The Long Past & Other Stories

by Ginn Hale

  How naïve he’d been—how foolishly kind and utterly devoted. I missed him so much that it hurt to remember him and know he was gone forever. I frowned up at the dark sky overhead until my urge to cry passed.

  Geula quickly pressed a kiss to my cheek. Her lips felt hot against my skin, and a hint of chocolate lingered on her breath. She knew exactly how to reassure me without saying a word.

  “Nothing like goodness inspired Mr. Edison to take us in,” I went on. “He wanted me so that he’d have an unregistered mage to test his mage-collars on without having to report his failings—”

  “The scar on your neck?” Geula asked in horror. “Edison did that to you?”

  I nodded.

  “He wanted worse for his wife,” I told her. “The reason he allowed my uncle to work on an armature wasn’t to develop a device to improve the lives of the injured and crippled. He wanted my uncle to build a shell that would let him lock his wife up and keep her from indulging in laudanum.”

  “An addict, was she?” Geula asked.

  “And a mean one at that. She’d call my auntie every filthy name she could think of and hurl plates at her if she was denied her doses.”

  At the time, I’d despised her for treating my aunt so badly. I’d sometimes wished Edison could have locked her up. But remembering the dull deadness of Liz Gorky’s gaze, I realized now what a terribly cruel act it was to so completely deny any person control of themselves—whether or not they made poor choices. Those decisions were theirs to make and defined who they were.

  “So what happened?” Geula asked.

  I didn’t want to go on. In some childish way, it felt like I was letting them die all over again by saying more. But I wanted to be honest with Geula. I did owe her that.

  “Auntie Abril fell ill. Her lungs had never recovered from the fire, and she was very susceptible to ague. She passed away on the thirtieth of September, only hours before Uncle Neelmani convinced Edison to allow him to use the armature he’d perfected to help support her breathing—”

  “It could do that?” Geula asked.

  “Uncle Neelmani thought so, but he couldn’t get to us in time to try it. Aunt Abril died two hours before he arrived with the armature and its cabinet.” I stopped for a moment, fighting back the memories of my auntie lying in her bed like a sunken, waxy doll. I didn’t want to think of her that way; it wasn’t who she’d been. I wanted to remember her dancing and laughing at both her missteps and mine. But the cold image of her corpse hung in my mind.

  “Without her in the house to hide the laudanum away, Mary Edison had free access. She died twelve days later of overindulgence,” I said. “Mr. Edison took it very badly. He blamed our family, and in a rage, he had his assistant Hays collar me so that he could test how long a mage could survive if the collar malfunctioned and didn’t stop burning. I was only saved because a newspaperman dropped by the laboratory unexpectedly to interview Edison. My uncle found me a few hours later and realized that we had to escape immediately. He packed up his armature, and we managed to get to the train station before Edison and his men closed in. I was already aboard with all our luggage…and I guess my uncle realized that if he fled he could draw Edison and his men away from me and his invention…” My voice failed me then.

  Geula didn’t ask me to go on. I drew in a deep breath and concentrated on the rushing, pleasant feeling of excitement in the air. Perfumes of machine oil and coal fires twisted around night-blooming jasmine. Faint vibrations rolled up from a music hall, and somewhere on a balcony above us, a woman hummed to herself and applied a spritz of lavender perfume.

  I exhaled slowly, feeling that I was placing this vibrant living world out between me and the painful memories that lay dead in the past.

  “I think he must have circled back to ensure that the fire I started destroyed all of his blueprints,” I said at last. “It was a month later that I read about his death and how much of Edison’s automaton laboratory had burned down. I was on my own from then on.”

  “How old were you?” Geula asked.

  “Sixteen,” I replied. “Old enough to know that a woman couldn’t travel on alone without trouble. But if I accompanied a frail old relative in a wheeled chair, folks were far more likely to let us alone. So I stuffed a mannequin into my uncle’s automaton armature and dressed it up with a wig. I explained away his mask as part of his eccentric flair, him being a stage magician.”

  “And abracadabra! Here you are with Professor Perfectus, yeah?” Geula smiled wryly.

  “Well, nine years on,” I pointed out. “But yes. That’s my story.”

  “So you aren’t Mexican, at all?” Geula appeared slightly chagrined. “And to think I’ve been trying to learn Spanish all this last month.”

  I laughed at that. (I’d been trying to pick the language up myself.)

  “My parents and uncle came over from England, but my grandfather was an Indian sailor and a wind mage.” After everything else, this seemed like such a small confession. “I used my aunt’s name because I had some of her papers mixed in with my uncle’s luggage. Her birthdate wasn’t too hard to alter. And I knew the Edison had never known her maiden name.”

  “Clever,” Geula said, but her expression turned troubled. “The armature that they trapped Liz Gorky inside? That was your uncle’s design?”

  “Based on it,” I admitted, though the idea of how terribly my uncle’s intentions had been misused repulsed me. “But it’s nothing like his actual work. If you put on the Professor Perfectus armature, it couldn’t restrain you like that thing Edison created. My uncle built spells into it to ensure that it responded to the desire of the wearer. It would fit and move like a second skin, not trap you in a cage.”

  “A second skin of steel,” Geula added.

  “My uncle can’t be blamed for what Edison did with his design.”

  “No.” Geula sighed and craned her head up at the statue looming over us. “How hard do you think it will be to break Liz out of that thing?”

  For an instant, the question surprised me. But of course Geula hadn’t immediately discarded rescuing Liz Gorky and turned her mind to putting as much distance between herself and Edison as possible. She wasn’t like me—she fought instead of running away.

  “I don’t know. Professor Perfectus releases with a touch. But I’d bet that Edison is using a lock like the one that closes his mage-collars.” I scratched absently at the high collar of my dress. “Those have to be released by the registered owner.”

  Geula’s scowled.

  “No way around that?” she asked.

  “I…” I didn’t want to be dragged back into Edison’s proximity. I wanted to pack up and leave with Geula tonight. And yet the thought of Liz Gorky gnawed at me. “I managed to open a few by draining their power so that the registration spell failed. It isn’t easy, but if there was enough time, I might be able to do it.”

  Geula smiled at me and then nodded thoughtfully.

  “Hopefully, you won’t have to.” Geula clasped my hand in hers and started up the steps. “We’re not alone in this, remember?”

  This time, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t run. We strolled up the stairs side by side.

  An hour later, upon the second story of the Women’s Hall, seated under a glass dome and surrounded by the perfume of hundreds of costly greenhouse orchids, I wondered if perhaps I’d made the wrong choice. Or maybe Geula had. We certainly didn’t seem to be making much headway on Liz Gorky’s account.

  The Jewels were gracious hostesses, and the table Geula and I sat at all but overflowed with delicacies and indulgences. Peaches, figs and bright gold oranges (all from California) were piled high on silver trays. Gilded chocolates, in the shapes of songbirds, studded an exotic coconut cake, and we’d already eaten our fill of lobster, potato gratin and sweet peas. Flutes of bubbling champagne percolated in front of us.

 
Across the table from Geula and I, Bertha Palmer sipped her champagne and watched the two of us with the hard, keen look of a landlady intent upon evicting undesirable tenants as discreetly as possible. To her right, meek Miss Starr poked at her serving of cake with a gold fork but didn’t actually take a bite. During the entire time that Geula had described what we’d witnessed in the Mechanical Maid display, she’d not spoken a word, nor had she appeared much surprised. To Mrs. Palmer’s left, Jane Addams hunched in her chair, looking too long and angular for its dainty proportions. She’d refused both cake and champagne in favor of a strong black coffee. She worried the column of pearls wound around her throat, and then seemed to catch herself and curl her large hands around her coffee cup.

  Of all three Jewels, Miss Addams alone had reacted with dismay to the revelation that Mudgett had claimed Liz Gorky as his wife. Outrage had shown clearly in her face and she’d looked to Miss Starr immediately. Then, as now, Miss Starr kept her demure head down, revealing nothing and offering nothing.

  “Now, I know that all you asked me to do was track down Liz Gorky…” Geula took a bite of cake and went on. “But there have to have been other women Edison and Mudgett have done this to. The exhibition has been going for months, and Liz Gorky could only have been part of their Mechanical Maid display for a week at most. So who did they have on display before this, and what’s become of her?”

  Mrs. Palmer turned her champagne glass in her hand. The other two were silent as well.

  “If Mudgett is running a hotel, he likely has access to a number of women.” I spoke up for Geula’s sake. “Not merely his staff but guests too. The exhibition has been drawing thousands and thousands of people from both halves of the country. Some are bound to go missing…”

  “Damn it,” Miss Addams muttered. She cast a brief glower in Mrs. Palmer’s direction. “Didn’t I say there was more to this?”

  “Let us not jump to foolhardy conclusions. It isn’t impossible that Liz did marry Dr. Mudgett previous to her coming to you at Hull House.” Mrs. Palmer spoke very deliberately and coolly. “He could be the father of her child, for all we know.”

  At this, Miss Starr’s head came up fast. For the first time all evening, I saw clearly how furious she was. A flush colored her cheeks, and though she glowered, her dark eyes seemed to glint with unshed tears. The moment she met my gaze, she bowed her head again and crushed a piece of her cake between the gold tines of her fork.

  Miss Adam’s hand jumped to the pearls and gripped them as if attempting to rip them from her neck.

  I remembered the photograph of Liz Gorky that Geula had shown me. This close to Miss Starr, I recognized more than a passing resemblance—the same dark eyes and angular jaw. Miss Starr’s bowed head and downcast gaze hid the very features that made Liz Gorky striking. Liz Gorky was too old to be her daughter, but could have been a younger sister, a cousin or even a niece.

  “Liz was not married,” Miss Addams said firmly. “She told us that her family disowned her for engaging in relations while still unwed.”

  “So she says, but there is only her word for any of that.” Mrs. Palmer favored each of us in turn with a hard, direct glance. “If we were to act directly—publically—against a man of Mr. Edison’s reputation and reach, we would certainly need more cause than the word of an admitted adulteress.”

  I didn’t recall anyone saying anything about Liz Gorky being involved with a married man, but neither Miss Addams nor Miss Starr objected. And if that was the case, it made even more sense that Mrs. Palmer feared legal charges against Edison on Liz’s behalf wouldn’t hold up.

  At the same time, Geula’s point about Mudgett and Edison going through other women troubled me deeply. Even if Edison’s cobbled-together copy of my uncle’s armature did function perfectly—and I very much doubted that it did—how long could a person survive having her will so completely suppressed and violated? How much time did Liz Gorky have before she went utterly mad or died? She’d hardly been missing a week, but already she’d struck me as a dull, dying thing. How many more would there be after her?

  “We must do something,” Miss Starr murmured.

  “Is there any way of finding out where they’re keeping Liz Gorky?” Geula asked. “We might be able to steal her away from them if we knew that much.”

  Unwillingly, I thought of the cabinet where I stored Professor Perfectus.

  “We could have them followed, but it will take time and would involve bringing even more people into the matter.” Mrs. Palmer glanced to me. “Since it seems that the two of you were noticed by Mr. Edison’s associate. He thought he recognized you in particular, didn’t he, Miss Nieves?”

  Geula and I exchanged a quick glance. Neither of us had mentioned that.

  “No,” I replied. “He mistook me for another woman, but after witnessing that Mechanical Maid, I wasn’t inclined to remain in his company long enough for him to realize his error.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Palmer’s level gaze reminded me of the unwavering stare of a snake. “Well, it would seem that after that incident, Mr. Edison took it into his head that this other woman was here at the exhibition. He appears to be quite interested in an automaton in her possession. If we could somehow locate that, then we might have a chance at trading it for Liz’s release.”

  “He actually said that?” Geula asked.

  “He has his agents searching the exhibition grounds,” Mrs. Palmer replied.

  I had to suppress the desire to leap up and rush back to the theater. I had no doubt Hays would recognize the cabinet if he found his way into the theater’s dressing rooms.

  “Of course, I’ve made certain that, for propriety’s sake, Edison’s men were not allowed to intrude into the private rooms or dressing rooms of any women. I informed him that I would oversee any such search beginning tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh for Heaven’s sake,” Miss Addams cried out, and she looked to me. “If you have the damn thing, then say as much. We’ll pay whatever you ask. Just let us get Lizzie back.”

  “Yes!” Miss Starr cast me a pleading look. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”

  I didn’t miss Mrs. Palmer’s annoyed expression or Geula’s pleased smile as she looked between Miss Addams and Miss Starr. I said nothing, but Geula leaned forward on her elbows like a card sharp preparing to reveal a winning hand.

  “Two thousand dollars and two tickets for California,” Geula said.

  Mrs. Palmer made a face like she’d bitten her tongue, but Miss Starr and Miss Addams agreed to the price. I glowered at Geula. She couldn’t actually believe I would ever hand my uncle’s armature over to a man like Edison. He’d made a monstrosity of the imitations he’d built. I didn’t want to find out what horror he’d create if he got hold of all the subtle innovation and spells that made up the real armature.

  “You do realize that this won’t stop Edison and Mudgett from replacing Liz with another woman,” I said. “Or doesn’t that matter?”

  Miss Starr shot me a look of raw fury.

  “I don’t know how things are done where you come from, Miss Nieves, but here in America, we look after our own!” She jabbed her gold fork at me. “Lizzie is one of us, and we are going to do whatever it takes to get her back safe and sound to her daughter!”

  Instinctively, I drew in a deep breath and felt the air around me grow cool as I drained the power from it. Geula must have felt the change because she straightened and cast me a worried look. As much as I wanted to slap a stinging charge across Miss Starr’s face, I resisted. And not merely because I’d be a fool to reveal myself in front of three theurgists, but because it occurred to me that Geula wasn’t being quite straight with them. She might promise a simple exchange of the armature for Liz Gorky, but there had to more in her mind than that. She’d been as appalled as I had at Edison’s Mechanical Maid.

  “Where I come from,” I began, “all people ar
e created equal and every life has value regardless of how poor or unprivileged their family and friends are. So obviously, Miss Starr, my America is a different one from yours.”

  To my surprise, Miss Starr’s entire face seemed to quiver. She gave a sob and then leapt from her chair and rushed off to the balcony.

  “Ellen!” Miss Addams called after her. She began to rise from her seat with an awkwardness that I remembered my aunt suffering when her prosthesis didn’t sit quite right.

  “No, Jane.” Mrs. Palmer stood swiftly and easily. “She’s overtired, that’s all. Let me talk to her. In the meantime, I’d very much appreciate if you’d finish the rest of this up.” Mrs. Palmer indicated Geula and I with an offhanded gesture, and then she strode after Miss Starr (who I could hear sobbing out in the dark).

  Miss Addams sighed heavily and took a slug of her coffee like it was whiskey.

  “You bring Liz here, and I’ll have your money and railway passes waiting for you. Are we agreed?” She looked to Geula briefly but turned her full attention to me. “I’ll send word to Edison that we’re willing to make the exchange. It can’t happen here, but would the theater serve?”

  “No.” The still air inside the auditoriums would stifle me. Edison wasn’t likely to agree to meet out in the open air, not knowing me as he did. But the vast space of the Technology Hall would seem familiar to him—like territory he owned. At the same time, it offered me air charged with currents and the cover of countless displays for Geula. Edison and his men couldn’t control them all. “I’d rather we make the exchange in the Technology Hall.”