Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (22 page)

The Vapours rush down over the escarpment in an angry wave, swallowing trees and rocks and hillside behind us like the grim reaper wielding its scythe of death. My head twists back and forth, gauging its distance from us. Terror swamps my soul as its force closes in.

“Don’t look back!” Urlick hollers to me. “Think only of the door on the Compound and getting through it!”

I twist my head back around and squint to focus. “I don’t see it! I can’t see it!” I panic.

“Neither can I! You just need to believe it’s there!”

He tugs my arm, and I stumble along beside him, believing I see it, imagining the door to safety lurks just beyond the next patch of trolling fog, battling against the demons in my mind that say otherwise, Vapours roaring up behind us.

The black rock that forms the escarpment at the back of the Compound finally appears. Jagged pieces of its rock pierce the cloud cover and my heart swells with hope. Dark smoke roils up from the bottomless pit that lies between the rock and the Compound’s edge. The one I peered into from my bedroom window the night Pan discovered me. Pan. Where is she now?

I wrench my head around, catching a glimpse of the overhanging turret through the thick, black, rising smoke of the pit. “Where are we going?” I shout. “This is not the front!”

“That’s right!” Urlick shouts, yanking at my hesitating hand.

“But there is nothing past the rock. I’ve seen it. It just drops off. The turrets, they stand half over the edge of a bottomless pit. If we continue this way, we’re sure to fall into it!”

“Embers,” he corrects me.

“What?”

“It’s called Embers, not a pit.”

“Embers!” I gasp. “As in proverbial Hell?”

“That’s the one.” He turns to me. “But there’s nothing proverbial about it.”

My feet instinctively slow.

The steam map was right. The Compound not only sits at the very edge of the Earth, but hovers over the very end of existence. No wonder Urlick told me there was nothing beyond his home but death. His home teeters over the threshold to Hell. No wonder the Commonwealth chose
here
to dispose of their discards. Could there be a more fitting place?

But the map. It claimed the Follies used to be part of the Commonwealth. How could that be? My legs seize at the thought. Urlick hauls me forward.

“Don’t worry,” he squeezes my hand. “I’ve no intention of diving in.”

“Then how—?”

He turns to me, eyes like beams of red hope in an otherwise blackening world. “How much do you trust me?”

My heart warms in my chest.

We push on and I begin to choke. My vision blurs. My head begins to spin.

“Here!” Urlick reaches up, tearing the sleeve from his shirt. “Cover your nose and mouth with this.” I press his sleeve to my face and try to keep running, my legs like rubber beneath me, clutching his bare arm with my other hand, Vapours gaining on us like an angry, roaring, tidal wave.

Urlick turns and scoops me up into his arms, then speeds through the trees. I have no idea how he knows where he’s going. One misstep and our lives could end. His heart lurches in time with my own. I cling to him, staring over his shoulder at the rolling froth that threatens to devour us, praying the pit doesn’t swallow us first. How has he survived in such a place all these years? Perched on the very doorstep of evil, on the very hearth of Hell.

I close my eyes, overcome by dizziness, my eyes no longer feeling like they’re my own, instantly haunted by images of my Mother’s face as she hangs in the gallows, my Father as he lies asphyxiated on the road. Does a similar fate await me? Will I die, here, now, with Urlick?

The Vapours pick up speed as Urlick surges forward, bidding me to hang on as tight as I can. The muscles in his legs strain to carry me. Breath chugs from his lungs. I close my eyes and beg the world to let us make it. Moments later Urlick slows and drops me to my feet.

“Where are we?” I gasp, tuning my head.

“The Compound.” He falls, breathless, back against a door.

“It has a back door?”

“Two, actually.” He palms the center of my back, pressing me toward him. “Be careful.” He flips his chin. “Don’t wanna step back too far.”

I turn to see the heels of my boots straddling the lip of the pit. Black steam rises at my back. One false move and I’ll go over. I swallow and lean toward Urlick, steadying myself against his chest, not caring if it’s improper.

He curses, his arms around me, as he tries to unlock the door.

Vapours spiral toward us, deathly black. We’re running out of time.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. It won’t open.” He slams his fist against the door. “Blast it! The seal!” he remembers. “I told Iris not to break the seal until my return!”

“What do we do now?” My lips tremble.

“Iris knows we’re out here,” Urlick says. “She wouldn’t give up on us that easy. We’ll just have to get her attention somehow!” He turns and pounds at the door, the two of us screaming, kicking it with the toes of our boots.

The squeeze of the Vapours pinches my lungs and hitches my breath. I feel lightheaded again, woozy. I bend at the knees, melting down Urlick’s side. He rescues me, his hands clasped tightly about my waist. “I don’t think she’s coming,” he whispers. “We’re running out of time.”

“She’s coming,” I say, refusing to give up faith. I let my head fall to his shoulder, burying my face in his neck, fighting to maintain my thoughts against the Vapours’ encroaching breath.

At first I’m convinced it’s a dream. Iris’s moon-round face in the porthole window of the door, eyes wide with panic. But it’s not, it’s really her. A couple of clanks and bangs and a shoulder later, the door finally flies open, exhaling a rush of cleansing salty steam. Urlick launches me through the doorway, the two of us coughing just as the Vapours rush the gates. “The SEAL!” he screams to Iris as he slams the door and activates the lock.

My legs give way and I crumple to the floor, feeling the cleansing steam working hard to pull the Vapours’ poison from my lungs, as Iris runs at the panel. The alarm squeals. The Guardian lights glow. The Vapours rush the side of the Compound, causing the floor to quake, colliding with the Guardian in a mighty explosion that curls them up and away from the door.

“Don’t worry,” Urlick shouts. “It’ll settle down in a moment.” He flips a look out the window. “Or it won’t.” He bends. “You okay?”

“Mm-huh,” I gasp. “And you?”

“I’ve been better.” He grins, still heaving in breaths. “But better now we’re on this side of the door.” He looks to me, eyes shining like red stars in the night sky, and I can’t help but think how wonderful they are.

“You—” He stands, reeling Iris in tight to his chest, planting a big fat kiss on her forehead. “Thank God for you!”

Iris pushes him off, disgusted, turning red as her dress.

“Can you stand?” He reaches out for me. “If you can, I’d like to show you something.”

I reach up and he pulls me to my feet. I still feel wobbly, but my eyes have finally landed. I’m no longer as woozy as I once was, but my lungs still burn a bit.

“Get the others and meet us in the kitchen, will you?” he tells Iris.

Her eyes grow big as teacups.

“It’s all right,” he assures her. “Eyelet knows. I’ve told her everything.”

An expression of unmistakable relief comes over Iris’s face, followed by her first genuine smile.

“We’ll meet you upstairs in a bit,” he says, grabbing me by the hand. “Come on,” he says, skipping forward. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for more surprises from you.” I stumble along behind him up the dark tunnel corridor, toward his lab. He stops, pulls me close, his eyes soft in the torchlight. “I doubt this one will surprise you.” He smiles.

I’d like to stay in this moment, but he bounces away, linked to me only by the fingers of our threaded hands. Seconds later we arrive at the scaffold stairs that lead to his laboratory.

He trips the stairs and they begin to descend noisily.

“It can’t be possibly be down here—I looked everywhere,” I say.

“Oh, not everywhere.” He grins. “But you were close.”

“How do you know?”

“A certain Bertie told me.”

“Who?”

“Bertie”—he flips his chin—“my hydrocycle.”

“You’ve given your cycle a name?”

“What of it?” He tugs his waistcoat.

“Nothing.”

I bring a hand to my mouth to hide the giggle that bubbles up inside of me as the stairs rattle down to rest on the floor.

Jumping from the treads, he pulls me to the left, around a corner to the back of the room, toward the curtain. “Traitor,” I say, as we pass the hydrocycle. It rumbles beneath its tarp.

“You stay here,” Urlick announces, twirling me around. “And close your eyes. Tight.”

“I thought the plan was no more keeping secrets.”

“No more secrets, I promise.” He pushes a finger to my lips. “But I never said anything about surprises.”

Reluctantly, I close my eyes.

His breath pulses a warm trail across the hollow of my neck, he stands so close. My skin flares.

“When I drop the drape, you may open your eyes,” he whispers.

“How will I know when you’ve dropped it if I’m not allowed to look?”

“You’re ears still work, don’t they?” His breathy voice sends a chill down my spine, prickling the hairs on my arms. I bite my lip; my pulse races at the excitement welling up inside me.

He turns and sashays across the room, and I envision his lithe and gentle movement. He runs a hand down the curtain and the hairs on my neck pull to attention.

“Don’t peek now.”

“I’m not.”

His head ducks out from behind the curtain, red velvet crushed up around his chin.

“I can see you peeking.”

Caught, I pinch my eyes shut.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

His shoes clatter across the floor behind the curtain and then, with the rip of a cord the curtains drop, plopping into a puddle on the floor. My eyes spring open as behind it stands…

Absolutely nothing.

“Is this a joke?” My hands land on my hips.

He smirks and trips a button on a cord in his hand. A spin of turbines gives way to a creak of gears, and the pattern in the floor breaks apart, shifting and moving into a series of plates. Slowly, they shuffle to one side or the other, exposing a giant dark hole. Drawing back, the plates disappear one by one beneath the floor. In their place, a platform rises up. On top of the platform sits the Illuminator, shimmering in the aether light of the room.

I gasp at its appearance, drawing my hands to my face. Tears press at my lids. The glass and wood cabinet housing the giant spinning glass disks; the snaggled wires that run from the cabinet to the mighty glass Crookes tube, resting in its brass stand next to it. I stare up at all the pieces of the machine, remembering the path of the lightning as it jumped from the wires to the long needle-nose tip of the Crookes tube in its stand. The mighty flash as the arc hit the glass. The smell of the wires as they crackled and sizzled. The whir of the glass disks as they spun inside the cabinet with such force, I swore they’d break loose.

I step toward it, remembering the acrid smell of my father’s laboratory as we descended the stairs. The bite of the cold metal gurney against my back. The spiders. There were so many spiders. The sound of the wires as they crackled and popped. The sizzle of the current jumping between the big brass conductor bars mounted to the front. How afraid I was that I’d be electrocuted.

“Well?” Urlick’s hands fly up from his sides, the Illuminator towering at his back. “Is it as you remember?”

I don’t answer; I’m still deep in thought.

“Is this the machine your father invented? The one you were talking about?”

My father’s words come rushing back to me, from that day long ago in his lab. The two of us, alone, preparing to shoot a picture of me. The only one he ever took.

“You must hold completely still, do you understand? You can hold still for me, can’t you?” he smiled, and I remember the fear in his eyes.