by Lev AC Rosen
She stopped walking and held up her hand. “I don’t think we’re alone.”
“Another cat?” Jack asked hopefully. He clearly wanted to study them, or was thinking of various pranks to pull with them. He reached into his pocket and took out Sheila. She woke from a peaceful sleep to look around at her new surroundings.
“You brought the ferret?” Violet asked, seeing it in the darkness.
“They have a great sense of smell,” Jack said. “Maybe she can catch one of the cats!”
“Cats are twice the size of ferrets,” Violet pointed out.
“I’m sure Sheila can hold her own,” Jack said.
“Anyway, I don’t think it’s cats.… I think there are people somewhere around.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jack. “Looked like the older students who warned us about the initiation. I spotted them a while ago. I assume they’re just keeping watch on us to make sure we don’t get into too much trouble so they don’t get blamed if we do.”
“Ah, well, if that’s the game, then that’s all right.” Violet said, and went back to pondering which direction to go next.
“My year, we were already safe in our beds by now,” Toby said, stepping out of the darkness, Drew right behind him. Violet raised an eyebrow at his coming out of hiding. “Well, if you know we’re here, no point us stumbling around in the shadows, is there? May as well just walk along with you.” Violet raised an eyebrow at him. “But, you know, my year, we were already safe in our beds by now.”
“Why don’t you just show us the way out?” Fairfax snarled.
“That wouldn’t be much fun, now, would it?” Toby said.
“This isn’t fun,” Fairfax responded.
“I didn’t mean fun for you.” Toby grinned. Drew chuckled.
“Well, I’m having a good time,” Violet said, “and I bet Jack is, too.”
“I am,” Jack said, “though I wish it had been an invisible cat you heard.”
“Well then, first-years,” Toby said with a wave of his hand, “lead on.”
In truth, Toby was a bit worried. This was a part of the basement he had never explored before. In previous years, one of the students had always had a compass on him, and it had never taken long for them to reason that the elevator must be on the great gear wall, so they just had to head toward the river to find the lift. This group seemed like it contained nothing but geniuses with no forethought for little things and people who didn’t take initiations seriously. He hoped it wouldn’t land them in too much trouble. Just a little while longer, he thought; then he’d take out his own compass.
At the end of one of the corridors there was a door that was very different from the others. The others had been simple wooden affairs with brass knobs and locks. This door was tall—it nearly reached the ceiling—and made entirely of brass. More curiously, there was no knob, handle, or visible way of opening it. But most striking of all wasn’t so much the door as the various figures lying around the wall in front of it.
“Skeletons?” Drew asked in a high-pitched voice. Violet swallowed. It seemed the older students hadn’t come this way before, and the shadows ahead did indeed look like skeletons.
“Possibly for research,” Jack said in a weaker voice than usual, “in the biology laboratory.” Violet nodded and shot her light at them, half-wondering if they would come to life. However, the light reflected back not white bone, but brass mechanics.
“They’re automata,” Violet said with wonder. “But why are they all just lying here?” Indeed, some of them had fallen from their leaning positions and lay in a heap at the end of the corridor. Violet, curious about their design, stepped forward and touched the first one. It was a thin figure, with long bonelike limbs that had at first made it look like a skeleton. But where the rib cage would have been was a large centerpiece with a clockwork key sticking out of it. And where a skull would have been was a smooth, featureless head but without eyes or mouth. It seemed oddly familiar to Violet, but she couldn’t figure out what she thought she recognized.
It was when she headed past the first figure to examine the second that the first came to life. She gasped, watching as its head straightened itself on its thin slumped neck and its thick heavy feet steadied themselves on the ground. Each movement made a squeal of metal. The thing’s hands, which had seemed simple three-pronged claws, stretched out, revealing sharp razors under their outer layer. The razors popped forward with the sound of knives being sharpened, and suddenly the hands were frightening talons that were reaching out for Violet’s neck.
Violet stood frozen in horror for a moment. A scream rose in her throat, but wouldn’t release. Her body was both cold and hot. Her brain shouted so many things at once that she couldn’t listen to any of them. All she could do was keep her eyes focused on the sharp glinting blades that were about to rend her head from her body. How sad it was, she thought, that she would never actually get to attend a class at Illyria.
Suddenly, Jack jumped forward, put his arm around Violet’s waist, and pulled her back out of the automaton’s reach. The other students had begun running as soon as the thing had come to life. Now Violet and Jack followed them, not looking back to see if the automaton pursued.
They caught up with the other students a few yards ahead. They were all panting from fright and the sudden exercise. Violet listened for any clanking to indicate that the creature was still chasing them, but heard nothing.
“Thanks,” Violet said to Jack.
He grinned, his face a little pink from the running. “Not a problem.”
“Okay,” Toby said. His panting was heavier than the others’, probably due to his general lack of physical fitness. “That’s enough fun for one night. Let’s get out of here.”
“No, wait,” Violet said, standing up straight and catching her breath, which her chest bindings made quite difficult. “We can do this without help.”
“I dropped the jellyfish jar when I grabbed you,” Jack said. “We won’t know where we’ve been anymore.”
But Violet wasn’t listening. She was gazing through a nearby archway. A dim light came through it, which Violet thought shone on something very interesting. Slowly and carefully, she walked up to the archway, and then stepped through it. The room beyond was huge, nearly as large as the Great Hall, but lit only by two dim gas lamps.
“It’s real,” she said softly. The rest of the students had followed her. They all stood on a large platform, staring at a small train car and a dark openmouthed tunnel in front of it. They could hear the sound of rushing water from the tunnel.
“Where does it go?” asked Drew.
“I don’t know,” Toby said, staring, “and it’s quite the find. But tonight is not the night to figure it out. I’m exhausted, and you may have noticed that we were attacked by skeletal automata. So unless it takes us back to our beds, which I very much doubt, I don’t see the point of riding it.”
Violet bit her lip and nodded. “You’re right,” she said, resigned. “Let’s go back. I think it’s this way,” she said, pointing down a corridor outside the archway, her shoulders slumped.
Toby took a compass off his belt and consulted it.
“I have a compass, too!” Lane said, seeing Toby looking at his.
Violet stared at Lane. “I thought you said you didn’t have anything.”
“Well, it’s just a compass. Not a mechanical torch or a jellyfish jar.”
The rest of the group sighed. “Oh, right, it’s just a compass. Which was created to show direction, help lost people, that sort of thing,” Jack said. “The Thames is to the west, I believe. The elevator will be that way, too.” He led the way, laughing long and loudly in the darkness.
IX.
PROFESSOR Erasmus Valentine did not like teaching the first-years on their first day of classes. Always so tired from whatever little adventure they had had in the cellar, they chose to sleep in rather than wake up early enough to bathe, so they not only were tired, red-eyed, and lethargic, but they als
o stank.
Valentine sighed dramatically to get the attention of the five bleary young men before him, then began his annual opening lecture. It was a brilliant lecture, which is why he had never bothered to change it in all his years teaching at Illyria. It was about man’s role as improvers of God’s original art, and how all the pieces of nature that they used were put there for them to combine into more beautiful works. He cited numerous examples of beauty, from the poetry of the ancient Greeks to Romantic poets to his own creations, the most notable of which was Isabella, the dove-sized peacock that sang like a nightingale. At this point, he took Isabella out of her huge gilded cage and let the students wonder at her. After a while, he continued, explaining in stirring rhetoric that it was now the students’ turn to perfect God’s creations. Valentine felt that this was not blasphemy, as one of the students had said last year, but the very purpose of mankind. He ended it with a plea, his eyes dewy with feeling, for the students to cooperate with him and one another, and for them to have patience with themselves. After all, they couldn’t expect to create their own Isabella on their first day. It was a beautiful lecture, Valentine thought, and modest, since it took only two and a half hours, which left another generous hour and a half to go over the rules of the lab, answer questions, and begin their first assignments.
Violet, staring at Isabella in her cage, found her to be rather sad. Her feathers drooped and seemed too heavy for her body, and her eyes were covered with the misty film she’d seen only in old people and dogs. But Jack seemed impressed with her, especially the cooing noise she made if one stroked her gullet, so Violet supposed that the miniature singing peacock must be an accomplishment.
In all fairness to Isabella, it was rather difficult for Violet to keep her eyes open. They had spent more time in the basement last night than she’d thought. It seemed that she had only closed her eyes when the small clock on the wall started ringing seven o’clock, and she barely had time to put on her suit and eat breakfast before running to the biology lab. Jack, on the other hand, seemed quite energetic. Violet wondered if he had some trick for getting more rest than she, or if he was merely excited because this lab was to be his second home and the dandy with the too-rouged cheeks, who was currently explaining the proper way to clean a scalpel, was to be his new mentor.
“Now,” Valentine said after showing the students the proper place for each tool and object—knives here, feathers there, bottles of blood on the shelf over the box of spare bones—“any questions?” Merriman raised his hand. Valentine pursed his lips and nodded. The young man was short and roundish, the sort Valentine would prefer not to talk to if he could help it.
“Will we be working with plants, sir?” Merriman asked.
“Plants?” Valentine said, and put a finger to his chin. “Well, most assignments will be from the fauna of the world, not the flora, and when you’re more advanced, cellular work, but if you’d like to try combining the two … why, a dove with rose petals instead of feathers could be quite lovely. That would probably be above your level right now, of course, but it’s certainly something to aspire to.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Merriman continued, “but I meant just plants. Growing corn with shorter stalks, for example, so it doesn’t fall over as quickly. It’s only, my father is a gardener, so I was wond’ring—”
“No,” Valentine interrupted, his nostrils flaring, “we won’t be doing anything like that. Leave crossbreeding of beans to the monks. We are scientists.”
“Of course, sir,” Merriman mumbled, looking at the table.
“What about bodies?” Jack asked without raising his hand.
“Human bodies?” Valentine asked. Jack nodded. “Well, we do have a resurrectionist on call if you seek to work with the human animal, but personally, I’ve always found touching corpses to be a bit … distasteful. So that would have to be on your own time.” Jack nodded again.
After that, Valentine explained that their first assignment was to gild a lab rat with snakeskin. “It’s really a poetic assignment,” Valentine said. “The prey becomes one with the predator.” Valentine set a cage full of squealing white rats on one of the tables and a pile of snakeskin next to it. The rats, smelling the skin of their predators, began to panic and headed for the end of the cage farthest from the skins, rocking it slightly toward the edge of the table. “Use as many rats and as much snakeskin as you need,” Valentine said. “I’ll be observing your work, but if you want detailed instructions, you’ll find them on page thirty of your text Divine Enhancements, by myself, Erasmus Valentine.”
Jack finished the task in less than ten minutes, with Valentine watching him the whole time. When he was done, only the rat’s nose, eyes, claws, and the inside of its ears and mouth retained their mammalian looks.
“Most excellent, Mr. Feste,” Valentine said, patting Jack on the back. “Students, look. See how Mr. Feste cut the snakeskin not into simple rectangles, but thought out the curves of the rat itself so that the snakeskin fit securely around its body. Note also how he chose snakeskin in complementary, though not matching, colors. See how the rat begins with reddish yellow fur at the nose—which matches the nose that Mr. Feste didn’t cover; quite clever, really—and gradually fades to bright green at the hindquarters. A real work of art, Mr. Feste.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jack said, smiling.
“Now let’s see how it likes its new skin,” Valentine said, and put it in a nearby empty cage. “It’s beginning to wake up.”
The students crowded around to watch the rat groggily raise its head, flinch at the soreness of its new stitches, then cautiously get to its feet. Cautiously, it peered around at the giant looming faces of the students and backed away from them. When the last of the ether wore off, it began to sniff the air, its tail stiff and eyes wide, clearly smelling itself. It looked around, but seeing only the faces of the students, merely cowered in the corner, having no place to run. After a moment, it carefully tried to nibble at its leg and noticed its newly scaled coat for the first time. It started to gnaw at its own skin in terror, and after a few moments of frantic struggling, fell to the ground, motionless.
“That happens,” Valentine said with a sigh. “Their hearts give out, poor things—they don’t realize that the snakeskin is theirs now, just think it’s another snake that they can’t escape from. Once I saw one tear its own tail off. Anyway, it’s no fault of yours, Mr. Feste. Some rats just can’t seem to realize the gift you’re giving them.” Valentine tutted, took a handkerchief out of his sleeve, gathered the dead rat in it, and threw it down the incinerator.
Jack frowned. He should have been able to predict the results of his assignment, but was so caught up in pleasing Valentine that he hadn’t thought it through all the way. He hated losing creatures, hated being responsible for their deaths. He wanted to help them, not hurt them, after all. If he had thought ahead, he could have conceived of a chemical that would have stripped the snakeskin of its scent, and the rat could have gone on to live a happy, armored life.
“Mr. Feste,” Valentine said, “you are free to go, if you’d like, or you can stay and assist your friends, or even work on something else.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Everyone else, back to work. You have only this class to finish the project. If you can’t manage by then, you’ll have to come back during your independent study time.”
The rest of the students hurried back to their own drugged rats. Jack took the time to explore the lab, peeking through microscopes and looking at the supplies, which included skins of all sorts of creatures, eyeballs drifting in preserving fluids, and many smaller animals resting quietly in their cages.
Lane finished his rat next, Valentine declaring it “acceptable but mediocre work,” citing the way the skin bunched around the rat’s neck and dragged back the ears. Violet finished next, her rat being “well done, but with no taste to the interaction of the coloring of the scales—it looks mottled, Mr. Adams. Mottled and sickly.” Fairfax
, who followed the instructions in the text word for word, finished next with a rat that was “pristinely done, but lacks any creative spirit. The book is a guide, but you must also bring part of yourself to these things. It is art, after all.”
Merriman finished at the very last minute with Jack’s help, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that his rat was “nicely done. Some of the stitching is poor, but it has a scruffy character I find suits it well. It is a rat, after all.”
By the time lunchtime came around, all the rats but Merriman’s had died and been sent down the incinerator chute. Merriman’s rat, a runt that he had named Tiny, was nervously exploring its cage, and sometimes licking its paws. When the bell tolled, Valentine dismissed them with a flourish of his hands, calling after them that they had best read chapters one through eight in Divine Enhancements by next week.
Jack and Violet had assumed they would sit with the other first-years, so they were surprised when they entered the dining hall and Toby and Drew waved them over. Toby was already eating and had a full mug of tea in front of him. Drew was looking at his food, fidgeting with it, tapping his finger on his nose, then looking at his food again.
“Hey, you lot. Jack and Ash, right?” Toby called. Jack nodded. “Sit with us today. We’re going to decide if you’re the sort of folks we can stand to be sociable with.” Violet looked over at the other first-years, but as Lane and Merriman seemed to be chatting happily, and Fairfax had found a small table that he could have to himself, she didn’t feel like she was abandoning anyone by sitting down next to Toby. Drew, though he had seen Jack and Violet approach, seemed startled, and jumped slightly in his seat when they sat down.
“You had time to shave?” Toby asked Violet.
“Pardon?” Violet said.
“You don’t have a hair on your chin. After a night like that, I figured you’d sleep in a bit rather than take the time to do your toilette.”
“Oh,” Violet said, suddenly nervous. “Ah, well. I had remembered Valentine as being a dandy, so I thought it would be best if I looked as well groomed as I could.”