Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (11 page)

This showed only the countries of the Empire, afloat in a sea of blue. As if someone had scraped off the others and left
only the island on which he stood and a few more, far away.

“Xeno, here, and I have what you might term
overlapping interests,”
said Dr. Snailwater.

“
You
might say that,” answered Xenocrates Fink.

“And I would be correct, as I almost always am.”

“Hark who thinks much of himself!”

Beth nudged the cat away and sat down in its place. It stalked off, mewling, as she picked up a book spread open on the chair’s arm. Jack removed his goggles, but the spine was too faded to read.

“As I was saying”—the doctor cleared his throat—“overlapping interests. Both scientists, but where I busy myself with the far more sensible nuts and bolts, as it were, his focus is on the more, ah, ethereal arts.”

“Xeno made me alive,” said Beth, not looking up from her book.

“And a splendid job he did, for without him you’d be an unthinking automaton, good only for the shipyards.”

“How, Mr. Fink? How do you do it?” asked Jack. He had not known, until now, that the doctor needed any help, that it wasn’t simply a matter of finding the right gears in his workshop.

“Xeno, if you please. No airs here. A little of this, a little of that. Keep the faeries happy with their nectars—flavored oils, lavender, nutmeg—and they’ll help. Give a
pinch of magic just where it’s needed. Now, what need you from me? Not a soul, unless my eyes do me wrong.” He laughed bitterly through his teeth. “A brain? Are you by chance a nitwit?”

“No,” said Jack, scowling.

“We need to know about doorways, Xeno. Young Jack here’s found himself on the wrong side of one.”

“Risky business,” said Xeno.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.” Except that, in a manner of speaking, Jack had. Jack fell silent as Dr. Snailwater laid out the tale, or as much as he knew of it. Every now and then, Xeno would leap to pull a book from a shelf, the crack in the blue eye sliding over the words.

“No luck when you tried to go back?”

Jack watched another faery, small as a dragonfly, sip from emerald oil. “No,” he said carefully.

“Hmmm. I shall make inquiries. Quietly, of course. Best keep him hidden or disguised, Snailwater. Lorcan’s a right nasty piece of work, just like his mistress. The pair of them, wanting to take us to war with the colonies, as if we don’t have problems here.”

“That’s enough,” said the doctor, glancing at Jack and Beth.

“Yes, yes, of course. Now, you simply must tell me about your land.” Xeno cleared a stack of papers from a chair and
ushered Jack into it, brass jaw grinning. A light glowed behind his eyes.

“Uh, all right.” And so he did, what he knew, what he’d learned from school and Mrs. Pond and eavesdropping on elegant suppers after he was sent to bed. Xeno sat fascinated, and even Beth put down her book as Jack described electric lights.

To them, it seemed that was magic. But Jack thought it boring compared to the faeries and clockwork, the people here with their bits of metal all over.

A thing occurred to him, swimming from the back of his mind to the front.

“D’you think there are others? Doorways, I mean.”

Xeno had no lips to put together in thought, but it seemed as though he would have, if it were possible. Dr. Snailwater ran his real hand through the fluff atop his head, and Beth waited.

Suddenly, Xeno laughed. Wheezy and harsh, his ivory teeth clacking together.

“Others? Of course there must be. Somewhere out there could be a world run by water, or sunlight. Buildings could hang from the sky, the people doing their shopping upside down. The key”—he spread his arms, and a steel faery lit on his rumpled shirtsleeve—“is to accept that anything is possible.”

•  •  •

Xeno fed them a lunch of bread and cheese, a jug of cold water beside to wash the slick grime from Jack’s mouth and throat. Beth ate nothing, but a cup of oil was set out for her and she drank dutifully. The doctor bickered with Xeno until only crumbs remained on the table, their words fast and so laden with interruptions Jack gave up trying to follow the conversation.

“You know,” said Xeno, setting down his knife. “There is one possibility—”

“No, there is not,” answered the doctor, a knowing look in his eye. “You cannot still be playing conkers with
that
old chestnut. It is a
myth
, old friend, and you will not give the lad false hope.”

“What’s a myth?”

“It’s a kind of story,” Beth offered.

“I know
that
,” said Jack. Clearly she still thought he was a bit stupid. “I mean, what are you talking about, Xeno?”

“Never you mind.” The doctor fixed Jack with a firm stare. “Beth, why don’t you take him outside.”

Beth led him through a tiny, cluttered kitchen to a bit of garden, better kept than the courtyard. Powder-winged butterflies flew in clusters with metal ones. Enormous flowers bloomed in a blinding riot of color. More of the tongued mushrooms clung to the walls, snapping at one another.

Overhead, the sky was almost night black, the thick clouds trapping the city lights, providing enough to see by.

He wanted to ask Beth what the myth was. Surely she knew, but that would make it sound as if he wanted to go home. As if he wanted hope, false or not. So he kept silent, watching as she puttered around the flower beds.

A faery, no bigger than his thumb, caught his eye as it scampered up to poke at his shoe. Through the stiff leather, he couldn’t feel it, no matter how hard the creature tried.

Jack leaned down, putting his hand close by, as Wilson had taught him to catch lady birds. The faery tilted its face up to Jack, and it looked very nearly human, eyes and nose and mouth all of steel but otherwise just like a person’s. It climbed slowly onto his palm, and Jack carefully, very slowly, straightened up, raising it to eye level.

“Hello,” he said. The faery watched him with curiosity, but none of the pinching, poking nastiness he’d seen from others. Perhaps Xeno’s oily nectars tamed the ones who lived back here.

It didn’t answer him, but turned in a circle, tiny feet tickling Jack. Filigreed wings fluttered, not quick enough to set it to flight.

Unlike Beth, the faery had none of what might be called
skin
, but it was easy to see how she might look something like this beneath it. Every bone carefully formed, hinges at
knee, elbow, and knuckle. The thinnest filaments sprouting out of its head as hair.

Would it hurt if he took it apart? He’d put it back together, of course, but possibly it was cruel to do such a thing. Who fixed them if they broke, or could they fix themselves, or one another?

Magic as they were, Jack wondered if it wouldn’t be simpler to be made this way.

“Oy!” He scowled at Beth as she ran to him, footsteps heavy, and the faery squeaked, springing up to the air, flying out of sight.

Beth shrugged, unbothered. “There’s loads. You’ll catch another.”

But there was no chance to catch another so that he could puzzle out how they worked. Dr. Snailwater poked his head out the door to call them inside so they could take their leave. Xeno bowed them from the house, and Jack remembered what he had said not long before: that anything was possible.

•  •  •

Jack pondered this all the way back to Harleye Street. They took the train once more, slightly less disorienting this time now he knew what to expect.

Up again on the street, the day’s soot hung thick and black. There’d been no rain to wash it away. Through
the goggles, Jack looked at the homes and offices and Londinium’s towers that poked up through the clouds like pins, their tops hidden completely.

He was a bit tired, and his chest hurt with each breath.

But anything was possible. He could learn magic, or clockwork, and here those things were not so different as in London, but rather entwined, feeding off each other. Mechanical creatures that flew and thought for themselves, mystery and wonder grounded in the metal that was everywhere.

It was silly to think he had to stay hidden. That was hardly any different than what his mother did, and besides, not a single person had said anything about how pink he was, not the whole time he’d been out.

He wanted to be having adventures, exploring. There was so much to see, through the thick glass of his borrowed goggles or not. He wanted to know how everything was put together. How all of it
worked.

Dr. Snailwater’s was filled with clanking, chugging noises as they stepped into the workshop. Upstairs, the train ran around the room, taking its passengers on their journey to nowhere and back again.

“I’ve a few things to do downstairs,” said the doctor when they’d shucked coats and shoes—and—in Jack’s case—goggles and topper. “No mischief up here, now.”

But Jack didn’t want to sit around. “Can I help?” he asked.

Dr. Snailwater gave him an appraising sort of look. “All right. Let’s see if you’re any good with this sort of thing, as you say. Any mucking about and it’s straight back up here with you, mind.”

Jack nodded seriously. Beth followed them, finding a stool in the corner from which to watch. The doctor laid out boxes of screws and tiny brass whatnots, plates and cogs and wheels. A cloth bag held all manner of tools, from hammers big as Jack’s arm to wrenches small as sewing needles.

“What are we doing?”

“Aha.” From inside a burlap sack trapped beneath one of the tables, Dr. Snailwater produced a foot. He set it on the worktop, and before their eyes, it hopped its way over to the edge, then fell to the floor with a
clang.

“Catch it, would you, lad? It won’t stop doing that. The owner isn’t best pleased with tap-dancing everywhere all the day and night. Told him I’d take a gander.”

Jack returned with the foot, which wasn’t exactly easy to carry since it kept trying to jump away. He held it fast as the doctor quickly removed part after part, setting them out in rows until the thing gave a last, forlorn little kick and was finally motionless, half of it still a maze of metal.

“Right then. It’s possible something tainted it, a bit of
faery business or whatnot, and now it’s taken on a life of its own, but we’ll try the usual things first. Here, lad”—the doctor pressed a turnscrew into Jack’s hand—“show me how you’d sort it out.”

They were waiting for him to do something silly. Not because they were unkind; on the contrary, Dr. Snailwater had been very kind, and Beth was all right for a girl without a heart, but he was a stranger here.

Jack took stock of all the pieces: screws and bars, the slightly curved bits that were clearly toenails, the chunk the doctor hadn’t disassembled. The other machines in the room chugged away in time with his thoughts.

The cogs slotted neatly into each other; the wheels spun with a simple flick. All the noise, the clutter, the feeling of eyes on him faded away.

He chose a turnscrew from Dr. Snailwater’s tools and set to work on the rest of the foot.

Odd, really, to think that it was a foot. A man walked on this, went about his day, perhaps removed it nightly for sleep and surely put it out of harm’s way while bathing.

One by one, the pieces came away, until only a small knot of metal parts, screwed so tight they were nearly a solid lump, remained on the table.

“Need a hand, lad?” the doctor asked.

Jack wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve. “No,” he
answered, gasping with the effort of loosening the screws. A cog came away, clunking to the table.

Something hissed. A pink mist billowed. Sparks flared and died within it.

“Beth. A jar, if you please. Hurry.”

Jack stared at the cloud rising above the worktop as Beth handed a small, heavy-lidded jar to the doctor. A quick swipe, and the odd pink stuff was trapped, humming, fizzing against the glass.

“That rather explains it,” said the doctor.

“What is it?” Jack watched more sparks burst. “Faery magic?”

“Don’t know as you’d call it magic, really. Not if everything’s got a soul. Bit got trapped where it shouldn’t be, that’s all. Not enough to be a whole one. Doubt the creature’s missing it.”

“How . . . How big is a whole one?”

“Depends. Needs about a brandy bottle for a faery, bigger for a person. Glad we got that sorted. You’ve not done a bad job, lad. Think you can put it all back together?”

Jack thought so, and did. It was fiddly work, and once or twice the doctor cleared his throat, so as to let Jack know he was about to use the wrong piece, but in a very kind way. Finally, the foot, complete and still and gleaming from a quick polish, was back in its burlap sack under the table.

Dr. Snailwater served a thick stew for supper for himself and Jack, another cup of oil for Beth. Soon after, her hands began to slow and words to slur. She settled herself in an armchair and went still, hands folded over her pretty, frayed dress. Dr. Snailwater dragged an enormous copper tub into the kitchen and filled it with pan after pan of hot water for Jack.

Even the soap was black, but it lathered well enough, and it felt lovely to be clean.

The nightdress fell to his ankles, striped like a prisoner’s uniform.

He selected a book—F. Z. Montague’s
The Personages of Starlight
—for no reason other than it was close by. It was cozy, with the fire lit, the scent of stew still filling the room. Back in London, he would’ve been sent to bed by now, hidden away while his parents entertained, not sat in a lovely warm room, reading in companionable silence with a strange doctor and an even stranger windup girl. He read until Beth wound down and the doctor bade him good night, then fell into his blankets and slept a peaceful sleep.