“I said I would try, that’s all. I didn’t say I could.”
“Still, thank you.” Liesl felt hopeful for the first time since her father had died. It had been ever so long since anyone had tried to do anything for her—not since her father had been well, at least, before Augusta had decided that Liesl must move to the attic. And that was months upon months ago: a tower of months, so that when Liesl tried to remember her life before the attic, her memory grew slimmer and slimmer as though it was being stretched, and snapped before it could reach the ground.
Po was next to her. Then it was in the corner again, a person-shaped shadow with a curious shaggy shadow-pet at its feet. Bundle did the mew-bark thing. Liesl decided it sounded like a mwark.
“You have to do something for me in return,” Po said.
“Okay,” Liesl said, feeling uneasy. She did not know what she could possibly do for a ghost, especially since she was never allowed to leave the attic. It was, Augusta said, far too dangerous; the world was a terrible place, and would eat her up. “What do you want?”
“A drawing,” Po blurted, and then began to flicker again, this time from embarrassment. It was not used to having outbursts.
Liesl was relieved. “I’ll draw you a train,” she said passionately. She loved trains—the sound of them, at least. She heard their great horns blasting and the rattle of their wheels on the track and listened to them wailing farther and farther away, like birds calling to one another in the distance, and sometimes she confused the two sounds and imagined the train had wings that might carry its passengers up into the sky.
Po did not say anything. It seemed to pour itself into the regular corner shadows. All at once it blended in with Bundle’s shadow, and then with the shadow of the crooked desk, and three-legged stool.
Liesl sighed. She was alone again.
Then Po’s silhouette pulled itself abruptly away from the corner. It looked at Liesl for a moment.
“Good-bye,” Po said finally. Bundle went, Mwark.
“Good-bye,” Liesl said, but that time Po and Bundle were gone for real.
Chapter Two
AT THE VERY MOMENT THAT LIESL WAS SPEAKING the word “Good-bye” into an empty room, a very frazzled-looking alchemist’s apprentice was standing on the quiet street in front of her house, staring up at her darkened window and feeling sorry for himself.
He was wearing a large and lumpy coat that came well past his knees and had, in fact, most recently belonged to someone twice his age and size. He carried a wooden box—about the size of a loaf of bread—under one arm, and his hair was sticking up from his head at various odd angles and had in it the remnants of hay and dried leaves, because the night before he had once again messed up a potion and been forced by the alchemist to sleep out back, where the chickens and animals were.
But that wasn’t why the boy, whose name was Will but who also answered to “Useless” and “Hopeless” and “Snot-Face” and “Sniveler” (at least when the alchemist was the one calling to him), felt sorry for himself.
He felt sorry for himself because for the third night in a row the pretty girl with the straight brown hair was not sitting in the small attic window, framed by the soft golden glow of the oil lamp to her left, with her eyes turned downward as though she was working on something.
“Scrat,” Will said, which was what the alchemist usually said when he was upset about something. Because Will was extremely upset, he repeated it. “Scrat.”
He had been sure—sure!—that she would be there tonight. That was why he had come so far out of his way; that was why he had looped all the way around to Highland Avenue instead of going directly to Ebury Street, as the alchemist had told him a dozen times he must do.
As he had walked down empty street after empty street, past row after row of darkened houses, in silence so thick it was like a syrup that dragged his footsteps away into echoes before he had placed a heel on the ground, he had imagined it perfectly: how he would come around the corner and see that tiny square of light so many stories above him, and see her face floating there like a single star. She was not, Will had decided long ago, the type of person who would call him names other than his own; she was not impatient or mean or angry or snobby.
She was perfect.
Of course, Will had never actually spoken to the girl. And some small corner of his mind told him it was stupid to continue finding excuses, every single night, to go past her window. It was a waste of time. It was, as the alchemist would have said, useless. (Useless was one of the alchemist’s favorite words, and he used it interchangeably to describe Will’s plans, thoughts, work, appearance, and general selfhood.)