He couldn’t remember and for the moment, he didn’t care.
Sena looked down at him melodramatically, as if reading lines from an atrocious satire. “He’ll live, doctor. I’ll see to it.”
Caliph started laughing while Sena produced a small steel flask from her halter top and told Baufent to administer it. Any moment now, Caliph expected dancing fish with hats and canes.
Instead, Baufent scowled, unscrewed the cap and sniffed the contents. “Won’t this do even more harm?” she asked.
Caliph’s laughter was like a windup toy that wouldn’t stop.
“Yes and no,” said Sena. “It’s poison, but it’s also the only way to remove his breasts.” She brushed Caliph’s hair from his forehead with cool smooth fingers as if deeply concerned over the future shape of his body.
“You’re right,” said Baufent who had turned into a real talking hamster. The huge gray rodent that was now Baufent leaned forward with the tiny flask in its paws and said, “Drink it … Drink it.”
Going along with the dream, Caliph did as he was told.
But when the liquid hit the back of his throat, something changed. Sena’s voice changed as well. It took on an edge. “Try to stay calm,” she said. “We’ll get through this.”
Her hand rested firmly on his forehead.
The euphoria had already begun to fade. Replacing it was darkness, emptiness and panic. “Sena? What’s happening?”
“Taelin isn’t well. She got into the medical supplies,” said Sena. “The puslet in your head allowed you to feel what she was feeling. You got high right along with her. But now we’re taking the puslet out. The influence of those drugs is going to go away—suddenly.”
Caliph felt his skin tighten. His body felt too small for his skeleton. All his bones pushed out, as if they were going to tear through.
He screamed.
Fire gurgled through his brain, driven by the strangely familiar smell of hyper-sweet mint. His breasts shrank instantly away. For a moment he knew them as Taelin’s breasts. He felt them with Taelin’s hands. Taelin’s long dark hair was in his face. He moved to brush it aside; then it was gone. All of it was gone.
His bones ripped through his skin, erupting from elbow, knee; the tips of his fingers exploded and his finger bones poked free. The skin of his feet bunched up around his ankles like threadbare socks that had finally given out. He screamed and his scream was never-ending. He was a pincushion of bloody bones, a punctuation mark of agony. His ribs broke and unfolded. They pierced upward through his chest.
He lost wind and heard his own scream fading into the abyss.
Sena’s voice filled his ear. “We’ll get through this. Knock three times on my door.” Then she was gone and he was alone in the dark—with his uncle.
“Where did she go?” Nathaniel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s cunning. You shouldn’t trust her. Tell me where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fool. She’s going to kill you. To save herself, she’s going to drain you dry. Now tell me where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Get up here, Caliph.”
Caliph’s body had shrunk. He was small now, only a child, and his bones had readjusted. He wasn’t a mess anymore. The pain had faded into powerful discomfort. He climbed from the darkness up onto a stool built just for him and looked across a high laboratory table at his uncle. Nathaniel smiled unpleasantly and used a medical probe to poke Caliph in the chest. “What do you think of that, eh?”
Caliph winced but didn’t talk back.
“That’s shuwt tincture,” said Nathaniel. “It hits you like a hammer, doesn’t it?” He grinned.
Caliph didn’t know what to say.
“You can’t speak,” said Nathaniel, “because you’re not really here. You’re six years old.” Caliph looked across the disheartening scene on the table. There was a dissection tray between them with a small creature lying on its back. Nathaniel handed him a forceps.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” said Caliph. Then he realized his mouth hadn’t moved. He was thinking the answer … not really talking.
“Fine,” said Nathaniel. “We’ll find her. Now pick up a cotton ball.”
Caliph obeyed. He remembered this. He remembered doing this exactly. He had been here before, when he was young.
“Clean up that bit of mess there,” Nathaniel snapped.
From the other side of the table Nathaniel basked in the silvery, wooden light that poured in from the backyard. Huge windows like display cases for insects cut up vignettes of branches and sky. The trees looked distorted through hundred-year-old glass.
Nathaniel’s hair floated above his forehead as he drew Caliph’s attention back. “Pay attention boy, help me open it up—see how they move?”
Caliph set down the forceps and used his fingers to hold back the sticky warm flaps of skin while Nathaniel placed a narrow reed into the rodent’s mouth. He inflated the tiny pink lungs with his own breath. The thing was still alive. Caliph watched its heart, no bigger than his thumbnail, pulse slowly under an anesthetic spell.
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Nathaniel said. “What’s the point?” He stabbed a probe into the rodent’s brain; the legs twitched twice and the heart wound down. His uncle laughed. “Useless,” he said.
Caliph let the flaps of skin close over the broken toy. He felt like crying but he didn’t. He was not in charge of his body. He felt his stubby legs climb hurriedly down the stool. His heart was racing. He was running out of the laboratory, just as he had done when he was six.
“That’s what she’s going to do to you!” Nathaniel called out to him, laughing.
Caliph ran away.
The hallway outside his uncle’s laboratory was wide and tall. As he ran, the strip of carpet down the center began to hiss. Parts of it came up and tumbled around his feet. The hallway grew taller and taller as he ran toward his bedroom door. The carpet got deeper. There were tumbling shapes around his legs. Leaves.
Fallen leaves rattled and crunched around his shoes as he ran. The ceiling disappeared into a partly sunny sky. He was surrounded by trees.
Caliph’s legs lengthened. He strode up to his bedroom door, which was no longer his bedroom door, and lifted his knuckles. He scowled. Hesitantly, he knocked: three times.
The door had a rounded top and a small leaded glass window. The blue paint covering its solid construction was cracked but clean. The door belonged to a cottage surrounded by orange and red leaves. Some of the leaves made leathery noises at his feet. The cottage’s wooden shingles released a drizzle of water that missed him by inches. He looked up. White skies punched with blue indicated the weather was clearing. Sunlight set the trees on fire like entire books of matches. He inhaled and smiled. It smelled like rain.
The door swung open. Its motion sucked one of the leaves across the threshold with a swirl that brought it to rest against the stiletto heel of a fine black boot. His eyes moved up from silver toes to faded dungarees to chic cashmere. Sena smiled at him like a bolt of lightning.
“You came!” she said as if surprised.
He felt sheepish. “Yeah, I didn’t have … I mean,” he shrugged, “I wanted to see you.” He remembered her handwriting, unpretty and boyish. An envelope, an invitation, had come to his box. Or had it? Had this happened before? Wait, I thought I took the train …
“Come in.” She stepped back and let him walk into the cottage. The smell of sweet mint enfolded him. He recognized it as the smell of the liquid he had drunk.
“How was the trip from Desdae?” she asked.
“Good. I took the Vaubacour Line from Maiden Heart to Crow’s Eye.” He felt her fingers stroke the back of his head.