The Boneshaker (17 page)

Inside the maze of the fair, it was almost possible to

forget that she was still in her hometown.

having. The pedals were so far forward, she actually had to lean a little bit to either side to complete a rotation. That shouldn't have been a problem, except the hinge at the middle of the frame allowed the front half of her bicycle to lean with her, causing her to either run into walls or fall over sideways. The hinge on this one moved, too, but the bicycle was secure, so it didn't matter.

She took another look around. Still nobody in sight. She began to pedal.

Natalie sprinted down Bard Street, past the open doors of her father's shop and straight on to her house, pausing only to glance at the red Chesterlane where it leaned against the barn. Feeling better than she had in a long while, she took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.

Her mother's eyes slid open as Natalie burst through her bedroom door. "How was the medicine show, Nattie? You're home early."

"I'm going back." Natalie climbed up on the counterpane next to her mother. "I thought maybe you'd be less tired and would want to come back with me. They're doing another presentation at two o'clock. Hydrotherapy. What's that, do you think?"

"Something to do with water, I suppose." Her mother's lips stretched into a smile. "Maybe I can make it tomorrow."

For a moment they sat without saying anything. Natalie, who had been about to tell her mother about the strange dizziness and the odder thing that had felt like a memory of falling, decided not to mention them right now.

The recording that had been playing on the Victrola came to an end. The needle skipped rhythmically in the quiet room. Something strange and uncomfortable began to stir somewhere between Natalie's throat and her belly, dissolving all the happiness she'd felt after her experiment with Limberleg's blue bicycle.

"Aren't your vitamins working, Mama?" she asked at last.

Mrs. Minks's heavy-lidded eyes opened wider, a little bit at a time. She opened her mouth, too, but after a moment she closed it again without saying anything at all and put her arms around Natalie instead.

"Tell me about it before you go back," she said. "Tell me a story."

Something damp fell on Natalie's cheek. She brushed away a tear that wasn't hers. "I don't know any." There were tears starting in her own eyes and she didn't understand why.

"Make it up as you go along," her mother said gently, brushing Natalie's messy hair off her face. "It'll be a good one; I'm sure of it. Storytelling's in your blood."

Natalie thought about the tales she'd told the afternoon before out in the Old Village. Those had been good stories, even if they weren't hers alone. "I guess I could try."

Sometime later Natalie descended the stairs to find the kettle howling on the stove and her father staring at a telegram.

"Mama wants to know if you're making coffee."

"Sure am." His voice was just a little too bright and casual as he shoved the paper into his pocket. "How about if I take it up?"

"I'll do it," Natalie said, making her voice sound nonchalant, too, as she took the kettle carefully off the stove.

"Don't you have a fair to get back to?"

"1 don't mind."

Her father smiled. "Go on. I'll fix it just the way she likes. One sugar cube and one tablespoon of cream. Go on, Natalie."

She swallowed and looked at the stairs. "And a little rum, Dad." Then Natalie turned and sprinted out the door and down the porch stairs to find Mrs. Byron, of all people, standing in the lane, her gray hair shining like steel.

Natalie just managed to stop herself from colliding with the old lady. Mrs. Byron scowled and brushed nonexistent dust from the lace front of her dress, releasing a whiff of stale lavender. Amazing: it didn't matter what kind of flowery scent she wore, it always smelled like something dried out and dead.

"Well, Miss Minks?" she said, staring down over her pince-nez glasses.

"Yes, Mrs. Byron?" Natalie said to the toes of her shoes.

"Someone, Miss Minks, has been riding through my roses again." She smiled coldly. "Is your father at home?"

Natalie didn't know whether it was the sense that bigger and more important things were going on in Arcane than some roses getting trampled by persons unknown or the certainty that her father had better things to do than hear about it that made her say what she said next. It just seemed silly to go on standing there taking abuse from a crabby old woman obsessed with the evils a bicycle could do.

She made herself look Mrs. Byron straight in the face. "I know for a fact you've never seen me ride through your garden, because I never have. Are you really going to lie and tell my dad I did?"

Mrs. Byron's cheeks pinkened. "I will not have you speak to me that way, young lady!"

"Because he's home, if you really think you can convince him I'd do something that babyish." It was easier to hold the stare now that Mrs. Byron was doing all the fidgeting. "But if it's just that you don't like me"—and here Natalie actually smiled, because Mrs. Byron's mouth was muttering silent, angry sounds that made her false teeth move around between her lips—"then go on, and I'm sorry I interrupted. I can take it, if it makes you happy."

For a moment they just stared at each other. Then Mrs. Byron's head pivoted on her thin, corded neck, and with a little snarl of fury, she continued on her way down the lane. The noise of cicadas swelled, as if the insects were applauding from their hidden shady places in the rustling trees.

"Look it in the face," Natalie murmured to herself. "I never realized it was that easy."

An hour ago nothing could've kept her from going back to the fair, but now something was begging Natalie to stay here, close to home. So instead of heading for the village of tents at the end of Heartwood Street, she slipped through the big barn doors of the bicycle shop. The Wilbur sat on the bench under the little window, right where she'd left it. She wound it carefully. Nothing.

It was as good a way as any to pass the time. Natalie began removing pieces until the flyer had been reduced to a neat pile of gears and cams, carved figures, and one big coiled spring. Then, glancing at the drawings tacked up over the bench and tracing the connections with her fingers, she started to put it all back together.

The barn door banged, and Natalie heard her father curse quietly. She looked up to see him shaking his hand as he stepped through the doorway.

"I thought I saw you come in here. Hi, Nattie." He glanced at the workbench full of pieces. "Not going back to the fair?"

She shook her head and scowled at a gear that didn't want to fit its shaft.

Her father turned the shaft around so the opposite end met the gear in question. "Other side."

Together they reassembled the little figure piece by piece until only the key was left. Natalie fitted it in place and wound the automaton carefully. Slowly, jerkily, the
Wilbur
began to move.

"Hey!" Her father clapped her on the back. "You did it! Look at him go."

Natalie set the little flyer on the workbench. The twin propellers spun and the double wings twisted back and forth in opposite directions, first one tipping its back edge downward, then the other. The
Wilbur
rolled forward hesitantly, whirling and warping jerkily for perhaps five seconds, each repetition a touch slower, until at last it lurched to a stop.

"It doesn't work very well." Natalie wound the key again and watched the automaton lurch along the workbench again only to slow down almost immediately.

"Sure it does. You did a great job."

"It just ... it doesn't go for long," she said. It had seesawed maniacally in Dr. Limberleg's hands. Why was it poking along now?

"Everything stops eventually." He took the machine from her and wound it himself. "No machine that's ever been built or born can run forever."

"Born?"

"I was thinking of people." He watched the flyer scoot along to stillness. "And then, some things aren't built to run smooth and easy in the first place. It doesn't mean they aren't doing what they're supposed to do. Like your bicycle, for instance." He smiled at the
Wilbur
and handed it back. "This was just a simple mechanism, to show you how the parts worked. We'll build a more complicated one next time, one that will run a little longer. Or we can just keep working on this, maybe get it to go a little faster, maybe even go twelve seconds like the real
Flyer I.
How's that sound?"

"Okay." Natalie swallowed her disappointment and tried to look cheerful. "That sounds great."

Her father gave her a quick hug and left the workshop. She set the
Wilbur
carefully on the workbench and followed as far as the barn door. As he crossed the yard onto the front porch of the Minkses' house, he took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket—the same telegram he'd been reading when Natalie had found him in the kitchen.

Beside the door, the red enameled bicycle leaned against the shop wall.

"Chesterlane Eidolon," Natalie said slowly, giving it a stern look. "AH right. Let's give this another try." Her frown deepened at the thought of the unfinished flyer springing to life in Limberleg's hands, his smug reaction to Natalie's shock. He probably thought he could work the red bicycle just fine, too. Natalie snorted.

She grabbed the handlebars and stalked down the street toward the little alley between the stables and the smithy where she'd been practicing before, running through the things she'd figured out on the blue Chesterlane at the fair. "Let's go," she muttered to the bicycle. "And I don't want any trouble from you."

"It will have surfaced in Pinnacle by now."

"I am aware of what day it is," Jake Limberleg snapped.

The last citizens of Arcane wandered homeward, silhouetted by the final rays of shadowy summer light. Stars began to creep from the horizon toward the vault of the sky, mingling with fireflies and the songs of crickets in the cornfields.

"Dr. Acquetus is merely reminding you that we are on a schedule." This, dryly, from Alpheus Nervine, one hand tapping the handle of the rapier that hung from his work belt. "Since you elected to set up shop here, like a fool, less than two days out of that last sorry little burg."

"With the deal the dead man gave us on the lot, could I afford to pass it up?"

"Don't jest with me, Jake," Nervine said evenly.

"What choice was there?" Limberleg demanded. "If we hadn't, if we had left everything shut and silent but had to wait here for a wheel anyhow, don't you think it would've raised some eyebrows? Isn't that what you said?"

"It was your call to make," Nervine snarled, "and it's too close."

"I said that to you out there in that godforsaken ghost town! I said,
We have rules
," Limberleg spat.

"It will have surfaced in Pinnacle by now," Acquetus repeated, louder. "Assuredly, the flu that was going around before we got there bought us some time, but when they realize the gingerfoot is something different, they will draw the obvious conclusion, and they will contact Arcane by some means tomorrow night or the next morning with warnings—"

"We can stop the communications."

"—and we are not prepared to depart on schedule," the phrenologist continued as if Limberleg hadn't spoken. "If we start dispensing tomorrow, we
must
be able to depart on schedule, Jake.
Where is our -wheel?
"

Thaddeus Argonault and Paracelsus Vorticelt, occupied with tying the flaps of the tents closed, stopped their work to listen to Limberleg's answer.

"Are you suggesting we creep away, crippled, dispense nothing?" Limberleg asked. His tone came out much closer to relief than indignation.

Behind him Nervine laughed. It was not a happy sound. "That," he said, "is not an option at this point."

"I am
suggesting
that we find out what is holding up the bicycle man and remove the obstruction," Acquetus said slowly. "I
suggest
we give that the highest priority."

"I'll see to that," Limberleg muttered. "In the meantime, Willoughby, perhaps you and Alpheus could see to the wires." He smiled grimly. "We wouldn't want to spoil any surprises for anyone. Not before they get to see the gingerfoot for themselves."

"What about the old man?" Vorticelt removed his glasses and polished them slowly, looking carefully at the mercury-colored lenses in his fingers.

"What about him?"

Vorticelt looked up from his polishing, fixing Limberleg with his bottomless, all-pupil gaze. Argonault, Acquetus, and Nervine turned their eyes on Limberleg one by one.

"I needn't tell you
what about him,
Jake," Vorticelt said, deadly calm.

"He's one man, and he's outcast here." Limberleg stared back, trying to meet Vorticelt's dreadful stare with an equally awful one of his own and not quite succeeding.

"Don't be simple." Nervine folded his arms over his chest. "Nothing in this ridiculous town is simple, Jake, and we've known it since that damnable wheel disappeared. Wake up."

With that, the Paragon who called himself the Chevalier of Amber Therapy turned on the heel of his floppy boot and stalked into the shadows.

"What about the other one?" Argonault asked, looking more at the other Paragons than at Limberleg.

Vorticelt answered. "The other one is past involving himself in matters like this. However"—he glanced at Argonault, and something like a smile flickered across his face—"there is, of course, the dead man."

"I'm not so sure you got a right read on this place, fellows."

Limberleg and his three remaining colleagues turned to face the new voice. The drifter in the long leather coat leaned on the pole of his lantern and regarded them with grim amusement, the old eyes glittering in the too-young face.

"'Course it looks like the, what'd you call him, the
dead man
is giving you the run of the place, so maybe the rest of it doesn't matter so much. Why's that? Why would a fellow like that deal with you?"

"I've been meaning to ask who the hell you are," Argonault said coldly.