The Cabinet of Wonders

  With his other hand, Master Stakan reached for her father’s bandages. Petra averted her gaze. When Master Stakan had placed the glass eyes, he said, “Well?”

  Petra turned to her father. He looked so normal, so whole, that Petra realized she had not really seen her father’s face for more than seven months.

  Mikal Kronos sighed with a disappointment he could not hide. “I see nothing.”

  “Ah.” Tomas Stakan’s eagerness drained away. “You know, I thought I might have to give it a few tries. It’s much more complicated than crafting eyes for the tin pets. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll come up with the right way to do it.”

  “I’m not worried, Tomas. I know you will. Thank you.”

  Master Stakan shook his head. “He has a black soul, the prince does. To send you home like this, with not a krona in your pocket to show for it.”

  “The prince promised to pay me in a couple of years.”

  Master Stakan snorted. “That’s a long way away.” Then, abruptly, he said farewell. His feet shuffled. Petra walked him and Tomik to the door, her hand briefly holding her friend’s before he and his father stepped outside the Sign of the Compass. Through the window, she watched Master Stakan walk away with the haste of someone eager to escape his own failure.

  He had left something unfinished.

  Petra made a decision. She returned to her father’s bedroom. Wordlessly (because she did not trust herself to speak) and quickly (because she was too scared to do otherwise), she stepped toward the bed.

  Still sunk in his disappointment, Mikal Kronos didn’t notice anything until his daughter’s fingers were on his face. He felt her reach for the glass eyes. He seized Petra’s hands.

  “Please don’t,” he said.

  Petra hesitated.

  “Get Dita,” he ordered.

  Petra imagined what she would see: two sickening holes, red like something scoured, and the rough stitches that lashed the flesh together.

  Her father’s voice grew harsh. “Do as I say.”

  She did.

  Soon, Dita was in her father’s room. The bandages were back on Mikal Kronos’s face. And the glass eyes were in the leather bag on the wobbly pine nightstand.

  THAT EVENING, Petra closed her bedroom door behind her with relief, hurt, pity, and the nagging sense that she was overlooking something important, something that didn’t fit. But her emotions were so tumbled together she wouldn’t have been able to see it for what it was. She would have only been able to say that she felt confused.

  She wanted to light a candle, but then she imagined Dita lecturing on the evils of waste. So she leaned out the window and watched clouds blow across the young moon. She said to Astrophil, “I don’t understand something.”

  “Go on.”

  “Why did the prince take his eyes but still promise to pay him? If he could do something like this to Father without anybody caring, he didn’t have to send him home or pay him.”

  “Perhaps what your father said was true. Perhaps the prince respects him.”

  “It’s a strange way to show it.”

  “Evidence suggests that the prince is a strange individual.” The spider flickered a few legs, and they glinted in the moonlight. “Your father has always prized learning.”

  Petra frowned. “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Take me, for example. I am a very inquisitive spider.”

  “So what if you are?”

  “I enjoy reading throughout the entire night. I have studied foreign languages. I hope to learn how to write one day. I try to discover new things, even if it makes me what you call ‘nosy.’”

  “Well, sure. I learned how to read at a young age, too. I don’t exactly share your fascination with reading every moldy book under the blazing sun, but it’s only natural that you would be advanced for your age. You belong to me.”

  “Precisely. And your father made me. Do you not think,” he began slowly, “that there is a reason behind my interest in learning?” If a spider can shrug, Astrophil did. “Let us face facts. I am made of a metal called tin. It is unusual that I like to know exactly how many words begin with z while Jaspar —who, as a later model and a more complex animal, could be expected to be more ‘advanced’—lazes around Master Stakan’s shop and even naps! But ultimately I am a construction. I am what your father made me, and he made me—as you have just mentioned—to belong to you.”

  “Astrophil, you don’t really belong to me. If you wanted to, you could walk out of this house.” She said this fearlessly, but did so because she knew the spider would never want that. “Anyway,” she pressed on, “each pet has a different personality. Isn’t it possible that what you like and how you behave just developed naturally?”

  “Possibly. I do not know, however, if ‘nature’ applies in my case.” The spider waved a front leg, dismissing the idea. “Let us stop talking about me. Let us address one fact about which we both agree: your father thinks very highly of study.

  “Perhaps Master Kronos was simply interested in the project. That would be very like him. But is it not possible he had other reasons for building the clock? What if the prince offered your father something more than money? Something Master Kronos could never afford and, even if he could afford it, would never be able to make happen because of his place in life? He is a mere artisan. He is a skilled one, and fairly well off because of it, but he is no lord.”

  “Astrophil, I don’t think—”

  “Of course you do. Because it is clear that the prince must have offered your father a place at the Academy. For you. Master Kronos said the prince would pay him in a couple of years. In two years you will be fourteen.”

  “But I would never, ever go!” Petra slapped the windowsill. “How could he think I would let him send me away to be trapped for years in a damp stone block filled with obnoxious rich brats trying to develop their magic? I couldn’t learn anything there that Father couldn’t teach me himself here.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. He is self-taught. Who knows what his skills would be like if he had had some training?”

  “Well, who knows if I have any skills? And that would be perfectly all right by me,” she blustered.

  “It is hard to imagine, given your father’s and mother’s abilities, that you yourself would not be gifted. And if you are, it is also entirely possible that your form of magic will be different from your father’s, in which case he would not be able to help you hone it.”

  Everything Astrophil said made sense, and it made her feel sick. True, she had always longed to be able to communicate with Astrophil using only her thoughts. But now a muted anxiety buried somewhere deep inside her warned that she might not want to have her father’s gift for metal. She might not be ready for the consequences. Especially now that she had seen some of those consequences. She thought about something the spider had said: it is also entirely possible that your form of magic will be different from your father’s. What he did not say was that this meant she could have inherited her mother’s magic: seeing the future. A gift she would never want.

  A wave of weariness hit her. She remembered Master Stakan’s Worry Vial. “I need to sleep, Astrophil.”

  “Well, if you must.”

  She walked across the room and lifted the vial. She cupped its bulging sides in her hands and climbed into bed. She removed the stopper. Remembering Master Stakan’s instructions, she put her mouth toward the bottle’s wide opening. She began to whisper. As her hushed words flowed into the bottle, the glass glowed green, brown, violet. Petra then reached for the cork and shoved it in, closing the vial. The colors inside the glass continued to change, but then settled into a deep purple, like the color of a bruise.

  Petra leaned back against the pillows. Finally, her mind felt clear. Her eyes closed, and before she drifted off to sleep, another idea occurred to her.

  6

  Sudden Storm

  YOU WANT to do what?” Tomik gaped.

  “It’s not such a ba
d plan,” Petra protested.

  “You want to go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal back your father’s eyes?”

  “You don’t have to make it sound like I’m crazy.”

  “The word ‘crazy’ doesn’t do you justice. I was thinking something more along the lines of ‘rampaging lunatic,’ ‘mad as a ship of fools,’ ‘scryer-cracked,’ ‘fairy-touched,’ and just plain ‘bone-headed’!”

  They were sitting on a heap of moss in the forest. Astrophil had wandered away, expressing an interest in studying the habits of ants. Petra and Tomik heard the chopping of trees in the distance. Summer was over. It was September, and the brassica harvest would be finished soon. The men in the village were beginning to set aside wood for winter.

  “It’s a risk-free plan, if you think about it,” Petra said.

  “Hmm. Let me think. I’m thinking. And you know what? I can’t figure out how in the name of heaven and earth this is risk-free.”

  Petra struggled to keep her temper. When she spoke she strove to sound rational, but her voice was tense. “All I have to do is go to Prague. It can’t be that hard to get hired as a servant in Salamander Castle. The castle has hundreds of servants. The prince probably needs three of them just to wash his socks.”

  “You want to wash his dirty socks?”

  “No. I’ll get a job doing something in the castle, like”—Petra racked her brain, trying to remember any skills she had—“like mopping floors,” she finished lamely. Then, with new spirit, she said, “Do you think my father lived in the castle for six months without someone noticing that he suddenly disappeared? People talk. I will listen. And then I’ll find out where the prince hid my father’s eyes. If I think I can, I’ll steal them. If I think I can’t, I’ll just come back to Okno.”

  “Doesn’t sound too risk-free to me.”

  “I don’t care if it is or isn’t.” She gave Tomik a look that he recognized well. It was the steely expression of Petra at her most stubborn.

  “I’ll come with you, then,” Tomik said.

  She had hoped for this. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I can’t let you be crazy on your own. Madness loves company.”

  But Petra grew thoughtful. “No,” she said reluctantly. “You need to help your father design a pair of glass eyes that work. You know that I might have to return to Okno empty-handed. You have to help your father come up with a solution.”

  Frustrated, Tomik flung his hands back as if he had burned them. “He’d never listen to me. It would be easier to make the emperor hop like a dancing bear than to make my father hear anything I have to say about magic.”

  “Then don’t say anything. Just show him.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “You could at least try. What you did with the glass spheres is something I’ve never heard of anybody doing. If you got your father to look at them, even he would have to be impressed.”

  “Well, maybe.” She could tell Tomik was pleased that she respected his abilities. “But I don’t like the thought of you going to Prague on your own.” His face clouded.

  “Aren’t Lucie and Pavel going to the city soon? Didn’t you say they plan to sell wares from the Sign of Fire?”

  “They leave in two weeks. They’re not sure how long they’ll stay, though. It depends on how the sales go. You’d have to figure out fast how you’re going to get inside the castle.” Tomik was focused, the way he always was when presented with a problem to solve. “I suppose you could tell Lucie that your family needs to buy medicine for your father.”

  Tomik’s suggestion made sense. Though Okno was a prosperous village, they did not have an apothecary. Varenka, the old, rail-thin woman with brown-spotted skin who had delivered Petra, could brew some drinks that were supposed to cure headaches and fevers. But you do not want to know what Varenka put in her drinks. Let’s just say that powdered chicken bones, crushed fly wings, and snail slime were some of the less disgusting things the woman used as “medicine.”

  “Say your family thinks you need a break from home, and you have an aunt to visit in Prague, too,” Tomik continued to counsel. “That way you don’t always have to be at the inn where they’re staying. But you should spend nights with Lucie and Pavel. You don’t want to wander around Prague after dark. It can be dangerous.” Tomik had visited the city once with his father. “Never leave any krona in the inn. It will get stolen. Keep your money pouch well hidden on your body, under your clothes. And whatever you do, don’t let anyone know where you’ve hidden it. There are a lot of Gypsies in the city, and one of their favorite tricks is to jostle you in the street. Then you touch wherever you’ve put your money, to make sure it’s there. And then they know where it is. When you think you’re safe, one of them will trail after you and nick your pouch when you’re not looking. In fact, you should avoid Gypsies altogether.

  “Lucie doesn’t keep secrets, so we can’t ask her to take you and not tell,” Tomik continued. “And if we told her beforehand, pretending that Dita said it was all right, Lucie would be sure to mention it to somebody. So the best thing to do is for you to wait at the edge of Okno. When Lucie and Pavel ride past, you run up to them. You can fake Dita’s handwriting pretty well, can’t you?”

  “Naturally.” Petra leaned back against a tree, folding her hands behind her head. “I sign Dita’s name better than she does herself.”

  “So write a letter from her asking Lucie and Pavel if you can ride with them to Prague. That should work.”

  He nodded, satisfied. Then he said that he should be getting back to the Sign of Fire, so they stood up and dusted off their trousers.

  “Astro!” Petra called.

  “I think that …” Tomik looked at her. “You should. That is,” he began again, “leave your Worry Vial at home, Petra.”

  “Why?”

  “The Worry Vials have a flaw.” Tomik’s blond hair hung in a short curtain around his face as he looked down. “Father designed them so that the problems and fears people whispered to the vials couldn’t be known to anyone else. When the bottle turns different colors it’s because there are tiny crystals lining the inside, and they bite into the worries like little teeth. The whispers turn green and brown as they’re broken down into fragments. Then the glass turns purple as it absorbs the pieces. The more you use the vial, the darker it gets. But each time you open it, there’s nothing inside, and even if you break the glass, the worries never escape. They stay in the pieces of the glass. But I recently discovered that there’s a way in which you can actually hear whatever somebody told a vial.”

  Petra immediately saw that this was a big problem. “But you’ve sold hundreds of them! And to members of the court. I bet they’ve told their vials lots of things they don’t want anybody to hear.”

  “Exactly. When I told Father, he was so embarrassed. I don’t know what bothered him more—that there is a flaw, or that I was the one who told him about it. He hasn’t decided what to do. If he tells everybody, it could ruin our business. It would be all right if people who bought the vials just demanded their money back. But what’s worse is that they wouldn’t trust the Stakan name anymore. And if Father stops selling the vials, people might begin to wonder what’s wrong with them, and somebody besides me might actually figure out how to extract the secret worries.”

  “How do you extract them?”

  “It’s simple, really.” Tomik shook his head miserably. “Lucie decided to use her Worry Vial as a vase for flowers from Pavel. No one thought anything of it when she poured water in the vial, and the glass stayed the same color it was before. It was violet, because Lucie doesn’t have enough worries to make the vial a darker color. The next day, the flowers were withered and Lucie was sad. I was in the kitchen when she poured the water out. I heard her say, ‘That’s odd,’ and turned around to see that her Worry Vial was clear again. Then I realized that the water had somehow sucked the worries out of the glass. The water had been violet, not the vial. I did some ex
perimenting, and discovered that if you put water in a Worry Vial, and pour it out later, the water’s different. It’s dark. It’ll evaporate eventually, like water always does, but vial water leaves behind a light dust. When you stir the dust with your finger, you can hear the whispered worries again.”

  “Most people aren’t like Lucie,” Petra comforted. “Who would think of putting anything inside a Worry Vial but worries? Your family is so used to having the vials around that they don’t seem special, but they’re very valuable to everyone else. They wouldn’t treat it like an ordinary bottle. Has anyone ever complained to the Sign of Fire?”

  “Not yet,” Tomik said gloomily.

  “At least someone will know if his vial has been tampered with. If you walk into your bedroom and see that your purple vial has become clear, you know that something’s wrong. Somebody would have contacted the Sign of Fire if this had happened.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “You should come up with an antidote. Then offer it for free to anyone who has bought a Worry Vial.”

  “An antidote?”

  “Yes … you know, something that will stop the water from pulling the secrets out of the glass. Maybe you could mix a sort of syrup that you pour into the vial after the glass has absorbed the worries. The syrup could seal the worries into the glass, like melted wax.”

  “Hmm.” Tomik became pensive, and they were quiet until a cuckoo called from the trees, breaking the silence. “Hey, where is that spider of yours? I have to go home.”

  “Astrophil!”

  The spider twinkled toward them, walking across a bed of moss. “The organizational skills of ants are really quite impressive.”

  As he approached, they heard a shatteringly loud crack. Astrophil squeaked and jumped to Petra’s shoe, ducking under the hem of her trouser leg.