“Remarkable,” I whispered.
Very carefully, Robin opened the back of the clockwork fairy once again. He removed the bone. He gently laid the now-still fairy back in the box and took the box to his workbench. He set the bone aside and turned to his cupboards. Digging around for a few moments, he returned with a blue glass jar.
“The salve . . . for the poison oak,” he said.
I nodded. I took off his blanket, my dress still wet from the rain. I located the rash on the back of my right arm. “Here,” I said, reaching for the salve, but my hands were trembling.
“I can get it,” Robin replied. He carefully turned me to the side, brushing my hair away, and applied the salve. “I’m sorry . . . about the pub.”
“Me too,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your friends. It’s just,” I said, taking a deep breath as I felt his fingers stroke my skin, “. . . his heart,” I said in a whisper.
“I understand. It moved me as well,” Robin replied, gently holding my arm. The burning rash had already started feeling much better. He set the jar aside, picked up his blanket and tried to draw the water from my hair. “You’re all wet,” he said in a whisper. He set the blanket down then stroked the back of my neck.
I turned to look at him. His eyes were the color of green glass.
Robin reached out and stroked my cheek. “Lily, you are so . . .” he began, leaning in toward me.
Confused. Lost. My stomach quaked. I looked away. “Robin . . . I have someone back in London,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
He sighed heavily, took a deep breath, and leaned back.
I turned again to face him.
He smiled softly at me, pushing a stray strand of hair behind my ear. He then rose and went to his fireplace. Lifting a copper kettle, he poured me a cup of something hot.
“This time . . . the mandrake tea?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No,” he said with a kind smile that evoked those dimples once more. “Never. Always know that you can trust me. I would never do anything to harm you. Drink, Lily. It will help calm you. It’s been a trying day. Drink, rest, and be at home.”
I drank the dark, steaming liquid. I could taste a hint of opium in the concoction. The other herbs were very pungent and soon the whole room started to spin. I watched Robin go sit down at his workbench, his back toward me. After a moment, he slid everything off the bench with a violent force. The fairy box crashed to the ground. The skeleton broke into pieces when it hit the floor. I wanted to call out to him, but at the same moment, I felt my eyes involuntarily closing. The last thing I saw was Robin setting his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably. I drifted into unconsciousness, lulled to sleep by the sound of his heart-breaking misery.
FROM SOMEWHERE IN THE DISTANCE, I heard the soft call of a mourning dove; its whoo-whoo-whoo sounded sorrowfully. The buzz of insects joined the chorus. The sun was shining. I could smell new grass and the light scent of flowers. I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at a bright blue sky. The clouds were high aloft and very thin. I was lying in a field, surrounded by hyacinth flowers. Standing nearby was Mên-an-Tol, a standing stone monument quite like the one Robin and I had seen that morning when he’d shown me the fairies. The Mên-an-Tol, however, was in Cornwall. I had come home.
My satchel sat beside me, a water skin leaning against it. My black Moroccan clothes had been folded nicely and placed under my head like a pillow. Between me and the stones, the grass was trampled down. I didn’t question how I’d come there. I knew. Somehow, I’d come through the stones. It was Robin’s doing, but how, I didn’t know.
The sky over Cornwall was clear and bright. My head didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had. I stood, looked back at the stones, then turned and headed toward the road. There was so much I didn’t know, didn’t understand, but there was one thing I knew for sure: I knew my way to my childhood home.
Barefoot, I made my way down the road. I was tired. I was, perhaps, more tired than I’d ever been before. I walked, almost instinctually, down the path that would take me back where I had started. As I walked, I inhaled the perfume of nature. This was the smell I had grown up with. Before everything had gone wrong, before my father had disappeared, before my mother had lost herself, before Oleander and Fletcher had plucked me out of the charity school, I’d grown up in these fields. I had made crowns of daisies and carried fists full of buttercups to my mother who had not yet gone mad. I had sneaked to the standing stones to touch and feel their ancient power not knowing what they were or why they were there.
I veered from the road and crossed a field. Climbing up a rise, I looked across the vista to see the small farm house where I’d grown up. Grass had grown tall around it. Part of the roof had caved in. The place was quiet. There were no sheep in the field nor horses grazing nearby. Just a single, lonely, dilapidated house sat alone. In the far distance, I spied the coastline. The dark blue waves off the north coast pitched and rolled.
I sat down in the grass and opened my bag. I wanted my tobacco pipe. Inside my bag I found my hat. I pulled it out and looked at the pin. The once-cherished item had become bittersweet in its double meaning. I pulled the cap on. I found my pipe and tobacco tin. I then spied a wrapped bundle I didn’t recognize. Trepidatiously, I pulled it out. I unwrapped the bundle to find a small round of bread. I had to laugh. What did I expect? When I looked back inside my bag, I noticed that Robin had also packed the fairy goggles. I left the goggles lying in my bag with Byron’s shirt and cologne, the bottle remaining, miraculously, unshattered. Robin had anticipated the real concern correctly: I was famished.
I ate the bread as I sat looking at the vista in front of me and wondered, not how—since I couldn’t quite get my mind around how—but why, Robin had brought me there. Why hadn’t he taken me back to London? Sitting under the sun, the wind whipping past me, the answer seemed obvious. Robin had brought me home to heal.
I finished the bread, drinking a slug of water from the skin, then picked up the tobacco pipe. I smoked slowly, thinking about what I needed to do next, and fighting off the urge to take laudanum. I needed to go back. The race, surely, was soon. I had no idea what condition the Stargazer was in. I had no idea what had happened in my absence. And I knew they would be worried. Angus had guessed what would happen. For all they knew, I might never come back, or worse. They didn’t deserve that, Sal most of all. I played with Byron’s ring, turning it around and around, then rose. I pulled on my satchel, slung the water skin over my shoulder, and headed home.
I was getting used to being barefoot. The soft grass crushed underneath my feet. I approached the old stone house carefully. Once I got close, I could see the place had been abandoned. The door was slightly ajar; I pushed it open. It creaked on its rusty hinges. The house was completely empty, true to my memory. They had taken the furniture long ago. It seemed that no one ever bothered with the place after we’d left. Dried leaves were heaped in one corner. The shutters on the windows had broken. They flapped in the breeze. The massive stone fireplace was empty. The mantel was covered in dust. In my memory, I recollected my mother’s little vases filled with wildflowers and an old clock that had been the most expensive item in the house. It was the first thing to disappear when the debt collectors started calling.
The roof had collapsed over our old bedrooms and washroom. In the kitchen, the doors on the old pantry wagged open and closed in the breeze. I opened the pantry door. It was empty save one tea cup. I pulled out the cup. It was white with pink roses on its side and had a very large chip near the handle. I remembered the cup very clearly. I had been the one to chip it, banging it against the table. My mother had scolded me severely until my father, always the gentler one, had intervened. I put the cup in my satchel then headed outside to the walled garden.
Nature will always reclaim what is hers. The roses my mother had kept so manicured, the beds of herbs that we’d kept weeded, and the prim apple tree in the corner had all grown wild. The image
struck me. Under watchful care of my mother and father, this garden had been beautiful. The apple tree always produced bountiful fruits. Unimpeded by weeds, the herbs had grown thick. The roses had neatly followed the arch of the garden walls. Now, everything ran amuck. It was all still there, and still beautiful, but it had grown unattended. Without someone to love it, to nurture it, the garden had become wild. Just like me, I realized.
As I gazed around the garden, I was struck with a memory. I crossed the garden to the western wall. The rose vines had grown thick. Trying to remember, I guessed at the right spot. I stuck my arm into the thorny vines. They scratched me, but I ignored the pain as my hands and memory worked in tandem. I was right. Pushing the vines aside, I revealed an alcove in the wall. Inside that alcove was a small, white marble statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos. I reached out and touched her. My fingers, pricked by the rose thrones, left a smear of blood on the goddess. Gasping, I pulled my hand back. It was like I had wounded the Goddess of Love. The roses fell like a curtain over her, hiding her once again. I stuck my fingers in my mouth; I tasted the salty tang of blood.
The image of the bloody goddess made me feel panicked. Had I killed what the Aphrodite had sewn together? I shook my head and fought away the tears. It was time to go. I picked my way back through the house and went outside. Turning east, I headed toward London.
THERE WAS A SMALL MARINA about two miles from my house. You could always find a fishing vessel docked along the pier, and you could occasionally find an airship docked in the small, rickety tower. To my great fortune, there was an airship in port overhead that day. To my misfortune, it was broken down.
“Pardon me?” I called, leaning under the ship. “I was hoping to jump a transport to London. Any chance you’ll have her running today?” I asked the pilot under the ship on the repair platform.
“Not unless you can fix this bloody thing yourself,” a surly man replied as his tools clanged against the ship’s underbelly. Hiking up the skirts of my purple gown, I grabbed a dolly then rolled under the airship next to him.
“What the hell?” the man said, sitting up. He banged his head on a galley rod. It left a massive smear of gear grease across his sweaty forehead.
“I took that as a challenge,” I said.
“Look, Miss, you ain’t got no place under a ship. Get out of here before you get hurt.”
“I’m not much for arguing while lying horizontal, are you?” Despite himself, he laughed out loud.
“Lily Stargazer,” I said then stuck out my hand.
“Are you really?”
“Who else would climb under this ship?”
“You’ve a point there. Iris Stormgood,” he replied, shaking my hand.
I took a wrench from his belt and had a look. “Your bolt is stripped. You’re not getting any torque,” I said. “Looks like you popped a belt because it wasn’t turning.”
“Stripped? Where?”
I pointed. “Got parts?”
“Yeah . . . in a bin upstairs.”
Upstairs? “Well, go get them.”
Iris thought for a moment then crawled out from under the ship. I heard him murmuring to himself as items crashed onto the deck of the gondola overhead. While I waited, I looked over the rest of the galley. The ship was a mess. Either this man knew nothing about airships or had bought a piece of junk. I started tightening nuts and mending bits as I waited.
“What’s her name?” I called.
“What?”
“Your ship. What’s her name?”
“Umm, well . . . Hero.”
His hesitation spoke volumes. “Find the parts?” I called.
I heard him murmur again. He returned a few minutes later with a wooden crate full of bits. “I thought we might need a few other things,” he lied.
“All right,” I said with a shake of the head. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I looked inside and pulled out the pieces I needed to do the repair. “Here, hold this,” I said, handing the belt to him. I pried loose a cog, replaced the stripped bolt, then tightened the replacement. I then took the belt from Iris and threaded it around the gears. “Pull,” I said, guiding his hands. With his help, I was able to secure the belt back in place. “Now tighten that nut there,” I said, handing him a wrench. “Turn it to the right,” I added.
He looked at me, a guilty expression stealing across his face, then did as I said. I rolled deeper under the belly of the ship, replacing a few other broken bits, as I instructed Iris on simple tasks. An hour later, I rolled back out from under the transport. My fine violet-colored gown was covered in gear grease.
“Now you owe me a drink,” I told him then jumped onto the deck of the Hero.
“All right,” he said carefully.
Once on board, I sat on a cargo bin and started wiping grease from my hands. I eyed the man over. He was wearing very expensive looking grey trousers, a green satin waistcoat, a cheap linen shirt, and flat leather shoes with holes in the soles. No gloves. No goggles.
Iris returned with two glasses of gin. He handed one to me.
“To the Hero,” I said, clicking glasses with him.
“The Hero,” he nodded affirmatively. We both drank.
The taste of juniper filled my mouth. “So where did you steal her from?” I asked. I looked up at the balloon. The ship looked so dastardly that she must have limped into my remote corner of Cornwall from somewhere not too far away. Apparently Mr. Stormgood had attempted, unsuccessfully, to fly her in by himself.
“I don’t know what you-”
“Save it. You’ve beaten the life out of this poor ship. Where’d you fly in from?”
He hesitated then said, “Ireland.”
“Anyone chasing you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you sure as hell aren’t going to get far flying like this. I’ll travel with you as far as London, show you how to manage the ship on your own. You can drop me there then head on your way to . . . ?”
“Denmark. Look, I can’t stop in London!”
“Well, I guess it’s good day then,” I said then stood. I polished off the drink, lifted the empty glass in toast, and with a wink, set the glass down and turned to go.
“Wait. Wait. Okay. All right. I guess I could use some help. But you’ve got to keep it . . . discreet.”
“I’m just trying to get back to London, and I really don’t want to waste my time riding in a carriage.”
“It’s a deal then.”
“A deal.” All I wanted was to get home. I didn’t care how.
As Iris packed up the tools, I crawled into the burner basket, adjusted the burner, then climbed back down. I set the ship’s coordinates then went to the galley. It was still a mess, but it would get us to London. “Iris,” I called. He shimmied into the galley with me. “Here, I want you to mind the galley until I get the ship out of port and on course. I can manage the basket and wheel for a bit. Once we get cruising speed, I’ll let you know. Do you know how to manage the galley?”
He nodded then took the galleyman’s seat. “You do know how to release the brake mechanism, right?”
“Of course, of course,” he said dismissively then eyed over the levers.
“That one,” I said, pointing.
“Right.”
“When I ring the galley, release the brake and ease on the propeller,” I said, pointing to the levers. “You’ll need to give it some speed,” I said, pointing to the foot controls.
“I got it.”
I shook my head. I went back on the deck and pulled up the anchors. I then crawled back into the balloon and opened up the burners. The ship lifted tiredly. Eying the ropes, I saw the tethers had taken some wear. I gave the ship some altitude; once we were at a pretty good height, I set it on a steady burn and crawled back down. I turned the ship and set course. Then I rang the galley. With a grinding lurch, and after several false starts, the propeller finally kicked on.
“Poor baby,” I told the ship, patting the wheel.
; Soon, we were cruising. I locked the wheel and crawled back into the basket. We left the coast and were heading east. I took out my compass. It looked like the ship’s rudder had been damaged. She was pulling starboard. I adjusted the wheel’s coordinates again then kept moving back and forth between the basket and the wheel. I left Iris in the galley where he couldn’t do much damage for as long as I could. We were about thirty minutes outside of London when he finally crawled out.
The ship was cruising at a nice speed. It was starting to get dark, so I had Iris light all the lanterns on the ship. He hadn’t noticed when I’d lit the red lantern on the back of the ship behind the wheelstand. I then took him through a fast, but accurate, tutorial on airships. In case he ever decided to lift someone’s ship again, at least he wouldn’t rip it apart in the process.
By the time we neared the airship towers in London, it was dark. I had been fighting an opium withdrawal headache for the last hour. My mood was starting to turn sour.
“Head back to the galley and slow the ship. I’ll get her lowered onto an end platform.”
“I can’t believe you’re helping me. I mean, you, of all people,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel bad about it now.”
“Bad about what? Stealing this ship?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m a scoundrel. That’s a fact and it is what it is. This is just business. But . . . I’m sorry to tell you . . . it was me who messed with your ship.”
“What?”
“The Stargazer. That’s your ship, right? I got paid, a lot, to come trim out some parts, mess up the gears.”
“You?”
He nodded.
“Who paid you?”
“Well . . .”
“Come on, Iris. I’ve had a pretty bad week. Shed some light.”
“They picked me up in Ireland. There was a suit looking for someone to do a dirty job. Odd chap. Real odd. His hands,” Iris said, wagging his fingers, “all clockwork. And he was a Frenchman . . . don’t see many of them in Ireland. I only caught his last name: Largoët. I wasn’t much interested in the job. After all, we’re real proud of what you did in Paris. But money talked and a lot of it.”
Chasing the Green Fairy: The Airship Racing Chronicles Page 14