Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

“Will you question the bird?” Crawford asked.

“No,” said the old dwarf. “The bird doesn’t know anything.”

McKee was carefully unwrapping the handkerchief from around the birdcage — Crawford saw that the bird had fouled the cloth square — and, holding it by one corner, she stepped after Chichuwee. As they drew closer to the lantern, they threw huge shadows across the tiers of birdcages on the curved walls.

Crawford reluctantly followed McKee out across the creaking floor toward the wagon, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell from all the birdcages.

“Sam!” called Chichuwee. “Get some river water boiling.”

Behind the glare of the lantern Crawford now saw that there was a cabin set back on the bed of the wagon, for a pale child was peeking wide-eyed from a doorway in it. The child tossed two tiny white objects to Chichuwee and disappeared back inside.

The old dwarf tossed the objects to the floor, and Crawford saw that they were dice.

McKee turned and caught Crawford’s chin in her hand. “Don’t look at the numbers on them,” she said. “But if you want to be helpful, you could pick them up and throw them, over and over again. Not looking, remember.”

Crawford grimaced in anxious impatience but nodded and crouched; he scooped up the two ivory cubes and dropped them, then did it again.

“I’m going to have to be getting back to … streets, again, soon,” he said.

“This water boils quick,” said Chichuwee. “It’s in a pot that’s actually up in the Alps, so the air pressure is very low.”

Crawford picked up the dice and let them fall. “But the pot is here — too?”

“Enough of it to boil water in,” said the dwarf. “Be quiet now.”

Crawford scowled at McKee, who just shrugged.

As he dropped the dice one more time onto the floor, it occurred to Crawford that he had been hearing this repetitive rattle ever since they had entered this chamber. Were these dice thrown perpetually, their numbers never read? Chichuwee must employ a relay of children to keep it up.

Three wooden steps beside the far wheel led up to the wagon bed, and Chichuwee and then McKee climbed up, skirted the lantern, and shuffled to the door the child Sam had peeked out of. Even Chichuwee had to crouch to fit through the open door, and McKee had to crawl through on her hands and knees.

“Dice, dice!” she called back over her shoulder, and Crawford hastily dropped the dice and snatched them up; and she added, “Follow.”

The finches and larks around the walls seemed to echo the cadence of “Dice, dice!” and Crawford tossed the dice up onto the wagon bed and hastily scrambled up after them.

A curtain was sliding over McKee’s back as she crept forward, and Crawford could see a glow of candlelight on her hands; then he crawled under the curtain too and found himself in a room he could stand up in. He remembered to toss the dice and scoop them up before getting to his feet.

This room clearly extended beyond the wall of the birdcage chamber, and, between shelves that were crowded with ragged books and obscure brass and crystal instruments, closed curtains implied windows in the varnished wood paneling that gleamed in the light of a dozen candles in glass chimneys.

The boy Sam was crouched over a low iron stove, watching water bubble in a glass pot; but when Crawford looked more closely, he saw that there was apparently no pot at all — the flat-topped ball of bubbling gray water was holding its shape with no visible containment.

Sam straightened and crossed to Crawford with his palm out, and then had to nudge him, for Crawford was gaping at the prodigy on the stove; finally the boy pried the dice from Crawford’s limp hand and hurried away to resume throwing them in the corner.

“You know how this is done?” Chichuwee asked McKee.

“Yes.” She set the birdcage on a shelf near the impossible volume of water. To Crawford, she said, “This will draw the ghost, if there’s a ghost there.”

Chichuwee nodded to her, and she dropped the soiled handkerchief into the boiling water. Steam immediately sprang up, and at this point Crawford was hardly surprised to see that the vapor didn’t dissipate but instead floated over the water in a distinct wobbly oval.

“Lucky,” said Chichuwee, shaking his head. “If it’s her.”

McKee crouched so that her face was level with the blob of steam while the handkerchief spun in the water below. Crawford noticed that, in spite of her show of confidence, she was trembling.

“Carpace,” she said.

A whisper bubbled out of the water in puffs of vapor: “None of the officers wear waistcoats in the mornings… I travel with two canes, one for morning and one for evening…”

“Damn,” said McKee, “it’s that ghost that was buzzing around the bird by the Temple Arch this morning. Carpace !” Sweat gleamed on her forehead in the candlelight.

“… catch me, the ground quakes…! I— Adelaide.”

“Got her,” said McKee with feral satisfaction; then, to the vapor, she said, “You shouldn’t drink.”

“Drink,” whispered the steam, “the glasses, the man switched them? Am I dead?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, don’t look at me!” The steam oval wavered. “Back in my ave!”

“Soon,” said McKee, “and then you can share all the half-wit gossip of the ghosts. But first — you said my daughter is alive.”

“Fly to the rooftops,” the steam bubbled, “trade stories with the sparrows. Nobody looking at me.”

“Yes,” said McKee, “greet every dawn before the people in the streets below see it. Where is my daughter?”

“Her name is Johanna.”

“Yes. Where is she?”

“Your man switched the glasses. Ach! I think I puked, in front of everybody.”

“No, not a bit,” McKee reassured the frail ghost. “It was as dignified a death as I ever saw. Where is Johanna?”

“I told you she died. At a different time than now.”

“Yes. But then you said that she is still alive.”

“Aye, she’s alive, but—”

McKee waved her open hand. “But…?”

“She’s not well, to speak of.”

“Tell me where she is.”

“Why can’t I think? Promise you’ll put me back in the ave.”

“I promise.”

“Hope to die?”

“Hope to die.”

“Fair enough. She’s alive but pledged to death and eventual resurrection.” The boiling water emitted several pops that Crawford thought might have indicated laughter. “I … adopted her out to the Nephilim.”

Even though it was just an inorganic whisper, the last word seemed to concuss the still air.

Crawford gripped his elbows and held his breath so that it wouldn’t hitch audibly. His mother and father had used the term Nephilim to describe the supernatural tribe they had escaped and spent the rest of their lives hiding from.

And he remembered his encounter with Girard, after Girard’s death on the river … and the thing he and McKee had encountered seven years ago on Waterloo Bridge.

And, it occurred to him, the woman who had been with Trelawny tonight.

Can we … oppose those things? he wondered; surely not. But he was surprised at the anxiety and grief he felt for a daughter he had only learned of today and who he had thought was dead until an hour ago.

McKee’s face in profile looked older and haggard, but she said, “Where can we find her?”

Crawford shuddered.

“This will be my first dawn, as a bird,” babbled the steam.

“Where can we find Johanna?”

“Put me back in my ave and I’ll take you there, over the rooftops.”

“You’ll move too fast. We need to walk where we go. Where can we find her?”