Page 64 of Pandora

There is nothing.

He turns the lid over, runs a fat finger inside the deep lip-groove. Red dust comes loose on the pad of his finger.

But. Nothing.

He does the same to the lip of the pithos itself, lays the flat of his hand on the neck, runs it round and round and round.

Nothing.

He takes the chair from the desk, stands on it—unsteady—peers within. Cannot see. He returns with a candle, angles it, tries to view the bottom.

Shadows, a flame-dance against terracotta.

And there is nothing. Nothing!

There is a hiss. Frowning, Hezekiah blows out the candle. The hiss stops.

Perplexed, he steps down from the chair, leans his weight on its spindly back.

Dora has found it, Hezekiah thinks. She must have found it, and therefore she knows! She must know! But if she knows, why does she not say anything?

She is planning something, then. She means to distract him with talk of the black-market, means to scare him. Well, he will not let her. He has come too far, waited too long to be thwarted now.

“Hezekiah?”

Lottie calls hesitantly from the top step. He keeps his back to her, grips the rim of the vase, his anger fully ripe now, his frustration fierce.

“Are you all—”

“Get out, damn you!” he shouts.

“But—”

“Get out!”

He listens to her retreat, her awkward shuffle, the bell that separates shop from apartment. Tries to breathe.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hezekiah instructed her to go to her room, to not come down again for the rest of the day, and so to her room Dora has gone. But she has no intention of staying there. No, indeed, she thinks as her heartbeat steadies—she will go to Edward. She must tell him what has happened, how Hezekiah’s guilt can no longer be doubted. He denied the matter, yes—restoring them, indeed!—but Dora has lived with her uncle too long now not to recognize when he speaks a lie. She laces her boots, reaches for her shawl on the back of the door, her threadbare bonnet, ties the ribbon under her chin.

The day is bright and clear; the first sun in weeks. Dora lifts the window sash, breathes in cold, crisp city, turns then to the birdcage.

“Hermes, I’ll be back late.” She lifts the catch of the door, swinging it wide open. “Here,” she says, reaching in her pocket for the currant bread she took from the kitchen before escaping to the attic. “Freshly baked today.”

Dora reaches into the cage but the bird—who has been chittering on his perch—suddenly nips her finger. She cries out, dropping the bread, then brings her finger to her mouth, sucks on it to quell the pain. After a moment she looks at it; Hermes has not broken the skin, but his beak has left a red mark and Dora rubs her thumb over it, frowning. He has not lashed out at her since the first year she took him in.

“Whatever was that for?”

Hermes flops onto the cage floor, looks up at her, cocks his head. She watches him, then looks with distaste at the detritus he stands on. Magpies are collectors, this she has always known, has taken full advantage of. Dora lets him keep some of the beads he has brought home, the ribbons and lace he appeared to take a fancy to himself. She has hung mirrors on thread to dangle from the cage roof which Hermes prods with his beak, seemingly taking pleasure from their dancing lights. But these past two weeks he has collected all sorts of extra things on his excursions—white downy feathers, holly leaves, pine cones, newspaper scraps, all scattered now with his droppings. Sighing, Dora rubs her fingers free of crumbs. She has no time to dwell on it, thinks about Hezekiah downstairs in the basement, the way his face paled to chalk when Dora admitted to opening the pithos.

Why did he act so oddly? Why, when Dora confronted him with her suggestion of illicit trading did he barely bat an eye, but at the mention of the pithos itself...

Hezekiah’s fearful response—and yes, she thinks, it was fear—threw her completely. Dora shakes her head, slips on her gloves. She needs Edward. He will make sense of it.

“Be good, Hermes.”

As she shuts the door behind her the magpie squawks harshly in reply.

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