Spare and Found Parts

by Sarah Maria Griffin

  “Your mother, your mother—Crane has her body here; he has her!”

  Nell summoned stillness against his madness, her truth against his terror. “She was here. I found her. I took her to the lake. She’s gone now.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. “She’s gone?”

  “Yes. She’s gone.”

  Nan and Julian were in the doorway then, Nan’s face drained of color and Julian a scarlet flash, clenching and unclenching his fists, silent and fuming.

  “Do you know how he got her here, Nell?” Oliver was almost laughing, manic. “He bought her body from my mother. My mother recorded Cora as cremated. And do you know—do you know what he bought her silence with?”

  Nell didn’t. What was the cost of that kind of silence? What was the cost of a body delivered? How could Julian pay for something so huge? What currency was enough for this?

  “What?” she asked, her chiming ascending to a ringing, impossible pitch.

  “With you. You. He promised my mother that I could have you when we were old enough.”

  Tears of fury and shame overcame the boy then, Oliver Kelly, the barfly, Nell’s counterpoint, now half mad with shock, in a terrible frenzy.

  Ruby’s hand clasped her mouth as she stood against the wall. Nell heard her gasp.

  And Nell just stood there, a terrible vignette scrolling behind her eyes: her father shaking hands with the undertaker, her mother’s body delivered like meat, her own body for trade. Like an object, a machine. A contribution.

  “My mother told me. She’s been trying to tell me for years.” Oliver swung around to face Julian, and the tension around them shifted up a notch, electric, dangerous. Sensing it somehow, Io moved closer to his maker, putting his hand on her shoulder. Nell squeezed it for a moment, then lifted it and moved out from behind the desk. This was not about Oliver and her father.

  Nan was still in the doorframe, one foot in the hall, her lips moving in silent prayer, and Nell loved her just then, blessing this awful room, blessing everything she feared.

  “How could—” Oliver began to ask the question that had been festering away inside Nell herself, but she cut him off.

  “How could you do this?” she shouted. How could you keep my mother’s body in here, how could you steal my plans, how could you promise me to somebody, how could you use me that way, how could you, how could you?

  The reply came with Julian’s sneer. “Cora was a genius, and she’d have loved it; she’d have done anything to live forever. She was reckless, but think of what she would have known if it hadn’t all been ruined.” He turned his piercing gaze to Nell for a moment, then back to Oliver. “Kelly, you haven’t a blind clue what you’re talking about. You’d do the very same if you could.”

  Nell was shaking with rage. “No, he wouldn’t.”

  Oliver looked at her, astonished.

  Julian actually laughed. “Please. He’s been ignoring your refusals for years, Nell. He’d have broken you down eventually. He doesn’t care what you want.”

  “I do care!” Oliver insisted, but Julian waved him off cruelly.

  “Ha! You’d keep her if you could. I know you, Oliver Kelly. You’ve been looking at me like a god your whole life; you’d kill to be just like me, to do what I do.”

  Something blinding and fast and dreadful happened inside Nell as Oliver shot toward Julian and the dull clumsy thudding of blunt punches filled the room—the snorting and breathlessness of two men fighting. There was maybe four, maybe six long seconds. Nell wouldn’t watch it any longer: Oliver stumbling, the dark clatter of her father’s mechanical hand against the back of his head, Ruby’s shocked scream puncturing the air—“No, no. Please stop!”—through her hands. Oliver was about to keel as Julian swung back, preparing for a strike that would knock him out.

  Nell threw herself between them, her hand shot up to meet Julian’s in the middle of his strike. Her fingers clasped around his arm, and all of her might was there.

  There was cracking and graceless wrenching and a wail.

  “My arm! You stupid girl, my arm—”

  The arm was separate from her father, clenching and sparking in her fist, from the elbow down. She dropped it, and metal clattered against the tiles. She gasped and stepped away from it. It writhed for a second or two as if it were still possessed, like a snake. Then it was still. Just a broken thing.

  “That arm was never yours, Da.” Nell was trembling, her hand bloody, her legs weak.

  Julian dropped to his knees, gasping, swearing, and Oliver kicked the arm away across the floor. Io moved toward Nell, arms raised for an embrace, but she stepped away from him. “No, no.”

  She didn’t want to be comforted. Adrenaline still seared through her; she was vibrating with it, her chest sore and her hands aching, her fingertips burst, a nail loose. Her ears rang. She couldn’t look at Julian, crumpled, heaving. A hot streak of guilt rose though her for her violence, but it felt like a purge, like an exorcism.

  “I am not yours either,” she said. He didn’t say anything at all.

  Nan touched her shoulder then, and the room stilled.

  “I want you gone, Da,” Nell said, her grandmother by her side. “You take the business, Oliver. You take on Da’s work. There’s no way he’ll be permitted to carry on anyway, not after his confession.”

  Julian’s head snapped up, a lens of his glasses smashed, her face and red hands reflected back at her in them.

  “It’s all in here, Da,” Nell said, her voice almost cracking. “Ma’s notes, all of them. She designed your arm. She designed what’s inside of me. And you, you took and took and then tried to wake her up to take more. You will—you will write a confession. You’ll tell the council and the city what you’ve done. You’ll resign. You’ll leave.”

  Nell stood taller, her hands bloody, her chiming symphonic. She retrieved her mother’s book, watched the blood from her hands seep onto the cover, red around the lip of the pages.

  “Do you really think that Kelly can take on my work? Do you—”

  “He’s welcome to if Nell wishes.” Nan cut him off sharply, her voice sheer voltage, her power undeniable, her fists full of crystals.

  Nell looked to Oliver, his eyes watery, his skin blanched, and said, “Do better with it than he did.”

  “Nell, are you sure?” Ruby gasped, her face soaked with tears.

  Nell nodded. “Ruby, he cares about this work far more than I do. I have something bigger to build.”

  Oliver accepted, his hands clasped in gratitude, mute.

  “You are not welcome on any Starling land, Julian; this is not your house any longer.” Nan continued, matter-of-factly. “There will be work for you out in the Libraries. You’ll be allowed your dignity, as long as you stay away.”

  Io stood away from this, blinking silently through it. Kodak had scampered in, and the android had taken him in his arms, as though for comfort. Nell looked over at them for a moment, the notebook heavy and precious in her grip. “I am sorry you have had to see this, Io. We are going to be better than this.”

  Io didn’t say anything at all.

  “Penelope, you will come stay in the Pasture until your father has packed his things and left. I want you away from all this awfulness—” Nan started, but Nell shook her head.

  “No. This is my home. I’ll be staying here, with Io. You are welcome to join us, but my work isn’t over. I have—I have a contribution to make.”

  “There are ways around that, Nell, after all this.” Nan studied her, then Io: “I don’t think the city is ready for something like that.”

  “You’re not ready for something like him, Nan. That doesn’t go for everyone else. There are people who are ready, and those who aren’t, I’ll—I’ll show them why they should try. There’s so much about our nation that we could learn from sleeping computers, Nan; there’s so much knowledge, so much music, so much about the whole world. Io can conduct that information. He can pass it out to us. I’ll be responsible with it,” Nell
pleaded. “You can stay here with me. I want you to see. To hear the music. I want you to look at this book with me. Will you?”

  Her grandmother looked out over the laboratory, her eyes far away. She cast her crystals into the air, and they froze there for a second, turned to prisms, then disappeared. Ruby gasped.

  “I will stay until these halls are clean of what has happened here—for you, child. I won’t leave you alone with either of these creatures.” She cast a glance to Julian, then Io. Nell put her arms around her grandmother and held her. She smelled like heady incense and clean sage, the fabric of her so soft. Nell leaned into her and was lost for a moment in her safety, until Ruby broke the moment.

  “Oliver, I think we should leave.”

  The boy gathered himself for a second. “Of course. I’ll—I’ll inform my mothers of this update then. If they ask who’s responsible for the state of me, I’ll make sure to let them know it wasn’t you. There—there weren’t any blowtorches within reach this time.”

  Nell turned to him, his cheek cut, a bruise blooming on his forehead. “Thanks, Oliver.”

  “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate . . .” He walked backward toward the door, unable to look away.

  Nell nodded. “If I ever need anything from you, I’ll take it.”

  Oliver smiled wryly. “Of course you will.”

  Ruby threw herself at Nell then, a roaring thunder of a hug, her cheeks soaked. “Nellie, I’m only five minutes up the road always.”

  Nell muffled a thanks, a sorry-for-everything into Ruby’s shoulder.

  “Don’t you be saying sorry. Don’t you ever say sorry to me,” Ruby said to her, pulling herself away. She turned to Oliver. “Come on, you. Can’t send you home to your mothers like that.”

  Then the pair were gone out of the lab, leaving Io and Nan and Nell and Julian in a strange silence. Nell took once last look over the bad white room and turned away. As she left, she heard her father softly call, “Nell,” but she couldn’t even turn to him.

  “If you want to talk to me,” she said, “you can write me a letter. Maybe I’ll read it. I’ll reply when I am ready.”

  Io placed a strong hand on her shoulder. Nell was grateful for its weight. She closed the laboratory door behind them. The house felt different to her, as though relief had started to wash through the halls, something like release. She was glad of Nan’s stern presence, even if the old woman wouldn’t look at Io. Even if she asked for him to be sent upstairs. Nell agreed, and Io and the stoat alighted to her room.

  In the kitchen Nan had Nell run her hands under cold water until the blood ran clear, and at the kitchen table she powdered them with something strange, something that stung; Nell didn’t ask what it was. Just there in the quiet Nan blessed her hands, their fresh wounds.

  On the table sat Cora’s journal. After a time Nan asked Nell could they go through it together. Nell took the book in her lap, opened it to the first page, and began to read.

  CHAPTER 19

  The first thing is it is dark. You imagine this is how it always feels before the curtain comes up—something like birth. You adjust the pleats in your dress, shuffle the small cards your speech is written on. You imagine yourself five hundred feet tall, strong as stone, with lights all along your limbs. You imagine yourself Nan, crystals in your pockets. Kodak rests around your shoulders, and you are glad of him, gladder still that it is not just the two of you up there.

  Io stands behind you, the red scarf slung over his shoulder. He blinks and looks down to you, and you beam courage up at him.

  “I’m sickened with me nerves,” whispers Sheena Blake.

  “Would you ever stop?” Rua hushes her. “We’re grand. Nell has us sorted.”

  “I know, I know. There’re just so many people out there . . .”

  Nic shushes them both, and Tim chuckles softly. They are poised and ready to go, each operating a different component of the presentation: speakers, a screen, the projector, the lights. You could not do this without them. They are proof that this matters, that this is possible. You are not doing this alone. You’ll never be alone again.

  Moving the Lighthouse rig into your father’s lab was hard—it was a mess, and it was sad—but the four digital archaeologists had been so excited, so enthralled by Io that through the grief, a home had begun to flourish around you.

  The night Julian left, Nan poured lines of salt on the floor, and you prayed with her then, watched them turn to ash. She is somewhere now in the theater; you are sure she is praying for your reception, for awe rather than uproar, for delight rather than riot. You are almost certain that you are praying yourself.

  The city is still reeling from your father’s admission and departure, still astonished at Oliver’s so swiftly taking up his reins. The air is simmering around you, and your chiming is filling you completely—exhilarated. You know the others can hear it, but nobody is asking for your silence now. You will not apologize.

  You are about to contribute a skeleton key to the city’s whole past: “Io, who can unlock sleeping data, who can read what we cannot. Io, who can show us where the world was headed before the Turn, so we can walk forward with knowledge of who we were before, so we don’t make the same mistakes.” You repeat these lines to yourself; you know completely why you are here and what you have to give. What you have to contribute. The mayor is speaking in front of the curtain. You hear your name.

  “Are you ready, Nell?” asks Io.

  You stand taller. He takes your hand. You hold it for a moment, then let it go. The curtains open, and light floods all around you. The beat strikes up, interstellar and glimmering as you walk toward the microphone and the silent, waiting crowd.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One girl can’t build a monster alone.

  There are many people without whom I’d still just be tinkering at my desk. Thank you, Simon Trewin, for plucking me as a wild card and for fighting for this book and for being at the other end of the phone: thank you for believing in me. To Eric Simonoff and all at WME too, for having my back. Thank you, Vanessa O’Loughlin—without whom I might have given up, way back.

  Thank you to everyone at Greenwillow Books and Harper for welcoming this strange book into your shelves. Martha, my editor, for handing me a flashlight while I built this weird thing, for interrogating the work, for bringing the book this far. It’s been a great, inky road to walk with you.

  Thank you, Nic Alea, for being a good witch across continents, for use of your poetry as epigraph.

  Thank you to my folks, Sean and Patricia—you gave me the toolkit I work with, the first books—the most important ones. The video games. The paper to write on. The David Lynch movies. Without the things you gave me—the love, most important—I wouldn�
�t be writing at all. I wouldn’t know how to. My sister, Katie—you keep me footed. Love to my Nana, to Polly and James and Tre. It is good to live on the same island as ye again.

  Thank you to the Doomsburies. You have all listened through mad sleepless months and tangles of plot: you are my compass. To Deirdre Sullivan, for challenging me to write a sexy Frankenstein book and for magic totems. To Dave Rudden, for catching me at the end of the staircase and taking mad phone calls at all hours. You both read me more than you ever need to; I’m indebted to you both for this. To Graham Tugwell, though it’s been a long time, for giving me the black armband in the first place.

  To my friends, and I am fortunate enough to have such a community that I can’t list all of ye here: there isn’t enough paper to gush. Thank you, to Christina and The Duffs for true kinship and a very important week on Valencia Island. To Damon, for making me laugh. To everyone at The Booksmith in San Francisco, for tolerating a lunatic greetings card buyer, for buying me gin on important days, for keeping the altar up. To the folks at JAM on Synge Lane, for giving me a piano to write at. To Helena Egri, for getting this from day one. To Roe McDermott, my God I miss you. To Erin Fornoff: all the common sense and laughter. You three good witches give me courage. To Tynan, for shouting it out in long halls. This is a strange job to find yourself in and all of ye make it less strange, or make the strangeness a home.

  And most of all, to Ceri Bevan. My whole heart, how did you let me away with this? I couldn’t have made you up.

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