The Bones of Ruin

by Sarah Raughley

  “Relax. The office refused their request to put the Crystal Palace on their schedule. Far as I can tell, there hasn’t been any cause for concern ever since we relocated to the Basement.”

  Iris stepped closer to the curtains, her ear nearly touching the velvet as she listened.

  “You think somebody talked? Why else would they suddenly ask about it?”

  “You think one of us would tell the Crown’s secrets to a nameless Negro?”

  “Calm down, Mr. James. The Crown’s research has been going on for twenty years. You think a few bloody Africans are going to best ’em?”

  He laughed as if the very idea that the envoys could discern their secrets was so ridiculous that it was beneath consideration. Good. Their arrogance made for a strong weapon. The Crystal Palace, John Temple’s research. All of it was connected to the white crystal. Experiments with the ore and an unnatural explosion had given Rin her powers in Dahomey. It could have been the same principle behind the explosion at the South Kensington fair ten years ago. Whatever the Crown was doing here, it was tied to the Fanciful Freaks.

  Another set of footsteps emerged to Iris’s left, and though the curtains were drawn around her, she held her breath. Slow, clinical steps passed by her, too close; his boots were right there, visible underneath the red velvet. Iris didn’t dare move, even after it was clear the new figure had joined the other three.

  “A wise man wrote not so long ago: ‘At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.’ ” A voice had recited the quote from memory. A voice Iris remembered. A voice that made Iris’s blood run cold.

  “I agree with Darwin’s conclusion,” the voice continued. “The erasure of primitive societies and their replacement with more glorious civilizations is inevitable. But only a fool would let that lull them into a false sense of security.”

  “In other words, Doctor?”

  “In other words: do not rest.” Though he spoke like a teacher, a mentor, Doctor Seymour Pratt’s voice was frigid and empty, hollowing Iris out from the inside. “And do not underestimate anyone,” he continued. “Whoever they may be.”

  Hold her down, gentlemen. Do not underestimate her. This beast is dangerous.

  His voice brought visions. Visions of pain and screaming. Blood and death. Hectic, chaotic memories of cold words and colder hands on her. Memories wrenching tears of wrath from her eyes…

  Before Iris knew it, she was leaping out from behind the curtain and rushing toward the doctor in his long black jacket and black tie. His gray hair drooped down from his bald head, merging into the beard that stretched down his neck, but she struck for jugular nonetheless, screaming as she wielded her nails like a knife. One quick slash was all she needed. But she’d been too far away; they saw her coming. The other men stepped in front of the doctor, grabbing her arms and waist, struggling to hold her as she screeched for blood.

  All the while, Doctor Seymour Pratt looked at her through his beady eyes. Not even a wicked grin. He simply inspected her, always inspecting with interest. “You see?”

  “I’ll kill you. I will kill you, Pratt!”

  Iris fought against the men’s grip with all her strength. One man each had an arm while another gripped her waist, three fools keeping her from the one thing she wanted to do—needed to do—more than anything. That emotionless old man’s wrinkled face needed to be ripped off. She needed to make him suffer like he’d made her suffer years ago.

  Yes. He’d once made her suffer. Iris may not have had the memories, but she knew it in her soul.

  “It seems you remember me, Iris. Although maybe it took you some time to remember. Otherwise you would have come to kill me a long time ago. I once hypothesized that if you ever regenerated, there would be psychological consequences for you to reckon with. Fascinating.”

  Iris didn’t hear him. A screech that didn’t even sound human erupted from her throat, scratching it raw.

  “She’s a bloody animal!” said one of the men who held on to her even after being elbowed in the face.

  “An animal? Yes. But this animal is special.” Doctor Pratt rubbed his white beard, studying her with those beady black eyes. “The day of the auction, when I saw you again, I knew I’d have to bring you here eventually. Then I heard you’d escaped. Clever beast.”

  Her desire to kill him filled her with as much grief as it did pain. It made her knees buckle. Made her very self slip away.

  “The five years we spent together must be engraved into your heart. That peculiar heart. Riddles we could never solve no matter what theories we hypothesized. No matter how long we worked. Now that you’ve been born again, I believe it’s time to resume where we left off, don’t you?”

  Doctor Pratt turned, placing his hands behind his back with the kind of nonchalance meant to shrink Iris’s being into nothingness.

  “We may not have the Moon Skeleton, but her heart may serve well in its place. Take her to the Basement. With the discoveries we’ve made in the years since her initial capture, I daresay we’ll find her body more useful this time around.”

  Doctor Pratt began to walk away.

  “But Doctor, we can barely keep her still,” said the man on her left arm through gritted teeth. “How are we supposed to take her anywhere?”

  The Doctor turned his head. “Shoot her. She’ll live.” A simple suggestion before continuing down the hall, turning a corner, and disappearing from her sight.

  “I’ve got a gun,” said the man holding her waist. “Hold her down.”

  Tears continued to sting Iris’s eyes as the man let her go and the remaining men gripped her arms so tightly she could feel the blood pulsating in them. They had her stretched out as if she’d been nailed to a cross built to make her suffer. And yet as they talked about going for her heart, as they joked about the man’s aim, Iris realized they didn’t even have enough regard for her life to make her suffer. They didn’t address her. They didn’t see even a sliver of her humanity as they talked among themselves. She was a beast to be put down. And that was all.

  Crying, Iris shut her eyes, tears hot against her skin as the bullet pierced her breast.

  And then a curious thing happened.

  The metal shattered against her heart.

  That was the last sensation she felt before dying.

  * * *

  She didn’t know how long she was gone for. After several moments, the darkness faded. Moonlight began streaming through her closed eyelids. Shards of metal oozed out of the bullet hole. If she’d been in her right mind, she would have questioned it: What exactly was her heart made of that it could shatter a bullet?

  If she had been in her right mind.

  But now her mind was fury, filled with shadowy tools cutting into her flesh, magnifying glasses, rough hands inside her mouth measuring her teeth, blue and green eyes watching her.

  The indignity.

  As the men carried her through the Crystal Palace by her arms and legs, revenge swallowed her being. And so when she opened her eyes, before the men could notice, she slipped her right arm out of one man’s grip and struck him in the ribs. Then she kicked her left foot into another’s chin. She fell on her back in the midst of the confusion, but rebounded quickly, punching two of the men in the ears to knock them off balance and kicking them between their legs just to send the message home. One by one they went down, knocked out. She caught the last man before he could run away, kneed him in the stomach, and covered his mouth before he could scream for help. Spinning him around, she forced him to look at the unconscious figures of his colleagues. She relished his fear.

  But as she held him in place, she could not only feel his heart pounding; she could sense something more in her blind state of blissful rage: the precious feeling of his life. His vitality. His essence. Closing her eyes, she remembered that day on the balcony with Adam when she felt life flowing through the plants and i
nto her soul. The peaceful oneness of all things. She remembered Adam telling her to concentrate.

  Breathe and let it consume you.

  It was life force she sensed. The soul all living things possessed. She thought of Adam pressing her supple body against his hard chest, begging her to feel him. And she did feel him—his spirit.

  His anima.

  Just like she felt Granny Marlow that day she first came to Coolie’s.

  She felt this man too. His very source of life flowed into her.

  She closed her hand tighter against his mouth, feeling his essence of life as he began screaming bloody murder.

  As she set his essence of life ablaze.

  He continued screaming, his body flushed with heat. His skin peeled off his arms. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth. She felt somehow peaceful as she burned him alive from the inside out, reducing him to ash right there in her arms.

  Nothing.

  Then shock.

  Then confusion and horror.

  The disturbing sight of a pile of ashes at her feet that was once a man. Panic, electric and acute, pulsed through her body as she stumbled backward, unable to blink, unable to close her mouth as she took in the hellish sight of what she’d done. And then she saw not his ashes but the ashes of others inside Gorton Zoo decades ago.

  A memory. Clear as day.

  The bodies of men and women turned to dust. The sun blazing above her, the sweat dripping from her brow, mixing with splatters of blood. “Specimens of the Niger Region,” her exhibit was called. And behind her, Anne Marlow lay dead from a rock to the head thrown by one of the exhibit’s visitors.

  Anne had died that day: the third of August, 1832. Anne Marlow, though that was never her name. Iris had never learned her true name. But she had mourned her death nonetheless. Mourned it the only way she knew how in that moment of perfect grief.

  By burning everyone near her to ash.

  And now Anne was here in the Crystal Palace, trying to speak to her just like at Belle Vue. She knew it wasn’t Anne. Anne was gone.

  No, this thing only took Anne’s form. Just as she suspected during the first round. This was another being entirely reaching out to her, trying to communicate, but she didn’t want to listen. She covered her ears as its voice began speaking its riddles.

  Uoy Sekam Ohw I Si Ti Rof Em Morf Nrut Ton Od.

  Nekawa…

  “The Hiva…” Iris said it herself, but it was as if her voice was not her own, as if it had burrowed out of the ancient earth itself to find her lips.

  Iris’s nails dug into her scalp. “No!” she shrieked, shaking her head. “No! Get away!”

  And then she was running, out of the palace, through the grassy field. She needed to escape.

  Her heart stopped the moment her shoulder bumped into someone, fearful he’d turn to ash. Frantically, she looked for a safe route, but her eyes caught instead a tall sculpture that hadn’t been there before, firm on the grass, exciting the Londoners swarming around it.

  Not a sculpture—a puppet the size of a young boy of average height. Pink cheeks, pointed nose, bushy brows, pin-striped pants. It was the puppet of Punch she’d seen in Whittle’s toy shop. Delighted children played by its red boots.

  “Turn around, Miss Iris.”

  Henry Whittle. Shaking, she turned and saw him, his gray newsboy cap and his brown vest the color of his hair. But all she could think about were the ashes left inside the Crystal Palace. The memory of death and bloodshed at the Gorton Zoo.

  “What is happening?” Iris wailed as she tried to shake the memory away.

  “What’s happening is this.” Henry took his right hand out of his jacket pocket and pointed a finger up into the air. It sparked with light that vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. Then he pointed at Punch.

  “The puppet I built is pretty popular, isn’t it?” Henry said with the pride of a toymaker underneath his calculating tone. “We know you have a tarot card. Give it to me or I’ll make this puppet explode.” His finger sparked again, the beauty of its light suddenly appearing all the more menacing. “I know you just ‘can’t stand the thought of people dying,’ right?” His voice was mocking.

  Their conversation that day at Club Uriel. He remembered. And now he was using it against her.

  “So?” Henry tilted his head to the side. “What shall it be, Miss Iris?”

  37

  THE BOLDNESS OF HIS THREAT dashed whatever remaining memories lingered in her mind. Iris bit the corner of her bottom lip hard, drawing blood to make sure she remained in the present. Whatever had happened in the past, Henry was real. His puppet was real. His threat was real.

  Calm down. Iris flexed and unflexed her hands as she watched Henry Whittle’s lips curve upward. Think this through. What’s in front of you? What’s really in front of you?

  “All these people.” Iris flicked her head to the side. “You can’t be willing to kill them.”

  Henry pompously straightened his vest. “Can’t I? You’ve seen what I can do. I’ve always had a knack for building explosives just as much as toys. Now that I’ve changed, setting one off?” He smirked. “All it would take is a snap of my finger.”

  The moment he readied his hands, Iris stepped forward in a panic. “Wait!” she cried, her arms up as if to stay a beast. The sound of children’s laughter was suddenly like wails in her mind.

  Gripping her forehead, she blurted out in frustration, “I don’t have a card! I don’t.”

  “Except I heard Rin tell Maximo you were heading to Bellerose’s house.” Iris stepped back, dread coursing through her. “We staked out the house for hours. Then you ran out and told your teammate that you had the card. We were smart to follow you.”

  We? Iris scanned the field but all she could see were visitors milling about and cooing at that damn puppet. Would Henry do this? Who was she to say? The boy’s grandfather was in debt. The Whittles were about to lose everything. What did she know about this boy and who or what he was willing to blow up to save his own family?

  His family.

  “Does your grandfather know you came all the way here to take bystanders hostage with a toy? ‘Give me a bloody card or I’ll blow up some kids’?”

  Henry flinched but said nothing.

  “You think he’d be happy to see his grandson’s a murderer?”

  “I’m not a murderer! Don’t talk about my grandfather!” Henry flung his newsboy cap down upon the grass. He seemed to realize what he’d done because his eyes widened for just a moment. Without moving his gaze from the ground, he breathed in and out slowly.

  “That old man just wants to make toys,” he whispered. “But he’s got no business sense. He’ll make toys in the morning and cry alone at night while Mary, who has no parents of her own, brings him his meals and medicine. Soon we won’t be able to afford even that.”

  Iris’s heart clenched as she thought of Granny, who always grimaced when Iris brought her medicine but took it nonetheless.

  “What would you know?” Henry glared defiantly at her, tears in his eyes. “What would you know about us?”

  Iris pressed her hand against the dress pocket where the tarot card was. “I know what it’s like to have people you’d do anything for,” she said, surprising herself when another face appeared in her mind’s eye beyond Granny. She saw him for just a flash in his circus attire, carrying her on his shoulders, dragging her to go practice their next routine. Back in those simpler times. “I think I know, now, or at least I hope, that you wouldn’t kill those people, who aren’t even involved in all this madness, just to win the tournament. I have to believe that.”

  She remembered him, sullen and suspicious in Whittle’s. And yet everything about his demeanor changed once he was called to that friendly old man’s side.

  “Either you love him enough to kill for him, or you love him enough not to break his heart,” Iris said, because those were the only two options she could see.

  Henry tried to put up a strong fro
nt, but he was fidgeting. His unsure hands were straightening his vest and white sleeves, already perfect with no need of further fiddling. His terrorist facade was slowly starting to crack.

  She remembered the way he’d smiled as his grandfather teased him that day. His eyes now weren’t the eyes of a killer. They weren’t like Doctor Seymour Pratt’s. Thinking of those black beady eyes in that moment reminded her of the bitter taste of hell. Henry didn’t compare.

  “Can’t we settle this some other way?” Iris said. “Away from the crowd?”

  Was there another way? Another way for all of them struggling in this evil tournament?

  Henry’s frown deepened. He said nothing. The two stared at each other, waiting to see who would break first. It was Henry whose arms eventually began to tremble.

  “Heeenryyy!” came a voice that sounded somewhere between a song and a battle cry. “My adorable boy!”

  Mary? Iris was shocked to see the shy girl practically jump on Henry from behind, wrapping her arms around him. In her worn blue dress, she looked taller and bustier than before, but that was undoubtedly the pixie-like, cherubic face Iris knew, strawberry-blond braid and all.

  Henry’s cheeks practically burst into flames. “What. Are. You. Doing? I’m busy—”

  But Henry couldn’t seem to stop her from pinching his right cheek. Painfully.

  “My, isn’t he adorable?” Mary said as Henry winced.

  Wait, that voice. Like Mary’s, it was as soft as a flute’s whistle, but something was off.

  Henry looked as if his mother had shown up in the middle of a date. Like he wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.

  “A boy of fourteen, a genius toymaker like his grandfather, working so hard to save his family from debt. Henry, you adorable boy, I told you this wouldn’t work. You’re far too innocent for this kind of bluff, you sweet little boy!”

  Iris’s eyebrow raised. Something was very off. Mary let go of Henry and stepped between the two of them, taking in the sight of their enemy with a manic confidence that could never have belonged to Mary. The pieces fell into place once the blond pixie began whistling a tune—a familiar old folk song.