Page 2 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

“Hattie!” Merritt came out of the nursery with a diaper in his hand and a rag over his shoulder. Seemed the second Fernsby child had been mid-change when she’d decided to take off with her favorite accomplice.

Owein stuck out a hand and, with an alteration spell, pulled up the carpeting in the hallway, creating a soft wall that both children collided into. A faint stiffness emerged between his fingers; alteration spells liked to kick back by altering the body of those who cast them, and this one had warped his knuckles. He commanded the carpet back into place, increasing the stiffness in his hand, but it would go away in a moment.

Merritt, more frazzled than usual, said, “Thank you,” as he collected the half-naked toddler and carried her under his arm like a chicken.

“Hulda home yet?” Owein asked. Ellis, the third and youngest Fernsby child, would be with her, as she wasn’t yet weaned.

“I imagine not, if you haven’t seen her.” Merritt ducked into the nursery. “Miss Hattie,” he went on, “you have a very lovely behind, but we must keep it covered—”

Owein slipped by the nursery, which had once been Hulda’s bedroom, to his room, which had once belonged to Beth. It was a simple room—Owein didn’t care for ornamentation or fanciness, though he occasionally changed the color of things when he got bored. At the moment, his bedspread was navy, his small writing desk rose pink. His armoire was darkly stained cherry; Merritt had made it for him shortly after their return from England a few years back. He’d never changed the color of it, and never would.

Owein picked up the thick letter on his pillow. Turned it over. Sure enough, the wax seal on the back signified it came from England.

Sitting down, he opened the four-page letter to familiar, picturesque handwriting, tightly written but neatly spaced. He wondered if Cora, to whom he was betrothed, wrote slowly to keep her letters so uniform or if they merely flowed from her fingers that way.

Dear Owein,

I have seen the wet-plate collodion photographs! They are remarkable. So bizarre that something used as a surgical dressing can render the face of any person on canvas. I will see if I can get my hands on one and send it your way. It lacks color, and so the finished product is not as satisfying as a true portrait, and yet it feels more real than a painting. There is no margin for error or artistic interpretation; the result hinges entirely on how that person looked, felt, and posed in the moment the camera pointed at them. If one were to find a way to mix the two mediums, to create photographs in vivid, lifelike colors, I think art as a whole would die out. Which would be terribly sad, and yet I find myself incredibly interested in the possibility. Perhaps someone will sort it out in our lifetimes, and we might be able to witness the phenomenon together.

Cora went on about the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry in Hyde Park, which she had attended with her mother, then updated him on her family, who seemed mostly unchanged, though relations with her sister, Briar, and the baron had improved since Owein had last seen them. Over four years had passed since he’d seen any of them, Cora included, and he wondered how much she had changed, if at all. That is, of course she had changed; she too had grown older, no longer a thirteen-year-old girl but a young woman of seventeen. She, surely, had changed. She seemed less soft spoken, but that could have been her openness in letters to him, not to people in general. He wondered, glancing back to the top of the first page, if she would send him a photograph of herself. He had no likeness of her countenance, not even a little portrait. Portraits were expensive, but Cora’s family was incredibly wealthy. Then again, from Owein’s understanding, portraits were often sent during courtship or marriage negotiations, and their impending marriage had already been negotiated, signed, and sealed.

Owein pushed that thought aside as he continued reading. Thinking of the marriage contract, and of his very near future, made his chest too tight, like the air had grown dense around him. It wasn’t that he didn’tlikeCora. He did, regardless of the mess that had occurred at Cyprus Hall in 1847. She hadn’t been too keen on being engaged to a dog, and had reacted somewhat ... violently in her attempts to avoid the betrothal. But betrothed they were, and Cora had been declared the ward of her cousin Queen Victoria herself for a few years following the incident.

Cora had started writing to him about a year after his return to Blaugdone Island, and their letters had gradually increased in frequency and length over three years’ time. He knew her well now, and he liked what he knew. Still, it felt strange, forming a friendship with someone who lived an ocean away, and until last year had been kept under very strict regulations as the queen’s ward. But, or so she said, Cora had since proven herself. She was well, though often frustrated with the pressures of nobility. Even when she didn’t outright say as much, Owein couldsense it in her letters. She used less punctuation when frustrated, and her tight penmanship grew even tighter.

I will request a copy of Frankenstein and read it. I think I shall be able to do so before your next reply, so feel free to share your thoughts on the novel straightaway. I’ll let you know if your theories are correct.

He could hear her smile in those words. Did her voice still sound the same, or had it lowered a note or two? Would it be strange for him to ask?

His knuckles popped back into place.

Please take care of yourself, and send my best to the Fernsbys and Babineauxs. I really would love to see your island. With my own eyes, not in photograph or portrait. You paint such a beautiful picture with your words. It must be enchanting.

That reminded him. Letter still in hand, Owein crossed to his armoire and opened the right door, pulling open the topmost drawer to retrieve a copy ofBeowulf. Opening the cover, he found the pink corydalis he’d pressed there after Cora’s last letter. He’d pressed it flat, and it was dry as paper; if he wrote an especially long letter and folded it around the buds, they might be shielded from the travel to London. He set the dried flowers on his writing desk and finished reading.

Sometimes I go into the woods and close my eyes and pretend I am anywhere other than England. France, Canada, even China! (Don’t laugh.) But more and more often, I try to imagine myself in Narragansett Bay, hearing the ocean lapping against the edges of the island, smelling clean air scented with sea and not smoke from a thousand stacks. For some reason,I can’t fathom a sky that wide and endless. I can’t imagine so much open space and freedom.

Her penmanship got a little tighter there.

So please, bask in it all for me, and send your thoughts across the Atlantic. Call it wishful thinking, but perhaps I’ll catch them in a dream and see your world through your eyes. In truth, Owein, the very idea of it makes me feel renewed.

Yours,

Cora

He smiled softly at the letter, rereading the end of it, wondering where she had written it, and if she’d done it all in one sitting. Their missives had been very cordial in the beginning. There had been alotof remarking on the weather. Over the last year or so, however, Cora had started conversing less like an aristocrat and more like a regular person, as though all of a sudden she had realized no one else would see her words, and that he would hardly judge her for them.

Owein had never been one to guard his words. Not that he could recall, anyway. But formality was contagious. In the beginning, he’d struggled to be himself, too.

In the beginning, he’d still been sorting out just whohewas.

He pulled out the chair to his desk, then grabbed his inkwell and shook it by his ear—empty. So he slipped out of his room to Merritt’s office, catching the delighted giggles of two toddlers wrestling as he went, and stole a brand-new vial from Merritt’s incredibly tidy desk. Incredibly tidy, meaning Beth had been in here recently and Merritt hadn’t had the chance to unleash his chaocracy upon the thing again, and Owein wasn’t referring to the man’s weak but present magical ability of chaos.

Finally seated, Owein started his letter. He never really knew how to address Cora; it gave him pause each and every time. She was, by all means, his fiancée, but it felt strange to call her that. He’d initially started with Lady Cora, as she’d addressed him as Mr. Mansel. There was a distinct difference, in his opinion (and Hulda’s, as she’d made it very clear in one of their numerous, painstaking etiquette lessons), between addressing a woman asdearversusdearest, the latter far more emotional and ... promising. Not that it mattered; he was already promised. And yet it felt strange to saydearest. Then again, it felt strange not to.

He wished he could see her again, in person. Perhaps in doing so, he could set his thoughts to rights. Figure out why his heart fluttered a little as he wrote, simply, her name atop the page:Cora.

His handwriting wasn’t so neat and perfect as hers, but he wrote neatly enough. He’d worked hard on making it neat. Granted, anyone who had Hulda Fernsby as a teacher would strive for neatness if only to keep her from lecturing on it. That woman had ingrained ten years of education into him in the space of three.

---