In the Night Garden

She was as curious as any child, and I brought her to my parents’ teas, where she learned the words “watercress” and “biscuit” and “speak up, no one can hear you,” where we misused our egg spoons together. When we returned to the house and the moon was beaming through the frost-foam, I sat her down on a chair—she had not quite gotten the trick of sitting on her own yet. She asked me, as it was the midnight hour and she did not yet speak between her alarums:

“Good children are given stories at nighttime. Am I a good child?”

“Of course, darling, you are the best child that ever used her salad fork on her snails.”

“Then I should be given a story.”

“All right,” I said. I did not really know very many stories, though I knew a great many poems. But these are not the same thing, even if one takes the newer fashions of verse into account. I settled back in my own chair, and the moon curled up in my lap like a cat. “Once upon a time there lived a maiden in a castle—”

“What is ‘Once upon a time’?” Hour interrupted.

“It means a very long time ago, or at least, long enough ago that it would be impolite to reveal the actual number of years involved.”

“What is ‘lived’?”

“It means to walk and talk and eat biscuits and watercress and use one’s fork improperly, and also to sleep inside a house rather than out on the stones in the cold.”

“What is a maiden?”

And so I had to explain about virginity, and about dowries, and marriage contracts, and hymens, and paternity, and primogeniture, and the various expressions of royalty, systems of rank, and court etiquette. After that, I had to sketch a castle for her, and explain about buttresses and moats, drawbridges and portcullises, dragons and invading armies, knights and feudalism and a general history of both architecture and comparative political systems. Then she wanted to know about weddings, and how a dress would be made, and feasts, and how food should be prepared, and rituals of pair-bonding, and what a maiden turns into after she is married. It was very tiring, and took many months.

At last, when summer had come again and the dandelions had turned to white gauze, I had just finished explicating the various methods of quarrying stone and in what countries what stones were common. Hour, with her great, eight-jointed hands on her knees, nodded her head with great effort—we had only begun to address nodding and shaking one’s head—and said:

“I think I understand now. Thank you. That was a very good story.”

THE

VIOLINIST’S TALE,

CONTINUED

“MY FATHER DID NOT LIKE HOUR MUCH. HE felt that she never got the crook of her finger quite right when she sipped her tea. I did not have the heart to tell him how difficult it was for her to sip tea at all, how many catches and sieves I had to fix in her throat before every luncheon, so that he might love her, just a little. He did not. And so, having exhausted the amusements of whalebone harps and watercress, we set roosters aside entirely and came south. We did not intend Ajanabh, but sooner or later most folk of a certain temperament find themselves here. In a city of artists and thieves I am not entirely out of place, and Hour mends the clocks. I am a good mother; I wind her every day. She is precise and perfect, and so too the bells of Ajanabh are as accurate as the sunrise, and never fail.”

The old inventor took Hour’s hand, which looked as though it had been cut from a soldier’s metal fist, in hers, and patted it fondly, like a grandmother proud of her cleverest child. The automaton knelt with a strange and awkward grace and laid her head on Folio’s shoulder. My mother was right. All the wonders of Ajanabh were authored in that little shack.

And so too they authored my hands. Following Hour’s suggestion, ten long bows were fashioned, not only of fine wood both red and dark, but within each stalk Folio laid a strand of her wiry hair and a trickle of quicksilver. No mere horsehair was strung from tip to tip, either, but Folio sent a boy with a coin to find the circus-master and ask after his mermaid, who had died of the most unfortunate gout. Finally, ten slender bows lay on the table, torchlight flickering on their polished surfaces.

“I am no musician, but I daresay these are the finest bows made.”

Being somewhat more dense in those days than I have since become, I did not quite understand, even then, what she intended. Folio laughed at my perplexed expression.

“Didn’t your mother ever read you stories about little girls who make deals with the devil for the sake of a violin? I’ve told Hour dozens. What then, should we make of a devil who makes deals with an old woman? I think we should say that anything worth doing is worth shedding blood over.”

Folio laid my hand flat on the table, and gently closed a vise around my wrist to keep it in place.

“I am sorry,” said Hour, her throat clicking and whirring, “this will hurt very much. It will be like the time that Mother gave me a new arm in place of a wing.”

There was blood, a great deal of blood, and a little dribble of fire, but not much, not very much at all.

THE TALE OF THE

CAGE OF IVORY

AND THE

CAGE OF IRON,

CONTINUED