Enchantée(5)

Maman had taught her that there were three kinds of magic. La magie ordinaire, for changing things. La glamoire, for changing oneself. And la magie bibelot, for imbuing objects with magic, making them sentient.

It was ridiculous to think the burned trunk was looking at her, but it felt that way. She pulled her shawl closer.

The other trunk was a strongbox, bolted to the floor.

From a secret pocket she’d sewn into the seam of her skirt, Camille took out a handful of coins: the change from the magicked louis she’d used at the chandler’s shop. Twenty whole livres. Alain had drunk up the money she’d given him for the chicken. But he hadn’t gotten any of this, the real money. She felt a twinge of regret as she dropped the coins into the box and locked it. Sophie certainly needed strengthening. But money for the rent was more important than meat, and she had only a few days to get another hundred and eighty livres.

Though her body swayed with fatigue, sleep felt like a distant country. There was so much to do. Closing the little door and locking it behind her, Camille stepped through the pale lozenges of moonlight that lay on the floor to kneel by the fireplace and warm her hands over the embers. From a stack nearby she took a handful of smudged proofs—Rise Up, Citizens, one of the pamphlets encouraged, Our Day Is Come!—left over from her father’s print shop and tossed them on the coals. Flames stretched up through the paper, bright and hungry, illuminating the mantel. The costlier curios that had once stood there—a porcelain shepherdess, a Chinese lacquerware lion with a wavy mane—were sold when her parents died. Now only a few paper figures tilted against the wall. She picked up a tiny boat and blew at the sails so they billowed.

Bagatelles, Papa had called them—little nothings. Queens with towering wigs and milkmaids dangling pails from their hands, knights with lances and dragons breathing flame: all made from inky test sheets for the pamphlets Papa had written. Even now, his words marched across the schooner’s sails: It Is Time We Act. The flames sparking from the dragon’s mouth spelled out Liberté! though the L faced backward.

She prickled with embarrassment, remembering. It took skill and practice to set the type backward into the frame so that all the letters came out facing the right way, or so Camille had learned when she’d begged Papa to let her be his apprentice. He’d swept her up in his wiry arms and swung her in a circle when she asked, his face a blur of joy and pride. It was hard labor for a little girl. It wasn’t just the hours standing on a stool while she set the type, but also rubbing the type with ink balls so it was black as black, hanging on the lever that brought the plate down so the inked letters kissed the paper. And inevitably she made mistakes: mixed-up letters, blots and streaks. She didn’t want Papa to see, but he found the sheets where she’d hidden them. He knuckled away her tears and told her: To try is to be brave. Be brave.

So she wouldn’t feel like her smeared test sheets were worthless, he folded them into ships, cut them into wigs, or made them into dancing bears. Most of the bagatelles had worn out long ago. The paper didn’t hold. One icy night someone had burned most of them for fuel. But a few survived.

She kept them so she’d never forget.

She’d never forget the way Papa taught her his craft and art so that she might one day be the best printer in Paris, even though all the printers were men.

Nor the way his pride gleamed when her broadsheets hung drying on the line. She’d not forgotten the thrill when the paper went from blank to black, nor the excitement that came from knowing Papa thought her old enough and clever enough to think about the world they lived in. And by setting letters into a printing frame, to change it. A printing press took the thoughts from someone’s mind and inked them onto a piece of paper anyone might read. It was a kind of magic. A magic to alter the world.

But that was all put away. Sometimes when she tucked into the bed next to Sophie, her feet aching from tramping and her soul bruised from working magic, she’d console herself that she’d get a chance at it again one day. Yet each day, that someday raced further and further away until she couldn’t see it anymore. She tried to press the rising sadness down but it raked at her ribs, her throat. She could even feel it throb in her little finger: a pulsing ache.

She didn’t want to do it—not now, she was so tired—but she had no choice. If she was awake, she might as well.

Setting down the paper boat, she fetched a heavy hatbox that rattled with metal bits. In it was broken type from the printing press. She ran her finger along the letters’ curves: their metal edges remained unbent. They’d come from an experimental border she’d been working on before Papa had to close the printing shop and sell the press. How empty the workshop had been when everything—presses, paper, cases, type—was gone. All that was left were dust motes hanging in the light and the liquid scent of ink.

Empty, empty, empty.

As Camille remembered, sorrow rose in her and ran like wine or laudanum, dark and bitter and relentless. She didn’t try to stop it. She didn’t tell herself that one day, things would be better.

Instead she worked the broken type between her fingers until it warmed and began to lose its shape. She smoothed it, over and over, while she held the memory of her parents’ deaths in her mind. How the first spots had pricked their skin like bites before they swelled. How the angry marks were followed by weeping sores on her mother’s arms and chest, and how her father raved as his fever swallowed him up. How lonely Camille felt when Maman told her she would have to work magic now, that it was up to Camille to tap the source of her sorrow and use it to keep the family alive.