CHAPTER 4
First you will hate me for this.
Then you will love me for it.
Marinda did not and would not hate her father, but his prediction certainly disturbed her. She was at a loss, confused, and dismayed at what had happened to her. All was definitely not for the best. The shock inside her was slowly suffused with anger and a sense of injustice.
Life in Lugtown was carefully balanced, perfectly ordered. Everything in its place and every place with its thing. Marinda had always done what she should, not what she wanted. But now, thanks to a piece of paper, Marinda had to leave her home and go on a silly mission for no real purpose that she could see.
Should she just ignore the whole fool’s quest? She was strong, competent, intelligent, hard working—given time, she could easily find a profession and make an adequate living for herself, even without her inheritance. But her entire life up until this point had been focused on her father. She would be starting entirely from scratch, and with no money. The modest stipend Benjulian Frull was allowed to grant her would cover few expenses. Even with her best intentions and determination, she could not create an entirely new existence for herself in five days.
How was she supposed to plan for that? Where should she go? She had the empty book—the foolish “magic” book, but an alchemical collection of self-written lives seemed too far-fetched to be real. Why did her father believe this would benefit her? How? What were you thinking?
She looked at the large book, the thimbleful of blood—her father’s blood. The best place to start, she thought, would be with his story…if the alchemically treated pages worked at all. Since the papers were all blank, obviously her father hadn’t tested the tome.
She knew exactly where she wanted to be when she tried this for the first time. Arlen Peake’s gravestone was carved from a square block of polished burlwood, cut to perfect conformity with all the other burlwood headstones in the Lugtown cemetery, which stood on a hill above the agate quarry.
She took the book and the blood sample, and made her way to the well-organized cemetery. Trees surrounded the graveyard, some of them bent over with the affliction of burls, while others stood straight. All the wooden headstones were laid out in a perfect grid, each identical, each grave plot marked with appropriate boundaries, for the Watchmaker insisted on stressing absolute equality in death.
She located Arlen Peake’s grave, the newly packed dirt planted with fresh grass, the flowers propped in vases. Marinda found a place to sit on the grassy plot adjacent to her father’s, whose occupant had died ten years ago.
She read his name on the polished burl grave marker and shook her head. With tears burning her eyes, she said in a scolding voice, “You could have asked, and I’d have told you this is not what I wanted! I know you meant well, but your silly dreams are not mine. I wanted a quiet life.” She sniffled. “I earned it!” She felt the sting of tears, the anger of disappointment, and the unsettled abandonment of confusion.
Supposedly, the answers lay in her book of Clockwork Lives, as yet unwritten. All the words were stored in that tiny sample of blood her father had left. The alchemy would release it.
Or so he said.
The little crystal vial glowed red in the afternoon sunlight. This was her father’s blood, his life’s blood, which contained the story of his life. And the alchemy would write it for her.
She removed the cap and paused. Her father had stored the blood when he was alive. He had wanted her to do this. Marinda chastised herself for worrying too much over things that could not be changed, so she tilted the vial and held it over the first blank page of the volume. A book without stories…and it was about to have one.
The crimson droplet fell from the lip of the vial and splashed on the paper. The redness soaked into the fibers…and Marinda wondered what she was supposed to see.
Then the blood started to shine as if illuminated by its own fire. It seeped out like spider veins, bending at angles, zigzagging as if flowing through a maze. The lines began to form letters, words, drawn out in the rush of a frantic, inspired calligrapher.
Arlen Peake’s life story filled the blank space, and Marinda turned the page to watch the words continue on the opposite side, line after line. The words filled a second page, and a third. All the things her father had lived. All the things he had wanted to tell her in his story.
Marinda’s pulse raced, and she felt a thrill of wonder. She had never known the feeling. Was this what Arlen experienced every time he saw new things?
When the blood was spent and the letters finished scribing themselves, the pages were covered with line after line. Her father’s story.
Sitting in the Lugtown cemetery beside the fresh grave marker, she turned to the first page and began to read.