Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon

  The ship hummed.

  “Oh, that old story,” I said.

  I turned to go.

  CRACK.

  Hissssshhhh . . .

  I jerked away from the jet of superheated air that streamed past my head. The pipe by my ear had a bullet hole shot through it. My ear stung. I lifted my hand to it and brought back blood from a graze wound.

  I turned around sharply to meet Lockwood’s smug smile. The barrel of his revolver steamed in his hand. Airguardsmen appeared at the doorway, looking annoyed and twisting the wheel on the boiler at the end of the hall, and the steam sputtered and tapered off.

  Lockwood holstered the revolver with finality.

  “I didn’t want you to think my depth perception was off,” he said.

  Oh please, I thought, and left the Chivalry with my ear still ringing.

  CHAPTER 4

  I couldn’t keep my mind off the paper in my coat pocket. I worked with my father the next morning, impatient at how slowly the Venen cultures grew. If I had fantillium, I thought, I could at least try the quickening equation on them. I didn’t dare bring it up with my father, however. Without a word, he soldiered on, his face rough and unshaven, his eyes sunken. Lunch was the same food the airguardsmen had—a soupy curried rice. Having no appetite for it, I allowed myself the distraction of quickly visiting Hannah in the infirmary.

  I arrived in the warmth of the infirmary’s main wing with Hannah’s academy textbooks tucked under my arm. I’d stopped by the school to fetch her homework. Hannah hated missing class.

  More beds were filled today. They lined each side of the infirmary’s long corridor, white curtains separating each patient. The infirmary nurses had fallen ill. And—my heart sank—so had Alice, her fiery red hair a tangle over her pillow. Dr. Palmer stood in a room off to the side of the wing, holding a clipboard and speaking in a low voice to Alice’s father, who wrung his miner’s cap in his large craggy hands.

  I walked down the long aisle until I reached Alice, lying asleep in her bed; I touched her freckled cheek, gently. She sighed and slept on.

  “If she didn’t know you liked her before,” Hannah’s voice broke in, “she really will now.”

  I quickly removed my hand.

  “Checking for fever,” I said.

  “Oh, just.”

  I smiled and walked to the aisle between Hannah’s and Mum’s beds. Mum lay unmoving in a deep slumber. Hannah lay on her pillow, her eyelids half-closed, but brightening when she saw I’d brought her books, and with effort she pushed herself upright. I dumped the books on the table by her bed. She used all the same books I did. One, in fact, was even a year ahead of me. It didn’t bother me, of course. Not in the least. Not at all.7

  “Does Professor Arnoth know I’m here?” she said, referring to our dusty old history professor. “If he knows I have the Venen, he’s going to be so cross!”8

  She struggled to lift a pen to her workbook, but her fingers, turning black, couldn’t bend.

  “I can’t even hold a pen,” she said with a wavery voice.

  “’Course you can.” I plucked the ribbon out of her hair and tied the pen to her hand. “There, see? Also, very fashionable.”

  She sniffed.

  “I don’t want Mum to die,” she said, and burst into tears.

  And that summed up the remainder of the visit. I left with my shoulder soaked and my knees weak. Hannah’s last words rang in my head: “I’ll fight it, Jonathan. I’m a fighter. I’ll fight it, and Papa will find the cure.”

  “I think he’s close to something.”

  “I knew it,” Hannah whispered, falling asleep with the pen still tied to her hand. “I knew it.”

  “Arsenic,” said my father, that night when the king arrived at the observatory unannounced with Captain Crewe to see how our work was coming along. My father presented the koch dish to the king, a round shallow dish he had swabbed with an arsenic compound, the black receding and leaving a ring around it.

  “Arsenic?” said the king. He sat on one of the sofas crammed into the room, eating a large bowl of curried rice. He ate like he spoke, with gusto and little regard. Grains of rice were scattered by his feet and stuck to the sofa’s embroidery. He wiped his hands on his napkin and sniffed. “That will kill the Venen?”

  My father smiled.

  “Arsenic kills everything,” he said. “But it does seem to kill the Venen faster than the other tissues.”

  “Wonderful!” said the king, leaping to his feet and thumping him so hard on the back, his glasses slid down his nose. “We give the queen a dose and she’ll be well straightway, will she?”

  “Yes, it doesn’t quite work like that,” said my father, who tried to explain to the king about wrong dosages and imperfect compounds and refining the formula and how the research would take time; otherwise we would inadvertently paralyze or kill the patients—

  The king chewed impatiently, face growing red as my father spoke.

  “I should think I have been very patient with you, Gouden,” he said in a slow and patronizing tone. “But we don’t have time for this any longer. We hardly have two days!”

  “I am aware—”

  “We must consider more options, Gouden!”

  “I will not work with Lady Florel or that chemical!”

  “You will work however I jolly well tell you to work—”

  “Is this a bad time?” a quiet voice broke in.

  My father, the king, Captain Crewe, and I all turned and discovered Hannah, her hair tangled and leaning against the doorframe of the laboratory. She wore an overlarge coat, which her bare feet peeked out under. Her toes were black.

  “I did it,” she whispered. “I came the entire way myself. Huzzah.”

  My father and I caught her before she collapsed to the ground. She came to as we brought her to an orange chair with claws for legs.

  “Come now, meisje,” said my father, drawing her baggy coat tightly around her shoulders. It looked as though she’d stolen it from the infirmary supply closet. “We will visit you soon. But your place now is in the infirmary. We can have the captain take you back, hey?”

  “Papa, I’m not five years old,” said Hannah, pushing him away and struggling to her feet, which caused her to knock against the laboratory table. The koch dishes clinked. “I’ve come all this way, and I’m going to help! Jonathan said you’ve almost found the cure. So, I thought . . . you’ll need someone to try it on. And that someone should be me.”

  My father blanched.

  “Well!” the king bellowed, making everyone jump. He strode to Hannah’s side and took her hand, which made her beam. “What a fine idea! You are a credit to the empire, young lady!”

  “Does the queen really have eighty-two strands of rare pearls?” said Hannah.

  “She does.”

  “I’ve always liked pearls.”

  “Then you shall have some!”

  “I beg your pardon!” said my father, stepping between them, his ears flaring pink and his spectacles flashing. “My daughter will be no medical experiment!”

  The king stepped back, stunned at my father’s tone, then rebounded. An argument progressed. Louder, then louder, my father parrying with sharp words and Hannah declaring that she wanted to help, pleading over the king’s booming voice.

  I watched quietly from a distance. Gears whirred in my head.

  She wouldn’t be harmed, I thought. Not if the time, and the arsenic, were an illusion . . .

  “What if we illusioned it?” I said aloud.

  Hannah, my father, Captain Crewe, and the king stopped arguing. They stared at me.

  There was a pregnant pause. The pause gave birth to a lot of little pauses. Foolishly, I spoon-fed them.

  “Why not?” I barreled on. “We know the chemical structure of arsenic. So—we breathe fantillium and have Hannah drink an illusioned dose. If we illusion sped-up time, we could see if it will work. And Hannah wouldn’t be in any real danger. Not if it were an illusion.”
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  “Why, that’s brilliant!” the king boomed, and immediately commenced into adulation about what clever children Dr. Gouden had. My father grabbed me by the arm and drew me to the far side of the room, just out of hearing.

  “I should think I have taught you better than this,” he said.

  “Better than what?” I said, bristling. “I’m trying to help!”

  “If fantillium truly creates an ersatz reality,” said my father, “then Hannah will feel the pain as though it were real! Do you not remember the snow? We felt the cold of it upon our faces! We could deeply hurt her, even if it does not last! You would do that to your sister?”

  I winced. “Well, no. Of course not. I just—”

  “I want him to!” said Hannah.

  “Dr. Gouden?” said the king. “A word, if you please.”

  My father and the king left the room. Ten minutes later they reentered, the king clapping his hands jovially and calling for us all to begin. My father’s face was ashen. He kept his eyes firmly away from me as the king announced broadly that our father would very much like to have me illusion the arsenic for Hannah. I wondered what the king had said to him.

  I did know one thing: If anything went wrong with the illusion, I was going to be in deep, deep trouble. . . .

  My father didn’t stop us as we helped Hannah to the orange chair and pushed it to the orthogonagen stove. But he didn’t help us, either. He remained by Hannah, arms crossed. I rooted through my father’s notes myself and found the chemical breakdown of arsenic. Captain Crewe brought the teakettle to boiling and produced the small metal box with the vials of fantillium. Taking one, he set the box down, uncorked the vial, and emptied the black contents into the kettle.

  We crowded around the stove. I clutched an empty mug in one hand and pages with the quickening formula and the arsenic compound in the other. My nervousness subsided the moment I inhaled my first breath of fantillium steam. Liquid ice. The world grew bright and sharp. The clock in the corner thudded the seconds . . . clonk, clonk, clonk. Captain Crewe turned down the lights.

  Hannah gasped when she saw my eyes. Her eyes, too, had dilated to pure black.

  We were ready.

  I filled the cup halfway with water and studied the arsenic formula on the paper, a tangle of elements and chemical bonds. I’d illusion the arsenic into the cup, and Hannah would drink it. Easy enough.

  The paper shook in my hand as I visualized the chemical in my head. I imagined threads of arsenic forming and bonding. It grew heavy in my thoughts, seeping to the front of my head, an actual physical sensation. I exhaled, pushing it to the mug.

  I almost saw the thought glistening in the air, a long string from my face to the cup. The water sucked it in, and it became metallic.

  “Right,” I said, sweat beading my forehead. I’d produced the Quickening Formula from my coat pocket and smoothed it out on the counter. “Hannah will drink the illusioned arsenic, and then I’ll illusion the days to go faster. Maybe—make the days last thirty seconds. That means it will only take about two or three minutes to see if it all works.” I handed the mug of illusioned arsenic drink to Hannah. “That would be about right, wouldn’t it?” I added, to my father.

  He didn’t answer. He remained with his arms crossed looking as though he very much wanted to hit me.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see,” I said, rankling.

  I stared at the page with the Quickening Formula, letting the numbers and symbols etch themselves into my head, redrawing it with mental pencil to paper. As soft as a sigh, the algorithm solidified in my head. Warmth like a fever evaporated from my skin. The formula swirled heavily around my brain. I closed my eyes and exhaled.

  x = 2880.

  Nothing happened. The grandfather clock clonked unbearably loud. Clonk.

  And then . . .

  And then . . .

  The dust in the dim light began to swirl in patterns.

  Clonk clonk.

  Shadows flickered with the lights. A buzzing filled my head.

  Clonkclonkclonk . . .

  Clonkclonkclonkclonkclonkclonkclonkclonkclonkclonk clonkclonkclonkclonkclonk

  The hands on the clock spun and blurred and it groaned as though in pain, chiming a mangle of broken bells. Light grew through the frosted laboratory window. The polar sun, lifting above the horizon. The light faded as it plunged back into the sea. Thirty-second days! It was working!

  On the sofa, Hannah began to tremble. The black on her fingers grew up her arms like vines.

  “Hannah, drink the arsenic!” I said as the light grew and waned faster.

  Hands quavering, Hannah lifted the mug to her lips, gulped, and gagged. She coughed and with sputtering defiance downed the entire mugful.

  She began to shake.

  Black spread rapidly around her ears and up her neck. Hannah gasped for air, and began to shudder and cry.

  Quickly my father took her into his arms and held her tightly. The windless air whistled around us. The light strobed.

  “Stop the illusion!” my father shouted at me. “You’re killing her!”

  “We see it through!” the king yelled.

  I mentally flailed. I didn’t know how to stop time! Thoughts in my head scattered. My focus blurred. Hannah’s lips and eyelids turned black.

  “Jonathan!” my father cried.

  And as fast as time flew, it could have frozen at that one moment when my father held Hannah tightly in his arms, the luster of her skin dimming and her body falling limp like a rag doll.

  I lunged at the stove and shoved the kettle off. It sloshed and hissed, burning my hands. I didn’t care.

  The laboratory darkened. The clock clonked its regular seconds. Sick, I ran to Hannah, my father holding her limp frame in his trembling arms, drenched in sweat. My knees gave way and I collapsed by them.

  The king towered over us.

  “She can’t be dead,” he said, alarm in his voice. “It—it was an illusion. Wasn’t it?”

  Captain Crewe turned up the lights, and as he did so, the black that had scored Hannah’s neck, hands, and feet slowly faded and receded back to her fingertips.

  Luster returned to her face. She drew a shuddering gasp.

  “Papa?” she whispered.

  My father broke into a stream of HoLander and held Hannah’s head to his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck. I drew a shaking hand across my forehead, wiping away the dripping sweat. It had just been an illusion.

  “Well, excellent,” said the king in a relieved voice. “The—that dose of arsenic—didn’t quite work, so—let’s have another go.” The king set the kettle I had shoved away back on the burner, and the water inside immediately rolled into a boil. Glistening steam rose out the spout.

  “Another go?” said my father as the cold air stung our lungs. I winced as the room brightened.

  “I expect this time, we shall require more arsenic.”

  “No.”

  My father stood with Hannah in his arms.

  “A stronger dose of arsenic, then?” said the king. “I am not a scientist—”

  “I will not illusion again.”

  The king slowly drew himself up, the buttons on his coat flashing.

  “We will illusion,” he said quietly, “until we find the cure, Dr. Gouden.”

  “I will not.”

  The fantillium air in the laboratory burned our faces and the king’s face became red. My father remained solid beneath his glare.

  With controlled delicacy, the king said, “I can see your daughter does not have the strength. You told me earlier your wife had the Venen, did you not? Perhaps she would volun—”

  “I have a better idea,” said my father, striding to the door. “Why don’t we experiment upon your wife?”

  The king’s voice grew dangerously low.

  “Because my wife is the queen, and your wife is a little nobody.”

  My father whipped around, his coat snapping behind him, and threw his hand out.

&nb
sp; Wind shrieked through the laboratory. A razor-sharp jet of air howled past my ear. It sliced through microscopes and glass bottles on the table, sending the pieces skittering across the tabletop and onto the checkered floor—

  —the razor wind of air slashed the king across the face like an invisible sword. Blood splattered. The crimson droplets remained suspended in the air as the blast of wind threw our sovereign over the mismatched furniture. He toppled into lamps and chairs and globes, slamming into the wall with a thunderous thumpf.

  He crumpled to the tile floor among the wreckage of furniture.

  Blood speckled his heavy coat and the sofas around him.

  The king did not move.

  No one moved.

  Captain Crewe drew away, looking horrified. My father gaped from the king’s mountainous form, to his own hand, then back to the king.

  I was the only one with enough sense to end the illusion. I threw the kettle into the sink and once again, the laboratory darkened. The broken furniture about the king faded back into their original whole forms, though askew from the king stumbling back against them. The gash across the king’s face disappeared. An illusion.

  “Jonathan,” said my father quietly, Hannah still in his arms.

  I hastened after him, out of the laboratory, with one last glance at the king as Captain Crewe helped him unsteadily to his feet. He touched his face where my father’s wind-blade had struck him. His bulging eyes caught mine in a seething glare.

  We’re going to pay for that, I thought.

  CHAPTER 5

  Hannah curled up in a ball, shaking with silent sobs, when my father gently set her back in her infirmary bed.

  I paced up and down the aisle of the infirmary, distracted, drawing a hand through my tangled hair. The infirmary was so crowded I had to step over the wheels of all the extra cots and carts and chairs they’d brought in, to accommodate all those infected with the Venen. Mum. Hannah. Alice. Nurses. The miners’ wives.

  And yet, everything was eerily silent. None of the figures on the beds moved. Entering day two of the Venen: fever, discoloration, and continued weakness.