CHAPTER FORTY-THREE #2
‘To learn,’ he said. ‘To be my third-in-charge and my partner in research. We will discover your link to the Ancient together. I will teach you, Dorothy. You will be the most learned Magician in this country. You will have articles published. You will have the worship you crave.’
‘You caged these spirits,’ said Dot. ‘You’re caging Theodora in paper and ink. How could I trust your word?’
‘I’ll not do this to you,’ said Salamander.
‘I can draw you up a fair contract, if that is what you want. You may have time to read it. It will give you silver enough to provide for your family. Your sister, Celia, wants to be a novelist. Why not send her abroad to a better school than you attended? Why not take your own apartment on Mieunetti Road? You could have all of the beautiful shoes you could want. Have your hair cut in a salon. Buy a gramophone made of gold and tesserae. Remuneration is of no consideration. I want you to be happy, Dorothy.’
Theodora was yelling. No sound came from her lips as her mouth contorted.
‘This is what you want,’ whispered the daemon.
Dot could only stare at him.
‘Would you like to hear the alternative?’ Salamander seized her and flung her across the room.
Dot shrieked and collided with a wood cage, landing against the concrete.
Pain exploded across her ribs. ‘I will keep you down here in the dark until you die. I will place Theodora beside you, and you will look on each other every day yet you will never speak again. I will make you a conduit of magic. Your life will be short. Perhaps a few more years if you do not succumb to the Ancient’s magic. Longer, if you do.’
Dot struggled to sit upright. Black baubles burst in her vision as she watched the daemon drawing again toward her.
The room spun and the wet concrete swam up to greet her as she collapsed.
It was from this vantage that she spotted, several cages down from her, a mid-sized spirit with white, soft fur – she reminded Dot of an illustration she had once seen of a snow monkey.
‘Your choice is this,’ said Salamander. ‘To be who you truly are and to revel in your power, to use the magic of the South Sea Spirit, which is your right – or to play this perverse game of pretend, and continue to stifle yourself into a performance which you think will make you lovable enough to be tolerated.’
Dot flinched away, but the daemon leaned in.
‘What is your choice?’
To be herself or to be loved?
Dot’s eyes darted back and forth. What did she want?
The tea shop. To walk with Theodora through Saint Penelope’s Cathedral. To find the Ancient Spirit. To eat potatoes with her grandad. To have her name printed in the newspaper. To be a witch.
‘Both,’ said Dot.
And she dove inward to the most desolate part of where her magic lived.
She threw off all of the control she had hitherto clung to and swam to the belly of her pain.
It was her fault that Emily had died. She was sensitive and strange.
Lio had mocked her. Rupert had disliked her – why was she so intelligent, yet unable to understand the psychology of a sixteen-year-old boy?
Rupert was dead. He had died at Opal’s hand.
There was the knife glinting. The rain came down.
He was buried on a hillside, so far away. Check his heart.
A voice rose from the darkness, ethereal and echoing.
May I have the ocean back, Dorothy?
Then, her own voice: I will give it, but only if you help me.
Dot’s body surged with the cold, oceanic magic and she felt scales lancing down her rib cage, over her shoulder, down her chest.
In the belly of Salamander’s dungeon, Dot then dove past her anger to draw from a gentler kind of warmth: a borrowed midnight-blue coat, a mug of chamomile and fennel tea, Theodora making salve for her, Lio delivering Archie to her, Rupert’s handwritten note: Thank you.
The Ancient Spirit’s magic balanced at last with her own, the twin pools of strange oceanic magic and warm human magic finding equilibrium. Dot snatched Theodora’s contract from its hiding place beneath her coat.
‘How—!’ gasped the daemon, leaping forward.
And in one vibrant plume of sea green and scarlet flame, Dot burned the contract to ash.
The daemon dove at Dot, throwing her back against the cement.
She collapsed under his weight and she laughed.
Oh, she had done it. Theodora was free. Fatigue washed over Dot as the daemon’s slimy fingers seized her face and throat.
She could not fight Salamander anymore but, with her final breath, she pictured the rune for severance and sent a shot of perfectly balanced magic at Theodora’s bonds.
The daemon screamed. One barb dove out from his back, razor sharp, and Dot knew it would pierce her flesh and make a conduit of her.
It would carve in his dark spellcraft and take the Ancient’s magic and extinguish her own life.
Dot braced for the strike, but no sooner had she done so than a fierce wind tumbled in, and she breathed in the scent of gunpowder, incense, woodsmoke and lilac.
Theodora’s spell shot across the room, but it did not hit the daemon.
No.
It hit the cage of the snowy white spirit.
The door sprung open and out flew Thistlethwaite, rushing right at the daemon.
Theodora opened cage after cage. The spirits flocked at Salamander; quickly, hundreds were out of their cages, rabid, violent.
The daemon Salamander was yanked away from Dot as they tore at him, struck him, dismantled him.
The violence was absolute. In only a moment, there was utterly nothing left. The daemon had been extinguished.
Theodora rushed to Dot, who lay exhausted against the cold floor.
‘Is Salamander dead?’ whispered Dot.
‘I believe so,’ said Theodora. ‘Torn to bits.’
‘The Ancient Spirit is taking the water back,’ whispered Dot. ‘I can feel it.’
And indeed, somewhere above them, the enchanted seawater seeped from Alliaster, dragging omnibuses and deep sea creatures through the city, past the Cathedral, past the Palace, along the River Lourdes and out to sea.
With each gallon that ran off toward the ocean, the weight of Dot’s fatigue grew; still, she knew how to manage it now.
She closed her eyes and let her body rest.
Around them, the freed spirits cheered and celebrated and rang their bells.
For years after, the city folk would find dead sponges and dried kelp and old barnacles on the Tower of étienne.
They would mark the tallest buildings to show where the water had reached; they would fortify the city walls and commission new Magicians to create wards against flooding and rains and ocean waves.
But at that very moment, so many hundreds of metres beneath the city, Theodora held Dot as she rested against the cement floor, surrounded by the pervading scent of her own magic: incense, woodsmoke, gunpowder and chamomile.