Chapter Two
The Running Hare
‘A simple straight stitch designed for tacking down pieces in preparation for more complex work later; or for covering distance at speed if a work must be completed rapidly.’
—An Exhaustive Compendium of Stitches
I understand a talking raven needs a great deal of explanation. He surprised me, too, when he first showed up. But to understand Baldbeak, you first have to understand the nature of the life we led in the Tower—my mother, Margotte Edevane, and I—and something of my own nature as well.
Silly. Soft. Slow. I heard these words more often than my own name (which is Persinette, shortened to Netta for my mother’s sanity), as a child and all the way into young adulthood.
I knew Mother loved me, but I also knew I was not the sort of daughter she had imagined, and that my vagueness and tendency to daydream often frustrated her.
Silly girl, because I was preoccupied with songs and stories, pretty stitchery and gowns. Prone to dreaming. Fond of staring out the window. Always humming under my breath. Generally driving Mother to distraction. Head as full of feathers as a pillow.
Soft, because I cupped spiders in my hands and carried them outside rather than squash them with the broom-end, and because of my love for the pigeons, ducks, and geese that were our only livestock (of a sort). And because of Baldbeak—but more on him later, as I have said.
Slow, because no matter how hard I tried, I was completely unable to learn to read—a cardinal sin in Mother’s world.
The letters scattered like ants under my gaze, too quickly for me to see them clearly, let alone decipher their meaning.
When Mother tried to get me to recall the shape of one letter, just one, it would immediately seem to curl away from my mind like smoke.
Put a quill in my hand, and it would wobble, refusing to press its tip steadily onto the paper, as if I held nothing more substantial than a thread.
I wanted desperately to be able to read.
I could feel the words inside the books all around me, almost hear them knocking against their covers, full of stories and knowledge that I could not access.
And more than that—Mother’s whole life was books and words.
She spent every day working in her upper room, poring over her spellbooks and crafting that one unimaginably complex spell that she had been working on since before I could remember, a hundred or more pages long it seemed, wrestling it into shape and crafting the physical book that would be its vessel.
“It’s all right,” Mother told me when I was much younger and weeping in frustration at another failure.
“It’s not!” I would storm, pulling at my Hair as if it were to blame. “I want to be like you! I want to be a mage!”
“There are other ways you can serve, my little helpmeet,” she said. “Not everyone can be a spellcaster.”
“But I want to be one!” I said. “What’s the point of having this”—I gave my long-suffering Hair another tug—“if I can’t use it? You can’t do spells without spellbooks!”
“Well,” said Mother, always a stickler for accuracy, “that is not strictly true. But yes, it is dangerous and ill-advised.”
“I’m never going to be able to do anything!”
Mother sighed. “Come.”
She opened her arms to me. Reluctantly, I went to her, sitting in her lap and resting my head against her chest. My wet cheeks made two dark patches on the workaday canvas apron she wore day in and day out.
“I’ll never do magic,” I sniffed.
“Magic is a demanding thing, little helpmeet,” she murmured.
She ran her hand over my Hair. “It takes and takes, and rarely gives. That is why we must cage it with books and words, to limit the damage it can do to us. But even so, every time I cast a spell, a little more of me is depleted. My hair grows back, to be sure, but each time it grows back weaker. In sooth, I am glad you have escaped that fate.”
I shivered. “What will happen to you?”
“To me? Why, nothing. I will be around for a very long time yet.” She squeezed me.
“But there will come a time when I have nothing left to sacrifice in the service of magic. That is why it is so important for me to complete my book—so that my spell can live on, even if I am no longer here to cast it.”
“And what is your great spell, Mother?” I asked daringly.
She pursed her lips. “I will tell you one day,” she said. “But not for a long while. You must be patient, and you must trust me.”
“Of course, Mother.”
Spellbooks were crucial to the practice of magic, she had taught me.
A powerful spell had to be transcribed and bound perfectly, just as it had to be read and recited perfectly, in order to be cast without harming the mage.
And even then—even if the book was flawless and the practitioner studied and studied—just one flubbed syllable, one mispronounced or omitted word, could result in either failure or a disastrous result far from the original intention of the spell.
A well-woven spell could last for centuries, like that which created the glims, lantern-like creations that still lit all the cities across Virelith—but a misspoken spell that caused destruction or damage could potentially last just as long.
“The quality of the books themselves plays a part, we have learned,” Mother had told me.
She had a habit of talking to me rather as if she were addressing an audience of fellow scholars.
“A spell written in a poorly copied or poorly bound volume will not have the same power. The binding, the cover, even the ink and paper play their parts, as well as the voice and body of the caster given up as sacrifice.”
“Like your hair.”
“Like my hair, and yours.”
I scowled. My Hair might move about like Mother’s, but I had no control over it whatsoever.
It was a most inconvenient length, brushing the backs of my knees, but would not let itself be cut.
If I walked without caution, it snagged itself on furniture, swept my mother’s desk clear of her tools, and even knocked books off the shelves.
I had learned to make small movements and keep myself as tucked-in as possible all over.
“And not just hair,” said Mother, “but teeth, and nails, too. Parts of the body that can be renewed again and again—offered with pain and humility in the service of the spell. True magic.”
I was a child, and the idea of magic hurting did not appeal to me, no matter how much the pain was couched in terms of sacrifice and nobility.
“Are there other kinds of magic? Where you don’t have to pull your hair or teeth out?”
Mother’s voice became sharp. “That is not true magic,” she said. “It is trickery. Or worse. Self-indulgent. Erratic. Uncontrolled.” She took me by the shoulders. Too tightly.
“You’re scaring me!” I protested.
“This is important. Magic must always be contained, Netta. Safe in books, where it belongs, sleeping until spoken. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Beware of the cunning of magicians, Netta. Do not let them tempt you. Remember. Do you promise you will remember?”
“I promise,” I said.
Mother and I did discover, however, through all our experimentation, that I had one gift—a bloated, excessive, completely inexplicable capacity for memory.
Mother taught me to read aloud by reading sections herself first, then having me repeat them, to entertain her from time to time while she worked.
In this, as in all things, she was exacting.
She made me sip vinegar or take a spoonful of honey before reading certain passages.
She complained about the dampness of my teeth and made me suck hard on a piece of flannel cloth before reading.
She turned the pages for me when necessary, and that was how I learned where pages ended and how to pause convincingly at the base of one before moving to the next.
I copied her emphasis and volume, and her inflections—sometimes too well, imitating her voice, and she would stop then and scold me for mockery, although I hadn’t intended it.
A strange thing that quickly became apparent when I started reading aloud was the behavior of my Hair.
It did not react this way when I listened to Mother read, but when I myself spoke a story aloud, it would rise from my scalp and float.
Mother said that if I were a proper mage, using my Hair as a source of power, strands would disappear with each casting as they burned up in service of the spell.
As I could not read, however, and therefore could not cast on my own behalf, the Hair could do nothing but drift aimlessly about my shoulders.
“It does not matter,” Mother said. “You are my little helpmeet. There are many ways to serve the great work. If you cannot read or cast, then you will aid me with the bookmaking.”
“Serving the great work” sounded noble. The actual practice of making books, however, is dirty, difficult, and usually foul-smelling, and those were the parts that Mother assigned to me.
It was worth it, though, to bask in the sunshine of her approval, and she certainly needed the extra pair of hands as she made spellbook after spellbook, honing her craft as she gradually worked to construct the one great book that would contain the mysterious enchantment she had spent my entire lifetime weaving.
I spent hours standing at our stove—first on a stool, when I was very young, then on tiptoe, and finally with my bare feet on the floor—stirring a great cast-iron pot full of glue for the bindings I had made from boiled bones, flour, and melted-down rabbit hides.
I made Mother’s inks, too, by soaking the oak galls I chiseled from the trees by the river and blending them with rainwater, vinegar, tree sap, and ash, adding sugar for gloss and drops of clove oil for preservation.