This New and Poisonous Air (13 page)

Soon enough Illinca’s father and his men, known as the Irontooths for their strength, were busy moving bones from graves to the charnel house so there’d be more room to bury the plague dead and hopefully the disease itself as the Dogs had prescribed. While they worked, Illinca idled. The charnel house cut a thin shadow over the yard where she played. Sometimes she pretended to be Mother—all home and prayer, the logic of folded linens. Other times, she was Father, putting her back into digging ragged holes while talking of ghosts. She liked looking at the artifacts piled in the charnel alongside the exhumed bones—a sharpened silver tooth, the swollen binding of a forgotten Psalter, clay dolls with painted eyes, ever-open to ward off things that would steal from the dead. There was a skullcap, still neatly folded after a hundred years, and a porcelain arm that rose from a pile of debris, fingers stiff and accusatory. Her father called this the bric-a-brac of the underworld.

The Irontooths numbered eleven in all, and there was music to their digging—the muffled thud of shovel heads striking the ground and the hush of dirt falling from the blades. Sometimes one of them would pause and say, “I know this one’s people. Let me be the one to roust him.” And then he would jump into the grave and collect the
bones, holding a ribcage gingerly like a muddy trap in which some animal was still alive. The men were kind to Illinca, their little audience, and brought her creatures carved from wood—elephants and monkeys and stranger things (monsters really) with two beaked heads and tusks protruding from their stomachs. One carved her what appeared to be a man who was trapped inside a wheel, hands and arms fused to the wooden circle. The man was naked but for his body hair, and his face was that of a grinning demon. She accepted these gifts and put them in her skirt pockets, pretending to be pleased. Her father’s partner, Frenir, said, “Soon you’ll have yourself a whole ark, Illinca. You’ll float away from all this and be saved, won’t you? ” She imagined standing on the deck of a creaking ship, waving to her parents and her village, then turning to realize she was all alone with her wooden bestiary that had somehow grown to full size and stood unsteadily on matchstick legs, watching her with the dark holes they used for eyes. And when she turned to look toward home again, she saw nothing but a wooden sky upon a wooden sea.

Her mother fell sick along with so many others.

Illinca was playing on the road when she heard the soles of her mother’s shoes scrape against the porch, then watched her step away from the house, moving in quick jerks. Illinca steadied herself for a lashing, but none came. Her mother only stared—face red, her blouse opened indecently. A rash, like the tail of a comet ran between her breasts.

“Mamma?” Illinca said.

“Have you said your prayers?” her mother asked.

“I have.”

“Have you said all your prayers, my darling?” she repeated.

Her father dug the grave himself. By then so many were already gone that the cemetery was beginning to boil over—the King’s Dogs had been right on that account. But her father found a special place for his wife, putting her deeper than the other bodies and tamping the soil. For a long time then, he sat cross-legged on her grave, holding his shovel in his lap. He talked to his dead wife, said things Illinca was too far away to hear. She stood near the charnel house and saw only that his lips were moving, like a fish pulled from the river.

After her mother was gone, Illinca’s father wouldn’t look her in the face, and an old neighbor agreed to take her in as his servant. He called her Anna, his dead wife’s name. He was sick, not from the plague but from the infirmities of age. She was to bring trays to his bedside, read to him from the Bible, and brush his hair before he went to sleep. He often touched her arm while she brushed, remarking on the softness of her skin and saying, “Slower now, Anna. My scalp is so tender.” He died one evening while she watched, holding his hands against his mouth as if embarrassed by the final words that might slip out. Her father told no more stories of ghosts and began carrying a woodcut in his pocket showing the Virgin with the infant Christ standing on her knee. The child was crudely etched, looking more like a grim man than a baby, two fingers of the same length raised in a sign of peace. Her father wept over his dinner and once threw his wooden bowl against the wall with such force it left a mark that Illinca could not rub clean. A week later, he told her he was leaving the village for a digging job with the Irontooths. “I’ll be back before month’s end,” he said. “I’m sorry to go, but the money will be good. Many gravers have fallen into their own yards.”

“But you’ll be a traveler,” Illinca said. “Travelers spread disease.”

Her father could not find it in himself to respond, and the Irontooths waved from the backs of their tall horses. Illinca’s skirt pockets bulged with her collection of carved animals, and just as she feared, she was left alone with them feeling too young and foolish to guess the next step.

WHEN HEINRICH ADLE ARRIVED in the square, two months had passed since her father’s leaving, and Illinca was becoming frightened. She tried her best to seem cheerful, sticking out her little tongue to catch snowflakes, holding the red fabric against her throat so the wind did not whip it away. She understood now that the fabric was a sign, though of what, she didn’t know. Perhaps it meant the wearer was free from disease, free to be a wife. But Illinca was not taken like the other girls. When she realized a man was actually watching her, she composed herself, trying to look sweet, but when she saw exactly
who
was watching, she nearly laughed. This man wore the strangest clothes—a cloak lined with silk the color of new pumpkins, a soft hat that fell over one eye, and a heavy-looking talisman around his neck—a brass cross with a hole in its center. She knew he was not from their village, and had only a moment to wonder how a traveler had gotten in. Maybe people were too sick to bar the way.

Heinrich Adle stooped to examine Illinca, and she saw that his face was oddly cleaved—chin, lower lip and forehead all dented with the same vertical line, as if he’d been hit with an ax. He looked something like a book held open to a page. “Are you eating snow because you’re hungry?” he asked.

She tried for charm. “Snowflakes don’t satisfy, sir.”

“Then we must find something that will,” he said, mustache rising above crooked teeth.

“What would that be? ” she asked, feeling that at any moment she might learn the secret of the red fabric.

“Satisfaction is variable,” he said. “Finding the proper source is an art. Luckily, you have met satisfaction’s sculptor.” He extended his hand and she took it, finding his skin warm and his nails clean. “I am Heinrich Adle from Alland.”

“Illinca,” she said, forgetting to report her surname because she was trying to remember if she’d heard of Alland. She was fairly sure she hadn’t and wondered if it was a made-up place, and this man was indeed as mad as he looked.

“And how many years have you seen, Illinca?”

“Ten,” she replied, refusing to drop her gaze from his. “Or at least that is my estimation. How many have you seen, sir?”

“An unfortunate number,” he said. “I wish that it were ten.” He paused, as if trying to remember an important detail. “You know you are too young to be standing in the square. Have you parents?”

“Gone,” she said. “The death took Mother, and my father is digging graves in other villages with his men, the Irontooths. Gone two months.” She touched her red scarf. “I’m learning to make do for myself.”

Heinrich Adle let out a quick laugh. “Is that so?”

Illinca wasn’t pleased—the other girls never got laughed at. If anything, they were approached with a kind of reverence.

“Where did you say these Irontooths are?”

“Another village,” she said, not wanting to show her full ignorance of the details, “to the south.”

“Of course,” he said. “I should have remembered that I’d heard talk of their name. Listen, my dear, I’m about to leave this place, as my job is done, but if you’ll come along, I think we might just be able to find these Irontooths of yours. You could be with your father and not forced to stand out in this cold. What say you, little Illinca?”

She felt her insides vibrate with tones of pure joy. She missed her father terribly, and in recent weeks, she’d woken time and again from a dream in which he never returned. Months passed, then years, and she grew older in their thatched cottage, hair turning white, nose and ears distending, until one day she finally gave up on waiting and slumped to the floor.

“You’ll not harm me?” she asked.

“Harm you?” Herr Adle replied. “Why in the world would I do something like that?”

She half-closed her eyes because she thought it made her look intelligent. “What motive do you have to take me on a journey?”

Herr Adle sighed. “I am in need of a girl, that’s all I’ll say at present, my dear. There’s an element of theater to my trade. Remove the red scarf and come with me, if you will. Otherwise, remain.” When he turned to leave, Illinca realized this was not a time for logic. Even her mother, who’d been logical about everything outside of God, would have agreed. If Father would not return, it was time to set out after him. Herr Adle’s carriage was hidden in the shadowed alley way behind the bakery that had been closed for weeks because the man and wife who’d owned the shop had succumbed. The carriage was made of polished wood and had real glass windows, something Illinca had never seen. There was a driver, wrapped in a thick blanket, who appeared to be in a deep sleep. Heinrich Adle tapped the man’s knee. “Be quick,”
he said. “And don’t light the lamps. We needn’t make a scene on our way out.”

She marveled at the warmth as she stepped into the woody sweetness of the carriage and sat on a pillowed bench across from Herr Adle who’d crossed his legs and removed his formless hat, patting it like some animal. “Are you a nobleman, sir?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not, dear.”

“But you have such wealth.”

He paused, the crease in his face looking ever more like the center of an open book. “I suppose you could say I’m a
visitor
to noblemen,” he said.

Illinca was fairly sure that was not the name of an actual trade, but then again she didn’t know everything about the world. In fact, her parents hadn’t bothered to tell her that much at all. Her mother spoke of the mysteries of God and her father talked of old stories, but as for the actual world and how it worked, they’d said little, most likely because they knew little themselves. Illinca tried to think what to say next, still attempting to deduce what Herr Adle wanted from her. Obviously it was something that a red scarf could provide, otherwise he would not have chosen her. She remembered a thing she’d seen her father do to her mother once. “Are you going to kiss my breasts and hair?”

Herr Adle’s yellowish eyes grew slightly wider. “My dear,” he said. “Your breasts—as you call them—well—you have less of a those than I do. And your hair, it doesn’t appear you’ve cleaned that in weeks.”

Illinca felt her cheeks redden and willed them not to betray her childishness. “Will you kiss it if I wash?” she said.

“No,” Herr Adle replied. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Illinca. And at any rate, I shouldn’t think your father would be pleased.”

They journeyed for what felt like hours, and Illinca was fascinated by the idea that she had become a traveler. She was now an illegal spreader of the Mortality along with Herr Adle, but what better thing to be now that death was everything? The countryside was dark—perhaps the moon had fled to another place like so many wealthy citizens. Herr Adle closed his eyes and seemed to sleep while Illinca watched the landscape. She’d never seen these forests and lakes and thought that at any moment she might catch a glimpse of her father and the Irontooths, and she wondered if she’d run to him or pretend she’d turned into a lady who rode in polished carriages and could not be bothered with the likes of gravers. She’d only carry on the charade for a few minutes, of course, to punish him for leaving her for so long. But she did not see her father or any of his men, and when the carriage hit a road-hole, it bounced so violently that Herr Adle awoke, grabbing his hat and stuffing his hands inside for warmth, then slowly realizing that Illinca was watching him. “What is that you keep in your skirt pockets?” he said.