Page 58 of Our Crooked Hearts
“I’m both.” I frowned. “Why do you know that?”
“I told you, I’m a matchmaker. The forgetting box is from Poland. Like you.” He smirked. “What did you think, I’d sell a Polish-Irish girl a juju? A vial of Kvasir’s blood? No. You children like to swim around in other people’s waters, but you’ll never go that deep. And there are things in the water that’ll get you if you do. Blood, that’s thicker. Stick with the magic that’s in your blood.”
I could feel his words sinking into me, where I didn’t want them to go. I thought about the three of us working our shallow way through the grimoire of a dead occultist, a woman I preferred not to think about at all. As if every spell was a fresh-forged thing, devoid of fingerprints or history.
Lazar watched me, smiling faintly. “When it’s hard to hear, that’s how you know. Anyway. The box. There’s a Polish folk story, goes by a few names. ‘Agnes and the Lonely Prince,’ ‘The Little Hut in the Woods.’ A girl falls in love with a prince, but a jealous fairy steals his memories and hides them in a golden box. The girl goes through many trials to find and unlock it, so her love will remember her.”
“Uh-huh. And you’re saying this is the box from that fairy tale?”
He inclined his head.
I could almost believe it. The thing would’ve looked at homein the chapped hands of some winter queen, faraway, long ago. Or maybe he was just jiggering up the price. “Why would I even want this?”
Lazar pursed his lips in that irritating French way. “I’m supposed to know?”
I asked the question I’d been putting off. “How much?”
Lazar snorted. “How much is it worth? More than you’ve got. How much will I take for it? That’s another question.”
I pulled out my wad of cash. “This is what I’ve got. This isallI’ve got. I don’t even know if I want that thing.”
“It’s yours either way. You think I’m happy something worth this much belongs to a little girl who doesn’t even clean her hair? No. I wish it was a rich man’s treasure. Oh, well.” He picked ten twenties off my pile. Considered the two that remained, and took one more. “A girl shouldn’t walk around with empty pockets. It’s still not enough, but how’s this for a deal: if you tell the beauty to bring me a few more bottles of that stomach settler, we’ll call it even.”
“Just, she’s got a name,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Call her Felicita, alright? And I don’t know what you’re talking about withstomach settler.”
“She’s an herbalist, your friend. A good one. My wife is receiving chemotherapy, and nothing else works so well for the nausea. I take your money now, and Felicita brings me five big bottles of stomach settler. Do we have a deal?”
Still I hesitated, trying to imagine why I’d need the box. How would it feel to carry it around like a self-fulfilling prophecy, an empty place where stolen memories would one day reside? But whose—my father’s? My own? Someone’s I hadn’t even met yet?
It didn’t matter. Whether it was power of suggestion or true enchantment or my dad’s Polish blood in my veins, I wanted it. It was meant to be mine. And right then it was comforting to be told I had a future coming at all.
“Okay,” I told Mr. Lazar. “If telling me how it works is part of the asking price, then yes. We’ve got a deal.”
I caught Fee up on my visit with Lazar. When I showed her the box she said, “Huh.”
“What do you mean,huh?”
Delicately she placed a palm over its top. Bottom, whatever. It didn’t matter, I knew how to open it when the time came. “I’m wondering if he’s right about like calling to like. I look at this and I don’t feel anything. It’s pretty, but I wouldn’t necessarily know it was even magic. What does it feel like to you?”
I took it back, sandwiched it between my hands. The metal was the same temperature as my skin, its grain so softly burnished it felt like fur. “It makes me hungry,” I said. “I hope I never have to use it. The idea creeps me out, honestly. But I couldn’tnottake it. It makes me hungry just to hold.”
“That’s sort of how I feel in a garden,” she said. Then, abruptly, “My mom’s grandmother was a yerbera. My dad just told me. And I’ve been thinking. When all this Marion stuff is done, I want to be better. I want to use magic to help, you know? No more selfish shit. There’s this practitioner in Pilsen, I know she’d take me on as her apprentice if I asked. When I’m done with school, or maybe before, even. Lazar is right, I think. About working stronger if you work with what’s in your blood.”
“Wow. That’s so cool. That’s… you’ll be amazing.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “It’s just, I’ll miss you. I’ll miss working with you.”
Under any other circumstance she would’ve reminded me we were sisters. Now she sighed. “Let’s just get through tomorrow, okay? Let’s get that over with.”
“You think it’ll be over after tomorrow?”
“Not really,” she said. “You?”
I held the golden box to my chest. There was a slight vibration to it, like a purring cat turned down to its lowest setting. It made me feel braver about the shadows gathering in the upper corners of Fee’s room, that would turn into breezes and whispers as soon as we turned off the lights.
“Personally, I think we’re fucked.”
