“I’m going to miss you,” said Mum, the breeze blowing dark wisps of hair in her eyes. The mottled black of her skin had disappeared, and she was as soft-spoken and sweet as she had ever been. I wiped her tears away with my misshapen glove—stuffed with both pairs of fingers—and smiled at her through my scarf.
“Nothing to worry about. Spring isn’t far away, right enough,” I said encouragingly, finding my voice. When Hannah finished her studies, she and Mum would join us in Arthurise and eventually accompany my father for holiday in Amsterdam. I would remain at the university. I was still going to miss her.
“Don’t board yet, Jonathan,” said Hannah, clutching her shawl and running to the city end of the dock, searching or waiting for something.
Lockwood appeared from the lift door, grinning like a fool when he saw me with my parents, surrounded by trunks. He was dressed smartly, in a new uniform, his Excalibur medal polished at his throat, and, I daresay, a new black eye patch. His rank had been reinstated, and was he ever cocky about it.
As odd as it sounded, Lockwood had been my stolid friend this past week. He never said a word about my extra face and spent his free time from the Chivalry in the observatory with me. I was teaching him chess, and he was teaching me how to use a dagger, or we were trying to, anyway. We were both hopelessly bad at what the other one did. But we kept each other occupied, a good thing. He was deathly hollow-cheeked over Anna. I hadn’t told him about seeing her in the illusion, and I hadn’t told him she was my sister, Hannah, either. I didn’t quite know how to bring it all up.
Lockwood, on the other hand, helped me keep the demons at bay. Every time I started to feel creatures crawling over me, and I cringed and tried to shake them off, Lockwood would leap on me, slam me against the floor, sending chairs scattering everywhere and say, “All right, Johnny, you pathetic little worm, let’s see if you can manage the Leffinger kick when I’m pressing so hard against your spine it punctures your stomach—” And we’d break into a brawl, scattering books across the library floor and banging against the shelves. Only after I’d stumbled to my feet, smarting, would I realize the demons had gone.
“I’ll take that, Dr. Gouden,” he said now as we prepared to leave, heaving my father’s chest of books from his hands. “We’ve got a civilian’s room for you two. Very nice. Very neat. Has a writing table. Smells like those little purple wossnames.”
“Oh, how nice,” said my mother, smiling at me and wiping her eyes with the end of her shawl. I pulled her into a big hug and didn’t care if Lockwood saw. He thumped me on the shoulder as I released her.
“Jonathan and I, we’re going to have great fun,” he said to my parents. “I’m going to teach him how to properly fight. In the mess hall. Dinner with entertainment. The officers are already placing bets on if he ends up breaking his own leg.”
“Afterward,” I said, “I’ll cut your finger and they’ll laugh even harder as you pass out.”
“Hardy har har,” said Lockwood, not sounding amused in the least.
“Jonathan, don’t board the lift yet—just wait two more minutes—” Hannah came running to us, beaming, her boots clanging over the platform. Her hair had been pinned up in ringlets but was falling out in dark curls around her face, and the cold stung her cheeks rosy and put a spark in her eyes.
Lockwood dropped my father’s chest of books.
Hannah stopped short at seeing the young, smartly dressed lieutenant, eye patch and all. She pulled back shyly, tugging her shawl around her shoulders.
“Hello,” she said, and then looked to me for an introduction. “Jonathan, who’s this?”
“Oh,” I said. I coughed. “Lieutenant Lockwood, this is my sister. Hannah.”
Lockwood blinked rapidly at her with his one eye, his mouth agape.
“Hello,” said Hannah, smiling at her feet.
Lockwood snapped about and fled into the dock’s lift. I ran after him and slipped beside him just as he clanged the doors closed on Hannah’s hurt expression. “You never told me she was your sister,” he snapped as the lift jolted upward.
“Oh.” I coughed. “She’s my sister, Lockwood.”
Lockwood remained still.
“She’s um. Well. Quite a bit like Anna, actually,” I said. “You might like her.”
Lockwood drew a hand through his hair, grief written across his face.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.
The lift doors slid open. He stormed onto the platform, making for the Chivalry doors. I tackled him, twisting his wrist over his head, kicked his feet out from under him and he fell, slamming onto the metal with an echoing booooong. I pinned him there with my forearm, pressing so hard against his neck that his adam’s apple made cider. Lockwood had taught me this trick himself.
“A,” he choked, “Knutsen hold—position—number two—” He sounded impressed against his will. “Well—done—”
“Go introduce yourself,” I said. “Tell her your name. Bow or something. Exhibit some sprezzatura—”
“Some what?” he choked.
“It means,” I said, pulling him to his feet and strong-arming him back into the lift, “don’t overdo it! Go attack the foe, Lockwood!”
I shoved Lockwood out of the lift the moment it had thudded back to the dock and the doors swooshed open. He stumbled into the curious reception of my parents and Hannah. He straightened, eyeing her with cold wariness.
“Hello,” said Hannah again, regarding his eye patch with fascination. “I’m Hannah.”
She offered her hand, palm down, for Lockwood to take and bow.
Lockwood stared at it, paralyzed. When nothing happened, Hannah glanced at me, then gave up and let her hand drop.
Lockwood grabbed it in a blur and fell gracefully to his knee. He cupped her hand in both of his and bowed deeply.
“And I am your faithful servant, forever,” he breathed.
Hannah looked as though she had been hit by a brick.
“Ah. Hm. Well,” I said, coughing. “That might be overdoing it.”
“What a nice boy,” my mother said, from my father’s side.
My father regarded them both with narrowed eyes.
“Jonathan Gouden!”
An angry voice carried up from the front of the dock and Alice appeared, a long coat over her infirmary clothes, fiery red curls a tangle and clutching a knitted shawl around her shoulders.
Panic seized me. I pulled my scarf tighter around my face and backed away, wanting to disappear into the beams of the vertical dock. She arrived, bearing down on me with fierce freckled anger.
“Oh, hello, Alice,” I stammered, shrinking into the shadows. Hannah! That ruddy little imp, she’d invited Alice to the send-off, and she knew I didn’t want Alice to see me until I’d healed! “You’re—well now, eh? Infirmary’s discharged you, then?”
“Yes, although they don’t know it yet,” she said angrily, her hazel eyes glistening. “You never came to visit me! And now you’re leaving? Without even saying good-bye? I’m sorry—I just—I didn’t realize I was that horrible!”
“Alice, no,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with you, I swear it. I’m just a bit—um—not pretty right now, that’s all.”
“I know,” said Alice. “Hannah told me you looked hideous.30 I don’t care.”
She was near tears, an infirmity that rendered me helpless. I remained still as she reached up with her delicate hands, touched my cheek, and tugged the scarf away. I held my breath as she got a full-on view of my splitting nose, extra nostrils and eyebrow and scabby eye on the side of my face.
“Oh, honestly,” she said. “All that fuss for this?”
She pushed herself up on her toes and kissed my cheek, her lips and the tip of her freckled nose softly brushing my skin.
I could have bottled that kiss forever and opened it to brighten rooms.
“Just checking for fever,” she whispered.
“Oh, just!” I said, feeling faint.
She laced
her fingers between my misshapen and knobbly gloves and hugged herself to my side, burying her cheek in my arm.31
I thought I had died again.
We stood there in the waning polar light, ribbons of bright blues and purple searing the sky, and the sun seemed to freeze on the horizon. My father held my mother in a tight embrace. Across the dock, Hannah had asked Lockwood how he’d lost his eye (her first question of him) and she sat on a bench, listening raptly as Lockwood commenced telling her in great detail of eleven children huddled—huddled—in fear in the Palace of Madrid as he scaled the walls ledge by ledge and burst through the window. . . .
I took the last few minutes to put a coin in the telescope, and as the tune plinked and plonked, Alice and I took turns looking out over the ocean and then to the observatory’s dome, which glowed a brilliant white against the deepening blue. Alice promised to write and tell me all about the happenings of Fata, and I promised in kind to write her about my studies, if it didn’t make her feel ill (she assured me it wouldn’t).
And everything felt . . . right. Like an airship straight on course. The sky was clear; and I pointed north.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EDITORS:
Martha Mihalick
Julie Romeis Sanders
Sarah Cloots
AGENTS:
Edward Necarsulmer IV
Christa Heschke
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Lisa Hale
Joe Fowler
Renee Wilson
Tim Hinton
Jason Kim
Kevin Keele
Travis Deming
Brent Melling
Alan Rex
Chris Melling
Grace Rex
Taylor Todd
&, of course, the Fam—Mom, Dad, Missy,
Peter, Sar, and all the rest of you, you crazy ol’ sonuvaguns.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HEATHER DIXON is the author of the acclaimed Entwined. By day, she is a storyboard animator and artist. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. www.story-monster.blogspot.com
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY HEATHER DIXON
Entwined
Illusionarium
CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Nathalia Suellen
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc’h
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
ILLUSIONARIUM. Copyright © 2015 by Heather Dixon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dixon, Heather, (date)
Illusionarium / by Heather Dixon.
pages cm
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: As apprentice to his father, the second-best medical scientist in the empire, Jonathan leads a quiet life in a remote aerial city until the king arrives, calling on them to find the cure to a plague that has struck the capital city and put the queen’s life at risk, but the newly discovered chemical, fantillium, that may help will also put at risk all that Jonathan holds dear.
EPub Edition © April 2015 ISBN 9780062311870
ISBN 978-0-06-200105-4 (hardback)
[1. Plague—Fiction. 2. Medicine—Research—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Apprentices—Fiction. 5. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. 6. Hallucinations and illusions—Fiction. 7. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.D64433Ill 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014041136
1516171819LP/RRDH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
Greenwillow Books
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1 Besides me, of course.
2 polarage pol-a-raj n: A mirage found in polar regions, when the cold air warps and forms floating icebergs and billowing shapes that could be mistaken for airships*
*but only by drunken airmen
3 My father enjoyed bartering with passing trade ships for their most unusual pieces of furniture, collected from all around the world. As a result, our row house and observatory were both filled with strange, mismatched furniture. It drove my mother to distraction.
4 A great-great-great grandfather clock, possibly.
5 More icing than roll. The proper kind of sweet roll.
6 See what I mean? Charming.
7 Really*
*No, really.
8 He had actually started to cry.
9 Hannah would have known this. Also, she could probably list off all the queens and dukes who had lost their heads there, in consecutive order, or, quite possibly, alphabetically by either a) surname or b) title. Our long winters on Fata were, indeed, joyous.
10 Or, at least, I really hoped he was.
11 Blast!
12 More food for me.
13 Divinity had become a lot less pretty since the illusion.
14 Please. Your mother doesn’t count.
15 I suddenly realized what Divinity reminded me of. One of those female insects that, after they mated, would bite off the male’s head and lay their eggs in his body so that when larvae hatched and burst through his headless body’s abdomen, they would eat his entrails.
16 He really did drool it.
17Absolutely fascinating, how everything split, sorting out how the veins and the nerves and the muscles grew apart—yes, it wasn’t quite bone in the new fingertip but there was definitely cartilage. . . .
18 With far too much relish.
19 ASAYAW = “As Soon As You Are Willing”*
*Which is the Arthurisian way of saying, “We’re Dying! DYING, I SAY!”
20 We’d also been curious as to how he’d gotten a masked guard uniform. He grimly answered that with a “Don’t ask.”
21 Surprise, surprise.
22 Which would sever his limbs from his body on impact, causing Death by Unmitigated Joy.
23 Niiii
iice.
24 Which really wasn’t fair, being dead and all.
25 Liar.
26 Fata Morgana’s shipped foods had given me a vast knowledge of all things dried.
27 Or smack him across the head. I couldn’t decide.
28 I had the sense to illusion it unlocked.
29 I was really looking forward to this.*
*I’d taken to marking my hands with pen and ink, drawing out the muscles and veins beneath the skin and labeling them with such intricacy that it almost looked like I had contracted the Venen myself. It was a marvelous diversion.
30 Thanks, Hannah.
31 The little snuggler.
Heather Dixon Wallwork, Illusionarium
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