by Alex Grecian
Day did not stop to help anyone. He did not ponder the fact that yesterday his own name had been a mystery, but today he remembered that long-ago carriage wreck. He kept his pace, shoving people aside, ignoring the screams and cries around him. He had one objective and he kept himself focused on it.
Through a break between people he saw the top of Jack’s head, dark wavy hair, unfashionably long, and he picked up the pace. Someone grabbed at his arm and he turned. A small round man smiled at him and held out a blanket. Day shook his head, but the man adopted a pitying expression and pressed the blanket against his chest.
“Your arm’s bleeding, sir,” the man said. “Let me look at it.” The man’s own arm sported a thick bandage.
“I can’t,” Day said.
“I represent the store, sir, and I can assure you we wouldn’t—”
“I don’t—”
“You needn’t shout, sir. I can . . . Oh, my, I just realized I really can’t hear you. You were speaking, weren’t you?”
Day pushed past him and ran on. The top of Jack’s head was still visible, and he launched himself through an opening between customers.
The world slowed down. He thought he could hear a tune playing in the background, a high-tempo melody that only served to charge him further. As he moved slowly forward he watched Jack turn, a grin on his face, that same wooden, unfeeling grin that charmed people who didn’t know him. Jack brought his arm up at the same speed with which Day was moving and pushed up off his toes, and he was laughing as he hit Day full in the chest.
Day staggered backward into an installation. It was a globe bigger than a four-wheeler carriage, and when Day hit it the framework of the box around it buckled. He put his weight on it and kicked Jack in his wounded abdomen. The monster bellowed and fell to one knee. With a great wrenching sound, the globe tore loose from its perch and toppled to the floor. Day was pulled off balance and stumbled backward. Time froze for one fleeting instant as the great sphere quivered, then slowly rolled away, picking up speed, people jumping out of its way as it moved. It slammed into the railing, and the loose screws of the balustrade gave way. Day followed it, windmilling his arms, unable to get his feet back under him. The wrought iron yielded under the pressure, sending a shock wave back along the metal frame to the stairs, which promptly removed themselves from the landing, bending the footing at the bottom. The entire piece of ironwork dragged itself out into the air, followed by the globe and then by Day’s fragile body.
The last thing he saw as he plummeted toward the ground floor of Plumm’s was a look of alarm on Jack’s face. Day had never seen any sincere expression there before, never seen anything that wasn’t meant to reflect malice or authority. The killer scrambled forward on his hands and knees, reached out, tried to catch Day as he fell.
But it was too late.
Day closed his eyes and surrendered himself to gravity. It was the first time in more than a year that he had felt at peace.
39
Mr Oberon dropped down and disappeared in the crush of people. There was a great deal of commotion, and Hammersmith was pushed back toward the wall. He couldn’t see over the bobbing heads of frantic men around him. He couldn’t hear anything except a low pulsing noise, and he felt confused, slightly panicked, missing one of the primary tools he used to navigate the world around him.
Someone grabbed him by the hand and pulled, and Hammersmith looked down to see Hatty Pitt. She was leading him through a break in the mob, and he gladly followed her. Her hand was warm and dry, and the pressure reassured him that he wasn’t completely lost; he was tethered to this strong little person and he would not float away just yet.
She dragged him to the lift at the back of the gallery and let go of his hand. He could see her speaking to the operator, who cowered behind the gate. The operator gripped the curved bars and leaned down to hear Hatty better, and Hammersmith surmised that the gallery must be noisy. Hatty gestured, and the operator shook his head, shouted something at her. Hatty shouted back, gesticulating more wildly and pointing back toward where Hammersmith stood. Evidently she wanted to get on the lift and the operator wasn’t obliging her. Hammersmith tried to look engaged and aware of what was going on, but he wasn’t sure whether Hatty wanted him to appear friendly or authoritative. He settled on an expression he thought might convey some sort of stern kindness. It was the sort of look his father had often given him when he was a boy, and a look he had seen many times on Sir Edward’s face.
The operator glanced in his direction and shrugged, pulled the gate open. Hatty grabbed Hammersmith again, hurried him onboard. The gate shut and the operator worked a lever next to a high stool, and Hammersmith felt his stomach lurch as the lift slowly descended toward the sales floor below. He looked out through the gate at the shins of Plumm’s customers who were standing on the gallery, then at their feet, and then they were all gone and he was looking at a massive broadside that advertised C&J Clark beaded evening shoes for women. The advertisement featured a woman who seemed to be able to walk on clouds in her new shoes, and she was followed by a gentleman in laced-up black Clark boots and three children all queued like ducklings wearing patent leather Clark shoes. The image doubled and tripled as it slid past and he blinked to get it back in focus. He assumed the broadside’s primary job, other than selling shoes, was to cover the joists and ductwork that might otherwise be visible as the lift moved up and down. He wondered if a third benefit of the happy family in the illustration was to make customers feel a bit more at ease as they moved through the air between floors. With the proper shoes they could walk on clouds, never mind the electric lift.
He checked his ear and saw no fresh blood on his fingers, but the back of his hand was smeared with wide brown streaks that he couldn’t wipe away. His blood had dyed his skin, and he thought again of his father, whose tanned brown hands had once laced his boots tight and mussed his hair. Hammersmith wondered what his father would have said about lifts and telephones and men who killed each other for sport. He could not remember his father’s voice and he thought it was possible that he would never hear anything again. How long before he would no longer remember what anything sounded like, and how did his life always seem to circle back to death and injury?
There was a slight jolt as the lift thumped to the ground, and the operator leapt from his stool and pulled the gates open as a cloud of plaster dust and powdered stone rolled into the tiny chamber. Something registered in Hammersmith’s peripheral vision, a shadow somewhere he didn’t expect to see shadows. He put out an arm to hold Hatty back as she began to step out. An instant later, a man’s body slammed into the floor in front of them and Hatty jumped, surprised.
The lift operator pushed past them and rolled the man over. A splintered bone protruded from the man’s arm and the operator reached to touch it, perhaps to try to put the bone back where it belonged in the man’s arm, but then pulled his hands back and looked up at Hammersmith, his face pale. Both men were wearing white gloves, the uniform of the Plumm’s employee, and Hammersmith realized that the operator knew the injured man. Hammersmith knelt next to the body and felt for a pulse, then nodded to the operator and gave him a smile he hoped was encouraging. If they could get a doctor there soon, the man would live. Until then it was probably a good thing he had been knocked unconscious by the fall. The pain would be intense when he woke up.
Hammersmith looked out across the sales floor where twisted black metal was strewn over the hardwood and embedded in the bright glass counters. The staircase had wrapped itself round several displays, and a phalanx of wooden mannequins lay crushed beneath a marble column. The brilliant blue globe from the installation, bigger than Hammersmith’s flat, rolled lazily to and fro over the ironwork and rubble, crushing wooden forms and demolishing crockery. As Hammersmith watched, it bounced over a segment of the iron stairs, bounced again and again and seemed to pick up energy before bursting out through the front of the s
tore in a silent rain of glass. He watched it bump down off the curb and gain a jolt of momentum before it disappeared from sight down the street.
He looked up and nudged Hatty, who followed his gaze to the gallery above, where a woman was being pushed dangerously close to the edge of the drop-off, no railing there to stop her or hold her weight.
“HEY!” Hammersmith knew he was shouting, but he couldn’t judge how loud he was. A man looked round at the sound of his voice, reached out, and grabbed the woman before she could fall, pulling her to safety.
Satisfied that everyone above was reasonably safe for the moment, Hammersmith turned and lifted the unconscious man under his arms and pulled him away from the lift. It was still dangerous there, where anything might fall from above. The operator moved a length of railing to make space, and Hatty stacked bolts of fabric to make a temporary gurney. They laid the man there. As Hammersmith straightened back up, the room spun round him and he put out both arms to keep his balance.
Hatty tugged on Hammersmith’s sleeve and pointed. He squinted and saw fingers, a sleeve, partially hidden behind an upended counter. Someone else had fallen or had perhaps still been on the ground floor when the railing came down. He climbed toward the prone figure, moving cabinets and rubble, throwing wood and iron to the side, making a path so that Hatty and the operator could follow.
There was a man lying atop a table on a wrecked display of wicker baskets and carriage blankets. The legs of the table had given out and it had collapsed, but the man moved as Hammersmith approached. As Hammersmith drew nearer, the man lifted a sword and waved it in the air, fending him off.
Hammersmith stopped and moved carefully round the fallen man so that he would be visible. He stumbled and grabbed the edge of an overturned cabinet until he felt steady enough to walk again. The man’s torso came into view. As Hammersmith moved, he raised his hands and held them up, palms out at shoulder level. “I MEAN YOU NO HARM!”
He had no way of knowing whether the man responded. He had to trust that he wouldn’t be run through if he tried to help. He took another step and now he could see the man’s face. The man lowered his sword and smiled.
Hammersmith stopped and stood for a long moment without moving, unaware that Hatty was calling to him or that policemen had begun to stream through Plumm’s broken front doors. At last he rushed forward and dropped to one knee and scooped the battered form of Walter Day into his arms and held him tight so that he wouldn’t disappear again.
After a moment, Hammersmith raised his head and shouted. “IT’S HIM! HE’S HERE! WALTER’S OVER HERE!” He realized he was crushing his friend and he pulled away. Day’s lips moved, and Hammersmith squinted, trying to read what he was saying. “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR!” Day spoke again, emphasizing his words carefully, and this time Hammersmith understood.
“It’s good to see you, Nevil.” He closed his eyes and the sword dropped from his hand, clattering unheard to the floor.
BOOK THREE
The two carriages sat facing each other from a distance of perhaps twenty yards. The larger of them was hitched to a team of eight stick horses, all of them champing at the bit, dragging their blunt ends back and forth in the dirt. The smaller carriage, a two-seater, had a team of two rocking horses that moved to and fro, cutting parallel gashes in the path under the runners. The drivers sat up top. The Jack-in-the-box had thrown back his lid, and he swayed gently at the end of his spring and hurled insults at the other driver, who did not appear to notice him or react to his words. As for the other driver, Mary Annette’s painted-on face was calm, her rosy cheeks were little red circles, and her smile a droll black bow. Her cross had been made to fit into the seat beside her so she did not need to carry it and could instead hold her lance out in front of the carriage in a straight line that pointed at Jack.
“Oh, I do not like this,” Anna exclaimed. “I do not like this one bit. Oh, oh.”
“It is a hard world,” said the Kindly Nutcracker. “And this is the way of it.”
“What do you think, Babushka?” asked Anna. “Isn’t there anything we might do to save poor Mary Annette?”
The Russian doll shook herself all over and split in half, as she so often did when she was thinking. Her shiny black hair tipped back and she rolled over and her inner self hopped out onto the path. This version of Babushka had hair that was painted yellow, and her lacquered violet dress was decorated all over with flowers and pretty bulbs. “Perhaps if we were to talk to Jack, he might take back what he said and they would be friends after all.”
Anna clapped her hands together. “Oh, let’s do!” she said. But then a terrible thought entered her mind and she frowned. “Oh, but he never will listen. He is a scoundrel through and through.”
Babushka shook herself again, this smaller part of her that had spoken, and the top of her yellow head popped off. She rolled over again, and an even smaller version of her tumbled out at Anna’s feet. This tiny, perfect replica of her outer shell was painted blue with angry red streaks slashing through her painted-on costume.
“No,” this miniature Babushka declared. “Jack will never listen to anything that is right and good. We shall kill him and be done.”
“Oh, no, we mustn’t kill anyone,” said Anna. “That would make us every bit as evil as Jack is.”
While they were debating this point, Jack removed the wooden cigar from his mouth, which was cut into his face so that he appeared constantly to be grinning but with quite a malicious gleam daubed in his eye. He looked every bit the naughty little elf. He spoke very loudly so that everyone could hear. “I am going to run you through with this lance, Mary Annette, and split the wood that you are made of into two pieces, and then I will do the same to any of your friends who would dare to take up your quarrel with me.”
Anna gasped, of course, for this was a truly awful thing to say to anybody, and especially to her dearest new friend in all the wood. She began to wonder if perhaps Jack was too evil to be allowed to live, after all.
“We should burn him,” the smallest Babushka said. “No matter if he wins or loses, we should unstick him from his spring and break him into all his pieces and burn them all until he is gone and can cause no more trouble for anyone.”
Anna began to nod, but then she caught herself and reminded herself that she was really a very good little girl and that good people did not break other people into parts and burn them, even if they said cruel things to others.
“If he wins,” said the Kindly Nutcracker, “I will bite him very hard indeed. On the nose.”
“Yes,” Anna agreed. “Perhaps he does deserve a good solid bite on the nose. But I do not think we shall burn him.”
“But what if he does split Mary Annette into two pieces as he has threatened to do?” asked the largest piece of Babushka. Anna thought it was quite odd that Babushka should be so concerned about it when she was accustomed to being split into pieces herself.
Anna thought very hard for a moment, and then she smiled. “If Jack breaks Mary Annette into two pieces, why then, we shall glue her back together. And if he breaks her into twenty pieces, then we shall glue those back together just the same, and it will be as if she was never broken.”
“I do not have any glue,” the Kindly Nutcracker said. “Do you?”
“No, I do not,” said Anna. “But we are already on a quest to find Peter, and once we do find him, then we will have to embark upon yet another quest to find a pot of glue like the one that my father keeps in his workshop.”
“Why, then we will all be able to remain together for a while longer, and you will not go home to your family and leave us behind,” said the middle Babushka.
“I will never leave you behind, no matter what happens,” said Anna.
“Unless Mary Annette wins the joust,” the Kindly Nutcracker said. “If she wins the joust, then Jack will fall off his carriage and break and we will not need any glue at
all.”
“We will still need glue,” said Anna. “If Jack should break into even a thousand pieces, we will find glue and we will put him all back together in a different way so that he will be good and kind to everyone from this day until the last.”
“That is a wonderful plan,” said the Kindly Nutcracker.
“Yes,” said the middle Babushka.
“I do not like that plan,” said the smallest Babushka.
But it was too late for Anna to argue with the angry little Babushka, for just then Jack cracked the reins of his carriage and said, “Hah!” and the stick horses jumped forward, and at the same time the two rocking horses slid on their rockers, pulling Mary Annette’s carriage forward, and the joust was under way.
—RUPERT WINTHROP, FROM The Wandering Wood (1893)
40
The great department store that had tried to reinvent the very notion of shopping was no more. The windows had been broken out and displays removed by police in order to allow easier access, so that now Plumm’s façade resembled a toothless skull glaring down the street at anyone who approached. The falling balustrade had rent huge gashes in the walls on either side of the ground floor and had pulled at least one support beam away, causing parts of the ceiling to cave in. The opulence and luster had been scraped away, revealing the poor naked bones of the place. Volunteers pitched in, along with the police and fire brigades, to help bring out the dead and injured. Many men worked well into the night, searching for anyone who might be trapped inside, and women bustled to and fro, bringing blankets, food, light, and comfort to both the workers and the victims.
