“Follow me,” her younger self commanded.
“And there’s supposed to be a lesson for me to learn here?” that other person asked.
“There were lessons to be learned from the beginning,” her younger self pointed out.
Élie huffed impatiently. “What is it you want to teach me?”
Her younger self slowly shook her head. “Come with me.”
Élie sloshed her way through the submerged thoroughfare. In the distance, she saw a tall tower that twisted into a spiral. Atop it was a statue of an Hispanic woman with a lovely face and open angel wings, one of which was broken in half. Most of the tower had fallen into rubble at the base of the building, and those remnants were covered in barnacles and more sea life.
Élie gazed at it all in wonder. “What has happened here?”
“You must comprehend what you are seeing, and what it is you do not see,” her younger self explained.
It still felt to Élie as though every word she spoke was meant for someone other than herself. Who the hell was she talking to?
Regardless, there was an answer. “This city sank.”
“Did it?” her younger self challenged, turning to face Élie. She seemed to be looking through her, though.
Another answer came from the owner of that mysterious voice. It sounded as if it was coming from all over. “Or, at least, it will sink. This city does not yet exist.”
“Indeed. But it will exist in time and forever reshape our world. It will also be doomed to fall and where it sinks on the planet shall determine the fate of everyone in it,” her younger self explained.
“What are you talking about? Why am I here?” Élie demanded again.
She couldn’t piece together the link between her and this metal metropolis. She began feeling ill with fear. With that fear came anger.
Her younger self offered no response. Instead, she turned and walked down the road again. Élie had no choice but to follow.
They rounded a corner and Élie gasped. Hundreds of people lay unmoving in the watery street. The bodies on the ground, however, weren’t just human. Parts of them were mechanical. Some were heavily encased in armor and barely looked human. The decay on both metal and organic parts was monstrous. The metal was severely rusted and corroded. Mechanical arms reached stiffly into the air, while the meat parts of these mechanical people were awash with all colors. Everyone shared the same decomposition. Had they perished at roughly the same time? Had they ever really been alive to begin with?
“These people,” that other person from somewhere else said. “No. These human automatons will go down with the city.”
“You’re only scratching the surface, Élie Fey,” her younger self-declared, disgruntled. “You are not learning anything.”
“Who are you talking to?” Élie demanded. “I’m Élie Fey!”
“Comprehend what you see and what you do not see,” her younger self repeated. “What is the reason for this place? Why are the Living Automatons here?”
Élie could not understand, and her frustration nearly caused her to scream out when that other voice rejoined, “For millions of years, people have tried to gain dominance. It began as a means to survive. Then it became a way to feel superior over another.”
Élie kept her silence and studied the cluster of metal and meat bodies.
“To dominate is power. Power fueled by more power, which ultimately leads to a downfall.”
“Look deeper than that,” her younger self urged. “How did it all begin?”
“Subverted. To create others to control. The Living Automatons were built to serve.”
Her younger self slowly nodded. “You are beginning to understand.”
“Understand what?” Élie demanded to know. “Who is here with us? I’m so confused!”
Her younger self wasn’t looking at her, but something else behind her. Élie looked to where a man was walking across the open space between the buildings at an intercession. He wore a black dapper coat and a thick leather gauntlet with mechanical parts on it.
“Pierce?”
Élie rushed over, ignoring the strange feeling of sea plants under her bare feet while calling for her grandson. He walked on and eventually vanished behind a building. By the time she reached the end of the road, he was nowhere in sight.
“Where did he go?”
She looked toward the twisted tower and spied him entering. She ran after him. In this place, age did not slow her down. She came to a pair of steel doors with rusted hinges and slipped through the open space between.
“Pierce?”
She wasn’t at all surprised to find the building was utterly dark, especially as the world beyond the door dimmed to nothing the farther she went inside. After a while, the water on the floor disappeared.
Élie evoked an illumination spell over herself, manifesting a glow around her. A simple trick she had performed shortly after Pierce had restored her abilities.
“Grandson?” that voice called. “Grandson, are you here?”
“Pierce?” Élie shouted.
“Why do you call for your grandson?” The question came from nearby.
Standing beside Élie, staring back at her, was herself, but no older than six or so.
“Pardon? Because I saw him.”
“And you really think your grandson is here? That’s rather stupid of you.”
Once again, a burning swell of anger formed within Élie. Her confusion and the inability to grasp what was happening made her blood boil.
“Élie Fey,” someone else called.
Pierce stood before her, dressed in his typical dapper coat, but now typewriter keys outlined his wide coat collar. A few small hourglasses hung from thin ropes tied to his wrist. Quills, Egyptian reed pens, Roman metal pens, and a wooden stylus, stuck out of the red band around the crown of his top hat. The band had letters from different languages embroidered in black thread. More typewriter keys served as the buttons of his vest and the cufflinks on his shirt. The shadow of his hat masked half his face.
“Why should I speak to you?” Élie challenged Pierce. “Apparently, you’re not even here.”
“I was told you weren’t here,” came the voice of the same woman whom Élie could not pinpoint.
“Do you know why your grandson is not here?” Pierce said, his voice deeper than usual.
There was a long pause. Élie thought she was going mad.
“Because you are no longer my grandson.”
“He’s not your grandson,” Élie seethed to the disembodied person. “He’s mine!”
“You have been reborn, Pierce. Reborn to tell stories.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Élie argued. “Reborn to tell stories?”
“Do you know where you are?” Pierce interrupted, ignoring her.
“I . . . I . . .” Élie glanced about. Nothing but darkness surrounded her and Pierce. The child had vanished. “I do not.”
“I’m somewhere deep inside my own mind. Some untapped region of my brain,” that voice answered.
“You’re no longer in your own body, Élie Fey,” Pierce pointed out. “How can you inhabit your own head? This story runs deeper than that.”
“Story?”
“What story?” Élie asked. “And who else is here with us?”
“You are not learning anything,” Pierce derided her, tilting his chin up so the illumination touched his whole face.
He looked different—older. Not by age, but more as though knowledge had greatly matured him. There was no more wonder inside him—the kind that had brought him so much light.
A ticking noise sounded all around them. Behind Pierce, two large circles formed in a blur of glowing orbs. The circles hung suspended in midair, the top circle a bright blue and orange, and the one directly beneath it shining like a gold coin. Gradually, the circles came into focus as the ticking grew louder. The entire thing glowed brightly, washing away Élie’s own manifested light.
The Astronomical Cl
ock faces came sharply into focus. Élie didn’t understand why it was there.
“Everything is a story, Élie Fey,” Pierce’s deep voice said without raising it. She heard it over the relentless ticking, all the same. “Lives are merely stories in motion.”
Unable to bear the dreadful ticking, Élie cupped her hands over her ears.
“Do you know who you really are?” he asked, sending the sound of his voice rippling through her entire body.
He raised his hand toward the clock behind him, the hourglasses dangling from his wrist. “The end of your lesson is drawing near.”
A bell rang. Out from the darkness, where no light reached, a skeleton emerged, ringing a bell and holding an hourglass. It approached without its feet touching the ground, never letting up on its ringing.
Pierce lowered his arm as the tolling skeleton took its place by his side. “This is the end of your lesson, Élie Fey. What have you learned?”
“Nothing!” she shouted with tears streaming down her face.
Her frustration had pushed her to her breaking point. “None of this makes any sense!”
The noise quieted down to dead silence. Élie lowered her hands from her aching ears. Everything was still moving—the clock hands were spinning and the skeleton was still ringing the bell—but there was no sound.
Pierce removed his top hat and touched it to his chest. He looked at her. It appeared he was finally seeing her. “Of course, you haven’t learned anything. You’re Fear & Confusion.”
Élie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” came that woman again, “but I do.”
Élie turned and felt a knife plunge into her chest. Holding the handle of the knife, she saw herself at the same age.
“What’s h-happening?” Élie asked her replica.
In a voice drenched with venomous anger, her other self said, “You are what holds me back.”
Élie’s sight dimmed. She closed her eyes, and then she was gone.
* * *
Élie Fey stood with blood dripping off her fingertips. The form of her fear and confusion flickered rapidly and, in seconds, was no more. With it, all manner of light went out.
Confusion & Fear had held her back, and now she had killed it. Élie understood so much now. Many of the world’s secrets and mysteries were revealed to her in that moment of clarity. These secrets fell through a strainer of truth, filtering out the lies.
During her journey, Élie had gone into the minds of animals and found that they were intellectual beings whose thoughts spun so fast, most focused on the basic means of survival when awake just to keep from going insane. Only in sleep could they converse with one another as the true intelligent creatures they were. She discovered light was a physical substance that could be felt by its intense energy. She understood how the Astronomical Clock was related to them, which was due to the god who sometimes lived there. She understood the history behind the machine city, and she understood why her grandson would be a part of it. She saw who Pierce would someday become, and she understood the importance of it all.
And Élie saw her own past relations who had lived thousands of years ago. The djinn. She felt them within herself and she knew their story—their true story.
Élie’s mind had fully awakened. It had been opened in a way she never believed was possible.
“Do you now know who you are, Élie Fey?” the voice of the man who used to be her grandson asked.
“I do.”
“Then leave this place. There is work to be done.”
* * *
Returning to her body was as easy as slipping into a warm bath. In her distress, her body and mind had reached purification, clearing away the clutter in her soul. Élie had returned, and with her head fueled by self-awareness, she put forth the focus needed to find Joaquin.
Grandson, she called to him, speak to me.
A breeze blew over her, carrying an energy she had never experienced before.
Grandmother, Joaquin replied. Help me.
His cry for help was the anchor she needed to discover his whereabouts.
Élie opened her eyes.
“I have found him.”
Chapter Seven
The Book
January
New York, 1926
“Are you sure you don’t wanna drive?” Frank Garcia asked at the wheel. “Youze never drive.”
“That’s ’cause I don’t know how,” Pierce reminded him, resting comfortably in his seat. “I told you this when you offered to let me borrow your car.”
It wasn’t that Pierce didn’t want to learn how to operate an automobile, but only that he didn’t have the time to be taught properly. The icy, narrow dirt road he and Frank were driving on at present, with its deep ditches on both sides, wasn’t exactly an ideal stretch to start learning on, either. Lucy promised to give him lessons when he returned from the cabin.
“Can’t believe youze weren’t taught how to drive,” Frank continued. “Not even in de war?”
“I bloody marched everywhere,” Pierce lied, taking out his tobacco pouch and papers. “Or I rode in the trucks. I was never required to drive.”
Frank snorted. “How do people in England get ’round, huh?”
Pierce stuffed the tobacco into the paper and started rolling it. “Let’s just say I come from humble beginnings, eh?”
Pierce sealed the cigarette with his tongue and put it in his mouth to light. He exhaled the smoke and removed his hat to run his fingers over his scalp. He rubbed behind his head, feeling the bristles where his hair was nearly completely shaven. Although it was the hairstyle of this age, Pierce hated having it so short.
“Y’know, youze really oughta put some Brilliantine in dat hair of yours. Slick it back.”
“I don’t care for that oily shite,” Pierce remarked, cracking the window.
“With it outta the way, dough, everyone can see dat pretty mug of yours.”
Frank reached over and ruffled Pierce’s hair.
“Oi,” he hollered, slapping his hand away. “Hands off, wanker!”
Frank chuckled at him.
“Bloody yank,” Pierce grumbled, shaking his head scornfully.
“I love it when youze get all riled up, Chaplin. ’Ey, youze ain’t related to Charlie Chaplin, is youze?”
“I wish folks would stop asking me that. No, it’s only a coincidence.”
It wasn’t even a coincidence. On the day that Trickster cocker dumped him in an abandoned building, Pierce saw a movie poster for The Gold Rush displayed outside a cinema. Pierce decided to use a fake name simply because the Trickster advised him to do so.
“And you’re now asking me this?” Pierce huffed.
Frank shrugged. “Didn’t really think ’bout it till now. I don’t see many shows.”
Pierce did. Every chance he got. The moving pictures mesmerized him to no end. He couldn’t get enough. Films took him away from it all: the bootlegging, the dirty, no-good gangsters, the coppers, and the whole bloody mess waiting for him outside the theater walls. He and Lucy had seen Strike and The Lost World more than once in a single week. She didn’t seem to mind, though. Maybe he’d take her to see the play The Butterfly’s Evil Spell that she had mentioned.
The cabin came into view through the cluster of skeletal trees. The place looked as if it had been built a hundred years ago.
“I’ll admit it,” Frank said. “This was a good idea youze came up with.”
Pierce flicked his cigarette out. “Cheers.”
“The boss is happy ’bout it, too. You’ve made an impression in your short time in da outfit.”
The car rolled to a stop near the front porch and Pierce got out. “I have a knack for this sort of thing, lad.”
“Lad,” Frank repeated with amusement, opening his own door. “I ain’t used to how youze tawk.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t exactly become accustomed to phrases such as ‘bump off,’ ‘cat’s meow,’ or ‘doll face,’ eit
her.”
Frank jingled the keys in his hand as he and Pierce walked over to the rear of the car. “Guess we just need to get used to each other’s idiomizims.”
“Its idioms, idiot,” Pierce corrected him while the thickheaded ninny unlocked the trunk.
“Y’know, for a fella your size, youze sure do have a wise lip on ya,” Frank stated, lifting the lid.
Pierce grabbed two suitcases and lifted them out. “I’ve been informed that it’s a flaw of mine.”
“Youze best watch it before someone bumps youze off.”
“Uh-huh,” he said blithely. “And what do you mean a fella my size, eh? Just ’cause I’m not some walking cinderblock like you doesn’t mean I’m below average, chum.”
When Pierce was being measured for a new suit, the tailor said he was five-nine, which was a pretty good height for the time he’d come from.
Frank lifted two boxes of perfume spray bottles out and they started for the cabin. “Like I said, wise lip for a little fella. Youze lucky I ain’t the kind who takes offense easily. Otherwise, you’d been missin’ some teeth, youze Reuben.”
This was the sort of relationship they had. Throwing jabs and counterfeit threats was all in good fun. Pierce actually liked the bloke.
Frank Garcia was born in the Bronx, and until his late teens, he had barely been out of his own neighborhood. Meeting Pierce was probably his first encounter with a British foreigner despite how many first-generation immigrants inhabited New York City.
“Aye, right,” Pierce said dismissively, setting a case down to open the front entrance. “Where do you think ol’ George is, eh? His car isn’t here.”
“Dunno. Maybe he went to the store.”
“Well, the bloke didn’t lock the bleedin’ door.”
As he and Frank entered, they were greeted with a double-barrel shotgun. Pierce seized up with fear. Then he realized who it was.
“Fuckin’ hell, George!” he yelled, letting out his breath, which he had trapped in his lungs. “We thought you popped out for a bit.”
George lowered the shotgun, the ball joint in his mechanical shoulder hissing as it moved. “Jesus, Isaac, I could’ve blown ya’ll to bits like toads on a log. I instructed you assholes to honk three times whenever you come up ’ere.”
The Payment Page 8
