Page 44 of Spring's Arcana
Human.
All the signs were there, right in front of her. The shape of hisfront teeth, the dimple in his right cheek, chin with its slightly off-center point, the detached earlobes—Mama’s were attached, and unpierced; her gold hoops were clip-ons. Leo had taken Nat to the mall to get earrings, and both of them had been in dutch for weeks afterward.
But what was done couldn’t be undone, as Leo said, and Nat could wear hoops or dangles, though Mama said it was sluttish.
Leo’s chair creaked. He finally turned the few increments that would let him see her at the door. He blinked several times, peering through tobacco vapor.
“Pretty as a picture.” He nodded, rolled the burning cigarette between his fingertips. The smell was nasty and comforting, though it didn’t belong in the kitchen. It belonged in the tiny garage, along with the sawdust and the warmth and the comfort of knowing she wouldn’t be scolded if she knocked something over or, God forbid, broke it as clumsy children always did. “Pretty as your mama.”
“You waited up for me.” Her throat swelled with a scream; it died away, shriveling to a harsh whisper. “You should have gone to bed.”
He shook his head, blinking furiously.Smoke in my eyes,he would say sometimes, when child-Nat would whisper that she wished she had a dad like other kids. “I was up anyway.”
He probably meant the lie to be kind, but Nat’s hands ached. Normally he would have asked about the brown stains on her arms, where she got the dress, how her evening had been.
She’d never stayed out overnight before. “Leo? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Been waiting a long time for you to ask.”
Why was that my job?“How could I not know?”
He gave her an agonized sideways look. Said nothing, so Nat took an experimental step into the room. She tacked unevenly across painfully clean flooring—still much more comfortable than the crisp black-and-white lino at Candy’s—and her heels made soft sounds, like Mama had dressed up to go out and was moving in a cloud of warm perfume and high excitement while Leo and Natwatched her grace, both sorry she was leaving but also, perhaps, just the tiniest bit relieved.
“Leo.” Nat settled into her usual chair, setting the clutch aside with finicky care. She should have been aching all over, but warmth stole through her. Pulling an all-nighter was supposed to make you crash eventually; the window was full of strengthening, depthless snowlight. “Please. You’ve got to tell me. Just say it.”
“Hardesty,” he said. “And talk to the Cowboy.”
What the hell?Nat stared at him.
The orange glow of the cigarette tip danced, but not from draft or breeze—it was eerily glassy-still inside the house, even the Black Forest clock in the parlor hushing his stentorian tick-tock. Leo smoked while she waited, tapping ash into the dry tumbler. He crushed the cigarette out against its inside, dropped the tiny stub on the clean half for later picking. “It’s a town, right where South Dakota starts thinking it’s Wyoming, but it’s not, not just yet. There’s a bar. You’ll know it when you see it. The moment you go in, Natchenka, he’ll find you.”
Disappointment crashed through Nat’s ribcage. Was he ashamed of her, the way Mama always seemed to be? Maybe that was the answer.
Why, Mama? Why wouldn’t you even tell me this?“The man who has the Cup,” Nat said carefully, trying to be a good student anyway. The Cup was the second part; maybe she’d been supposed to get the Knife from Jay?
Or Koschei? That was the trouble with riddles; they were only clear in retrospect, like all life’s worst moments.
“The man who knows where the Cup is.Da.” Leo’s mouth contorted, worked for a moment as he peered at his night’s work, carefully rolled and waiting in neat anchovy-packed rows. “I’d tell you, Natchenka. I would. But there is dirt in my mouth.”
That wasn’t a saying she’d heard before. “What does that even mean?” If she was five, or even twelve, she might have started howling at the injustice.
But Nat was old enough to drink, she had almost,almostenough saved for an apartment of her own, and she was on a wild magicalgoose chase. So she kept the howl to herself, locking it in her chest along with a tearing, familiar pain.
“In the old country, if you wish to keep a man quiet, you bake a handful of dirt from his own grave into his bread. And then he cannot tell what you do not wish him to.” Leo’s cheeks were damp, and his gnarled, strong, liver-spotted hands trembled even worse now. He flicked the lighter again, testing it, killed the flame with a snap of his wrist. “Love makes you weak, my Natchenka. I hope you never find that out.”
Me too. Nat might have been shaking too, but not after tonight.
“You know…” Leo coughed, then selected another hand-rolled and clicked the lighter into brief life. His hand’s quivering made the tiny orange flame dance. He inhaled deeply, sucking at the smoke. “In the old days—theveryold days—they would burn him alive in the wooden statue, or cut his throat over the bonfire. Eventually, after all was said and done. But before then he was carried around the town, given the best of every dish, andsheheld him in her arms all night. I think every single one of them thought it was worth it until the fire started, or the knife came out.”
“Is it?” She sounded like a completely different person, Nat discovered. Like a stranger talking to a dotty old man. But the stranger’s throat was full, and her eyes were hot too.
She couldn’t shake, but she might very well cry here at the table. It would be a relief, after… everything.
Wouldn’t it?
“Sometimes, a man wishes to say what he knows, but he cannot.” Leo nodded, but he wouldn’t quite look at her. “You’re strong, Nat. Like her. You cannot imagine the weak.”
Funny, I thought I was doing great just seeing it in the mirror.“You’re strong too, Leo.” The name was bitter in her mouth, but she laid her hand on the table, palm cupped upward.
