“Whatever are you talking about, child?” His dead-lark eyes flicker, worried, and he sort of laughs.
“The machine.” I point. “It belongs to me—”
“EYELET!”
My head swings around. My mother stands at the back of the crowd, looking frazzled. A week’s worth of toffee sags in her hand. She weaves her way to the front, apologizing, seizing me by the arm.
“But Mother—”
“Not now, Eyelet!” she hisses, urging me to keep silent, and drags me to the back of the tent.
“But it’s not his. It’s mine!” I shout. “Father made it for me. To look inside my head. Not for him to take photographs of women’s purses with!”
Heads swing ‘round. Mother gasps. The carnie’s eyes grow wide. Throwing back the flap of the tent, Mother yanks me through, hauling me stumbling out into the center of the midway.
“Where are we going?” I protest. “Didn’t you hear me? That man has my machine!”
“Not here, Eyelet.” She glances nervously back over her shoulder. “We can’t talk about this here.”
“Why not?”
She pulls me forward, but I yank her to a stop. Frustrated, she falls to her knees. Her eyes are wet, like she’s about to cry. The corners of her lips are trembling.
She runs her hands down the sides of my hair and scoops my cheeks into her palms. I can tell by the look in her eyes she’s about to tell me something bad. Something I don’t want to hear. “I’m afraid the world is not always as it should be, Eyelet.” She swallows, and the water in her eyes seeps over the edges of her lids. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”
I turn away, staring over her shoulders at the back of the red-and-white-striped tent. Hot tears prick my eyes. “He sold it, didn’t he?” I say. “The machine he promised he’d fix me with. Father sold that man my machine—”
“There they are!”
The carnie's voice rings out across the midway like the crack of an elephant trainer’s whip. “There!” He emerges from under the tent flap, pointing. The thug standing next to him gives chase.
Mother grabs me by the arm and hurls me onto her hip, though I’m much too big to carry, and bursts through the crowd, bouncing off the backs of patrons as she heads for the gates. My heart leaps in my chest. I bob along, clinging to her, hands clasped tight around her neck. Why is he chasing us? What does he want?
"I'm not sure," she shouts.
“Mother?” I say, looking back over her shoulder, my eyes catching on something strange. “Mother!” A ghoulish green glow rises up from the horizon, engulfing the whole sky behind us. “Mother!" I shout. "LOOK!”
She turns just in time to see it. A flash so big, so bold, so bright, it fills my head, my heart...the whole universe.
Eclipsing all that came before it.
And all that is to come.
PART ONE
One
Eyelet—age seventeen
Living in eternal twilight might sound romantic, but it’s not. It’s simply depressing. No one in the city of Brethren has seen the sun since the Night of the Great Illumination. I close my eyes and try hard to remember what life was like before the flash. But I can’t.
It’s been nine long years since golden rays have warmed my skin. Nine long years of grey skies and continuous rolling cloud cover, living under a hood of darkness and gloom. Some say the flash knocked out the sun forever. But I refuse to believe it.
Personally, I believe its up there still, stuck behind all that cumulonimbus. I raise a hand, squinting through the layers of cloud. Perhaps it’s gone to shine over Limpidious—the utopian world beyond the clouds my father always dreamed existed. Or perhaps the flash just shorted it out and it’ll be coming back on soon.
Whatever the case, I’m tired of waiting. So until it reappears, I’ve created my own personal dash of sunshine. I pop open my latest invention: the skeleton of a bumbershoot stripped clean of its canvas, its remaining ribs and divers wound tight with wires and tiny hissing aether bulbs of hope. My own engineered solution to the gloom.
Slowly the bumbershoot blooms, wreathing my head in a mushroom cap of light, its warmth seeping through me, dissolving the chill from my bones. I flit around beneath it like a child, enjoying the presence of my uncustomary shadow stretching dark and lanky through the grey mist out over the cobblestones, recreating a longer, thinner me.
A puff of smoke spoils the moment, followed by a vulgar zap. The bumbershoot fizzles out.
“OOOooooo! You ornery thing!” I shake the apparatus in disgust.
If my father were here you’d be glowing.
If my father were here a lot of things would still be glowing.
I stare dreamily into the clouds.
Even I’d be fixed by now.
But he’s not.
I snap the bumbershoot shut.
Enough jiggering about with this silly thing; I’ve far more important things to accomplish today, like returning this useless paper journal to the archives unnoticed. Preferably before the start of class.
I look at the thin notebook in my hands, at the word Lumière etched across the front. And I was so sure this was the one.
I flip it open one last time, running a finger over the endless columns of data, collections of random samples and their subsequent findings, not at all what I’d expected to find.
What does all this mean? And why did he record it?
“—particulate matter, subject 521, 10 parts per million—excessively abundant.”
I flip the notebook shut and hug it to my chest. Whatever it is, it’s of no use to me. What I need are directions on how to run the machine. And a map to where it is would be useful, too.
One of these days, I will find the right book. And when I do, it’ll lead me to my father’s machine. And then I’ll fire up the Great Illuminator and use it to cure myself of these hideous seizures once and for all, making good on the promise my father broke. Then at last I’ll be safe. No more fear of public persecution. No more threat of being found out and deemed insane. I’ll no longer have to fear falling into an episode and being locked away in an asylum for the rest of my life, over an illness that the world just doesn’t understand.
I look down at my chrono-cuff, realizing the time. Half past—I’d better get moving. Parting a mare’s tail of trolling fog, I push on toward the Academy, taking the shortcut through Piglingham Square, though I know I shouldn’t. I gasp at the sight of bodies still dangling from the gallows at the center, throwing a hand to my eyes. Cantationers, no doubt, sentenced to death for the practice of Wickedry. Their bodies dipped in vats of scalding wax and left to hang as examples to the rest of us.
There are two things you don’t want to be found guilty of in this post-flash modern world. The first is Wickedry—the practice of magic, black or otherwise. And the second is Madness. I shudder at the thought of the second one, knowing how fragile my existence is. “They must never know,” I hear Father say. “You must never give up your secret. Seizures are considered an incurable form of Madness in the Commonwealth. If anyone were to know, you’d most certainly be locked away.”
A chill runs the length of my spine, my eyes trailing off toward the horizon, settling on Madhouse Brink—the mental asylum that looms over the edge of the city—where all the Mad are sent. I remember the looks on their faces in the windows, the shrieks of their screams crying out.
I shake off the image and race for the school, arriving breathless at the gates moments later. Impenetrable gates for an impenetrable fortress, where educators seek to create impenetrable minds.
I step up to the rampart of twisted heavy iron ivy, greeted by two mechanical ravens sitting atop newel-post perches, guarding either side of the gate. Their heads bob robotically, tilting left to right. Their eyes, spurred by a hiss of methane, light up into pairs of beaming cathode rays. Slowly, they scan my likeness, head to toe, systematically comparing my image to the vast library of metal-stamped images housed inside t
heir memory banks.
My father’s work, the two of them. “Security Sorcerers,” they’re called. The first of their kind in the Commonwealth.
The last of their kind.
“What’s the matter?” I say, when the bird on the right hesitates. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me, Simon?” I fold my arms over my chest, annoyed by his antics. I should easily have been approved by now.
“Don’t make me come over there and tighten your springs,” I threaten. What on earth can be the matter?
The bird’s eyes stall on the word on the front of the notebook I’ve pressed to my chest, its eyes tracing out the cursive letters.
L...u...m...i...è…
My stomach cramps. Quickly, I move my hand to block the remainder of the word. This can’t be happening. He can’t possibly know what it is. Can he?
The bird’s wings flutter and the cramp in my stomach tightens.
“You can’t be serious, Simon.” The bird’s nickel-plated beak creaks ajar. “It’s me”—I touch my chest—“Eyelet. Remember? I’m the one who named you!”
None of that seems to matter. Father warned me it would be so. The pulse in my wrist rolls like thunder. What am I to do?
The mechanical raven spreads its wings, preparing to report me. My heart beats wild in my chest. Above my head the air fills with voices of real ravens feverishly fussing on approach. “The flock,” I say as my chin snaps up to see them swirling. “What are they doing here?”
Enamored with my mother, it is not unusual for them to be drawn to me—black moths to a human flame. They often trail me about the city, cloaked about my head and shoulders, whispering portents of caution in my ears. But lately they trail me less often, a request I’ve made of my mother to have them sent away. I’m far too old at seventeen to need to be escorted to school, not to mention what the Commoners say.
“What is it Archie?” I say to the largest of the flock, waving him off. “What’s the matter? Why have you come?”
He drops down in front of me, severing the connection between mechanical Simon and me. The mechanical bird’s beam falters, bouncing off Archie’s feathers, blinding the machine temporarily. Simon blinks his steely lids as his program resets. His wings retract. He tips his head and the gates fall open behind me.
I’ve been approved.
“I must say,” I turn to Archie, sucking in a relieved breath. “I’ve never been so glad to see you!”
I smooth my skirts and I turn to enter, and Archie swoops down again.
“Enough already,” I say, my head twisted backward, my mind distracted by how Simon’s left wing has clanked awkwardly down, not quite into place. Perhaps father didn’t have time to perfect the fold? I ponder. Maybe if he’d used a ball-and-socket assembly instead of a hinge?
Archie swoops in again, interrupting my thought, cawing ridiculously loudly in my face. “For goodness’ sake.” I push him away. “What is it? What is the matter with you?” It’s then I notice, Pan, my mother’s raven, is not among the group. “Is it Pan? Where is she, Archie? What’s happened to her? Where’s Pan?”
“Pan?”
The voice is sadly familiar. I swing around to find Professor Smrt skulking toward me through the front gates. His eyes flick to the raven above my head. “Surely you don’t expect that creature to answer, do you?”
“Of course I don’t.” I pull myself up straight.
“Of course.” He grins and rolls his hands. “That would make you appear...Mad, now wouldn’t it?”
I swallow. Professor Smrt’s lips remind me of a snake’s. Nothing but a sharply drawn line with a too-thin tongue flicking out between.
“Straaange, isn’t it?” The word 'strange' fizzles off his tongue like newly shaken cola. “How drawn those birds are to you?” He cranes in uncomfortably close. “Why is that, I wonder?” He swats at one, cuffing it in the bottom, sending it sputtering about, nattering in jagged flight. “Could there be truth to the rumors?”
“What rumors, sir?” Blood rushes to my face. Though I know perfectly well what he’s talking about. Lately, the locals have grown suspicious, making accusations about my mother being a Valkyrie. A shape-shifter, capable of changing forms from raven to human and back. Some even claim she’s a carrier of messages from the world of the living to that of the dead. Preposterous, really. But that’s what they’ve been saying. All because of the birds.
The all-too-familiar throb of fear pulses in my neck. How many times have I warned her, insisting she sever her association with birds? I don’t care that Pan has been her companion since birth. Or that Mother’s the one who taught Pan to speak. I’d prefer not to end up a wax candle in the square.
I glare at the sky, trying to signal the birds to leave, but for some reason they continue to circle and squawk.
“You expect me to believe you haven’t heard the rumors?”
“That’s correct…” I whisper, ducking my chin, hoping he doesn’t recognize the lie in my cheeks. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ve come early to work.” Lifting the hem of my cloak, I turn and push past him up the front stairs, raven entourage still in tow.
“About that.” His words catch my step. “There’s been a complaint.” I swallow. My heart thumps in my chest.
“Professor Rapture has informed me that she has reason to believe someone’s been entering the archives unauthorized.” I squeeze my father’s stolen notebook closer to my chest, my hands trembling. The heels of Smrt’s shoes snap against the stone walk as he stalks toward me. “Do you know anything about that?” His voice lifts. His shoes creak to a halt.
I ball my fists and slowly turn, picking through the thoughts that swarm my brain. I dare not volunteer the truth; I’ll face immediate expulsion. But then again I dare not lie to him either.
“I only ask because I’ve noticed you about the grounds earlier than usual of late.” His chin juts out at me over the stones. “Not that a student as astute as yourself would engage in such criminal activity. Or would she?”
I say nothing, just glower into Smrt’s beady black eyes, which, without their tiny white rims, could easily belong to any of the ravens still swirling about my head.
“Don’t tell me I’ve rendered you speechless?” He laughs. “I thought that only happened to you in class.” I bite my lip, choosing again not to grace him with an answer, worried about where this line of questioning might go.
He slithers up the stairs, quickly closing the space between us. “Tell me,” he leans forward, whispering at my ear, the stench of his digesting kipper breakfast on his breath. “What happens to you in those glazed-eye moments, when you sit stuck in a stare, gazing lifelessly out the window, unable to form an answer in class? Is it fear that consumes you…”—he moves in even closer—“…or is there something deeper that disturbs you, Eyelet? Something that might reek of...Madness?”
A jolt of terror bursts in my veins. I pull back, trying hard to collect my breath. He doesn’t know. How could he? I’ve never had a full seizure in class. He’s just fishing. Trying to bait me. I mustn’t crack. I turn and take to the stairs in a whirlpool of black flight and dark chatter, feathers striking softly against my cheeks.
“That’s it, then? You’ve nothing to say in your defense?”
“I have plenty to say.” I whirl about.
The professor’s brows twinge.
I swallow hard and settle back on my heels, realizing what I’ve done.
Confrontation with faculty members is prohibited at Brethren’s Academy of Scientific Delves and Discoveries. Immediate grounds for expulsion at the discretion of any faculty member, should they feel the need arise. Not to mention, I’ve just challenged male authority in a world where women have no right to do so. Participating in a dangerous display of sudden broken temperament. I only attend this school on the good graces of my deceased father’s reputation, one of only a handful of girls in the Commonwealth to be granted such a gift. And now, I fear I may have thrown it all away—with one thoughtl
ess lash of the tongue.
The professor tsks, his left eye twitching the way it does when he reaches for relief from his Palsy puffer in class. He circles me, his eyes worrying the hair on the back of my head, before appearing again, purse-lipped, in front of me. “Caught consorting with ravens followed by a clear break in temperament. You know what this means, don’t you?” He reaches into his breast pocket.
“No sir, please,” I cringe.
Sudden breaks in temperament are considered the first diagnosable sign of Madness within the Commonwealth. Especially in women, the so-called more mentally plagued gender.
He produces pencil and notebook from his pocket and flips the book open, my future dancing in his cold-hearted hands.
I gasp. “I’m sorry, sir,” I sputter. “I don’t know what got into me. I promise you, it won’t happen again—”
“But alas, it already has.” He grins and licks the end of the pencil, then begins scrawling a note in the tiny book. “Such a pity, really.” He glances at me, his bare brows lurched. “I knew your father well. How he’d roll in his grave to know what’s become of you.”
The last word rolls off his tongue like poison infecting every fiber of my soul. I purse my lips trying to keep my words from coming, but they seep out anyway, harsh and crisp and curt. “You haven’t enough proof. The Council won’t believe you. My academic record here at the school is impeccable. They’ll never believe Madness could coexist with such brilliance. You’ll lose. And then you’ll look like a fool.”
Smrt’s eyes reduce to mere pinpoints. He glides toward me, his lips nearly brushing the lobe of my ear as he whispers. “If not bound by the contractual agreement arranged by members of the Academy, upon your father’s untimely death, I’d see to it you were tossed from these grounds immediately! And locked away in the asylum where we both know you belong!”
“Smrt!”
A voice calls across the courtyard, but Smrt ignores it. I shudder, falling back. “What’s that?” he says. His eyes lock on the notebook pressed to my chest. My hand bolts up to cover the lettering.
Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) Page 2
