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Percy abhorred parties. He detested balls and shunned gatherings. He hated card games and gambling dens. He avoided everything from intimate dinner conclaves to sporting events. Anything, in fact, where one was forced into regrettably uncomfortable clothing, assembling in numbers greater than six, and making a show of being entertained by other people.
Primrose looked, even at her best, suspicious of the world and prissy about her existence within in it.
Their mother, in Percy’s unasked-for opinion, looked like a bewildered hedgehog.
“Oh, my babies. My precious jewels! Tiddles, Sniffles! Darlings, sweetlings, loveliest children of my heart and loins, how delightful to see you at last! Finally, you remembered I exist, and I am waiting. You depuffed days ago, weeks, ages, eons, and forgot all about me! Come to me now. Come to the bosom of my affection.”
Ivy threw her head back and moaned. “Oh, where did I go so pedultuously wrong?”
Was he floating with aplomb as some oddball form of courtship? To puff and depuff to the best of his abilities, as if he were a kind of puffed-up peacock putting himself on display for a suitable peahen. Was Arsenic his peahen? Was that a romantic pet name? Peahen?
Besides, Percy had never understood the notion of gifting the dead sexual organs of a plant to females. It seemed oddly threatening. Trinkets might be the way to go. Tokens of affection.
But then there would be the awkwardness of actually giving her the gift. What would he say? How would he say it? Here, my lovely peahen, I have brought you a bottle of castor oil. Please come sit in a chair with me in my library and don’t talk too much and when you do speak, say something smart? If we’re lucky the cat will sit on top of us.
“Well, yes, Paw, but that’s all in the past. Percy saved him with philosophy. He’s on our side now. There was a book club involved. It’s all perfectly in order.”
The whole time, both Anitra and Rodrigo tended towards that slightly shocked air of unexpectedly having found a place to belong. They lived with people who enjoyed their society and wished to keep them close. It was a sensation Arsenic occasionally enjoyed herself these days. To be wanted was an extraordinary gift. The thing about The Spotted Custard was its general aura of welcome. So long as one was willing to tolerate the foibles of the staff and crew, the ship forgave you yours.
For lack of a better analogy, what their brash and rather impulsive daughter had done was build herself her own pack.
Arsenic shook her head. “Alis volat propriis.” He flies by his own wings, translated Percy. He flushed with pleasure.
Primrose was attempting to pass around fresh tea. Arsenic glanced back at Percy. “Does your sister never stop?” “Tea is her answer to everything. I once broke my arm and she tried to give me Lapsang souchong.”
“Married werewolves, you know, they’re always better. They work more for the common good, they fit easier into mortal life. It’s like pack, only civilized. We talk about it as being tamed. But it’s not that simple. It’s being loved. It makes werewolves fit.” Arsenic’s eyes were sharp. “It makes them good. Like a moral compass for a diminished soul.”
The Wallflower said, “The longer I live and the more I travel the more I find that practicality is the enemy of wonder.”
Apparently, in Edo, dunking one’s biscuit was tantamount to a declaration of war. Every soldier drew his gun. The deckhands stood ready to fight. Rue and Anitra looked fierce. The tea things scattered. Biscuits shattered. The carnage was unnecessarily tragic.
Percy frowned. “It seems an odd pairing.” Lady Manami shook her head at him. “The heart is an unfettered thing when spirits are involved. Had you not noticed, we love where we will? We have learned that love happens so rarely, we should value it beyond all things when it lands upon us. It is the only thing that keeps us young and sane.”
How strange that the knowledge of immortality was bundled up not in intellectual pursuits but in emotional acumen. “Is that wisdom?” he asked, because Lady Manami was old and must perforce have something to teach him. “It is the only wisdom worth knowing.”
Percy was embarrassed to admit he even had a few muscles from his time as ship’s navigator. He hoped Arsenic wouldn’t find this off-putting. A gentleman ought not to mess up the lines of his jackets with muscles.
“We’re in the middle of an escape, sir.” “You’re absolutely correct. Crumpets are also required under such trying times. Tea and buttered crumpets, please Virgil. And for Arsenic as well. We all need restoration.” “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” Vigil tottered off, muttering something dark about Percy wanting dipped biscuits. As if Percy would ever do anything that shocking with biscuit integrity. He wasn’t a monster.
