Of Metal and Wishes

by Sarah Fine

  Finally we get so deep that there are very few traps, because the only person who comes here is Bo himself. He leads us to a steel door and flicks at the fingers of his metal hand, but his other hand is fumbling and uncoordinated, probably because of the deep wound in his forearm. He leans back against the wall and stares at the ceiling. “Wen . . .”

  I step forward as Melik’s arms become steel at my waist. I squeeze his hand in reassurance, then let it go. “You need help,” I say to Bo.

  He nods. “There’s a key built into the hand, but I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” There is the slightest tremble in his voice. He is scared. If he loses his other arm, he will lose himself. He has already been torn apart, and he cannot afford to lose the pieces of him he has left. I take his injured forearm in my hands and gaze down at it. “I’ll help fix this. All I need is needle and thread.” I sound more confident than I am. “Now show me what to do.”

  “The ring finger. There’s a catch at the base of it.”

  With his help I hold his hand up to the light, the metal veins, tendons, muscles, threads of brilliance, woven through this dangerous weapon, this human-shaped war machine. I flick the tiny, delicate catch like he told me, and a jagged key unfolds from the center of his metal ring finger. I guide his hand and insert the key into the lock, which comes undone with a deep, echoing click.

  In front of us is Bo’s bright metal world, his family of statues awash in lantern light. We walk through a gleaming archway and into the massive chamber, and Melik’s eyes grow wide with fear, but also with admiration. He mutters something in Noor and then asks, “How long have you been here?”

  “Seven years.” Bo limps along a metal walkway and nudges a small, broom-pushing spider off the path. It falls on its side, legs scrabbling.

  “You did all this in seven years,” Melik says in a flat voice.

  Bo turns around slowly. “I wonder what you would do if you had seven years in solitude, Noor. Would you break? Or would you build?”

  Melik stares at him. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Bo pivots on his heel and keeps walking. I shuffle past Melik and catch up with him. “I need to look at your wounds.”

  He shrugs me off and waves his hand back at Melik. “Look at his first. I need to check the . . .” He stumbles, and I steady him, wrapping my arms around his waist as he sags.

  He bows his head, and his lips are against my ear. “I have failed you in so many ways today.”

  He is so close, half man, half machine, and I think about what could have been for him. All that brilliance, shredded by the harshness of the factory, warped by loneliness. Underneath he is still a boy, one who craves a touch, a smile. So I smile. “You also saved me.”

  In his eye there is so much emotion that it is painful to watch. He blinks away the shine of it. “Help me get to my room?”

  Melik walks quietly behind us. His footsteps are steady and solid, and I know if I looked back to see him, his shoulders would be straight and his head would be high. Because that is how he is, how he should be, what is right. I duck my head and breathe my relief.

  I lower Bo onto his sleeping pallet while Melik waits outside the room. Bo reassures him that nothing will kill him as long as he doesn’t go snooping around. From the tension in Melik’s posture I can tell he doesn’t want to be here, that half his mind is with his brother and the Noor, wherever they are, but judging by the way he looks at me, I know the other half is here and unwilling to leave my side.

  Bo’s skin is pale, and he is shivering. He has lost too much blood. It’s oozing from his wounds, the ones in his left leg and right arm. He glances down at himself and rolls his eye. “Serves me right, doesn’t it? I turn them loose and they feed on me.”

  “You just got in their way,” I say as I examine his arm. “They’re only machines, right?”

  He nods, and shifts his machine arm, wincing. It is strapped over his shirt, like a vest, and I want to take the whole thing off so I can see Bo, the person, not the machine. But also because he needs to rest, and lying down with all this metal attached to his body must be uncomfortable. “Can I take this off?” I ask him.

  He tenses, and his eye searches mine. “You don’t . . . I don’t want you to. . . .”

  I touch the side of his face. He looks so young right now, so scared. “Bo, you need to rest. How can you do that like this?”

  He grimaces, and I know he is in pain inside and outside, facing demons I will never understand. “All right. Just . . . all right.”

  With careful, steady fingers I unbuckle the leather straps that hold the machine arm to his body. I tug gently at the whole thing, and there is a slight pop as the cuff pulls loose from his skin. Bo’s breathing becomes rapid and shallow as I pull the arm away from his body and finally see what is left of him. Just a withered stump of flesh-covered bone, extending from his shoulder socket, all that remains of his left arm. I don’t stop there. I don’t ask permission this time, I simply act. I find the thread-thin strap that holds the metal mask on his face, and I undo that, too.

  From Bo’s chest comes a whimper, like that of a child, full of pleading and fear. But I am merciless. I pull the metal mask away from his face to see what he hides behind the beautiful steel skin, the dead black eye.

  He is a living skeleton, a living scar. Ruined skin taut over broken bone. He has no left eye, only a weeping, empty socket and a limp eyelid. He hasn’t been glaring at me at all; he is half blind. I see him, the parts that are whole and the parts that are shattered. He is human, he is a boy, he is evil and good fused together. My Ghost. My rescuer. My enemy, my friend.

  “It’s bad, I know,” he whispers.

  “No, it’s all of you, and I’m glad I can see it,” I reply, stroking his hair.

  His good eye searches me, looking for the fear, the repulsion, but he won’t see it. There is a beauty in Bo that is not just in spite of his wounds, but because of them.

  “I only wanted to know you, Wen. I’ve wanted to know you for so long. Ever since your father talked about you, I’ve been living on that wish, that one day you would come to me, and you would see me for what I am, and still you would not leave.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Only part of you. Part of you is outside the door, watching over the Noor. Wanting him.”

  I cannot lie to him. “That’s true. But part of him is elsewhere too, with the other people he loves. We cannot own each other, Bo. We can only offer what is ours to give.”

  “I wanted to give you everything,” he says. “I wanted to build a world where you and I could play and live and where no one else would harm us, ever.”

  “You build amazing things, but I need the sky and the sun.”

  He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry for everything I did. For Mugo, for framing your red Noor.”

  “His name is Melik,” I say gently.

  “I know that. Will you forgive me if I don’t want to say it out loud?”

  I will.

  Bo’s hand, loose and uncoordinated but warm nevertheless, closes over mine. “When I saw how you screamed for him, how you fought for him, how it was killing you to lose him . . . I realized what a horrible mistake I’d made.”

  He would never have been rid of Melik like that. I would have carried my red Noor in my heart forever. “I’m glad you came to help us. You saved our lives.”

  I look around the room for anything that might help me care for Bo right now. I crawl over to the heavy jug on a table in the corner and pour him a cup of water. He needs fluids and food to rebuild his strength. He manages to sit up, but without the metal hand and with his remaining arm so weak, he needs my help getting the cup to his lips.

  “There are preserved plum cakes, many of them,” he tells me, pointing to a small cabinet beside the table. “You and the Noor should eat too. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  I
get him a plum cake and take one to Melik, who tears into it with real desperation and thanks me with a full mouth.

  By the time I return to Bo’s room, he is leaning against the wall. He is brave now and lets me take off his shirt so I can see his wounds, old and new. The burn scarring covers his neck, his shoulder, and the left side of his ribs, and it looks like the fiery beast grabbed him in its clawed hand and left its ugly fingerprints all over his otherwise beautiful body. Bo turns away like he doesn’t want to see how I’ll react. He is naked for me now; everything he ever tried to hide is laid out in front of me. And . . . it doesn’t seem worth concealing. I think I might have loved him if he hadn’t. I can’t tell him that, how I wish he had not left the world to hide down here—because really, what else could he have done if he wanted to survive? But now, now he is strong and smart and can offer the world so many things. He should want more than me, than to hide down here with a stupid girl who knows nothing of the world.

  Well, he’s not strong now. He’s actually very weak. His fingers tremble as he places the paper wrapping of the plum cake at the side of his pallet. He looks down at his forearm, where the muscle and flesh are torn to the bone. “I’m not sure I have the things you need to put me back together,” he says. “The other half of me, easy. Metal threading, screws, cogs, winding mechanism, activating circuitry. This half?” He chuckles. “I don’t envy you.”

  “I can bandage it,” I say.

  There is a distant slamming noise, and I jump. Bo gives me a tired smile. “Your father has come to see us.”

  His footsteps tap down the stone staircase, and I hear Melik stand up to greet him. They talk for a few seconds in low tones, but I can hear enough to know my father is examining Melik’s neck and face, which makes my heart heavy with gratitude. Then my father is in Bo’s chamber, staring at Bo’s hand over mine. His expression is impossible to read. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last half hour,” he says to Bo.

  Bo points to a chair in the corner, inviting my father to sit. “I told you I would get them, and I did. She is unharmed. The Noor . . . well, he will recover. And I . . . I got what I very much deserved.”

  My father gazes down at Bo’s wounds with a sharp clinical eye. “You will recover too. I can easily treat these wounds. But we’ll have to do that topside. We don’t have time right now.”

  I notice the determined clutch of my father’s fists. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to leave,” he says. “They’re coming.”

  THE TENSION ZIPS through Bo’s body like lightning, and I feel it in our joined hands like an electric shock. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I took care of them.”

  My father shakes his head. “They regrouped, and they’ve been joined by the local police. There were survivors, and some of them were able to describe you. They know who you are, Bo, and they’re coming to get you.”

  Bo’s teeth click together. “Help me up.”

  My father and I pull him to his feet.

  “I need my arm,” he says quietly, and my father helps him strap it to his body like he’s done it hundreds of times before.

  Bo touches the left side of his face and looks out to where Melik and all the perfect metal statues await. “And my mask, please,” he says to me.

  I lift the metal half-face from the floor, smooth, sculpted and shining, fatally marred by the terrible, dead black eye. And then I look at Bo’s face, his real, whole face, half hideous, half beautiful. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his scarred cheek, lingering long enough to hear the catch in his breath. Then I fit the mask in place and fasten the thin strap, unable to look at the results. “What are you going to do?” I ask, staring at his feet.

  “I’m going to see what’s coming.”

  He turns and walks from the chamber, fighting not to limp, and my father and I follow. He stalks past Melik, toward the chamber full of pipes where he spies on the people of Gochan One. He hunches over one, his metal hand moving with machine precision to adjust the knob on the side. “They won’t get far,” he mutters.

  “It depends on how determined they are to find you,” Melik says in a hard voice.

  Bo pivots around to face him. “Probably very, since I saved a Noor from swinging and destroyed the factory floor, killing dozens of men in the process. But that won’t protect them from what lies in those corridors. They’ll turn back.”

  “No, they won’t,” says my father. His voice sounds as hollow as the pipes. He’s bent over one of them now, his eye to the hole.

  Bo frowns and joins him, peeking into the pipe next to it. He curses.

  I am next to him in an instant. “I want to see.”

  “You don’t,” says Bo.

  I ignore him and lower my head to the opening of the pipe beside his.

  And gasp.

  I am looking down the hallway outside the cafeteria, the one near Bo’s altar. From my skewed vantage point I see a few men with the high-powered electric cattle prods in their hands.

  They are driving a cow toward the stairs.

  Melik ducks his head and peers into the adjacent pipe. His hisses something in Noor and turns to me. “They’re trying to drive the cattle through the corridors. To trigger the traps.”

  I watch the men jab at the cow’s bony backside. They are relentless, and slowly, slowly, the beast inches forward. “Can cows even walk down stairs?”

  “They can,” my father says grimly, “if what’s behind them is frightening enough.” He points to a pipe. “There are already several in the hallways below the killing floor.”

  My heart hurts for these creatures that are already condemned to slaughter but will now be killed in a way no soul should have to suffer. Bo is cursing nonstop under his breath, skipping from pipe to pipe as he watches the cows plow through his trip wires and bump against the walls, triggering his arachnid soldiers to fight and kill. I step back from the pipes; I don’t want to see it. I can already picture it, because I witnessed what happened to Ugur.

  Melik turns to Bo. “You have to get Wen out of here,” he says in a low voice. “If they make it all the way down here, she needs to be far away.”

  Bo stands up and looks Melik in the eye. “I know that.”

  Somewhere above us there is a deep, percussive boom, and my father moves over to a pipe on the far left side of the array and peers in. “The cows triggered an explosion on the fourth sublevel.” His eyes are bright with fear as he straightens up. “It won’t be long before the mob comes through those tunnels.”

  “Come on,” Bo says. “Time to go.”

  He limps out of the pipe room and leads us all the way to the back, past the hulking factory machines, past the dead-eyed metal Melik who is poised on the edge of the walkway. When the flesh-and-blood Melik walks by it, he pulls up short. He is reaching out to touch its face when there is a crash above us, followed by the faint lowing of cows.

  “They’re in the metal hallway,” my father says to me. “They’ve probably triggered the spiders.”

  Bo reaches the elevator and yanks open its sliding metal door. “This will take you to the roof, and you can get out through Gochan Two. Guiren, you know the way.”

  I stare at Bo. “What are you doing?”

  He bows his head. “I’m not going.”

  “Yes, you are,” I say, taking his hand. “We can all go, now. We can escape!”

  He rewards me with a sad smile. “What is there for me outside this factory?”

  “Seems to me you can do almost anything you want,” Melik says, laying a protective hand on my shoulder. “Do what she asks. Come with us.”

  Bo chuckles as his eyes light on Melik’s fingers on my body. “You obviously believe me to be a better man than I am.” His gaze travels to Melik’s face. “Keep her safe.”

  Above us I hear men yelling and crashing. They are pounding on the door to Bo�
��s fortress. They are almost here.

  “They’ll hurt you,” I say in a choked voice, tugging Bo toward the elevator. My father steps inside and waits, and he seems to be riveted by his own shoes. He won’t look at me.

  “And if I run, they’ll chase me.” The lanterns overhead glint off his metal face. When he speaks again, his voice is almost a snarl. “They’re invading my home, Wen.”

  I will not let this happen. I whip the metal syringe out of my dressing gown pocket, but he is too fast. My arm is caught in his machine grip before I know it, those skeletal steel fingers wrapping around my wrist. I gasp, expecting pain, but it doesn’t come. He merely holds me there, and he doesn’t take his eyes off me as he gently pulls the syringe from my grasp and hands it to my father.

  I look over my shoulder at Melik. “Help me.”

  He and Bo exchange looks, and Melik shakes his head. “I won’t try to force him.” He reaches for me. “We have to go, Wen, please. They can’t find us here.”

  Bo releases my wrist and fishes inside his pocket, pulling out a small object. He opens my fingers and places the object on my palm.

  “I would like to make a wish,” he says quietly. “This is my offering.”

  My fingers close over the white seashell. Tears burn my eyes. The crashing is louder now, rhythmic booms as they assault the door. Any second now they will break through. “What is your wish?”

  “One kiss,” he whispers.

  My heart is caving in. There is only one reason he feels bold enough to ask this of me. He thinks he’s about to die. I don’t look at Melik. I don’t look at my father, either. The only one I look at is Bo. I focus on his deep brown eye, the one full of secrets I will never learn, the one that belongs to a boy who built an entire world where we could play together, where neither of us would ever be lonely. I raise my head and tilt my chin, and he spends a few seconds looking stunned that I’m actually going to grant his wish. But then he lays his hand on my cheek and bows his head, lowering his lips to mine. His kiss is brief and so full of sweetness it forces the tears from my eyes. They roll down my face as he pulls away. “Thank you,” he says to me.