Ikey stood, braced between rocks. His breath spilled from him in great ladlefuls.
“The tally…” Ikey panted, “lets me… justify… my being. My worthiness.”
To whom?
“Me.”
I’m so sorry.
Ikey swallowed. His arm trembled. Pins and needles prickled his right hand. His toe began to slip. Tightness enclosed his throat. He shoved the stone forward, and pushing against it, readjusted his foot. Again, he lifted the stone to the extent of his reach, planted it against the wall, then scrambled up behind it.
“I didn’t…” Ikey panted again, “ask… for your pity.“
Ikey heaved the stone again. It popped through the sod. He pushed it over, enough to hopefully conceal the hole, and then he allowed himself to slide to the bottom of the pit. He collapsed into a dark heap and felt as if his arm and his legs were oozing, dripping down the side of the pit.
And you shan’t receive my pity, as you obviously don’t need it. You have plenty of your own.
Ikey lifted his cheek from the mud where it had landed. Darkness pressed around him. He reached up with his mechanical hand, and he never knew whether or not he laid his tin-plated fingertips on the black satin of her sleeve.
“Sometimes,” Ikey whispered, “in these darkest places, pity is all there is. When love fails you. Pity.”
And which is your companion now?
Ikey smacked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. It felt dry and huge and sticky. How could she understand a word he said?
“The same,” Ikey mumbled, “as was in the hospital.”
Whatever Rose's response, Ikey lost it as he drifted further into blackness, back into the darkest. Rose.
The slot snapped open.
A tray scraped across the floor.
Ikey came to. Awareness dribbled into him. The gray shades of his legs splayed out before him registered in his brain as something he was staring at. Something he had been staring at.
His neck hurt. Everything hurt.
Ikey pushed himself up to sitting. A gray light probed the edges of the stone above.
With a groan, Ikey pushed himself forward, curled his legs under him, and crawled out of the the hole in a lopsided manner, back into his cell, his head throbbing. It felt so heavy, ready to snap off and drop to the floor with a thud.
At the door, Ikey collapsed before the tray. He reached out, picked up the bowl, and with a shaking hand, brought it to his lips and slurped it down.
If he had the energy, he would have licked the residue from it. Instead, it fell with a clatter to the tray.
He rolled over. His arm throbbed. His legs ached. His back burned. The flesh about him swirled with pain, and Ikey could do no more than imagine the cart, the wood, the iron. He stepped away from his body, watched it float away like a rowboat, drifting off, the pain sitting, hunched over the prow, arms folded across itself.
He listened for the sound of her breath. Heard only his own. His heart lilted in his chest like a rattled music box.
“Rose?” Ikey croaked.
The stones sat around him, thick and hard and blind as sour old men. The air of their disappointment became the only response.
“You’re still there, aren’t you?”
His body hummed with pain. And if he were to feel Rose’s touch, the tips of her long, slender fingers mooring him, then he’d have to slip back into his body, shrug into the pain like a wet wool coat. If Rose touched him. But if she was there in the dark, and she laid her fingers along the bones of his shin while he was outside of his body, would he feel it?
Ikey sank back into his body, felt the pain slip its iron cuffs over him, wrap chains around his limbs and hold him to the ground.
Ikey reached across his chest, slapped at his left arm. Something was there, but he couldn’t tell if it was iron or flesh, the waking or the dream.
The slot snapped open.
The tray scraped across the floor and disappeared under the door.
The slot snapped shut and darkness completed the room again.
He sat up. Any minute, Cross would barge through the door, lantern in hand, and tell him to rise and shine, Clementine, or some such rubbish.
Ikey shivered and drew his arms around himself. When the cold, tin-plated fingers touched his arm, he startled and jolted himself. He fell back to his cell, awake and aware, and inhaled the putrid air.
A sigh leaked out of him, thick as drool.
Work remained to be done. Despite the ache in his limbs, he pushed himself to hands and knees and crawled to the pile of rocks in the corner. Just as he would have done with a machine, he had laid the stones down in the order he had taken them out of the wall. It would be a simple matter to rebuild it, to pack the spaces with mud instead of mortar, and then smear more mud across the walls so that his exit wouldn’t appear out of place. As long as he could finish it before someone decided to drag him back out.
“I could use your help,” Ikey rasped.
Rose didn’t answer, but merely stood in the corner, hands behind her. Listening.
Ikey leaned forward. His forehead rested on a stone. The cool hardness of it pulsed through him, and it felt odd to be both warm and cold at the same time, to want to shiver and sweat, to get up and race and fall into place all at once.
“Look,” Ikey whispered, then smiled at himself for the choice of word. “Thank you for being here.”
He inhaled deeply, and the miasma of the cell threatened to overwhelm him.
“I’m sorry for being upset with you. I didn’t understand.”
Nothing.
Ikey lifted the last stone he removed from the wall and lugged it over to the hole. He laid it down and snugged it into place. He scooped up a handful of mud and smeared it across the top of the stone.
“Nothing with you is as it seems, is it?”
A whisper flitted over the dark. Ikey turned his head, but missed it.
“What was that?”
Rose didn’t repeat herself.
Ikey pushed himself up to his feet, then stumbled back to his pile for the next stone.
Chapter Fourteen
A wall of light crashed down on Ikey. It clanged and squealed like iron and Ikey clenched his eyelid shut, then tossed his right arm over his eyes.
Hands grabbed him and yanked him off the floor and to his feet. His legs wobbled. Another pair of hands grabbed his left arm and steadied him.
“Ready to behave yourself?” someone asked, a black shape that wasn’t Rose.
Ikey nodded.
“Clean him up.”
Ikey was tossed on a litter and hefted up. The air snapped at him. Cold and shivers gnawed at his flesh. Goose bumps drove pins into him as he clamped his arm over his eyes to block out as much light as possible. Around him, iron feet marched across wooden floors. The hum of machinery filled his ears like water. The taste of dust and oil and coal poured into his throat and threatened to choke him.
His gasping grimace hid what otherwise would have been a smile.
He made it. Then he blacked out again.
When Ikey next awoke, he grasped at the left side of his chest and felt a handful of ribs.
The hospital again.
He sat up in bed. The world swayed around him. He clutched the edge of the mattress. Bandages kept his sight from him.
“Here,” a woman’s voice said. A hand lifted his chin and Ikey wanted to sob at the touch, the warm softness of the fingers. He let go of the bed to grab the hand and hold onto it for dear life, but before he clutched the woman’s hand, he fell backwards into a clank of bed springs.
“Here,” the voice repeated. The hand slid behind his shoulders and lifted.
“You need to drink. You’re severely dehydrated.”
A cup was placed to his lips. Ikey drank, slurped, reached for the cup. The woman’s grip on him started to dip. He planted his hand back on the mattress to steady himself.
He wished for an iron arm.
The woman
pulled the cup away.
“Cross,” Ikey croaked. “Is he all right?”
“Who?” the woman asked. She laid Ikey back down.
“Cross. The man in the next bed.” He waved a hand to his right.
“There’s no one in the next bed.”
Ikey’s hand fell limp over the edge of the mattress. “Marlhewn.”
“That’s correct. You’re in Marlhewn.”
The weight of the woman’s words crushed Ikey. He wished for her to touch him again, to place the tips of her fingers on him and lift him out of where she found him.
“Can you take another sip?” the woman asked.
Ikey pushed the bandage off his face.
Nurse Luca sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes shifted away, across the room. She glanced back, but didn’t look directly at Ikey.
“Philip,” Ikey said.
“Here,” Nurse Luca said as she slipped her hand behind Ikey’s shoulders again. “Another sip.”
After the drink, she lowered him back to the mattress.
“Tell me of Philip,” Ikey said. “Is he still alive?”
Nurse Luca glanced away again.
“Is he alive? Did Rolfe save him?”
Nurse Luca looked down at Ikey, into his right eye. “He’s been transferred to a different facility.”
She lied.
Ikey turned his head. Empty beds lay in an unmoving procession between him and the whitewashed brick wall at the end of the hall.
“Do you think you can eat?” Nurse Luca asked.
Ikey wanted to snap at her, to yell, to scream and rage and turn over the beds and rip every brick out of this god damned building.
All the fight sizzled out of him; steam from a broken line.
“Maybe in a little while, then,” Nurse Luca said.
Ikey closed his eye, and the beds and the wall and everything stubbornly refused to disappear, to go away, to give him back the peace he had known in solitary. He considered a request to be put back. But he couldn’t get to David and Gavril from there.
“My arm,” Ikey croaked. “Can I have my arm back?”
Nurse Luca stood and smoothed the apron over her skirt. “In due time. You need your strength back, first. Rest. If you need me, please do call.”
She turned and her skirt billowed out slightly with her movement, and for a moment, she was a gray, cotton bell.
“Please,” Ikey said as he pushed himself up onto his elbow. “Don’t go. I’ll have something to eat. And some water. More water. Please.”
Nurse Luca paused a moment, then turned back around. A smile simmered beneath her lips. “Of course. I’ll see to it and return shortly.”
As she disappeared through a doorway at the end of the hall, a feeling crept over Ikey that she had disappeared forever. Ceased to be. Vanished along with everyone else in the world, and there would be not a thing more to say. It was him. Just him. And Rose. Waiting in the dark.
The thought stopped his breath, froze him stiff as he considered what to do with the thought, how to feel about it. The returning clip of Nurse Luca’s shoes snapped the spell. He glanced to the door and waited for her, and though the stride was too quick, too shallow, the thought couldn’t be helped that Rose approached. She would emerge from the doorway and glide across the floor in a cloud of shadows that followed her around, swirling and subduing the light.
Propped on a set of pillows, Ikey sipped at a cup of water and nibbled morsels of sausage and cheese from a plate Nurse Luca had placed beside the bed. As she began to leave, Ikey called out to her. “Stay.”
Nurse Luca turned and gave a brief smile, but it was a forced grin, one that said she was expending patience on him.
“The doctor will want to see you. I shall return as soon as I notify him.” Nurse Luca’s gaze rested below Ikey’s face, trained on his shoulder or his collarbone.
“A mirror, please,” Ikey said. “I should like to see one.”
Nurse Luca glanced up to his eyes, then looked off to the side. A flush of color livened her otherwise pale cheeks. “Why should you want that?”
Ikey sought a reflective surface in the infirmary. Brick and wood and iron and cotton everywhere. He rubbed the patchy beard on his face. “I might like to shave.”
Nurse Luca clasped her hands before her apron. “I shall assist you with that. I wouldn’t want you to nick yourself before your strength returned.”
“A mirror. Please.”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
Nurse Luca turned away again, skirt flaring, and Ikey wished for the clear tone of a bell, and that her skirt might be polished brass so that he could gaze into its surface and see what horrible thing resided on his face.
As Ikey placed the empty tin cup on his bedside stand, Rolfe entered the infirmary with Nurse Luca at his heels.
“How are you feeling?” Rolfe asked from under his twitching mustache.
“How long was I in solitary?”
Rolfe stopped at the foot of Ikey’s bed and clasped his hands behind himself. “Eight days.”
“It seemed so much longer,” Ikey said as his attention drifted to the sheet that covered his lap.
“I’m quite sure. You were remarkably ill when they brought you in here. I don’t know how long you were to be kept down there, but once you stopped eating, they assumed you had died or were about to die.”
Ikey nodded.
“And given your condition when they brought you back in, it truly is a wonder you survived.”
Nurse Luca tilted a pitcher over Ikey’s cup. Water sluiced out and rang clear and crisp against the tin.
“Philip,” Ikey said. “What happened to him?”
Rolfe stared straight into his glass eye. “I’m afraid there was nothing I could do for Mr. Unwin.”
Ikey glared at Nurse Luca. She looked away.
“What do you do here, then?” Ikey asked as he swung his attention back to Rolfe.
Rolfe cocked an eyebrow. “I clean up the messes of those who are careless.”
Ikey lowered his head. “I tried to save him.”
“I commend you for your efforts. I truly do. You shouldn’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your doing. You did not condemn him to this place.”
“I could have stopped him. If my hand had worked. It wouldn’t close when I needed it to.”
“As I understand it, it wasn’t your hand that propelled him into the machine.”
Ikey reached across his chest again and took a handful of his ribs. “When can I go back to work?”
“You need to recuperate. Build your strength back up.”
“I want to go back to work.”
Rolfe arched an eyebrow and regarded Ikey for a few seconds longer. “There is no need to hurry back. You are free to take your time and recover. I’ve explained to the superintendent how gravely ill you are.”
Ikey considered whether or not to push the issue further at the risk of raising concerns from Rolfe. To hell with it. After eight days, Cross may have shown up. “I wish to go back to work. Where is my arm, if you please?” He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The world slipped out from under his feet. He swayed and bobbed in fuzzy spaces. Ikey closed his one eye. The other focused on his knee as he gripped the edge of the bed.
“There, there,” Nurse Luca cooed as she placed her hands on his shoulders. Her touch was warm. Soft. Her fingers felt so short and stubby and fat as she guided him back, pushed him down into the bed.
“I must say that I commend your work ethic, young man, but I fail to see what gain you will receive by rushing back. You will not work off your reconciliation any sooner. And if you go back before your strength has returned, you stand to lose more than your arm to the machinery.”
“I want to check on my friends.”
“Yes. That young man who comes in with you. The one that has the bilateral hand augmentation.” Rolfe held his hands limp against his belly to demonstrate damaged hands. “He is fine. He still comes in eac
h evening for his checkup.”
“David,” Ikey said. “But there are others. And what of my missing friend Cross? Have you seen him?”
“Tall, right? Thin. Blonde hair. Tattoo on the distal left arm, if I recall correctly?”
Ikey nodded.
Rolfe shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Ikey’s head fell back against his pillow.
Rolfe cleared his throat. “Eat what you can. Drink plenty of water. We will provide you with as much meat, cheese, and butter as we can. Get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, we will consider returning you to work.”
“My arm?” Ikey asked.
Rolfe turned to Nurse Luca. “Would you please get our patient more to eat?”
Nurse Luca nodded. The floorboards creaked as she clipped toward the door at the end of the hall.
After she disappeared, Rolfe rested a finger against the foot of the bed. “I must say, I was quite surprised to see the condition of your arm. There was mud and muck mired in every crevice, every nook and cranny. One of the tin plates covering the finger tips was missing. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the thing was used as a shovel.”
Ikey looked to his lap again. He swallowed hard.
Rolfe tapped the foot of the bed. “I can understand how a man might go a little stir crazy in such circumstances.”
Ikey nodded.
“But what I fail to understand is what appeared to be a handle, of all things, lodged in the works.”
Ikey looked up at Rolfe. “It must have gotten lodged in there when I was trying to stop the machine. I don’t recall.”
Rolfe cocked his eyebrow again. “Indeed.”
Heat flared into Ikey’s cheeks. His mind raced for a better explanation.
“Well,” Rolfe said, “if you need anything more, please let myself or Nurse Luca know. In the meantime, do try to eat up and drink plenty of fluids.”
He turned away.
“Wait,” Ikey called.
Rolfe stopped. He turned back to Ikey and lifted his eyebrows in expectation.
Ikey took a deep breath. “Never mind. Thank you. For your ministrations, doctor.”
Rolfe gave a bow at his neck. “All in a day’s work, young man. It is my oath to do no harm.”
As Rolfe left the room, Ikey fell back against the bed. What little he had consumed grumbled in his stomach. Tears pushed at his right eye as he thought of Rolfe sending others down to examine his cell, find his exit, cut him off, and condemn him to his own fate inside Marlhewn.
Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Page 16
