The Curious Case of Mary Ann Read online

  Death would forgive her sooner.

  Out of breath, hope and energy, she slowed, and then stopped, scanning the forest as her pink-striped morning uniform stuck to her sweating back and legs. The trees had given her the head start she’d needed to elude her pursuer. Now it seemed like all the terrors that had been streaming out behind her like hat ribbons had finally caught up. She sank onto a rock beside a sundial and wept.

  2

  “Don’t you think that’s a curious way to water the flowers?” asked a voice a few moments later. Mary Ann peered through her tears to see a tove standing there, one clawed hand holding a rain umbrella, the other tucked into the pocket of his pale green morning jacket. He regarded her with bright brown eyes in a face of somewhat patchy black-and-white fur.

  For a moment, this appearance distracted her from her troubles. Weren’t toves primarily known for their fine burrowing skills? How did he keep the jacket so clean? And was he actually speaking to her?

  The short horns on his head made him look very alert and attentive, which he was, since she still hadn’t answered his question. One small, rounded ear gave a twitch while he waited.

  “Very curious,” she admitted finally, drawing a clean handkerchief from her pocket and hastening to wipe her face. “Though I wasn’t watering. I was crying.”

  “Well, could you cry at some other location? You see, despite all my best efforts at flood remediation, my roof needs work just there. And while the tree canopy does help block —”

  She squinted at the creature. “You can see me?”

  “Certainly. A tove’s eyesight is excellent.” And in a tone suggesting he wanted to be helpful, he added, “Perhaps you’re thinking of moles.”

  She wasn’t thinking of moles; she was thinking of Mary Anns. It was very odd, everyone seeing her properly today, while any other day she could count on only the briefest interaction with Mr. Rabbit or the staff, and never the lot at once. She decided it must just be a low invisibility day. “Where am I?” She sniffed, dabbing her eyes.

  “You’re in the Tulgey Barrens, along the Wabe.”

  Ah. It had been so long since she spent much time in Turvy, she’d quite forgotten it. It was best never to dwell on places here, since the land was prone to shift and change when it grew bored with itself. It was better to put one’s efforts toward other, more tangible tasks.

  “And forgive me if I overstep, but why were you crying?” asked the tove. “Is it all the raths around here? They make a pitiful caterwaul, I know, but it’s nothing to take to heart. They’re not in any pain. Just a bit mome these days. Mating season, you know.”

  Mary Ann hadn’t heard any raths today, mome or otherwise. But the tove’s voice was so soft and sympathetic, and Mary Ann wasn’t used to consolation or pity. Suddenly she was overcome by visions of her wretched circumstance, of swinging axes and spinning heads and the death of a man she abstractly loved but did not know.

  She was awash with frustrated tears in no time.

  “Oh, now that won’t do,” said the tove. “Oh, really now, miss! Crying does so much property damage around here. In fact, there was a tear-related flooding incident in Neath earlier today. That wasn’t you, was it?” He searched her face for an answer. “No? … Well, you’ll just have to come in.”

  Not knowing where In was, she wiped her eyes and let the tove lead her to a small circular door just a few feet away, embedded in the ground beneath their feet. The tove flung open the door, then shimmied down a ladder into a warmly flickering pit. A second later, a clawed arm popped up and motioned her down, as if it were the invitation itself and not the logistics that had stalled her. “Come! Come, come.” It would be a tight squeeze, and the ladder was unlikely to hold her. But she wrapped her skirts around her legs and jumped into the hole.

  The drop was short and the home, surprisingly accommodating, so long as she remained seated. (Which she did.) She imagined the ceilings were quite high from a tove perspective, and the space was pleasantly tiled and wallpapered. There was a water stain on the dining room ceiling. The whole place was furnished with beautiful little sofas, tables and chairs, sporting a carved design that was so familiar, Mary Ann froze at the sight of it. “Rowan Carpenter’s work?”

  “Custom!” said the tove proudly. “Why, I’m one of the biggest collectors of his smaller work in all of Turvy! Extraordinary, isn’t it? Just look at those lines!” He stroked the wooden arm of a sofa. “How do you know of him?”

  “He’s my father,” she murmured, and then amended, “Was.”

  The tove chuckled. “Changed his mind, did he? Backed out of the job?”

  “I saw him murdered moments ago,” said Mary Ann.

  She should have, perhaps, eased into this topic a bit more.

  The tove let out a quick “ulp!” of the throat, pushing down any additional insensitive words that had a chance to erupt. He took this moment to do a quick pour from a decanter into a tiny crystal glass, then a quick sip from the cup. He repeated the move with a second cup, but offered that to Mary Ann, which she waved away. The tove paused, hand pressed to his mouth. Then he was ready. “Murdered …” He shook his head. His voice was all air. “Such a genius … A true artist … Start with the event and proceed backwards from there.”

  Unaccustomed to being the focus of conversation, Mary Ann described the scene as succinctly as possible. She explained how she couldn’t return to her employer without the mirror, she couldn’t return to Neath without risking her safety, and she couldn’t return to her father’s for fear the Hearts’ servant might still be in the area, searching for her.

  The Tove agreed it was a muddle. “And this Knave of Clubs. Does he often commit executions on behalf of Neath’s King and Queen?”

  Mary Ann said she hadn’t heard of it, but also had no idea of what the man was capable. She relayed how the fellow had become one of Queen Valentina’s servants when the House of Hearts troops bested the House of Clubs in a particularly deadly round of War some years ago. The Clubs had been the last royal family standing between Valentina and her total rule of the Neath territory, and those alive in the aftermath did well switching their allegiance to her swiftly. The Knave, Jacob Morningstar, was among them when the Clubs’ deck was cut, and he became a particular favorite of the court in due time.

  “Could your father have done anything to displease the Royal Family?”

  That, Mary Ann could not say. Whether formal execution or outright murder, the results looked much the same, she feared. Either way, any resolution would require her to bring charges against a highly-regarded servant of the Royal Family — and that was impossible for someone of her status. “I do not hold hope for justice,” she said finally. “But I would settle for answers.”

  “And answers you shall have,” said the tove. “Here, drink this.” He poured from another decanter and held out the cup.

  “Again, thank you, no. I’m really not —”

  “You’ll be safe here today … tonight … but my house will be safer if you are a bit, shall we say, more the appropriate size?”

  She smiled. So it was DwindleAde, the popular drink that helped with those awkward size adjustments. She accepted the cup, sipped, and found herself in the spacious sitting room, properly able to, in fact, sit.

  “I know someone who may be able to solve at least one of your problems,” the tove continued. “We’ll go there in the morning.”

  She nodded. And a sudden heavy sadness rolled over her again, accompanying this thought: “I suppose I shall also have to bury my father.” Being smaller only meant the weight of her troubles had come along proportionately.

  “We’ll take care of that, as well,” said the tove.

  “But what if Jacob Morningstar’s still there, waiting?” In another flash of memory, she pictured the cloaked figure in the workshop’s half-light, holding that axe. Her heart beat so hard it was pounding itself a march.

  “He can’t wait forever,” said the tove. “He’s still a valet. He
has regular duties at the castle, doesn’t he? He’ll have to be back by morning, surely.”

  While she appreciated his caring consolation, Mary Ann felt unconvinced.

  “I’ll help you with the burial tomorrow morning,” said the tove. “I would be honored to do whatever I could for such a fine artist.” He uncovered a dish and held it toward her. “Cheese?”

  “I’m not very hungry, thank you,” she said, while the tove helped himself to that and some wafers. “You’ve been very kind. And I realize I don’t even know your name.”

  “Douglas,” said the tove. “Douglas Divot. I was named that because I dug less than the others in my litter. Late bloomer, you know.” And he sliced off a bit more cheese.

  “Mary Ann Carpenter,” she said, feeling somewhat sorry she had no interesting factoid to share regarding her name. But Douglas didn’t seem to mind. He sat with her there for a long time, telling her tales of Tulgey Barrens, his life in the Wabe, and details on his favorite cheeses.

  Then he showed her to a guest room, furnished with more of her father’s work. It was a very pretty room, the wallpaper patterned in cheerful tove burrows. She realized she could hear a sound now through the ceiling. It seemed there were raths, after all. Calling … calling … To no reply.

  She closed her eyes, thinking it would be a million years before sleep would find her, after the day she’d had. Yet, it wasn’t long before she found her consciousness slipping away to the mournful outgrabe of the mome raths.

  3

  “Do you have the Burgeonboosh?” Douglas Divot asked.

  Morning had come, and the inevitable, unenviable tasks with it. Now, as they approached Rowan Carpenter’s property, so still and silent ahead, Mary Ann pulled a little cake from her apron pocket, and Douglas did the same from his jacket. She took one small bite of her portion, and he his, and in a flash, Mary Ann was back to normal size and Douglas, twice his usual.

  Their first stop was the shed, arming themselves with the most ferocious garden implements the little outbuilding had to offer. They checked the craftsman’s cottage first — no sign of Jacob Morningstar; that was some relief, at least — and then moved on to her father’s workshop. Mary Ann’s heart beat a Lobster Quadrille as she swung open the door to this latter building, bracing herself for the tragic scene before her. She’d pictured it in her mind a thousand times already and every time she’d hope it would not be as bad as she’d imagined.

  Of course, it was every bit as gorrible as one would expect, and then just that much more.

  For instance, her imagination had not accounted for the presence of the workshop’s tinier residents. Overnight, flies and ants had taken over, transforming her father’s toppled head into more of a vague head-shape, black and rippling with movement. Enough blood had pooled from the neck and body, partially drying around both, that it combined with the sawdust on the floor to create a startling russet and tan carpet. The neck, she noticed, revealed a perfectly smooth cut and she wondered at it now. How had this been possible? She’d seen the incident with her own eyes, of course — a single swing, impact, lop. Mary Ann had chopped enough wood in her lifetime to know that things simply didn’t work that way, not even in Turvy. The men had both been standing, so it wasn’t even as if gravity had been on Jacob Morningstar’s side. Physics in the land was, yes, always somewhat subject to whim. But she felt fairly certain that this was not the work of any ordinary axe.

  “Where would you like to bury him?” Douglas asked, his voice startling her out of these thoughts.

  “Under a Tumtum tree, I think,” Mary Ann heard herself say. That particular wood, with its swirls and burls and twists, had been one of her father’s favorites.

  Douglas nodded. “If you help me carry him, I’ll burrow out the grave,” he said.

  So they heaved the body first, struggling through the doorway and ultimately resting the remains in the grass along the desired locale. Mary Ann took a moment, grounded herself and went back in for the head.

  The flies and ants were none too pleased about the disruption, levying their complaints quite loudly as she did what must be done:

  “Hey, buzz off!” one said.

  “Where’s breakfast going?” asked another.

  “Aw, have a heart, lady! I’ve a family of thousands to feed,” an ant pleaded.

  Having cleaned the most wretched of household items in her eighteen years, Mary Ann had long ago lost her queasiness over muck and bodily fluids. But now, the texture of cold skin and the sandpaper stubble of her father’s jaw were pressing the boundaries of her revulsion. Each stood as a terrible reminder: “As of yesterday, I was not a thing.”

  As she shifted the head to open the door, Rowan Carpenter’s stained and matted hair — or what there was left of it, for it was never ample — fluttered so humanly in the breeze. It was one image too many. She ran back to the yard, reuniting head with body like a hot potato, and grateful to have the item out of her hands. Some people longed to get a head in the world; others, not so much.

  While Douglas made progress with the hole, Mary Ann put herself to work doing what she did best: cleaning. In Turvy, if you planned to do a job properly, you did it backwards. So she scrubbed up the blood, then fetched water from the well for scrubbing, then swept. In no time, the workshop was considerably improved, the only evidence of the deed being the reddish-brown floorboards where the blood had soaked in.

  The stains will likely be permanent, she thought. Rowan Carpenter will forever be a part of this building.

  She was turning from her work when she noticed the Queen’s present propped against a wall. It was a mirror, carved with intricate, twining hearts and roses. He had made it full-length, so Queen Valentina would be able to see every inch of her fabled elegance at once.

  The piece had been stained a ruby red so the grain of the wood shone through. Her father believed that one should always remember and honor the first artist of the piece, the tree itself. The Queen would adore it; there could be no alternative. But given its size and Mary Ann’s current situation, how to get it to Mr. Rabbit without Mary Ann risking herself?

  She would think of a way.

  In the meantime, she decided to make a headstone, and thought nothing more fitting than using a Tumtum panel her father had planned for a small tabletop. She pondered what she wanted it to say. Then she found a jar of stain and a brush. And with them, in her tidiest backwards printing, she wrote:

  ROWAN CARPENTER

  Contractor. Woodworker. Visionary. Dad.

  Never had so much good

  Been done with a bit of wood

  As when the man did and would

  Transform it.

  Now art alone must linger on

  As artist leaf’t us, fallen, gone

  This cold decay upon the lawn,

  We mourn it.

  Mary Ann reread it. She wasn’t much of a writer, she knew. She liked to read whenever she got the chance, but as for writing… housemaidery tended not to encourage one’s more creative side. She decided the plaque would have to do —though it occurred to her, there was one thing it still needed.

  She stepped outside to see if one tradition from her childhood was still intact, and she was not disappointed. Yes, there was the pile of oyster shells up against one side of the house. Rowan Carpenter would use them whole for mosaics and chimney breasts, and crushed for paving walks and drives. They were as much a part of the man in her mind as the wood ever was. And they were in seemingly-endless supply, for they were the product of a man with an abiding passion for seafood. The man who, during the dinners of her childhood, was outright competitive over the stuff, curbing her portions in order to enhance his own. Sometimes he made feeble, flushing excuses about it. And sometimes he simply slipped oysters from her plate, one by one, through sleight-of-hand.

  She had such mixed feelings about it, finding it both amusing, yet also something like a small, old scar that was still-tender from past treatment.

  She gathere
d up some shells in her apron and carried them back to the workshop. With glue, she was able to assemble a rather beautiful wreath.

  She was just putting the finishing touches on it when Douglas entered, a clump of grass stuck to one horn, his claws caked in grime and some of his own shed fur.

  “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’m ready now.” And gently, she set the wreath upon the plaque she’d made and they withdrew to the back garden.

  Toves did know their precision digging; the grave was a perfect rectangle, just the size of a carpenter in-complete. Mary Ann tried to keep her mind on the positives of that — her good fortune in making a kind friend who could spare her this difficult step — as they moved her father’s body, then the head, into the grave.

  “A shame to see the end of an amazing artist,” said Douglas, wiping his damp eyes on the forearm of his jacket. “It must be doubly hard for you, though.”

  Mary Ann murmured noncommittally and put her energies toward shoveling in the hole. There was a part of her that wondered if she didn’t grieve the experience and the situation more than she did Rowan Carpenter himself. The artist was a loss to the world. The father was a heat shimmer along the distant road of childhood.

  With the dirt in place, Mary Ann added the plaque, then set the wreath across the grave to finish drying, its mother of pearl glinting in the morning light.

  “Are you ready?” Douglas asked, resting a grimy clawed hand on her shoulder, a sweet consoling gesture. “Would you like to say some words?”

  To the wind, she released only the words that mattered. “I’ll find out why this happened.” And as the words took flight, an idea emerged:

  Answers may lie here.

  So they gave the place a rudimentary search. They started on the cottage and rummaged through the cabinets. They moved to the bedchamber and went through the drawers. Mary Ann peered under the bed and poked in the fireplace. But the sad fact of it was, they were no better informed about murderous motives than when they’d started.