Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables

by Stephen L. Antczak

  Mose stood at the end of the pier and stared down at the reflection of the stars in the dark and swiftly moving waters of the East River as he tried to work up the nerve to surrender to its wet embrace. He did not particularly wish to snuff it, but could not find a good reason to keep on living. Every day of his young life had been a struggle. He honestly could not remember a time when he had not fought to keep himself from starving, bodily harm, or despair. He was born puny and had stayed that way in a culture that valued brute strength above all else. He was without family, without influence, and without means. In a day or so his rent would be due, and all he had to his name were the filthy rags on his back and a single, much-worn penny in his pocket—and it cost a half dime to sleep in the old wardrobe on Mrs. Murphy’s landing.

  What was the point of keeping body and soul together? He was a runt, a pathetic weakling. He couldn’t even claim to be a proper cripple, like Dead Legs Turpin or Deaf Willie. He might as well throw himself in the drink and get it all over with. Drowning might not be the ideal death, but at least it was a good deal cheaper than buying poison, and nowhere near as messy as stepping out in front of a train. He took a deep breath, more to steady his nerves than prolong his life, and prepared himself for the cold, dark river.

  But just as he was about to jump, a star broke free of the firmament above and shot toward the startled young man, lighting up the night sky like a flare fired from the deck of a sinking ship. Mose watched, mouth agape, as it arced over his head and landed with a loud report at the edge of the riverbank. The pier quaked mightily, as if shaken by an angry giant, nearly hurling him into the water.

  Mose hurried to the foot of the pier, all thoughts of suicide erased from his mind. He hopped down onto the riverbank below to see what had plummeted from the heavens above, only to find a crater the size of the Bowery Boys’ pump engine gouged in the rocky soil, steam rising from the hole like from a potato roasting in the coals of a fire. He cast about and found a length of driftwood long enough to serve as a poking stick, just in case there was a moon man waiting to jump out at him.

  As he looked down into the hole, he saw what looked like a misshapen sphere of iron roughly the size of his fist, its edges still glowing orange, as if plucked fresh from a blacksmith’s forge. Mose’s heart leaped in his chest. He knew that a scientist like the famous Professor Tolliver would pay handsomely for such a miraculous find—perhaps as much as twenty dollars.

  Mose prodded the smoldering sky stone with the stick, and then scampered off to steal a bucket. He returned a few minutes later with a wooden pail liberated from the back of an unattended wagon. He then trudged to and from the nearby river, like a one-man bucket brigade, dumping gallon after gallon of water onto the meteorite until his arms and back ached. As the first blush of dawn started to tinge the morning sky, he finally succeeded in cooling it down enough so that it could be handled. Wrapping it in cast-off burlap bags, he cradled the still-warm rock to his chest and hurried away. Although the misshapen lump was no bigger than his closed fist, Mose was surprised by its weight—if it had been any heavier he would have had to steal a wheelbarrow to transport it.

  Mrs. Murphy’s Boardinghouse was located on Baxter Street, and was a ramshackle, four-story building barely two rooms wide, with a crumbling front stoop. As Mose entered the foyer, Mrs. Murphy’s door opened and the landlady reached out and grabbed him by the arm, like a trapdoor spider snatching its prey. She was a large, meaty woman, whose face seemed to be set in a perpetual suspicious scowl.

  “Trust ye t’ be creepin’ in at the crack of dawn!” she snapped, giving the startled boy a shake. “Where’s my rent?”

  “This is all I’ve got,” he replied, shoving his last remaining penny at her.

  “All you got, eh?” she said dubiously, eyeing the gunnysack he held cradled under one arm. “What’s that, then?”

  “Just some rotten bits of food I scavenged from the bin, that’s all,” Mose assured the landlady. “I’ll have the rest in a day or two, I promise.”

  “Ye ‘promise’!” Mrs. Murphy snorted derisively as she dropped the coin into the pocket of her apron. “Here, I’ll make ye a promise, laddie—if I don’t have my half dime by sunup tomorrow, ye’ll be sleepin’ in the gutter along with the slops and road apples, where ye belong!” With that, the landlady retreated to her apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard it made the entire building shudder.

  Mose climbed up the narrow, winding stair, making his way toward the top of the house. Some of the other boarders, those who held jobs working the docks or the nearby fish market, were already up and about. On the third floor he had to step around a small cookstove set up at the head of the stairs, careful not to upset the pot atop it. A weary-eyed woman crouched in a nearby doorway, watching her porridge bubble and hiss. Mose glanced past her into the windowless, reeking room beyond and saw that it was empty of furnishings, save for a pile of filthy rags. The boy sighed wistfully.

  Because of the pitched roof of the boardinghouse, the wardrobe on the attic landing was set on its back, like a packing crate—or a coffin. This worked out for Mose, as it allowed him to stretch out as he slept. He opened the cabinet door and dropped his prize onto the bundle of old clothes stuffed with scavenged straw that served as his bed. He then boosted himself inside and closed the wardrobe behind him, securing it from the inside with a twisted piece of wire so he could sleep in relative security.

  It was dark as death inside the wardrobe, and smelled strongly of mouse piss, but it was the only place in the world Mose felt anything resembling safe. At least the only things he had to worry about inside his shelter were bedbugs and cockroaches. As he settled in to sleep, he pulled the sky stone from its gunnysack, holding it as a child would a beloved toy.

  Tomorrow he would make his way to the university on Park Place and find Professor Tolliver. Back when his mother was still alive, she used to read aloud to him from the papers. She had been particularly intrigued by the account of Professor Tolliver’s incredible Automatic Man—a clockwork automaton capable of not only dancing the waltz, but playing chess. Professor Tolliver claimed that someday all the dangerous and unpleasant tasks would be handled by such so-called automatonics, and that mankind, once freed from scarcity and soul-grinding toil, would finally attain utopia and explore its full potential. While Mose wasn’t sure such a world was completely possible, his mother had embraced it wholeheartedly. As far as the late Mrs. Humphries was concerned, Professor Tolliver was the wisest man in America since Benjamin Franklin. There might be other learned men of science in the city of New York, but the professor was the only one that mattered.

  As slumber claimed him, he briefly wondered from what far-flung star the rock had fallen from, and if that would make any difference to the asking price.

  Mose was drawn from the pit of sleep by a loud rapping noise. He opened his eyes to find himself still sealed away in darkness. He yawned and automatically stretched his limbs, only to be unexpectedly brought short, as if he had been transferred, sometime while he slept, from the wardrobe and placed in a small wooden box. What if Mrs. Murphy had come to collect her rent, and found him in such a deep sleep that she had mistaken him for dead? His mind began to race and his heart began to pound in fear. Within seconds, he had convinced himself that the pounding was that of nails hammered into his coffin. Believing he was being buried alive, Mose flailed about in mortal terror, banging his fists against the coffin lid—only to have it shatter into splinters. To his surprise, he saw Mrs. Murphy staring down at him, her usual scowl replaced by a look of shocked disbelief.

  “Merciful God in heaven!” the landlady cried out in fear. “What have ye done with Mose, ye great beast?”

  “What do you mean? I am Mose,” the confused youth replied.

  As he sat up, Mose came to the realization that what he had mistaken for the undertaker nailing down his coffin lid had been Mrs. Murphy banging on the wardrobe in search of her half dime. As for what had once been his home, it
looked as if someone had attacked it with an axe: the bottom had been reduced to kindling, and the side panels were split wide open.

  As he climbed out of what remained of the wardrobe, the top of his skull abruptly smacked against the ceiling. Mose cursed and reached to massage the top of his head, only to freeze at the sight of a huge, hairy hand dangling from his wrist. He looked down and saw that his moldering boots had finally disintegrated, destroyed by the pair of massive feet that now grew from his ankles. He took a tentative step forward, only to go crashing through a rotten floorboard. This proved far too much for Mrs. Murphy, who threw her apron over her head and ran downstairs, screeching at the top of her lungs for her husband.

  Mose stared down in amazement at his transformed body. Gone were the spindly arms, twiglike legs, and sunken chest, and in their place were limbs and muscles more in keeping with Goliath and Samson. Although his miraculous metamorphosis had reduced most of his tattered clothes to rags, his trousers—which he’d been forced to triple-cuff to keep from tripping over—were still in one piece, although they were now stretched to the point of bursting and came no farther than his kneecaps.

  As he marveled over his “growth spurt,” Mose remembered the meteorite he’d scavenged from the riverbank. He reached down into the ruins of the wardrobe to scoop it up, only to find that it had dissolved into a handful of rust.

  The ever-present cigar dropped from Horseshoe Harry’s mouth as Mose entered the Green Dragon Saloon. The half-naked colossus had to stoop to enter the doorway, and when he stood erect his long, powerful arms dangled so low he could scratch his kneecaps.

  Sykesky came forward, staring up at his transformed friend in disbelief. “Mose? Is that you?” he gasped.

  “It’s me, all right,” he replied with a voice so deep it rattled the bottles behind the bar. “I come back to join the gang.” The way he said it made it clear it was not a request.

  “The Dead Rabbits and Chichesters ain’t gonna know what hit ’em!” Sykesky grinned.

  The Bowery Boys cheered in agreement, and raised their beers and whiskies in salute to their new secret weapon. All, that is, save Horseshoe Harry, who looked as if he’d just swallowed a bag of nails.

  Mose sat down at the nearest table and called out for food and drink, and for someone to bring him a decent suit. While the other gang members yelled at the saloon-keeper to prepare a feast worthy of their new comrade, Sykesky ran off in search of clothes. Ten minutes later he returned, accompanied by a tailor, who carried a sizable bundle of ready-to-wear clothes over his arm and a tape measure about his neck. By this time Mose was busily devouring his second bushel of oysters and drinking beer from a bucket.

  The tailor cringed as the redheaded giant pushed himself away from the table, and dutifully stood by as Mose tried on different articles of clothing, flinching every time a seam burst or a button went flying. Mose finally found a suit that more or less fit him, even though the pants ended halfway down his shins and the shirtsleeves stopped halfway down his forearms.

  Just as the tailor hurried out of the saloon, one of the Boys came charging in. “There’s a fire on the corner of Mulberry and Spring!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “And the Dead Rabbits are on their way!”

  The assembled Bowery Boys jumped to their feet and grabbed their stovepipe hats, shouting in excitement. Upon reaching the firehouse, Mose pushed aside his fellow gang members and stepped between the traces of the engines.

  “Hang on and enjoy the ride, lads!” he laughed, and took off in a dead run, the pumper and its hose cart bumping along behind him like a rickshaw, while his comrades clung on for dear life, clutching their hats with one hand for fear of them flying off.

  Mose galloped through the narrow, cobblestoned streets of Old New York, with Sykesky ringing the engine’s brass fire bell to warn pedestrians and other traffic to clear the way. A pack of mongrel dogs chased after them, adding their barks to the general cacophony. As they neared their destination, a plume of black smoke could be seen rising above the surrounding tenements and other buildings.

  Suddenly, as they rounded the corner, Mose came to an abrupt halt that sent several of his passengers flying. Blocking the road was a wagon with a broken axle that had spilled a garden full of vegetables onto the street. The greengrocer who owned the wagon was desperately trying to salvage his inventory, which was being pilfered by a band of guttersnipes. Only a day or so ago, Mose would have been one of their number, snatching up errant cabbages and stuffing potatoes in his pockets; but now he had a better way to make a living.

  “Take my place, lads!” Mose shouted. “I’ll take care of this!”

  The greengrocer yelped in fear and hurled a head of cabbage at the redheaded giant striding toward him. Mose merely laughed and popped it in his mouth like a plug of chewing tobacco.

  “No need for violence, friend,” he assured the trembling merchant. “I mean you no harm.” With that, he slipped his shoulders under the wagon tongue and, with a mighty grunt, lifted the wagon—horse and all—over his head like a circus strongman so that a brace of ten Bowery Boys could hurry the pump engine toward the fire.

  A block away from their destination, one of the Boys hopped off the engine, carrying an empty pickle barrel under one arm, and ran off in search of the nearest hydrant. Once he found it, he staked the Bowery Boys’ claim to the fire by covering the hydrant with the barrel and then sitting atop of it, arms folded and ready for a fight.

  By the time the engine arrived, the conflagration was well advanced, with flames licking from the fourth-floor windows. Horseshoe Harry hopped off the engine to check the front of the building as its tenants hurried out of the burning structure with what few possessions they owned. On the lintel of the door was a rectangular pressed-tin fire mark that said CONTINENTAL NEW YORK in raised gold lettering over a black background.

  The gang leader grinned and turned to wave to his men. “Start pumpin’, boys!” he shouted. “They’re insured!”

  But just as the Bowery Boys began to hook up their hoses, a second fire engine, this one flying a flayed rabbit skin like a flag, arrived, pulled by a dozen young men. The leader of the Dead Rabbits jumped down off the pumper, pushing back the sleeves of his shirt in anticipation of a brawl.

  “Sod off, you lot!” he shouted. “This is our fire!”

  “Oh, is it, now?” Horseshoe Harry replied, pushing his stovepipe hat forward like a rooster raising its comb. “Seems rattlin’ them worry beads has shook the sense outta ya Paddies. Anyone with one eye in their head can see we got here first, Bourke.”

  “So that’s how it’s gonna be, eh, ye Yankee shite?” Black Dog Bourke spat the stub of his cigar onto the sidewalk as he brought up his fists.

  The rival gangs set on one another with fists, boots, and whatever else they could get their hands on, swearing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Meanwhile, as they fought for the right to claim tribute from the Continental Insurance Company, the building continued to burn and its hapless residents continued to dash in and out of the smoking tenement, trying to rescue what little they had.

  Suddenly there was a great bellow, like that of a gored bull, as Mose jumped into the fray, a wagon tongue clutched in one hand, and a paving stone in the other, inflicting dreadful damage with every swing of his powerful arms.

  “Mother Mary, help us!” Black Dog Bourke wailed in despair. “They shaved an ape and set it loose amongst us!”

  Shaken by the ferocity of Mose’s attack, the Dead Rabbits turned and fled. Upon seeing the rival gang surrender the field, Mose grabbed the brake on the Bowery Boys’ engine and began pumping it like a fiend, doing the work of twelve men. Mighty geysers of water erupted from the canvas fire hoses manned by the other gang members, shooting forth with such force and volume that the blaze was extinguished as easily as spitting on a match.

  A huzzah went up from the Boys, cheering their newest and bravest member: “All hail Mose! The leader of the gang!”

  Upon hearing himself d
eposed, Horseshoe Harry took off his hat and hurled it to the ground in disgust. The leader of the Bowery Boys was always the biggest and strongest of the gang. And they didn’t make them any bigger or stronger than Mose.

  It wasn’t long before stories of Mose’s prowess began to spread throughout the city. Some said he could lift a horse-drawn omnibus, passengers and all, above his head and walk it from Chatham Square to Astor Place without breaking a sweat. Others claimed that they’d seen him take a dip in the East River, diving off the Battery and surfacing on the beach at Staten Island three minutes later. There were also rumors he amused himself by rowing out into the bay and blowing ships away from shore by puffing on foot-long cigars, that he wore a beaver hat that measured two feet tall from crown to brim, and replaced his boots every month, not because he had worn them out, but because they had become too small.

  Hearing fanciful tales about the Bowery Boys’ new leader in a local bar, a reporter for The National Police Gazette decided to investigate for himself. Upon arriving at the Green Dragon Saloon, he was astonished to find an eight-foot-tall Mose, now dressed in a custom-tailored suit designed to accommodate his prodigious frame, flexing his biceps like a sideshow strongman while lifting six giggling young ladies—three to each arm, while smoking foot-long cigars and downing growlers of beer the way other men knock back shots of whiskey. Recognizing the story of a lifetime, the reporter hurriedly fished his notepad and pencil from his breast pocket.

  “Excuse me, sir. But could you tell me the reason for such unusual footwear?” the reporter asked, gesturing to the copper plates welded to the bottom of Mose’s brogans.

  “These be my stompin’ boots,” the gang leader explained with a grin. “When me and the Boys get in a brawl with the Dead Rabbits or the like, I come leapin’ in, kickin’ and stampin’ like they was roaches under my feet. When I do that, they run off and hide themselves in Paradise Square, like the vermin they are. Ain’t that right, lads?”