by Oisin McGann
The place smelled of damp wood and mildew, stale air and a slight metallic tinge that she suspected was the trans-portmanteau. It had carried her from her bedroom, moving smoothly and quietly for over an hour—she had counted out the seconds—and only when the creature had opened its folds had she felt an ether-soaked cloth pressed over her face. Now, here she was, and she was certain that the engimal was here with her.
She was seated on a simple wooden chair, her wrists bound to its arms with thin, strong rope. Her ankles were tied together, but were not bound to the chair. The floor under her bare feet was stone: cold, rough, and dusty. But there was what felt like a straight seam under her heels—flagstones then, not bedrock.
There was the faint sound of dripping water from somewhere not far away. Around and above her, she heard the barely discernible creaks and ticks made by a building’s structure expanding or contracting with the passing of the day.
“I know you’re awake,” a voice said to her. “I can tell by the change in your breathing.”
Daisy lifted her head. She was in the clutches of an enemy. Questions like “Where am I?,” “Who are you?,” or “What’s happening?” would be pointless. So she got right down to brass tacks: “Mr. Barnum, I had thought you a man of better character. What do you hope to accomplish by kidnapping me?”
She heard him step closer to her, sensed his hands near her face, and resisted the urge to flinch. He uncovered her eyes, putting the scarf in his pocket and she blinked in the dim light cast by a lamp sitting on a table nearby. They were in a small stone-walled room with one low wooden door, and a stone ceiling supported by massive oak beams. She had been right. The trans-portmanteau lay folded up in the corner, one mirrored corner lifted over its bronze top, as if keeping an eye on her.
“Forgive the blindfold,” Mister Peter Barnum said. “It was just in case you woke up while we were traveling. It’s important our whereabouts remain unknown to you. I don’t want you leading your family back here after your release.”
“You intend to release me?”
“Oh, yes—in time, if our demands are met. But to answer your first question, your kidnapping has been executed in order to gain some leverage over your husband. He has something my colleagues and I want, and we are willing to trade your life in order to get it. I also intend to see if we can extract information about that item from you and obtain it that way. A successful conclusion to either strand of our operation will see you safely home.”
“I assure you, Mr. Barnum,” Daisy told him, “you will get nothing from me. And you will learn before long that you have trifled with the wrong family.”
“Ah, yes!” he laughed, his jovial face broken by ugly lines in the light of the oil lamp. “The fearsome Wildensterns. I have heard the stories. And yet, despite their deadly reputation, I penetrated their defenses easily enough. Besides, how loyal do you really think they are to you, someone they consider an outsider—a commoner? I suspect they will not react with the urgency you hope for. I often find that such giants of industry can be quite small-minded, rarely appreciating a good thing when they have it. If I were your husband, my good lady, I would not have left you alone among them. And without him to goad them on, their response could be a little more … sluggish.”
Daisy tried to hide how much he had stung her with that. There was more than a little truth in it. She spent so much time defying the family’s will and trying to change their corrupt ways. She wouldn’t put it past the Wildensterns to use this as an excuse to dispose of her. They wouldn’t have to do anything, except to do too little, too late. Barnum had turned away from her. His traveling trunk lay on the floor beside the small table and he lifted a false panel from the bottom of it, picking out what was concealed beneath. It wriggled slightly in his hands.
“I abhor violence toward women,” he said, holding up an engimal that was the size and shape of a tarantula, with disproportionately long legs. Its spider-like body was dark blue in color, with a translucent ceramic thorax that glistened like dark crystal. It looked damaged; three of its metal legs were little more than stumps and two of its six eyes were a sickly yellow, instead of turquoise. “But I can’t promise you that this won’t hurt. You will suffer no bodily injuries, except for the possible harm it may cause to your brain. This, my dear, is a dream-catcher. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.”
Daisy had never come across one, but she had heard the term. Nate had seen more than one during his time in Africa. They emitted hypnotic sounds that created pictures in the mind. Nate said that they fed on activity in the brain, on the passion the pictures created. Some could even create webs in which their subjects could lie in complete comfort. Apart from the risk of addiction for the user, dream-catchers were not considered dangerous. The creatures became just as intoxicated on the human’s emotions as the human did on the dream-catcher’s visions. This did not ease Daisy’s fears as Barnum placed the engimal on her head and she felt its legs clasp her scalp. Two of the legs scraped down the sides of her head, their tips sliding into her ears; she nearly gagged with fear as she thrashed and shook her head.
“A friend of mine was in the Congo with your brother-in-law, Nathaniel,” Barnum whispered, his face close to hers. “They were with a hunting party in the jungle. The party made the mistake of refilling their water skins from a pool infected with a highly dangerous strain of bacteria. They were many days’ walk from any medical help. They suffered severe diarrhea and vomiting the whole way, severely weakening them. Half of the white men in the group and several native guides died of dehydration on the way back. It was a terrible ordeal for all of them … except one. Nathaniel Wildenstern was hardly affected at all.
“This is only one of many stories I have picked up about the … unconventional powers of healing among the Wildensterns. It has taken me a long time, but I have discovered the secret behind the family’s invulnerability.”
“Really?” Daisy replied. The engimal’s legs were emitting a warbling, trilling sound that seemed to be injected straight into her brain. She was feeling a little dizzy and Barnum’s chatter was beginning to irritate her immensely. “Is this flight of fancy going to take long? Or is your plan to bore me into submission?”
“Before she died,” Barnum continued, ignoring her, “your husband’s mother possessed an engimal with the most marvelous capability. Just as this dream-catcher can affect the mind, so the Wildenstern creature could repair the human body. I have been told that it could cure almost any disease.
“Such a thing would be invaluable. There are many, many wealthy people who would be willing to pay enormous sums of money to have their illnesses and disabilities cured by this creature.”
He leaned in closer to her, his face inches from hers.
“Only the women in the family are permitted to handle this miraculous beast and very few of those. They are the custodians of its power. The creature bestows upon them its formidable powers of healing, which they use on their children. And the same women are charged with keeping it from anyone outside the family. But it was your husband’s mother who kept it for her generation, so you must know where this thing is.”
Barnum had obviously stumbled on the Wildensterns’ supernatural powers of healing, but had mistaken their source. The family had an entire zoo of engimals, but nothing that could seal wounds or cure disease. The Wildensterns’ health came from a kind of intelligent parasite in their blood. There were no engimals involved. But Daisy was damned if she was going to tell him that.
“I … have no idea what you mean,” she panted, for her sight seemed to be fading, and even the sound of Barnum’s voice was growing distant. Her fingers and toes were becoming numb. “If such a thing exists, I have never heard of it.”
“This dream-catcher of mine was hurt at some point in its past—permanently maimed,” Barnum told her, his face close to hers. “Its mind is damaged now; it hungers for darker emotions. It no longer paints
pretty pictures in the imagination. I have seen its victims bite through their own tongues in terror. Death by heart failure is not unknown. But you, my dear, have a young strong heart. It will be a horribly long ordeal for you, if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
Daisy suddenly shrieked with all the air in her lungs as she saw, as clear as day, Berto, her beloved husband being held down on a wooden floor by four men, as four more stood around him and raised axes over their heads.
“Your husband’s family is not coming for you,” Barnum told her in a matter-of-fact voice. “Give me what I want, and this can all end.”
But all Daisy could do was scream as the axes fell.
V
A FAMILY CONFRONTATION
It was early afternoon, and the search parties had still found no trace of Daisy, Barnum, or his versatile engimal. Nate summoned the entire family into the dining room, so that they could sit around the long table and he could look each member in the eye. To his annoyance, his Uncle Gideon had taken the opportunity to order up lunch from the kitchens, and a lavish spread of breads, cold meats, cheese, and other foodstuffs suitable for a first-rate buffet now adorned the dining table.
Nate waited impatiently while the last of the serving dishes were laid out on the table and the eating noises had subsided somewhat. Then he stood up at the end of the table and stared down at them all. Whatever issues Nate had with his sister-in-law, she deserved better than this. And besides, he was supposed to be responsible for security—he did not relish the thought of explaining to Berto how he had lost his wife.
“For those of you who haven’t heard,” he announced, “or who are too obtuse to understand its importance, Daisy has been kidnapped. It is vital that we put all our resources into finding her before the trail goes cold. This concerns all of us and as such, we should all be involved in the efforts to find her. I have already given instructions that every member of staff be drafted into the search.”
He glared at the extravagant luncheon before him. That alone would have taken several members of the kitchen staff to prepare. Staff that should not have been in the kitchen, because they were supposed to be searching the house. He slammed his fist down on the table, causing the dishes and cutlery at that end to bounce slightly. They all looked up at him with expressions that ranged from surprise to baffled annoyance.
“It has come to my notice that some of you have been diverting servants from the task at hand,” he growled. “Gideon, you ordered half a dozen of the grooms to exercise the coach horses. Elvira, you have accused the housekeeper of losing some of the silver and she now has four maids counting the bloody cutlery over and over again. Oliver, I told the groundsmen and the gamekeepers to take the hounds and comb the area beyond the property. Now I find that you’ve sent most of the groundsmen off to trim some trees and the gamekeepers are employed sweeping fungi out of the lake.”
“We must not let a minor emergency disrupt the running of the estate, Nathaniel,” Gideon blustered, the hedge of his thick black beard no barrier against the food flying from his mouth. “Daisy would be the first to recognize the importance of keeping order in times of crisis! Certainly, your father would tell you that if he was here.”
Nate restrained the desire to pick up the nearest piece of silverware and drive it into the side of Gideon’s neck. This was how they always did it. The family had its chain of command and nobody openly defied it. At least, not in any concrete way. But any attempt to force members of the family into acting in a manner that wasn’t to their taste—in an ethical or benevolent way, for instance—met with a more passive resistance, as he was witnessing now.
“Well, my father is not here!” Nate barked. “And given Berto’s absence, I have the authority to use the staff as I see fit. Daisy has been kidnapped! So either we have an intruder in our midst, or someone has broken the Rules of Ascension. Either way, I would have thought you would all be a little more concerned! She’s one of us. And no matter what differences we have, we always look after our own when faced with threats from the outside. And we condemn any action by a family member that breaks the Rules!”
“She’s never been one of us,” Oliver muttered. “So the Rules should not be applied to her case.”
In his late twenties, Oliver was older than Nate and of a heavier build. His thick hair and handlebar whiskers were black. Like his father, he wore too much jewelry and was prone to aggressive behavior and flaunting his physical strength. He considered himself a master of the family’s martial skills and a natural leader, and was popular with some of the nastier elements in the clan. Everyone knew the frustration he felt that both Berto and Nate ranked above him in the family.
Oliver was cleaning his fingernails with a small dagger. He sported a surly expression on his face and pointedly ignored those around him as he went about this absorbing task. Nate threw him a warning glance, but Oliver merely raised his eyebrows and went on with his personal grooming. He was in charge of the estates; it would be very difficult to search the surrounding land properly without his cooperation.
“Really, Nathaniel,” Elvira croaked, slapping the arm of her wheelchair. “Daisy must take some responsibility for this predicament herself. It was she who purchased that infernal beast—against my advice, I might add—and she has reaped what she sowed. By all means, carry on your search with as much of the staff as you can muster. We are all concerned for her safety and, as soon as a ransom is demanded, we will decide what action needs to be taken as regards paying it. But the dear girl is feckless and driven by vain notions of unladylike ambition. This will be a valuable life lesson for her.”
There was an undercurrent of muttering at this point, with many of the relatives agreeing that Daisy was indeed feckless and driven by vain notions of unladylike ambition. Others added that a few life lessons were long overdue for the young upstart. Nate breathed out slowly through his teeth. Fighting with his conniving family would waste valuable time—time Daisy didn’t have.
Berto would go out of his mind with worry when he found out. Nate was reluctant to send a telegram to his brother for that reason. There was nothing Berto could do from London, and this would knock him off his game just as he was right in the middle of important negotiations with the East India Company, the Wildensterns’ biggest business rivals. Nate had decided to wait until the end of the working day before contacting him.
But Elvira had raised a point that Nate had been wondering about. Where was the ransom demand? What did the kidnappers hope to achieve by this? There would be time to ponder this later. He stood up straighter, sweeping a cold stare across everyone seated at the table.
“Right now, finding Daisy is our only concern. Cross me on this and you’ll find empty bellies and missing cutlery are the least of your worries. If you want to find yourself managing a copper mine in Mexico, or supervising flocks of sheep on the bloody Falkland Islands, keep obstructing this search. Believe me, there are more than enough vacant positions to go around. So either help me, or stay out of my way. The choice is yours.”
Turning his back on the chorus of protests, he walked out of the dining room. He hoped the threats would have the intended effect. After all, he couldn’t exile everyone—much as he might have liked to.
VI
THE NIGHT OPERATOR
Nate was met on his way out by his manservant, who was holding a telegram on a silver tray. It was from Berto in London. For the sake of discretion, his brother had kept the message brief and vague, but the words still seemed to wail at Nate from the paper:
HAVE RECEIVED WORD FROM A THIRD PARTY THAT MY WIFE HAS BEEN TAKEN ILL STOP CAN YOU CONFIRM STOP SHOULD THIRD PARTY BE REWARDED STOP
Berto knew that his telegram would be read as it was transferred through one staging office after another. He should have scrambled the message using the code sheet he had with him, but he must have been in a rush. Saying that Daisy was ill was a plausible lie—a way of k
eeping a lid on news of the kidnapping. Nate paused for a moment. Obviously the family had not received a ransom demand because the kidnappers had somehow contacted Berto directly. Now, before he negotiated whatever ransom they were looking for, Berto was contacting Nate to confirm the terrible news.
They truly were a devious bunch. Nate wondered if the East India Company could be involved somehow, and if so, what they hoped to achieve. They were one of the Wildenstern’s biggest rivals and it would not have been the first time they had used underhanded methods to get one over on the family.
Indeed, one of Elvira’s husbands years ago had been a director of the Company—she had suggested plans to merge the two business empires, but her brother, the Patriarch, had discovered her new spouse was using his position to spy upon the Wildensterns. Rumor had it that Elvira herself had orchestrated her husband’s “accidental” drowning in his bathtub.
Nate sighed and hurried toward the elevator, taking it to the floor where the telegraph office was found. Wildenstern Hall was not only the family’s home, but also the seat of its power—the head office for the North American Trading Company. As such, it had state-of-the-art electrical telegraph equipment with which it kept in contact with its businesses around the world.
Nate strode into the office, hearing the clicking of a few of the machines as the operators hunched over them, seated in wooden and glass–paneled booths. With the heavy batteries under the counters at their knees, they tapped out messages in Morse code on their keys or listened intently to the dots and dashes coming in on their sounders. They then transcribed the signals onto paper in the form of letters from the alphabet, forming short, concise messages. Some of the booths were empty, but he knew half of the operators had joined the search of the house. The Chief Operator, a tidy man with a pinched face and prim moustache, saw him and hurried over.
