Mechanica (14 page)

The cellar was nearly pitch-black. I lowered myself in and stumbled over my own feet.

The inside of the workshop was what I had expected: chaos. Sheets of butcher paper that Mother, and then I, had tacked along the walls, covered with formulas and calculations and little notes, were all torn down, shredded in pieces on the floor or crumpled up and stuffed into corners. Even with the paper that covered the room in brownish snowdrifts, though, it was
emptier
: most of my books were gone. My other works in progress that I’d set on the huge desk or on the bookshelves—oh, the bookshelves—lay in smithereens on the hard floor. I saw with a kind of harsh, hollow amusement that the only thing left intact was the sewing machine. The Steps had been careful, it seemed, not to destroy anything that would affect
them
too much.

With a shiver I realized that my dressmaker’s dummy, while still unharmed, had moved: it leaned against the outer door, propping it open, so that I could see into the rest of the cellar. Attached to its wheeled base were tiny shoelace harnesses, the ones the buzzers used to do my sewing . . . and leading away into the darkness, a mincing pattern of infinitesimal hoofprints . . .

Jules, Jules
. . . I couldn’t think of him yet without shuddering. I knew he was a machine, and that Mother would say he couldn’t feel pain, but then, she would have said he couldn’t even think, not really . . .

No. I would mourn Jules later. I had to assess the workshop now, to see how impossible my once barely possible dream had become.

It was the empty bookshelves that hurt me most. Not just the odd failed experiments and scraps of dyed cloth I’d piled onto them, and not just the many old texts, invaluable as they had been; at least I’d had a few months to absorb them, and the years of Mother’s tutoring before that. I knew enough, at least, to keep going, to get by.

But Mother’s journals were gone. They had helped me learn to interpret the oldest of her reference books, they had given me her own ingenious ways of simplifying the sliding motion of a piston or of blowing glass evenly and without extra bubbles . . . and they had been in her voice, always her crisp, demanding, intellectual voice, the voice that had told me the stories and taught me the lessons I’d loved. I remembered the sight of my childhood storybooks burning up in Piety and Chastity’s fire, the day they’d moved into their rooms. I knew beyond doubt that Mother’s books and journals had already met the same fate, in the gaping central fireplace of the Steps’ receiving room, our old library.

I could carry on without the journals, but I’d lost her voice again; I’d lost
her
again.

I wondered if Mother would ever stop dying, if she’d ever leave me for the last time. It didn’t feel that way.

Even in her last gift to me, I had failed her.

I righted my toppled desk chair and sank onto it, burying my head in my arms. My temples pounded, my throat clenched, and though my eyes were dry and burning, I shuddered as if I were crying. I had no idea how one day could contain so much happiness and despair at once.

I heard a tiny buzz and clatter, and a light weight landed on my left hand. I looked up. One of the beetles perched on my ring finger, rubbing its wire feelers together. Two small sparks fizzed above its head.

“At least you were saved,” I said, though I couldn’t manage a smile.

But then I heard more buzzing, more clicks. A dragonfly emerged from a pile of clutter, and two spiders descended from the ceiling. Soon the whole fleet of buzzers had surrounded me, and beetles’ legs were stroking my hair, butterfly wings fluttering against my arm, and spiders clacking their steel pincers as if in sympathy.

I stroked each of them in greeting and tried to smile. I was impressed, truly, that they’d known to hide, and I was pleased and slightly baffled that even they so clearly wanted to comfort me.
Why couldn’t the Steps have found a dragonfly instead of Jules?
I thought—and then felt ashamed, for the dragonfly’s sake. But I could not change my wish.

Still, I was grateful for the buzzers, at least.

And then I heard a sound that made my heart lift a little more. The furnace rumbled to life in the back room—the room with the door that had no key.

I ran to the hidden place in the wall where the door would open, stumbling over crumpled paper. The sooty handprint Mother had left was long gone, worn off every time I’d moved from one room to the other, barely thinking of what I did. Shaking with hope, I pressed my hand to the place I knew so well.

Immediately, seamlessly, it opened. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.

What if there was more to this, to the secret of the workshop, than the false fire of years ago? What if there truly was magic—real, illegal, Faerie magic—keeping this place hidden?

Had that magic sent Mother’s letter to me too? I no longer believed Stepmother could have done me such a kindness.

I understood less about this place than I ever had—and I loved it more than ever too.

I hurried out of the furnace room, the studio, and then the cellar, making sure the doors closed fast behind me.

I took off my boots when I entered the hall and wiped the bottoms of my stockings with my flannel petticoat. I didn’t want to risk even a speck of soot giving me away again. I took the servants’ stairs as I always did, rickety, dusty, and connecting the kitchen to the drafty third floor that housed my bedroom. I pictured Jules climbing up the main stairs to my room and wished I’d told him about this more hidden staircase.

My dream flooded back to me then, just as real as when I’d first had it. I was too spent to cry anymore, or even to mourn him.

But in the absence of those stronger emotions, I felt a tingle of hope. The workshop was intact, or half of it was. And I knew, especially after tonight, that Mother still had some secrets in store for me. Standing there on the servants’ staircase, I grew convinced that I’d find her designs for Jules eventually.

I was still lost in a dream of rebuilding him when I got to my door. I opened it—picking Stepmother’s locks was always one of my favorite hobbies. Once inside, I could barely keep my eyes open as I forced the lock closed again; but I wanted to maintain the Steps’ belief in my imprisonment, if I could.

Enclosed in my cold room once more, I drifted, exhausted, to my narrow bed.

M
Y
room was flooded with light when I woke, and I couldn’t believe I’d slept so late. I’d grown used to crawling out of bed before the first wash of sunrise warmed my windowsill—or to skulking into the kitchen after a night in the workshop without having slept at all.

I stretched slowly, relishing the knowledge that I had no chores that day. It was a Sunday, too, which meant the Steps had been at church all morning, and would be out on social calls for much of the afternoon. They were back for their brief Sunday luncheon by now, but in an hour or so, I could sneak down to the cellar.

Luncheon
. My stomach started complaining even as I thought the word. I hadn’t eaten since leaving for Market the day before, and even though I knew I’d survive until the Steps left and I could go down to the kitchen pantry, I wanted to eat
now
.

I remembered the parcel Fin had given me just before he and Caro had left, the one he didn’t want me to pay him back for. It was still in my overcoat’s left pocket, hanging on a post at the end of my bed.

I smiled with relief, eagerly dug out the twist of paper, and unfolded it in my lap. I discovered a small, glistening pile of what looked like wrinkled garnets. When I touched one it sprung into fresh, purple-red plumpness, as if it had only just been picked.

Rhodopis berries! I hadn’t seen them in years, not since before Mother died. They were Fey fruits, more like small, stoneless plums than any berries that grew in Esting, valuable for both their intense juiciness and the way that, if properly dried and stored, they revived at the touch of a finger. They were said to help settle an overworked mind, too; perhaps that was why Mother had eaten them so often.

Like all Fey goods, they were contraband now. I wondered at Fin’s boldness and trust in giving them to me; with the king’s strict laws, he could be imprisoned if I reported him. But then, I had decided to trust both Fin and Caro last night; I’d had to. Maybe Fin gave me the berries to show that he trusted me, too.

As the fruit burst into sweet, liquor-strong juice on my tongue, I was transported back to the tea times with Mother that I’d loved, a tray of sandwiches or a bowl of berries laid out between us as she imparted whatever lesson she had in mind for the day. The taste of the Fey berries was as vivid a memory as the image of Mother’s face or the aroma of clary-bush tea, and I found myself even more grateful to Fin for letting me relive them so clearly.

I ate only a few before twisting the paper closed again. I’d be able to slip into the kitchen soon enough for some plain bread and cheese that wouldn’t be missed. The berries were special, not just because they were so hard to come by in Esting, but also for the memories they evoked—and because of the new friend who had given them to me.

My hunger quieted, I looked around my room, wondering what to do until they left. I’d not had such a luxuriously idle stretch of time to enjoy since childhood. My first thought was a wish for books, real books: novels and poetry and stories. I loved my mother’s science texts, but those were my work. I longed to read for pleasure. I decided to leave a note for Fin and Caro, asking them to buy me a novel at the next Market Day.

I did have a journal under my mattress—I’d brought it up from the workshop a few months ago, for when I had ideas in the middle of the night. I pulled it out, retrieved pen and ink from my dresser, and immersed myself in writing and drawing, careful to listen for any sounds of the Steps approaching my room.

I kept drawing Jules: diagrams of his hocks, his neck, his ears, the furnace in his belly, and the tiny pistons that surrounded it and made him move. It had never even occurred to me to open him up and learn more about his workings, strange as that seemed to me now. But I knew—I really knew, now that I’d lost him—that Jules had never been an invention to me, never been one of Mother’s oddities, or even a tool. I’d no more have split him open than I would a pet cat, or a dog, or a horse of my own. I’d always known, deep down, that Jules held the rights to his body, not me. He wasn’t an object, but a being, something really alive.

And that meant he was really dead. I flung my journal aside and lay down on the bed, cold and sad and still again, waiting for the Steps to leave.

I heard nothing for half an hour, and then the whinny of a horse from their rented carriage outside and wheels crunching in the snow. I grew certain they were gone . . . but I decided to climb out the window again, just in case. My little bedroom was on the side of the house the Steps almost never saw. They always used our grander front door to welcome guests or to meet their hired carriages. Here at the back of the house, where the shadows of the forest’s tall pine trees sometimes nearly touched the workshop’s window, I was hidden and safe.

Snow was still thick on the ground, but the sun was warm, and much of the ice on the wall had melted away. I moved quickly and got to the ground easily this time, though my chest still hurt me slightly.

I entered the workshop through the window I’d broken the night before. My eyes rested on Jules’s harness by my sewing machine, and a sharp pain went through me. I sat down at my desk chair and took a shaky breath.

My largest caterpillar—I’d found several in the workshop’s seemingly endless secret compartments over the last months—crawled out from behind a stack of papers and onto my hand, clinking a cool, weighty path over my fingers. I looked at the sewing machine again and saw the spiders crawling over it, the other caterpillars and beetles making their way to their assigned places, the dragonflies hovering in the air.

I had a whole battalion of insect tailors, but Jules had been their leader. I’d never thought even to name them—but then, people tend to name horses more often than they do insects. Jules had been my only real friend.

I ached. Jules, Jules. What would my work be without him here to help me? I remembered the jingling sound of his chain tail as he trotted after me along the shop’s stone floor, the way his glass eyes always seemed to understand when I told him about the hardships of my life with the Steps. I had no one who would look at me like that now.

And yet . . . dark eyes, crinkled at the corners, with long shadow-casting lashes, appeared in my mind. A squarish face with warm, brown skin . . . an easy, dimpled smile . . . a low laugh. Fin.

I told myself not to be stupid. We’d met only twice, and those times on the same day. Of course it would be impossible for Fin to understand me.

But for all my stern lecturing of myself, I could not quite tamp down the warmth I felt, could not quite turn Fin’s face from my mind: his quick smile, the shape of his mouth.

He haunted me nearly as much as Jules did. I almost hated myself for it.