by P M Cole
“I’m quite tired and busy and—”
The box chirped.
Colin looked at me. “You got a bird?”
“Err… yes, that’s it. A bird, I have a bird and—”
“I love birds! What kind is it? I once had a blackbird as a pet when I was a youngster.” He moved to his right, which I copied then nipped to his left quickly moving past me to the box. He rested his hand on the wooden top. “Can I see?”
I went to obstruct his apparent wish to see what was underneath, when it flipped over, and ‘Owl’ looked up at him.
Colin’s mouth fell open. “A toy?” he said, looking at it closer.
It chirped. ’N…o…t…T…o…y…C…r…e…t…i…n.’
I giggled.
Colin looked at with a smile. “What’s funny?” Then quickly back to the ‘toy’ when he realised it was walking towards him. “What…” he said, taking a step back.
The Owl took to the air, beating its artificial wings, hovering, then slowly drifted towards him.
“It’s… it’s… possessed! A demon!” he shouted at the toy.
I couldn’t help myself, I started laughing.
“Why are you laughing!” He turned to his left, grabbing a piece of wood, and swiped it through the air before I could react, but there was no need to worry as ‘Owl’ deftly moved higher or lower, causing Colin to miss each time.
“No! Stop!” I shouted trying to stifle my laughter.
Colin stood, wood aloft, a confused look on his face. “But… it’s…”
I held my arm out. “Owl.” The bird’s head turned to me, and then its body followed as it flew the short distance and landed on my forearm. It chirped but I felt it best not to repeat what it was saying.
Colin, slightly crouched, with his back against the wall, stood up. “What is it? Magic? You made it?”
I looked at the mechanical wonder. “Honestly, I do not know what it is. But I like it. I think I’m going to call it… Auto.”
‘A…u…t…o…I…s…N…a…m…e…?’
“Auto? What kind of name is that?” said Colin.
“Yes, your name,” I said to the owl.
Confusion flashed across Colin’s face once again. “Wait… you can talk to it?” He then jolted as if electricity had hit him. “It understands?!”
The owl took to the air once again, flying around, and repeating its name.
“I think it does, yes.”
“But—”
“I don’t know. I had this idea of how to build it, and now it exists.”
Colin went to reply when a noise came from upstairs. I shot a look up to the door at the top.
Colin walked past me to the first step. “Should just be Estelle.”
As expected, the girl's face appeared as she opened the door from the shadows at the top of the staircase. She walked downstairs with something in her hand.
“This was on the counter in the shop; it’s addressed to you, Cog.”
She handed me the small but expensive-looking envelope, and a chill ran through me when my fingers touched the silky surface.
“That bastard sending you notes again?” said Colin.
I knew he was referring to Byron, but the handwriting on the outside was different. “No, I think someone else.”
I carefully tore the top open and pulled out the single piece of paper inside. There wasn’t much to read, but I stood frozen in shock as my eyes caught the first two words.
‘Dear Daughter.’
CHAPTER TEN
I sat on my favourite brick ledge about twenty feet up one of the walls inside the Ratters village. ‘Auto’ flew around the cavernous space above my head while children on the ground looked up and pointed. I looked at their smiles and heard their laughter, but it was if I was watching memories, not real life.
The letter supposedly written by my ‘mother’ was short and to the point. She apologised for not trying to contact me sooner, but said she felt it was not appropriate. Whatever that meant. And that she wanted to see me, to explain what happened all those years ago. She also said she resided at Grayton Manor but understood why I would not want to meet her there, so she suggested a neutral location in London. The statue of Achilles in Hyde Park. Tomorrow at 9 a.m.
I looked at my pocket watch. 11:50 p.m.
Olivia appeared from her hut and walked to be below me. “You need to eat. I got some broth on the go,” she shouted.
She wasn’t wrong, I hadn’t eaten all day and when I wanted to, events made me forget the rumblings from my stomach.
I nodded, then clambered to the side, and placed my feet on a number of short metal plates that I had driven into cracks in the wall to provide a series of steps. I looked upwards and called. “Auto!” then continued down to the floor as the owl swooped down.
I sat in Olivia’s room near the fire with a bowl in my hand. She sat opposite, her eyes glancing at the mechanical bird perched on a nearby shelf.
“He’s quite harmless,” I said.
She frowned. “I don’t like it. It’s not natural.”
Auto chirped something which I ignored. “Pulling hundreds of people faster than a horse can carry them is not natural, but that is what a steam engine does,” I replied to Olivia.
She looked back to me. “Colin told me about the letter from your… well, the letter you received. Do you think it’s her?”
My head was telling me it was a hoax from Cannington, perhaps thought up by his sidekick, Byron. But my heart felt differently. “Maybe…”
“You’re going to the meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I want to come with you.”
I had already turned down the same request from Colin and Estelle, but somehow the kind of support the woman opposite me would provide was more apt. “Ok, thank you.”
“Good!” She looked at the flames nearby and stoked them. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to have found out she was still alive the way you did, and then this letter…”
“I… everything that is happening is because of Hades. He’s manipulating her somehow. All this time he has kept her in that place. Away from me.”
I noticed Olivia look at me out of the corner of her eyes, then continue attending to the fire.
*****
The air in my small hut was cool, but warmer than the basement had been. I was grateful for that. I leaned over the side of my bed and picked up my pocket watch from the floor. The hands, just visible in the light seeping through the fabric partition, told me it was 6 a.m.
Three more hours.
Sleep had been sparing since I lay down six hours before with my mind not wanting to let go. The image of my mother's deathly face from my dream a day earlier still haunted me. What spell did Hades cast upon her to keep her all these years? In the letter she said she would explain, but what truth could I give to any words she might say to me? Could I trust her at all?
Despite my fatigue I sat up, giving up on the hope of any more rest. I walked to the small table across the room and poured some water from a jug, hoping the cool liquid would start to wipe away the cobwebs which cluttered my thoughts.
I looked at the shelf which was halfway up the back wall of my space. Auto sat with his eyes closed, looking anything but animated. I walked closer.
“Maybe… you’re just a toy…”
His eyes flickered open and he chirped.
‘A…w…a…k…e…?’
I smiled. “Yes. Unfortunately.”
I looked at my suit, minus its helmet, at the bottom of the bed. I thought about asking Olivia for a dress but decided not to. Whoever my mother was now, it was important she realised I was no longer a child. She needed to at least know that about me.
A short while later I was dressed and inside Olivia’s hut, eating breakfast consisting of some bread with a little cheese and a potato. I heard a commotion outside and the entrance sheet pulled back revealing Bernard.
He smiled on seeing
me, then his eyes jumped to Auto sitting on the shelf behind me, blinking and shaking one of its wings. “Remarkable,” I heard him whisper under his breath, but then returned his attention to me.
“It is good to see you again, young lady,” he said, sitting next to the fire.
I smiled. “I have been at the Factory. Charlotte has been teaching me some things.”
He nodded to Auto. “She taught you how to build that?”
‘A…u…t…o.’
“His name is ‘Auto’ but no, he is my own design.”
Bernard nodded. “So, you are to see your mother this morning?”
“That’s the plan.” I finished my food and wiped my face with a cloth.
“If it is her, you must know she is under his influence, you can’t—”
I noticed Olivia frown as she took my plate from the table. “She’s not a child Bernard. She knows.”
“You’ll be going with her?” said Bernard.
“I am.”
“I would like to offer myself to go as well.”
I jumped a little. The sound of Bernard’s neck breaking, came back to me from the night at Hades manor. “I’ll just go with Olivia.”
Bernard nodded. “Of course.”
I looked at my pocket watch. 7:45 a.m. and stood. “It’s time,” I said to Olivia.
She nodded and grabbed her coat.
The journey to the exit onto the street near Hyde Park Corner was not long, but I couldn’t shake a feeling of dread, which had taken root within me. No words, true or otherwise, from the woman that said she was my mother would make up for the previous seventeen years. Even with my abilities, I was unsure I would have survived for much longer amongst those that lived in the mud and filth of London. Mr Gladwell saved me then, and again recently. And throughout all that time, my mother was residing with my mortal enemy and his lackeys. Anger was welling inside me as I climbed out of the sewer entrance to a mist covered street following Olivia.
I looked back down to Colin and Bernard, nodded, and closed the cover. We were standing in one of the narrow side roads that emerged onto the junction that Wellington's Monument sat in the centre of. I opened the coat which sat over my suit and pulled Auto from an inside flap where I had been keeping him.
‘C…o…l…d.’
“I know. But I need you to take to the sky. You will be my eyes and ears above. Watch for any danger.”
He chirped and with a flutter took off into the grayness.
We walked the short way to the wide junction. Omnibuses and cabs rushed past, quickly being swallowed by the fog. Noises came from a cabmen’s shelter along with smoke from the small chimney, and a lone horse drank from a trough, not paying us any heed as we hurried across the road to the large stone pillars of the entrance to the park.
I peered through the gaps between the columns to see what lay beyond, but the fog was so thick that only mud tracks disappearing into a sea of white, lined by spindly trees were visible.
Olivia took my arm. “It’s up there to the right. On a clear day you would see it clearly from here.”
We walked together into the park. I looked up for any sign of Auto but above was just one uniform colour.
A rectangular stone structure became visible about a hundred feet ahead of us, and my heart began to pound in my chest. Despite the ice which covered the grass, I felt as if I was standing near Olivia’s fire. Answers to questions I had asked myself my entire life were about to possibly be resolved, so why was I slowing?
Olivia looked at me. “We can go back if you want?”
I briefly closed my eyes, allowing the anger to flow back into my mind. “No. I have to know.”
We pushed on, walking onto the lawn, between the trees. The plinth was now just thirty feet away. A woman came around the corner of it, dressed in black as if she was mourning. Her face was covered in a veil which lay upon the fur collar of her long winter coat.
She looked at us and we walked forward, stopping just a few yards from her.
“Corine?” said the woman.
Olivia let go of my arm.
I swept my eyes across the area around us, looking for any signs of danger, but there was only the mist. I looked back at the woman. “Yes.”
She pulled her veil back and I wavered slightly. The woman standing in front of me was late twenties at most. She was the woman from my dreams.
“You… are… the same?” I said.
Even as the words left my mouth, I realised how that was possible.
Heather.
My mother looked down briefly, then back to me. “There is much I need to explain.” She looked at Olivia. “Who is this?”
“You can call me Olivia.”
“I don’t know your connection to my daughter but—”
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
“Very well, but I was hoping we could talk in private?”
I sensed Olivia’s back straighten. I looked to her. “It’s Ok.”
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“I’ll be at the gate.”
I nodded again.
I waited for Olivia to move back into the fog, then turned back to the woman. “You should know if this is a trick—”
“I promise you, it is not like that. Harold does...” She noticed the disgust on my face. “Lord Cannington is not even aware I am here.”
I smirked. “Hades not being aware of something? I find that hard to believe.”
“His powers are not limitless. If they were, he would have found you for me many years ago.”
“For you? His plans for me have nothing to…” I stopped before anger burst from me and took a breath. I needed to be on my guard. “Where were you for all of these years? Why are you with him?” I said, trying not to raise my voice.
She looked down. “All those years ago… I was a different woman. Young and stupid, in so many ways.” She looked back at me, her eyes glossy and red. “I searched for you once I was able to. But despite my magic I was not able to locate you. Nor could he when I finally asked him to do so.”
“But… but… why were you even with the god of the underworld? I saw what happened that night. Finlay shot you, but not before I saw how you reacted to—”
Emotion got the better of me, making my throat tight, but my anger fought against it. I wiped a tear away from my cheek. “He is evil! He killed my friends. He will kill me!”
Her expression suddenly changed so dramatically that I wondered if it was the same woman looking back at me. I took a step back.
“He will not touch you! That was our agreement!”
“Agreement?”
She returned to her former prettier self. “When I recovered from what Finlay had done. Harold held me captive, but he did not harm me. Over time he introduced me to the children he was trying to help, and through them I saw a spark of good in him.”
She could see my incredulity.
“I don’t expect you to believe me yet.”
“He told me he would kill me!”
“When?”
“At… his manor…”
“When were you there?”
“The night of Byron's and the others' birthday ball…”
She looked confused. “You were not there.”
I sighed. Only celestial beings were aware of the different time. Which my mother was not.
I stood closer to her, pushing the mounds of other questions to one side. “You cannot trust him! He wants all of us for some larger plan!”
“I know—”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “You know his plan?”
“Yes. He wants to shed the cloak that was cast upon him by his father and brothers. This realm is his home now and he wants to make it a paradise Corine…” Her hands reached for me, but I backed away.
I shook my head. “No… he wants to control everything, everyone. And those that stand in his way he will destroy!”
“He used to be like that… but not anymore. His l
ove for—” She stopped as if hearing a distant bell. “I have to go.”
Chirping ran out from above me and I whirled around ready for an attack.
A gust of wind buffeted my face. I slowly turned back to my mother, but she was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I rushed through the bustling streets of London, not knowing my destination, and not caring. I just needed to keep moving. On returning to Hyde Park Corner, I told Olivia I needed some time alone, and took off before she could reply. Eventually, I found myself within one of the many squares which acted as miniature parks amongst the constant chaos of the capital. I pulled the iron gate open and sat on the first bench. Nannies walked with perambulators while others in their ward followed behind. A young girl walked past, a bonnet upon her head. She looked the same age as I when I escaped from Finlay’s clutches. She giggled, although she was not looking at me, but a few feet to my right. Auto was perched on the top of the seat, flapping his wings, and rotating his head.
I leaned forward to the child. “He’s alive, like a real bird.”
Her eye’s widened, and she went to talk but her guardian shouted her name. She frowned and quickly caught up with the rest.
I wondered what her future would contain. What would have mine been like, if I had not escaped, growing up with the other six in Grayton Manor?
I shuddered, pulling my coat around me tighter.
I thought about the conversation I had just an hour earlier. Despite my mother's delusion, there was still the child within me that wanted to hug her. A part of me that thought the last sixteen years could be erased. I just needed to allow the same spell which Hades had cast upon my mother to take me as well, and perhaps we could be a family.
I shook my head, letting the ice-cold air bring me back to the scene around me.
A rustling came from the bushes behind and Auto started chirping.
I turned around just in time to see a black mist in the form of a woman solidify from the shadows. Charlotte walked towards me.
“Right. You done with you moping? I thought I’d give you a little time to get your head around your meeting with that woman.”
