Soleil

by Jacqueline Garlick

  “But you haven’t even told us how to get there yet!” I rise up on my toes and shout after him.

  “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.”

  “Where have I heard that before?” I snarl back at Urlick, and then to the ‘pede. “That’s ridiculously unfair!”

  The centipede pauses. It chuckles then guffaws. “Everything in this world is ridiculous, and nothing here is fair. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be. Then again, you won’t be here for long.”

  “Won’t be here for long. What does that mean?” I launch to my toes, hollering again. “Won’t you at least give us a hint how to get there?”

  “Oh, all right,” the ‘pede says. He turns his attention to the sky and thinks a moment. “High tea is held in the grandest place in all the Kingdom.”

  “Which is?” I press.

  “Again, you’re a smart girl. Figure it out.” The creature rises up onto his hind legs and stretches his forearms out. “Look around you. Where might a Queen of Spades logically throw a grand tea party? He jerks his metal head to the right, then drops down on his legs and scurries away, maniacally clicking up the road out of sight.

  “Wait!” I try one more time, but it’s no use, he’s gone, only the clack of his nails remain.

  “The Queen of Spades…” Urlick says thoughtfully.

  “The Black Queen of Spades,” I correct him.

  I raise a hand to my eyes and scan the cityscape. “Logically, the castle must be within the city.”

  “Or not.” Urlick checks the other way.

  “The centipede. He came from that direction.” I point, squinting to make out buildings through the smog. My eyes float from one heap of junk building to the next—none of which seem suitable for the domicile of a Queen. “I have no idea where a Queen would throw a party in all this mess.”

  “Me either.” Urlick sighs.

  “Wait. Black Queen. The Black Queen of Spades.” My eyes lock on something in the distance. “Urlick,” I grab his arm. “What do you think?” I point out the building just left of the near the centre of town, poking up from the rest of the piles of junk. An array of broken, wooden implement handles, stand poked in the ground, to form a solid circle. At the base of them, broken off implement heads from several spades stick out of the ground, forming the main walls of a castle. “The spades form the castle, while the handles form the keep. That’s logical, right? A castle made of spades?”

  Urlick looks to me. “As logical as this illogical world gets.”

  We share a quick satisfied glance, join hands and start down the steel cobblestone pathway toward the city, when all at once the walkway moves beneath our feet. The faster we walk the faster the earth churns. We speed up to a jog, but the harder we run, the further we’re transported backward. It’s as though the path has come to life under the propulsion of our feet and is acting like a reversing conveyor belt. Gears churn and mechanical engine whirls. Flywheels flutter and creep.

  “What’s going on?” I shout to Urlick.

  “I’m not sure.” He looks to our feet.

  I trip on a kink in the belt and slip off the side and roll down the steep metal hill beside us, leading to the stream.

  “Eyelet?” he shouts and jumps from the track, scrambling down the metal hillside after me. “Are you all right?” He falls to his knees beside me.

  “I think so.” I rub the wound on my head where I clunked it on a metal stone. The world turns hazy and wobbles before me. I blink to clear my eyes. I think perhaps I’m falling into an episode, and then I know I am. I smell the faint hint of burning toast. Quickly, I reach into my pocket and pull out a leaf.

  “What’s that?” Urlick shouts. He sounds so far away. “What is that? What are you doing?”

  I crush the leaf in my hand. “I need to...” I feel myself quickly losing consciousness.

  “You need to what?”

  The muscles in my hands tense, then begin to shake.

  I hear Urlick gasp. “Oh, no.”

  “The leaf,” I manage, though I’m sure my words are slurred. “I need to—” I try but cannot bring my hand to my mouth.

  Urlick snatches the leaf from me and stuffs it up under my nose.

  “No.” I turn away.

  He looks hard at me, my vision quickly fading. How do I get him to understand before I can no longer chew it? I fight to open my mouth. He must read something in my eyes, because he jams it between my teeth before they begin to chatter, and helps clamp my jaw shut over it. The leaf’s sweet aroma lingers on my tongue. I try to chew, but I can’t. Instead my gyrated teeth do the job for me, thankfully, releasing the badly needed juices down my throat. Their tart, sticky flavour writhes through my brain. The darkness that pulls over me, slowly lifts.

  “Eyelet?” I hear Urlick’s voice. It’s distant, but there. “Eyelet, are you with me?”

  I’m here. I feel myself shaking and shivering, the leaf inside my mouth fighting to restore balance.

  “Eyelet!” Urlick shouts. Did I suck down enough of the leaf’s soothing anti-venom to stop this from taking me over completely, or will he witness my very first full out, thrashing, drooling, debilitating episode?

  All at once, my mouth is pried open and more leaves are shoved in. The instinctive nature of the episode snaps my jaw shut and grinds the leaves between my teeth. Their juices tingle on my numbing tongue and slip down the back of my throat. From there, they thread throughout my limbs, slowly slithering and taming the effects of the silver, like a welcoming peace, restoring stillness to me.

  “Eyelet?” I feel Urlick’s hands clutching my skin, his mighty grip clasping my arms. “Are you all right?” He stares deep into my eyes and at last I see them, my own vision returning to the surface. For a moment, there are two of him. But then, at last, he becomes one.

  “I am now,” I say, struggling to regain my composure. The muscles in my arms, legs and abdomen ache. “Thank you,” I say, and he leans down and kisses me on the forehead, then crushes me tight to his chest.

  A trumpet sounds in the not so far off distance, and our heads crank up. A crackling voice announces something new through a staticky gramophone horn. Though we cannot see the device it feels ominous, like it takes up the whole world, booming from the clouds or something. “Twelve minutes wasted, and counting,” the voice booms. Urlick looks to the sky. The announcement ends as fast as it happened.

  “Come on. We’d better get going.” Urlick helps me to my feet. “Though, I don’t know how they expect us to get there, if the ground keep propelling us back.”

  “Did you really think it’d be easy?” a sultry voice snakes out from behind a nearby tree.

  Urlick collects me up in his arms and whirls around. Laughter crackles out between the tree’s bark. The trunk begins to shimmer, like the top of a windblown pond, then slowly it peels wide open. From within, a long-legged female creature materializes—an automaton with half-human features, exposing a very sexy human leg, as she steps out onto the grass. The human leg is followed by a very shapely, but clunky metal one, made of used machine parts, joined at the knee with a rusty ball joint. The mechanical leg squeaks and clicks as she moves, as do both her hips (mechanical ones) and her one arm, her neck and half her face.

  She’s scantily dressed in a black walking skirt with a slit cut up one side, exposing almost all of her thigh, like the ladies of the night in Gears wear, when they work the streets. Her matching leather under-corset is pinched scandalously tight. One of the sleeves of her tattered cotton chemise hangs down over her human arm—the elastic is badly worn—while the other side hugs her shoulder egregiously low, as if only to showcase her rudely propped up breasts.

  She flexes her one mechanical arm, made of a series of flywheels and chains, and a wheel in her bicep whirs. Pulleys ravel and unravel.

  “It takes twice the effort to get anywhere in this world.” She examines her jeweled nail beds at she talks. “But then again”—she sucks on the end of a long, thi
n, cigarette stick she holds in the other hand. The end of the cigarette glows red—“how could a person of your status understand such a concept?” She blows out a puff of smoke.

  I clear the smoke away from my face with a hand and glare back at her.

  She raises her drill-bit eyebrow.

  Whoever she is, I hate her already and we’ve only just met. This is not at all like Alice. Or maybe it is?

  One of her eyes and a cheekbone is real. The rest of her face is fashioned out of small, shiny, pounded-steel shell-shaped plates, riveted together to achieve the likeness of a face. A slotted socket bolt takes the place of her missing eye, and a covered acorn lug nut serves as a nose. Her mouth seems to be made of cold rolled steel shavings, twisted together and curled back to create the illusion of full, sensuous lips. A prominent ‘V’ has been clipped into the centre of the upper one, to create a dip.

  Someone has spent a lot of time perfecting this automaton.

  “How is it you seem to be alive when nothing else around here is?” I ask.

  “I look alive to you,” she snaps.

  “Well, if you aren’t, what are you then?” Urlick interjects.

  She bats her floaty, blue ostrich feather eyelashes his way and narrows her one good remaining eye. It’s stunningly grey and fixed headily on Urlick. I step in front of him, to sever its connection. She draws on her cigarette, and blows it in my face. “Long dead,” she says, finally answering his question, then darts unexpectedly my way.

  “What a lovely specimen.” She grabs my arm, stroking it with her cool, metal fingers.

  I snap it away, scowling.

  “Whatever.” She rolls her one good eye. “You won’t have it long. Sir Hatter will see to that.” She puffs on her cigarette, flicking her ashes to the ground.

  “Sir Hatter?”

  “Yes. The mad one. Who runs the city.” She blows another puff of smoke in my face. “He sees to it that I get what I want. In exchange for favours.” She cups her ample metallic breasts and clinks them together provocatively, then grins Urlick’s way.

  “You’re disgusting,” I snap.

  “Really?” She snarls her lips. “Just wait and see what he makes of you.”

  “He’ll make nothing of me, because I won’t be seeing him.”

  “Hah!” She puffs her cigarette. “Why else do you think you’re here? Sir Hatter sees who he wants to see. And you’ll see him, want to or not.”

  “Who is he, exactly? This Sir Hatter?” Urlick interrupts.

  “All in due time, my friend. All in due time.” The automaton shifts closer, bouncing a metal finger off the end of his nose. “Until then,” she breathes, “let’s say you and me have a little fun, shall we?” She yanks him in by the scruff, wrapping her long, lanky, legs around his waist.

  “Stop that.” I attempt to divide them.

  “Tad bit possessive, are we?” She reduces her good eye to a slit and stares at me, raising the corners of her tin mouth into a broad, clacking smile. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but no one owns anyone else here, sweetheart. I’m afraid our little friend here gets to decide who he wants to play with from now on.”

  “Even so, he’ll never choose you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She arches a steely brow.

  I glare at her, and she glares at me. Infuriating, soddy wench. “Come along, Urlick.” I yank on his arm. He peels her leg from his waist. “We’ve a party to attend.”

  “Good luck with that.” The automaton falls back against a tree. “Those who attend Sir Hatter’s parties seldom come back. At least, not all in one piece.” She twirls a coil of her steel shaving hair around her test-tube finger. “Chop. Chop.” She makes a cutting motion and starts to laugh.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap.

  She crinkles her nut nose. “Who am I to spoil the fun.” She slides around the back of the tree. The flowers at the base of it giggle.

  An icy chill shakes inside me. “Let’s go, Urlick,” I steer him away. Without warning, she pulls a perfume bottle out from between her breasts, darts forward, and sprays Urlick in the face with it. A great, grey plume engulfs his head. He coughs and chokes, and fans himself.

  “What is that? What have you done?” I wave the cloud from his gooney-looking face. He giggles, dizzily.

  “You’re a wicked, wicked automaton.” I turn on her.

  “And you’re a stupid, stupid girl,” she barks.

  “Urlick?” I snap my fingers in his face. “Urlick, are you all right?”

  “Urlick, are you all right?” The automaton mocks me, hands on hips, then drops the bottle back down between her breasts. “My job here is done.” She turns on heel and strides away.

  “Urlick!” I shake him by the shoulders, trying to wake him from the trance.

  “Better get going,” the automaton coos. “You don’t want to be late for the party.” I turn and drag Urlick off. “Don’t want to miss the elusive silver rabbit.”

  “Will he be there?” I spin back around, but she’s already gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Flossie

  “BLASTED RABBIT!” I DIVE after it and fall, tentacles flopping, slapping myself in the head with one of my arms. My own suckers stick to my face. I flex a muscle, and they pop loose. “How honestly degrading!”

  I stare at my sucker-marred reflection in an oily puddle. I cannot wait to be restored to my former beauty.

  And I used to think a harelip was a problem.

  I curse the rabbit again. The slippery little sucker slunk right through my grasp. I’ve been chasing it now for over an hour, around and around this godforsaken place. I ball my bluing fists and shake them in the direction it last leapt. “How dare you steal something from me!”

  I blow out a breath, warding off a falling piece of filthy, fly ash that circles my head like a pesky crow. “God knows this place gives Brethren a good name.” Metal hills, tin trees, alloy flowers, and all of it rusting… Could the design be anymore dismal?

  I wonder whose ugly brainchild this ridiculousness is? I flick soot and grit from my skirts then pry a metal stone from my boot and toss it into an oily stream. It disappears with a plunk. Rusted metal leaves begin clanking in the trees. A tigress wind stalks up my back. The ringlets at my temples flutter. I whirl around to find the smog-filled sky directly above me has prematurely darkened.

  Oh, no. I gulp, and close my eyes them open them again, hoping what I’m imagining before me isn’t real. It simply cannot be. Yet, it is. I swallow. A daunting shadow falls over me.

  It’s certainly not the rabbit’s. Something far, far worse.

  I walk my eyes slowly up a rugged pair of jackboots, over fishnet stockings, past a set of ruffled bloomers, and down the snout of a steamcannon, to the pocked and hairy faced of the creature that holds it. “Can I help you?” I ask, my voice quavering.

  The corset-sporting creature grunts. He says nothing more, just snatches me from the ground, tucks me up under its great stinky arm, and carts me away.

  “Wait!” I kick and scream. “Where are you taking me?”

  “You are to attend the party. By order of the Queen,” the great hairy thing says.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “She’ll eat you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Eyelet

  THE EARTH HOLDS STILL THIS time, as we race-walk toward the city. I manage to pull Urlick part-way out of his stupor, but whatever was in that bottle, still has him reeling.

  We jog up the grass at the side of the pathway, this time, along the edge of the oily stream. The ground seems to hold as long as we don’t run, though not running isn’t helping us make great time. Suddenly we happen upon a double fork in the road.

  “Now what?” Urlick asks. He bends and pinches the stitch in his side, his eyes still a little bit squirrely.

  “I don’t know.” I pace, working out a stitch of my own. “All of this is just a colossal waste of time. How are we supposed to know how to ge
t somewhere we’ve never been? And what kind of a useless sign is that?”

  Stuck in the middle of the double fork sits a doubly confusing sign.

  “You could go this way or that. Or another,” I read slowly.

  The sign points in all four directions.

  “How are we supposed to know which road will lead us there the fastest? Or if any of them even leads us there at all?”

  “It is perplexing at best,” Urlick slurs his words.

  “What you’re looking for is the long cut,” a low, slow voice remarks in a haughty tone.

  I whip around to find a huge, mechanical daddy long-legs rising up out of a mysterious plume of unexplained dust. The spider towers over me. So much so, I’m forced to look up. In fact, this is the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It’s as tall, if not taller, than my beloved brass mechanical elephant back at the carnival. And completely frightening.

  The arachnid stretches its spindly, metal-sleeve legs out across both forks in the road. They extend, unfurling noisily, telescope-like, one chink at a time, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, until the tips of its claws—three per leg, made of soldered on pins—stick into the earth. They surround us from either side, like tiny stabbing knives. Its face, a speculum metal disk, is as big as a gristmill stone. And its abdomen, made of an expanding bellow, billows up the size of hot air balloon.

  Hundreds of cast off clock parts—hands, motors, shafts, dials—make up the inner workings of its cephalothorax. A large clasp from a watch chain forms its fangs. An alarm clock ticks inside its grenade-shell chest.

  I’m terrified to know what makes up its parallaxing eyes.

  “What do you mean a ‘long cut’?” I finally say, having grown brave enough to speak.

  Its pin tip claws needle deeper in the earth.

  I wriggle a little in my skin.

  “Why the longest way there possible, of course.” It raises a chain-link brow.

  I cock my head. “Why ever would we want to do that?”