Free The Mercury Waltz by Kathe Koja

sleeve they call it, that pocket sewn inside the skirt, where one palms something good to replace with something worthless, but nothing she slips into that sleeve is ever given back.
    The brewer’s wagon stinks of hops, it rains all the way to Paris, their one-room is thick with fleas and biting lice: but the dancing mother is happy and soon finds a much better place to dance, she comes home from the Gran-Royale decked in heron feathers and with money in her purse, money enough to get a two-room and real meals—hot soup and good bread, two times a day!—and a real nursemaid for Tanti, who cries less and begins to fill out, plump and chucky in the cheeks, on the streets the Parisian goodwives all say she is très jolie . Tilde at first is at a loss with the cards: there is more to learn, much more, she is sure of it, but Annabell—for such she is instructed to call her mother now, who here in Paris is no one’s mother, but a brave and lovely mademoiselle left with two little sisters to raise, just like “Miss Imogene of the Boulevard”—Annabell will not have her running the arcades, mixing with the mudlarks and the tinkers’ boys, for I need you here, severe as she regards the cameo, a queen’s ivory face on a ribbon of sky-blue tulle, a gift from one of her gentlemen just the night before, one of the gentlemen for whom Tilde tells the cards when they come calling to see Annabell, who twirls so gracefully as she pines for the protector who will one day come to save them all.
    And amazingly, he does: truly it is like “Miss Imogene,” the plump man with the blond mustachios who arrives with pink roses and china dolls, piping-hot delicious chocolate from the fine cafés, who promises Annabell, as they lie together beneath silk coverlets—several stitched together, to hide the many holes—that he will care for her now, take her away from the dancehall and the two-room, move her to a fine house in Lyon, she says, as she packs only what fits in her fine new lady’s trunk, green leather and shiny silver locks, what fits her new life. Pretty gardens and a stable, and a nursemaid already for Tanti—
    But what about Jeanne? She loves Tanti, she calls her her little pumpkin—
    Jeanne will stay here. When Annabell turns her back, it is as if a shadow falls directly onto Tilde’s heart, as if the cards lay spread before her, the Queen of Hares face-up beside the Shadow, the card that means death, or loss, or change, or all three because You will stay with her, says Annabell, still not looking at Tilde, whose hands clench at her sides. Marcel says we will raise Tanti as our own, but he can only bear to have one child about the house. And you—he says you are too grown already. But listen, urgent, turning to knot the cameo about her daughter’s rigid neck, I shall send money, plenty of money, my little Mathilde, you will never want! You understand me? When you are older, you will understand, Marcel has plenty of money—
    — and so he does, but after one envelope, delivered by indifferent messenger to Jeanne morose to receive it and more loath to share it, no more is received at least by Tilde, who by then understands that no more will be coming, that Annabell is gone, Tanti is gone, and what there is is the dressed china doll, the cameo, and the Taroc cards in the sack she stitched herself, of dark blue velvet as deep as the midnight sky. While Jeanne drinks vin ordinaire and takes in washing, Tilde takes herself down to the street, to the mudlarks in the painted wagons camped inside the park who, for certain considerations—a headdress of heron feathers, an unbroken china doll—consider it a lark to school the gaje girl, that skinny little blue-eyed devil, and teach her some of the many uses of that potent pack of cards.

The cathedral of St. Mary of Dolors is as old as the city, built at the heart of its crumbling, spooling streets, though some traditions call it even older, the city itself in accretion around it,