to open. He could feel the bustle and noise and assault of the day to come.

He should open the shop. Right now.

But instead, he went out the back door.

The bakery was a few buildings down from Caleb’s—the only shop in the main marketplace that wasn’t run by a magic smith. Sometimes the smells from it traveled all the way down to Oscar’s pantry like a beckoning finger. He could not smell anything today.

Oscar knocked on the bakery door. Dimly, he noticed that the window, which was usually filled with bread and rolls and cakes, was empty, and the shop was closed.

Malcolm opened the door and read Oscar’s face. “My boy, are you all right? Did something happen?”

Malcolm ushered Oscar in and pulled out a chair for him, and then presented him with a roll and a glass of water. Then Malcolm pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

Oscar blinked. Words came out of his mouth. “Caleb’s gardens were destroyed. His glass house came down. Someone must have attacked the gardens.”

“I see,” Malcolm said, leaning in. “That is very upsetting.”

Oscar began to pick at the roll, peeling little bits of crust off. “Someone destroyed Madame Aphra’s cloth. And Madame Alexandra’s leather.”

Malcolm clasped his hands together, and his gaze did not waver from Oscar. “Yes. I know. What else?”

“The Most Spectacular Goat is missing,” Oscar said.

“I know,” Malcolm said gently. “It is very sad. She is a spectacular goat. What else?”

“They think it’s another magician. One we don’t know about. Trying to sabotage the Barrow.” Oscar had bits of bread in his hands, and he rolled them around with his fingers. They were cool and soft on his skin.

“Yes. It seems a possibility. Though a troubling one.”

“There are sick children in the City,” Oscar added quickly. “Sicker than City children are supposed to get.”

A pause. “Did Miss Callie tell you that?”

Oscar nodded. There was more to the story, but he did not feel like telling it. He picked off another bit.

“I see. Is there more?”

Oscar pursed his lips together. “Someone has chopped the wizard trees down. Five of them. In the northwest strip of the forest.”

Malcolm straightened. His eyes darkened. “How do you know this?” he asked, voice suddenly careful.

“A Mistress Eliza and Mister Giles. They were up there. There was an illusion spell, and it failed, and . . . they saw the stumps.” Oscar’s eyes flicked up at Malcolm. “The wizards sacrificed themselves!”

He’d thrown the words out in the air, thrown them at the baker, because he could not hold them in anymore. But Malcolm caught the words without even flinching. “I am glad you know,” Malcolm said solemnly. “It is important to understand what the island is really made of.”

Oscar looked down at his hands. “Why doesn’t anyone remember?”

“The truth is there for anyone who looks closely enough,” Malcolm said. “But I don’t think anyone wishes to look.”

“But shouldn’t they know?”

“They should. But that would mean looking at what drove the wizards to it. The fable is so much . . . cleaner.”

Oscar set his gaze on a crumb on the floor, slowly gathering words to him before sending them off into the air. “What could someone do with that wood?” he said finally. “From a wizard tree? If . . . they were going to use it?”

“Use it?” Malcolm’s brow furrowed, and he moved his gaze to the wall. Oscar watched his face, looking for something to hold on to. But so many things were passing over it, like leaves in the wind. “Well,” he began slowly, “the wood would be very powerful. The magic in it . . . I imagine you could do whatever magic you wished with it . . . if you were so inclined. If someone is using the wood . . .” He shook his head. “No, I cannot imagine anything more powerful.”

Oscar’s eye twitched He stared at the plate in front of him.

“My boy,” Malcolm said after a time, “is there something else?”

Oscar shifted. He tore the roll into two pieces. And then each of those into two pieces. “I did something wrong yesterday,” he said. “I said the wrong thing. To Callie. She had a little brother and I said . . . the wrong thing. And now . . .”

“That is difficult,” said Malcolm. “It is a terrible feeling to hurt someone who you care about. What you must do is make amends. There are few among us who say the right things at all times.”

“But I always do this,” Oscar said, looking as close to Malcolm’s eyes as he could. “Everyone tells me. There are ways to do things, ways to act with people, and I do not understand them. I cannot understand what people mean when they talk. I do not do things right. I do not feel things right. I do not see things right. I am not . . . I’m not made of the same thing as everyone else.”

The baker took in a deep breath. “I think if you’ll look around, my boy,” he said gently, “you’ll find that no one is quite right. But we all do the best we can.”

Oscar looked down. He was not like everyone else. And the more that people did not see him for what he was, the more alone he was.

“What about everything else?” Oscar asked, eyes now stinging. “What about the gardens, the goat, the trees? If there’s someone doing this, they have to be stopped! You are a magician. You can help. Can’t you help?” Someone had to stop it, before the whole world came crashing down.

Malcolm leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I
was
a magician, Oscar. A very long time ago. But I cannot help.”

“Why not? We need you. Caleb’s not here. We need a magician!” Oscar could feel his heart racing.

“Magic won’t solve everything, Oscar,” Malcolm said. “It often has the peculiar ability to make things worse. And there are some things beyond a magician’s power to fix.”

“Well, you could try.”

Malcolm gave him an odd look. “I am sorry. I know this is hard. Magic is not ours to use, my boy. We think it serves us, but that is only magic playing tricks. Magic only makes us hungry for more magic. We need it more, we rely on it more, and thus it has more control over us. Do you understand?”