The Wrong Grave (7 page)

Burd shrugged. “It's not mine.”

“It's yours,” Tolcet said to Halsa. “Take it up the stairs and give it to your wizard. And refill the bucket with fresh water and bring some dinner, too. Did you think to take up lunch?”

“No,” Halsa said. She hadn't had any lunch herself. She cooked the fish along with some greens Tolcet gave her, and ate two. The other three fish and the rest of the greens she carried up to the top of the stairs in the tower. She had to stop to rest twice, there were so many stairs this time. The door was still closed and the bucket on the top step was empty. She thought that maybe all the water had leaked away, slowly. But she left the fish and she went and drew more water and carried the bucket back up.

“I've brought you dinner,” Halsa said, when she'd caught her breath. “And something else. Something I found in the marsh.

Tolcet said I should give it to you.”

Silence.

She felt silly, talking to the wizard's door. “It's a doll,” she said. “Perhaps it's a magic doll.”

Silence again. Not even Onion was there. She hadn't noticed when he went away. She thought of the train. “If I give you the doll,” she said, “will you do something for me? You're a wizard, so you ought to be able to do anything, right? Will you help the people on the train? They're going to Qual. Something bad is going to happen if you won't stop it. You know about the soldiers? Can you stop them?”

Halsa waited for a long time, but the wizard behind the door never said anything. She put the doll down on the steps and then she picked it up again and put it in her pocket. She was furious. “I think you're a coward,” she said. “That's why you hide up here, isn't it? I would have got on that train and I know what's going to happen. Onion got on that train. And you could stop it, but you won't. Well, if you won't stop it, then I won't give you the doll.”

She spat in the bucket of water and then immediately wished she hadn't. “You keep the train safe,” she said, “and I'll give you the doll. I promise. I'll bring you other things, too. And I'm sorry I spit in your water. I'll go and get more.”

She took the bucket and went back down the stairs. Her legs ached and there were welts where the little biting bugs had drawn blood.

“Mud,” Essa said. She was standing in the meadow, smoking a pipe. “The flies are only bad in the morning and at twilight. If you put mud on your face and arms, they leave you alone.”

“It smells,” Halsa said.

“So do you,” Essa said. She snapped her clay pipe in two, which seemed extravagant to Halsa, and wandered over to where some of the other children were playing a complicated-looking game of pickup sticks and dice. Under a night-flowering tree, Tolcet sat in a battered, oaken throne that looked as if it had been spat up by the marsh. He was smoking a pipe, too, with a clay stem even longer than Essa's had been. It was ridiculously long.

“Did you give the poppet to the wizard?” he said.

“Oh yes,” Halsa said.

“What did she say?”

“Well,” Halsa said. “I'm not sure. She's young and quite lovely. But she had a horrible stutter. I could hardly understand her. I think she said something about the moon, how she wanted me to go cut her a slice of it. I'm to bake it into a pie.”

“Wizards are very fond of pie,” Tolcet said.

“Of course they are,” Halsa said. “And I'm fond of my arse.”

“Better watch your mouth,” Burd, the boy with green eyes, said. He was standing on his head, for no good reason that Halsa could see. His legs waved in the air languidly, semaphoring. “Or the wizards will make you sorry.”

“I'm already sorry,” Halsa said. But she didn't say anything else. She carried the bucket of water up to the closed door. Then she ran back down the stairs to the cubbyhole and this time she fell straight asleep. She dreamed a fox came and looked at her. It stuck its muzzle in her face. Then it trotted up the stairs and ate the three fish Halsa had left there.
You'll be sorry,
Halsa thought.
The wizards will turn you into a one-legged crow.
But then she was chasing the fox up the aisle of a train to Qual, where her mother and her brothers and Onion were sleeping uncomfortably in their two seats, their legs tucked under them, their arms hanging down as if they were dead—the stink of coal and magic was even stronger than it had been in the morning. The train was laboring hard. It panted like a fox with a pack of dogs after it, dragging itself along. There was no way it would reach all the way to the top of the wizard of Perfil's stairs. And if it did, the wizard wouldn't be there, anyway, just the moon, rising up over the mountains, round and fat as a lardy bone.

The wizards of Perfil don't write poetry, as a general rule. As far as anyone knows, they don't marry, or plow fields, or have much use for polite speech. It is said that the wizards of Perfil appreciate a good joke, but telling a joke to a wizard is dangerous business. What if the wizard doesn't find the joke funny? Wizards are sly, greedy, absentminded, obsessed with stars and bugs, parsimonious, frivolous, invisible, tyrannous, untrustworthy, secretive, inquisitive, meddlesome, long-lived, dangerous, useless, and have far too good an opinion of themselves. Kings go mad, the land is blighted, children starve or get sick or die spitted on the pointy end of a pike, and it's all beneath the notice of the wizards of Perfil. The wizards of Perfil don't fight wars.

It was like having a stone in his shoe. Halsa was always there, nagging.
Tell them, tell them. Tell them.
They had been on the train for a day and a night. Halsa was in the swamp, getting farther and farther away. Why wouldn't she leave him alone? Mik and Bonti had seduced the two rich women who sat across from them. There were no more frowns or handkerchiefs, only smiles and tidbits of food and love, love, love all around. On went the train through burned fields and towns that had been put to the sword by one army or another. The train and its passengers overtook people on foot, or fleeing in wagons piled high with goods: mattresses, wardrobes, a pianoforte once, stoves and skillets and butter churns and pigs and angry-looking geese. Sometimes the train stopped while men got out and examined the tracks and made repairs. They did not stop at any stations, although there were people waiting, sometimes, who yelled and ran after the train. No one got off. There were fewer people up in the mountains, when they got there. Instead there was snow. Once Onion saw a wolf.

“When we get to Qual,” one of the rich women, the older one, said to Onion's aunt, “my sister and I will set up our establishment. We'll need someone to keep house for us. Are you thrifty?” She had Bonti on her lap. He was half-asleep.

“Yes, ma'am,” Onion's aunt said.

“Well, we'll see,” said the woman. She was half in love with Bonti. Onion had never had much opportunity to see what the rich thought about. He was a little disappointed to find out that it was much the same as other people. The only difference seemed to be that the rich woman, like the wizard's secretary, seemed to think that all of this would end up all right. Money, it seemed, was like luck, or magic. All manner of things would be well, except they wouldn't. If it weren't for the thing that was going to happen to the train, perhaps Onion's aunt could have sold more of her children.

Why won't you tell them?
Halsa said.
Soon it will be too late.

You
tell them, Onion thought back at her. Having an invisible Halsa around, always telling him things that he already knew, was far worse than the real Halsa had been. The real Halsa was safe, asleep, on the pallet under the wizard's stairs. Onion should have been there instead. Onion bet the wizards of Perfil were sorry that Tolcet had ever bought a girl like Halsa.

Halsa shoved past Onion. She put her invisible hands on her mother's shoulders and looked into her face. Her mother didn't look up.
You have to get off the train,
Halsa said. She yelled.
GET OFF THE TRAIN
!

But it was like talking to the door at the top of the wizard's tower. There was something in Halsa's pocket, pressing into her stomach so hard it almost felt like a bruise. Halsa wasn't on the train, she was sleeping on something with a sharp little face.

“Oh, stop yelling. Go away. How am I supposed to stop a train?” Onion said.

“Onion?” his aunt said. Onion realized he'd said it aloud. Halsa looked smug.

“Something bad is going to happen,” Onion said, capitulating. “We have to stop the train and get off.” The two rich women stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Onion's aunt patted his shoulder. “Onion,” she said. “You were asleep. You were having a bad dream.”

“But—” Onion protested.

“Here,” his aunt said, glancing at the two women. “Take Mik for a walk. Shake off your dream.”

Onion gave up. The rich women were thinking that perhaps they would be better off looking for a housekeeper in Qual. Halsa was tapping her foot, standing in the aisle with her arms folded.

Come on,
she said.
No point talking to
them
. They just think you're
crazy. Come talk to the conductor instead.

“Sorry,” Onion said to his aunt. “I had a bad dream. I'll go for a walk.” He took Mik's hand.

They went up the aisle, stepping over sleeping people and people stupid or quarrelsome with drink, people slapping down playing cards. Halsa always in front of them:
Hurry up, hurry,
hurry. We're almost there. You've left it too late. That useless wizard, I
should have known not to bother asking for help. I should have known not
to expect you to take care of things. You're as useless as
they
are. Stupid
good-for-nothing wizards of Perfil.

Up ahead of the train, Onion could feel the gunpowder charges, little bundles wedged between the ties of the track. It was like there was a stone in his shoe. He wasn't afraid, he was merely irritated: at Halsa, at the people on the train who didn't even know enough to be afraid, at the wizards and the rich women who thought that they could just buy children, just like that. He was angry, too. He was angry at his parents, for dying, for leaving him stuck here. He was angry at the king, who had gone mad; at the soldiers, who wouldn't stay home with their own families, who went around stabbing and shooting and blowing up other people's families.

They were at the front of the train. Halsa led Onion right into the cab, where two men were throwing enormous scoops of coal into a red-black, boiling furnace. They were filthy as devils. Their arms bulged with muscles and their eyes were red. One turned and saw Onion. “Oi!” he said. “What's he doing here? You, kid, what are you doing?”

“You have to stop the train,” Onion said. “Something is going to happen. I saw soldiers. They're going to make the train blow up.”

“Soldiers? Back there? How long ago?”

“They're up ahead of us,” Onion said. “We have to stop now.”

Mik was looking up at him.

“He saw soldiers?” the other man said.

“Naw,” said the first man. Onion could see he didn't know whether to be angry or whether to laugh. “The fucking kid's making things up. Pretending he sees things. Hey, maybe he's a wizard of Perfil! Lucky us, we got a wizard on the train!”

“I'm not a wizard,” Onion said. Halsa snorted in agreement. “But I know things. If you don't stop the train, everyone will die.”

Both men stared at him. Then the first said, angrily, “Get out of here, you. And don't go talking to people like that or we'll throw you in the boiler.”

“Okay,” Onion said “Come on, Mik.”

Wait,
Halsa said.
What are you doing? You have to make them understand.
Do you want to be dead? Do you think you can prove something
to me by being dead?

Onion put Mik on his shoulders.
I'm sorry,
he said to Halsa.
But it's no good. Maybe you should just go away. Wake up. Catch fish.
Fetch water for the wizards of Perfil.

The pain in Halsa's stomach was sharper, as if someone were stabbing her. When she put her hand down, she had hold of the wooden doll.

What's that?
Onion said.

Nothing,
Halsa said
. Something I found in the swamp. I said I would
give it to the wizard, but I won't! Here, you take it!

She thrust it at Onion. It went all the way through him. It was an uncomfortable feeling, even though it wasn't really there.
Halsa,
he said. He put Mik down.

Take it!
she said.
Here! Take it now!

The train was roaring. Onion knew where they were; he recognized the way the light looked. Someone was telling a joke in the front of the train, and in a minute a woman would laugh. It would be a lot brighter in a minute. He put his hand up to stop the thing that Halsa was stabbing him with and something smacked against his palm. His fingers brushed Halsa's fingers.

It was a wooden doll with a sharp little nose. There was a nose on the back of its head, too.
Oh, take it!
Halsa said. Something was pouring out of her, through the doll, into Onion. Onion fell back against a woman holding a birdcage on her lap. “Get off!” the woman said. It
hurt.
The stuff pouring out of Halsa felt like
life,
as if the doll were pulling out her life like a skein of heavy, sodden, black wool. It hurt Onion, too. Black stuff poured and poured through the doll, into him, until there was no space for Onion, no space to breathe or think or see. The black stuff welled up in his throat, pressed behind his eyes. “Halsa,” he said, “let go!”

The woman with the birdcage said, “What's wrong with him?”

Mik said, “What's wrong? What's wrong?”

The light changed.
Onion,
Halsa said, and let go of the doll. He staggered backward. The tracks beneath the train were singing
tara-ta tara-ta ta-rata-ta.
Onion's nose was full of swamp water and coal and metal and magic. “No,” Onion said. He threw the doll at the woman holding the birdcage and pushed Mik down on the floor. “No,” Onion said again, louder. People were staring at him. The woman who'd been laughing at the joke had stopped laughing. Onion covered Mik with his body. The light grew brighter and blacker, all at once.