Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “Hmph,” I muttered. “They’re pining for me, all right.”

  I took another plodding step and heard Miss B laughing from the Lucidia.

  “Do you mind?” I called out over my shoulder.

  “The tower sinks!” she shouted back, drowning as much in her own amusement as I was in this nightmarish bath.

  “Go on!” the Watchmaker's Doll said.

  “Go?!?” I replied. “I'm sinking!”

  “Barely.”

  “Barely?!?” I managed to twist around enough to glare at the girl. “And what would you consider 'greatly sinking?' Up to the nose?”

  Not to be out-glared, she marched to the railing and leaned far over the side to wriggle her mechanical nose at me.

  “At least then I wouldn't hear so much complaining!” she taunted to me.

  “Is that so?” I shot back, balling fists. “Perhaps the Queen of the Oil Sea would prefer to wade out herself for her precious trinkets!”

  “They're not trinkets!” she spouted, tilting her small body further over the side of the ship. “They're—”

  And that's when it happened. A more skeptical audience to this tale may accuse your humble narrator of inventing the following turn of events to break up the incessant arguing or to sprinkle in a bit of humor. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

  “They're—eek!” the Doll cried as she fell over the side of the ship, her little feet kicking in protest as she slid. And there I was, and though the slip was over and done all in a half-moment, I somehow had time to swear and spot an overhead cloud make the likeness of a hysterically-laughing face.

  And then she landed on top of me. Thick velvet collided with my face, stinging my cheeks and thoroughly suffocating me. All and all, the experience was like being punched out by an upscale tailor. The girl's high-pitched screams filled my ears, ensuring that I would not have any of my senses at command to help keep balance. I sloshed about in place, slinging oil everywhere. Or so I imagine, being momentarily blind, deaf, dumb, and altogether unbalanced.

  The fact that neither of us tumbled down into the sea is nothing short of miraculous.

  Eventually my sight returned and her screams ceased. I soon came to realize that the Watchmaker's Doll was clinging to my back for very dear life. I still can feel how her false fingernails dug into my neck.

  “Well,” she said at last.

  “Well,” I said back, “so here we are.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “So, um, what do we do?”

  “I'm not sure,” she said into my ear. “Perhaps we should ask our hosts.”

  “Good idea,” I replied. “But let's wait until they finish laughing.”

  And so we did. Not patiently, but we did. And to their credit, the crew calmed down and offered their help. Eventually.

  Very eventually.

  I hate them.

  “All right,” Madame B shouted from the deck. “You two just remain calm.”

  “No problem,” I shouted back.

  “If you're going to remain sarcastic, Pocket, we can just leave you out there.”

  “Don't be difficult!” Dolly said with a kick to my back before shouting to the pirates. “He won't be difficult anymore! Come help us!”

  “Fine,” the Red Priest said. “Shuffle back to the ship and we'll help the young lady off of your shoulders.”

  I looked down at the portion of my legs not hidden beneath the muck and tried to steady them.

  “Sure,” I said, slowly twisting my torso. “Dolly, hang on.”

  And then, slowly, carefully, gracefully, I nearly fell over.

  “Eek! Careful!” the Doll shouted, sliding and clinging to me.

  “Is there a problem?” the Priest asked.

  “I can't turn around,” I said.

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, he can't!” the Doll yelped.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Miss Doll,” the Priest giggled, “you might want to adjust your skirts.”

  “Don't look!” the girl on my back screamed.

  “Come on, this is serious!” I snarled to the pirates. “For God's sake, find a way to solve this!”

  The Priest's solution, therefore, was to produce a rather large butterfly net.

  “Catch,” he said.

  “I can't,” I said.

  “I wasn't talking to you,” he said.

  The next thing I heard was the sound of something cutting through the breeze. The Doll gasped.

  “I've got it!” she said.

  “Got what?” I inquired, my back to the scene.

  “This.” She delicately dangled the netting over my face.

  “Wait...so you expect—”

  “Onward!” the Doll demanded in glee, kicking her heels into my back. “Safari!”

  I grimaced and blew the net away from my nose.

  “Fun day,” I said, carefully taking a sloppy step ahead.

  Plop, plop, plop. My body pushed through the oil, wobbling and shaking and toting the clockwork lady upon me.

  “Don't drop me, okay?” she said.

  “I don't believe this,” I grunted, feeling my fingers start to slip.

  “Gah! I said, don't drop me!” The Doll bounced on my shoulders. I squeezed my arms tighter around her thighs.

  “I'm trying!” I shouted back, trying to keep my very unsteady balance. “This isn't exactly easy, by the way.”

  “Are you trying to say that I'm too heavy?”

  Sigh...well, certainly a woman filled with steel and brass is going to...it wasn't worth arguing.

  “You're fine,” I muttered. “I'm just not used to walking in metal boots through a slop of oil with a clockwork girl on my back. Imagine that.”

  She kicked me in the back with one foot. “Be nice!”

  Instead I groaned and snorted. “You know, that's a quick way to get thrown into the muck.”

  “You wouldn't dare!” she said with sweetness and conviction. “I am too cute!”

  “Ug...”

  We slopped along the sunken beam until finally spotting a shiny half-circle of gears sitting on the surface like little, metal lily pads.

  “There!” Dolly said, releasing her fingernails from my skin to point. “You see?”

  “I see them.”

  “Hurry.”

  I moved cautiously into position, the swaying of my knees creating little waves that made the gears slide away from us.

  “Stay still,” the Doll whispered to me, aiming her net with her little arms. “I think I can reach from here.”

  And there I was, sunk to my knees in the lifeblood of new industry, as the girl on my back reached for the lost parts of herself. Now if that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is.

  “Bend down a little,” she said. “I'm too high to hit the surface.”

  I clenched my back, lowered my shoulders, and forgot to breathe. Fumes instead of air began filling my lungs, and my eyes began to water over. The entire world at once appeared to be a giant oil painting that was drying unevenly. I felt dizzy and would have shortly lost control of the situation had I not heard Dolly cheer.

  “Success!” she announced. I blinked hard and saw the butterfly net hanging before my eyes. It was stained black now, dripping and jingling as the Doll shook around her captured bounty.

  Exhausted, sore, and indescribably foul-smelling, your humble narrator, realizing he could do nothing else, broke down in laughter.

  “Success,” I repeated.

  “Are you...crying?” the Doll asked.

  “No,” I said, laughing hard. “I'm definitely not. So are you happy now, Doll?”

  “I suppose. Are you sure you're not crying?”

  And I laughed harder than I had in days. “Who can tell, Doll? Who can tell?”

  I heard her make a quiet sigh. “Boys are quite strange.”

  And that was that. I somehow managed to twist around enough to see my way back to the Lucidia, where the Priest and B made good on their
promise and helped pull the Doll from my shoulders. I didn't even care when she kicked me in the jaw on the way up. I was just glad for the dry boards of the ship.

  I soon found myself resting on the floor of the deck, breathing as deeply as I could manage while bearing the stink. I considered suggesting that we move ourselves downstairs, but didn't feel like moving my tired legs just yet. The Doll was standing next to me, but a world away, her eyes trained on the small pile of retrieved gears in her hands. They had been cleaned, polished, and returned to her in a small silken cloth. I yawned and stared at my toes through my dirty socks.

  “I'm afraid I may have ruined your boots,” I said to the Red Priest. He was sitting crosslegged across from me, observing the large, brass footwear I had borrowed. The sea did not want to let them go when I attempted to climb aboard the Lucidia, so I had abandoned them on my way over the rail. The Priest quickly retrieved them and smiled as I offered my apology.

  “They'll be fine,” he assured me. “They can take a little oil.”

  “That's a little oil, is it?”

  He shrugged. To be completely honest, there wasn't a spot of brass to be seen between the disgustingly thick layer of petrol that now coated the boots. The captain ran a finger through it and flicked a small lump overboard.

  “I'll be back shortly,” he said, hurrying off.

  “Odd one, isn't he?” I said to myself.

  “Who?” the Doll said, keeping her eyes on the gears.

  “The captain,” I responded. “Who else?”

  “Anyone else.”

  “Good point.” I yawned again as the Red Priest returned, clutching some peculiar contraption of which he seemed quite proud.

  “What's that?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Watch and see.”

  “There’s no getting a straight answer out of you, is there?”

  “What fun would a straight answer be, Pocket?”

  He sat on his knees and slid the device next to the boots. The thing was sort of pot-shaped with a wooden crank that the Priest began wildly turning.

  “You, uh, made this, I'm guessing?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he replied, spinning the crank.

  I watched as, to my surprise, the pot spit up a mushy lump of...something.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “What do you think it is? It's soap.”

  “Soap?”

  “Hold on. This isn't working.”

  He frowned and shook the machine. Finally, one small soap bubble appeared from the machine, floated up for a moment, then dissolved.

  “Hmph,” the captain said, displeased. “It's not supposed to behave this way.”

  “What's it supposed to be?” I asked.

  “Soap foamer and dispenser. Portable.”

  “Ah. Well, it sort of dispensed, um, that one spot of soap.” He scoffed. I then proceeded to make the situation worse. “Why don't you just grab a bar of soap and a rag?”

  “Hmph...”

  “Look, I can go get it. Hell, I'll wash the boots if you like. I did dirty them—”

  “No, no.”

  “I might as well do a little scrubbing.”

  “No, no, no!”

  “No?”

  “This was supposed to work. It was supposed to make things convenient.”

  “Not the end of the world.”

  The Red Priest sighed. “I can create better than this.”

  I was surprised at how genuinely disappointed the captain seemed at the failure of his device. I struggled to find words of encouragement.

  “Listen, it's really not worth getting so upset over.”

  “I understand,” the Doll interjected, staring at her pile of gears.

  “I'm sorry?” I replied.

  “You don't understand. I do.”

  “Would you care to inform us then?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Why should I?” the girl said. “He understands and I understand.”

  “I don't.”

  “You don't need to.”

  “Dolly—“

  “Captain?” she said, ignoring my complaint. “Can you look at something?”

  “What is it?” the Priest said.

  She presented her hands and their contents for him to inspect.

  “Do you see?” she asked.

  “Hmmm...” he replied. “No.”

  “Those two.”

  I stood up and looked into her palms. Resting below her thumb were two smaller gears, separated from the others. The Priest stroked his beard.

  “They're different,” Dolly said, pointing her nose down to the separated pieces.

  “What do you mean?” the Priest said.

  “They are differently crinkled.”

  I squeezed my eyes at them and realized that the girl was right. The smaller two displayed a distinctly different outer lip-pattern, or whatever you call those little metal bumps, and were just slightly off-color.

  “So what are you saying?” I finally asked.

  She frowned. “These two didn't come from me.”

  “Oh,” the Priest said. “I suppose not. Probably parts from something else sitting down there.”

  “Oh...” the Doll replied quietly. “For a moment...I thought they were mine...”

  “Easy mistake. They look nearly identical if you aren't paying attention.”

  “Yes...I guess they do...They're all pretty common-looking...”

  “Dolly?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Captain,” she said, pushing out her hands, “I want you to take these.”

  “What?” he said.

  “What?!?” I said in disbelief. “Doll, we've just waded out into that...that...giant—”

  “I've changed my mind. I don't need them,” she said. “They aren't part of me anymore.”

  “Hold on—”

  “Mister Pocket, when you spill blood, do you keep it in a jar?”

  I scratched my head. “No.”

  “No. You don't sit around and watch it rust either. And do you know why? Because anything can rust. That nasty, sunken beam you trotted on, it rusted. There's nothing special about it anymore.”

  “But we went all the way—”

  “There's no difference now between these bits and the other dirty debris. I don't want to be reminded that a part of me became garbage in the sea.”

  “I think you're overthink—”

  “And if you can't understand that, I don't know what to say to you!”

  She dropped the pile into the Priest's hands and marched away. I sighed and shook my head as she went downstairs. The Priest neatly tied the corners of the cloth together, closing the gears in a tidy pouch, and began to chuckle.

  “Don't laugh,” I said.

  “It's funny,” he said.

  “It's not funny.”

  “Oh, I think it is.”

  “I walked out there with that girl on my back.”

  “I know that.”

  “My back!”

  “Well, if you wanted your life to make sense, you shouldn't have started traveling with a woman.”

  “You travel with a woman.”

  The Red Priest sympathetically patted me on the shoulder. “I do. But I never said I wanted life to make sense.”

  Night fell hard that eve and, try as I did, I could not make myself fall asleep in the very comfortable guest room that had been offered to me. I felt restless, and leaving my hat and eyeglass behind, I got up and went for a walk, not really sure of where I was headed. The ship was dark and silent, and each footstep I took seemed to send a thousand splinters into the air. I ran my fingers down the walls in the black until I realized that I was trying to find my way to the surface. For no known reason to me, I dragged my tired feet up the stairs toward a modest patch of moonlight that was shining through the cracks. I was soon topside, alone with the night and the rolling wind. The air was cold, odorous, but reaffirming. I moved to the edge of the railing and stared
out across the oil sea for awhile.

  “What are you doing out here?” said a voice behind me.

  “Couldn't sleep,” I said, not looking back. “And you?”

  “No reason. I thought you hated the smell.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why come outside?”

  “I don't know. Maybe I'm getting used to it.”

  “Oh.”

  We stood without words and watched the sky.

  “I'm sorry for earlier,” the girl said to me. “I didn't mean to make a scene.”

  “Don't worry about it, Doll.”

  “And I know I made you carry me all the way out—“

  “It's forgotten.”

  She paused for a moment. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, Doll. I'm just tired.”

  “Then shouldn't you be in bed?”

  “That would make sense.” I blew my bangs out of my face. “Probably why I'm not.”

  I turned around to tell a joke to the Doll, but lost my words when I saw her. She was out of her normal clothing, instead dressed in a thin, pale nightgown that stopped above her knees. The light hit her pale legs in just the right way to make her skin slightly translucent, and I took a minute more than I probably should have to look at the gears inside climb up her thighs. The wind was pushing the garment against her body, outlining its girlish shape, and I had to instantly remember to watch my eyes.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, looking up at the sky. “So, uh, where'd you get the gown?”

  “Madame B,” Doll replied. “To sleep in.”

  “Right. Sure. You must, uh, feel pretty cold out here then.”

  “I'm all right.”

  “Uh, fine. Good.”

  “Mister Pocket,” she said, her voice serious and hushed.

  I looked into her eyes. Shyness and concern flickered through them.

  “What's wrong?” I asked.

  “Did you forget?” she asked.

  “Forget?”

  “Forget to ask.”

  “Ask? What was I supposed to...” I stopped in the dim light and saw it, the familiar object that she was holding behind her back. The same object I had carried over sky and earth for eternities from the moment I had met this girl. The key to the Doll. And I remembered. I remembered the words etched into the shiny metal I had first been given in the belly of a watch shop. I remembered the words I had shared with the girl at the end of a long day on the run.