Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters Page 17

  The flat at which it deposited her had a most fashionable address. This was not a neighborhood where one found courtesans or mistresses, as near the theatres, but people of independent means. If the lady in question had once been the dear friend or wife of a wealthy gentleman, it was she who commanded now.

  Aurelia told the cab to wait. The service entrance was much less grand than the white-outlined front door with a uniformed footman on duty. Aurelia walked past a boiler-suited workman and up four flights to the apartment designated as the home of Madame du Charpentier. A maid in a starched white apron and cap over a trim black uniform answered her knock and accepted the package. Aurelia began to descend the stairs. She had not yet reached the door when a cry from above arrested her.

  “Mam’selle! Please return! Madame wishes to see you!”

  It was most irregular for her to be admitted to the front part of a customer’s domicile. Aurelia stood nervously in the center of a room that was more a jewel box for its inhabitant than a mere chamber. Sumptuous silk hangings of warm, beautiful colors depended from ornamental bronze fittings. The furniture had been expensively upholstered in damasks and brocades to match. Madame du Charpentier lounged upon a fainting couch in a satin gown with her small feet in Chinese slippers. She was a lady of a certain age, older than Aurelia’s mother, but not as old as Grandmere.

  Aurelia smelled, or, rather, sensed something wrong in the room. She could not identify the source of the discomfort. The sylph had awakened a new sense in her! She had many questions for M. Rupier when he returned.

  “And how may I serve, madame?” she asked.

  Mme. du Charpentier appealed to her, blue eyes wide with pleasure and curiosity.

  “Mademoiselle, I implore you! It is so nice to get a parcel from M. Rupier, but who gave it to me?”

  “Madame, I do not know his name.”

  “Describe him!” Madame commanded.

  Aurelia shook her head. “I regret, Madame, that he swore me to secrecy. No doubt he wishes to tell you himself.”

  The woman and her maid exchanged glances.

  “It is M. le Bovin,” the maid said.

  “Doris!” the woman exclaimed, rapping her maid on the wrist with her ivory-backed fan. “You should not refer to M. Carnau in that fashion.”

  “It is true,” the maid said, unrepentant. “I will call him M. le Cochon instead. No matter how many gifts he gives you, he smells like a pig, not an ox. And he is a pig!”

  “Well, this makes up for it,” Madame said, opening the small bottle and inhaling the essence. “Oh, it is heavenly! Tell M. Rupier that it gives me much joy.”

  Aurelia inclined her upper body.

  “I shall, Madame. But I must tell Madame that your admirer gave me the basis of the formulation himself. He wished to please you.”

  “Of course he did.” Madame waved the fan. “He is most persistent. I know a man who has an eye out for opportunity. I do not cast my sous as if they were breadcrumbs. If he was not so infernally handsome, I should send him about his business. Still,” her expression softened, “if he has such a sensitive soul as to cause you to create such a perfume for me, perhaps I am too hasty to dismiss him. And this will greatly abate the displeasure of his miasma.” She took another deep sniff of the bottle.

  “That is its intention, Madame,” Aurelia said.

  Mme. du Charpentier seemed to have forgotten that she was present. She waved her fan.

  “Thank you, mademoiselle. You may go.”

  Aurelia was troubled by the dazed look on Madame’s face, but she departed.

  * * *

  Over the following weeks there was much to do. Madame Noisette had spread the word about her lavender lotion, and how it picked up her spirits. Aurelia had many orders from the lady’s friends.

  “You see, your talents are manifesting themselves,” Alfonse said.

  “It is chemistry, dolt, not magic,” Aurelia corrected him.

  “I think you will find that it is both.”

  While she worked and Hyr darted around her like an insane hummingbird, Alfonse read to them from the newspapers. He adored the society columns, especially the rumors and confidential whispers. Now that they knew their mystery customer’s name, Alfonse looked for any reference to M. Carnau.

  “It said yesterday that M. Carnau must declare bankruptcy or leave the country,” he said, “but today, here is word that he has been rescued from ruin.”

  “Good for him,” Aurelia said, signing to Hyr to add chamomile to the dancing wisps in her mixing bowl.

  “In fact, he is getting married!”

  “He is? To whom?”

  “To ‘the delightful Mme. du Charpentier, a widow of means’.” Alfonse held up the paper. A drawing of ‘M. Casanova’, by a popular artist, depicted him in a local café with Madame at his side looking rapt.

  Aurelia put down her vials and frowned at the page. She could not possibly have fallen in love with him. He was too conceited and she was too sensible.

  “Hyr?”

  The translucent boy child obediently whisked to a stop before her eyes.

  “Mistress?”

  “That perfume that we made for Madame. Have you recalled why it smelled familiar to you?”

  “Which perfume? The one with musk and ginger and bergamot and . . . ?”

  “Yes!” Aurelia interrupted him. “Is it a love potion?”

  “Oh, no!” Hyr said, floating away from her on his back as if swimming in a river. “It is more of . . . an obedience drug. You may command the wearer to do your will. Well, nearly. What you formulated lacked at least one ingredient.”

  Aurelia felt herself grow very still.

  “And what was that?”

  “Oh, it is unpleasant. Cow urine. That is why it is so seldom used any longer. I can’t think of the last time it was employed. Was it two hundred years ago in Persia, or three . . . ?”

  “He does that to himself,” Aurelia realized. The dreadful smell was deliberate. He caused her to surround herself with scented things. “Can he persuade her to give him money?”

  Hyr waved his hands expansively.

  “Anything! Speak, and it is done.”

  “Could he persuade her to marry him? Could he command her to make over her entire fortune to him?”

  “Naturally. But the potion wears off quickly if it is not renewed, and especially if the commander is no longer close. Pheromones, the natural perfumes of the body, are part of it. It is most specific. She would only take instructions from the one.”

  He couldn’t have added them to the perfume. The pheromones must have been present in the room already, no doubt in one of the other gifts the maid said he had brought.

  “If it wears off, she would come to her senses,” Alfonse said.

  “Not if she died,” Aurelia said.

  “What?” Alfonse asked.

  “Hyr,” Aurelia asked, seriously, “could he tell her to . . . to die?”

  Hyr was untroubled by the notion.

  “Oh, yes. It is a powerful potion. It would be easy. All he would have to do is tell her that her heart must stop beating. And it would.”

  A horrible picture suddenly rose before her eyes. Aurelia laid down her pipettes.

  “He is marrying her for money. Surely someone, perhaps her grown children, already suspects this terrible man of fortune-hunting. But if she dies after the marriage, her money will pass to him. My father is a man of law. I have heard many such cases discussed over the dining table. A court suit would take a long time. A marriage, only minutes.”

  “That is horrible!” Alfonse declared. “What can we do?”

  The stink was the clue. The terrible smell was one of the things that had been missing from the completed potion—for it was a potion, not a perfume. It w
as evil magic, against the will of God. The Holy Bible did not say that a witch must not live, but rather that a poisoner must die. And M. Carnau was poisoning this poor woman, but through her pores and her nose, not her lips. She had fallen into his power. He had done it deliberately. Why else the strange list of ingredients? Why else the secrecy? He had made Le Parfumier Rupier complicit in a future crime!

  “We must create a counteragent,” Aurelia said, firmly. “I must recreate the potion in its entirety, and find a way to undo its works. We have little time. Hyr! Help me!”

  “At once, mistress!”

  Hyr began to send vials and bottles flying her way. Alfonse went out, locking the door behind him.

  Aurelia assembled from memory the elements of the perfume in the crystal bowl. She still liked her formulation. If it had not such dire associations, she would be pleased with herself!

  Alfonse returned suddenly, holding a covered crockery jar at arm’s length. He handed it to Hyr, who made a terrible face. The contents made Aurelia’s eyes water.

  “It is pig,” Alfonse said. “Do not ask how I got it.”

  Aurelia smiled at him.

  “I won’t.”

  Moaning about the stench, Hyr added a yellow wisp of pig’s urine to the luscious mixture in the bowl. As soon as he did, Aurelia felt a strong sense of compulsion coming from it.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated. It was a strange thing, but she understood how every element went together. She felt her way through the sweet and sour. The bitter, dry notes of the myrrh should have made it feel sacred, but it was overpowered by the hot, fierce stench of the pig’s excretion. Her eyes stung. The sylph’s favorite musk was last, its heady, rich aroma tickled her nose, but she felt it go deeply into her mind.

  “Come back, mistress!” Hyr shouted. She felt a wind buffet her backward. She coughed, reassembling her wits. She sniffed. The sylph smiled at her. He gestured to the bowl. The wisps had vanished.

  “I have cleared the air, mistress.”

  “Thank you,” Aurelia said, sighing. “Magic is indeed a gift.”

  “Is there an answer?” Alfonse asked. “Can you counteract the poison?”

  “Indeed there is,” Aurelia said. Her thoughts had tiptoed among the scents and odors at her command, and come up with the right scent. “And it is so simple, as simple as a key slipping into a lock. This is a sin. It is only appropriate that trinity flowers should heal it. Hyr, let us begin.”

  The sylph flitted around the workroom lamp with joy.

  “Command me, mistress! This is fun!”

  * * *

  Alfonse delivered the box to the home of Madame du Charpentier. It was a gift from Parfumier Rupier, the enclosed note said, in honor of her upcoming marriage. The young guardian returned to the shop.

  “Are you certain that this will undo the evil?” he asked Aurelia. “Must I cast additional protections upon the premises?”

  “I think not yet,” she said. “Wait and see.”

  And they did. The very next day’s paper contained an interesting note in the gossip column.

  “The engagement between Mme. du Charpentier and M. Carnau had been called off, definitely and for good,” Alfonse read, relishing each word. “The gentleman has departed from Paris.”

  Aurelia could not help but be relieved.

  “Now the poor lady will never have to smell that stench again. She can enjoy the perfume in peace.”

  “What if M. Casanova learns that the gift was from us? He may seek revenge!”

  Aurelia showed him the small vial that hung around her neck on the same chain as her silver cross. Its value was greater than a month’s pay, but M. Rupier would undoubtedly forgive the debt—since he had left her without explanations of the many secrets hidden in the shop.

  “If he comes here, I shall give him a taste of his own medicine,” she said. “I will compel him to turn himself in to the Gendarmerie. That will teach him to pollute the element of Air.”

  A Flower Grows in Whitechapel

  Gail Sanders and Michael Z. Williamson

  Isabelle Helen Harton, Headmistress of the Harton School for Expatriate Children, was in her office when Karamjit knocked discreetly.

  He said, “There is a child at the entrance, Memsa’b. The guardians want to speak to you.”

  She knew by his tone and phrasing that these were not the usual nursemaids or concerned parents that normally came to the doors of her school.

  She closed her book, stood and said, “Thank you, Karamjit. I’ll be right there.” She rose from her chair and walked downstairs.

  When she opened the door to the chill, damp, February air, she gasped and stared. There was indeed a child, but the guardians holding her hands so carefully were Elementals.

  It wasn’t uncommon for waifs to be dropped off at police stations, orphanages, or churches.

  It was quite rare for one to be brought to the front door of the Harton School by Earth and Air Elementals. In fact, it had never happened before.

  Gathering up her astonishment and sitting on it hard, speaking with at least the appearance of aplomb, she politely asked, “May I help you?” Protocol must be adhered to when dealing with Elementals or unexpected things could happen.

  “She is pursued. She is in danger. She is alone.” The breathy syllables could barely be heard above the noises on the street. The sylph’s feet did not touch the ground and she did not leave a shadow, of course, but she gripped the hand of the little girl with desperation all too visible, despite the sylph’s transparency.

  “What pursues? What is the danger?” Isabelle’s astonishment was giving way quickly to alarm.

  “We know not. All we know is that it has consumed her parents, and reaches out for her. Will you take her into your charge? Knowing that there is danger?” This was remarkably formal for a normally flighty satyr. This was also alarming to Isabelle and she hesitated, knowing that the request was both a geas and a binding. Looking at the confused and frightened eyes of the small girl, she knew that she could not turn her away.

  “I will take her into my charge and protect her to the extent that I am able.”

  “It is well,” both Elementals said in unison, before disappearing, one sinking into the ground and one fading into the air.

  The girl collapsed onto the frosty front step, as if only the Elementals had been keeping her going.

  * * *

  The child appeared to be far too small for the neat little room. Her dark hair spread over the pillow as she restlessly shifted, but she did not awaken. She had a faint Chinese cast, but was clearly mostly European.

  What am I going to do with you, little one? Isabelle wondered as she kept watch from an overstuffed armchair. She had no idea what the guardianship of the Elementals could mean and the prospect of danger was not new, yet she was used to having at least some information from which direction that danger might come. She also knew that she couldn’t have left the little one to her fate. She sighed deeply and then reached up to caress the hand that had appeared on her shoulder.

  “Who do we have here?” Frederick Harton, Isabelle’s soft-footed husband, said in his quietly concerned voice.

  “I don’t know, but potentially a very great problem.” Isabelle gestured over to the clothing that was laid out on the other small bed in the room. Neatly laid out was a skirt with petticoats, as English as would fit in any middle to upper-class neighborhood, but next to them was a blue silk tunic of distinctly Asian design. The fabric was a bit worse for wear, with a couple of ragged tears.

  She ran her fingers over the rich fabric. “It’s a cheong sam. They’re Chinese, and this quality of material is only worn by higher-class diplomats or their families. I encountered a few Chinese merchants in India and they didn’t wear anything this fine. The Chinese are very structured,
with strict laws on what each level can wear. Why would a European girl child be wearing something that only a Chinese diplomat would be allowed to wear?”

  He offered a reassuring squeeze but no comment.

  She continued, “We won’t know anything until she awakens. She was also wearing a red silk pouch around her neck. I left that alone. Even in her sleep, she became very agitated when I touched it.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Mei-Hua,” she replied. “Which is also a puzzle. She’s clearly English, and her accent places her to Cheshire. Yet she offered a Chinese name in excellent Mandarin.”

  * * *

  “Headmistress?”

  If her office hadn’t been so quiet, Isabelle never would have heard the hesitant question.

  “Yes, Mei?” She tried to project reassurance. The little thing was so self-effacing that she almost blended into the walls, even after being here for a month. She had no problems with the other children per se; it was almost as if they didn’t know she existed. Everyone in the school was surprised when she spoke, as if by her speaking she had become real to them again.

  “Agansing said I was to talk to you, please? About the garden?” Mei-Hua bowed deferentially and kept her eyes low, avoiding eye contact with Isabelle.

  “What about the garden, child?” Isabelle had to work hard to keep a sigh out of her tone. To a woman used to cheeky Londoner children, this politeness seemed both extreme and worrisome. Combine it with Mei-Hua’s knack of remaining unnoticed, and it spoke of unseen damage from whatever she could not remember—either in what happened to Mei’s parents or how she came to the school.