Glass, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part One: Innocence
1 The Glass House
2 That Bess!
3 A Daich of Seeds
4 A Garden to Wait For
5 Charms of the Forest
6 An Owl Is Cursed
7 Pierced
8 Unnatural Spirits
9 The Dark Secrets of a Glass House
Part Two: The Wand
10 Voices in the Night
11 Chimes in the Mists
12 Hek-ish
13 A Stubborn Wand
14 To Be a Witch
15 Wanted!
Part Three: Greenwich
16 The Royal Observatory
17 The Soul of the Night
18 The Swan and the Hedgehog
19 A Sob in the Night
Part Four: The Silk
20 A Will, a Way, and a Wand
21 Winter Warbler
22 The Dog Star
23 A Letter to Greenwich
24 To Life!
25 A Wing and a Prayer
26 Vanities
27 The Confession of the Cuckoo
Part Five: The Making of a Witch
28 To Catch a Witch
29 A Soul Freed, Another Trapped
30 A Call to Action
31 Cold Fires
32 Separate Ways
33 Prison
34 Between Death and the Glass Slipper
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by Kathryn Lasky
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part One
Innocence
1
The Glass House
In a deep valley, tucked far away from any city, there was a house made of glass, stained glass. The glass cast pools of colored light that might have seemed as if a rainbow had crashed silently to Earth. Near the house a girl walked toward a garden where every flower was also made of glass. The garden on this sunny day danced with light of the shimmering colors of roses and peonies, daisies and poppies, tulips and dahlias, and dozens of others. The glass blossoms sparkled brighter than any flower that had ever bloomed. These were flowers that knew no season, for they were made of crystal and blossomed all year long. Unnatural, yes, but eternally beautiful. The garden, however, was completely barren of fragrance.
The girl walking toward the garden was called Bess. She wore her auburn hair in two long plaits, with strands of clover bells woven through. Clover bells were a delicate vine that even when wilted had a lovely appearance and only grew in this county. They carried a lovely scent, which made them unique in this garden. Nevertheless, she still sniffed the air, hoping that someday she would be surprised and discover a fragrance. But this was not to be. For the Wickham family were not perfume makers but glassmakers—renowned glassmakers. Although they lived in a remote part of the land, their renown was such that every duke and duchess, prince and princess, king and queen had exquisite pieces of their work, from chandeliers to glass bowls to extraordinary figurines of flowers and animals. For every royal wedding there was a bridal bouquet made from flowers—not grown, but blown in their furnaces. And thus was their slogan, Wickham’s Fine Crystal—not grown but blown.
When Bess reached her sixteenth birthday, she would be initiated into the mysterious craft of turning crystals, cristallos, into beautiful shapes. For it was not until she turned sixteen that she would receive her daich from her grandmother. Daich was a very old word for a sack or pouch of cristallos, the fine crystals of sand, soda ash, and limestone from which glass was made. On her sixteenth birthday, Bess would also be given her blowpipe. And when she made her first object, always a small round cup, there would be a celebration. But now she stopped still in the garden of glass. As she longed for fragrance, she whispered to herself . . . “Why? Why must I be a glassmaker just because I was born into this family? Why can’t I be a . . . a . . . gardener for real flowers, which smell lovely, and don’t break or shatter, but simply wilt, to bloom again in another season?”
She heard footsteps behind her, running. She turned. It was her sister Olivia. Olivia’s pale face was now flushed. “Has something terrible happened? What? Someone’s burned in the hot shop? An explosion?”
“No, no.” Olivia paused and seemed to arrange her face before speaking. She swallowed and waited several seconds. “I am so sorry to tell you this.”
Why was Olivia being so formal? “Tell me what?” asked Bess. Olivia had the strangest look in her eye.
“I am sorry, Bess, but . . . it’s bad news, especially for you.” She slid her eyes away. Olivia’s hiding something, Bess thought. She doesn’t want me to see it in her eyes. “Olivia, just tell me. Did something happen to Mamma? Papa?” She glanced back at the glass house. Bess followed her eyes. The four chimneys emitted no smoke.
“No, it’s Grannie . . .”
“Grannie? What?” She looked at the chimneys again. Had the ovens been shut down? There was no smoke issuing into the sky.
“She . . . she died in her sleep.”
Bess caught her breath. This could not be. Her beloved grannie was dead. But that explained the smokeless chimneys. Such was the custom, an ancient one, that when a member of a glassblower’s family died, the ovens were shut down for a period of mourning.
Bess studied her sister’s face. There was something very odd about her expression, but Olivia’s eyes wouldn’t meet hers. Although the sky had suddenly turned cloudy, Olivia still wore the dark round spectacles that hung from a ribbon around her neck. The Wickhams wore these on sunny days when reflections from the glass were too powerful for their pale eyes, though the reflections had never bothered Bess.
“Too bad, Bess.” Olivia sighed and tucked her lips into a flat seam, as if to conceal a smirk that threatened to escape.
“Of course it’s too bad, Olivia.” Tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. “It’s awful!” she gasped.
“Oh, I mean too bad for you. You won’t get your daich.”
“What?”
“Daich of cristallos, like Grannie gave us on our sixteenth birthdays.” Then she sighed. “If she had only lived another two years.”
Bess’s voice cracked. “Olivia, you think I’m worried about that? Not getting my cristallos because Grannie died? That is the last thing on my mind.” Bess broke into a run, dodging the many sharp petals and vines of the glass flowers—the un-pickable flowers.
Followed slowly by Olivia, Bess entered their grandmother’s bedroom. Everyone except Bess was wearing the dark round spectacles, for the sun’s rays were splintering fiercely through the glass house. Lavinia Wickham turned toward her three daughters. “Now, dear children, it is time for the last kiss for your beloved grannie.”
The three girls stepped up to the body of their grandmother in order of birth. First was Rose, who adjusted her glasses and bent over and brushed her lips to her grandmother’s forehead. “Cold,” she whispered to her sister Olivia. Olivia was next to step up. She bent over her grannie’s head to kiss her but said nothing. Bess noticed she did not even let her lips touch the old woman’s forehead.
“Oh dear,” her mother said as Bess was about to step forward. “I forgot to close the body’s eyes.” The body? How had Grannie suddenly become just “the body”? Bess wondered. How had Grannie become this nameless being? The anonymity was insulting. “Will you do it, Bess, dear? Close the eyes.” Bess nodded.
Her grannie had green eyes. When Bess bent over, the eyes seemed to look straight into hers. It was as if she could read them, the thoughts in Grannie’s head. How could this be? But the words were clear. Your time will come.
“Hurry up,” she heard Olivia mutter.
Bess closed the paper-thin eyelids over the sea-green eyes. When her lips grazed her grandmother’s forehead it felt warm, and not cold at all. Her father’s hand gripped her shoulder. “Come along, Bess. It doesn’t pay to linger over the dead.”
The dead? It felt like a slap in her face. How had their grannie become simply “the dead”?
2
That Bess!
Bess had not been in bed long that evening when she heard a soft knock on her door.
“It’s Mamma, dear.”
“Come in, Mamma.” She was holding something in her hands, but Bess couldn’t see what it was. The moon was full and so glaring that it cast a brilliant green shadow that sliced diagonally across her mother’s face. The other half of her face was a brilliant orange. “My goodness, that moon falls brightly through the stained glass. I think I need my specs.” She raised the spectacles that dangled from a ribbon around her neck.
How very odd she looks, Bess thought, with the diamond-shaped patches of color scattered on her face and dress. All she needed was a hat with bells and she would have looked like a court jester. And then there were the two round discs of her spectacles, shading her eyes from the dizzying array of colors that fell through the colored panes of glass.
“I don’t know how you do it without spectacles, dear.”
“I don’t always want to see the world through tinted glass. I love the light too much.”
“You are a strange one, Bessie.”
Bess then realized that it was a small package that her mother was carrying.
“What have you got there, Mamma?”
“Just a little something. I’ll show you in a minute.” She then sighed deeply. “I know, Bessie dear, that you must be fearfully disappointed that Grannie did not live long enough to give you your cristallos.”
She thinks I’m mourning that. Dare she say what she was really thinking?
She took a deep breath. “Mamma, may I be perfectly honest with you?”
“Of course, dear child.”
“The truth is, Mamma, I am not disappointed at all. I don’t care about the daich of cristallos. I . . . I don’t think I’d even make a very good glassblower.” A shocked expression fled across her mother’s face.
“Nonsense, Bess. Absolute nonsense. It’s in our blood.” Her mother’s face turned pale, despite the colorful patches playing across it from the stained glass.
“But, Mamma, it might not be in mine.”
Lavinia appeared even more shocked by this statement. She inhaled deeply and then spoke. Her chin was set firmly. “You shall get your daich on your sixteenth birthday. I shall give it to you. And you shall still become a fine glassmaker.”
“It’s not the same if you give it to me.” Bess knew she shouldn’t contradict her mother, but she could not help herself. Her mother’s brow creased as if she was perplexed by Bess’s words.
“What are you talking about? It’s not the same? Just because I give this to you, rather than Grannie? Perhaps it’s not exactly the same, but that doesn’t matter. It’s your destiny.” She paused. “Your destiny!” She said the two words with force.
But what if my destiny doesn’t fit? Bess thought. Doesn’t fit me, like a dress that is too big or too small? And who gets to decide what my destiny is? Why not me? But Bess said nothing.
Lavinia Wickham shook her head gravely. “Don’t deny your destiny.” Bess shivered. There was almost something threatening in her mother’s voice. Lavinia Wickham’s face was pale, and now, with the light of a full moon pouring through a rose-colored pane, it turned a fierce red. Yes, there was an intense red color in the Wickham family’s palette of glass. By adding certain minerals and compounds of salts and chemicals, they could make a particularly unique, fiery-red pigment with which to stain glass—blood fire, they called it.
“You will make a good glassblower—daich or no daich. The cristallos are still here. You will, in time, learn how to use the blowpipe, add color, create shapes. You are part of this family. You will learn!” There was a defiance in her mother’s voice that Bess had never heard before.
But do I want to learn? Bess glanced at the package her mother was holding.
“What did you bring me?”
Her mother gently began to untie the strings that bound the soft cotton wadding.
“You see that?”
“Yes, a glass bunny.”
“Remember the bunny you found in the garden?”
Bess shivered. “I was so excited when I first saw it! But then I realized it had been stabbed, hurt by one of those sharp petals of the Blood Thorn lilies in our glass garden . . .” She trailed off.
“Yes, and it bled to death,” said her mother flatly. “The flower didn’t commit murder, darling girl. We fixed up the creature a bit, and Olivia posed it beautifully. Rose drew an excellent lifelike picture of it. Then Father, with his wonderful techniques with the blowpipe, shaped it into a perfect glass replica. What do you think?”
“It’s nice—I mean, lovely.” She was trying not to be so contradictory, but inside, Bess was rebelling most fiercely. But it’s dead, Mamma, she thought. Dead as those glass flowers.
“‘Nice’? Is that all you can say? Well, young lady . . .” Bess hated it when her mother called her young lady. There was something so humiliating, so mocking, as if Bess was trying to be something she wasn’t. “It’s more than nice. It’s a limited edition and has already almost sold out. It has fetched the highest price of any of our animals.”
“Are you suggesting that I go on a hunt for dead animals? Because if you are, I’m not.”
“Of course not. Creatures are attracted to you. Wounded ones you have brought home and patched up. They are as good as new. “
“So you want me to bring you wounded animals?” Bess could barely contain her shock.
“No, not necessarily wounded ones. But if you could just bring home some of those adorable creatures who seem to flock to you . . .” There was a little squidgy feeling in Bess’s gut, as if perhaps the jam on the toast she had eaten that morning had gone moldy. She swallowed uncomfortably as her mother continued to look off into the distance and talk into the darkness of the night.
“Rose, you know, is very good at making sketches. So Olivia assisted her and rearranged its body. That’s what she did with the dead bunny.” Another nauseating feeling twisted in Bess’s stomach as her mother continued, saying, “. . . propped it up into a hopping position.”
“Mamma!” Bess gasped.
“It was dead, darling. Dead. D-E-A-D. It didn’t feel a thing.” Her voice was so soft, as if she were trying to cuddle the words. “And if Rose makes enough sketches, Father and Olivia can make excellent molds. They just need a drawing or a rendering of the creature doing what it does best. In flight if a bird, hopping if a rabbit, leaping if a deer. This is how you can contribute to the glassworks. But I promise you, Rose is so good she can catch their every movement from life. In vivo studies, they call it. And all you need to do is bring the live ones to us, where Rose can study them and sketch them.”
“But where?
“Well, right here. You see, Father is thinking of building a little pen where we can keep them for just a short time while Rose sketches. And Father himself is developing some new techniques for shaping the glass that he thinks will be perfect for capturing their motion. For example, the blur of a hummingbird’s wings while hovering.”
“But, Mamma, hummingbirds only hover when they are gathering nectar from flowers—real flowers, not glass ones.”
“We could bring one of the glass ones into the pen and dip it in honey.”
“And have another dead creature on our hands? No thank you, Mamma.”
“Now, don’t be insolent.”
Bess’s face twisted into the most insolent face ever.
“Really, Bess!”
Bess was quiet for several seconds. “What would you say if I planted a garden in that pen? A real garden, with real flowers, and maybe carrots and plants that the animals could eat. They would be drawn to this garden.”
“Hmmm . . .” Her mother looked doubtful as she considered the idea.
“Mamma, you know, I might make a better gardener than a glassblower.”
“Nonsense, darling girl. You’ll make a fine glassblower.” She sighed. “But I’ll discuss this with your father.” She carefully wrapped up the bunny in the cotton swaddling, then bent over her daughter and gave her a good-night kiss. As she left the room, her back seemed to stiffen, and it was as if Bess could read her mind. She’s always been a difficult child. Loving but difficult. That’s Bess!
But Bess didn’t care. She was so excited at the prospect of planting a garden, growing a garden with the scent of real flowers and rows upon rows of tomatoes, bunches of ruffled lettuce, and bright orange carrots. She could hardly sleep, and when she did, it was the fragrance of orange blossoms mixed with jasmine that threaded through her dreams, with colors more radiant than the palette of any glassmaker on Earth.
Later that night, Bess woke up. The entire house was very chilly since the fires had been shut down for the mourning period. The moon had slipped away to another land, and it seemed that most of the stars had followed. It was that edge of the night between the blackest of black and the first gray of dawn. She thought she heard the creak of floorboards. Was her family still up? She got out of bed and tiptoed down the ruby glass hall. She heard low voices coming from the library that held the glassmakers’ books. These were books of formulas, of solutions and chemicals for staining, recipes for silica and sand and other mixtures that were essential for glassmaking.
“And you looked under Bess’s bed . . . ?” Rose asked.
Bess could not hear the rest. What were they looking for under her bed? Why? What?
“Of course. That was the first place I looked,” her mother said. “Right after Grannie died, before Olivia went out to tell Bess.”
“When was the last time you saw it?” her father asked.
“Oh dear, I can’t remember when. Maybe our wedding day.”
“Wedding day? That was almost twenty years ago!” her father exploded.
“Hush, keep your voice down. I don’t want Bess to hear about any of this. And besides, Bess had a good idea today. Growing a garden to attract animals.”
