Soleil

by Jacqueline Garlick

  “Engage!” Smrt shouts.

  I turn around.

  The monster machine bounds after me, hovering just at the tops of the trees, hunched forward in its propulsion so I can clearly see the expressions of my attackers.

  The Ringmaster yanks back on a throttle in his bubble. The guns on the front of the mount, activate, jutting out from the base of the sidecar. Three snub-nosed cannon-launchers and two rapid-fire steam machine guns, rise up into position, squaring me up in their sights.

  More spiders flood over the ridge in front of me, forming a solid chain on either side of Smrt’s machine, blocking me from escaping. I don’t know who or what to keep my eyes on. The insects form an arch and move inward, surrounding all of us.

  We’ve no choice but to turn back.

  “Eyelet!” I shout, seeing her cornered by a couple of large pedes.

  I raise my cannon-launcher and fire, launching a strike straight through the one pede’s head, not wanting to shoot too close to Eyelet for fear of hitting her, and leave the other pede unharmed. Eyelet lurches right, reacting to the explosion, narrowly escaping a flame throwing strike from the other pede.

  The Ringmaster squints and takes aim.

  “Fire!” Smrt shouts.

  I’d all but forgotten about him.

  A volley of bullets sprays my way. “Hyah!” I turn on a jewelet and outrun them.

  Gunfire smoke wreaths the Ringmaster’s sidecar. He grins and loads again.

  The centipedes aim again, launching flaming arrows into the air that drop and set the forest ablaze in pockets all around us.

  “They’re trying to trap us,” Livinea gasps, looking back. “What are we gonna do?”

  Iris slows her elephant.

  The spiders take aim, casting long, sticky, never-ending lines of gunk-laced spinnerets over our heads, quickly creating a cross-hatched pattern across the forest, though most get caught in the trees.

  “They’re creatin’ a web,” C.L. shouts.

  I look up, dodging a line as it falls, catching sight of another sticky projectile streaming past in my peripheral. “Masheck,” I holler, seeing it fly over him. He skids to a stop before it hits him, earth curling beneath his pachyderm’s feet.

  The spiders spew line after line coating the grasses in webs.

  The butler retreats, but his steam elephant’s leg gets caught up in one of the webs and brings the great beast down. “No!” he shouts.

  The spiders move in with lightning speed, casting spinneret after spinneret, pinning both he and the elephant down.

  The butler scrambles from his mount, trying to escape, but the sticky webs won’t let him go. He’s trapped beneath the growing web, his arms and face covered. A spider quickly bundles him up in its thread. He struggles, emitting violent screams as the spider laces him tight to the ground.

  He blinks out from beneath the thickening web. The web latches to him, driving thousands of tiny spine-like spears into his skin, injecting him with poison. He thrashes and screams, his desperate, brittle voice echoing through the forest, until eventually his cries cease.

  “God, no,” Livinea shrieks, yanking back on her charge.

  More spiders attack.

  Smrt’s laughter booms throughout the forest, crackling through his short-circuiting gramophonic speakers, like the haunting reaction of a demented god. “And so you will all die, as he has,” he rasps in his low, garbled voice. “Every last one of you! Die! Die! Die!”

  I whirl around to find myself bone-chillingly close to him, his vengeful eyes locked on me. He holds his hand, a fuse box in it, high enough for me to see, his thumb hovering over the box’s plunger.

  “And you thought you could win this one.”

  I track the wire attached to the bottom of the box, through the side of his mechanical carriage, to a nest of sparking, snaggled wires, weaving up throughout the bottom of the structure of the great, rusting Illuminator. A long length of sulfuric cable connects the two. All he needs to do is light the charge.

  “No!” I slam my heels into my elephant’s sides and ride crazily toward him. “No, this can’t happen!”

  C.L. and Masheck spring into action beside me, joining in the charge.

  I look back, seeing Eyelet swinging around. She sees what I see: it’s in her expression, in the terror of the sound she makes. She lays into Clementine’s sides and races toward us, as the Ringmaster raises his guns. My heart collapses in my chest. “No!” I shout, urging her to hang back.

  Maniacal laughter pours through the metal slats in Smrt’s glass bubble.

  I look to her, then to him, and back.

  Thoughts of the tea party ignite in my brain. The capsule, the laughing, the game, his madness. If only I’d been able to save the necklace. If only I’d overthrown him in the end. None of this would be happening. None of it.

  It stops now.

  I set my sights on Smrt and push my elephant to his capacity, closing off the last few strides that separate us. Bearing down, I grit my teeth, drawing my steam-cannon launcher from my hip, and focus him in my scope.

  A flashing red sensor pulses from the base of the capsule, and my attention jerks to that.

  Smrt’s jaw flies open. Laughter again. “Did you really think I’d let you get that close? Did you really think I’d let you kill me?” He stares at me through his last good eye, narrowing it to a slit. “You had your chance to save them back at the party,” he shouts. “All of them!” His voice booms low and demented. “But you made the wrong choice, and now you lose.”

  He makes no sense. It’s all just madness. My eyes flit between him and his artillery.

  Something tings. A red pulsing light ignites on the side of the great Illuminator.

  The massive machine rumbles as it wakes. A countdown begins.

  Forty-nine,

  Forty-eight,

  The storm inside the capsule rages as the mighty machine’s frame shakes.

  “No.” Eyelet hammers Clementine in the sides and races faster. “No, no, no, no!”

  “Don’t, Eyelet, wait!” I draw back on my elephant’s reins and whirl around, thundering after her, pushing my animal to top speed, seeing the Ringmaster’s intention in his eyes, down the barrel of his gun. Eyelet is to be his victim, not me.

  “That’s it, darling, come to Papa,” Smrt calls from his mount, his dastardly voice etching up my spine.

  Eyelet cocks the hammer of the flamethrower in her hand, draws it back and launches a weak round, barely meeting and scorching the face of Smrt’s protective bubble.

  “That’s it, that’s it…” The ringmaster coos training her in his sight.

  “Eyeeeeeelet!” I shout.

  She turns to me just as he fires. Smoke billows from his massive gun’s snout. Everything slows to an unbearable pace as Eyelet makes the connection. She stares back at me, fear flashing in her eyes, as she wheels Clementine around in an impossibly tight circle and rides back toward me, horror etched across her grimacing face.

  “Hyah!” I kick my elephant’s sides. Charging forward, I take aim, releasing the first of a double-barrel cannon strike from my elephant’s tusks, the biggest ammo the animal packs. I must deflect their strike. The first of my hits takes Smrt’s mighty contraption out at the knees. The huge machine staggers, its feet grinding into the earth as it tries to maintain balance. Even from here, I can see Smrt being tossed about inside.

  It grinds to a sobering stop on its massive talon-gripping feet.

  The second cannonball sails and hits, detonating just short of its target, blanketing Smrt in a shower of dirt and debris.

  Thirty-Seven,

  Thirty-Six,

  The ringmaster takes aim from his side car bubble, peppering the ground around Eyelet in bullets. Clementine jolts to a sliding stop. She prances and screams, not knowing what to do, how to flee, as the bullets that hit the ground, erupt all around them trapping them behind a fence of spears. They spring up from the ground into pointed end, forming a solid circular c
orral, five hands high.

  “Urlick!” Eyelet shrieks, looking up at me over the tips of their ends.

  They’re trapped. She’s not getting out of this.

  Eyelet turns on Clementine, working her in circles. The horse balks and whinnies. She refuses Eyelet, as she demands the horse pick up speed in the tiny space they’re trapped. She pushes her, forcing her to reach within to try and leap the fence of spears.

  “No!” I gallop at them.

  She looks to Smrt, then frantically to me.

  “Don’t!” I shake my head.

  “Prepare to bleed,” Smrt laughs again, catcalling from his machine as the ringmaster takes aim.

  Eyelet leans back, forcing Clementine to rear. The horse whinnies and kicks out her front feet.

  Clem can’t possibly clear those spears. There’s not enough room. “No!” I shout at Eyelet, as she forces the horse to leap.

  Somehow, Clementine manages to clear the trap, but not by much. The spears graze her skin. Blood springs from her hind flanks as they land, and Clementine snaps forward into a full-out gallop, blood streaming down her hind legs.

  Smrt cusses and shrieks. “You shouldn’t have done that!”

  I glance back over my shoulder, to see Eyelet on Clementine, galloping as fast as she can.

  Smrt raises his launcher and lets off a round of fire power, blowing the cook to bits. I shudder watching her drop from her mount.

  “One,” Smrt shouts, sizing up his next victim.

  A scream slices through the air behind me. I twist around in time to see the groom blown from his mount. “Two,” Smrt moves his sights onto Sadar.

  Sadar. “No,” I breathe, as Smrt takes aim, plucking him out of the sky.

  I turn my head as Sadar ejects.

  Sadar shouts out, then strikes the ground, breaking his neck. The bone crushing sound is unmistakable. His mosquito roars on, engine whining as it spirals through the trees and to the ground, exploding into flames on impact. “Four.” Smrt takes aim at another.

  Livinea cries out and pulls her steed to a stop, as Martin attempts to bail from his wasp. But he’s struck mid-air by a bullet and falls, pile-driving his wasp into the ground. Several spiders scurry in, devouring Martin whole, as Livinea shrieks and covers her eyes.

  I turn away, as the bloody carnage plays out all around me. The maid, the footman, and the others, all now dead.

  You will pay for this, you son-of-a-bitch. I will see to it!

  I whirl around on Smrt, abandoning my chase just as the Ringmaster’s gun sizes up Livinea in its scope.

  “Noooooooooo!” C.L. shouts and blazes toward her.

  My stomach pulls up into my throat.

  “C.L!” I charge forward, Masheck bolting toward him as well.

  Leaning back in my mount, I spray the ringmaster with bullets, hoping to throw off his aim, too afraid to deploy anything more lethal with C.L. ahead of me, so dangerously close in range.

  Wanda zooms down from the sky, peppering Smrt and the Ringmaster in another round of rapid steam-bullets. C.L. draws back in his saddle, loads his steam crossbow, and shoots. His arrows clip the Ringmaster’s bubble.

  The ringmaster glares at him through the glass.

  Spiders shoot from their posts. I blast their mechanical guts to bits, taking them out in droves. I stop to reload, and shells rain down on us.

  C.L. lets off another crossbow shot, gutting the offender straight through the heart. The giant mechanical millipede falls with a nerve-racking thud to the ground. Another shot comes from the side, threatening Livinea.

  C.L. takes another crossbow shot. He destroys the culprit. Livinea darts left in time to escape another incoming round of gunshot, then slows, and squints her eyes, aims her rifle and fires, pummeling the undercarriage of the Ringmaster’s side-car. “There you go! That’s what I'm talkin’ about!”

  Smrt launches a fire bomb, lighting up the forest to our left.

  “Masheck!” I shout in warning.

  He looks up just in time to bolt away from the artillery fallout, then gives me the sign that he’s all right.

  My eyes light on the storm in the glass capsule. Arcs of radium now flicker within its rage, growing stronger, darker, more violent by the moment.

  Twenty-five,

  Twenty-four,

  Somehow I’ve got to stop this.

  Tracking the snout of the ringmaster’s gun, I realize its Eyelet, he now has set in his sights. She gallops with her back to him, unknowing, Smrt smirking. I lunge forward in the saddle and give my elephant the charge command, but it’s too late.

  Bullets knock her from her mount.

  I swallow the scream that rises in me, and ride toward her like the Vapours, my mind suddenly trudging through water, everything in the world around me blurring.

  Eyelet lands on the ground a good rock’s throw from her weapon. She tries to stand but stumbles, then tries to crawl. He’s hit her clean through the leg. Her hands are covered in blood. She lunges, her fingers straining, but can’t reach her gun.

  “Six,” the Ringmaster shouts, laughing. Smrt joins in. Their voices wail from the speakers, fragmenting up the forest all around us.

  Eyelet looks suddenly up, her eyes pleading. They urge me to turn back.

  I glance over my shoulder, and see why.

  I’m to be Smrt’s next victim.

  “Seven.” Smrt laughs wildly, calling his target like a pool player would his next ball in the pocket.

  “Watch out!” Livinea screams, and takes aim at Smrt’s glass carriage, blasting it with her elephant’s steamharpoon. It sails through the air like a missile, hitting the glass with a loud crack, knocking Smrt temporarily off balance. I flinch at the sound of his gun being deployed anyway. Bullets whistle, cutting the air, winging past me so close, they steal the breath from my lungs.

  I look back. I’d have no head right now if it weren’t for Livinea.

  I gallop on as fast as I can. Over my shoulder, I sense something. I turn to see Smrt hanging out the side of his bubble’s window, bow in his hands, its quiver aimed at Eyelet.

  It wasn’t me, it was never me he was after. It’s her he needs. He needs her blood.

  The world spins out in front of me.

  Eyelet lies coughing on the ground, as Smrt pulls back his bow.

  I dig my heels into my animal and drive forward, as the air at my back warps with the sound of his releasing bow. The arrow rushes past me and my world slows to half-beat time. A lump strangles my throat. The quiver slices through the air with the utmost of ease. A red-tipped arrow.

  Reaching to my hip, I draw my cannon launcher, sit back, take aim and shoot—in an attempt to clip his arrow. But the arrow’s too quick. The cannonball falls short of its target. The arrow whistles on. I’m helpless to stop it.

  Eyelet looks to me, blood on her lips.

  I freeze, unable to breathe—

  “Look out!” Wanda shouts, diving down from the sky, pulling her great mechanical wasp into a low sharp turn. She streaks across the air in front of Eyelet—taking the arrow meant for her straight through the neck.

  “Oh, God!” Eyelet shouts as Wanda falls, her wasp flying on without her, nose diving through a thicket of trees and into the ground, where it explodes into fire. Wanda drops to the ground, her lifeless body rolling to an abrupt stop against the trunk of a tree— rumpled into ball of mangled bones and flesh.

  “No,” Eyelet shrieks, and claws at the earth trying to reach her, but cannot move her legs. “No, no, no…” She sits back, splattered in Wanda’s blood.

  Livinea screeches and bails from her mount, racing to the two of them.

  C.L.’s gaze jerks from Wanda to the Ringmaster. He lets out a sound like a wild animal. His face becomes stone-like. His body rigid. His eyes hollow.

  He hollers at the top of his lungs.

  Then turns and charges toward Smrt with a sick blaze in his eyes, and sprays them both in bullets. Rising to a stand on his rhino’s back, he draws back
his steam crossbow, cracking the window of the Ringmaster’s bubble with its force and driving the bow straight through his skull.

  C.L. whoops in victory.

  Smrt retaliates, spraying C.L. in steam machine gun fire.

  C.L. drives his rhino on, headed straight for Smrt. He throws out the nubs of his arms and tosses his head back joyously, shouting as Smrt lets off a round of ammo, riddling his chest in bullets. His body waves and shakes in time with the hits.

  I shout and scream and crumble.

  Livinea shrieks and scrambles back up onto her mount and rides toward C.L.

  C.L. falls backward in a spray of bullets, his skull hitting the ground. Livinea drops from her saddle and races to his side as his rhino charges on. Its massive arsenal of artillery explodes upon impact, taking Smrt and the ringmaster down. Smrt’s face engulfs in flames, his wild eyes screaming, a torrent wave of his faltering voice jags throughout the forest as the protective layer of his bubble melts and the fire slowly devours him.

  I stop my pursuit, watching the flames as they burst and lick the sky.

  Livinea sobs at C.L.’s side, collecting him up in her arms. “No, no, please, no.” She uses a handful of skirt to mop up his blood. “Please, please, don’t die…” She wails, flinching at each new segment of explosion, rocking C.L. back and forth in her arms.

  My heart anchors itself in my throat. I ride in with plans to drag her away.

  C.L. eyes flutter open. “Kiss me.” he rasps.

  “What?” Livinea lifts her weeping head.

  “Kiss me, I said. Let me die with the taste of yuh on me lips,” C.L. wheezes. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

  Choking back her sobs, Livinea lunges forward and kisses C.L. long and lush and hard, and he falls still. “No,” she cries, falling into a heap over his chest. “No, no, no…” She pounds the ground.

  Fifteen,

  Fourteen,