The Eterna Solution

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  Clara sighed. Over the years, Green had tracked her to too many different sites; dissuading him would be impossible, redirecting him was the only hope. Perhaps she could appeal to pity. This was a risk, but she thought if she appeared to him vulnerable, it might keep him from thinking her powerful. Women sometimes had to use this trick and she hated it every time.

  “Mr. Green,” she began wearily, “as you know, inexplicable things are my pastime, and, frankly, my obsession. As I am an epileptic, paranormal interests can trigger seizures, and so I have a host of guardians and friends, all you see here, who help me. Some share my interests, others follow along, humoring me.

  “I cannot make this public,” Clara continued, “as all of New York would come to me with pleas for intercession and requests for advice. You seem fond of me, despite our constant demands that you stop pestering us. If you value me or my health in the slightest, you will take this under advisement and stop trying to expand our hobby into some sort of government initiative, am I clear?”

  “Hobbyists,” Green repeated slowly, looking skeptical.

  Clara said nothing more and everyone else held their tongues and stared at him. As the silence lengthened, the intensity of their glares grew, conveying unmistakable dislike. Finally he lifted his hands in surrender. “Hobby it is, then. Would you please, however, render an opinion, to another follower of the unexplained, about this sulfuric hellfire? I can see it, others have remarked upon it, but it seems not everyone sees the same thing. Some see nothing at all but the metal itself. What do you see?”

  “I don’t dare speak to it,” Clara replied carefully. “Even an opinion can set me up for danger, if printed. Those desperate for answers will still seek me out and all will escalate. Write what you must of the unknown mystery but leave me out of it.”

  Bishop stepped closer. “Or city officials will finally close you down,” Bishop said, the quietness of his voice somehow strengthening the threat. “I’ve a note ready at City Hall, just waiting for me to ask my friends in offices to act.”

  Clara’s body reacted to Bishop’s forceful energy as he utilized his power of mesmerism against Green. Bishop was subtle in the use of his abilities; people listened and assented to his wishes of their own free will. All the more reason for him to remain supremely careful with his intoxicating and appealing gift.

  With a sigh and a shrug, Green walked away, glancing back up at the torch in consternation.

  Clara immediately began ascending the stairs at the rear of the monument. Stevens and Franklin were quick at her side.

  “My dear fellows,” Clara said to them, “tell me what you’ve been dealing with.”

  “I admit I am late to addressing this site,” Franklin began mournfully. “I ought to have had this in hand before you returned. But both Mr. Stevens and I kept hoping the flames were a bit of staging, trying to inspire the populace to pressure city officials to raise Lady Liberty in the harbor. I assumed this was one of the many campaigns.”

  “I’d likely have thought the same,” Clara assured, trying to relieve Franklin of the guilt he was always so quick to pile upon himself.

  “Miss Bixby and Lord Black have agreed to keep watch below and discourage onlookers,” Bishop interjected from behind them. “Mr. Spire and Miss Everhart are taking an investigative look about the park grounds and Miss Knight ran after Mr. Green, probably to use her own psychic powers on him.”

  Franklin led the party up to a small landing where there was an entryway into the arm itself. The door into the statue’s framework, which presumably would disappear once she had an actual body, was locked.

  “I don’t suppose, in the time you waited for us, you troubled the Trust for a key?” Clara asked Franklin.

  “I tried, but there was neither answer nor aid,” Franklin replied. “But no matter.”

  With a flourish, he flipped up the long collar of his brown frock coat, one he’d had specially made by Miss Carter, a talented seamstress in the theater district. Franklin would have caused casual onlookers a good deal of unease had they seen his array of hidden implements. On the underside of his collar gleamed several lock picks, each nestled in a small holster and visible only if the collar was raised. Whipping one from its place, he wasted no time in picking the lock.

  “Is there room atop the arm for all of us? Will it hold?” Clara asked.

  “I’ve seen up to six permitted up there at a time when they’ve opened the observation deck,” Mr. Stevens replied as Franklin gained entry and bolted up the interior stair, his boots setting a clanging echo bouncing off the copper. Clara ducked her head as she passed through the temporary doorway.

  The interior of the arm was dark, but they could see well enough to make their way thanks to light coming from the grate of the torch above. Indeed, the supernatural fire cast an eerie green glow down through the space. A narrow stair at a difficult angle allowed only for small steps and required a firm grip on the iron rail. It was not a good sport for the ladies’ skirts but Clara kept her complaint to herself.

  At the top, a short, narrow notch gave access to the platform surrounding the torch. About two feet wide, with a circular railing about at waist level, it afforded a lovely view of the park along the outer edge. Franklin offered Clara his arm as she stepped out, but she shook her head and moved smoothly past him, gathering her skirts close as she saw the flames up close for the first time.

  The bulk of the fire roiled within the beautifully wrought brazier of the torch. The copper sculpture’s dynamic, left-leaning flame reached gracefully up into the sky, staid and stoic above the chaos below.

  Taking a careful walk around the narrow circle demonstrated that the fire entirely filled the brazier and confirmed for Clara that heights were not her favorite places, especially when one rail of relatively small circumference was all that kept her from tumbling two stories to the ground.

  Uncertain whether she would be burned by the strange illumination, Clara reached out a palm, testing whether the infernal blaze emanated heat. Though she felt no warmth, the core of her palm suddenly stung as if it were attacked by a horde of wasps, the pain rapidly escalating in intensity. With a hiss she drew her hand away.

  “Clara—” Bishop made to admonish her.

  “It does not burn but stings,” Clara stated, interrupting him without hesitation.

  “Like an acid,” Stevens surmised, inspecting her hand and the already-swelling tip of her first finger. With a gentle eagerness, he offered, “I’ve a salve for that, I’ll be sure to provide some for you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stevens,” she replied, all too aware that he thought of her and Bishop as saviors and had to be dealt with delicately.

  “Mr. Stevens, what do we have in terms of chemical properties at work here?” Bishop asked.

  Stevens began peering, sniffing, and poking at the flames; he even stuck his tongue out near them, as if trying to taste their eldritch surface. He did this for some while as the others watched, regularly flinching back from the sting of the fire and flicking the edges of his jacket out of the way.

  “Well, the sour sulfur should be obvious to everyone—it’s the source of the green and yellow coloration. I detect barium chloride, as well as a lime and limestone residue. Phosphorus creates the brightness, and a sodium nitrate or carbonate enhances the yellow. Plus there is something else I cannot quite put my finger—or tongue—on.”

  “This is elemental then,” Bishop prompted, “rather than…”

  “Supernatural?” Evelyn finished. She had climbed the steps behind Bishop and joined the others on the observation deck.

  “Mostly elemental. With a shade of mystery,” Stevens said, almost excitedly, invigorated by the puzzle. “Brilliant stagecraft, really.”

  “How is Lord Denbury?” Clara asked.

  “Safe. I daresay his wife won’t let him out of the house again and I’m sure that’ll be just fine with him,” she replied, then gestured that they continue. “But do go on.”

  “How,
then, do we render all this inert?” Bishop asked.

  “It’s been burning for days, without end,” Franklin said wearily. “Like I said, when it was first reported, I thought it was part of its show.”

  “To neutralize the sulfur, which herein has become sulfuric acid, we require a base of at least seven or eight on the pH scale. Water will dilute, however, from personal experience, I can attest that it won’t entirely extinguish. And the mystery element here, well…”

  “For that, we’ll need a bit of magic,” Clara said softly, “to tip the scales, pH or otherwise, in our favor.”

  Evelyn made a face at the sight of the chains wrapped around the statue’s hand and wrist.

  “What’s this?” she said with concern. “These chains are not a part of the statue’s design.”

  “To be fair, we don’t really know what she’ll look like when completed, Evelyn,” Bishop countered.

  “I do,” Evelyn stated firmly. “I’ve been one of the few of my station campaigning to get her erected! Lady Liberty doesn’t wear chains, that’s rather the point…”

  “Surely to keep all the pieces together—” Franklin suggested.

  “But they aren’t attached to anything,” Evelyn retorted. “Look, they’re just fastened about the arm.” She bent closer to one of the padlocks, where something white fluttered behind it. “There’s something written here,” she continued, thumbing a tag affixed to the lock then read it aloud: “‘Provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor.…’”

  There was a long silence.

  “Shakespeare,” Clara blurted finally. The company turned to her. “That’s Shakespeare. From … Coriolanus. The beginning. Text from the starving citizens.”

  “A keen memory,” Bishop said with a smile.

  “Do recall that ill-intentioned, dramatic period of time in my youth when I wished to become an actress, dear senator,” Clara said, returning his smile. “I daresay I committed several plays entirely to memory in those days. All aching tragedies, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bishop chuckled.

  “It’s part of the magic, then,” Evelyn stated. “Part of the spell. This makes me think of the Baudelaire poem, written out but missing a name; that was a part of the magic surrounding Lord Denbury’s soul prison.

  “Perverting great literature seems to entertain the Society as much as fouling religion, though I’ve not seen this sort of riddle repeated since Denbury’s case. I think it was too time-consuming, since they’ve gotten more efficient and ruthless, in their parsing of soul and body. Where once it was a sport, it’s become a business.”

  “Could this be the same operator, or someone copying those previous tactics?” Franklin asked. “Someone who admires those early days?”

  “I’m not sure it matters just now; our priority is to counteract this spell,” Evelyn replied.

  “Perhaps we need another verse?” Clara posited. “Something in contrast?”

  “Perhaps,” Evelyn nodded. “Moriel at heart believed in English superiority above all else.”

  The mention of Moriel seemed to darken the mood, as if his very name was a poison. Clara focused her thoughts, seeking a rallying cry from the greatest of lasting literature.

  “Something of freedom, perhaps, something of an opposing sentiment to break the will of this fire, to meet its magic word for word…” Perhaps Hamlet: We who have free souls, it touches us not … No, that text wasn’t quite right. She needed a counterpoint to the visceral cruelty of the Society; opposing it with a demand of restive peace.

  She closed her eyes, and as she did so, the vibrant, energizing hum she’d first noted on the ship when truly feeling the ley lines for the first time was again present. They must be close to one here; a resonant thread Manhattan usually drowned out. She recalled some esoteric text once positing that Fifth Avenue was thought to be Manhattan’s ley line. Perhaps the eldest of forces could help her here. Just then, a suitable text came to mind.

  A statement of longing and rejection from Clara’s favorite tale of the woeful capability of human horror came to the fore instead. Opening her eyes, she spoke in a clarion tone.

  “‘We may again give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights, Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, Do faithful homage and receive free honours: All which we pine for now.’”

  As she recited, the fire flickered a bit, as if losing some of its oxygen. The tallest of the flames grew lower.

  “Well done,” Bishop murmured. “Macbeth?” Clara nodded.

  “Indeed, but as the secondary flames persist, I imagine we’ll get nothing done without a bit of chemistry,” Evelyn stated.

  “Let me see to that,” Stevens said with certainty in his voice.

  “Thank you for what you’ve done and will do, Mr. Stevens,” Bishop said. “Whatever resources you need, we’ll attend to.” The two men shook hands on it.

  “We must break her hand free,” Clara insisted. “She stands for everything the Society is against—people raising themselves up from nothing. She is female, triumphant, free, not enslaved, she … offers light and shelter for all.… She is not an aristocrat and that’s threatening to them, hence the chains—and our mandate to release her.”

  Moved by this speech, her companions stared at the padlocks with renewed determination.

  “She’s just a hand now, just a light, a lamp, and yet, she inspires as if she already stands tall in the harbor…” Bishop mused.

  “Just think what she’ll be like when fully finished, welcoming and impressive,” Evelyn said, reaching up to run a gloved hand gently over a graceful sculpted tongue of metal flame, the low-licking preternatural fire not reaching that height, held by an awe-inspiring hand that was larger than Evelyn’s whole body.

  After studying the locks, Franklin again whipped up his collar, selected an implement, and set to work liberating the emblem of the free.

  The first was opened in quick time; the chains clanged down along her forearm once the lock was removed. As Franklin reached for the second, an arc of green flame shot toward him like a thread of lightning and he yelped, dropping the lock pick on the grate-like floor of the landing, where it thankfully didn’t fall through.

  “Careful!” Clara said. “Are you all right?”

  Franklin nodded, rubbing his arm.

  “We may need to fully banish the fire first,” Clara said, trying to assure him that he had not failed. Franklin nodded and walked back toward the chains, where he fiddled for a moment with the tag bearing the quote from the Bard. Releasing it from its place, he pressed it between his palms. She watched as he engaged his psychometric touch, trying to glean information from the scrap of card.

  “A house, a relatively fine one, but not a place I know. And a pen, likely the one that wrote this. That’s all,” he said, pocketing the tag. “I’ll keep an eye out for the property, but there’s nothing to commend it,” he finished, his disappointment and disenchantment palpable.

  “Thank you for trying,” she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He tried to smile but it wouldn’t hold.

  Clara returned her attention to the ornate, grated cup of the brazier, examining the black pitch that lined the torch deck. The low, clinging flame that rose from this bore a deeper color than the rest of the sulfuric glow. She peered closer, holding her nose against the acidic, rotten smell.

  It looked a lot like the mixture of blood and tar that had caked some of the floorboards in the disastrous house where Louis had met his end.

  “Mr. Stevens?” she called, waving him over.

  “Yes?”

  “This pitch, it is used in Society rituals.”

  “Indeed, Miss Templeton.”

  “Mightn’t it be directly counteracted by our Wards?”

  “Why, yes, Miss Templeton, that’s a wise suggestion. Alas, I have no more Wards, having set many out in any place I could think of and given others to anyone who was amenable. The reverend promised to have a small box ready b
y the time you returned.”

  “Indeed, and we used the last of our New York Wards on the return voyage, to protect the boat as we moved through troubled waters.” She looked down at her team below to find that trusty Josiah, their best and brightest young hire, was returned from an errand at the behest of Franklin.

  When she descended with Stevens, the boy was at her side the moment he saw her, offering a wide smile, his brown skin flushed from movement. The boy had an uncanny read on her, and anticipated her in ways that were good instinct to the point where she believed he must be a burgeoning psychic.

  He was only about ten years old; by the time he became an adult he would be one of the best assets their ragtag company had managed to develop.

  “What is it, what do you need, Miss Clara, you have that look,” he said with a grin; his spirit was as restless and eager to take on the world as hers.

  “That look that always finds great comfort when it falls upon you, my trusty right hand,” she said approvingly. The boy glowed with pride. She decided it was time to share more of their work with him, both as a sign of her deep care for him and to continue his training. “There’s a pitchy substance up above, around the torch. I think it’s some of the same stuff I’ve seen in buildings tainted for the Society’s purpose. What do you think about placing one of the city’s own Wards directly onto that foul muck? Not just lighting it like a candle in prayer, but directly mixing substances. Do you think it would have the desired effect of countering the offal?”

  “You’re asking my opinion, Miss Clara?” he asked, wide-eyed, recognizing the unusual nature of this revelation.

  “Yes, Joe, I am. You’ve watched this latest madness crop up and you’re sharp as a tack, so what do you think?”

  “I’ve seen the city Wards do a lot of good, Miss Clara, especially if they’re personalized by those who set them. And when some Wards were spilled, they still seemed to have an effect, like standing on blessed ground. I’d say it can’t hurt. I could go procure you some from the reverend.”

  “Hire a cab to take you up; it will be too exhausting and take too much time otherwise.”