The Boneshaker (14 page)

Every once in a while, blasts of disjointed music from the One-Man Band exploded somewhere deep in the maze of booths and pavilions and fluttering tents. Natalie and Alfred decided to look for the source of the clanging and see where that took them.

They wound through the concessions and past an open-fronted tent full of printed placards on easels, a few more spindly black chairs, and a table piled with books and pamphlets. The bunting across the front of the tent read
MAGNETISM.

After the experience of eye contact with Vorticelt, nothing could have prevented her from having a closer look at whatever there was to read about Magnetism—as long as Vorticelt himself didn't show up. She nudged Alfred, took a few steps toward the tent, and stopped. Alfred stood unmoving behind her. "What?"

"I still have a headache from earlier is all," he mumbled.

Natalie peered inside the tent, but the only person there was a thin and pale man who sat very still on his chair as if he was asleep.

"The Paragon's not in there. I just want a look." She tiptoed inside, leaving Alfred fidgeting on the threshold.

CURE NERVOUS DISEASES WITHOUT DRUGS OR MEDICINES,
the first placard proclaimed over a picture of a languid, tired-looking woman that reminded Natalie for a moment of her mother,
PARACELSUS VORTICELT, THE PARAGON OF MAGNETISM, THE ONLY HEIR OF THE GREAT MESMERIST HIMSELF,
announced the second card. Beneath the words an angular image of Vorticelt brandishing his narrow white cane like a wand stared out of an oval frame, facing a second image of someone in a long white wig and a costume from sometime hundreds of years before. Presumably the Great Mesmerist, whoever that was. The third placard read:
PARACELSUS VORTICELT PERFORMS MIRACLE CURES USING ONLY THE FORCE OF ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

"What's animal magnetism?" Natalie said aloud.

The thin, pale man lifted his head and spoke quietly from his chair. Either he was the same man who had ridden the piano-bicycle in the procession, or Limberleg had hired a bunch of brothers with a really strong family resemblance.

"Animal magnetism restores balance to the body's magnetic fluids." His voice was soft and there was something grainy about it that reminded Natalie of a phonograph record. "It is called animal magnetism because instead of magnetic minerals, it requires only a highly magnetic human animal to achieve the same effect. A practitioner uses a rod to conduct the magnetic charge from himself to his patient, but Brother Paracelsus is so magnetic that his gaze alone is enough to achieve the necessary effects. A course of magnetized water taken externally, preferably Paracelsus Vorticelt's patented Aqua Magnetica, is recommended in chronic cases of magnetic disparity."

"So he just stares at you and you're cured?" Natalie asked, reaching for one of the pamphlets.
Disparity
she didn't understand, but Natalie knew what it meant to take a medicine externally. "And people are supposed to buy water to rub on afterward? Can't they just take a bath?"

Rather than answering, the thin man blinked slowly and his head dropped back to his chest as if he had gone to sleep again.

"This has got to be a joke," Natalie muttered, tossing the pamphlet back on the table.

The tent next door, proclaiming
MAGNETISM TREATMENT
on its frayed bunting, was tied up tight. Natalie tried to peek through the flaps, but Alfred grabbed the strap of her overalls to haul her away. He didn't relax until they'd turned a corner and all things Magnetism were out of sight.

"Hey, look at that." He jogged over to a glass case in front of the entrance to a large red pavilion. Something inside the case moved, catching the light. "What is this thing, Natalie?"

"Cabinet of Curiosities," she read from the draped banner over the doorway.

"I mean what's
this?
"

Natalie edged around two bigger kids and put her face up to the glass. A tinny, discordant music-box tune muffled by the brass-fitted glass panels accompanied a perfect replica of the One-Man Band as it strolled across a little moth-eaten velvet-covered dais inside the case, manipulating its tiny instruments.

"It's an automaton," Natalie said slowly. "A little machine. He—Dr. Limberleg—collects them."

"What makes it move?"

"Clockwork. They wind up." The little man executed a sharp turn and began pacing in the other direction, the brass cymbals clashing on his back.

"So it's like the one you're making with your dad, right?"

"Not really," Natalie said, swallowing uncomfortably. "Let's go." She remembered Mr. Tilden's words the day before:
I don't like the way they seem.

Alfred hesitated at the glass case. "Hey, Natalie? If it's a wind-up, where's the key?"

The small figure, showing no signs of winding down, turned sharply again. The faint discordant music didn't seem to repeat at all. Natalie watched for a moment, until the automaton did another sharp turn.

"I don't know." She took a couple of determined steps away from the case, but Alfred darted the other way, right up to peer through the curtains into the tent. When she didn't follow him, he stared back at her, incredulous.

"You don't want to go in? You love mechanical stuff."

I love mechanical stuff because I understand it,
Natalie thought,
but I don't understand this automaton at all, and it scares me.

"Nah. I ... I see enough of it at home."

"Sure looks swell in there," he said wistfully.

Natalie looked desperately around for something, anything else to distract Alfred from the curtained pavilion in front of them. To one side, the lane opened onto a row of concessions, and at the end of that row she spotted something lit up like a star, gleaming with a blinding light. "What's that?" she said, too eagerly, and shaded her eyes as she pulled him away from the Cabinet of Curiosities toward it.

As the two of them wandered closer, a group of older girls surrounded the shining thing for a moment, shading enough of the glare for Natalie to make out the shape of a box, brass below and glass on top, capped by a little canopy of faded red silk. The tallest of the girls turned a crank on one side and leaned in close to the box for a moment. Laughter, then squeals from the group as the girl who had turned the crank bent to retrieve something from a little door in the brass part. Whispers, giggles, and shrieks from six bent heads, then the girls strolled away, on to some other amusement.

When she and Alfred reached it and saw what was inside, Natalie's jaw dropped. She could tell immediately that she was looking at something mechanical, but she'd never imagined an automaton on this scale.

The box contained a woman—or at least the top half of one, visible from the waist up and leaning slightly to her left so that her ear rested against the small end of a tortoiseshell ear trumpet. Her face was young and smooth and beautiful, and looked like it might be made of wax. Her eyes were thick-lashed and closed. The graceful fingers of her long hands sat folded neatly atop a green jade box carved with swirls and flowers. She wore an embroidered silk gown of some vaguely Oriental style, and her shining black hair was done in a fancy updo of twisting rolled curls—and topped with a small gilded birdcage. Inside it, a little yellow canary chirped and fluttered. The bird, at least, looked like it might be the real thing.

"Say," Alfred said admiringly. Natalie gave him a sharp look, and he blushed. "Well, she
is
kind of pretty," he grumbled.

The squeamish feeling she'd gotten from the miniature One-Man Band was too fresh in her memory for Natalie to particularly like the looks of this thing. Warily, she read the white lettered card that stood inside the glass beside the jade box.

P
HEMONOE

WHO FORETOLD THE RULE OF

Alexander the Great

ANSWERS YOUR EVERY QUESTION FOR A PENNY

BY MEANS OF

The Most Ancient Art of Gelomancy!

PAY A PENNY,

TURN THE CRANK,

SPEAK YOUR QUESTION CLEARLY INTO THE EAR TRUMPET,

THEN GIVE A GOOD HEARTY LAUGH

AND

DISCOVER YOUR DESTINY AS TOLD BY PHEMONOE

THE LEGENDARY

Libyan Sibyl!

Natalie examined what she could see of the mechanism connected to the ivory-handled crank on the side. Below the coin slot, a little weighing pan, like those on a set of scales, hung from a lever suspended from the ceiling of the box. The other side of the lever held the crankshaft connected to the ivory handle. Natalie smiled and relaxed. This was no weirdly inexplicable thing moving on its own. This she could understand.

"That lever keeps the crank from moving until the weight of the penny in the pan releases it," she explained. "When you turn the crank, it winds up Phemonoe here so she can do whatever it is she does."

"So what's
gelomancy?
"

"Dunno." Natalie rooted in her pockets and came up with a coin. "Here."

Alfred dropped the penny through onto the little metal weighing pan and gave the handle three good turns until it would go no farther.

In its cage among the piled black hair, the canary fluttered and chattered, but the sibyl herself didn't move.

The wide end of the ear trumpet, covered by a delicate brass grille, was set into the glass above the ivory handle. "Alfred," Natalie said, tapping the grille, "you have to ask your question first. And you have to laugh. I guess that's what gelomancy means." She grinned. "Ask it if you're going to marry Miranda Porter someday. That ought to be good for a chuckle. Plus you already know the answer, so it'll be a good test of the sibyl's accuracy."

Alfred gave her a dark look and leaned close to the ear trumpet to whisper something inaudible through the brass grille, then gave a loud laugh.

At the moment Alfred laughed into the trumpet, the woman inside the glass box moved. Her shoulders lifted, the way someone's will on a deep, deep inhalation, and her eyes popped open to reveal bright blue balls of painted glass. She straightened, leaning away from the trumpet, unfolded her long-fingered hands, and tapped on the surface of the box. Her glass eyes seemed to focus on Natalie, standing directly in front of the box. Then she blinked and turned to stare at Alfred, still standing to the side next to the ear trumpet. Her eyes narrowed as if she were thinking carefully.

The sibyl stopped tapping, lifted the lid of the green jade box, and withdrew a white card. A second later it made a soft sound as it landed in a compartment behind a little door in the lower, brass part of the box. The canary chirped a few notes and rustled its wings.

Alfred zipped around and extracted the card from its compartment. Natalie watched the sibyl swivel her head in order to follow him around the box, blue eyes unblinking.

"
To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same.
" Alfred scowled at the card, turned it over, and frowned at the sibyl. In response, the sibyl folded her hands neatly, leaned back toward the trumpet, and closed her eyes.

"Seems like maybe Phemonoe thinks you like being tortured by Miranda," Natalie said with a grin. Then she realized her friend was blushing. "Alfred," she said sharply, "do you secretly actually
like—
"

"Are you kidding?" Alfred hissed, shoving the card in his pocket. "I don't know what this so-called fortune means and neither do you! Here's a penny;
you
try. Ask her if you're going to marry George Sills, why don't you! See how you like it."

Natalie plucked the coin from his fingers. "I have a better question." She dropped in the penny, wound the crank, and leaned close. "Tell me something useful," she said into the tortoiseshell horn. "Tell me where the generators are. Tell me where to find Limberleg's Chesterlane Eidolon." She forced a riotous laugh into the ear trumpet, and the sibyl took another deep breath, as if inside the box she was inhaling Natalie's laughter straight into her lungs.

The wax woman raised her head, tapped her fingers, and turned to look straight at Natalie. She opened the jade box and selected a card.

Alfred plucked it from the compartment, glanced at it, and handed it airily across to Natalie. "
I am willing to do so, but it requires more effort than Ifeel able to make,
" Natalie read aloud. She looked from the card to the sibyl, who had not yet closed her bright blue eyes again. "Give me another penny, Al."

"Tell me something useful," she said into the tortoiseshell horn.

He did. Natalie started up the sibyl again, laughed, and waited for the next card, which read,
You do not question me properly.

"Is this a joke?" Natalie demanded.

"Natalie, they're already printed," Alfred protested. "It's like one of those tea cakes with fortunes in them. They don't really mean anything."

She held out a hand for another coin. Alfred sighed and handed one over. Natalie turned the crank and asked, "How would you prefer I question you, if you please?" She waited for a long minute, but the sibyl did nothing.