Undermajordomo Minor by Dewitt Patrick

Author:Dewitt, Patrick [Dewitt, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Humour, Mystery, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780062281203
Amazon: 0062281208
Goodreads: 23879881
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2015-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

6

A village woman had taken ill and left her infant child with Klara for some days; she and Lucy set up to play house in a manner which was at first light of spirit, but which took on a certain seriousness, then an absolute seriousness. This is how it would be was Lucy’s thought, and it worried him because he had never been so satisfied before.

The child’s name was Anna, and she had purple eyes and was fat as a piglet. Her mood was typically jolly, her laughter quick to come and difficult to arrest, but on the third night something upset her so that she wouldn’t cease crying, and if she was enthusiastic in her laughter, then she was doubly so with her weeping. She sat in a quaking crimson heap in the center of Klara’s bed, fists trembling, gulping for air. They thought she was ill, or that a sliver had pierced her flesh, but she had no fever and there was nothing on her person like a blemish, and they were at a loss as to what they should do.

Klara was looking at the baby out of the side of her eye. A thought came to her, and she left the room; thus abandoned, Lucy made a sequence of grotesque faces at Anna. When this summoned no reaction, he made his sounds: the knock-on-wood sound, the horse-trotting sound, and finally, the bullfrog-on-a-lily-pad sound. But Anna only raged on, and Lucy gave it up. “I’ve made all my sounds,” he announced.

“Wait,” said Klara. She returned shielding a candle, and lay on her stomach before Anna. As Klara drew the candle laterally back and forth, Anna’s eye was drawn to the shivering slip of flame, and she followed Klara’s movements, and was distracted or charmed by them so that her upset was halved. Klara held the candle still and expelled a steady stream of air, not enough to extinguish the flame, but merely to bend it; it flickered raggedly, recalling the faraway sound of a canvas sail in the wind. Anna had ceased crying now. Klara blew harder, and the flame struggled to cling to the wick; she exhaled sharply and the flame was rent, which produced a click. As though it were the punch line to a famous stunt, Anna laughed wildly, as before, her mysterious misery vanishing with the candlelight. Klara smiled at her success, the smoke whorling upward. Lucy had watched all of it. He was astonished.

It was a feeling which stayed in his blood as he slept that night, and then into the morning, so that when he returned to the castle he knew that he was hopelessly mired in love. He brought Mr. Olderglough his breakfast and they shared their comfortable greetings. Peter was scratching in his cage in the corner; crossing over to him, Lucy was struck by a startling truth. He took up Mr. Olderglough’s hand mirror from the vanity and held this before the bird.

“What are you doing, boy?” Mr. Olderglough asked.

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