He probably smiled. “How about buying two?”
THE NEXT MORNING, Petra went to the library to fetch some krona to pay Master Stakan. She sprang up each step.
The library was lined with bookshelves much taller than Petra. Years ago, Master Kronos had built a ladder that hovered in midair. To make it work, you snapped your fingers and, like an obedient (if slow) dog, it would glide to wherever you pointed. When Petra asked her father how he had made it, he had replied vaguely, “You just have to understand a magnet’s emotions. Magnets are very affectionate, but they can be stubborn if you offend them, so building the ladder was really just a case of making friends.” Which may have been why the ladder was always quicker to obey her father than anyone else.
When Petra entered the library, she snapped her fingers and pointed the ladder into the left-hand corner, where one wall of books met another. Then she climbed the rungs, noticing along the way a dried-up apple core her father must have left on the fourth shelf more than half a year ago. When Petra reached the top shelf, she pushed aside a number of books on how to build a water fountain.
Growing out of the wall was a dandelion. It was a fuzzy white globe, the sort you blow apart to see every seed carried on little white wings. But the fluff of this dandelion was actually fine filaments of silver. Petra leaned forward and blew on the flower three times, two longs breaths and one short. The globe gently fell apart. The seeds drifted down. They fell into holes in the wooden floor that were so small Petra could not see them, though her father had assured her that they were there. Then there was a whisper as each seed, now invisible, turned in the same direction.
A floorboard slid away, revealing a mound of krona and smaller piles of foreign money. Petra counted out as much as she needed to pay Master Stakan for two Worry Vials.
She paused, looking at the mix of gold, silver, and copper coins. It struck her that there were very few glints of gold. And the piles had eroded over the months. Most of the family’s savings had come from the ordinary work her father would do every day, like fitting horseshoes and making iron hoops for barrels. How would their life change now that he could no longer work?
The question weighed on Petra like a heavy hand on the back of her neck.
She reached past the coins and flipped open a little trapdoor. There was another dandelion, but a springtime one. It was yellow and made of bright brass. The petals prickled against Petra’s finger as she pushed it like a button.
She pulled her hand out of the hiding place and the floorboard slid shut. Like a flock of miniature birds, the silver dandelion seeds lifted out of the floor, soared up the bookshelves, and swept around their green stem. They formed a perfect sphere once more. Petra climbed up the ladder again to rearrange the books. When the flower was covered, she raced out of the library, down the stairs, and out the door.
MASTER STAKAN GREETED HER CHEERFULLY. “Petra! I was just going to see your father.” He patted a soft leather bag on his work-table. “Shall we go together?”
“Yes! But before we leave, can I buy something from you?” She dug the coins out of her pocket. “Two Worry Vials, please.”
“Hmm.” He hesitated. “Having bad nights, are you? Well.” He hesitated again. Then he turned and lifted two bottles down from a wall of shelves stocked with every shape and size and color of glass bottle you can imagine. The Worry Vials were short, fat, and clear. The opening to the bottle was wide, and sealed with a big cork. “Just be careful where you keep them, will you?”
“Sure,” she said.
He clapped his hands together. “Then let’s go.”
At that moment Tomik came in through the door, carrying a loaf of bread. His eyes fell on the leather bag. “They’re ready?”
“Yes,” his father said, and pocketed the bag. “Petra and I are going to the Sign of the Compass. You stay here in case anyone comes to the shop.”
Tomik’s fingers punched through the bread crust. “I’m coming, too.”
Master Stakan drew in an angry breath.
“You just don’t want me to see,” Tomik growled.
“I want Tomik to be there,” Petra said. There was a firmness in her voice, as if she had forgotten she was only twelve years old.
Master Stakan exhaled gustily. His gaze wavered between the two children. Then he said, “You needn’t mangle the bread, son. Come along.”
But his face was that of someone acting against his better judgment.
THE THREE OF THEM CROWDED AROUND Master Kronos’s bed in the little room on the ground floor. When Master Stakan explained why he had come to visit, Petra could tell that her father was excited, though he tried not to show it.
Master Stakan opened the leather bag and tipped two small glass balls into his hand. Though Petra had known what was in the leather bag, she still felt an odd pull in her stomach when she saw the two eyes—for that is what they were, two white glass eyes with silver irises and black centers. They were her father’s eyes—No, she told herself, they’re just copies. But still, she blinked at the glass eyes on Master Stakan’s palm and felt unnerved.
With his other hand, Master Stakan reached for her father’s bandages. Petra averted her gaze. When Master Stakan had placed the glass eyes, he said, “Well?”
Petra turned to her father. He looked so normal, so whole, that Petra realized she had not really seen her father’s face for more than seven months.
Mikal Kronos sighed with a disappointment he could not hide. “I see nothing.”
“Ah.” Tomas Stakan’s eagerness drained away. “You know, I thought I might have to give it a few tries. It’s much more complicated than crafting eyes for the tin pets. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll come up with the right way to do it.”
“I’m not worried, Tomas. I know you will. Thank you.”
Master Stakan shook his head. “He has a black soul, the prince does. To send you home like this, with not a krona in your pocket to show for it.”
“The prince promised to pay me in a couple of years.”
Master Stakan snorted. “That’s a long way away.” Then, abruptly, he said farewell. His feet shuffled. Petra walked him and Tomik to the door, her hand briefly holding her friend’s before he and his father stepped outside the Sign of the Compass. Through the window, she watched Master Stakan walk away with the haste of someone eager to escape his own failure.