by S. T. Joshi
Henrietta, human-formed once again, held a finger to her lips and beckoned Eli over. He jogged across the workshop, keeping an eye out for the absent Mari.
“Henrietta,” he said, grimacing at her bruised cheek and split lip, “what are you doing here?”
“I came looking for you. I wanted to see if you’d found anything that would change your mind about the djinn.” She gestured at her prison. “Is this proof enough?”
“I’m sorry – I never meant for you to be harmed. I should have known the djinn were cruel from the beginning, but I see the truth now. I’m getting you out of there.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, darling.”
Eli turned to see the towering form of Mari, standing just a few yards away. How a seven-foot woman with cherry-red skin had managed to sneak through the vastness of the workshop was anyone’s guess, but there was probably some magic involved.
“I’d hoped this moment would never come,” Mari said. “Or at least not until after my victory today. Do you have any idea how many of our wonderful competitions this one has ruined, Eli? In fact, I seem to recall her being responsible for a certain spell that turned me into a handkerchief.”
“And I seem to recall you burning my village and killing my family.”
“Did I? Hm. That must have been a good year for me – sounds like a victory celebration. You should be glad your family died for a noble cause.”
Henrietta’s spit landed just south of its mark, striking Mari below the eye. The djinni wiped herself clean with a forearm.
“Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t kill you years ago,” she said. “Then I remember what a delightful idea that curse was, and how much I enjoy knowing that you still suffer to this day. Once such a social creature, now unable to be remembered as anything but a strange beast …How positively lovely.”
“Please,” Eli said, “let her go. You don’t need to do this.”
“I’m afraid I do, actually. Today’s event must run smoothly, and that can’t happen so long as this one’s loose.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“I’m not certain. I’d like to hear Zumaj’s opinion on the matter, which is why you’re going to have him meet me in the western fields.”
“I’m through running your errands.”
“Come now, Eli – I can’t seek him out myself. Catching a glimpse of his project before the event would be a blatant violation of the rules. And besides, you’re in too deep at this point. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll kill this little darling, not to mention everyone you’ve ever loved. Here,” Mari said, handing Eli a note. “This is a list of things I want you to accomplish while I’m meeting with Zumaj. I’ll be checking your work when you’re done. And if you finish early, do be sure to tidy up the places where Zumaj and I will be standing during the event; I’d hate for him to think I’m a slob.”
Mari opened the cage, enveloped Henrietta with a large sack and slung the protesting prisoner over her shoulder. “Be back soon,” she said. “The show starts at nine o’clock, sharp!”
* * *
After delivering Mari’s message to Zumaj, Eli found himself with a second list of last-minute tasks. He only had a short time to work with, but managed to speed through the stitching on the abominations and prepare the workshop for the event. The djinn entered just as he finished sweeping.
“I’ve done everything you asked,” he said. “Please don’t harm her.”
Mari put Henrietta, now bound and gagged, back into the cage. She then patrolled the workshop, checking the spinning gears on the machines she’d built into the walls, while Zumaj took Eli aside.
“My legion,” he said. “They are prepared?”
Eli pulled the covering away from a crate, revealing the abominations inside.
“Good. This will be a day to be remembered, inventor. I see Mari’s device in the floor, and don’t suspect it is strong enough to end me. Prepare to celebrate in the name of Zumaj.”
“Yes,” Eli said, lifting his fist half-heartedly. “Zumaj. Woo.”
Zumaj took the abominations to the far end of the workshop, where he started setting them up. Mari, halfway through her sweep of the area, came across the workshop’s clock and sucked in a sharp breath.
“Eli!” she said. “Is that time right?”
“It should be. That clock’s always run fine.”
“Zumaj! Places!”
Mari ran to one end of the workshop and stood in the small red box Eli had painted on the floor. Zumaj stood in a similar box on the opposite end. Between them, running lengthwise through the workshop, was the pit containing the cylinder, which now had a number of spikes protruding from its curved surface.
Everyone, including the bird-rats, looked at the clock. A few seconds before nine, Mari smiled at Zumaj. “Good luck, darling.”
“To you as well.”
The clock chimed and the event began, Eli watching helplessly from the side.
Zumaj’s legion waddled forth in their jerky, uncoordinated manner. Mari watched the cylinder, which was doing an excellent job of not moving at all.
“It’s not spinning! Why isn’t it spinning?”
Zumaj laughed. “Poor Mari. Was there an error in your calculations? Should we expect your machines to start functioning at the stroke of ten?”
“Even if my machines are late, at least they’ll prove more useful than your little errors.”
Zumaj looked at his legion. The bird-rats were supposed to be advancing on Mari, but were instead stumbling in circles.
“Inventor!” he yelled. “What is wrong with my creations?”
“It looks like a problem with their legs,” Eli said. “Maybe you should check.”
“I can’t! Once the contest has started, I am forbidden from leaving this spot!”
Eli nodded. “I had a feeling that might be the case.”
“Fool!” Mari said. “What have you done?”
Eli went to Mari and took the cage’s key from her pocket. The djinni stood still as stone, not resisting.
“Explain yourself!” she said.
“I did a lot of thinking about your game while you were gone,” Eli said, unlocking the door to Henrietta’s cage. “It seemed odd that you would observe so many rules if the ultimate goal was simply to kill each other. Why not just get to the point and have it out? Why all this strange ritual? And then I realized: you do it this way because you have to. You do it because, like Henrietta, you’re cursed.
“I probably wouldn’t have made the connection if I hadn’t known about Henrietta’s condition,” Eli continued, cutting his ally’s bonds. “But I saw definite similarities between her curse and your game, which led me to a realization: they’re both machines. They both have rules – mechanical parts, essentially – that dictate their functions. So in order to ruin your game, I took the approach I’d take in stopping any machine: sabotage.”
Just then, the cylinder in the pit began its rotations.
“Oh,” Eli said, checking his pocket watch. “It’s now nine. I changed the clock while you were gone. I wasn’t certain it would help, but you’d seemed very adamant about starting on time, and the cardinal rule of sabotaging a machine you don’t understand is to break anything that seems important.”
“You’re a fool,” Mari said. “I may be off to a late start, but that doesn’t matter. My machines will end Zumaj, and once he’s gone and I’ve won, I’ll no longer be bound to this place.”
A wooden beam that had been spring-loaded against the wall snapped out like a sideways catapult, swinging in an arc intended to strike Zumaj’s back and knock him into the pit. It narrowly missed, grazing the djinni’s arm.
“I should also mention,” Eli said, “that the other reason I changed your start-time was so you wouldn’t have a chance to inspect everything properly.” He p
ointed at Zumaj’s feet. “I painted your boxes a few feet to the side of where your note instructed.”
“Mari!” Zumaj said. “Do something!”
Eli had Henrietta stand behind Mari, then positioned himself behind Zumaj. All the while, traps sprung on the walls, ineffectively striking the air around Zumaj.
“They can’t move their feet to resist,” Eli yelled to Henrietta over the sounds of the workshop, “but they’re still awfully big, so we’re going to have to put our weight into it. Ready?”
“Ready!”
“One …”
“No!” Mari said.
“Two …”
“You can’t do this!”
“Three!”
Eli and Henrietta pushed their shoulders into the backsides of the djinn, who had conveniently high centers of gravity. Mari and Zumaj fell simultaneously into the spinning cylinder, whose spikes pulled them through a slotted sheet of metal and started shredding their cloth flesh from the legs up.
“Curse you, Eli Whitney!” Mari yelled, her lower half sucked into the death-trap, the rest of her torso following quickly. “May you never find profit as an inventor! May you never –”
And then she was gone, along with Zumaj. All that remained was the separated threads of their flesh, taking another trip around the cylinder.
As the last of the wall-traps finished springing, Eli took up his broom and swept Zumaj’s legion into the cylinder pit. He wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned on the broom handle as Henrietta approached.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now I collect their threads and lock them away somewhere safe.”
“Will that keep them from returning?”
“They’ll find a way back, like they always do. But this might keep them sleeping long enough to forget about you.” She tilted her head to the side. “What about you? Where do you go from here?”
“I suppose I continue on to my teaching job. I’m not thrilled by the idea, but –”
“Oh …my …Lord.”
Eli and Henrietta turned to the doorway. Standing there with a basket against her hip was Catherine Greene, the owner of the plantation and Eli’s gracious hostess. She advanced, marveling at the contraptions on the walls.
“Catherine,” Eli said, kicking a stray bird’s wing into the cylinder pit before she could notice. “What are you doing here?”
“I was picking up some cotton from one of the workers, and thought I heard a commotion …” She leaned over the pit, looking curiously at the still-spinning cylinder. “What is this thing?”
“It’s …why, it’s my latest invention, of course! Look!” Eli grabbed a handful of cotton from Catherine’s basket and tossed it into the pit. He tried not to show his surprise when he realized the spinning spikes had instantly separated the cotton fibers from their seeds.
“Eli! It’s marvelous!”
“Yes, well – this is just a prototype. The final version will be much smaller.”
“You’re going to be rich! I’ll go tell Phineas right away!”
Catherine hurried off. Eli turned to Henrietta, smiling.
“Cancel that order for the teaching job,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders and sticking his chest out. “I’m going to be rich.”
And that’s how Eli Whitney, creator of the cotton gin and pioneer of the interchangeable-parts manufacturing system, finally found his inspiration. Although his inventions would go on to forever change the world of industry, he never did get rich.
Dressing Mr. Featherbottom
Amy Sisson
The first time AnnaBella Frostwich put makeshift clothing on her companion, Mr. Featherbottom, her mother thought nothing of it. Anna was only three years old, and small children naturally treated their companions as playthings, almost like the porcelain baby dolls that had gone out of fashion at the end of the last century. But by the time children reached school age, they understood that companions were more than mere toys; they served as playmates, teachers, chauffeurs, and chaperones. In spite of their ubiquitous presence at every level of society, however, there simply was no reason to dress them. Companions did not feel the cold, and their brass and copper plating did not require covering to maintain modesty, after all.
But unlike other children, AnnaBella did not outgrow her habit of dressing Mr. Featherbottom. In fact, by the time she was seven, she was becoming an accomplished little seamstress, and had turned Mr. Featherbottom into a facsimile of a fashionable young ‘gentleman’ Each time he initiated a growth phase, using spare parts from the local companion co-operative to lengthen his limbs and maintain a commensurate size with Anna, she created a new wardrobe for him, covering his metal body with a green seersucker jacket and trousers, or perhaps a gabardine suit for rainy days. As Anna’s skills did not extend to shoemaking, and her own outgrown shoes would have looked silly on him, Mr. Featherbottom’s metal feet stuck out from the bottom of his trousers rather comically, but otherwise he seemed quite dignified.
Mrs. Frostwich did not know what to do about her daughter’s propensity. It was not wrong, precisely, to dress one’s companion, just as it was not wrong that the newly created Mr. Featherbottom had chosen a male identity and an unusually formal name for himself upon Anna’s birth. It was just very odd.
One day, Mrs. Frostwich happened upon Anna playing with a remnant of white lace that the little girl had found in the household rag bag. Humming and singing little snatches of songs, Anna used a headband to anchor the lace to her head as a makeshift veil. Mr. Featherbottom sat by patiently. In addition to a dark gray walking suit, he wore an expertly tied dove-grey cravat and a matching top hat, which Anna had begged from her father’s valet.
Anna appropriated a small bunch of artificial flowers from a nearby vase and held them towards Mr. Featherbottom, sing-songing, “Oh, Mister F, will you marry me?, Uh-huh, uh-huh. Mister F, will you marry me? And when shall the wedding be?’ Uh-huh, uh-huh.”
“I should be delighted, Miss AnnaBella,” Mr. Featherbottom said, standing up and doffing his hat. Anna giggled and proceeded to hum a loud wedding march as the two promenaded around the perimeter of the room.
Later, Mrs. Frostwich discussed the matter with her own companion, Geraldine, who unfortunately didn’t have much to say. She then tried Mr. Frostwich, both expecting and receiving his customary response (“I’m sure you can manage it, my dear”). Finally, not knowing to whom else she could turn, she made an appointment to see Dr. Hughes, who had attended the family since Mrs. Frostwich’s own girlhood.
“I really don’t see any harm in AnnaBella dressing her companion, Mrs. Frostwich,” Dr. Hughes said with a reassuring smile. “Do you, Jacoby?”
The doctor’s companion, sitting unobtrusively nearby, shook his head. As with most medical companions, the majority of Jacoby’s body was comprised not of brass and copper, but rather of surgery-grade composite steel, so that he could withstand frequent sterilization and assist Dr. Hughes without undue risk of infecting human patients. Jacoby’s spotless metal torso gleamed yet was not flashy, lending him an air of understated efficiency and trustworthiness.
“It’s unusual but not unheard of,” Jacoby said, inclining his head and addressing Mrs. Frostwich in clipped yet pleasant metallic tones. “There have been a number of reports of children dressing their companions well beyond the play-acting stage. In fact, some of those children eventually grow up to become seamstresses, tailors, or even fashion designers. If Mr. Featherbottom himself doesn’t object, it seems likely that he has noticed her talent and is subtly encouraging her to develop those skills.”
“But the wedding veil …?” Mrs. Frostwich trailed off. She’d been unsure whether to bring it up, but she’d found herself blurting it out to Dr. Hughes as soon as she’d arrived.
“Just exercising her imagination, I’m sure,” said Dr. Hughes. “It makes perfect sense, si
nce AnnaBella is so interested in clothing. I’ve always suspected,” he continued with a chuckle, “that weddings are simply an excuse for the ladies to buy new clothes, wouldn’t you agree? I’m sure AnnaBella is more interested in dressing as a pretend-bride than in actually getting married.”
Mrs. Frostwich felt somewhat reassured. Perhaps she should even ask her husband to arrange extra drawing lessons for Anna, who might yet turn out to be a prodigy rather than an oddity. There was a certain prestige in having a child pursue artistic endeavors in this dawning industrial age, and fashion design seemed to incorporate the best of both worlds: it was an art form, yet it was practical and potentially lucrative. Mrs. Frostwich imagined herself at the center of an admiring throng of her peers at a future Gardening Society luncheon.
From that point on, Mrs. Frostwich took an almost perverse pride in describing Mr. Featherbottom’s latest ensembles to her friends during their afternoon visits, and remarking upon the precision of the stitches and other fine details that Anna incorporated into her work. She even allowed Anna to adorn Geraldine with a few small accessories on their days out. But underneath, the devoted mother still wondered whether Anna’s eccentricities were quite …quite.
* * *
When AnnaBella was 22, she graduated with honors from the New Yorke Institute of Fashion, taking home the Weetwood Prize based on her thesis collection. As the winner, AnnaBella was scheduled to give the last student showing in the Institute’s event at the New Yorke Spring Fashion Week Extravaganza.
The decision to give AnnaBella the award had not been without controversy. During her four years at the Institute, other students had partially followed her example by giving their companions occasional accessories to match their own designs. But Anna dressed Mr. Featherbottom every single day, in full rigging right down to his custom-made shoes. Her idiosyncrasy, argued some of the more conservative faculty members, might ultimately reflect poorly on the Institute, which was still struggling to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the more-established fashion academies in Paris and London.