Page 83 of A Lion Among Men (The Wicked Years 3)

“Huffy, are we?” said the dwarf. “Feeling our oats, eh? This is a strange turn of affairs.” But he backed off a little, nonplussed.

“Look,” said Brrr.

“Easy for you to say,” replied Yackle, tapping one dead eyelid with her fingernail.

The Clock’s machinery chirred with a sound like the tumbling of oaken dice. The hands of the dwarf fell at his side, but remained fisted, as if Mr. Boss would strike the equipment if it dared an impertinent display. Brrr shifted to get a better view. Ilianora and the boys watched, too.

Through a mist that suffused the stage from vents in the flooring, a tall figure emerged. It stood about ten inches high. It sported a long white beard and a tall velvet hat—like a witch’s hat but without the brim. The face was indistinct but furrowed with character; it looked like the business end of a pair of socks folded into each other. The face seemed pinched between the downward cone of the white beard and the upward cone of the black velvet cap. Stars and moons were picked out on the old gentleman’s robe.

“What’s happening?” asked Yackle. “This is no time to fall silent, you lot.”

“Sorry,” said Brrr, and he began to describe what he saw.

In his arms the figure hugged an oversize volume, a folio of russet leather clasping vellum pages of irregular cut. Oversize, proportionally speaking, of course: in actuality, the prop was about the heft of a roast-wren sandwich.

The figure set the book down on the ground. He looked to the left and to the right, as if checking to make sure he was alone. Then, alarmingly, he looked at the small audience and winked at them. It was almost salacious. Brrr felt in the presence of rough magic.

“It’s a book,” said Brrr. “A magic book, I bet.”

“The Grimmerie,” added Ilianora. “I knew it in my youth, back at Kiamo Ko.”

“The Grimmerie,” replied Yackle. “As I suspected. What about it?”

Brrr and Ilianora took turns describing the scene. The figure opened the cover of the book. It was only a simulacrum of a book, not a real book: its pages were not more than five inches square, if that. When the book was opened flat, at a central section of pages so the versos and rectos spread evenly in each direction, the bearded puppet made some arcane gestures above the gutter of the volume. He let his beard trail along the stitchery, which seemed a nearly obscene gesture, certainly an odd one. Then he curled his fingers up and lifted his gnarled hands—Brrr could tell his hands were gnarled even though they were papier-mâché puppet hands. He knitted a spell with his fingers. It was as if, Brrr thought, he were writing in the air above the book. “He’s…he’s conjuring something out of the book.”

“Of course he is. It’s the Grimmerie. Aren’t you getting any of this?”

“Don’t be so snarky,” said Brrr, but mildly; he couldn’t really fault Yackle. The air seemed to crackle and dry; his mane was going mad with static.

Yackle gripped each of her elbows and hugged herself. “What’s he calling up?”

Something began to lift off the page. It looked like origami being done by invisible fingers: a complicated fold of ivory paper twisted itself, unbent a limb, twisted again, uncorked a shoulder. Slowly the creature balanced on four limbs, then stood erect on two—the rear two limbs. A third pair of limbs scraped the air behind the creature, unfolding and unfolding until they were twice the height of the biped.

“Wings,” said Ilianora, in a gasp.

“A winged human,” said Brrr, “made out of paper, I mean.”

The creature stood to full height only once, and some trick in the folds of the face made a little gleam of light come out—as if a torch had picked up a glint of reflection made by a drop or two of dried glue. The figure was naked and magnificent, a hobbledy old winged woman with a mane of paper hair wild enough to make Brrr jealous.

Then the creature’s wings folded back, to pack into the woman’s shoulders like a broad deformity, a pair of humps. The weight of them curved her spine a little; she stooped, looking older. This caused her hair to drop over her forehead, giving her a shifty look beneath its unkempt locks. The light dimmed somehow; only now could Brrr see that the paper had been crumpled before being folded, so the dozens of wrinkles approximated the veined sheen of old flesh.

“It is an old woman,” said Brrr. His voice went quiet. “An old woman has just lifted out from the pages of the Grimmerie, and been deprived of the wings that helped her stand erect. The wings have folded heavily on her back, buckling her spine with the weight. And she is on her knees, now, and lying down, naked and old.”

“I know,” said Yackle tiredly. “Naked and old and newborn. And never knew a mother’s kiss. Tragic. But you’ve learned of your origins, Brrr, and I’ve learned of mine, too. Happy birthday.” Her voice sounded as proud as it did tired. “Now what?”

The crumpled woman who had sprung from the open folds of a magic book slid offstage, never waking, never stirring. The bearded puppet was left alone. He picked up the book. He looked here and there—hunting for something. A puppet can do anything. He turned at last, and a scroll of paper at the back of the stage wound a new backdrop behind him. An approach to a towering house, almost a castle—

&nb

sp; “Kiamo Ko!” said Brrr.

Ilianora gripped his paw. “Wasn’t Kiamo Ko bigger than that?”

“Everything seems bigger when you’re young,” explained Brrr. “Anyway, this is a stage set, so how big can it be?”

“Give me my eyes,” said Yackle. She sounded like a crazy old lady, nothing more, but Brrr knew what she meant, and answered her. Brrr described what he saw.

The castle was painted gloomy and quaint, bats in the window and crossbones on the door: a bit over the top, if Brrr could rely on his own memory. But up came the magician, if that’s who he was, in his tall hat and his unrespectable beard; he delivered air-knocks on the castle wall, and then he laid the book down on the floor before the doors, which anyway were painted shut. Once he’d accomplished this, the magician puppet was yanked into the fly space by the Clock’s impatient gearwork.

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