It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had changed his mind, had turned, and was on his way back? I stared at my wet face, dimly reflected in the shine of the black walls, and then stumbled back to the bed.
Perhaps the pain was over for good, miraculously, but I couldn’t think of any good reason for why that should be the case—however much I wished it were so. Unless he had died or been killed somehow, on the road, and the spell had died with him?
I shuddered at the thought, despite my fury with him. I couldn’t imagine a world without him, even if that meant freedom for me.
After a while, however, the heartsickness started up again, just as badly as before, so I supposed he must still be alive. I did not remember the pain coming in waves like this before I came to the city. Perhaps it was the effect of having been so long in the sorcerer’s presence that altered the experience of it?
Whatever the cause, it seemed to be waxing and waning rather than keeping a steady presence. I did not know how long it took, but eventually it eased again, and I was once again grateful for the relief. I knew it would not be for long. I seemed to sense the next wave of it already, gathering itself ominously behind my eyes and readying for attack. Cornelius jumped up onto my chest and kneaded it with his paws.
“Cornelius,” I said into the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“If this is what happens when I’m away from him,” I said, “I will never be able to go back home. If he discards me, I will die.”
“He will be back tomorrow,” said Cornelius reassuringly. “Probably,” he added, less reassuringly.
“But I have to leave tonight,” I said. “I have to go to the Snagged. To take them that heart.”
The idea of leaving the Housenowgave me the shivers. Perhaps the House was providing some comfort, some shelter from the full force of the spell, and walking out its door would make everything worse. After all, as Cornelius had said, the sorcerer and the House were one and the same, somehow. It was an extension of his magic.
Maybe being close to the House was a little like being close to the sorcerer himself and thus protecting me a little from the pain, making it wax and wane as it was doing. Once I was outside the walls, I would really be apart from him, without even his strange black substance to surround and succor me.
I would only know for sure once I left. But I had to try. What else was I going to do, lie here sweating and fever-dreaming until he got back, and then gratefully pop on my apron and resume business as usual? No. I struggled upright.
“I need a clock,” I said to the House in what I hoped was a commanding tone.
“What’s that?” asked Cornelius.
“It’s a device that tells you what time of day it is.” I realized that I had never seen a clock in all my days in the sorcerer’s House.
“What’s the point of that?” said Cornelius with animal logic.
“I want to know how long I have. The pain seems to come in waves. If I leave when it ebbs a little, I might have time to get to the address and back.”
The House provided with its usual secretive generosity. I turned my head and saw a small, ornate pocket watch on the bed beside me, a gentleman’s toy tricked out in black metal and diamonds, dense and complicated. It had a cunning clasp that opened with asnick,and inside were the familiar numbers, old friends arranged in the usual comforting circle, as if sitting around a table together in polite conversation.
They seemed as alien here as I was, here where time was ill-mannered and unruly, and refused to be fettered by numbers and flattened behind glass.
I gritted my teeth and stared at the diamond hands as they swung around, and when the pain tightened its grip on me again, I closed my eyes. After a long while, when the pain lessened, I opened them again.
It had been almost an hour of a dull ache that was unpleasant, but bearable. Now I had to wait and see whether the respite was consistent—whether I could trust it enough to risk leaving the House. I lay back and let the pain take me again.
I could feel the walls grumbling around me. The House, although it had reluctantly provided me with the pocket watch, didn’t like its presence. It forced the House to belong to the real world (a little), and follow real-world rules (a little), and the self-governing sorcerer magic resented it.
I found it comforting, however. It had a light, sure tick that sounded like the clip of hobnailed boots on tile and made me think of Da coming home after the day’s work. It soothed me as the heartsickness worried and snapped at me, when it took me in its jaws and sank in its black teeth.
Without the watch, I could not have guessed how much time had passed. When the next respite came, I saw it had been about an hour again. I lay still for another almost-hour, listening to thetick, tickof my new friend, and then the heartsickness took me once more.
I knew now, however, that there would be an end to it, and so when the black pain snatched me up again for its mad dance, I allowed myself to be tossed and twirled without resistance, waiting for my chance to leave the House.
I lay awake that night, staring at the pocket watch and waiting for it to get near enough to midnight, holding the piece of paper with the address on it crumpled in one hand.
The watch’s ferocious, regimental ticking fought against the viscous soup of the House time—or rather, the odd timelike substance, because what filled the House’s days like wine in a cup wasn’t really true time at all, just something like it, just as the mice Cornelius chased weren’t really mice, but just mouselike enough to pass muster with a bored cat.
Although the ticking was faint, it was valiant, and I trusted that it could hold its own.
When the time came near, and the pain stopped again, I heaved myself out of bed, feeling as if I was a hundred years old, and started looking about for my boots.
