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I understand the lantern.
The only clear spot is on the chair beside the table, an outline in theshape of a person. They must’ve peeled themselves from the chair and walked out, leaving their footprints in the tar on the floor.
“What happened here?”
“A small incident.” Casvian speaks with a studied, too-casual nonchalance, but his cheeks are pink.
I kick at the tar. It doesn’t budge. “Someone really messed up, didn’t they?”
He glares at me. “Your job isn’t to ask questions. It’s to clean. You have till the end of the day.”
“Do I get any supplies?”
Casvian points to a door at the end of the hall. “Everything you might need will be in there. Have at it.” He turns to go, a pleased smile on his lips, then pauses. “Don’t ask anyone for help. No one else sets foot in this room, hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” It’s easy to smile at him when I imagine him covered in tar, hopping out of this room. “Should I get you when I’m done?”
“I’ll be in the first ring. But don’t worry—I’ll be back before long. We’ll see how much you get done.”
As he leaves, I can’t help but think I should follow him. My mission is to find Pa, not to clean up tar, and Casvian knows where he is. But if I don’t find the way to Pa today, then how do I explain not having tried to clean this mess? It’s better to bide my time. To earn Casvian’s trust enough to avoid his suspicion and give myself a real chance to find Pa.
I take a tentative step deeper into the room. The tar gives a little under my weight, but my foot leaves no imprint. It’s as though the surface has hardened, but underneath is still malleable.
The door Casvian indicated opens into a well-stocked supply closet. There are tools galore: the usual, for sweeping, mopping, scraping, and polishing, and the unusual, things I’ve no idea what to do with. Besidea large sink is a shelf of blue-glass jars with labels that say things like DRYING POWDER, STICKING PASTE, EXTRA-SMALL WOOD SHAVINGS, RAPID DISSOLVER, VERY SHINY SEALER.
I grab a bucket, fill it with anything that looks promising, tie my hair up with the ribbon from the storage room, and get to it. With the most promising of the tools—a small flat shovel—I hack at the tar. The shovel bounces off when I hit the tar from above, but one good thwack at an angle and a dent appears in the tar. I hit the same spot again and again, until the dent is more of a cut that goes two inches deep. I wiggle the shovel’s flat edge into the cut and push down on the handle, using it like a lever to pry under the tar. The tar flexes, just barely. I get to my feet and stomp on the handle.
With a crack, a two-inch piece of tar flies free. What was that, fifteen minutes? At this rate, Pa will die of old age before I’m half done with the room.
I just have to try something else. Back in the closet, I go for the jar of dissolver,pausing only to don a pair of stiff leather gloves. I’ve no interest in discovering what dissolved skin looks like. I unscrew the jar at arm’s length, then pour a little dollop onto the tar.
The tar sizzles and smokes, belching a noxious-smelling plume into the air. I pull the front of my tunic over my mouth and nose as a slowly widening patch melts into a glossy liquid. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it dissolved, but I’ll take a liquid I can mop over a solid I can’t budge.
In the ten seconds that it takes for me to cross the hall, grab a mop from the closet, and return, the black mass has hardened.
I’ll have to be quicker.
I pour more of the dissolver onto the floor, mop at the ready. The moment the sizzling settles, I drive the mop into the liquid. Mostly the mop just smears the stuff around, but a good pint of it sticks to the mophairs. The first push is easy, the second pull is like dragging the mop through honey, but by the third push, the mop sticks fast to the floor.
I grip the handle tight and pull as hard as I can, but it doesn’t budge. I let go, and the mop stands upright, like a giant paintbrush paused in the act of coloring the room black.
It’s more interesting, but Casvian probably won’t see it as an improvement.
It’s all right. I’m only an hour into the day. I have time.
I throw a dozen more things at it. The hours pass, and nothing works. My heart thuds in my chest, and my vision gets blurry. I wipe my face with my sleeve, giving up on the Very Shiny Sealer.
A two-foot section of the tar is now as glossy and reflective as a mirror. A girl blinks up at me. A strange girl, with shoulder-length hair and a pretty face that’s been carved free of all its boldness. She looks like she’s going to cry.
I spring to my feet and bound out of the room. The air in the hallway is colder and fresher.
I breathe, pressing my palms into my eyelids. What would Pa do?
But it isn’t Pa that comes to me. A memory of Amma washes over me and a riptide of longing pulls me in deep.
“Let me have a look, love.” Amma takes a ruined doll from my hands. I’m seven years old; my nose is too big for my face and my hair’s one huge tangle. There’s a boy about my age staying at Amma’s, freckled, naughty, and stormtouched.
He likes taunting me, playing pranks on the pretty wooden doll Ma carved for me when I was born. The boy calls my doll weak and says he’ll make armor for her out of the dark clay that collects in the streets. He’s covered my doll in the sticky clay, thinking it’ll wash off, but something about the polished surface of the toy makes it bind together.
