Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (26 page)

It wasn’t his fault. He did what any sensible person would have done, given the terms of the curse. And what was one confused, newborn life compared to a hundred sleeping royalty and servants, and the damage that would come to a kingdom left bereft of rule, defense, or direction?

Such an easy calculus to make, that only one man had to die. Puissant just wished it hadn’t been him who’d done the killing.

Now, if he could ever find that stupid little fae witch who’d laid the curse, he might have a purpose in violence. But he was done with ambition, and wanted to see his father before the old man died.

Somewhere far behind the prince, a woman sobbed.

“L
et me get a good look at you,” Sykesky said, eyeing his friend like a housewife judging the freshness of a side of beef.

Mose did as he was told, straightening his narrow shoulders and throwing out his birdlike chest as best he could. As an afterthought, he spat in his hand and used it to slick back his bushy, bright red hair. He was about to polish the tops of his brogans against the back of his pants legs, only to stop for fear of the boots disintegrating. Sykesky circled Mose, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze traveling up and down the smaller youth’s slender frame as he stood at attention. Mose had always been a slight child, even in the best of times, but eating out of garbage cans had reduced him even further.

Mose was sixteen and had been living on his own ever since his mother succumbed to the white death, nearly two years before, leaving him an orphan. He made a living, such as it was, picking rags and hawking the
Herald
when he could scrape up the
pennies to buy papers, as well as the occasional thievery. But he was getting too old to be a newsie, and had little chance of landing an apprenticeship. There was only one real option for a young man such as himself, without education or patronage, if he wanted to survive to adulthood: he had to get himself ganged up.

Of the various gangs on the Lower East Side of New York City, the Bowery Boys were the natural choice, as they were easily the largest and most powerful, with connections to nearby City Hall that the Dead Rabbits and the Roach Guard did not share. Most important, the Boys enjoyed a great deal of social status as volunteer firefighters and owned their very own pumper engine. Thanks to their speedy response time and willingness to rush into burning tenements, the gang made a nice bit of money from the fire insurance companies, often winning sizable bonuses for being the first engine to arrive. Because of this steady, and relatively respectable, means of income, many a young fellow in dire circumstances had found his fortunes reversed after becoming one of the fabled Bowery Boys. Indeed, Sykesky was living proof. Where once his friend had been dressed in rags, now he wore the red shirt, black flared trousers, and black vest that served as the Bowery Boys’ uniform, with the traditional black stovepipe hat perched rakishly atop his well-oiled hair.

Mose had known William Sykes since they were both three years old, having grown up together in Mulberry Bend. Upon seeing Sykesky’s transformation from street urchin to flashy tough, Mose had asked his old chum to recommend him for membership. Sykesky had first tried to dissuade the smaller boy, but Mose had persisted, reminding him of the time he’d saved his life by yanking him out of the way of a teamster’s wagon when they were eight years old. Sykesky finally relented and agreed to introduce him to Horseshoe Harry, the leader of the Bowery Boys.

The Green Dragon Saloon, located on Broome Street, just west of the Bowery, was the gang’s favorite haunt and de facto clubhouse. Sykesky pushed open the double doors of the saloon, revealing a long, pitch-black hallway. As Mose trailed behind his
friend, he had the uneasy certainty that his passage was being watched by others hidden in the surrounding darkness. At the end of the corridor was another pair of swinging doors that opened onto a room with a sawdust-strewn floor, on one side of which was a lengthy, polished wooden bar fitted with a brass foot rail. Behind the bar was hung a large mirror, and above that was a painting of a nude woman sprawled across a tiger skin rug. In the musician’s alcove, near the back of the room, a sodden pianist was muddling his way through “Buffalo Gals,” accompanied by an equally inebriated fiddle player. The walls of the Green Dragon were lined by wooden booths filled with boisterous young men dressed identically to Sykesky, drinking foaming tankards of beer, smoking pipes and cigars, and playing at dice or cards. And the loudest and tallest was none other than Horseshoe Harry, the leader.

Sykesky announced himself to his boss by loudly coughing into his fist. Horseshoe Harry, who got his name for his ability to unbend said item with his bare hands, stood over six feet tall, his stovepipe hat drawn down over one eye, his trousers tucked into his boot-tops, the smoldering stub of a cigar pointing from his lips toward the ceiling, his jaw jutting forward contemptuously, as if inviting the world to take a swing, if it dare.

“What d’ya want—Sykes, is it?” he growled.

“Yes, sir,” Sykesky said, clearly pleased that the gang leader had remembered his surname. “I got that kid I told you about—the one that’s looking to join.” He turned and motioned to Mose, who stepped forward.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he said, touching his forelock in deference.

Horseshoe Harry snorted and hawked a wad of phlegm onto the barroom floor, alongside the boy’s poorly shod feet. “What’s yer name, kid?”

“Mose Humphries.”

“Ya look like a bog hopper t’me,” the gang leader snarled, gesturing to the youth’s shock of ginger-colored hair. “The Boys don’t take no micks. We don’t
have no truck with papists, neither. We leave that trash for the Dead Rabbits. We only take native-born, God-fearing Protestants.”

“I ain’t no Catlick,” Mose replied tersely. “My folks was from Wales. But I was born in Mulberry Bend, on Ragpickers Row.”

This seemed to mollify Horseshoe Harry enough for him to take the cigar from his mouth and give Mose a closer look. “So ya wanna join up, eh? Ya gotta be tough to run with the Boys, but it looks to me ya couldn’t wrestle out a turd.”

“I’m tough enough,” Mose said, pulling himself up to his full height of five foot one as he jutted his chin out in imitation of the Bowery Boys’ legendary braggadocio. “And I ain’t scared of nothin’.”

“The boy’s scrappy as a terrier,” Sykesky assured his boss. “I seen him snatch a wharf rat up by the tail and bash its brains out on a paving stone when we was six.”

Horseshoe Harry studied the slender youth dressed in stinking rags for a long moment before he finally spoke. “Seeing how ye’re a native son of our beloved country, and ain’t a bead rattler, I’m gonna be generous and set ya a task. If you can perform it to my satisfaction, you’re in the gang. All y’have to do is man the pumper.” He turned to look at his fellows lounging about the Green Dragon. “Whattaya say, lads?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door at the back of the saloon. “Let’s go see if the kid’s got what it takes!”

There was a roar of agreement and within seconds Mose found himself swept along by the tide of rowdy young men and dragged down the street to the Bowery Boys’ “firehouse,” where their pump engine was kept. Upon arriving, Mose saw that the doors were chained shut and bound by a padlock the size of a baby’s head. Horseshoe Harry fished an equally oversized key from his waistcoat and removed the lock, swinging open the door to reveal the gang’s most prized possession.

It was, indeed, a sight to behold, with a square, flat body the size and shape of a piano box fashioned from pure mahogany, with gilded moldings that gleamed like the brass on a rich man’s
coffin. The words A
MERICA
L
IBERTY
, draped in Old Glory, were painted on the front, and the accompanying hose cart was red with blue-and-white striping, in keeping with the patriotic theme. Resting atop its large wheels was an air chamber, and a pair of folding wooden pump bars, known as brakes, that ran horizontally and were long enough to accommodate six men on each side. There was no finer pump engine in all the city of Manhattan.

“Show me what ya got, kid,” Horseshoe Harry said, gesturing with his smoldering cigar.

Mose eyed the engine for a moment and then stepped up to the brake that was closest to him, which was tilted upward, like a teeter-totter. Standing on his tiptoes, he wrapped his hands firmly about the heavy wooden pump bar and pulled it downward. Or, at least, he tried to, as the brake barely budged. Mose let go, spat into his palms, shook his arms out, and grabbed the handle a second time, grimacing as he yanked it toward the floor with a mighty grunt. This time the brake obeyed, accompanied by a sound like that of a huge blacksmith’s bellows.

“
See?
” Mose grinned, turning his head to look at Horseshoe Harry and the others, who stood gathered in the doorway. “I
told
you I was tough enough—!”

Just as he spoke, the brake began its return journey, yanking Mose free of his rotting boots, much to the amusement of the Bowery Boys and their leader. Mose yelped in alarm as he suddenly found himself dangling a foot or more off the floor, his bare feet kicking the empty air for purchase, while the assembled gang howled like a band of baboons. The embarrassed youth let go of the brake and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, his face an even brighter shade of red than his hair. Snatching up his decrepit footwear, he dashed out of the firehouse into the gathering dusk, his ears ringing with their derisive laughter.

M
ose stood at the end of the pier and stared down at the reflection of the stars in the dark and swiftly moving waters of the East
River as he tried to work up the nerve to surrender to its wet embrace. He did not particularly wish to snuff it, but could not find a good reason to keep on living. Every day of his young life had been a struggle. He honestly could not remember a time when he had not fought to keep himself from starving, bodily harm, or despair. He was born puny and had stayed that way in a culture that valued brute strength above all else. He was without family, without influence, and without means. In a day or so his rent would be due, and all he had to his name were the filthy rags on his back and a single, much-worn penny in his pocket—and it cost a half dime to sleep in the old wardrobe on Mrs. Murphy’s landing.

What was the point of keeping body and soul together? He was a runt, a pathetic weakling. He couldn’t even claim to be a proper cripple, like Dead Legs Turpin or Deaf Willie. He might as well throw himself in the drink and get it all over with. Drowning might not be the ideal death, but at least it was a good deal cheaper than buying poison, and nowhere near as messy as stepping out in front of a train. He took a deep breath, more to steady his nerves than prolong his life, and prepared himself for the cold, dark river.

But just as he was about to jump, a star broke free of the firmament above and shot toward the startled young man, lighting up the night sky like a flare fired from the deck of a sinking ship. Mose watched, mouth agape, as it arced over his head and landed with a loud report at the edge of the riverbank. The pier quaked mightily, as if shaken by an angry giant, nearly hurling him into the water.

Mose hurried to the foot of the pier, all thoughts of suicide erased from his mind. He hopped down onto the riverbank below to see what had plummeted from the heavens above, only to find a crater the size of the Bowery Boys’ pump engine gouged in the rocky soil, steam rising from the hole like from a potato roasting in the coals of a fire. He cast about and found a length of driftwood long enough to serve as a poking stick, just in case there was a moon man waiting to jump out at him.

As he looked down into the hole, he saw what looked like a
misshapen sphere of iron roughly the size of his fist, its edges still glowing orange, as if plucked fresh from a blacksmith’s forge. Mose’s heart leaped in his chest. He knew that a scientist like the famous Professor Tolliver would pay handsomely for such a miraculous find—perhaps as much as twenty dollars.