Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology

by Anika Arrington

  Bertha argued vehemently with Akachi, the old woman from the balcony the first time I laid eyes on the pair. She brandished an ornate dagger. “You were wrong! Rowland has come for me. He is mine. You cannot stop me from leaving the island now!”

  “Ye hab an époux, Berta—a good man.”

  “And I will be rid of him. But nothing I do touches him! Time and again he escapes. You will help me, mémère. Fairfax will not die! Kill him! Perform the rite! Do it now!”

  Akachi wagged her head. “I tol’ ye eet weel no’ work. Hees gris gris, eet be too strong.”

  “Then give me something stronger!” Bertha appeared purple with rage. “I will be free of him! I will see him dead!”

  Akachi’s eyes betrayed her grief. “Ye hab crossed the Ioa, fille. Ye no respect dee speereets. Dey comb for ye. Be gone weed ye lest ye bring dere fierce angah upon me de sem.”

  Bertha sneered her hatred at the woman. What light remained seemed to flee. “I call this storm, you fool!” she shrieked above the howling wind. “The spirits do my bidding! I will be free of Edward Rochester if I have to destroy this island and everyone on it!”

  The shack creaked and shifted on its pylons, knocking Rowland from the post upon which he balanced. I dragged him from the onrush of water and onto high ground. I fumbled for the picture Bertha had planted on him. He fought me savagely. He landed a firm right hook on my jaw. I pushed him down and tried to reach into his waistcoat. He sunk his teeth deep into the side of my hand.

  Both of us muddied and slick, I struggled to retain him. On a sudden impulse, I pulled the chain from beneath my shirt and forced it over Rowland’s head. He attempted to fight me off, but I prevailed. I slung the crystal talisman around his neck, bloodied as it was.

  “From Yvette,” I shouted into the gale. “To keep you safe!”

  He landed another blow, then scrambled away from me and to his feet just as Bertha fled the shack and into the rainforest. “Get her to the caves!” I shouted as he ran after her. “Hurry!”

  The wrenching of wood and iron added to the shriek of the storm. The ground gave way beneath the shack and it listed to its side. I ran inside and found Akachi lying in a heap on the floor, unconscious. With a jolt, half the stilts failed and the structure fell into the stream, knocking me off my feet. I managed to extract the frail old woman from the wreckage just as the flood swept it away.

  I lay Akachi onto a pallet deep in the caves. Her friends rushed up to assist her. “Where is Rowland?” I demanded. “Where is Bertha?”

  Julian strode forward, two heavy lengths of rope slung over his shoulders like bandoliers. “Dey hab not comb.” He expertly knotted the ends together as he spoke. Grabbing two coils myself, we stepped out into the hurricane.

  I cannot say what directed my steps. Perhaps I followed that invisible tether that bound me to Yvette’s crystal. It felt attached to a rib just beneath my heart. It drew me onward, and I followed the compulsion.

  We slipped and slid down the path to the shore, compelled from behind by the blow. The palms bent to the ground or snapped like twigs. Great shrieks of splintering wood transcended the continuous howl of the tempest. Debris filled the air: bits of plank and net and limbs of trees as thick as my thigh. We navigated a minefield of destruction, and God only knows why we survived.

  We came to the bungalow, but I pressed on to the sea, the top of the lighthouse my beacon. The pounding of the surf surmounted the scream of the gale. I rounded the bend and stopped short. Despite my reputation of imperturbability, the sight paralyzed me with fear.

  The storm rushed the tide forward. With each crashing wave, the thirty-foot cliffs upon which the lighthouse stood became less significant. In very few moments, the shoreline would vanish beneath the surge.

  In the distance, a waterspout—a cyclone spawned by the hurricane—began to rise up from the sea. Another snaked away from it, while a third cyclone swirled its way over the ridge, the bungalow in its path. In the deafening roar, the three seemed bound in a sinuous, serpentine dance about the lighthouse; and there, in the center of it all, perched on the edge of the cliffs, stood Bertha and Rowland, my brother.

  The lighthouse door had never required securing. The thick stone walls had defied the tropics for more than one hundred years. It gave us hope. We secured the lines about ourselves to the iron staircase within, then ventured out toward our object.

  Bertha had freed herself of her blouse and skirt. She stood shoeless, wearing nothing but wet leather. Her hair flew in great long black snakes, whipping about in the wind. Her contorted face completed the image of Medusa. She raised her hands high above her head and danced in the spray of the surf. She threw back her head and screeched at the heavens, reached toward the cyclones swirling in the near distance, as if she held them in her hands and ruled their motion.

  Rowland appeared small and frail beside her, perhaps because she so easily threw off his attempts to control her. Both Julian and I understood. When the woman became so crazed, the most primal forces within her engaged and overcame men stronger than my brother.

  In the face of such wind, I could not understand how he remained upon his feet. I motioned to Julian. He jerked his chin in understanding. We pushed off into the gale and pressed for the pair at the ledge.

  Absorbed as Bertha was in her maniacal incantations, I managed to avoid her notice as I approached. Rowland leapt upon me, catching me unaware. We both fell hard onto the stone. Rowland raised his fist to pummel me. Julian pulled him off before he could strike.

  Rowland fought against Julian. He could not hear reason. Bertha’s dance became more berserk. Rain and spray flew into my face with equal measure and clouded my sight. Bertha, wet and slick, slipped from my hands. She seemed intent not on escape, but in completing her insane ritual. I at last managed to grapple my wife, when again, Rowland assaulted me and wrenched her from my grasp.

  The inexorable tide surmounted the cliff. With one relentless blast, it knocked us all from our feet, then sucked us toward the ledge as it drew back for the next wave. Bertha screeched and scrambled for some sort of hold. I lunged for her, but came up with naught but a fistful of hair. It was enough.

  Secured by my line, I dragged her toward me by her tresses. Her last fall had rendered her unconscious. I preferred the dead weight to a continuous battle. I wrapped the rope about her, then struggled to my feet as the waves pummeled us. I pulled myself up our tether, my wife strapped to my back, until at last we reached the lighthouse. I stumbled over the threshold. We dropped in a heap on the floor.

  I dragged Bertha up a few stairs and away from the encroaching water, then plunged again into the storm. I made my way down Julian’s taut line. To my great relief, he had managed to secure Rowland. Even so, my brother retained his consciousness and his loss of reason. He fought against all attempts at rescue, and Julian could not get back to his feet.

  I returned to the lighthouse. With the next wave, when the line loosened, I looped it around a pylon in the lee of the thick stone, then began to haul.

  As quickly as I could, I dragged the line through my makeshift pulley, betimes making great progress, betimes losing ground. I ignored the searing pain in my muscles, my throat, lungs, and eyes, burning with the salt of the sea. My serrated hands stained the rope red.

  An eerie, gray-green light glowed beneath roiling black clouds, broken only by blinding bolts of lightning. The sounds of thunder, surf, and wind, like a locomotive bearing down upon me, became so much meaningless din. I concentrated on the growing pile of rope at my feet, and the line that went taut, then lax with each crashing wave.

  I felt certain I had all but achieved my task. I wrapped the line about both my hands and leaned all my weight into one mighty heave. With a jerk, the rope cinched around my fingers. It shot straight up in the air, and me with it. I screamed as muscle and tendon ripped from bone. I hung like a kite tethered to the earth by a string. Buffeted in the whirl of wind and water, I thought Rowland’s rope would surely sever my
fingers. Then, of a sudden, it went lax, and I dropped again into the surf around the lighthouse.

  The tide had risen several feet—enough for me to survive the fall. The surge tossed and rolled me along what had once been dry ground. I snatched a scant breath before the opposing force sucked me back. The ground beneath me disappeared. I had been towed beyond the ledge and into open sea.

  It seemed everything slowed, then, like a wind-up toy at the last of its spring. I can still recall every thought, every tick of that internal clock, every sensation of that second of time.

  I knew my life over. My thoughts flew to Yvette. Perhaps I would soon greet her beyond the veil of death. My soul already reached out to her, grateful—almost eager.

  And then I felt the fierce yank of the rope securing me as it reached its extremity. It forced out what air remained in my lungs.

  The realization flooded me that I yet could live, were I of a mind. The next instant, ferocious pain bloomed throughout my body as, unable to wrest me free, the enraged sea hurled me against the jagged stone of the cliff-side.

  Everything went black.

  How I survived, I can only surmise. I came to my senses as I again scraped along the ground in the roaring surf. I grappled the line and pulled myself forward to the door of the lighthouse. The currents swirling around it had brought me again into the leeside.

  Agony screamed through me. The clear water rushing over me washed pink, and then red, back into the sea. My right arm hung uselessly at my side. I half-swam, half-crept through the portal in a desperate bid to escape the pummeling of the surf. Safely inside, I attempted to rise, but a white hot, searing pain nigh overwhelmed me, and my legs crumpled beneath me.

  I forced myself calm. I pushed back hair and blood and water from my eyes. My line still flailed in the surf. I hauled in first it, then Julian’s tether. The ragged and frayed end drew my gorge.

  I managed to force the door closed. The hurricane hurled itself impotently against the immutable stone of the lighthouse, its deafening bombardment at once stifled when I sealed the breach.

  I leaned back against the door, panting for breath. The water reached to my chest. My mind raced as I groped about for some means to rescue Rowland. However, every attempt to rise resulted in failure. My determination, my denial of the excruciating torment which constantly assaulted me—useless. I could not stand. I could rescue no one. I doubted I had saved myself.

  Bertha crouched upon the stairs where I had left her. She shivered uncontrollably. Terror filled her eyes as I dragged myself toward the steps and higher ground. Wild and feral, her arms clamped about herself, she rocked back and forth, keening. Weeping. Muttering incantations beneath her breath.

  Not yet midmorning, what little daylight remained faded as the heart of the storm approached. I felt the encroachment of a long, oppressive night ahead.

  Sun had surrendered to Wind.

  Every night for the past fourteen years, I have relived that storm. Every time I lay my head upon my pillow, darkness enfolds me. Just as in the hurricane, I plunge into the depths of excruciating pain without any hope of relief.

  Nightly, as my eyes grow heavy, I curse Yvette for saving my life, and Bertha for not taking it. Alone with my wife as the storm raged, I prayed for death, but death would not come. I prayed for unconsciousness, but that, too, was denied me. Throughout endless hours, my thoughts tormented me as the gale battered the island, as they plague me even still.

  I should have saved my brother. Instead, I sacrificed Rowland to the cyclone for a woman debauched, debased, deranged, whose last semblance of sanity the storm stripped away.

  That night, my end would have been a simple thing for her to accomplish. None would have questioned or suspected her. I would count it a blessing, relief to my guilt-riddled heart. She had me at her mercy. Wealth and independence sat at her feet, and me helpless to stay her hand. Yet, my insane, spite-filled, murderous wife refrained.

  Although it broke his neck, the cyclone failed to wrest Rowland’s corpse from Julian’s grasp. My people found them lashed together high in a tree, where Julian had snatched his own life from the jaws of death. His mechanical arm had saved him. It never failed, although his natural limbs had done.

  I buried Rowland in the cathedral at Spanish Town. He had buttoned Bertha’s Daguerreotype beneath his shirt, against his skin. Even Yvette’s crystal had not the power to intercede. I obliterated the picture in a crucible fueled by grief, but the purging failed to return Rowland—or Bertha.

  After a year of recuperating myself and my ventures, I took Bertha away from the islands, hoping to affect some sort of improvement in her sanity. But, fourteen years with the best care money can buy and her condition only worsens. Only her brother knows I hide her away at Thornfield. None at that house know her as my wife.

  Magic is nothing but the execution of knowledge beyond the understanding of the ignorant and superstitious. So I maintained as a youth, and so I always shall. But, I have become convinced that Yvette purchased my life at the cost of our happiness together. Because of it, for fourteen years, every morning I awaken to the warmth of her crystal resting over my heart, and I resolve anew to make good use of the gift she made such a sacrifice to bestow. I do not comprehend the how of it. But then, the sun does not require my understanding for it to shine. It simply does.

  Even so, for fourteen years I have waited for . . . something. The other shoe to drop. The rest of the story. Some explanation as to why Yvette would demand this life of me, miserable as I am, shackled to a maniac but otherwise alone, unable to seek the true companionship of a loving wife. Pleasure, I have sought and sometimes found, but never happiness.

  Had Yvette, or the Fates, or God, or whomever holds the whip that cracks over my head and now and again lashes my back—had they any mercy, they would free me of this torment, but Bertha remains as hale in body as I do myself. Decades yet will pass before either becomes infirm enough to anticipate the release of death.

  My conscience prevents the neglect that would speed either of our demises. And so I plod through life seeking diversion where I can find it—and betimes dissipation when my soul grows weary, and my wits dull.

  But I do make use of my talents. I resolved that the hurricane’s devastation would not impede our plans to assist the new American Federation, and it did not. That nation thrives, in large measure due to our efforts, and those of men like us. I have managed to keep Jamaica unpolluted by the mores of industrialization. My message has taken hold of the Caribbean and begins to spread throughout the Western Hemisphere.

  To keep pace and the peace, coal and fascism have been forced to loosen their stranglehold on England. Each Rochester estate or venture enriches, rather than exploits the lives of its people. I have made a name for myself. I dare say I have done some good.

  And, even in my blackest moods, I always had Yvette’s crystal to warm the ice in my heart and light my way through the bitter darkness. At least, I had done. Until this morning.

  I awoke with the previous night’s dream of the storm vivid in my recollection. I sought the comfort Yvette’s crystal always afforded me, but it was gone. In a panic, I tore apart the bedclothes. I ransacked the room. I had not removed that rock since the day I reclaimed it from Rowland’s corpse. I had clutched it in my hand when I succumbed to sleep the night before.

  Then, I saw it. It lay on the table at my bedside. Crushed into dust. As I sat there, staring at it, a sharp pain seared my finger. Before my eyes, Yvette’s ring dissolved away like paper before a flame.

  Some six months gone, I had returned my ward to that depository of failure, Thornfield, where I shuffled away the bleak reminders of my unhappy past. Her mother claims me the father, although I have no cause to believe it. Even so, I could not abandon her daughter as that faithless French soubrette had done.

  I had charged the warden of that asylum to hire a governess for Adele, and duty requires that I inspect the purchase. I have postponed it too long, but returning to Tho
rnfield always weighs heavily upon my spirits. I keep my stops as brief as I can justify, as long as I can bear. I had relied on my medallion to brace me for the task.

  Every right choice to my credit I have made with Yvette and her good opinion as my guide. But apparently, it has all been for naught. Good works have profited me nothing, and I have subsisted on her beggarly ration of affection for far too long. She now leaves me to my own devices, with a madwoman strapped to my back and an urchin clinging to my leg, and I will get on as best I may.

  She has abandoned me, and no denying it. She withdraws her light. If I stumble into the black abyss, it is by her hand. She demands I battle Hades itself without buckler or shield, and I shall. Or perhaps I shall simply surrender to it, and take my happiness wherever I can find it, no matter the cost to my charred soul.

  On the morrow, I am for Thornfield to alone face my fate, and the devil take her for it. The devil take us both.

  Styled after Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

  No one makes cyborgs like they does in Singapore. That’s why we set sail there when the Cap’n lost his leg. We were sailin’ round the Horn, see, takin’ ships as they come for Her Majesty’s Navy. Privateerin’ ain’t exactly the most honest way for a sailor to make his wage, but least it’s legal.

  Well, one great Portuguese tub proved too spirited. One minute we had them on the run, pullin’ the best of their cargo from the hold, the next, our first mate is screamin’ to heaven on high. In all fairness, the cap’n is her husband, but the shrill nature of the female voice ain’t exactly intimidatin’.

  “Harris! Harris! Help me!” she’s wailin’ and there’s all manner of fear in her face and blood on her hands. We gets him to his cabin, and she turns to me like I got to know which way’s north now.

  “He’ll be all right, Dashwood,” I tells her. “Just do what ye can for him, and I’ll get the crew goin’. Where’re we bound?”