I realized at once that I’d made a mistake. I’d only attempted anything like this with Clementine, and the experience had led me to believe that qualities particular to her were universal. Clementine’s mind was airy and spacious, almost spare. Even when her mind dwelled on the realm of the dead, it was tranquil and light-filled. Draken’s mind was the opposite. A dank, dark, murky space, filled with buzzing at the edges: a warren with no exits, and whispering voices came from everywhere, their words full of breathless want. I would get nowhere in this place, in the putrid labyrinth of Draken’s thoughts.
Urgently, I tried to pull away. But Draken had sensed me there, and now he eagerly held me close. I began to lose sight of the lawn around me, as if I were deep in a summoning, but the realm was not the spirit world: it was Draken’s twisted mind. He was strong. Much stronger than me. His embrace was asphyxiating and total.
But I wasn’t alone. I felt Clementine’s strength adding to mine, pulling me out of Draken’s putrid mind just as I had pulled her from the earth. With all her clear-eyed certainty she pulled, and suddenly my vision cleared.
I gasped for air, surfacing with as much relief as she had. The lawn reappeared around me. Now I saw that in the time I’d wasted, Draken’s creature had arrived. It had burst from the lily pond, diving upward into the air as if emerging from the depths of the sea. The skin of its torso and face was a greenish white, and the matted beard and hair were dark as seaweed. Below the waist, it was an emerald serpent, the thick coils propelling it out of the pond and across the stones with shocking speed. It was a veritable Neptune, and though it carried no trident, it didn’t need one. The muscular tail was weapon enough.
The Drago surged across the lawn toward us, and I had no more time to lose. How had I effected my disguise in the Lyceum? How had I altered the people’s perceptions, bending their minds to see what I wanted them to see? The transformation had occurred by casting my thought of Samantha upon the people around me. So. All I had to do was cast my thoughts upon Draken. Would that be enough?
I looked across the lawn to where Draken stood, feet planted firmly apart, eyes gleaming with vicious anticipation. In fact, I considered, letting the thought unspool, feeling Clem’s conviction joined to mine, he required no transformation; he was truly a serpent already. Cold and deadly, devouring lives whole. Draken, the Embalmer, was the genuine Drago, the creature of insatiable appetite that could annihilate entire populations. And he’d been preying upon us for years. It was the human exterior that hid his true nature: the serpent within. Just as I had shed my disguise to show my true self, I would now show his.
The Drago that had sprung from the pond reached us, smelling of ocean and decay, and it circled us once before wrapping its coils around Clementine. Its movements were precise. As the creature wrapped itself around her, it pushed me aside. It held Clem loosely in its serpent’s tail and brought its face close to hers. Then, slowly and experimentally, still watching her face, it began to squeeze. Clementine was pulled away from me by the coils, and I felt her hand leaving mine without resistance.
It seemed to me that the whole of the Cisneros Society was pressing its weight upon us, crushing slowly, enjoying the extinction of each breath. I closed my eyes for a moment. I drew upon the strength that Clem had promised me, the strength of what had brought us out of the spirit realm: I had carried her and she had carried me. This was where the power of enchantment resided: inthe joining of wills. Not in the power of a steel vestment laden with bones. Draken was merely a conjurer.
So let him conjure.
A scream came from across the lawn, and I opened my eyes. It came from Principa. Draken lay on the ground. “He cannot stop,” Principa screamed. “He cannot stop.” The other enchanters stood frozen, staring at Draken uncomprehendingly.
With steady steps, I closed the short distance between us until I was standing over Draken. He was, in ghoulish imitation of his monster, transforming into a serpent. It had begun with his feet, and now I could see the scales overtaking his legs. He didn’t writhe or otherwise fight himself. No, the battle was in his mind. He was using the Cisneros Steel, and he could not stop himself. His eyes were wide with ferocious concentration, with the effort of resisting his own enchantment. His chest rose and fell in rapid breaths. He was, ineluctably, at my suggestion, transforming himself. “Do you cede?” I asked.
Clementine had disappeared into the folds of the serpent. I couldn’t even see her. But I was still attached to her by the rope, and I could feel her within: a pillar of strength, sending me the force of her will.
I looked back down at Draken. Now it took little effort; between us, Clementine and I had merely brought to the surface what was already there. The scales had overtaken his chest, and they began climbing up his neck. “Do you cede?” I asked again.
His face had turned a horrid, mottled red, and his eyes were glassy. I heard, distantly, the incongruous sound of carriage wheels clattering—too fast, much too fast—across the dirt roads that led to the Manse. Now the scales overtook his jaw and began to close his mouth. He would not cede. The scales had sealed his lips, and now they shuttered his face, stealing quickly over his eyesand enveloping his head. Draken lay before me, a massive brown serpent, with flecks of yellow along his motionless underbelly. His cold eyes stared.
The clattering coaches were accompanied by shouts, and I looked over my shoulder to see Wister, Roy, and a dozen others alighting from the carriages, running toward us across the lawn. The Drago, shorn of its connection to Karl Draken, had loosened its coils, and now with the arrival of the Sor Juana Alliance it hurtled back toward the pond, diving into the water lilies and disappearing into the depths. Clementine stood where I’d left her, eyes still closed. Now she opened them. She didn’t have to look around her to know what we had accomplished. She smiled at me across the lawn.
Sam: Livia
Encontrar: With this word you cannot find a thing that does not exist, and you cannot find a thing that is abstract, without substance. But if your search is for a physical thing,encontrarwill find it.
—Euphemia Parra,Encantos de palabra(translation mine)
Saturday, September 29, 1888
With Draken defeated and the portal destroyed, the Cisneros Society members had nothing to fight for at the Manse. They abandoned it to the Sor Juana Alliance, leaving only the bloated serpent and the Trenches behind. Simeon Trench was lying shirtless on the grass, still struggling with the pain of the burns. (Norbert, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t a skilled medic.) Roy looked at the sad remains of the duel with a mixture of disgust and pity. “I’ll take the serpent in as evidence,” he said. “Let the Office of Criminal Enchantment manage the consequences.”
“Is Keel House safe?” I asked Wister anxiously.
“It is. They knew nothing about the portal, only that it was a Sor Juana refuge, so their approach was less ferocious than it might have been. We’ll have some repairs.” She smiled. “Nothing insurmountable. I’m terribly sorry we weren’t here as planned, but I see you’ve managed without us.”
“We have.” Clem glanced at me. “And if we aren’t needed here,” she added, “Sam and I must go to Commonwealth with some urgency. There is a final Cisneros Society member there…”
“Go,” Roy said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Go, but carefully through Salem; there is considerable damage.”
“Will you come to Keel House tomorrow?” Wister asked. “We have much to discuss.”
Clem nodded. “Until tomorrow.”
The drive to Commonwealth was calm. The rampaging creatures that Draken had unleashed upon Salem had left a silence in their wake. As we rolled through the city, we saw the trail left by the En Micó: a dozen buildings on Essex Street and many more trees turned to solid salt. Not far from the Lyceum lay the remains of the creature, now a lumpish white pile that had been doused into inertia by the fire brigade. All ordinary activities had come to a halt, and now that the creatures had been contained, there was an air of relief—even tentative celebration—in the air. Children were skating along the block of Essex Street that had been turned to salt; clusters of people stood here and there, trading stories of sightings and narrow escapes.
Our animated carriage, drawing almost no attention after the day’s other spectacles, glided smoothly along Bridge Street and continued into Beverly, curving around the seashore where the waves sparkled in the afternoon sun, unperturbed by the events that had shaken Salem. I watched the gulls tussling with clams, remembering briefly the Carpia that had attacked us with their razor-sharp beaks. Already they seemed like a thing I’d imagined.
Clementine had been almost silent on our journey, and she grew uncharacteristically agitated as we neared Commonwealth. She urged the little carriage onward; it hurried obediently past the great mansions, under the shade of elms and copper beeches, doing all it could to carry us swiftly to our destination. Finally we reached the black iron fence that bordered the campus, and Iglanced through the bars at the idyll of greenery and stone, the place where both Clem and I had sought, and failed, to learn enchantment. The faint resentment I still felt was, I found, softened by the surprising realization that Clem and I had triumphed against the very men who had spurned us from this institution. I remembered Clem’s words to Rosetta, when she’d returned after a week at Commonwealth and declared how little the place had to teach her. She was right.
The carriage came to a stop outside the crooked house that lodged Throckmorton’s office. Clementine fairly leaped from the driver’s seat, hurrying now along the path toward the building, and I scurried along beside her. “The tokens,” she said to me, as we neared the building. I handed her the tokens I’d been holding and she dropped them into her pocket. They did nothing for her overall dishevelment, but they did add the requisite whiskers and stature. She was still quite encrusted with dirt, and her clothing was noticeably rumpled from her encounter with the Drago. I doubted Throckmorton would notice.
