Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Read Free

want to have a sword catch it.” A smooth red stone glowed in the afternoon light. The gift Pa had put around my neck the day of my birth. I had nothing else of him. No pictures, no letters, nothing but a flat speckled rock on a black silk cord. Shaped like a long blunt-nosed arrowhead with a vertical oblong slit in its center. Ma called it my Legacy Stone, a piece of jasper Pa’d claimed that he’d had since he’d been a boy. I slipped it over my head and tucked it inside my shirt.
    “Still doing well in school? I’ve been bragging to everyone about how sharp you are.” As proud of me and Eddie’s school work as if he’d been our own daddy, Mr. Ford kept close watch on our learning. Since he paid for us both to go out of his own pocket, he had the right, I guess. Sometimes I wished he had been my real pa. I had no memory of my father at all. Ma said she’d lost him two days after my birth. Never would tell me more. Must’ve been real hard on her.
    “Oh, yes, sir. Perfect marks in History and Literature last term. My grammar and cipherin’ still need work, though. You won’t want me countin’ your receipts, that’s for sure. Can’t wait fer summer to be over so we can go back.” I didn’t lie. Believe it or not, I loved school, except for having to wear shoes. You can call it girlie, I don’t care. Guess I had a knack for it, especially for Shakespeare and other storytellers. I reckoned I knew just about any book you could name then, backwards and forwards. Me and Eddie would have competitions in history, too, trying to stump one another. It amazed our teacher, Miz Finch, that we could be that sharp. Me in particular, because I didn’t appear the studious type. ‘Tweren’t natural, she’d say. High praise from someone who looked unnatural herself. Never saw such a backside on a woman. Broader than a hay wagon.
    Reaching into his coat pocket, Mr. Ford drew out a peppermint stick and handed it to me with manicured fingers. “Here. Make sure you give him half.” When I reached for it he withdrew the candy. “After you put the swords back in the property closet.”
    I smiled and stared at my big booted feet. Just like at school, I wasn’t allowed to be barefoot in the theatre. “Yes, sir.” I collected my treat and scampered off with the rapiers, their daggers stowed inside the caged hilts. Mr. Ford in a good mood, sweets in my hand, and Eddie doing my chores…all was right with the world.
    As right as that twisted war-torn world of 1862 could be, on the last happy day of my childhood. Before I became the most magick-hunted person on Earth.

2/ Romulus
    I punched his boy-bits with all of my might.
     
    My ma folded shirts in the Greenroom, on account of it being cooler than in the costume shop. Sweat soaked her calico dress. Some crazy person built Washington City in a swamp, so summers always sweltered. Until last year’s attack on Fort Sumter had filled the city with troops and government workers, most people had always left town come June. It felt that miserable. Most years Mr. Ford booked little or nothing into the Athenaeum for June, July, and August, there being no audience to speak of. But now he had a chance to pack the house full of free-spending Army officers and War Department workers. That’s why the popular Booth had brought his company, to perform for folk starved for entertainment as well as thirsting for good news of the war.
    Giving me that look she always used when I’d disappointed her, Ma said, “You switched chores with Eddie? What did I tell you about---?”
    “I didn’t take advantage of him,” I protested. Well, maybe a little . “He asked me to help him out of a fix.”
    She smoothed her damp dark hair out of her gray eyes. Short and round, she wore spectacles on the end of her sharp nose. They made her look like Ben Franklin’s sister. The glasses usually sat atop her head, except for when she sewed or when she wanted to glare at me about something I’d done. I