Clockwork Twist : Trick (5 page)

Twist's consciousness drifted back to him slowly on the sound of the whispering wind.  For a moment he stayed still, lying on the bales of cotton near the top of the cargo hold, and kept his eyes closed.  The crisp air smelled of salt.  The ship sailed so smoothly beneath him that for a moment, he thought he was in the sky again.

Twist finally opened his eyes to see Myra's copper face lying close beside him, her eyes closed and her form perfectly still in the thin morning light.  He remembered her curling up on her own corner of the cotton, farther away, before he'd fallen asleep the night before.  But now, she was right beside him, clasping one of his hands in hers.  Twist's Sight was the last part of him to wake.  The moment it did, his attention slipped swiftly into her sleepy stillness.  It was so deep, comfortable and cool in her peace that it took a long while for him to even think of leaving it.

He gently—carefully—slipped his fingers out of her grip without waking her, and then pushed himself up to sit.  Jonas was still asleep as well, bundled up in a wool blanket a little farther off.  Twist pushed his own blanket away and felt somewhat enlivened as the chilly air rushed in to take its place.  Still dressed in his white cotton shirt and black trousers from the day before, Twist grabbed his discarded jacket and his boots as he crept to the edge of the piled-up cotton.  Climbing out onto the main deck, he found a few of the sailors tightening the rigging in the dawn wind.  They offered him casual nods and remained at their work.

Twist pulled his jacket close around him and stood at the railing to look out at the sea.  The waves bounded by at a rapid pace as they had the day before, but now Twist could just barely make out a coastline in the morning mist.  A thin line of land sat on the horizon to the north— creeping slowly nearer as it continued to glide by—while open and endless sea stretched out to the south.

As he studied the world around him, Twist once again wished he knew more about geography.  He couldn't guess the name of the land he saw, or even the waters they now moved through.  Jonas had mentioned something about the Arabian Sea the night before, but Twist didn't have any idea of its size.  So he could only watch and wonder while the ship sailed so hurriedly through the unknown.

After a while, one of the sailors approached him.  It was the youngest member of the crew, and he offered Twist a hesitant smile as he said something.  It took Twist a second to realize that it might be English, though with a very thick accent.

“I'm sorry?” Twist asked slowly.

“Hot,” the boy said, holding out a tin cup to Twist. “Good.  You like?”

“Oh!” Twist muttered as he recognized the scent of coffee wafting out of the cup in the boy's hand.  He took it with a smile and a nod. “Thank you.”

The boy seemed quite pleased, and in fact somewhat relieved, when Twist took the tin cup from him and tried a sip.  He didn't, however, seem to be in a great hurry to leave.  Twist had read about communication across linguistic borders in novels.  It seemed that pointing and smiling was the best way to proceed.  Out of pure curiosity, Twist decided to give it a try.

“Where is that?” he asked slowly, pointing to the coast to the north.  The boy glanced after his point, then looked back to him blankly. “That land,” Twist tried again, “what is it?”

“Land?” the boy repeated, looking to the coast.

“Yes,” Twist said, nodding.  “What land is it?  What's its name?”

The boy's face flashed with sudden understanding. “Yemen,” he said certainly.

“Yemen,” Twist murmured, searching his memory for anything similar.

“Arabia,” the boy said, drawing the shape of the peninsula on his palm with a finger for Twist to see.  Twist nodded again once the boy's accent filtered through his hearing to the word he knew.  The boy then pointed to the lower right corner of the imagined image he'd drawn. “Yemen,” he said again.  He then pointed to the lower left corner and said, “Oman.  We go...” he added, tracing his finger around the invisible corner of Yemen, then up the west coast of Arabia.

“Oh, I see,” Twist said, smiling as he nodded.  The boy smiled back, looking pleased with himself again.  “Thank you,” Twist offered, feeling positively triumphant.

Another voice came to them from afar.  The boy and Twist turned to look, to find Jonas approaching them.  He said something to the boy that Twist couldn't follow, but the boy laughed and shook his head, responding quickly in the same language.  They spoke for a moment more before the boy hurried off.

“So, you figured out where we are, then?” Jonas asked Twist with a smile.

“Off the coast of Yemen, apparently,” Twist said, sounding more proud than he'd intended to.

“Yeah, just about at the Gulf of Aden, by the look of it,” Jonas said, peering over the bow to a new, just-visible coast in front of the ship. “We'll be entering the Red Sea soon.”

“Oh, now you're just showing off,” Twist grumbled.

Jonas laughed and shook his head. “I'm supposed to know my geography,” he said. “I'm the sky pirate, remember?  I'm very impressed you got coffee and our location, all on your own.”

Twist couldn't easily ignore the patronizing tone, but he also couldn't detect any true malice in Jonas's voice.  Just then, the boy returned with another tin cup of coffee for Jonas.  Jonas seemed to thank him and they both continued to talk for a little longer.  Twist turned to the railing and watched Yemen drift by until the boy left them again.

"There you are!" Myra's voice accused as her metal feet carried her quickly across the deck with a rhythmic ticking sound.

She rushed past Jonas to wrap both arms around Twist's waist before he had quite enough time to turn round, jolting him in her rush.  Twist's senses were instantly overrun with a sparkling wave of triumph.

"Found you," Myra said, smiling at him.

"Indeed you have."  Twist smiled back and petted her wire hair, which was now bound at the crown of her head to hang down her back in a long tail.

"Why don't I ever get hugs?" Jonas asked.

Myra turned—not releasing Twist—and gave him a curious look. "You're not Twist," she answered flatly.

"Of course," Jonas said, his understanding tone rather thin, "That's a perfectly logical reason."  Twist felt a ripple of annoyance through Myra's copper skin.

"You're just jealous," Twist declared flippantly.  The moment the words left his mouth, he realized they weren't even slightly his own.  The expression on Jonas's face betrayed exactly the same sentiment.

"Exactly," Myra said, grinning proudly.

"That's getting creepy," Jonas said to Twist.

Twist understood his meaning, and moved to loosen Myra’s grip on him.  She hardly seemed to notice as her attention shifted to the coast now filling the northern horizon.  Jonas let Twist tell her its name first, and then filled in more information as needed, himself.

The ship was speeding quickly around the south-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, past Somalia, and entering the Red Sea.  By mid-day, they had passed Ethiopia and come to Sudan to the west, and were off the coast of the famous city of Mocha to the east, half way up the coast of Arabia.  Rounded rock mountains and smooth flat coasts of cream-and-gray sand seemed to line the dark, cerulean waters of the Red Sea in one continuous palette, dotted sparingly with ports, towns, and palm trees.

Even with the apparent vacancy of the land around it, this long, narrow sea was considerably more crowded than the open Arabian Sea had been, as vessels hurried from one end to the other.  Consequently, Myra wanted to stay out on deck all day, watching the endless variation of ships glide by on all sides.

Though the sun was already falling behind the tall, jagged, dusty mountains that stood on the eastern coast of Egypt, it felt like little time had passed at all when the ship slowed and slipped gracefully into the Gulf of Suez.  Twist could easily see the mouth of the canal under the pale blue sky—a wide, straight channel with sharp edges against the soft and shifting desert all around it—beside a relatively small and utilitarian looking town nestled at the edge of the sea.  Twist had expected something much more impressive, given that this was a place he had actually heard of.

“Not much, is it?” he remarked to Jonas as the ship pulled into a tiny, square-walled shipping yard, just to the side of the canal.

“It's not a tourist spot,” Jonas said with a shrug. “No one usually stops here.  They just go on north to the Mediterranean or south, down to India or China.  Suez is just a place one passes through.”

“So, where's the city?” Myra asked, returning to them on the deck after having taken a run around all sides to find the best view of the sunset.

“Right here,” Jonas said, waving a hand to the clump of buildings behind the shipyard.

“Oh,” Myra said, frowning slightly. “I thought Egypt would be more … legendary.”

“I've got to take you two to Cairo and Giza and win back Egypt's good name,” Jonas muttered, shaking his head.

Once the ship was docked, the large sailor with the gold teeth called something to Jonas.  He and Myra both turned to respond with words Twist couldn’t decipher.  He understood the basic idea, however, as Jonas and Myra both moved to disembark.

Having only stopped to pick up food for their dinner and drop off their passengers, the crew of the cotton ship left Suez within the hour, speeding elegantly up the long canal.

“So, why didn't we just stay with them?” Twist asked as he, Jonas, and Myra wondered the wharfs at the edge of the small city.  All around them, Egyptian workers loaded cargo to and fro along the bare, dry wood.

“Because they're taking the canal,” Jonas answered. “Every ship that takes it has to log their cargo and passenger manifests in Port Said at the other end.  The mags watch the canal because there are so many archeological digs around here.”

“I'm very glad you know that,” Twist said with total honesty.  “Then, how do we get to Paris from here?”

“Actually, I wasn't kidding about Cairo.  There's a world-class airship dock there, and one of the seven wonders of the world, and some great street food...” he continued, now counting on his fingers and looking more excited as he spoke, “I know this really good gambling den just off the Nile.  Oh, and there's mummies in all the museums.”

“Real mummies?” Myra asked, looking frightened.

Jonas looked at her critically. “Are you afraid of dead people?”  She only stared at him for a moment before she caught his meaning.

“I'm not dead,” Myra snapped crossly. “I just got a new body.”

“Right, that's not scary at all,” Jonas said, smiling tightly.  Twist let his annoyance out with a sigh while Myra pouted pointedly at Jonas.

“So, how do we get to Cairo, then?” he asked tightly.

“The train would work well,” Jonas said, ignoring Myra's pout completely.  He glanced at the wooden sign that stood near the end of the wharf, and then led the group into the city.  For all the world, Twist could see nothing but curly lines on the sign, with not a word among them.

The city began to look like a somewhat more interesting place to Twist as he and his companions began to walk through it.  While the buildings were of a simple, blocky construction with little in the way of ornament at all, and both the streets and the walls of every structure were of the same sandy color, the crowds that hurried down the dusty streets and filled the wide squares were amazingly international to his eye.  He saw people who looked European, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and even British.  Upon turning a corner, Twist stopped in sudden shock.

“What's wrong?” Jonas asked, surprised by the sharpness of Twist's motion.

“That's the Union Jack,” Twist declared, pointing to a small house in the corner of the square, and at the English flag that wafted in the breeze before it.

“Oh, it looks very colorful,” Myra observed hopefully, keeping her eyes on Twist.

“That's probably the consulate,” Jonas offered.

“Can we go inside?” Twist asked him.

“Why would we?”

“Because it's England in there.”

“Really?” Myra asked, obviously wondering at how a whole country could fit into a two-story house, before dismissing the idea with a shake of her head.

“Whatever,” Jonas said, smiling now. “You know, there was a consulate in Bombay too.”

“I didn't think of it then,” Twist said quickly as he hurried to the house.

The door opened instantly under his hand to reveal a small office with a wooden floor, flowered wallpaper, sun-beaten velvet curtains around the windows, and a portrait of Queen Victoria on the far wall.  There were also a few desks covered with papers and books, with chairs on both sides of them.  The center desk was the only one currently in use, occupied by a small man in a gray tweed suit who was pouring himself a cup of tea from a round, ceramic pot.  He looked up over his bushy red mustache at Twist.

“Oh hello,” he said brightly. “How can I help you?”

Twist stared at the tea pot on the desk, and at the butter biscuits on the little plate beside it.  He inhaled deeply the wafting scent of paper, ink, and proper tea, and focused on the fact that the ground beneath his feet was technically English soil.  A single tear burned into the corner of his eye, and his heart filled to the brim with a gravity that could have dragged him down through the Earth and all the way back to his home.

He gave himself one moment, and then took in a deep breath, whipped away the tear, and tipped his top hat to the man behind the desk before he turned to leave.  He shut the door behind him and found Myra and Jonas on the curb outside, back in Egypt under the setting sun.

“Did you get what you needed?” Jonas asked.

“Yes, I think I did,” Twist said, pulling himself into a taller posture.  He held his walking stick with a bit more dignity, and offered his arm to Myra. “Shall we continue?”

Myra took his arm with a smile and Jonas turned away to hide his own smile from Twist.  Together, they continued on towards the train station, and to Cairo beyond.