by Mackenzi Lee
They led us through a checkpoint and outside the city walls until we were standing at the edge of the lake. At our feet, the water lapped hungrily at the shore. I wondered for a moment why they’d brought us here rather than just finishing us off behind the station, but I figured it was probably easier to throw our bodies into the lake and be rid of them. A bitter wind snapped off the waves as one of the officers pushed me forward so that my face was toward their rifles with Father beside me. I shivered.
I am going to die here, I thought.
I wondered if it was a luxury, knowing the end was coming, or if it was better for it to knock you down out of nowhere, like Oliver crashing from the clock tower. Everything felt like it was crashing—the waves behind us, the raucous carols mixed with laughter from the city, the sound of my heartbeat as it clawed at my chest. But then I thought of Oliver, alive and free, and it all quieted a bit.
I took a breath and closed my eyes.
The officers’ rifles clattered as they swung them off their shoulders. I waited to hear the shots or feel the pain or at least the impact. To feel something. But long seconds stretched to a minute, and nothing happened.
I opened my eyes. The officers were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of us with the butts of their rifles still on the ground. They were all staring at me. Then Krieg said, “You stopped the explosions.”
I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I tried to speak, so I just nodded.
He took a step forward, hands outstretched, and I flinched. “It’s all right,” he said, and I realized he was undoing the chains from around my wrists. When I was free, he unfastened Father’s too and tossed them into the water behind us. Their splash was swallowed by the waves.
Krieg turned to the other officers. “Gentlemen,” he said, and they all raised their rifles to the sky and fired once. I knew it was meant as a decoy, but somehow—madly—it felt like a salute.
Then the officers turned. They began to walk back to the station. And Father and I were left alone.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get my breath back. I was standing there like I was made of stone, shaking and gasping and wondering how the bleeding hell I was still on my feet. More than that, how I was still alive. We both were.
“Alasdair.” Father’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Alasdair, we need to go.” I felt his hand on my arm. I think he meant to pull me toward the road, probably to run, but instead I turned and fell against him, my face pressed into his shoulder. After a moment, he reached up, and we stayed there for a while with my face in his coat and his hand on the back of my neck.
Far behind us, buried deep within the city streets, I heard the tower clock strike.
Ornex was the first town across the French border, and it was where Mum was hiding at Morand’s boardinghouse. It was a few hours’ walk there on a clear day, but it took us most of the night to reach it. We had to cross the foothills to avoid the checkpoints at the border, which involved a fair amount of scrambling up rock faces slick with ice. The striped shadows from the pines made it nearly impossible to see where we were going, and I kept sinking into snowdrifts that I barely had the strength to pull myself back out of. It was the coldest I could remember being in my whole life.
I was stumbling more than walking by the time we crossed into France and rejoined the road. My shirt was soaked through with sweat and blood and snow, and I kept swiping at my nose and coming back with fistfuls of scarlet. Father had a tight hold on my arm to keep me up, though he wasn’t much steadier than I was.
Ornex was a tiny town, and with dawn just beginning to bleed across the sky, it was nearly as dark as the foothills. We staggered through the streets for a while before Father spotted the half-timbered boardinghouse painted bright blue, with Morand’s name on the hanging sign. “Just here,” I heard him murmur. “Come on, stay awake.” I wasn’t certain which of us he was talking to.
Father dragged me up onto the stoop beside him and unwrapped his hands from my coat so he could hammer on the door. As soon as he let me go, I started to sink. “Alasdair—” He grabbed me around the waist, but instead of him getting me back up I dragged him down as well. My knees connected hard with the stones.
And that was how we were, tangled on the ground like unstrung marionettes, when the door opened. The faint light from a fire beyond felt like staring into the sun, so bright it made my vision blur.
“Finch! God’s wounds, how did you get here?” That was Morand’s voice. I felt his metal hand pulling me up, but I couldn’t see straight enough to stand—everything was tipped and darkening. Father and Morand were both holding on to me, trying to get me on my feet, but then a wall of the warm, boozy air from inside hit me hard as a slap. All my strength surrendered, and I passed out cold.
This time, I had a sense of sleeping far longer than I should have. I knew there was something I had to do, some pressing reason for me to wake, but it was like being underwater with stones tied to my ankles. When I finally clawed my way up to the surface with a gasp, it took me a moment to make sense of my surroundings. I was in bed, in a tiny, bare room with no idea how I got there. I was still cold, but I wasn’t shaking anymore, and the pain in my shoulder had dropped into an ache. And sitting beside me, white hair glowing like sun-gilded snow, was—
“Clémence.” Her name left me in a breath.
“Good morning,” she said, and the corners of her mouth turned up. “You look gorgeous.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted, “You’re alive.”
“So are you. That seems a bit more miraculous just now.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I thought I was dead too, if it’s any consolation.”
“Bleeding hell, I left you. I should have gone back. I thought—”
“Alasdair, calm down. It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not, it’s not all right. I left you—”
“Alasdair, stop.” She put a hand on mine, and the feeling of her skin—of her, real and true and alive—stilled me. “It’s all right,” she said gently, the softest she’d ever spoken to me. Something inside my chest unclenched, and I slumped backward again with a shaky breath. Clémence dropped her hand with a smirk. “Look at that. You’ve only been awake a minute and you’ve already worn yourself out.”
“How did you get away?”
“Oliver came back for me while you were putting on your show for the police and he brought me here. You only missed him by a few hours.”
I didn’t know who to ask about first, my parents or Oliver, but then, like an answer, the door opened and Mum entered, Father on her heels. “God’s wounds, Alasdair!” She didn’t cry or make a fuss, but she put her hands on either side of my face and held on for a long moment, like she was making sure I was truly there.
Father stood behind her with his arms crossed. He didn’t look quite himself yet, but he was standing steadier than before and some of the color had come back to his face. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“I’m all right.” I thought about sitting up as proof but decided that would be too exhausting, so I just stayed slumped against my pillow while he took my pulse and pressed a hand to my forehead.
“Your fever’s gone down. Do you think you could eat something?”
“How long have I been asleep?” I asked.
“Most of the day,” Clémence replied. “Happy Christmas.”
“Hell’s teeth.” I made a valiant attempt to sit up but barely made it to my elbow.
Father stopped me, but I wouldn’t have made it all the way if he hadn’t. “What’s wrong?”
“I have to go.”
“Alasdair, it’s all right,” Mum said. “We’re safe here for now, we don’t have to leave. As soon as you’re feeling—”
“No, I have to go. I have to find Mary.”
“Absolutely not. You’re not well,” Father said at the same time Clémence said, “What do you want with her?”
“It’s something I h
ave to do. For . . .” I swallowed. “For Oliver.” Father didn’t say anything, and Mum looked at the floor. Father must have told her, but I wondered if she’d seen Oliver when he brought Clémence here. She didn’t say anything, but reached out for my hand, and I met her halfway. “Please, just trust me,” I said. “If I wait too long, I may not be able to find her again.”
Mum nodded, but Father kept his arms crossed and stared me down with his mouth set in a firm line. “You’ll be careful?”
“Always.”
“You’re not going anywhere for a few days.”
“I know that.”
“Your mother and I were thinking we might stay here until things have calmed down. Help Morand.” He paused, then added, “You don’t . . . you don’t have to stay with us. But we’d like to know you’re all right.”
“I can do that.”
He gave a small humph, then nodded shortly, and I knew that was as close to permission as I was going to get.
We talked for a bit longer, in a roundabout way where none of us actually mentioned anything that had happened over the course of the past few weeks. There would be a better time for that. The conversation wore me out, and after a while they left me to sleep. Mum kissed me on the cheek, then tugged on one of my curls. “You need a haircut, Alasdair. You’re getting scruffy.”
Father stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. His eyes met mine, and we both smiled.
As soon as my parents were gone, Clémence made to sit down again, but I grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the bed. “Come here, will you?”
Her mouth twitched, and after a quick glance at the door, she lay down beside me, on top of the blanket with her face away from mine. I slid my arm around her waist and pressed my forehead into her shoulder. Her hair still smelled like sulfur from the bombs, and for a moment I was back in the clock tower. “Do you know where Oliver went?” I asked.
“North,” she replied. “He said something about Russia.”
“Was he all right?”
“Yes,” she said, and she sounded sure. “He was very calm, which was surprising after everything. More than anything, he just seemed ready. Ready to go somewhere new. Try again.” There was a pause, then she added, “He asked me to go with him.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to find you. Make sure you were all right too.” She shifted, and I could feel the gears on the other side of her skin thrum. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and I realized that I was. My whole body hurt and I couldn’t remember ever being so tired, but I felt better than I had since Oliver died. I still missed him, but not in the way that I had for the past two years, when he was standing right in front of me and still not there. It was the way I used to miss him, on the nights he didn’t come home or when he’d go boxing and leave me alone at the shop. The way I’d missed him in the days right after he died, missed him so much I had to bring him back.
I didn’t know what was going to happen now—to him, or to me, or any of us. But that didn’t matter so much right then. My brother was out there: alive, and whole, and himself.
“Do you think things will be better?” I asked.
“For Oliver, or for clockwork men and Shadow Boys in general?”
“Either. Both.”
“The clockworks that stayed in Geneva won’t have an easy time after what happened. I don’t think your brother will either, no matter where he goes. It probably won’t be good for any of us for a long time, but I like to think that crooked things have a way of straightening themselves out.”
“Someday,” I said.
“Someday,” she repeated. “And what a world that will be.”
Sleep was closing in, but I focused on the feeling of Clémence beside me, her skin against mine, her heart beating through her shoulder blades and into my chest. “Will you come with me to see Mary?” I mumbled.
She didn’t answer for a moment, and I was afraid I was going to fall asleep and miss her answer. Then she said, “If you want me to.”
“I do,” I replied, and I fell asleep just as her hand fumbled its way into mine.
A week later, I sat in the front room of the Shelleys’ house in Turin. It was warmer in Italy than it had been in Switzerland, and the combination of clear winter sunlight coursing through the windows and a roaring fire made the room stifling.
January 1, 1819. The first day of the new year.
I had cleaned up as best I could. There was nothing to be done about my bashed-up face, and my arm was back in a sling, but before we left Ornex, Morand had found a jacket that nearly fit me, and my boots had shined up nicely. I still felt shabby. The Shelleys weren’t living as well as they had in Geneva, but it was a good deal finer than what I was accustomed to.
Mary was on the chaise across the room, her shoulders sagging so that she seemed to sink back into the upholstery. Percy Shelley stood at the fireplace, staring pointedly away from anyone. His dirty-blond hair was pulled into sleek pigtail and he wore a well-tailored tailcoat in midnight blue. Silhouetted against the fireplace in his fine clothes, he looked like a figure in a painting. When I’d arrived and Mary had introduced us, he’d gripped my hand harder than I thought he needed to, and his gaze had almost been as sharp as Jiroux’s. Perhaps he recognized me as Victor Frankenstein, or had heard other, truer stories about me. Or perhaps he hadn’t known I existed until Clémence and I showed up on their doorstep, the same way I hadn’t known of him until I kissed Mary on the shore of Lake Geneva.
The Shelleys had been easy enough to find. Gossip followed them like a rank odor, and we hadn’t even left Ornex before someone told us that Mary had traveled from Geneva to Turin on Christmas Eve. Our arrival had been uncomfortable, to be generous about it. Mary had hidden her shock poorly; Shelley hadn’t even tried to hide his, or the anger that came close on its heels. He’d objected to my proposition and laughed at my poor attempts at extortion. As much as I knew about Mary, I had little ammunition against them. Their reputation was already so wretched that I could hardly do it further damage. Shelley had shouted at me for a while, and I’d endured it with a blank face in spite of the fear sitting heavy inside me that I wouldn’t be able to keep the promise I’d made to Oliver.
Mary had said very little while Shelley raged, and she’d made no move to stop him. But she caught me at the door as I left and asked me quietly to come back the next day. When I arrived, there was a small, round man sitting in the armchair beside the fire, clutching a notepad while a white-faced Shelley stood at the mantelpiece. He was a reporter, Mary explained to me, from an English newspaper, stationed in Turin. She had invited him—without asking Shelley—to report on what she had promised him would be the story of the year. Which was a big claim, considering we were only a day in.
“Mrs. Shelley,” the reporter prompted, and Mary looked up at him. She had broken off midsentence and was staring out the window.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and tugged at her necklace. “Could you repeat the question?”
“What was your intention when you wrote Frankenstein?”
“I had no intention but to tell an imagined story,” Mary replied. “I never meant to cast my allegiance to one side, or for my novel to be such a rallying point for oppression and fear.” Her gaze flitted to me, the moment too brief to be called eye contact.
The reporter scribbled something down on his pad, then dipped his pen again. “Why did you choose to publish the novel anonymously?”
“That was my suggestion,” Shelley interrupted. “We wanted to see if the book had merit on its own without my surname attached to it.”
Mary’s mouth tightened into a frown, but she said nothing.
The reporter made a note, then looked back to her. “And now you will be republishing under your own name?”
“Yes,” Mary replied. “I want everyone to know I wrote it.”
“There has been a good deal of speculation, Mrs. Shelley, particularly with the recent uprising in
Geneva, that your novel was based on an incident surrounding the late Dr. Basil Geisler and his work.”
My hand flexed on the arm of my chair. There had been no mention of Mary or the resurrected man in the official reports out of Geneva, and only a hint that the rebellion might have been sparked by Frankenstein. The unofficial reports had ranged from laughable to shockingly close to the truth. In Ornex alone, I’d heard stories that included the resurrected man and Frankenstein, as well as Mary. But no mention of my own name, or Oliver’s.
Mary pursed her lips but managed to keep her tone light when she spoke. “I don’t know anything about the uprising.”
“Really?” The reporter leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and his mustache twitched. “Because I heard that you were seen in Switzerland just before—”
“Move on,” Shelley growled from his post at the mantel.
The reporter sat back with a wary glance at Shelley, then ran his finger down his pad like he was finding his place again. “Could you tell me, Mrs. Shelley, where precisely the inspiration for the novel came from? If not from truth, that is.”
Mary looked to Shelley, but he kept his back to her. For one gut-twisting second, I thought she was going to change her mind and leave me with the shards of another broken promise. But then she said, so softly the reporter and I both leaned closer, “It came to me in a dream.”
“A dream?” the reporter repeated, and he sounded disappointed.
“While my husband and I were in Geneva, some of our friends were having a competition to see who could write the best ghost story, but I couldn’t think of anything. Then one night I dreamed of a student, kneeling, with a corpse made of gears and cogs stretched out before him. And then by the working of the engine placed inside, the monster came to life.”