The shadows stop moving. The world holds its breath. She clings to the moment, anticipation quickening her heart until she almost laughs. Then, smooth and warm and the same as always: “That’s nice, dear. Let’s walk home together.” The figure steps out of the darkness, lovely and flawless. Perfect.
She simply walks on her way, ker-pat ker-pat, listening to the echo of following footsteps.
She smiles at the feel of storm in the air.
The next morning, the windowsill is dry and clean. Caulking leers from its corners. Below, the wall is pristine, pure, perfect. Its colour has no importance.
Overcome with grief, she sits. The chill tile steals warmth from her bare legs and buttocks, robs her of sensation. She reaches a trembling hand to test for lies. The paint is solid; its finish immaculate.
Impenetrable.
Footsteps.
She’s lost yesterday’s peel. As every morning, a new garment waits on her bed, the old discarded. She grieves in silence.
“Oh, there you are, dear!” The woman’s voice is soft and warm. Her face is smooth and lovely. Her clothing is fitted, its colour of no importance. There is no flaw in form or gesture.
She touches the paint and sees nothing, remembers nothing.
“Your ride’s here, dear. Time to get dressed. Have a nice day at work.”
She doesn’t answer, simply stands and goes to her room to dress. The rudeness brings no frown or puzzlement.
Nothing changes.
Outside, she walks with her eyes straight ahead. The sidewalks are clean and even, slicing obedient lawns dusted with snow. The vehicle waiting disturbs not a flake as it hovers, silent and steel. Its colour is of no importance. A set of steps lead up and in.
Faces smile. All are smooth and lovely. She feels no warmth or welcome. She can’t tell them apart.
She joins the murmuring. “What a lovely day.” “Work will be nice.” “Don’t forget it’s my house for the movie tonight.” “We never forget.” She doesn’t know which words come from her mouth.
She moves as they do, without flaw, always with purpose. Her hands reach. Her left picks up a rod, her right the ring that slips over it. Make them one, put them down. Her hands reach. Her left picks up a rod, her right the ring that slips over it. Make them one, put them down. The material is inanimate flesh, its colour of no importance.
She reaches again, eyes blind by rote, and touches something warm.
His hand is out of place. Only by a breath, only for a heartbeat, but it is enough.
Her fingers, caught on skin, miss the next rod.
It’s as if she’s sleeping and only now awakes. She grasps the telltale rod and its abandoned ring, tucks both into her pocket with unfamiliar speed. Her hands reach, fingertips quivering. Her left picks up a rod, her right the ring that slips over it. Make them one, put them down.
Saved by rhythm, she looks up.
He’s slower to recover. Before him, a pair of connected rods and rings bounce aimlessly, unable to link themselves in the next step. His eyes catch on hers, a puzzling in their depths, then he looks back to his task, murmuring soft and warm: “This is nice.”
Too late.
She remembers herself in his eyes.
And the scream comes from her soul.
There are worse things than remembering.
There is change.
She runs down the sidewalk, pat-ker-pat pat-ker-pat, dodging cracks and sprouts of frozen, ragged weeds, coughing as each breath brings more of the thick stench on the wind, shivering, eyes struggling to comprehend.
Reality is a peel, curled in the mind’s hand, fragmenting as it dries, blowing away.
The buildings around her sag like a spinster’s breasts. Every step takes her further into nightmare.
“Hello, dear.” The woman’s voice is hurried and harsh. “Why aren’t you at work?” There is a sharp catch before each word, as though something is being reset.
She won’t look. She won’t answer.
She has seen beneath the paint.
Her ride waits for her the next morning. Nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
She isn’t home.
Paint hangs in long fingerlike curls from every wall. It lies in dry wisps, irregular and wild, like tangled hair or autumn leaves. Plaster has fallen, dusty clumps pulled free and thrown to the tiles. Wood stares out, like bones stripped of flesh.
Words stain her window, fighting the frost.
“I am real.”
Their colour is red.
She holds court with dusty shadow, watches others perform. Their skin is perfect. Her fingers, nails stained and broken, tickle dying shrubs, wander crumbling brick, seek . . . what? She has left the words behind.
Things have changed. It is not enough.
Her hand loosens a shard of brick—its colour is of no importance—carries it into view. She brings it to her arm, cuts across softness, flinches with ecstasy. The shard falls to the ground.
With a nail, she tests the new edge, then pulls ever-so-gently. The paint—its colour of no importance—comes away willingly. She grasps the tiny beginning between fingertips; her tongue’s between her teeth.
She tries not to hope too much.
The paint peels with extravagant generosity. She shifts her fingers to the edges, careful to work with it, adjusting to the growing tension as the peel becomes stubborn. She pulls hardest of all, and the peel falls free at last.
She cradles the peel in her hand, watching it curl. Her fingers echo the shape.
She stares at what is exposed. The chill wind goes unnoticed. Multiple greys mix with black specks of mould. Paper feathers sodden plaster. She sees faces in textures; landscapes in whorls.
What does it mean?
“Oh, there you are, dear!” The woman’s voice is soft and warm. Renewed.
She knows what she will see. A face smooth and lovely, no flaw in form or gesture. She stares at her arm.
Why is there a wall within herself?
“You’ve missed your ride.”
Who put it there?
She stares at her arm and sees dark liquid welling up through the plaster. Suddenly, the torn edge of the paint becomes a line of fire. She looks up, eyes swimming with change.
The peel is in her hand. Power is in her hand. “You are not my mother.” Her voice is discordant, dangerous. Her voice hums with power. “You are not real.”
The woman’s mouth melts as she speaks. “You need your coa . . .” Lips go. Chin follows. The wind whips the air with ice, tat-tat tat-tat, and the woman congeals into a lump of inanimate flesh.
Clutching the peel, she looks at the sagging buildings, the remnants of gardens. She looks at others, perfect in form and perfectly oblivious, waiting by the old bus. “You are not real.” The words lift in the wind and fly back in her face, blinding and sure. “There’s only me.”
She doesn’t need to watch. She feels it happen, a shifting of perspective, a clarity as cold as the coming night.
They are gone. All of them. All of it.
She’s done it before. And before that. Uncounted befores and before thats. Each time victory traps her. She closes a fist over the peel, remembering.
She won once. Only once. Her power ravaged this world and all who lived on it.
Leaving her alone.
Alone—until she has to rebuild it or go mad.
Rebuild—until she becomes lost.
Lost—until she rediscovers her lie and destroys it. Leaving her . . .
Alone—until she has to lie to herself again.
She opens her hand and watches the tiny piece uncurl.
“No,” she tells it. “Not this time.” She tips her hand and watches the peel fall.
The freezing wind at her back is her guide, the sleet driving into her flesh her companion. She runs with the storm, owns its screams, its fury, its destruction. Every step marks purpose. Every moment marks change.
Even the one where she finds herself
on her knees, on her stomach, and then curls into a sigh.
Even the one where the snow paints her with peace.
The Knack of Flying
By Shelley Adina
London, March 1896
The betting book at the Gaius Club was one of its most successful innovations. So successful that from time to time even Lewis Protheroe, the club’s secret owner, perused its pages to marvel over the latest madness.
The Hon. Cyril Whitworth wagers £100 that he will win back every penny he has lost to Mr. Edmund Ffoulkes by Easter.
Mr. Thomas Ware wagers £500 that Lady Julia Mount-Batting will kiss him at the Penningtons’ Masked Ball.
Lewis had closed the book, shaking his head. Both men would lose, and painfully.
But of late, the entries had taken on a new character, as though a craze were blowing through London like a hot wind that affected only the younger, moneyed set. A craze so secret that it had not even reached the scandal sheets, never mind the Evening Standard. A craze so dangerous that had anyone in an official or parental capacity known of it, it would have been declared illegal on the spot.
Over breakfast at Carrick House, Lewis said, “You ought to see some of these bets. Utterly mad. Twenty pounds on the Acorn for third place in the first heat. Seventy-five on the March Hare for first place in the final.”
“That’s a wee bit of change.” Steven McTavish—known as Snouts due to the imposing size of his nose—slathered strawberry jam on his toast. “They have to be races. But it’s too early in the year for horses. Too much mud. And who could race in that old ruin?”
“The pilots of flying devices.”
Snouts nearly dropped his toast down the front of one of his more sober waistcoats, which this morning was embroidered purple paisley. “They’re racing flying devices? At the Kennington Oval?”
“Apparently. Take a lot of drunken toffs, plus money, plus sport, and what do you get?”
“Trouble with the South Bank gangs, you ask me.”
“Still, I think we ought to investigate.” Lewis gave himself a moment to enjoy his friend’s stare of astonishment.
“Now you are mad,” Snouts finally said.
“They are making bets in the club’s book. It behooves me to know what is going on among my members.”
“And what will young Lord Snootybum say when the man he thinks is merely the general factotum at his club sits down next to him in the amphitheatre?” Snouts, who respected only a very few people in the world, numbered Lewis among them. “Do you really want to hazard a set-down from one of those chinless Bloods?”
“I am willing to take the risk. Sir Barclay Ightham, chinless though he might be, laid down the seventy-five pounds. I should very much like to see him lose it.”
Snouts could tell when Lewis’s mind was made up. “Very well. I will go with you. But strictly as observers. And we will tell no one—the Lady may be down in Cornwall, but I would not put it past anyone in this house to send a tube to her and include it in their news.”
“Have it your way.” Lewis, having had it his way, was perfectly content to allow Snouts to think he was organizing the expedition. Breakfast subsequently became an animated argument over whether they ought to dress as gentlemen or simply go in raiding rig, should the gangs find the occasion irresistible.
The races were to begin at one in the morning, well after most gentlemen were sunk into their card games at their clubs, respectable people were asleep, and the costermongers had a few hours of slumber yet before they needed to load their boats and row them to the markets.
Lewis and Snouts climbed the ancient steps of the ruined oval that had seen Londinium’s chariot races centuries before. The full moon lit the gathering crowd as the old, grassy stands filled—silently, for the most part. Fisticuffs broke out here and there over seating, but were settled with no more than grunts and cursing. They found seats near the top, just before the fourth turn.
How strange it was to see the old ruin lit up like this. Lewis had only been here once or twice, in the daytime. The place was said to be haunted, but the only thing Lewis had ever seen moving among the broken arches, or climbing up what remained of the stone seats, were artists of the romantic persuasion, too poor to go to Italy.
Now moonglobes the size of a man’s head were shaken into life along the topmost seats. And in the grass at the bottom, in the middle of the ancient racecourse, were the flying machines, their pilots making last-second adjustments, their engines growling and coughing. Lewis leaned forward in admiration. The sheer variety! But how could some of them get off the ground?
That monowheel, for instance. A few daring souls piloted them along the streets of London, but their tendency to tip over when stopped at cross streets was so far preventing more general use, sensible as the theory might be. How did it fly?
There was an ornithopter, as might be expected, being unloaded from a wheeled cart. And here were two more, small enough to be carried by their pilots, their harnesses dragging in the grass.
On the far side floated an isinglass bubble that had to be filled with gas, if its pilot’s breathing helmet were any indication.
A contraption like a bicycle, but with vanes instead of wheels, and a balloon bobbing atop it, was mounted by its pilot, who wore a cravat and a top hat. The poor chap was never going to get any speed out of that thing.
Now here was the racing master, pacing to one side of the broken stone racecourse with a portable speaking horn in one hand.
“Welcome, gentlemen, to the sixth race of our short season.” His amplified voice floated up to Lewis and Snouts, but did not, one trusted, extend farther. “For those of you new to our sport, here are the rules. One is for the pilots—don’t fall off. Two is for the spectators—pilots may not receive assistance, save in the case of danger to life or limb. Three is for all—what happens at the Oval stays in the Oval. No gossip, no newspapers, no traceable identification of pilots or devices at any time. Is that clear?”
Lewis leaned to his left to murmur, “They’re breaking that one in spades in my betting book.”
“Which has its own veil of secrecy,” Snouts replied. “They must be depending on your discretion more than their own.”
“The pilots in the first heat will proceed to the starting line,” the racing master called, walking to a chalked line across the ancient, uneven stones as the pilots variously floated or trundled out to take their places.
“Gentlemen, on your marks—”
A sound like a bandsaw cut him off, and a young man swooped in to take his place among the racers. His contraption appeared to be no more than a child’s scooter with an engine and propeller mounted to the rear. He stood on the board, one foot in front of the other, his hands on the stick, presumably the steering mechanism. Or some kind of support, at the very least, for the device had no wheels. He pulled back on the stick and the contraption settled to the ground.
“Let the Acorn be informed that if he is late to the flag once more, he will be disqualified,” the racing master said sternly, to catcalls from the crowd.
The Acorn. This was the one only expected to take third place. Lewis began to regret putting a guinea on the lad. The technology might be interesting, but wasted if the pilot were overconfident. He wore an aeronaut’s goggles that concealed much of his face, and a tweed cap with a tassel on the top—like an acorn’s cap—on a mop of curls. His jacket was a disgrace—it could have been pulled out of a rag picker’s pile. Thankfully, his canvas pants seemed to be of a later vintage, stained though they were by winding grease.
“Start your engines.”
The air was filled with the sound of steam engines being ignited. Now even Snouts sat forward as the monowheel lifted off the ground and its vanes unfurled. The ornithopters hovered, their fresh-faced, darting-eyed pilots giving each other’s whirling vanes some space. The Acorn stood upon his device in a nonchalant, hipshot pose, as he pulled back the stick and the device, its engine buzzing angrily, lifted once more
off the ground.
“And—go!” The racing master’s white handkerchief dropped.
With a snarl and a cloud of steam, the ornithopters lifted straight up into the air. The monowheel shuddered into motion, and as it circled its pilot at the centre, its vanes whipped around the circumference so fast they blurred. However, these did not give the contraption the speed its pilot clearly wanted, for the bubble and the biprop passed it at a sedate pace, lifting higher as they went. The biprop pilot raised his top hat politely as he sailed by.
But Lewis did not have a guinea invested in the skill of those men. What was keeping the Acorn? He was jiggling the engine, fussing with it while trying to keep his balance. Suddenly it leaped out of idle and into high pressure, the propellers winding up into a higher key. The boy clutched wildly at his steering stick as the device took off. Levelling vanes snapped out of the sides of the base, and he soared into the air. He found his feet in a moment, and, to Lewis’s astonishment, leaned into the stick and took the first turn in a graceful arc that carried him past bubble, biprop, and monowheel in seconds.
The crowd leaped to its feet and vigorously exercised clapping boards muffled with cotton, and whirling hand drums whose innards had been likewise muffled. The sound was like the wind rushing through bare trees, and Lewis stifled a cheer.
The Acorn gunned into the straightaway, but here was where the ornithopters carried their advantage. They were already halfway down. He leaned into his stick and shortened the distance, but it was not going to be enough. The ornithopters were in a ragged line, like so many geese migrating south, when they clattered over Lewis and Snouts’s heads and into the fourth turn.
“Come on, Acorn,” Lewis muttered. “You can take them.”
The Acorn let off the pressure as he entered the third turn, then accelerated once in it, banking his contraption to allow physics to take him around the curve. Since ornithopters could not bank, their pilots merely hanging suspended in their chairs from single propellers, they were forced to take the curve more cautiously. The Acorn was gaining! Any second he would—
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