“What happens in two weeks?” I had asked the Watchmaker's Doll.
And she had answered me. “Ask me again in eleven days.”
Eleven days later and here we were, standing in a different dark under the same sky. I half-smiled an apology to her for letting myself forget. Her only reply was to again put the turnkey in my hands. And once again, I rubbed my thumb over the etched words.
“My father wrote that,” the Watchmaker's Doll said to me.
Stunned, I nearly dropped the key. “Your...father?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, uh, the man who created you?”
She looked at me like I was dense. “Isn't that what a father is?”
“Sorry.”
“Don't you want to know?”
I nodded.
“Then ask,” she said with the softest smile.
“All right,” I replied, trying to match that impossible gentleness. “What happens in two weeks, Doll?”
She approached and put her hands over mine. We stood there on opposite sides of the key.
And we kissed.
The moon stayed put as a few more lifetimes slid by in that moment.
When our lips at last broke and pulled away, she squeezed my hands tighter and said it.
“After two weeks,” she whispered. “I stop.”
My heart dropped. “Stop? What do you mean? You're not going to—”
“Relax,” she said with a giggle. “I'm not going anywhere.”
“But...I'm confused. Then what do you mean by 'stop?'”
“When you turn the key,” she whispered, “it starts me up, gets me good and spinning on my own for awhile. But it doesn't last forever. Sooner or later, the key has to be spun again.”
I nodded in the dark. “Two weeks.”
“That's right,” she said. “Every two weeks. My father wrote it on the key for me as a reminder.”
“And tonight...”
She smiled and nodded back to me. “...is two weeks.”
“So you're going to…”
“Sleep,” she said. “Very soon.”
“How soon?”
“Within the hour.”
“Oh.”
She must have known that I wasn't completely understanding the implication behind her eyes.
“Mister Pocket,” she said to me, “I want it to be you.”
“Me?”
“To turn my key again.”
My breath fell still in my throat.
“Why me?” was all I could ask.
“Because you turned it once,” she replied, “and I'd...like you to turn it again.”
The oil sea rolled on around us.
“I'd be honored,” I said.
I escorted the Watchmaker's Doll to her quarters and sat at her bedside. Her bright hair cascaded down the pillow like some reddened waterfall washing its way through Paradise. I tried to tuck her turnkey into the blankets.
“No,” she said, softly pushing it away. “You keep it tonight.”
“Why?”
“Let me sleep through the night. Girls need their rest.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She clutched her hands around the sheets and bundled herself tight. “Come and wake me in the morning. Promise?”
“I promise.”
As the final minutes ticked away, she pressed her pale lips into the shapes of the letters that make my name.
“Thank you, Mister Pocket,” she said. “Thank you for my first real weeks.”
“My pleasure.”
The light in her eyes began to dim.
“Getting sleepy?” I asked with a shy grin.
She nodded. “Remind me in the morning, Mister Pocket, to tell you something important.”
“Why not now?”
She looked me in the eyes and gave me that mischievous, girlish wink. “Because I have to go to sleep.”
And with that, the light fell from her eyes. Her eyelids slowly slid closed and the soft ticking of clockwork beneath her chest came to a stop. She lay before me, completely at rest.
Carefully, I took her bare hand and kissed it.
“Sweet dreams, Doll.”
With nothing more to do, I blew out a candle, tucked the turnkey under my arm, and made my way out of the room.
The red sun came up in the morning and, exhausted as I was, I promptly got up, fumbled into my clothes, and retrieved the turnkey. The Lucidia seemed so dead and empty in the morning. I was the only one up, so I was careful to quiet my stroll. As I reached the Doll's chamber, the feel of the girl's lips from the night before reappeared on my own. My chest was tight and I took a moment to steady myself. Then, with grand and precise strides, I entered the room, moving like an actor onto a stage greatly awaiting its promised hero. The dawn filled my veins and wrapped my bones. Life was absolutely new as I walked into the bedroom of the Watchmaker's Doll.
And saw the empty bed.
Dawn was snuffed out of me like the candle flame I had blown out the night before.
The turnkey hit the floorboards with a sharp clang. I was tugging on the sheets, looking around, calling out her name.
Nothing.
I banged on the quarters of the crew, checked under stairwells and in corners. I ran from one end of the ship to the other.
Nothing.
I searched the decks, cast my bloodshot eyes over every visible inch of the oil sea.
Nothing. I returned to the empty bed and was slapped with the nauseating truth. She was gone.
Finally I grabbed the pillow that had held her head. As I pulled it up, a small folded note floated out from underneath. I felt dizzy.
With a shaky hand, I picked up the note and read its short message.
“Nothing personal, Pocket.”
And I was sick.
Because I didn't need to recognize the handwriting to know who had made it to this bed before me.
“Just watch yourself, storyteller,” Kitt Sunner had warned me on the steps of the Gaslight Tea House. “I may get bored one day and take something of yours.”
And one day had come.
Chapter Fourteen
Pocket the Gentleman
“No...”
“Yes, Alan.”
“He couldn't have—“
“He did.”
“The...the little rat. What was he thinking?”
“I wondered that for a long time.”
“Long? You mean...”
“Yes, Alan. This story's nowhere close to ending.”
My knees gave. Having my soul's essence so quickly punched out of me, my body went weak and collapsed on the floor like a rag doll.
Doll...
She was gone. Kitt was gone. The world was gone and it didn't take me with it. What was I left with then? Nothing?
No...
A spark of light on metal caught my eye from the floor. The Doll's turnkey.
The Lucidia's crew shuffled around me, talking over each other. I paid no attention to whatever they said. I was deadened.
Except...
Anger. At that fallen moment, my face to the dirty floor, anger was my sole motivator, the only remaining force pushing blood through my dead man's body.
Kitt Sunner, you coward.
I don't know how long I’d lain on the floor, but eventually I felt my arms raised by someone. I was soon up, but not on my feet. My body was being supported by The Red Priest and Madame B. They were dragging me out of the room and shouting empty words of encouragement. I didn't let a single one into my ear until B spoke the following.
“Calm down. There's no way in Hell that they're off the ship.”
I snapped momentarily back to life and stared into the girl's face.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, look who's still alive,” she replied. “We'll find them.”
“Find them?”
“We're surrounded by oil and water,” the Priest said. “You think Kitt's going to try to swim to shore with a sleepin
g girl on his back?”
This logic made sense, but for some reason it didn't make me feel any better. I still had that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, that pounding in my head that kept saying, “She's gone. They're gone.”
“Where are you taking me?” I muttered.
“The galley. You need to eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“We don't care,” Madame B said. “You're eating.”
“But Dolly and Kitt—”
“Gren and Jack are searching the ship,” the Priest said. “They'll find them.”
I still wasn't reassured, but was too weak to complain. The pirates took me to the galley, which sat slightly on a slant. Miss B dropped me onto a stool and began rummaging through a cabinet strewn with cobwebs.
“Let's see...” she said, searching. “What haven't the maggots gotten into yet?”
I dropped my head.
“Sorry,” the captain said. “We told you we don't normally cook onboard.”
“That's fine,” I grumbled. “Let's just skip the meal.”
“Nope!” B said, pulling a dusty box out. “Breakfast is happening, if I have to shove it down your throat myself.”
“Great,” I replied, taking her find. A bowl was given to me, and into it I poured the contents of the box, a pile of hard and salty crackers. I sighed and pushed my teeth through one.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely to my hosts. They smiled at me.
“Try to relax,” Madame B said. “The fox may have made a run for it, but I can assure you, they're definitely not gone.”
I smiled weakly and nodded. As I did, Gren and Jack barged into the room in a fevered panic.
“They're gone!” Gren shouted.
And in my delirium, I laughed. I actually laughed. Because I felt as if Gren had delivered some great climax to a joke that had been building up for days upon days. I closed my eyes and envisioned the Lucidia, that half-sunk ship, as a stage, a spot-lit bit of playacting in the dark. The walls were to me just flat, painted panels and we were just tragic clowns with painted faces, rosy-cheeked and dark-eyed.
“What do you mean, gone?!?” I heard Madame B growl. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I pictured her moving center stage, stamping her feet with theatric exaggeration.
“They're...uh...gone,” Hack-Jack said, eliciting laughter from my invisible audience.
“Impossible!” the Red Priest shouted, playing to the back rows.
Gren moved from his position on the set to the pirates and spread his arms wide.
“Your shuttle,” he said to the Priest, “it's missing too.”
“What?!? How?!?”
“We don't know.”
“The landing bay was completely submerged in the crash.”
“I know.”
“Even if they could get inside, they couldn't navigate it...could they?”
“Apparently.”
“But how would they get the ramp open and—”
“Would you stop saying they?” I snapped, knocking the pieces of the stage apart like a child. My eyes opened and I could see the others looking upon me with confusion.
“Uh...” Gren started. I didn't give him the chance to get further.
“The Doll is sleeping,” I said, holding up the turnkey in my clenched fist. I paused for a moment and glared at it, having not remembered clutching it as I was dragged to the galley by my hosts. But back to the point.
“Without this, she can’t lift a finger,” I said, “and this is a kidnapping. So if you're going to speculate on what's happened, speculate on Kitt. Because Dolly's not a consenting party to this, all right? What are you smiling about, Spader?”
“Nothing,” Gren said, quickly changing his face.
“Pocket,” B said softly, “we haven't been awake for long, and this has already been a rough morning. Why don't you stop and have a little breakfast before you start dealing with this?”
I looked down at the bowl of old crackers.
“Fine,” I said. “Leave me.”
“What?”
“I want to be alone.”
“Nothing doin—“
“Go!” I yelled at the others. Madame B lowered her brows in anger and crossed her arms.
“Fine,” she said coolly. “Let's give Pocket his precious peace. When you're done throwing a tantrum, we'll be upstairs.”
I huffed through my nostrils in response. They said nothing else and silently marched out of the galley. B slammed the door hard behind her.
And I was alone with my meal.
I took a cracker in my hand and squeezed it into crumbs.
Relax.
How dare they expect me to stay calm and chew on old foodstuffs like nothing's happened?
I bit into another cracker, mashed my teeth, and swallowed the flavorless pulp.
Ug.
Too frustrated to sit still, I began searching the pantry for honey or jam or anything, anything, to put a little flavor on my tongue.
“Relax...” I muttered, looking through cupboards and cabinets. “It's gunna take a lot more than this to make me...ah.”
That's when I found the bottle of sherry.
Cooking sherry.
But more importantly, sherry.
Without a second thought, I palmed the dirty bottle, downed three mouthfuls, and promptly gagged, not so much from the intensity of the drink, but from my own impatience in consuming it.
“Not terrible,” I announced between fits of coughing.
I fought my way through a few more drinks then resigned myself to the bowl of crackers.
It wasn't long before the room around me acquired a fuzzy haze and the pounding in my head went silent.
I took a deep breath and gripped the sides of the bowl. I was dizzy, and closing my eyes, I let the world again take the form of a painted stage. I rose for a soliloquy and addressed my unseen audience.
“Meal...” I slurred. “The Doll was gonna make a meal.”
Comically, I stumbled across the scene and began pulling open doors and drawers.
“She was gonna save this mess! She was gonna take these crusts and crumbs in her pretty hands and build them up into something. Something warm. Filling. But look at me now. Starving and abandoned. All appetite and no satisfaction. Just chewing on remnants. Tasting the broken pieces of myself.”
I turned to the audience and postured.
“Well, not literally!”
Laughter. Applause. Fanfare.
“Maybe I can do it,” I mumbled in my stupor. “Maybe I...I can put together somethin'...somethin' solid.”
I knocked my way through the pantry, blindly grabbing at anything resembling food. Raving mad, I threw my ingredients together on a found plate, desperately trying to play the role of chef.
Of creator.
“Come on, Doll,” I pleaded, digging my nails into half-loaves as hard as stones, “show me how to do it. How to make somethin' outta this mess.”
I fell back into my seat, my creation of mustard, coffee grinds, and broken crackers on a hard, split roll before me.
I put my teeth to the bread, couldn't bite through it, and pushed it away.
“Lousy,” I declared.
I dropped my head onto my folded arms and let the stage lights dim. In my mind I let form the picture of Dolly as I had seen her the previous night, windswept and shy. I replayed the joining of our hands, the quiet kiss, and her soft fade into sleep beneath the heavy blankets.
And in that moment, I found my resolve, and the stage lights flashed back on.
If Kitt could get off of a sunken ship, then so could I.
I lifted my head and tried to shake away my dizzy inebriation. Propelled by my decision, I sat tall and finished the remaining crackers. When the bowl was empty, my created stage was gone, replaced once more with the steamship in its actuality.
I cleaned up the mess I had created and marched straight away to the Red Priest's cabin.
It was due time for me to come ashore.
“Wait, wait now, Pocket.”
“What is it?”
“I may be getting ahead of myself...”
“Probably are, Alan.”
“...but what was your plan in chasing the thief without a lead? Just wander aimlessly across Britain?”
“Eh, well, in my moment of passion, I hadn't really thought that out.”
“I see. Maybe you shouldn't mix your 'passions' with cooking sherry then.”
“Maybe...”
I stood there in the Priest's cabin, arms folded, feet planted, and eyes staring down the bewildered gazes of the Lucidia's crew.
“You're what?” Quill asked.
“Leaving,” I repeated.
“Leaving...” B said, her voice icy.
“From the ship, yes.”
“Is that so?”
“That's what I said.”
“Sorry,” the captain said. “You can't.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Oil sea. I don't care anymore. I'll find a way. Hell, I'll swim if I have to.”
“No, Pocket,” the Red Priest clarified, alarmingly serious. “I mean, you can't.”
I blinked in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You're not allowed.”
“Allowed?!? The hell do you mean, allowed?”
“Because of our arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
“You know.”
“Do I?”
B rolled her eyes. “Does a good job of playing dense, doesn't he?”
“Uh...” Hack-Jack said, scratching at his hair like an alley dog, “I dunno, B. I don't think he's messing around.”
“I'm not,” I said sternly. “What arrangement?”
The pirates exchanged looks and shrugs with each other.
“The arrangement,” the Priest said once again. “The reason you're on this ship!”
Something was wrong here and I hadn't quite put together what yet.
“The reason,” I said cautiously. “Refresh me.”
“You know, the deal. For the employment of you and your partner.”
“My partner...by which you mean...”
The Priest squeezed his eyes and tugged his beard.
“Gren, of course.”
I squeezed my eyes thinner and began to grind my teeth. Spader. Greatly self-restrained, I spoke.
“Would you all kindly excuse me for a moment?”
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 40