Mechanica (12 page)

S
HE
grabbed my kerchief and yanked it hard, forcing me inside. I caught sight of Piety in the shadows, her eyes cold.

Stepmother dragged me farther in and twisted my hair to make me face her. Rough pain shocked my scalp, and I heard some strands stretch and snap. I grabbed her wrist and curled my palms tight around it, pulling her skin in opposite directions. She cried out, but didn’t release me.

“We’ve been in your room, Nick,” she said, “and imagine what we found there. I should have known you weren’t capable of such fine sewing on your own.”

“I—” I gasped, the pain still sharp. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Shut it,” said Chastity, walking down the stairs. Her heavy skirt rustled on the staircase. “We found it, Nick. What, you thought we wouldn’t?”

Stepmother gripped me harder, and her long fingernails scraped against my forehead, drawing a trickle of blood. “She never was very smart. She got that from her father, I imagine.” She laughed softly.

Chastity kept advancing until her face was only inches from mine. “Poor Nick,” she whispered, and when her mother scoffed, she raised her hand. “Poor Nick, too stupid to keep her soot off the stairs. Why, your bedroom is thick with it!” She waved a black-dusted finger in front of my eyes, then smeared it across my nose. Stepmother produced a handkerchief from her apron pocket, and Chastity delicately wiped her hand.

Soot in my bedroom? I’d been so careful . . .

“And that dress!” Stepmother laughed again. “What on earth! Could you possibly have thought we would let you attend the ball with us? And in
that?
”

The ball? I tried to think, but Stepmother’s hold drove too much pain through my mind.

She let go of me at last, and I swung my fist at her face. I landed a punch, but Chastity was already behind me—I’d never have thought her so quick—and she pinned my arms behind my back.

Stepmother touched her cheek, prodding for a swell. “Piety,” she said, her voice soft and dangerous, “go find me some ice.”

“What?” Piety emerged from the shadows by the door, frowning at her mother. “Let Nick do tha—oh. Right.” She trotted to the kitchen.

Stepmother and Chastity manhandled me up the stairs and down the corridors, to the drafty servants’ quarters where I slept. Stepmother opened the door, and Chastity shoved me inside.

My only lamp was lit, burning out the oil for who knew how long. I could see a trail of soot on the floor. I crouched down, my scalp still aching too much for me to think clearly, and stroked my finger along the path of tiny hoof prints through my bedroom.

“Nice rat you had there,” said Chastity. “Had to stamp on the pest three times before it quit moving.” She kicked something by my side; I heard a rattle and clank. A tiny gear rolled into my line of sight, leaving a thin string of oil in its path.

“Jules—” I knelt and touched the gear, refusing to believe. I turned.

A small mess of copper and steel and shattered glass was splayed across my ragged carpet, just next to Chastity’s daintily booted foot. The only parts still intact were his chain-link tail and a bit of glass that read
II.

I kept whispering his name, “Jules, Jules,” while the Steps stood over me, watching. I wanted to stand up and pummel Chastity, but my body was sluggish and obstinate, and it kept me on the floor. I stayed still, trying to catch breaths that wouldn’t come.

“Mechanic Nick,” said Stepmother, moving closer. “It’s too perfect, really.”

“I think we should call her Cinder-Nick,” scoffed Chastity. “After how dirty she is. You know, from the soot.”

“You needn’t explain,” Piety said, coming through the door. She handed Stepmother some ice wrapped in a cloth napkin. “We understand your reference, you nitwit.”

“Piety!” Stepmother snapped. “You mustn’t speak to your sister like that.”

“I’m only saying I like your name better, Mother,” said Piety. “Though it’s a bit repetitive. I think we should call her Mecha-Nick—Mechanick . . . Mechanica.”

Stepmother smiled. “It does have a certain resonance,” she said. “And since she’ll hardly be able to continue in that line of work now”—I cringed, imagining what else they must have destroyed—“she’ll relish her new name all the more.”

She reached down and grabbed my chin, pulling my face up so I had to look at her. “Mechanica,” she said, rolling her tongue around each syllable, “you will stay in this room for two days; do not think I’ll be foolish enough to put you in that cellar again. We are accustomed enough to your incompetence to get by without your services for that long. At the end of that time, you will resume your chores and your dressmaking. Until then, there will be no food, no water, and not a word from any of us. Perhaps then you will come to appreciate your station here, and the company of your family, rather than waste your time with disobedience.”

She pushed me down again and left the room, her daughters trailing behind her. I heard the key turn as she locked the door.

I stayed where she’d left me, crumpled on the floor, clutching Jules’s gear and torn between grief and anger. I tried to move a few times, but my limbs shook too much.

When I finally gathered the strength, I pushed myself up and crawled into bed. I pulled my thin coverlet over my head and let myself cry, sure that the Steps would no longer be near enough to hear me.

I hadn’t cried in years. My dull, lonely life had been too monotonous for the drama of tears, before today. I remembered almost crying at Market, when I thought I’d lost Caro’s friendship before I’d gained it in the first place. And now I’d lost Jules, my very greatest friend.

The quilt soon grew damp and I made myself stop, not wanting it to frost over in the night, my room being so far from the fireplaces.

The snow was picking up, and white sheets drifted across my window. I forced myself to breathe evenly. I dragged my hand across my eyes and buried my face in a rag-stuffed pillow.

I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep, because in my dream I was still in bed, trying not to cry. I was still cold enough to shiver under my coverlet.

I heard a soft clinking on the floor, but didn’t look over until the sound grew into a small crash, like a wineglass breaking in reverse. I thought Chastity had come back, and the only thing that gave me the strength to sit up and look was the prospect of getting my revenge for Jules’s death.

I saw only the metal and glass scraps on the floor. At first I thought I’d imagined the noise—but then the scraps began to move. I heard the backwards glass-breaking sound again, and a few shards of Jules’s body jumped into the air and fused together.

They settled to the floor. For a moment they were still.

Then everything moved at once. Gears rolled forward, nestling inside the healed glass, fastening themselves to rods and joints and each other. A copper ear skittered over the rug, clipping to Jules’s forehead, which in turn joined his neck. More glass mingled, more gears clicked. They came together in a crescendo rush, and in a snapping, clanking, shivering movement, Jules was whole again.

He cocked his head to the side, and his ears pricked forward, greeting me. I laughed and felt the corners of my mouth tremble.

Jules cantered over to the bed and reared, pawing the threadbare blanket with his hooves. I bent to pick him up, but he jumped suddenly and I heard another crack. I cried out, unwilling to lose him again so soon.

Fissures appeared on his flanks and back, and his ears flattened to his skull in panic.

I clambered off my bed, trying to reach him, then stopped, realizing with a dreamer’s clarity that there was nothing I could do but watch.

The cracks grew over him like vines, faster and faster. At first he bucked, whinnying metallic screeches. Then he gradually stilled, looking up at me with frightened eyes.

He was growing.

New, molten glass leached out between his fissures, cooled, and hardened only to crack again and make room for more. The gears inside him moaned and creaked, and metal filings gathered at the base of his transparent stomach, then flew up again and formed more joints and chains and gears. Black smoke poured from his nostrils.

Soon he was the size of a large dog, then a man, and still he grew and grew, until he towered over my bed, as big as any plow horse I’d ever seen. Glass dripped down his flanks like sweat, a few rivulets still glowing with heat.

At last he shook his head and huffed, then nuzzled his copper nose against my shoulder to let me know he was all right. He smelled like a smithy.

Jules walked over to my closet, each heavy step making the floorboards creak. He nudged open the door and, finding the closet empty, stomped a rear hoof and butted it closed again.

I wondered what he was looking for; my closet was bare. Then I remembered Stepmother’s words when she’d confronted me earlier: “Could you possibly have thought we would let you attend the ball with us? And in
that?
”

“Jules—” I gasped. “You made me a dress?”

He returned to me and knelt by the bed, joints creaking under his new weight. “Get on,” he huffed, his voice low and graveled, and in the dream, it was only natural that he could speak.

I climbed onto his back, and then he was running, or maybe flying, and I felt the hum of his gears under me, the heat from his furnace warming my legs. We left my room through the window, and Jules galloped toward the forest behind Lampton Manor.

He halted, finally, beside a tall oak tree drooping with snow. I clutched his neck, my ribs still heaving as I gasped from the thrill of the ride. I knew this tree: my parents’ graves lay under it. The snow was so deep, I could not see the gravestones.

“Look up,” he said, and I did. A sumptuous ball gown was caught in the tree, all dark and shining, the train sweeping toward the ground. Wind battered the silk and lace, but the branches cradled the dress well, and it looked unharmed.

“It’s beautiful, Jules,” I whispered, stroking his neck. Tears froze in my eyes before I could cry. “I’m sorry I forgot your charcoal.”

Jules huffed sharply and shook his head. “Get down, Mechanica,” he said, and coming from him, suddenly I thought I liked the name, even if it had first been spoken by the Steps. Mechanic and Nick: the thing I loved and myself. Mechanica.

I dismounted, but kept one hand pressed to his side. My feet sank into the fresh, powdered snow.

Jules reared and then barreled forward, his head colliding with the oak tree. A sharp crack broke through the air. The dress shifted a bit in the branches, but stayed aloft. He backed up and rammed the tree again, with the same result. He did it again, and a third loud thud echoed through my dream.

“Stop it, Jules,” I said. “It won’t help . . .” And then I realized that the noise I was hearing wasn’t right, didn’t fit with the dream somehow. Then I knew I slept, and I woke to my cold room and thin mattress, the top of my blanket soaked and frosted stiff with tears.

My hand ached—I opened it and saw that the gear was still clutched in my fist, its spikes piercing my skin and drawing tiny drops of blood. I remembered that Jules was still gone, and I was still trapped.

I heard the thudding noise again and jumped. It seemed to come from outside, and I looked over and saw stripes cutting through the snow on my window.

A rock hit the pane, making another thud and another stripe through the snow.

I scrambled out of bed and opened the window, wincing against the freezing air. It was dark outside, and it had stopped snowing; I hadn’t realized I’d slept so long.

Someone waved at me from the ground. “Can you come down?”

I could not identify the whisper, couldn’t even tell if the voice was male or female. The view from my window faced the back lawn, just like my workshop did; this side of the house was both the coldest and the most secluded. I could see a white expanse of snow below me, and a dark figure, but I had no idea who it was.

I briefly worried that the Steps would somehow hear our hushed conversation . . . but suddenly I realized that I didn’t care. They had killed Jules and destroyed the workshop—nothing else they could do really mattered to me.

I was freer now, in a way, than I’d been before.

“Well?” the rock thrower whispered again.

I stared down. I was on the third story, but exposed wooden beams ran all the way down to the ground, crisscrossing the white walls. I silently thanked whichever of my ancestors’ architects had come up with that idea.

“I think so,” I hissed back. I pictured the Steps inside, oblivious to my new adventure. The moon was barely up; they were probably reading Scriptures in the parlor right now, safely on the other side of the house.

I retreated into my room and wrapped my kerchief tight over my ears, then found the bulky coat in the back of my closet that used to belong to Father’s driver. It hung comically large on me, but at least it was warm. I dug through the pockets and pulled out my old moth-eaten mittens. I wondered, for the hundredth time, why Mr. Candery’s cupboard of Fey helpmeets didn’t include moth repellant.

The window stuck halfway up. I wouldn’t fit through unless it opened all the way, so I put all my weight behind it and shoved as hard as I could. The wood groaned, and I heard a crack, but it opened. I ran my mittened hands over the panes, checking for damage; there was only one small fissure in the glass, toward the bottom. I shivered, remembering my dream.

I climbed outside and let my legs dangle until my foot brushed against the first beam. I stretched my arm up to close the window, but I couldn’t quite reach. I left it, knowing an open window wouldn’t matter if the Steps found I was gone.

Gripping the window frame, I stepped down. The wall was slick and icy, and my feet wobbled on their narrow hold. I saw a beam to my right and reached for it, then held on tight as I lowered myself again. Snow lay thick on my next foothold, and some seeped through the tops of my boots.

I paused for a moment to breathe. I’d never been afraid of heights, but clinging to an icy wall with almost twenty feet between my body and the ground wasn’t particularly appealing. Holding my breath, I felt downward for the next beam.