12. Sam Fundamentals of the Spirit Realm
Sam: Fundamentals of the Spirit Realm
A spirit in the realm can see most of the visible world, one thing at a time.
A spirit thew in the world can see most of the invisible world, one thing at a time.
But there are limits. A thew cannot perceive thoughts at a distance, and a thew cannot penetrate the thoughts of another thew.
There is no omniscience, for spirits are not gods.
—Elián Erquiza, The Nature of Thews
Some spirits among us focus on a single person for long stretches of time—months, even years.
A fixation of fury, or concern, or love, may ensnare one’s attention indefinitely.
Naturally, the effect will be felt by the living, though they will be unable to explain why they suffer from a feeling of unrelenting lassitude, or incessant paranoia, or redoubtable good cheer.
I’ve never done this. Although I nursed a particular grudge for Simeon, I understood that he was only one small part of a larger whole.
He was the venom of the spider’s bite, but he wasn’t the spider.
From the very beginning, I allowed my attention to follow the spider’s vast web.
At first, it was no web at all. Only a scattering of points, cases of interest, people I couldn’t let go.
Slowly, as the letters of a gravestone would emerge into legibility with the brightening light of the moon, the contours of the web began to show themselves: the enchanter in the forest connected by the stubborn, sticky strand to the jeweler in reduced circumstances, who in turn led me to the thief in the tavern, who led to the banker in the city, who led to the mistress in high society, who led to the maid in wait of revenge, who led to the villain in need of secrets, who led again to the enchanter in the forest. And that was only one circle among many.
I could see that Quinn was caught in the web, but I couldn’t yet see how. The nasty message scored upon his back had confirmed it, and it seemed to me he didn’t have the wherewithal—nor, perhaps, the necessary vindictiveness—to seek the culprit.
Well, I had the necessary vindictiveness.
I remember how my mother tried to teach me the grace of forgiveness.
She certainly had enough practice of her own, and she had the ability to forgive quickly after a burst of rapid rage.
Oh, she could sometimes be furious! But it never lasted long.
In comparison, I hid my anger and forgave reluctantly.
“Are you still angry with me?” she once said, laughing, because she had refused to allow me to accompany my brother to Boston.
I stared at her mulishly. “You’re ridiculous!
” she said, trying to embrace me. But I pulled away.
“Come, Sam,” she said, growing serious. “You can’t cling to your resentment in this way.
It becomes a poison, and it does much more harm to you than it does to others. Look at me! I’ve already forgotten it.”
“Because you are not the one who was wronged!” I exclaimed.
“Wronged?” My mother shook her head. “Look at the matter clearly, Sam. Your brother is older, and you can’t yet manage the world as he does.”
“I’m still angry.”
My mother sighed. “Sam, you imagine insult and injury everywhere, but sometimes it isn’t there. It isn’t an insult to say that you are young. You can’t go through life imagining yourself to be the world’s victim. That’s a recipe for bitterness.”
She was right. I did perceive insult and injury everywhere. And it did lead to bitterness. But not without reason, I would have said, if I’d been better equipped to answer her then. The person who forgives every injury will never be the one to seek justice.
On Saddle Street in Salem, I looked in through the window of Cristóbal’s Clockworks to see the proprietor, Cristóbal, hunched over his worktable, his dexterous hands maneuvering the diminutive parts of a pocket watch.
His table stood under a south-facing window to take full advantage of the daylight, and on the walls around him timepieces quietly ticked and tocked, a battery of watchful automata.
The wheeled chair that he sat in was expertly made, and as I watched he put down his tools, wheeled quickly backward to make a neat turn, retrieved a spare part from the large cabinet of drawers behind him, and swiveled back to the worktable.
On the other side of the shop, where the black window lettering announced “Camille’s Fine Needlecraft,” the seamstress sat with a pile of white satin, the needle in her hand forgotten, her dark eyes staring off into the distance.
A patched dress form stood bare beside her, and an array of pins, spools, scissors, and scraps littered the sewing table.
I sent the seamstress a nudge of reassurance and she blinked, looking around her as if surprised at her surroundings.
“Cris?” she asked, a faint note of alarm in her voice.
“Here, Mamá,” the clockmaker replied. He didn’t look up from his work, but his voice was gentle. “Do you need me?”
“No, dear.” She looked down at the needlework and found her place, continuing the padded satin stitch of a white rose.
I pulled away. On Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a gentleman on the second floor of a stone mansion stood half dressed, paused in his preparations to visit the club.
His valet stood to the side, gloved hands clasped, eyes pinned to the floor, while the gentleman pursued a vigorous argument with his wife.
“I don’t care what she says,” the woman insisted, her voice rising.
“I placed the handkerchiefs there last night, and today they’re gone. ”
“They are only handkerchiefs,” the man said. His bald head gleamed with sweat.
“They are very fine silk handkerchiefs, embroidered with my name, but the cost,” she hissed, “is immaterial. Stealing sugar from the kitchen would be equally egregious. We can’t permit a thief to live under our roof. She will only grow bolder.” The woman’s sharp nose flared with anger.
It intrigued me to see the young maid in question crying in her fourth-floor room, a very plain, rather scratchy handkerchief inadequately gathering her tears, while the cook stood in the back garden, hand on hip, sharing a thin cigar with the driver.
Between them, silence reigned. I left them to their laborious schemes and concealments.
Back in Salem, a young nanny sang to a fussy child, cooling the infant with a paper fan, and Constable Roy Maxwell worked through a pile of paperwork and correspondence.
Each time he finished a form or letter, he gave himself three minutes’ rest, which he spent drawing.
He was composing a detailed illustration of a yarrow plant.
At the center of the Commonwealth campus, on the second floor of the Cabot Camera, Orin Hornsby and his thew watched over the university’s reliquary: a glass vessel containing seven ancient bones.
The bones, white and faintly luminous in the blazing light of the reliquary room, shuddered slightly now and then, their power drifting unseen through all the halls and corridors of the university.
Hornsby sometimes talked to the bones, but tonight he was silent, staring at them thoughtfully.
I traveled last to Lynn Woods, to the Manse, the very center of the spider’s web.
I found the Embalmer in his study, a room that would have seemed beautiful to anyone unfamiliar with its usage.
Two enormous windows, some fifteen feet high, looked out onto the woods.
Bookshelves filled with scrolls and bound books occupied the other walls.
A massive table stood at the center of the room.
Its surface, a burgundy suede, showed signs of wear and tear.
Chalk lines, stones, and pins dotted its surface.
The Embalmer was in the act of adding a fresh pin.
He smoothed out the slim curl of paper attached to the pin, reviewed the words, and nodded with satisfaction.
Then he plunged the pin into the wine-colored suede, just beside a white stone with the words “Washington Square” painted onto its smooth surface.
He chuckled a little and straightened up to survey the table.
To any idle observer, the designs wrought upon the suede would have been an inscrutable tangle, but I’d been studying this plan for some time, looking over the shoulder of its maker, and I understood the meaning of every stone, line, and pin. My movements mirrored theirs.
The Cisneros Society had many objectives, some more mundane and petty than others, but all were in the greater service of strengthening the Society’s hold upon the world around them, and the single most imperative goal toward that end was monopolizing portals.
To all outward appearances, the Cisneros Society used its power for material achievements—the railway line to Chicago, the land bridge to Nova Scotia, the discovery of rare gems in remote mines, or the seamless conveyance of sugar from the islands.
But these material achievements, all accomplished with the aid of spirit thews, drew their power from exclusivity.
Cisneros would have been happiest—and wealthiest—if only Society men had thews.
And so controlling the portals, keeping them secret, and using them to procure thews lay at the heart of the Society’s mission; they were the core of the Embalmer’s chalk-and-pin plans.