* * *
Muybridge brought the snow in with him from the swirling, freezing street. For once, the city and its buildings were not swarmed with people; the cold had driven them inside to huddle in silence and sleep.
He climbed the familiar stairs of the exposed landing, where the ice had made the cold stone treacherous. Frost glistened on the banisters and the steps creaked, along with his long, cold bones. He had aged seven years since they had last met, enough time for every cell in his body to change. A different man climbed these shadows and stairs, so why did he feel the same?
The dull brass key in his hand felt unchanged, yet he knew she was not there. She had sold the cameras and bought a passage back into her origins. She was in Africa with the sun and heat. So why did his insides churn with a dread that hollowed him as he climbed towards the rooms?
The door opened easily and he paused to listen, straining for those sounds that humans make, even when holding their breath: the uncontrollable vibrations that are emitted as they sleep. There were none. The rooms were empty, their silence clad and reinforced by the snow outside.
He shut the door and peered into the studio; his machine was still there, in exactly the same place. But his nerves were spliced and unsettling his abilities: he could not leave the other rooms unchecked. He quickly paced through them, and found them to be clinically empty; every scrap of their previous tenancy had been cleaned away. Her metal bed was stripped to its frame; the sink was bare; only the crockery of their golden-memoried breakfast remained, in a stacked, unbroken pile.
He returned to the machine, removing his gloves to touch his fingertips to its smooth, cold mechanisms. The crank turned, free and easy; age had not atrophied his engineering. The lenses and shutters fluttered in obedience, albeit far too quickly. He bent closer to see that all the polished surfaces were clean and free from dust.
As he touched the gears again, he felt oil on his fingertips. He looked closer: there was wear on the head strap. Somebody had used it, not once,
but a number of times. Who would have done such a thing? And what for? His mind raced. Apart from Gull and his men, the only other with keys had been the black woman. He shivered. Did she still come here, addicted to the effects of machine? He looked edgily around the rooms again, fondling his pocket where the revolver nestled. Nothing moved.
He came back to the table and walked to its other side. Something lumped under the thin, stained carpet beneath his feet, something akin to a long, slender pipe. He knelt and pulled the shabby rug away. A black, tarred electric cable ran along the floorboards and across the room, its end snaking up the inside of the table leg and under its countertop. He peered under the table, crouching to see what was hidden below: here was the greatest find. Two incandescent lamps, held beneath the table by sturdy clips. He pulled one out and examined it. It was Edison’s work: one of his handmade, electrically powered lamps – new, unique and incredibly expensive. But where had it come from? And what would this extravagance give his machine?
He stood up and stared at the machine, the wire and bulb still in his hands. He imagined her in it, serene and seemingly unaffected, and tried to push the images of her transformation out of his mind. He looked at the wire, which split to join each of the two bulbs, a metal ring on each brass stem, holding the lamp in place. He searched below the counter with his fingers and quickly found the two holes drilled into the tabletop. The surface of the table near the holes was burnt, its varnish scarred from the continual heat of the lamps. He traced the cable back to an empty cupboard. By his calculations, the batteries would have been stored here: somebody had been using his device in the dead of night. That would be the only reason for such expense – to operate it and transform another while all else slept. He shuddered at the idea. His machine of daylight, which had proved sinister enough in the sun’s presence, had taken on an ominous, unnatural function in his absence. He wished he could talk to the almighty surgeon about this, but Gull was unwell. All his attempts
at contact over the last months had been met with sturdy denial. He was in retreat.
On his way home through the slow snow, he reflected that perhaps the locked room was best left that way, with nobody except the sick doctor knowing of his involvement here. If the machine had been used for some untoward purpose, then it was nothing to do with him. He was innocent of any of the effects that it might have produced. Yes, better left that way. He would have it out with Gull when he was recovered.
His trusty instinct was sharp in the cold, and it told him that yet again he only had a few days left in this city of crime and intrigue. He would lay low and let the snow keep all muffled until he was on the ship again. There, between his worlds, he could decide whether to take the matter further or drop the brass key like a bullet into the starless, churning water.
* * *
On the night of their return from Ishmael’s reunion with Ghertrude, they made a strange mating. Ishmael made love to assert himself, while Cyrena’s endeavours sought a reassuring balm: neither was achieved. The hybrid resonance that followed them into their sleep disturbed the house for days. They were only fortunate that the bow was already gone; she would not have fed well on the atmosphere they had created.
Ishmael did not notice that Tsungali and the bow had gone. So absorbed was he in finding his place in his new life that he temporarily forgot his old one; he could hold no reflection on anything other than Cyrena. He longed for her to see his truth, not because he was deformed and rare, but, conversely, because of his growing normality and commonness. He hungered for her to mirror him in the depth of the love she so strongly professed. He watched her continually, when he thought she was unaware,
to see if there were cracks or blemishes in the perfection of her surface. He wanted her to prove his existence in hers; all else had been empty, and the attempts of those who marked his passage had always failed: even Nebsuel’s ministrations now seemed lost. His place in the world had been slippery, unfounded and without a single trace of purpose, as hollow as a bottomless well.
Cyrena visited Ghertrude once a week. She took care to do it alone; it was easier that way, and she could concentrate on her friend without distractions. She found relief in being clear of the house, to have a break from Ishmael’s constant attention. It was not his fault, she realised; he simply wanted to be close, but she had lived alone for years, and most of that time had been spent in a space that no other human could truly enter. The now and then was like the difference between the sound and the sight of the swallows. In her crossings of the city to visit Ghertrude she would try to revert to those times, and her imagination and sensitivity would glide gleefully in advance. Sometimes they would warn of obstacles, but mostly they would tug her impatiently and joyfully forward.
At the house, Ishmael always sat close to her; her feelers never seemed able to extend beyond him. He smothered her perception with his love and need, and she sought ways of stretching around it, for both their sakes. She was aware that he sometimes watched her, as if listening to her heart for irregular beats and uncertainties. She assumed it was care, but at times it felt like custody.
Ghertrude was regaining her strength, that confident energy which had so defined her from her first day in the world. But now it was turning inwards, no longer seeking to pry and investigate in the lives of others. Hoffman no longer stalked her dreams – he had been banished by the first visit of Cyrena and Ishmael. Her instincts told her that it was Ishmael who had done it, that it had something to do with the sounds from the attic. The eerie music, without structure or form, slid into the subconscious
and opened pathways and doors previously closed. It had filled the entire house, and had been the only thing to enter the basement in the years since her foray down there.
Since she had told Cyrena about the incident with the Kin, she realised her memory of it had changed, as if sharing her story had given her space to reflect and see it from different angles. The facts remained the same, and the events occurred in the same sequence, but their meaning had somehow shifted. The puppet guardians no longer seemed uncanny and full of dread; instead, their actions appeared to have a calmness, care and purpose, rather than the cruel, mechanical coldness she had so automatically and fearfully interpreted.
How could this be? What had changed to allow her to give them such a great benefit of the doubt? In their absence, she realised that the only variable factor was herself. She considered the child growing inside her and wondered at the effects it might be having on her attitude, but surely that should be making her more protective, more hostile to anything that could be unnatural or threatening? Perhaps it was the harshness of recent events – the reality of violence, and the blind selfishness that so often instigated it. She had, after all, witnessed it first-hand. Hoffman, Maclish, even Mutter, had behaved in ways abhorrent to all that she treasured and believed; blood and anger had washed the innocence from her eyes. Ugly conceptions and spiteful deceits had hacked at her heart until it had shrunk and burrowed deeper into its meaty cage. In such a fearful setting, those brown things were turned into the dreams of another place, as opposed to the nightmares of this one.
Her thoughts carried further than she could have known; as she sat and pondered her past with a warmth and tenderness unfamiliar to her upbringing, locks withered and fell away, and the nailed-up doors grew soft, warping ajar.
Three days earlier, Ghertrude had enlisted Cyrena’s support and made the difficult journey to her parents’ home to tell them about her pregnancy.
She had long been dreading it, and the drive there in her friend’s purring car was fuelled by trepidation. Cyrena held her hand, letting her feel the firmness of her purpose and her total support.
Ghertrude’s mother greeted the pair and showed them into the dining room; a strange choice, Ghertrude had thought, amongst the myriad of other, more suitable rooms in the house.
‘Your father will be here presently,’ she said in a hard, agitated voice.
Did she already know? Was she already upset and angry with her? Had Mutter let the cat out of the bag? Ghertrude sensed a strain, an unease showing in white, fractured marks through her mother’s agitation. She looked older and worn. Her buoyant ease had disappeared, replaced with a distance and distress.
‘Mother, is something wrong?’
The answer to her question chose that moment to walk in the door: her father was shrunken and hunched, his eyelids red-rimmed and his clothing dishevelled. Where had Deacon Tulp gone, and who was this poor imitation in his place? She looked on apprehensively as he waved them to the chairs.
‘Sit, sit down, please,’ he said, in a voice that had none of the stride or wit he was so famous for. ‘My dear child, you are shocked to find me changed so; you are not alone in that. Sometimes I shock myself.’ A weak smile flickered across his face and he looked at his wife, whose lips were pursed tightly together, squeezing the blood elsewhere.
‘The truth is, I am near the end of my tether. The business is dying and our savings have gone.’
‘Gone, father? Gone where?’
‘Gone with August Daren,’ Mrs Tulp interjected. ‘He has closed his bank, taken all the money and disappeared.’
‘He must have predicted the collapse,’ Deacon Tulp continued. ‘He saw the imminent destruction of the Timber Guild and the downfall of the city and he got out while he could, taking everyone’s savings with him.’
‘But father, why is this all happening?’
‘Because there are no trees, my dear. Without a workforce, there’s no one to bring the logs out of the forest, so they sit in desolate heaps, cut and rotting. No one will work there. We have tried everything!’
Ghertrude had never seen him so despondent.
‘The only thing we can do is take what we have and leave,’ sighed her father.
‘Where?’
‘South.’
‘But where?!’
‘I don’t know!’
They sat in silence for a long time, until Cyrena, uncomfortably intrusive in the unexpectedness of the family’s revelation, could hold her tongue no longer. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
There was a glint of annoyance in the old man’s eyes, which smoothed out as he shook his head.
‘No, thank you, dear. You are very kind.’ And then, as if it had only just occurred to him to remember, he said, ‘You can do one thing for us: keep an eye on this little one. Always be her friend.’
Cyrena nodded gravely and he brightened for a moment.
‘Anyway, my daughter, let’s talk about you. What is the important news that you have brought us today?’
The three days since her visit should have given Ghertrude time to get used to the idea of her family’s upheaval, but she could not erase the image of her father’s anger at her news. He could not speak, and had left the room distraught and furious. Since her disclosure, she had slept soundly for only one night, and her dreams had been full of displacements and endings; this was not the nutrient she had intended to feed her child.
She sat alone in the house, searching for a positive stance, when she heard a sound, something moving outside the kitchen door.
‘Sigmund!’ she called out, knowing that it was not he.
She stood up and walked to the door, cracking it open to listen at its gap. Hearing nothing more, she stepped into the hall and looked around. Though she saw it on her first scan, she did not allow herself to acknowledge it. The second look, however, was more deliberate, and it could not be ignored: the white envelope had not been there before. She knew what it was, and was terrified of what it had to say.
G.E.Tulp
The period that has passed since I last addressed you has been much longer than I suggested; it was not necessary to contact you before now. You have performed beyond my hopes. Your conduct and intelligence in all matters has been excellent, and you shall be rewarded
.