Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  He shook his head. “I’m sure I would know if there was an altered human among my staff. Especially if the parts are as obvious as you described.”

  It was true. There was no way Rumpled could be inconspicuous with his alterations. And his size.

  “What should we do, then?” she asked. She felt calmer than the night before, but the worry still clung to her like a wet petticoat, leaving her wanting to do nothing but hold her daughter close every minute of the day.

  “I’m going to get some discreet legal advice. No doubt there will be speculation about who the man was and why you and I abandoned our guests last night, but I’d still like to keep all this as quiet as possible. You can talk to the servants and see if they know anything about the man—you’re closer with them than I am.”

  She nodded again, and nestled close to him.

  For a moment, there was silence between them. Then, “Byron?”

  He looked down at her.

  “Are you… angry with me for lying to you?”

  She tried in vain to read his face.

  “I’m sad,” he said.

  Sad. She searched his eyes for elaboration.

  “I’m sad that you’ve had to live with this,” he went on after a pause. “And I wish I had known sooner. But I understand, and I own my part of it all. I want to get to the bottom of things and discuss it all with you and build better trust. Later. Right now all I want to do is keep you and Lizzie safe.”

  Her eyes burned and she hid her face against his chest, and they laid still for a little while.

  At last he patted her back and said softly, “We need to get to work.” Then he kissed her, got up, put on his dressing gown, and rang for his manservant to come get him dressed. Amanda got out of bed, walked to her wardrobe, and pulled out a black dress.

  She talked cautiously with all the servants. They had never seen or heard of anyone matching Rumpled’s description, and swore that there had been no altered humans or even tiny men in the house, including the basement. She asked to be taken to the basement, just in case, and Southworth led her down. It was a dark place, lined with well-organized shelves and compacted bins of waste. In the center of the room, electric lights illuminated an enormous generator. It dwarfed the one she had run back at the mill.

  But she saw no sign of Rumpled.

  She visited the room where she’d met him, and tried again to find the trap door, but no amount of tapping or prying at the floorboards yielded any result.

  Byron arrived home before supper and joined her in the library, where she sat with Lizzie clutched in her arms.

  He came forward and kissed her, then sank into the chair opposite her. “I talked to a lawyer,” he said.

  She cradled the baby and waited expectantly.

  “He agrees with me that we need to get copies of the recordings to ensure that they exist. He’s also going to look further into the adoption laws and how they intersect with contract law. Altered humans can’t adopt through normal avenues, because they can’t pass medical exams. But the wishes of a biological parent can override some adoption laws. And a contract with a biological parent could qualify as the parent’s wishes in the eyes of the court. There may be some precedent.”

  Amanda’s heart plummeted.

  Byron noticed. “He’s going to dig for loopholes or anything that this… person may have overlooked or may not know. He’s the best lawyer in the area. If there’s a chance on that front, he’ll find it.”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t find anything about him from the servants, or in the basement. I did write down a list of all the men’s names I could think of, though.”

  He smiled slightly, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “So did I.”

  She returned the faint smile and reached for the list. He handed it to her, then said, “Let me hold her.”

  For a second she hesitated, then she lifted Lizzie and passed her to her father. He would protect her. And she was the one who had to guess the name.

  She looked down at the lists, mentally crossing out duplicates. She was almost done when the library doors glided open.

  They both looked up and saw the little man in the doorway again.

  If he was surprised to see Byron there, he didn’t show it. He strode forward and again positioned himself three feet in front of Amanda, hands clasped behind his back.

  Amanda nervously cleared her throat, but her husband interrupted.

  “Before we begin this, I would like to have a copy of both contracts.”

  Rumpled reached into his wrinkled coat, pulled out a copper stick, and handed it to the governor without looking at him. “I thought you might.”

  Byron took it, examined it, and then flicked a switch on one end of the gadget. It whirred to life, and fuzzy but unmistakable versions of the little man’s voice and Amanda’s pressed into the silence of the room. First the conversation about trading her firstborn for two machines, then the one about guessing the name.

  Amanda’s cheeks burned as the recording played, and when Rumpled’s low voice intoned, “You love this man, this—prince charming, don’t you?” she wanted a trap door to appear below her chair and devour her. She stole a glance up at Byron and found his face emotionless.

  “Are you satisfied now?” the little man asked evenly.

  Byron’s face tightened, but he said, “Carry on.”

  Amanda licked her lips and gripped the papers, trying to ignore the red blinking light and focus on the scrawled names on the papers in front of her. “Is your name… John?” she asked.

  Rumpled shook his head.

  “Samuel?”

  No good.

  “Nathan?”

  He denied it.

  “William? Thomas? Jasper? Peter? Frank? George?”

  None of those. Nor was it Max, Daniel, Michael, Walter, Lawrence, Stephen, Titus, Theodore, Arthur, Victor, Richard, Ned, or Louis.

  She went through her list first, then her husband’s. When she got to the last name, her chest felt cold.

  “Is it Matthew?” she asked.

  “No.” He didn’t appear nervous. If anything, he almost looked bored, ready for them to be finished and let him be gone until the next evening.

  She looked at Byron.

  “How will we have proof of your real name?” her husband questioned, his eyebrows lowered over his eyes in a way she’d never seen.

  Rumpled didn’t reciprocate the intensity. “When you are finished guessing, either because I say you are correct or because the time is out, I will provide acceptable documents. I am a human being. I receive mail and I pay taxes. I have my proof.”

  There was nothing further to say. Amanda wanted to plead and beg again, but knew the little man would not relent.

  “I will see you tomorrow night,” he said, turning on his heel and walking out of the room.

  Neither of them slept much that night. Every time one of them thought of a name, they would get up and turn on the light and write it down. When morning finally arrived, Byron got up early to put more of his plans into action. Amanda questioned the groom and stableboys and gardeners in case they knew something the house staff did not. They couldn’t help her.

  When the mail came, she flew out of the house eagerly to greet it, hoping that the plans Byron had ordered would come so that she could find the location of the trap door, but they didn’t arrive. So she retreated to the library and began scanning the spine of every book systematically, compiling a compendium of men’s names.

  Byron again came home early with the disheartening news that his lawyer had uncovered no legal ways out of the predicament. He had requested a copy of last year’s census for all of New England, and had been informed that it would take three days to process.

  “He probably knew that,” he concluded, brows furrowing in anger again.

  The comfort she had felt from his strong assurance that there had to be a way out of this faded as he talked. Rumpled was no idiot. His genius had be
en apparent in his creations, and was now just as clear in the plan he’d laid.

  “Why would he even give me a chance, then?” She picked Lizzie up from where she played on the rug and held her close. The baby tried to wiggle out of her grasp.

  Byron gazed into the distance absently. “I don’t know. Maybe he just wanted you to feel you’d been given a chance. Or maybe he wanted to feel he’d given you one, without risking his goal.”

  Amanda stroked Lizzie’s fuzzy hair until the child calmed down. “And why does he want her?”

  Byron did not know.

  They sat, waiting, searching their minds for any names they might have forgotten. Neither could remember at what time the little man had appeared the evening before, though they knew it had been before eight o’ clock. As the clock hands neared the hour, apprehension built in Amanda’s stomach until she thought she would be sick.

  When the doors did finally open, she jumped. Upon turning her head, she saw that Rumpled did indeed stand in the doorway.

  Just like the other nights, he approached her, not sparing a look for Byron. His red eye glowed up at her, and he stood and waited.

  Amanda cleared her throat, trying to use the sound to shatter the roar of panic in her mind, and lifted both lists in one hand, still clutching Lizzie with the other.

  “Is your name Ezra?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is it Edwin?”

  Shook it again.

  “Lucian? Jefferson? Gilbert? Zachariah? Julius? Orville? Bernard?”

  It was none of those things. Nor was it Horatio, Archibald, Earnest, Hugh, Roderick, Christopher, Simeon, Ambrose, or any of the other names she rattled off for nearly half an hour.

  She finally reached the last name. “What about… Augustus?”

  He shook his head again. “None of those names are mine.”

  Amanda crumpled the papers in her fist. “Why do you want my baby?” she cried.

  Rumpled didn’t answer. He only said, “I will see you tomorrow,” and turned to leave.

  Byron leapt to his feet. “I will give you anything. I will work to amend the altered human statutes… I’ll find a child who has no home for you to adopt.”

  Rumpled stopped his exit, but didn’t turn to face the governor. “You know as well as I do that you do not have the power to do those things. There are not enough strings that you can pull to make things change fast enough for me. I want a child. I earned yours perfectly fairly and legally. And I will have her.” And with this calm epithet, he left the room.

  Byron would have rushed after him, but Amanda reached for his hand. “Don’t…”

  Her husband whirled around. “I can follow him and find where he lives!”

  “I have to guess… that’s the rule. If he can prove we forced it from him, the contract is no good. Please.”

  He stood looking down on her, chest rising and falling rapidly. “But… I have to do something. I won’t stand by and let her go.”

  Amanda reached further until she touched his fingers with her own. “I know. Maybe you can… pull some strings to hurry the census report along.”

  He sank to his knees beside her chair and grasped her hand. “Even if I can, there are hundreds and hundreds of people on that list. How can we read them all? And what if he doesn’t even live in this state? What then?”

  Tears stung her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  He encircled both her and the baby with his arms and held them close as the windows darkened into night.”

  XI.

  At Last I See the Light

  Byron told her before they went to bed that he was going to leave early the next morning, but it was still odd to awaken without him again. For a moment she was flashed back to the early days of their marriage when she consistently awoke under silk covers, with the sun on her face, and a long day of lies and uselessness ahead of her.

  Panic flamed in her chest and she shot up. Lizzie.

  A baby’s cry drifted through the open door to the nursery reassuring her.

  She got out of bed and wrapped her dressing gown haphazardly around herself, then slipped into the next room.

  Janine sat faithfully next to the baby’s cradle, rocking it at perfect intervals. She looked up and her eyes glowed at her mistress.

  “I think she wants her mother.”

  “I’m sure. Thank you, Janine.”

  The gears in the machine’s arm whirred as she moved from the cradle and let Amanda pick Lizzie up. The baby calmed as her mother’s arms closed gently around her, and her tiny fists clenched as she nestled her head against Amanda’s shoulder.

  Amanda’s heart quivered. “I’ve got you,” she whispered.

  “Are you all right, mistress?” asked Janine.

  Amanda nodded, fighting tears. “Can you ask the servants to gather in their dining room? I need their help with something.”

  Amanda’s trepidation at humbling herself before the servants melted away in the face of their sympathy. Instead of despising her for her lies, they were eager to do all they could to help. Nothing she said had jogged their memory further with regards to Rumpled. None of them had ever seen a small man with an electronic eye, or even without one, anywhere near the palace. Most of them had never seen either an altered human or a man that small, and any they had seen didn’t match the description of Rumpled at all.

  Southworth, however, did have a friend at the architect’s office and he offered to get the plans to her by luncheon. Mary agreed to take care of Lizzie while Amanda looked for more names, and all the other servants paused in their work to sit down and write any names of men they knew or had ever heard of. Amanda did the same, searching the depths of her mind for any names she might have forgotten. Then she took all the servants’ lists and did her best to condense them down into one great list of names she had not yet tried. A few of them were names she had never even heard of.

  At this point, however, she was fairly certain that if it were something she could guess he would never have offered her the chance. If, however, she could find the trap door and make her way quietly to where he had come from? If she could see or overhear something that would show her what his name was?

  She had a hurried lunch with the servants and the butler returned before she was finished eating. He handed her a large roll of paper, tied with a blue ribbon.

  She looked up at him.

  He nodded. “The plans for the house.”

  She pushed her food out of the way and untied the ribbon with trembling fingers. Then she spread the plans out on top of the table.

  She could see the general outline of the house, but the lines and numbers confused her. “Where’s the room?” she asked, looking from face to face, her own cheeks warming slightly at her ignorance.

  “Here,” one of the footmen pointed out. “And it looks like the plans do include a trap door, but I don’t see anything about how to open it.”

  Based on where he was pointing, it looked like the door was about where she’d thought it was.

  “He may have rigged it with his own mechanism,” the butler said. “And… it’s possible it can only be opened from the other side.”

  Her heart sank and she strained her memory. “No… I know that he closed it behind him. And he still managed to get back in later.”

  The servants looked at each other.

  “Just let us pry up the whole floor, dearie,” Mrs. LaFaye urged.

  She shook her head. “If I get down there, it has to be in a way that he can’t prove.”

  An automated voice spoke from behind her. “Would you like to feed Lizzie, mistress, or do you want Mary to do it?”

  Amanda turned to face Janine and her mind lit up with an idea. “Mary can do it. Then, Janine… can you meet me in the room where you were made, please?”

  “Of course.” Janine left to relay the message.

  Amanda rolled the plans back up and headed to the room where it had all begun.

  If Rumpled was the one who had
engineered the mechanism that opened the trap door, maybe Janine could figure it out. After all, he had engineered her, too.

  Janine stood in the middle of the room, blue eyes fixed on the section of the floor Amanda had pointed out.

  “I do not understand,” she said. “This door is a trap?”

  “That just means it’s a door in the floor,” Amanda explained. Once again she surveyed the floorboards for any hint of cracks that shouldn’t be there, and saw nothing.

  “And you want for me to open it?”

  Even after over a year, the machine’s grammar needed some work. “I thought you could help me figure out how. I think the man who made the way to open the door is the same man who made you.”

  Janine looked at Amanda, then back at the floor. She tilted her head to one side, a mannerism she had picked up from Byron.

  “Touch the button on the back of my head,” the machine said at last.

  Amanda surveyed the metal plate in the location indicated. “I don’t see a button.”

  “It’s there.”

  She reached forward and touched the warm metal. She felt over every inch of it with her fingers, noticing spots where it was welded to other metal or even rusted through. When she pressed her finger carefully into the third rust hole she came upon, she was startled to see a tiny hatch pop open, revealing tiny gears that whirled around a small lever.

  “Don’t pull the lever,” Janine instructed. “It resets me.”

  Amanda pushed the hatch closed until it clicked into place.

  “He hid the button in the surface’s imperfections,” she mused, letting her gaze dart over the floor near the location of the trap door.

  There was a knot in one board.

  Trembling, Amanda knelt and pressed her finger firmly into it.

  A clicking and whirring sounded as a square but jagged section of floor rose straight up an inch, leaving a slight gap between itself and the other boards. Heart pounding, Amanda put her fingers underneath the edge and lifted it. It was heavy, but not too heavy for her to swing upwards and lower carefully back onto the floor.