The Bones of Ruin

by Sarah Raughley

A stillness fell over the amphitheater so suddenly that Iris worried her hearing had gone again. On the contrary, everything inside her was beginning to work. Her blood was flowing. Her arms and legs were slowly moving. As Iris’s daze began to clear, she forced her brain to work again, to ascertain the situation.

  Jinn’s breathing seemed to fill the entire silent hall. “Iris…”

  “The knives…” Iris’s hoarse voice crawled out of her. She coughed blood.

  “Iris… Iris, you…”

  “The knives. Knives.”

  When she began shaking her arms and legs, Jinn finally understood. He worked quickly, yanking the knives out of the board and tossing them away. Her body was gaining strength, but she was still weak from the pain and the sheer shock of the events. She collapsed into Jinn, who caught her, knelt down, and cradled her on the ground.

  “Iris…,” he said again as if he couldn’t say her name enough times. As she gripped his arm and took in a deep breath, he stroked her face. Iris felt blood rushing through her cheeks from the light pressure of his hand. “You’re alive. You’re alive… Iris…”

  When she looked up and saw fresh tears dripping down his face, she wondered for how long he’d been crying. But what she saw over his shoulder made her want to cry instead. Coolie with a greedy grin, his right arm stretched toward her, revealing to the audience his latest catch.

  His newest inventory.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a booming voice, “I present to you our Nubian Princess Nefertiti, the Deathless.”

  So he’d settled on a name.

  The realization of her survival slowly dawned on the audience. She could hear the sounds of confusion, then disbelief, then excitement and fear. Then cheering, shouting, feet stomping, screaming. It was the kind of pandemonium Coolie fed off. The hairs on Iris’s arms stood on end. The crowd’s lust rattled her. It was as if they wanted to take her apart and see what was inside. To taste her exotic blood as they swallowed her whole.

  They wanted more.

  In the royal box, the red-haired woman leaned over, her legs daintily crossed, staring at Iris through her golden binoculars.

  But Adam. Adam Temple was mouthing something to her. The very thought that he was attempting to communicate with her so calmly in this situation was terrifying in and of itself.

  Everyone. Everyone was looking at her. Everyone had seen her.

  It was over.

  Is this a nightmare? Her lips began to quiver. Desperately, she gazed up at Jinn, silently pleading for an answer to her unspoken question. He was looking at her too.

  He was smiling.

  His expression was bright despite his tears. It wasn’t just relief. It was as if all of his burdens and secrets had suddenly fallen off his broad shoulders.

  “I knew it,” he whispered, holding her closer to him as if they were alone in this chaotic horror show of an amphitheater. “I knew you were…”

  A rush of panic swelled inside her. Iris pushed herself away from him and jumped to her feet, her legs stronger now. The room was spinning. She could hardly take it all in: Coolie’s evil. The crowd’s insanity. The men and women in the royal box carefully scrutinizing her. The other performers in the wings, horrified. Jinn staring up at her from the ground.

  Iris ran. So fast she barreled past security before they could catch her.

  “Iris, what are you doing—?” The Bearded Woman.

  “I heard rumors but… are you one of those—” The One-Legged Opera Singer.

  “You’re one of them!” The Swiss man who pretended to be a Cherokee chief.

  Iris heard each performer as she pushed past them. Ironically, many already considered those in the circus to be “freaks.” But what was considered outside the realm of the acceptable depended entirely upon the social space one inhabited—and every space had a set of rules.

  What was dead was supposed to stay dead. That was simply the rule of life.

  Blessedly nobody followed her as she entered Astley’s main lobby. They were too terrified. But she couldn’t imagine any were more terrified than she.

  When Iris exited the amphitheater, she found herself on the clay entry porch, quivering in the cold, foggy night. The lamps dangling from the porch roof illuminated the darkness, and yet she still couldn’t see the way forward. Collapsing against one of the columns, she wrapped her arms around it, breathing heavily, her head whipping from one direction to the other, wondering where she should run. She hadn’t time to think before she spotted a cab emerging from the thick mist, the horses’ hooves clomping along cobbled streets.

  It was now or never.

  The second the driver was near enough, Iris ran up to him.

  “Take me to—” She didn’t know where. “Take me somewhere. Take me anywhere!”

  “Twenty pence, ma’am.” The man said in a disaffected tone, scratching his mustache.

  “Twenty pence? I don’t have any money!”

  “Then I’m sorry—”

  She ambushed him. Because of his shock and her ferocity, it took only seconds for her to wrestle his long, black coat from him before she kicked him out of his seat, grabbing his bowler hat as it flipped up in the air. His coat was already covering her circus attire by the time the man hit the ground. Using his hat to shade her face from sight, she grabbed the horses’ reins as the cabdriver began swearing and calling for help.

  “Iris!” someone cried behind her.

  Jinn.

  “Wait!” he said. “You don’t understand!”

  But she couldn’t wait. If Jinn was here, then more would follow. The ten years she’d spent in Coolie’s company. Her life with Granny. Her partnership with Jinn.

  It was all over.

  “Yah!” she cried, and snapped the reins of the horses, which began tumbling through the streets, scaring pedestrians out of the way. Iris looked over her shoulder. Jinn was chasing after her, but the horses were too fast. Wincing from the agony burning inside her, she turned back and left Jinn’s desperate cries to the mist.

  * * *

  Over the bridge.

  Through this street. Through that street.

  Over another bridge.

  Iris didn’t know where she was going. By now the police had probably been contacted. By now Coolie had sent out a search party. But she kept riding, forcing the horses harder until their knees buckled and they whinnied in protest, stopping suddenly and flinging her out into the street. There was a market nearby. She limped into the narrow street, sheathed by her stolen coat, holding her hat low so no one would see her face. The streetlamps were dim, the lights from the apartment windows faded, and yet they were blinding to her. Every woman who passed by, every man she bumped into, every dirty-faced child that sat on the steps of a store building—every one of them was a spy. Nonsensical, she knew, but she couldn’t think. Where to escape? Where? Out of the city? Out of the country?

  Think, Iris. Frightening men shot her murderous glances from the dark alleyway. Calm down and think. She needed a place to stay. To rest and recoup before figuring out her next move.

  But when you’re ready to speak of secret things, Iris, come and find me.

  Adam. The thought unsettled her, but when she tried desperately to think of another way, her mind turned blank. Secret things. Resting and recouping wasn’t all she needed. She needed the truth. Who else would give it to her?

  “The card.” She patted her coat before realizing it wasn’t hers. She’d left his card with his address forgotten and crumpled at the theater.

  Think, Iris, think, think! Hitting her scalp wasn’t smart. It was still aching from the bullet—and Granny Marlow’s freshly tight braids.

  19 Melbury Road.

  With a new surge of energy pulsing through her, she asked whoever she could for directions. It took two hours longer than it should have, what with her having to cobble together half-answers and wrong advice, but eventually her tired legs brought her to a tall, redbrick house fit for a lord: a touch of the r
omantic medieval. White paint coated the window frames. But the roofs were round rather than pointed, reminding Iris of the shape of a cello. Trees and bushes peeked out from behind the manor.

  The black iron fence and locked gate wouldn’t let Iris onto the premises. Even in the night, coaches wheeled down the roads and scattered pedestrians roamed the sidewalks. That was all she could see through the night and fog.

  Iris pounded the gate until her hands were tired, paying no mind to the bewildered pedestrians passing by. The last thing she wanted was to draw more attention to herself, but her sore neck and tired legs were about to crumple; her heart was weary, her mind as thick as the fog blanketing the streets. Finally she gave up and crouched down on the dirty sidewalk, letting the coat she’d stolen cushion her bottom.

  She drew up her knees and waited.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees… and waited.

  Finally she buried her face in them and began to cry.

  Soon, news of her special sort of freakery would reach every nook of London from the East to Westminster to the bloody palace. Crouching in the night’s chill, a well of despair flowed up from deep within her. Coolie had taken away her right to choose how she would live and to whom she would reveal her secrets. He’d scoffed at her free will and revealed to the world what she herself didn’t even understand. And now she was alone.

  She’d be kidnapped by police and investigated. Or maybe burned at the stake. Or maybe placed in an asylum. Or perhaps in a cage like that poor Sarah Baartman, whose bones were held captive, even today, somewhere in France. There was no escape for her. No future.

  She couldn’t even say a proper goodbye to them. Granny. Jinn.

  Iris… What do you think of me?

  Iris shook her head, her sobs growing louder, carrying into the air. There was no sense in conjuring up an answer now. She’d left him. She had no right to answer.

  “Miss Iris?”

  Iris blinked the tears from her eyes as she heard keys clanging inside the gate behind her. She jumped to her feet so quickly, the hat tumbled off her head as a rush of air entered her lungs.

  A woman in a white bonnet opened the gate with a creak. And behind her—

  “L-Lord Temple…”

  He stood in the threshold of the manor’s open door and gazed at her calmly as if he’d expected her to come. He had expected her to come, surely. But those blue eyes were so soft and round, so wholly, genuinely compassionate that she found her tired legs stumbling toward him nonetheless.

  “Lord Temple.” Tears dripped from the corners of her eyes. “Adam.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She shouldn’t be here. But what was that voice deep within her telling her that this was the only place in the world right now she could be? “Adam,” she said again, her voice hoarse, her neck pained, her body weary. But her feet would not stop moving until she was close enough to reach him.

  She did. She gripped the collar of his white shirt, her fingers trembling. “Help me…”

  Adam’s expression grew softer. “Aren’t you tired of running, Iris?”

  It was the release her aching body needed. Her face still wet with tears, she collapsed into his arms and fell asleep.

  7

  VISIONS OF WORLDS IRIS HAD never before seen burst behind her eyelids like stars as she dreamed strange dreams.

  In one moment, Iris saw a castle upon a mountain that could just be seen through the mist. A silent procession of white-robbed figures carrying jewels of unknown origin climbed up the long golden stairc ase winding up the rock toward the palace. Gifts for a greedy, bloodthirsty tyrant. A king who’d conquered the planet and left the world below in ruins.

  In another moment, Iris saw herself standing atop a tree higher than the world itself. A tree piercing the heavens: the world tree, the people had named it, with roots that dug deep into the earth, painstakingly cultivated by the altruistic technology of the world’s holy priestesses. A tree originally meant for all, whose fruit kept all life alive. Now it was dying from humanity’s mistreatment. She could see the continents of mankind spread out over the seas. Their brass machines and silver gadgets. Their massive, frightening black drills with the claws and jaws of a monster of nightmare, each contraption sucking the planet’s life from its core.

  Each world was the same. Each time the same cries burrowed into her soul. The misery of the weak. The arrogance of the strong who crushed their bones into ruin beneath boot and heel. And a cry of a different kind. Steadfast and sure. A whisper.

  Niaga Ecno Emit Si Ti.

  * * *

  Iris gasped and shivered underneath her covers. She was alone in the darkness when she awoke, the details of her strange dream receding into the unknown. The soft bed was grand, not in size but in earthen-colored silks and pillows. The thick, dark-red curtains covering the arched windows to her left were open just enough for her to see the prattling rain and the moonlight filtering through the wet trees. Wherever she was, she must have been on the second or third floor.

  Wherever she was.

  Adam… help me…

  She remembered now. Her flight from Coolie. She sat up, placing her hand on her cool forehead. By the window was a mahogany French vanity rimmed with gold. And tucked in the corner, taut against the dark green wallpaper, was a grandfather clock that told her it was the middle of the night.

  This must be Adam’s residence…

  When she saw the glass of water and plate of shortbread cookies on the oak table to the left of her bed, her initial fear subsided. One of her earliest memories was having cookies with Granny during her first Christmas with Coolie’s company. She took the glass, illuminated by the long candle burning on the table, and sipped it slowly. But the anxiety of not knowing what came next still haunted her.

  Suddenly, she gripped her body—her clothes. Her circus clothes were gone. She was in a light flush-pink nightgown that draped down to her ankles. Who’d changed her? Her palms began to sweat at the first answer to pop into her mind.

  Thunder cracked in the skies. And when she turned, she found a figure peering at her from outside the window.

  He was standing on the branch of a tree nearby. A crack of lightning brightened his long physique, his black cape flowing in the wind, his top hat lowered but not quite enough to cover the harlequin mask on his face—half black and half white, the colors separated perfectly down the middle. Iris covered her mouth and stifled a scream before throwing off the covers and climbing up onto her knees. With another flash of lightning, he was gone.

  “Don’t be afraid,” came a gentle voice from the door, which opened with a creak.

  Lord Adam Temple walked across the threshold, rolling a large silver coin over his knuckles. His black coat was open, and she could see the first few buttons of his white shirt were undone, the top of his hard chest visible. His dark green vest hugged his lean torso, and the lamp he held dangled in the air, brightening his sharp sapphire eyes.

  Iris looked back at the window, but the figure was gone. Had it been her imagination? A hallucination owed to the last vestiges of sleep? She crumpled over, holding her chest against her beating heart.

  “Calm down, Iris,” he whispered in a soothing voice. “I’m not your enemy. I could never hurt you.”

  His words were soft. And worse still—part of her believed him. Some deep instinct inside her kept telling her as much. Granny was the only person she’d ever come across who’d elicited a feeling of familiarity from her… until Adam.

  Placing his coin in his pocket and the lamp atop the dresser in front of her, he pulled a boudoir chair out of the corner and carried it with him to the side of her bed.

  “Were you the one who changed my clothes?” That was the first thing Iris could think to say as he sat down, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line.

  With an all-too-charismatic smile, Adam shook his head. “I do have servants, you know.”

  Like the woman who’d opened the gate. Shifting her shoulders uncomfortably,
Iris accepted his answer. He didn’t seem like a lecher, not like Coolie. He remained a respectable distance from her, but his gaze itself was like a tender touch. His large hands looked like they could envelope hers completely and warmly if they chose to.

  She still wasn’t comfortable. She still wasn’t satisfied.

  “Tell me the truth,” she demanded. “You said you could, so do it.”

  “Right to it, then.” The corners of Adam’s lips curled upward. Like Alice’s Cheshire cat. “After the night you’ve had, wouldn’t you rather rest and—”

  “What am I?”

  Adam sat back in his chair, staring at the food she hadn’t touched before sighing. “The first thing I should tell you, Iris,” he said, closing his eyes, “is that I won’t give you the truth. Not all at once.”

  “What?” Iris balled her hands into fists. “But you—”

  “Right now your mind can’t handle even a hint of a memory that would reveal your true nature. Our meeting earlier today at the amphitheater is proof enough of that, wouldn’t you say?”

  When she nearly choked the life out of him. Iris’s muscles relaxed.

  Placing his arm on the table next to her, Adam picked up one of the long shortbread cookies and considered it. “My sister used to love these,” he whispered with whimsy and something darker before turning back to her. “I know you have so many questions. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. That’s why I want to offer you a safe place to remember your memories gradually, at your own pace. That way, they’ll feel more real to you than if someone simply told you.” He paused. “That was what I wanted to do, at least.”

  Iris tilted her head, a curious frown playing on her lips. “And that plan changed?”

  “Today it did. A little,” Adam admitted. “But the general idea is the same.”

  At this Adam hesitated, and as he did, he stared deeply into her eyes, almost apologetically. Something within Iris stirred. He did know her. The “her” she couldn’t remember. She could feel it so deeply that it made her chest swell with heat. Perhaps that was why she didn’t flinch when he took her fingers in his.