Chapter 13 #2
Mak Genggang threw the ball in the air. It described a silver arc, glinting in the sunlight, but when it ought to have begun falling to the ground, it stopped, and hovered mid-air.
“Oh!” said Prunella, forgetting her thumb in her delight.
The light shining out from the orb gave the carvings on its surface the appearance of being traced in fire. The minute flowers and animals, the graceful loops and swirls, all shone forth brilliantly.
The orb began to sing in a woman’s voice: a quavering contralto, deep, throaty and rough, as though she had worn her voice thin with shouting. The words were unfamiliar. Prunella did not understand the language, but she thought suddenly: She is very angry. I wonder why?
She felt the stones stir in the pouch tied under her skirts. Prunella pressed down upon them with her hand, thinking she must be mistaken—but no, the pebbles which had been so still even at the edge of Fairy were wriggling. It was as though she had a pocket full of beetles.
“Oh!” said Prunella, now in dismay.
“There,” said Mak Genggang. “It is the blood that does it. I don’t suppose you can make out anything she is singing? The song is an enchantment, that is clear, but she might have had the sense to include a translation spell. Why, child, what are you about?”
Prunella had caught the orb out of the air. She rubbed it against her skirt, and was relieved to see the blood come off. The song began to waver. When she had wiped it clean the voice died away entirely, and the treasures went still in their pouch.
She had found the secret of awakening them.
“I don’t wish to alarm the servants,” said Prunella hurriedly. “What they would think if they came in to find a flying orb warbling at us!”
“I expect they would not think anything at all,” said Mak Genggang. “They seem idiotish creatures. Not a one of them understood me when I desired them to take me to the Society of Unnatural Philosophers.”
If Prunella thought her subterfuge had succeeded, however, she was wrong. Mak Genggang continued:
“It is only natural that you wish to keep the secret to yourself. Well, now you know how to call it forth, and may listen to your mother’s voice at your leisure.”
“My mother?” said Prunella.
“Did not you hear her?” said Mak Genggang.
“It was very improvident of her not to have taught you about your singing orb. If she was going to the trouble of enspelling it so it could only be unlocked by your blood, she ought to have enciphered a message within your veins while she was at it, so you would know how to use the orb when you were old enough. It is a mother’s duty to teach her daughters about the uses of blood, particularly a magical daughter. ”
“But why do you say it is my mother?” said Prunella. She could not recall, now, if there had been anything familiar in the weary voice, singing in an unknown tongue.
“Why, only a mother can store secrets in the blood of her children—that is to say, an unscrupulous witch may do anything with anyone’s blood, but that is a very evil magic, and attended by all manner of fell consequences. Did not you say you had the orb from your parents?”
“Yes,” said Prunella. “But it was my father who gave it to me.”
“A man, casting blood magics?” scoffed Mak Genggang.
“You may as well say the English King loves Janda Baik, and has nothing but our good at heart! There never was a man but was frightened of blood magic—the magic in a woman’s blood, most of all.
For what is more potent than a woman’s blood?
I am sure mine has saved me many a time in my dealings with the spirits! ”
Prunella was only half-listening. The idea that the orb belonged to her mother—that it was her mother’s voice, and no stranger’s, she had heard—was so novel that it was only with difficulty that she abstracted herself from her thoughts. Mak Genggang was repeating her name.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Prunella.
“I said, since the servants seem not to know whether their heads are in the air and their feet on the ground, or whether it ought rightly to be the other way around, you will have to take me to these thaumaturges,” said Mak Genggang.
“That is what I came to tell you, before we were distracted by your orb.”
“Why do you wish to see the unnatural philosophers?” said Prunella, puzzled.
“I don’t give a fig for them,” said Mak Genggang.
“It is the so-called sultan I wish to see, and the sky says he is with them. At a party, forsooth! I know what he is doing; he is begging from the British, thinking he will return laden with cannon enough to blow me and all my women to paradise. But he will find Mak Genggang is not so easily outdone! I should like to see what spirit he has for merriment once he knows I am come.”
Prunella had started to say that she did not know where the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers was, but her interest was piqued by the mention of a party. “A party, at the Society? But thaumaturges are infamous dancers, Henrietta says.”
But as she spoke she recalled the reason why Henrietta had had an opportunity to see thaumaturges dancing.
It had been a great event, the great event of the year at the Society.
Henrietta had attended it in her first Season, and she had been full of it for weeks afterwards when she returned to the school.
“The Spring Ball!” Prunella exclaimed.
“That is what the sky called it,” said Mak Genggang.
Prunella put aside the troubling mysteries of her inheritance with relief. She would return to the orb and the treasures later—for now there were more pressing concerns to be thought of.
“I long to see the Spring Ball!” she said. “Henrietta said it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen, and she has been to dozens of parties. Are you going? What shall you wear?”
“I shall go in what I am standing in,” said Mak Genggang. “A witch is always appropriate whatever her attire. It is quite another matter for a young girl, however. We will ask the sky what is suitable for the occasion.”
“Cannot the sky tell you where the Society is?”
“I know where it is, but that is hardly to the point. It would be shockingly brazen of me to go alone to a party full of foreign gentlemen,” said Mak Genggang.
“But if you are with me, there cannot be any impropriety, for we shall look after each other. Are you coming? We ought not to delay any longer, or they will all go home, and my interrogation of the sky will be all to do over again.”
“Yes,” said Prunella. She stood, and slipped the silver orb under the collar of her dress. It nestled against her breastbone, a cold weight, heavy with secrets. “I shall certainly come.”
· · ·
PRUNELLA’S first impression of the Spring Ball was of light. Veritable forests of candles were arrayed around the Society’s rooms, their glow reflected within innumerable shining mirrors, till it seemed as though the rooms were ablaze.
The effect had been achieved by mortal art alone.
The Society, being composed in large part of gentlemen fond of their food, had chosen to focus its magical enhancements upon the refreshments.
But to Prunella, the change from the dark night without was almost magical in itself.
She felt as though she had entered another world.
When her eyes had grown accustomed to the light she looked around, ready to take pleasure in everything. But her heart sank as she registered her surroundings.
It had been her intention to avoid Zacharias if she could, since she presumed he was at the Ball, but in fact when she saw him she was so consumed by disaster that she hurried towards him, grateful to see a familiar face.
“Mr. Wythe, what is to be done?” she exclaimed. “Mak Genggang assured me that the sky knew these things, but it is clear to me the sky knows nothing of high society, and I wish I had never come! It was very unwise—indeed, it is nothing less than a disaster!”
“I cannot but agree,” said Zacharias. “But if you think so, why did you come?”
Prunella was too troubled to attend. “Only look at my dress!” she said.
“To think of wearing hoop skirts and silk taffeta when every other young female is in white muslin! I do not know if the sky meant to be disobliging, or if it is merely ignorant. Surely it must have seen that this is not at all the thing. I look a very guy!”
“That was not quite what I meant,” said Zacharias.
The cut of Prunella’s gown was absurdly old-fashioned, it was true, but the hue was remarkably becoming, and the dress could not but benefit from being worn by the possessor of such lively dark eyes, and such a small, piquant face.
The sky had not gone so far as to suggest that she powder her hair, and her dark curls tumbled over the back of her dress, only just restrained by a pretty bandeau.
Altogether the effect was charming—Prunella looked like a china shepherdess, modelled in bronze.
To Zacharias’s own astonishment, he heard himself say, “Indeed, I think you look very well.” He was no great hand at gallantry, and he felt like a coxcomb the moment his speech was out.
Prunella was nearly as embarrassed. How she would have liked to respond with the elegant coquetry of her imaginings! Instead she flushed, cast her eyes down, and said abruptly:
“Oh, you are being civil!”
Anything less flirtatious could scarcely be imagined. But it was easier to devise witty replies in one’s fancy when the gentleman whom one addressed was a fiction: nameless, faceless, and not nearly so attractive as a certain Sorcerer Royal.
Fortunately they did not long have the luxury of feeling awkward. Mak Genggang’s path had been blocked by a footman who sought to prevent her from accosting the sultan, and she began haranguing him for his impertinence, in tones that drew the fascinated attention of everyone in the room.
“Wythe,” gasped John Edgeworth, emerging from the crowd, “what in Heaven’s name is that harridan doing here? Was not it enough to magic her up in your shewstone to affront the sultan? What is she saying to Morton?”