Chapter 8
Mouse paced the front steps of Thistlemarsh the next morning, using the crumbling twin boar statues that guarded the entrance as touchpoints. The storm from the night before had left the world washed-out and gray. Her fingers flitted to touch her pinky every few seconds.
Before descending from the Matchbox, Mouse had pored over her reflection. Even in the light of day, the finger was gone. There was no scar or gore. It was as though the tip of her finger had simply been erased, leaving behind a blurred end.
She experimented by rolling a coin between her fingers and running them through the still water in her vanity washbasin.
She could feel everything, but in the mirror, the coin flowed seamlessly through the air before returning to her ring finger.
When she dipped her pinky into the water bowl, she could feel the liquid against her skin, but there was no sign of its presence on the surface.
No ripples, no dent, just water, still as glass, reflecting her confused expression.
She thought of running to tell John, but the image of his disappointed and shocked face kept the urge at bay. She was the fool who made a deal with a Faerie; she would be the one to bear it.
Mouse knew that Blakeney’s had no stories about Faeries who bargained for body parts, but she studied it anyway, desperate for guidance.
The book was silent on the matter, but plenty of her childhood heroes judged her for making a deal with a Faerie from their safety behind the ink.
Her mother’s handwriting glared at her from the margins.
Mouse groaned and stopped pacing between the boar statues, glancing at her watch for the twentieth time that morning.
A flash of black caught Mouse’s eye, and she looked up to see a car rolling down the drive.
She knew next to nothing about cars, but even she could recognize a Rolls-Royce from the magazines.
A fuzziness surrounded the vehicle; the longer she watched, the less it looked like a motorcar and the more it looked like a tangle of leafy branches, tightly fashioned into an automobile-esque shape.
Her eyes stung, and she had to look away as it pulled into the drive.
Thornwood emerged, dressed head to toe in a cream suit.
According to any rule of fashion, the color should have washed him out, but instead, his hair took on a new life, and his eyes sparkled with mischief.
Mouse decided she did not like it at all.
“Something is wrong with your car,” she said.
The Faerie frowned and looked back at it. The outline of the car straightened.
“You can see the spellwork,” Thornwood said. He tilted his head as though it was a question rather than a statement of fact.
“I don’t know. I had never seen a spell before I met you.”
“Can you still see it now?” he asked. Mouse squinted.
“Just snippets of it. It looks like it’s trying to escape out of itself.”
His lips tightened, and the motorcar went completely solid.
“Are you working magic?” Mouse asked.
“Just strengthening the spell. You should not be able to see it at its loosest, let alone when I have tightened it. I am more out of practice than I thought.”
“I did not realize that Faeries needed to practice their magic.”
Thornwood did not respond, but his jaw twitched.
So, the question bothered him, Mouse thought. Interesting.
A vision of Thistlemarsh with bursts of magic coming off it like sunbeams sprang to mind. “Could something like that happen to Thistlemarsh as you are fixing it?”
“No. Your price will be enough to set the magic in place. Besides, the Rolls is an illusion. I will properly transform the house.”
“Speaking of my price, a warning would have been appreciated.”
“What are you talking about?” Thornwood asked, brushing past her and through the open doors. Mouse followed close behind. She shoved her hand before his face.
“Oh, only it would have been nice to know my finger disappeared in mirrors or water before I found out for myself through a horrifying ordeal in the middle of the night.”
“You’re lucky I did not take the entire digit away, girl,” the Faerie snapped.
“I am not complaining about the price,” Mouse said. “I’ve made my bed. I just would have liked a warning!”
“You should not be able to see that the finger is missing at all, even in your reflection. I will remedy the issue,” Thornwood said. He held his hand out toward her.
Mouse flung her hand behind her back. “No.”
His brows furrowed. “Well, what would you like me to do?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Mouse said. It was pointless to argue with him about the terms of what he’d taken. After all, she was not planning to give him anything else. “It was frightening, that’s all.”
He sighed. “It is hard for me to remember that humans are so unused to magic now. It has only been a hundred years, but the very sight of it frightens you.”
“A hundred years for us is much longer than a hundred years is for you.”
Thornwood hummed in reply. “I cannot control every side effect of the magic I produce, even if I try. As we move forward, I will have to cast more spells, and these acts will occasionally have consequences that I cannot anticipate. What you see in the mirror, for example. However, know I am not intentionally trying to harm or frighten you.”
“All right. Thank you for the explanation.”
“Now, I will begin my work. The villagers have seen me, so the groundwork there has been set. To them, I am an architect from the city who has arrived to help you. My servant is spreading the story as we speak. Will you be in the gardens all day?”
“I suspect so.”
“Brilliant. Keep any visitors outside.”
Mouse scoffed. “We need not worry about visitors.”
“All the better. I will let you know when it is safe to pass the threshold. Do not come in without my command.”
“What would happen?”
“I would be annoyed, which is not what you want, I am sure.”
Mouse nodded. “One moment, then; I need to fetch my lunch from the kitchen.”
She scurried through the halls to the kitchen, tracing her steps from the night before down and back up again. She pressed a cold egg-and-bacon sandwich into the Faerie’s hands, tucking her own and Mr. Hobb’s under her chin as she fiddled with her thermos of strong black tea.
Thornwood looked as though she’d just handed him a slug.
“It won’t bite you. Nothing grand, I know, but it tastes nice and will keep your spirits up.”
“What is it?”
“Venison and gravy on bread flown straight from Florence,” she snipped. Thornwood blinked at her, and she rolled her eyes. “It’s eggs, bacon, cheese, and fried bread that I prepared earlier this morning. Will the banality of it kill you?”
“I have not eaten human food in a very long time,” he said. He sniffed the wrapper, his expression dubious.
“Eat it or don’t. I’ll remember not to make you one tomorrow.”
Thornwood’s head shot up. “No, I would like one tomorrow, if it is satisfactory.”
Mouse marched out into the garden without deigning to respond.
Mud squelched beneath her feet as she approached Mr. Hobb’s shed.
The door was open, and a grizzled voice drifted to her.
He was singing in a different language, although Mouse could not identify it from a distance.
She padded further up the path, allowing the melody to roll over her, sharp in its sadness.
She could see through the doorway where Mr. Hobb worked diligently on something laid before him on the table. He abruptly stopped singing, and his eyes met hers.
“Hello, Miss Mouse,” he said. “Are you replicating your namesake and sneaking about?”
“Perhaps I ought to take this sandwich back to the kitchen for my dinner,” she said loftily.
Mr. Hobb stood and opened the door wider for Mouse to squeeze through into the shed.
It was no more than four walls and a bench, but Mr. Hobb had turned it into something charming.
Plants grew on nearly every surface, carefully maintained.
Sunlight wafted in from a skylight above his table.
Magazine clippings of grand gardens were pinned above his workspace, as well as a single photo of Mouse, Bertie, and Roger.
Gridded paper covered in designs rolled off his desk in sheets. Mr. Hobb caught Mouse looking.
“An old hobby,” he explained. “Your uncle never took to any of them, but by the time that fact got through my thick skull, I found that I liked working on the designs, even if only on paper.”
“They are beautiful,” Mouse said, lifting the top page so the image was lit from behind. Circled hedges interlocked in intricate patterns, framed by glorious swaths of flowers. They could not do everything he suggested in his work, but it was a brilliant start.
Mr. Hobb coughed. Mouse looked at him. He was smiling at her, bemused, and she put the paper back. Heat rose in her cheeks. How shameful that she had not even asked him before making plans. It was something her uncle would do.
“You know I will be working on the grounds this month,” she said. Mr. Hobb nodded. “Well, I was just thinking…Would you be interested in trying one of your designs?”
His eyes widened, and his gaze shot to the paper on his desk.
“That is very kind, but are you sure you want to take a chance like that now? I would hate for you to lose out because you took pity on an old fool to help him fulfill a hopeless dream.”
“It is not pity! On the contrary, I need your help, and the risk is not any greater for me to add something exciting and new to the grounds at the same time.”
“If you’re sure, I won’t say no,” Mr. Hobb said. His eyes were misty.
“Which design would you choose with a limit on both funds and time?”
Mr. Hobb brushed past her. He shuffled through the papers before pulling one from the bottom of the stack. He held it out to her. The brushstrokes were simpler, a set of growing bubbles, each with a different theme.
“Basic but elegant,” he said, his face flushed. “We can salvage most of the elements we need from the current landscaping.”
“All right, then—let’s begin.”