Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (8 page)

Everything went black.

How I survived, I can only surmise. I came to my senses as I again scraped along the ground in the roaring surf. I grappled the line and pulled myself forward to the door of the lighthouse. The currents swirling around it had brought me again into the leeside.

Agony screamed through me. The clear water rushing over me washed pink, and then red, back into the sea. My right arm hung uselessly at my side. I half-swam, half-crept through the portal in a desperate bid to escape the pummeling of the surf. Safely inside, I attempted to rise, but a white hot, searing pain nigh overwhelmed me, and my legs crumpled beneath me.

I forced myself calm. I pushed back hair and blood and water from my eyes. My line still flailed in the surf. I hauled in first it, then Julian’s tether. The ragged and frayed end drew my gorge.

I managed to force the door closed. The hurricane hurled itself impotently against the immutable stone of the lighthouse, its deafening bombardment at once stifled when I sealed the breach.

I leaned back against the door, panting for breath. The water reached to my chest. My mind raced as I groped about for some means to rescue Rowland. However, every attempt to rise resulted in failure. My determination, my denial of the excruciating torment which constantly assaulted me—useless. I could not stand. I could rescue no one. I doubted I had saved myself.

Bertha crouched upon the stairs where I had left her. She shivered uncontrollably. Terror filled her eyes as I dragged myself toward the steps and higher ground. Wild and feral, her arms clamped about herself, she rocked back and forth, keening. Weeping. Muttering incantations beneath her breath.

Not yet midmorning, what little daylight remained faded as the heart of the storm approached. I felt the encroachment of a long, oppressive night ahead.

Sun had surrendered to Wind.

Every night for the past fourteen years, I have relived that storm. Every time I lay my head upon my pillow, darkness enfolds me. Just as in the hurricane, I plunge into the depths of excruciating pain without any hope of relief.

Nightly, as my eyes grow heavy, I curse Yvette for saving my life, and Bertha for not taking it. Alone with my wife as the storm raged, I prayed for death, but death would not come. I prayed for unconsciousness, but that, too, was denied me. Throughout endless hours, my thoughts tormented me as the gale battered the island, as they plague me even still.

I should have saved my brother. Instead, I sacrificed Rowland to the cyclone for a woman debauched, debased, deranged, whose last semblance of sanity the storm stripped away.

That night, my end would have been a simple thing for her to accomplish. None would have questioned or suspected her. I would count it a blessing, relief to my guilt-riddled heart. She had me at her mercy. Wealth and independence sat at her feet, and me helpless to stay her hand. Yet, my insane, spite-filled, murderous wife refrained.

Although it broke his neck, the cyclone failed to wrest Rowland’s corpse from Julian’s grasp. My people found them lashed together high in a tree, where Julian had snatched his own life from the jaws of death. His mechanical arm had saved him. It never failed, although his natural limbs had done.

I buried Rowland in the cathedral at Spanish Town. He had buttoned Bertha’s Daguerreotype beneath his shirt, against his skin. Even Yvette’s crystal had not the power to intercede. I obliterated the picture in a crucible fueled by grief, but the purging failed to return Rowland—or Bertha.

After a year of recuperating myself and my ventures, I took Bertha away from the islands, hoping to affect some sort of improvement in her sanity. But, fourteen years with the best care money can buy and her condition only worsens. Only her brother knows I hide her away at Thornfield. None at that house know her as my wife.

Magic is nothing but the execution of knowledge beyond the understanding of the ignorant and superstitious. So I maintained as a youth, and so I always shall. But, I have become convinced that Yvette purchased my life at the cost of our happiness together. Because of it, for fourteen years, every morning I awaken to the warmth of her crystal resting over my heart, and I resolve anew to make good use of the gift she made such a sacrifice to bestow. I do not comprehend the how of it. But then, the sun does not require my understanding for it to shine. It simply does.

Even so, for fourteen years I have waited for . . . something. The other shoe to drop. The rest of the story. Some explanation as to why Yvette would demand this life of me, miserable as I am, shackled to a maniac but otherwise alone, unable to seek the true companionship of a loving wife. Pleasure, I have sought and sometimes found, but never happiness.

Had Yvette, or the Fates, or God, or whomever holds the whip that cracks over my head and now and again lashes my back—had they any mercy, they would free me of this torment, but Bertha remains as hale in body as I do myself. Decades yet will pass before either becomes infirm enough to anticipate the release of death.

My conscience prevents the neglect that would speed either of our demises. And so I plod through life seeking diversion where I can find it—and betimes dissipation when my soul grows weary, and my wits dull.

But I do make use of my talents. I resolved that the hurricane’s devastation would not impede our plans to assist the new American Federation, and it did not. That nation thrives, in large measure due to our efforts, and those of men like us. I have managed to keep Jamaica unpolluted by the mores of industrialization. My message has taken hold of the Caribbean and begins to spread throughout the Western Hemisphere.

To keep pace and the peace, coal and fascism have been forced to loosen their stranglehold on England. Each Rochester estate or venture enriches, rather than exploits the lives of its people. I have made a name for myself. I dare say I have done some good.

And, even in my blackest moods, I always had Yvette’s crystal to warm the ice in my heart and light my way through the bitter darkness. At least, I had done. Until this morning.

I awoke with the previous night’s dream of the storm vivid in my recollection. I sought the comfort Yvette’s crystal always afforded me, but it was gone. In a panic, I tore apart the bedclothes. I ransacked the room. I had not removed that rock since the day I reclaimed it from Rowland’s corpse. I had clutched it in my hand when I succumbed to sleep the night before.

Then, I saw it. It lay on the table at my bedside. Crushed into dust. As I sat there, staring at it, a sharp pain seared my finger. Before my eyes, Yvette’s ring dissolved away like paper before a flame.

Some six months gone, I had returned my ward to that depository of failure, Thornfield, where I shuffled away the bleak reminders of my unhappy past. Her mother claims me the father, although I have no cause to believe it. Even so, I could not abandon her daughter as that faithless French soubrette had done.

I had charged the warden of that asylum to hire a governess for Adele, and duty requires that I inspect the purchase. I have postponed it too long, but returning to Thornfield always weighs heavily upon my spirits. I keep my stops as brief as I can justify, as long as I can bear. I had relied on my medallion to brace me for the task.

Every right choice to my credit I have made with Yvette and her good opinion as my guide. But apparently, it has all been for naught. Good works have profited me nothing, and I have subsisted on her beggarly ration of affection for far too long. She now leaves me to my own devices, with a madwoman strapped to my back and an urchin clinging to my leg, and I will get on as best I may.

She has abandoned me, and no denying it. She withdraws her light. If I stumble into the black abyss, it is by her hand. She demands I battle Hades itself without buckler or shield, and I shall. Or perhaps I shall simply surrender to it, and take my happiness wherever I can find it, no matter the cost to my charred soul.

On the morrow, I am for Thornfield to alone face my fate, and the devil take her for it. The devil take us both.

Styled after Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

No one makes cyborgs like they does in Singapore. That’s why we set sail there when the Cap’n lost his leg. We were sailin’ round the Horn, see, takin’ ships as they come for Her Majesty’s Navy. Privateerin’ ain’t exactly the most honest way for a sailor to make his wage, but least it’s legal.

Well, one great Portuguese tub proved too spirited. One minute we had them on the run, pullin’ the best of their cargo from the hold, the next, our first mate is screamin’ to heaven on high. In all fairness, the cap’n
is
her husband, but the shrill nature of the female voice ain’t exactly intimidatin’.

“Harris! Harris! Help me!” she’s wailin’ and there’s all manner of fear in her face and blood on her hands. We gets him to his cabin, and she turns to me like I got to know which way’s north now.

“He’ll be all right, Dashwood,” I tells her. “Just do what ye can for him, and I’ll get the crew goin’. Where’re we bound?”

“The Orient,” she says, without no waitin’. “There’s only one man that can do what we need.”

The only question be’n would the Cap’n make it, and it’s dicey there for a bit. Caught a storm not twelve hours after he regained consciousness, at which point he passed right back out, if you please. The first mate’s still screamin’, but in the way that meant we ain’t moving fast enough for her tastes.

They say it’s bad luck havin’ a woman aboard, but when Mrs. Margaret Dashwood-Campbell gets in high dudgeon, it’s like sailin’ under the command of that Greek Athena, Goddess of War and Wisdom, a thing out o’ legend.

“Mr. Harris, get that sail into position, or your wrinkled brow will spend the journey to Singapore on the Maiden’s head!”

“Aye, Dashwood!” is all you can say, and hop to it.

We all knew she were worried for the cap’n, so we soldiered on, but two days of tossing on the high seas was nearly all we could take. Lucky for us, the storm blew itself out without leaving us becalmed.

Tweren’t easy makin’ fast sail at half rations for so long. Even havin’ the monsoons wid us, there’s more than a few unkind things said ’bout the cap’n and his first mate.

“Ain’t right sailin’ under a woman,” says Beakman one day at mess. “It’s her bein’ on board got the cap’n hurt. Now only God knows where we’re sailin’ to. I don’t like it. I won’t stand it much longer.”

“Beakman, you are as daft as Harris is old,” says Martin—who ain’t more than three summer’s my junior. “It was Dashwood saved the captain’s life, and we’re sailin’ to Singapore. Everyone knows that.”

“So she says, how do we know she ain’t sailin’ us all to our doom?” Beakman pipes back.

“’Cuz more than one man on this boat can navigate, you great lump,” I puts in. “Just cause you gots kelp and not much else ’tween yer ears don’t mean the rest of us can’t read a star or two. Now quit yer yammerin’ ’fore Dashwood finds outs, and decides to clean her knives on yer face.”

In the end, we touched the docks in west Singapore, sweet as you please, ’bout an hour before sundown, and not sixteen days after the cap’n was injured.

Singapore is a swarm of bodies bumpin’ and jostlin’—a great mix o’ peoples wid all different faces. First Mate Dashwood sets us a haulin’ them heavy crates of goods down, and in the midst of the bustle she calls Martin, Beakman, Boarhead, and meself aside. I enters the cabin, and there’s the captain all laid out in a wooden box. His face beat up and the color of the sail. His leg is missin’, just a great wad of bandages. Next to him is a long package wrapped up so’s we can’t tell what’s in it, but mark me if it ain’t just the size to be the leg that ain’t there.