Oddity Read online

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Trouble Breeds Trouble

  Chapter 2: Your Own Battles

  Chapter 3: Bread Pudding

  Chapter 4: A Powerful Medicine

  Chapter 5: First We Chew . . .

  Chapter 6: The Fate That Fell

  Chapter 7: Susanna Will Not Be Played With

  Chapter 8: Item Number W17

  Part II

  Chapter 9: Liar

  Chapter 10: They Always Look

  Chapter 11: Give a Little Run

  Chapter 12: Doctoring a Sock

  Chapter 13: Bits and Scraps

  Chapter 14: Under Every Flower

  Chapter 15: The Risks She Took

  Chapter 16: Never Liked Corsets

  Part III

  Chapter 17: Warmonger

  Chapter 18: No More Trees to Climb

  Chapter 19: Masterpiece of Cruelty

  Chapter 20: The Bullet or the Fangs

  Chapter 21: A Kind of Bravery

  Chapter 22: Grander Intentions

  Chapter 23: A Miracle or a Curse

  Chapter 24: The Daughter of Trouble

  Epilogue

  The Journal of Anomalous Objects

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Are you keeping mice in your bag again?” Constantine asked, turning in his saddle to peer at his daughter. “You couldn’t choose a filthier pet.”

  “I haven’t kept mice since I was a little girl,” Clover said, folding her haversack closed and pulling her hat down to hide her eyes. If her father knew what she did have in her bag, he would wish it were a whole litter of mice.

  “I can hear you fiddling with something back there. When you turn fourteen, I’ll be giving you your own medical bag, but not if you plan to keep buttered bread and rodents in it.”

  Clover held her tongue. In addition to remembering the portions that turned poison to medicine, never flinching from the horrors of pus or spilling organs, and keeping his tools clean and orderly, her father also wanted Clover herself to be tidy: useful and trouble free, like a porcelain spoon. She was too tired to argue anyway. For the past two days they’d been assisting a breech birth down on the Sawtooth Prairie, and fatigue had made Clover goose brained.

  She knew she looked ragged even though her dark curls were bound into tight braids. Being a doctor’s daughter was messy work, and Clover hated to have her hair yanked by deranged patients. She’d been tending to the sick in the foothills of the Centurion Mountains with her father for as long as she could remember. She helped him grind powders and hold patients down during surgery. She even stitched up the easy wounds herself, dipping the silk in brandy before making the tight, clean loops that kept a body together.

  Now Clover shifted in her saddle, close to giggling or cursing. Or both. She watched her father, the model of propriety. Constantine Elkin had high cheekbones and a black beard that tapered to a handsome ink brush point. In recent years, Clover had seen the gray hair creep into his temples. His clothes were threadbare, but even now, after twenty-six hours of keeping a mother and baby alive in a sod house, his vest was still buttoned up — he was always a gentleman. He even chewed pine needles so his patients wouldn’t smell the smoked trout he survived on.

  They started up the red-clay slopes toward home. The forest thickened, and a squirrel squawked at them from the branches above. To Clover, there was nothing sillier than an angry squirrel, a fat governor of its own tree. She giggled, which only made the squirrel bark louder. Its tail waved like a battle flag. Clover wiggled her nose and showed her own teeth as she barked back, “Chuff, chuff!”

  Clover’s stomach grumbled. She hadn’t had time to eat the raisin buns Widow Henshaw had made for her, and now they were as stale as oak galls. She pinched off a crust and cast it at the base of the tree, because even grumpy squirrels deserved something sweet now and then.

  Her father shot her a look. He was suspicious. What would he do if he discovered the secret in her haversack? Nothing upset him as much as an oddity.

  Clover noticed the bundle of gray fur swinging from her father’s saddlebag and was suddenly as hungry as she was tired.

  “Are you telling me that after two days of tending and a healthy baby against all odds, those settlers paid us with prairie rabbits?” Clover asked.

  “You would prefer to be paid with snails? They’re poor, kroshka,” Constantine answered. “The poorest.”

  Clover usually liked it when he called her kroshka — it meant little bread crumb — but those rabbits galled her.

  “Aren’t we poor? Everyone pays us with turnips or jugs of sour cider. There’s not even any fat on those rabbits. Look at your pants. I’ve mended them so many times the seat looks like a quilt.”

  Constantine sighed and shook his head.

  “This is why the ties on my bonnet frayed and I switched to men’s hats,” Clover continued.

  He looked back at her under a cocked eyebrow. “I thought you preferred dressing like a boy.” There was a tender smile half-hidden under his mustache.

  “I wear trousers so I can sit on a saddle properly, since I spend half my life on this horse. I wear men’s gloves because they were made to get dirty and don’t stretch or wear out.” Clover knew she was beginning to sound like an angry squirrel herself, but after the cramped vigil in the damp birthing room it felt good to holler. “I’m not about to blister my backside sitting sidesaddle just because the world was made for men!”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  It was just like her father to make her feel like she had chosen this life.

  “A Prague-trained surgeon could have real paying customers if only we lived a little closer to New Manchester,” she argued. “Or Brackenweed. Or any city. We could have fresh milk every day and new clothes. In New Manchester, we could buy turpentine instead of having to boil pine resin ourselves. That stuff never washes out! And you ask me why I don’t wear dresses.”

  Her father was silent, allowing her outburst but refusing to participate. If Clover had wanted a response, she shouldn’t have mentioned New Manchester. Nothing shut her father up as quickly as talk of the past. He had buried his history like a dead body.

  Clover had been a toddler when they left New Manchester and didn’t remember a thing about it. “Cities are swollen with woe,” Constantine was fond of saying. Because of his Russian accent it sounded like svollen vit voe. The true name of that woe was Miniver Elkin. Clover knew only three things about her dead mother: that she had been a collector of oddities; that she was involved with a society of scholars who studied the singular objects; and that she had died in a tragic accident that her father would not explain.

  Constantine’s broken heart was the reason Clover had never walked the busy streets of New Manchester, never visited her mother’s grave. Everyone said that Constantine Elkin was a generous doctor. But Clover knew how much he kept for himself. His high, learned forehead was a cabinet he had locked his secrets inside.

  Now Clover had her own secret, something thrilling. Keeping an eye on the back of her father’s head, she opened her haversack and reached in.

  She gasped as it stung her finger. Biting cold! She opened the bag a little wider to let the light in.

  It could have been an ordinary ice hook: an iron curve like an eagle’s talon with a simple wooden handle, gray and splitting. Clover thought it was lovely, its flank dimpled where the smith’s hammer had shaped it. If polished, it might even have fit among her father’s surgical tools.

  Just last week, while looking for mushrooms, she’d found the Ice Hook under the leaf mulch on the western side of the lake. It was the kind of tool used to carry blocks of ice in the fancy cities, where they could keep food cold for weeks in icehouses. Salamander Lake, where Clover lived, had smokeho
uses but no icehouse. No one she knew had any use for a tool like this, but then, this wasn’t just an ice hook.

  The minute she’d touched it, she’d known it was odd. The iron was ice-cold, even though the rocks around it had been warm from the afternoon sun. Clover hadn’t had time to really examine it or wonder at her luck, because her father had hollered for her to saddle up for the ride down to the prairie. Now, three days later, the tool was still thrillingly chilled.

  There was no denying it; the Ice Hook was an oddity, one of the fabled objects that her mother had collected and her father refused to discuss.

  What he didn’t know was that Clover had studied issues four, seven, and twenty-one of the Journal of Anomalous Objects, which their landlady, Widow Henshaw, kept hidden in her pantry under rags and bundles of lavender. While the old woman napped by the stove, Clover memorized the brittle pages.

  She lay awake most nights enchanted by the entries. In Spain, there was a Fishing Net that pulled trout from the water fully cooked, with herbs and butter. In the southern coastal town of Juniper, there existed a Button that whistled a cheery melody whenever it rained. Clover had memorized the entry:

  The Button has been proudly worn on the jacket of every mayor since the founding of the city. Juniper hosts a music festival in March, inviting composers to perform their variations on the Button melody. Should you attend, bring an umbrella and an appetite for the local delicacy, chowder pie . . .

  But no matter how much she committed to memory, Clover was fixated on the missing pieces. The journals in the pantry were out of date, their lists incomplete. She ached to know what other wonders were hidden in the world. It didn’t help that this strange disclaimer could be found on the first page of each issue:

  Be it known that portions of this periodical contain intentional errors and outright fabrications. For reasons of safety, the locations of specific oddities have been omitted. Due to incidents of poaching, some collections can no longer be publicly displayed. Please report poachers and criminal traffickers to your local sheriff.

  It was intended to frustrate thieves, but it frustrated Clover too, casting a dreamlike uncertainty over the entire subject. Every entry in the journal was as intriguing as it was unbelievable: a Mirror that led to another world, a talking Rooster that had risen to the rank of army colonel, an Umbrella that trapped lightning . . . Clover could never be sure which oddities were real, actually out there in the world, and which were decoys imagined by the Society of Anomalogists. Before she found the Ice Hook, Clover had worried that oddities were just another fantasy adults indulged in, like wishing wells, shooting stars, and Father Christmas.

  But now she knew better. Now she had touched the truth.

  She let her horse fall back a bit to give herself some privacy and pulled the Ice Hook out of her bag. She lifted it to the sunlight to see the white fuzz gathering on the steel near the handle, the moisture in the air turning to frost. It was as if winter itself had been forged into the tool. She touched it lightly with her tongue. It stuck fast, frozen instantly to the metal. She pulled it off with a whimper.

  A wonder, a marvel! Though she had no idea what to do with it, just holding the Ice Hook made Clover breathless. Her hand trembled, like the first time she’d used her father’s scalpel to remove a wart.

  Something as stubbornly strange as the Ice Hook didn’t belong hidden away in sleepy Salamander Lake. Clover knew it was the key to a wider world. Why shouldn’t she become a collector like her mother, or maybe even an adventurer like the famous Aaron Agate, searching the wilds for priceless items to write about in the journal? And because she was also her father’s daughter, Clover might discover medical uses for oddities. Now that she knew oddities were as real as the boots on her feet, she felt that anything was possible: a cure for the pox, for scarlet fever, for any of the pests that gnawed on human bones. Her father would have to smile on that.

  But knowing he could turn around at any moment, she hid the Ice Hook beneath the raisin buns, closed the bag, and promised herself not to look again until she was alone.

  They were close to home now. They turned onto a narrow trail near the cliffs that overlooked the lake. They pulled their horses to a stop, and together the two Elkins watched the boats on the water. The lake was a glistening emerald in the late-morning light. As always, Clover tried to make out the salamander shape in the edges of the water. But to her the lake looked more like the hand of a lady who had fainted.

  The village itself was just a squat row of cottages on the bank, pine needles gathering on the roofs like coonskin caps. It had been settled years ago by simple folk fleeing the Louisiana War. Whites, Italians, Blacks, and one grumpy Russian doctor, they all ate the same smoked trout, drank the same river water.

  Clover’s father sat very still as the horses twitched flies away. Finally, he said, “You have something in your bag.”

  He wasn’t angry yet, but he was close. Clover held her breath, watching the muscles of his jaw twitch. There was no escape: he knew.

  She pulled the Ice Hook out and held it toward her father. He wouldn’t touch it, though. In fact, he seemed afraid to look at it.

  “I suppose it is odd?”

  “It’s always cold,” Clover whispered. “Freezing cold. No matter what.”

  “I don’t care what it does!” His eyebrows knitted together. “You know how I feel about oddities.”

  He shifted in his saddle, as if he couldn’t bear to sit so close to the Ice Hook, and glared at Clover. “Put such interests behind you. They are corrupt. They are dangerous.”

  “Horses are dangerous before we tame them.” Clover had rehearsed this argument in her mind. Her voice trembled, but she kept speaking. “Every tool in your bag could be dangerous in the wrong hands. This Ice Hook is simply cold . . .”

  “Then why do you hide it like a crown of jewels? Trouble breeds trouble. You may think you’ve found something special, but there will always be another little secret to protect, and before you know it, you’ll be obsessed. You’ll sell everything for a button that whistles when it rains or something equally ridiculous. A person may think she is collecting oddities, but in fact the oddities are collecting her.”

  He brushed the front of his vest off and looked as if he might ride away. But after a moment he said, “It’s perverse, isn’t it? For it to be cold when nature wants it otherwise?”

  “It could make ice,” Clover suggested. “Ice can stop pain. You could use it to help —”

  “You see? It’s already worked its way into your mind,” he said. “Made itself indispensable.”

  Clover was alarmed to see tears welling in her father’s eyes.

  “There is always an excuse to keep them,” Constantine said. “But I have seen what they do, Clover. They took your mother from us.” He paused. “This is how she died.”

  Clover gripped the pommel of her saddle to stay steady. Maybe he would tell her now. “Did she have . . . many?” She faltered, seeing the pain in his face.

  “Shelves of them: a Quill that wrote in different languages, a Mirror that swallowed people whole, an Ember that burned and burned and refused to be extinguished! She thought they could be . . . useful.” He shook his head. “They devoured her.”

  Clover knew some of these treasures from the journals, and before she could think better of it she blurted, “The Mirror doesn’t swallow people. Brave explorers have entered —”

  “Never to return!”

  It was more than he’d ever admitted before. The Ember! The Quill! Clover had dreamed about their magic. Had Miniver really touched them, seen their astonishing effects with her own eyes? Had she looked into that Mirror, a door to a twin world? But there was one question Clover needed answered more than any other.

  “How?” Her voice wavered. She’d never been this close to knowing. “How did oddities kill Mother?”

  Constantine’s hat cast a shadow over his face, and Clover felt his silence returning.

  “Where, at least, is
she buried?” she pushed. “Haven’t I the right to know where my own mother rests?”

  Clover expected him to snap at her, but when he finally spoke, it was in a weary whisper. “This simple world is good enough for us. A pitcher that holds water. A needle that pulls thread. These are good enough. Do not become a collector of oddities, Clover Elkin.”

  Clover scratched the frost off the Ice Hook with her thumbnail. Just last year she would have cried at this disappointment, but she kept her eyes on the oddity. She’d learned to take deep breaths to keep the tears from welling up.

  “Promise me,” he said.

  Clover bit her cheek until it bled. “I promise,” she said.

  “What do you promise?”

  Now the tears came. “I promise not to collect oddities.”

  Clover made one last effort. “But this one. It’s unique — wondrous . . . !” Her words failed her.

  “How do you intend to get rid of it?”

  He was giving her no room to argue, no choice at all. She’d found, at last, something of her own, a door to her mother’s world, to answers, and her father was shutting it. Locking it. He had to control everything, even her dreams.

  She opened her mouth, but outrage choked her.

  Clover gripped the Ice Hook, its shameless chill stinging her palm. She raised it over her head like a weapon and threw it as hard as she could. It flashed briefly and dropped into the lake.

  “Are you satisfied?” she muttered through clenched teeth. “It’s gone forever! And I’ll never find another.”

  “I pray you don’t,” Constantine said gently.

  He reached out and patted her arm, but she pulled away and swallowed a sob. Her father waited as Clover composed herself. He was as patient as a statue — and just as heartless.

  A cloud blotted the sun, and the lake turned a deep olive.

  “You’ll be hungry, no doubt,” Constantine said, heeling his horse toward their cabin.

  Clover hesitated, watching the ripples where her treasure had disappeared, her hopes sinking with it. She wiped her eyes and followed her father.

  “We have earned a proper meal,” he said. “You can’t survive on raisin buns alone. Tomorrow we’ll ride out and see how that new baby is faring.” The horses picked up their pace, eager for their oats and bedding. “What will we give to fortify the mother’s blood?” he asked.