He looked quickly up. “Missus?”
“Killed, Charles. How many?”
His voice was small when he answered. “Two, Mrs. Harrogate, ma’am.”
She clicked her tongue. He was lying to her, of course, she could see that writ clearly in his face. The powder she’d fed him hadn’t yet taken full effect. No matter. She was pleased by the lie, pleased to see the shame he felt when he spoke of it. She’d seen too many kids in that chair, hurt over and over by the world, until their hurting and their being hurt no longer seemed shameful at all. Those were the ones that worried her.
She crossed the room, her black skirts swishing on the whitewashed floor. She picked up a long surgical knife from the table near the door. “Does it hurt, Charles? When you heal yourself, I mean?”
“Yes.” The boy paused. “It’s like my insides are on fire.”
“I must see it for myself, you understand,” she said. “I must cut you now. But I would like your permission.”
His eyes were clear. “Yes, ma’am. You can do it.”
She crossed the room and cut the boy’s arm. Bright red blood flowed slowly down over his wrist, his knuckles, it dripped on the white tiles. The boy was gritting his teeth in pain, gasping, and he turned his face and stared down at the wound. As they watched, the incision closed over.
Margaret Harrogate looked at Coulton. He shrugged, bored. She turned back. “There are five families of talent, Charles. You belong to the second. You are a haelan, what Dr. Berghast would describe as a regenerator. When your cells begin to die, any part of you, in fact, your body revivifies. It is a rare and extraordinary talent. You will age differently than the rest of us. You will understand risk differently, danger differently, love differently. Now, think carefully, Charles. Is there anything else you can do?”
“Anything else—？”
“Unusual. Special. Can you … manipulate your flesh? Say, reach objects that should be too far away? Did you ever slip into a space too small for you, that you shouldn’t have been able to slip into?”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Harrogate. No.”
“There is a box in the corner. Do you see it? I want you to try to reach it. Concentrate, now.”
Ovid closed his eyes. Opened them. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“Close your eyes. I want you to imagine a white sky. Nothing is in it. Now, in that white sky is a dark cloud. It is shaped like a door. It is getting closer. Look at it. There is a keyhole in it, and you hold a key. What happens when you turn the lock?”
The boy looked confused, unhappy.
Margaret ran her tongue over her teeth, considering. Perhaps it was not a part of his gift, the mortaling. Perhaps he simply needed to learn control. No matter.
“Tell me about your mother,” she said, changing her approach. “Tell me about your happiest memory of her.”
“My mama?”
He peered suspiciously at Margaret, eyes hooded. She waited.
“My mama…，” he repeated, softer.
Now she could see the powder was taking effect.
“Mama’s just about the only good thing there was for me,” he said. “I don’t even remember her voice now. She used to sing in the church, used to sing like sunlight was just shining on the angels. Like honey on your tongue. That’s how it felt. This one day, she came back home smelling like flour and sugar because she was working in those days in this old kitchen, and they were making pies that week. And she rolled up her sleeves, and there was all this sugar on her elbows and arms, and we licked the sugar off them together.”
Margaret smiled. “Could she … do things? Like what you do?”
“No.”
“And your father, could he? He was white, obviously—”
“I don’t remember my pa,” said Charles abruptly, angrily, and he dropped his eyes and stared at the red starbursts of blood on the white tiles.
She could see he didn’t want to say more, and she felt a quick pang of guilt, but it was necessary; she needed to know certain truths. The boy was struggling against himself but the powder was in him. “Pa died taking us to California,” he said at last. “I always wanted to find where he was buried and tell him I’d grown up and tried to be a good person like Mama said he was. He was a good man, and he loved us, and he believed in a better world. That’s what Mama always said. But he was afraid too, all the time, afraid for me. Maybe he knew what I could do, I don’t know. I was just a baby.” Charles looked up. His eyes were glassy. “Maybe it was just he knew there was no place on this earth for someone like me. Nowhere I’d ever belong.”