Of Metal and Wishes (27 page)

My father gazes down at Bo’s wounds with a sharp clinical eye. “You will recover too. I can easily treat these wounds. But we’ll have to do that topside. We don’t have time right now.”

I notice the determined clutch of my father’s fists. “What’s wrong?”

“We need to leave,” he says. “They’re coming.”

THE TENSION ZIPS
through Bo’s body like lightning, and I feel it in our joined hands like an electric shock. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I took care of them.”

My father shakes his head. “They regrouped, and they’ve been joined by the local police. There were survivors, and some of them were able to describe you. They know who you are, Bo, and they’re coming to get you.”

Bo’s teeth click together. “Help me up.”

My father and I pull him to his feet.

“I need my arm,” he says quietly, and my father helps him strap it to his body like he’s done it hundreds of times before.

Bo touches the left side of his face and looks out to where Melik and all the perfect metal statues await. “And my mask, please,” he says to me.

I lift the metal half-face from the floor, smooth, sculpted and shining, fatally marred by the terrible, dead black eye. And then I look at Bo’s face, his real, whole face, half hideous, half beautiful. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his scarred cheek, lingering long enough to hear the catch in his breath. Then I fit the mask in place and fasten the thin strap, unable to look at the results. “What are you going to do?” I ask, staring at his feet.

“I’m going to see what’s coming.”

He turns and walks from the chamber, fighting not to limp, and my father and I follow. He stalks past Melik, toward the chamber full of pipes where he spies on the people of Gochan One. He hunches over one, his metal hand moving with machine precision to adjust the knob on the side. “They won’t get far,” he mutters.

“It depends on how determined they are to find you,” Melik says in a hard voice.

Bo pivots around to face him. “Probably very, since I saved a Noor from swinging and destroyed the factory floor, killing dozens of men in the process. But that won’t protect them from what lies in those corridors. They’ll turn back.”

“No, they won’t,” says my father. His voice sounds as hollow as the pipes. He’s bent over one of them now, his eye to the hole.

Bo frowns and joins him, peeking into the pipe next to it. He curses.

I am next to him in an instant. “I want to see.”

“You don’t,” says Bo.

I ignore him and lower my head to the opening of the pipe beside his.

And gasp.

I am looking down the hallway outside the cafeteria, the one near Bo’s altar. From my skewed vantage point I see a few men with the high-powered electric cattle prods in their hands.

They are driving a cow toward the stairs.

Melik ducks his head and peers into the adjacent pipe. His hisses something in Noor and turns to me. “They’re trying to drive the cattle through the corridors. To trigger the traps.”

I watch the men jab at the cow’s bony backside. They are relentless, and slowly, slowly, the beast inches forward. “Can cows even walk down stairs?”

“They can,” my father says grimly, “if what’s behind them is frightening enough.” He points to a pipe. “There are already several in the hallways below the killing floor.”

My heart hurts for these creatures that are already condemned to slaughter but will now be killed in a way no soul should have to suffer. Bo is cursing nonstop under his breath, skipping from pipe to pipe as he watches the cows plow through his trip wires and bump against the walls, triggering his arachnid soldiers to fight and kill. I step back from the pipes; I don’t want to see it. I can already picture it, because I witnessed what happened to Ugur.

Melik turns to Bo. “You have to get Wen out of here,” he says in a low voice. “If they make it all the way down here, she needs to be far away.”

Bo stands up and looks Melik in the eye. “I know that.”

Somewhere above us there is a deep, percussive boom, and my father moves over to a pipe on the far left side of the array and peers in. “The cows triggered an explosion on the fourth sublevel.” His eyes are bright with fear as he straightens up. “It won’t be long before the mob comes through those tunnels.”

“Come on,” Bo says. “Time to go.”

He limps out of the pipe room and leads us all the way to the back, past the hulking factory machines, past the dead-eyed metal Melik who is poised on the edge of the walkway. When the flesh-and-blood Melik walks by it, he pulls up short. He is reaching out to touch its face when there is a crash above us, followed by the faint lowing of cows.

“They’re in the metal hallway,” my father says to me. “They’ve probably triggered the spiders.”

Bo reaches the elevator and yanks open its sliding metal door. “This will take you to the roof, and you can get out through Gochan Two. Guiren, you know the way.”

I stare at Bo. “What are you doing?”

He bows his head. “I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are,” I say, taking his hand. “We can all go, now. We can escape!”

He rewards me with a sad smile. “What is there for me outside this factory?”

“Seems to me you can do almost anything you want,” Melik says, laying a protective hand on my shoulder. “Do what she asks. Come with us.”

Bo chuckles as his eyes light on Melik’s fingers on my body. “You obviously believe me to be a better man than I am.” His gaze travels to Melik’s face. “Keep her safe.”

Above us I hear men yelling and crashing. They are pounding on the door to Bo’s fortress. They are almost here.

“They’ll hurt you,” I say in a choked voice, tugging Bo toward the elevator. My father steps inside and waits, and he seems to be riveted by his own shoes. He won’t look at me.

“And if I run, they’ll chase me.” The lanterns overhead glint off his metal face. When he speaks again, his voice is almost a snarl. “They’re invading my
home
, Wen.”

I will not let this happen. I whip the metal syringe out of my dressing gown pocket, but he is too fast. My arm is caught in his machine grip before I know it, those skeletal steel fingers wrapping around my wrist. I gasp, expecting pain, but it doesn’t come. He merely holds me there, and he doesn’t take his eyes off me as he gently pulls the syringe from my grasp and hands it to my father.

I look over my shoulder at Melik. “Help me.”

He and Bo exchange looks, and Melik shakes his head. “I won’t try to force him.” He reaches for me. “We have to go, Wen, please. They can’t find us here.”

Bo releases my wrist and fishes inside his pocket, pulling out a small object. He opens my fingers and places the object on my palm.

“I would like to make a wish,” he says quietly. “This is my offering.”

My fingers close over the white seashell. Tears burn my eyes. The crashing is louder now, rhythmic booms as they assault the door. Any second now they will break through. “What is your wish?”

“One kiss,” he whispers.

My heart is caving in. There is only one reason he feels bold enough to ask this of me. He thinks he’s about to die. I don’t look at Melik. I don’t look at my father, either. The only one I look at is Bo. I focus on his deep brown eye, the one full of secrets I will never learn, the one that belongs to a boy who built an entire world where we could play together, where neither of us would ever be lonely. I raise my head and tilt my chin, and he spends a few seconds looking stunned that I’m actually going to grant his wish. But then he lays his hand on my cheek and bows his head, lowering his lips to mine. His kiss is brief and so full of sweetness it forces the tears from my eyes. They roll down my face as he pulls away. “Thank you,” he says to me.

He herds me onto the elevator, where my father and Melik wrap their arms around me. Bo looks at my father. “Guiren, thank you for these years.”

My father nods, and when I look closer, I see he is crying too. But then his head jerks up at a resounding crash, and his eyes widen as the first men descend the steps. Bo steps back from the elevator and turns to face his attackers, who are armed with cattle prods and knives and guns.

Slowly, like a gesture of defiance, he raises his metal arm and presses a button on his wrist. Current hums through the arm, ending in a sharp popping spark between two of his steel fingers.

The whirring of gears is louder than any I’ve heard before.

Every single statue in the room raises its head at the same time.

My father makes a frightened noise and lunges for the elevator’s red button. He punches it as the metal statues stand up or turn around, whatever programmed movement is required for them to face Bo’s attackers. They all step forward at once—Mugo, Jipu, Melik, even Minny’s tiny little boy. Bo turns his head to look at me. He smiles.

The last thing I hear before the elevator whisks us up is the screams of the mob as the metal army attacks.

MELIK CRUSHES ME
against his chest and bows his head over mine as the elevator accelerates, carrying us past floor after floor. The metal cage shakes me to my bones. I don’t know what’s louder: Melik’s heartbeat or my own sobs. I barely notice as the elevator stops and my father slides the door open, as I am half dragged and half carried along a path littered with broken glass and bird droppings.

We have just reached the catwalk when a tremor shakes the entire building, making the remaining glass around us clank and rattle in its panes. Suddenly I feel dizzy, and I stumble against the wall. My father does the same.

Only Melik keeps his balance. “The building. Could he destroy the building?”

My father shoves off the wall and puts his arm around my waist. “I am not surprised at anything Bo can do. Hurry.”

Another tremor sends my father careening into a wall. “It’s going to come down,” he says, his voice rising to a panicked squeak.

Melik grabs my hand and pulls me to the catwalk, then pushes me ahead of him. He’s muttering under his breath, something like “Go, go, go”—suddenly we’re thrown forward and I land hard on my stomach. My tiny white seashell falls through the grate and plummets to the ground four stories below. Melik is on top of me, crushing my face into the metal, but then he’s up and so am I. We scramble as the entire Gochan One factory shifts and cracks, enough to loosen the catwalk where it’s fastened to the brick. It’s going to be sheared off, and we’re going to fall.

I throw myself toward the hatch in the ceiling of the Gochan Two warehouse as the catwalk drops away below my feet. I heave myself through the opening, with Melik’s large hands on either side of mine. “My father!” I scream.

“He’s holding my legs,” Melik grunts. “Help me.” He’s grasping for anything that will give him leverage, and all there is . . . is me. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and tug, and he grits his teeth and drags himself through the hatch. Slowly we pull my father through as well, in time to watch Gochan One disappear in a roaring cloud of dust.

We sit there for what feels like days but is probably only a few minutes. My father says he should go attend to the wounded, and I know that is where I belong as well, even though I am wearing only a dressing gown and sticky, crimson woolen shoes. Father leads us down a side stairwell of Gochan Two, and it is clear to me he has been here before. “Did you help him put together the arm?” I ask.

He nods. “Bo drew up the design when he was only fourteen. As soon as he recovered from the injuries, he was coming over here to learn. I got him the parts, but once he had that arm, he never needed me again, not really.”

He sounds so sad. He has lost a son today. I link my arm with his as we get to the factory’s side exit, one that opens onto a small plaza between Gochan One and Two. My father stops Melik before we open the door. “We have to do something about your hair.”

Melik nods toward the door. “The dust will be my disguise.”

We pull the fabric of our clothes over our faces and walk into the brown fog, and the world is full of the cries of injured men, panicked men, frightened men. Layered under sirens and over the pops and crackles of fire, buried in black smoke. I follow the dim outline of my father. Tears stream from my eyes, from both grief and the sting of grit. It is a slow journey, as we must climb over piles of rubble, all that remains of Gochan One. My hands are torn and bleeding by the time we make it.

The compound square is chaos, with the dead and dying laid out in a tangle while the living search the rubble. The firefighters spray their hoses on the flames. Some of our cafeteria workers and office girls are tending to the wounded. I look over my shoulder to tell Melik I should be helping.

He’s disappeared.

I turn in place. I should be able to spot him; he’s taller than most, and I’d recognize the way he carries himself. But he has melted into the dust. Without saying good-bye.

Too many losses for this one day. Too many. I sink to the ground and cover my head with my arms, blocking out the noise, the sights, the pain. People touch me, move me out of the way, try to talk to me, but I have nothing left for them. My heart has been crushed. I am as empty as the tiny white seashell now lost in the rubble, shattered into jagged pieces.

Someone smacks me lightly on the shoulder. “I need your help,” my father says. “Put aside what’s happened and work.” His face is streaked with grime; his shoulders are dotted with blood; his eyes are shining with grief. But he has not crumbled or snapped.

And so I stand up and get to work.

I don’t stop for the next six days.

On the seventh day after the collapse I tell my father I want to go back to my mother’s cottage. I’m going to sell the last of my dresses to give us enough to have some choices about what we want to do next.

The autumn sun glows bright above me as I make the walk past rubble to massive factory to genteel mansions clinging to the side of the Hill. I tilt my face to the light, thankful that I am here and alive and able to see the sky. I unlock the door to my mother’s cottage and inhale what is left of her scent, lotus and apple blossoms. I pull the jade green silk dress from my closet. It is the last thing I have from her, the last dress she ever made for me. The sleeves, waist, hem, and neckline are intricately embroidered, the work of an artist.

I run my fingertips over each bud and leaf and swirl of thread, remembering her voice, her smile, her songs. Before I realize what I’m doing, I am wearing this dress, humming the song about the girl and boy in the field of citron. The warped mirror on my dresser shows me a girl with shoulder-length black hair too short to braid. Her face is heart-shaped but less full than it used to be, less childlike. This dress fits her perfectly because her mother made it so.

The time for this dress is over, though. I change back into the new brown work dress given to me by the factory store matron so that I didn’t have to spend the past week wearing a torn and bloody nightgown. I wander out into the overgrown walled garden, where I sit on the stone bench and stare out at the Western Hills. No more do I wonder what is on the other side. I know. I
ache
with knowing.

“I was wondering when you would come,” he says, stepping out from behind my mother’s gardening shed.

I stifle my cry of surprise and jump up, my mouth opening and closing like a fish without water. “You were gone,” I say stupidly.

Melik has wound a makeshift bandage around his neck, and his eyes are still red. But the bruises have faded and his face is beautiful again. He bites his lip and looks at his boots. “I had to find Sinan.”

“Is he well?”

He nods toward the hills. “He’s waiting for me, along with the others. He curses me every day that I lost my head over a girl.”

I stare at him. “You disappeared without saying good-bye.”

He runs a hand over his head, and his rust red hair sticks up. “I stand out. Right now people think I’m dead. But if I were to hang around the Ring . . .” He shrugs apologetically. “Do people assume we’re gone? Have you heard rumors?”

I let out a raspy breath. “Those are rampant these days, but not many are about the Noor. Many are fixated on how the Ghost got his revenge and took over a hundred men with him. But mostly things are being blamed on the unsafe factory conditions and the unstable building. It’s quite a scandal.” I tuck my short hair behind my ear.

Melik gives me a concerned look. “How are you?”

I’ll fall apart if I answer him honestly. “We’ve been using the company store as a clinic. Lots of broken bones and burns. Many people have been helping us, though.” Both Vie and Onya have been by my side, bandaging and splinting the survivors, horrified at what happened to all our good Itanyai boys and men. “There’s always work to do,” I say in a thin voice.

“Wen always has medicine,” he says softly, his words snatched by the breeze. “And your father?”

“I shouldn’t be happy about this, but the collapse of the factory might be a wonderful thing for him. For all the surviving workers, actually.”

He tilts his head.

“All the records of their debts were destroyed,” I explain. “The company’s trying to figure out who owes what, but everything’s in chaos. I’m hoping that everyone’s slates will be wiped clean.”

Melik gives me a weary smile. “That might be too much to hope for.”

I feel so hollowed out that his voice echoes inside me. “I know you’re right.” I clear my throat. “And without the factory, there’s no meat—not in this area, anyway. Many people are blaming the government, and others are blaming the companies that run the factories. Things are very tense in the Ring.”

His smile fades. “Things are tense everywhere.”

Yes, they are. Including right here. I’ve been thinking of Melik every moment of every day, no matter how hard I try to stop, but seeing him hurts so badly I can barely catch my breath. I clench my teeth and will my eyes to stay dry.

“Wen, please look at me.” He waits until I do. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly that day. I didn’t want to, but—”

The pain of it twists in my chest. “I wanted you to be safe. I understand.” But I’m choking on my words, and now he’s rushing toward me. He lets me collapse onto him, lets me hold on tight.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbles into my hair as the grief and longing of the past seven days come gushing out of me.

He lifts my chin and kisses me, and I feel it pouring from him as well, a want as deep as the ocean, wishes as unreachable as the moon. This will never last long enough for me, but I let him hold me against him and pretend it might.

He sets his forehead on mine. “I have to go back to the west. My family needs me.”

“Take me with you.” There is nothing for my father and me here, nothing I love, not anymore.

Melik kisses me again and shakes his head. “The road between here and there is too dangerous, and nothing waits for me but sorrow. Still, I have to go.” He bends to kiss my neck, murmuring his words into my skin so they will seep into my heart and stay. “If you think this is the last time you will see me, you are wrong. Say you believe that.”

And then he is kissing me deep, demanding the answer he wants, making promise after wordless promise. He does not object when I unbutton his shirt and slip my hand underneath to feel his chest, to slide my fingers over the scar that runs from the spot over his heart to his shoulder. At some point in the last week he has removed the stitches, and now there is only a thin red line that has already started to fade. But it reminds me of what we’ve already been through, and how we are standing here now, together.

“I believe that,” I finally whisper.

As soon as I do, he leaves me under the autumn sun, which does nothing to warm me. Shivering and shoving my hands into the deep pockets of my dress, I watch him walk away with his shoulders straight, unbowed and unbroken, still not knowing his place. He leaves me there to pray to gods I don’t believe in for his safety, to weave my wishes together tightly and hope they keep me warm, to make offerings to a ghost who no longer exists. . . .

My fingers close around the object and lift it from my pocket, into the light. I have no idea when or how it got there, and it makes my heart thump heavy and fast. It is my tiny metal girl with her Wen face and body, but she looks different now. The long, fine braid at her back has been snipped; it is now shoulder length. Knitted to her side is a boy, and his arms wind around her waist and chest, holding her against him, keeping her safe. I twist them this way and that, and cannot figure him out.

He doesn’t have a face.

I raise my head and search the Western Hills, but Melik has long since vanished from sight. I turn from them and look out on the Ring, to the still-smoking gap where Gochan One used to be.

With the metal couple clenched tightly in my hand, I begin my long walk back.