“We don’t have time for this!” Gren shouted, shaking me. “We have to get out of here!”
“I don’t care!”
“Pocket!” Gren yelled, shuffling his weapon aside and throwing me against the curved wall. “Listen to me! He’s not worth it!”
“Don’t…care…”
“Pocket…” he spoke under his breath. “Will. You’re better than this.”
Too exhausted to fight, I dropped my shoulders and sullenly responded to my friend.
“I don’t want to be, Gren. I’m sick of it.”
Gren chewed on his lip. He looked over to the fallen man, still wriggling and purpled and on the floor, and then back to me.
“What the hell happened to you?” Gren uttered.
My body hurt. My mind hurt. My soul was all bunched up at the bottom of my feet. And I was still hungry.
“I fell in love,” I said.
Gren drew a very long breath. “Love,” he repeated. “Okay. But standing around here, screaming and fighting, isn’t going to do Dolly any good. And you know that. The more time we waste here, the further away she gets and the more we risk getting shot. Now, I don’t feel like waiting around to die. How about you?”
I pressed my head against the coolness of the stone. “No.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
I peeled myself off of the wall and gave a final, passing glance to the collapsed Motorist.
“Okay, Gren,” I said. “You take the lead.”
The next floor up was a complete battlefield, and Gren and I were soldiers who had arrived to the war a day too late. The other Motorists who had transported us here lay slumped all across the space, many singed by fire. Spots on the surrounding stone were charred black from the explosions. Bullet marks and blood drops were abundant. Rifles, chains, and blunt instruments were strewn about. I did not know if these men were killed, unconscious, or too weak to respond to us, but I didn’t feel like asking.
“Looks like someone set up a pretty good trap,” Gren muttered to me.
I nodded in silent agreement. But who, I wondered. That knife-brandishing set of hands in the smoke, that phantom who had cut my hands free. Was this his or her work?
“If anyone’s alive enough to hear me, don’t move!” Gren announced to the room, pointing the Half-Luck around. “I don’t think any of you want to risk a fight in your condition.”
Gren carefully moved about the men, kicking away any nearby weapons from their reach and checking their clothes for that missing key. I stood and watched, my fingers white and shaking as they clutched onto the Doll’s toy. The act may seem ridiculous to some, but at the time it was the only thing I could do to protect the smallest part of the woman I loved.
“Nothing,” Gren said, returning to me. “No one has it.”
“To the top, then,” I replied.
The topmost floor of the Motorists’ bootleg powder mill was a sight I could barely describe. If the room below had been a battlefield, then this space was the Apocalypse itself. The windmill’s central machinery, notably its spinning, center shaft, was still miraculously intact and functional, but practically everything else had been blown to bits, including a quite sizable hole in the stone wall. How a gunpowder blast managed to blow through solid stone and not harm the wooden shaft completely eluded me. But now was not the time to wonder.
“Watch yourself,” Gren said, stepping through the rubble. “It’s a little rocky.”
“I imagine the Apocalypse would be.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Look, there’s the hatch,” I said, pointing to the wooden exit built into the ceiling.
“And there’s the ladder to get to it,” Gren said, pointing to the wooden pile of charred sticks blasted apart by the detonations.
“Ah,” I replied, frowning, “I see.”
“Now what?”
“You want to try climbing on my shoulders?” I suggested.
“Do you want me climbing on your shoulders?” he sarcastically countered.
I started to sweat, or rather, started to realize that I had been sweating profusely for some time. I wiped my forehead. “So we’re trapped here. Wait! No!”
I jogged to the edge of the gaping hole that was torn into the side of the wall.
“Hey Gren,” I said, watching the large sails of the windmill swing past outside, “how sturdy do you think those things are?”
My friend shrugged and then slowly widened his eyes as my meaning sunk in.
“Something funny, Alan?”
“You’re telling me that you, you, Pocket, jumped out of a hole and rode a windmill to the ground?”
“Well, I didn’t really jump. And Gren, as well.”
“I’m just having trouble picturing that.”
“Well, it wasn’t very graceful.”
“I bet.”
Gren peered down the opening, glaring at the ground below.
“No,” he said.
“It’s only a few floors down. The fall probably wouldn’t even kill us.”
“No.”
“The beams holding those sails are pretty thick.”
“No.”
“And we can wrap our arms and ankles through those wooden lattice holes that are holding up the sailcloth.”
“No.”
“So we don’t have to depend on supporting our own weight so much.”
“No.”
“If you’ve got another idea, I’m listening.”
Gren paused, scowled, and rolled up his sleeves.
“That’s what I thought,” I sassed.
And as the two of us at last planted our feet onto the soft soil at the bottom of the mill and—
“Whoa, whoa! Hold on now, Pocket. You’ve promised me an amusing windmill episode. Silly, you said it was. What you’ve given me is a whole chapter filled with nothing but bloodshed and torment.”
“Well, granted, but I think it was important to—”
“And finally, when you actually get to a little piece of comedy, a piece, mind you, not the complete chapter I refilled your glass for—“
“Fine. I get it.”
“—you skip over the entire business.”
“Alan!”
“What?”
“Sigh. So you want some comedy?”
“I think you owe me a little.”
“Okay then. How’s this?”
Chapter Twenty
The Great Comedy of the Windmill
And so it came to be, as decreed by the great Alan Dandy, bartender to the great city, bearer of the great bottles of even greater substances, that the farcical tale of the windmill was to be recounted. All praise to Alan Dandy!
And may the rest of London forgive me.
The voice of Gren Spader rang through the air like birdsong, provided that the bird involved was frightened. And tone-deaf. And probably dying.
“This was a horrible idea!” Gren squawked, clinging onto the sail beneath mine.
“At least we’re outside!” I shouted back from my own perch.
“Oh, sure!” he shouted. “This is much better!”
I should probably mention that this was our eighth circle around the whole of the windmill. My suspicion that the beams were sturdy enough to withstand us was thankfully correct. I had misjudged, however, the difficulty to remove our limbs from the small lattice holes in time with the meeting of the sail with the ground. Also, the sails didn’t exactly meet with the ground, so it was more of an issue of falling free at the point where the ground was as physically close to our bodies as possible.
After three circles around the entire windmill, Gren and I figured out the proper time to let go.
After four we realized that we were stuck to our posts.
“Much, much better!” Gren shouted as the sky once more twisted upside down before my eyes.
“Great, Spader! Complain some more!” I yelled. “That’ll help!”
Gren howled. “I swear, just one more turn on this
ride, and I’m dropping this damned thing!” He was referring to the Doll’s bubblemaker, which was clutched between his knees.
“You do and I’ll kill you!”
“Why does everyone want to kill me today?!? It’s getting really old!”
“You won’t live long enough to become ‘really old’ if you drop that toy!” I threatened. “Parts of Dolly are in there! Would you drop her?”
“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have held this thing?”
“I’m already hanging on to this,” I said, cradling my bottle of faerie juice against my ribcage with my elbow. “You think I’m happy to see you holding the Doll between your legs?”
“What did you say?” Gren shouted, his head spinning.
“I said, don’t let go of that bloody—”
“Look!” Gren exclaimed as we began our ninth circle around. “Someone’s in the sky!”
“Military?!?” I gasped, afraid.
“No, some sort of civilian dirigible. It’s…yeah, it’s a hot air balloon. I’m gunna try to signal them.”
Unfortunately, with our hands and feet and Gren’s knees incapacitated, we could do little more than thrash about on the posts. Miraculously, the pilots of the balloon spotted us anyhow and began steering toward us.
“Thank God!” Gren said.
I spun upside down once more and got close enough to grasp a quick look at the men approaching in my overturned sky. There was something unsettlingly familiar about them.
“Oh no,” I muttered to myself.
The two men, brothers, began to wave excitedly as they approached. The unusual, colorful wardrobe hanging from their bodies were unmistakable.
The Marvelous Marins, peddlers, medicine men, maniacs, were careening through the clouds. And they were heading our way.
“Hello!” Doctor D yodeled to us.
“Good day!” Doctor P sang out.
Well, I figured, at least they’re on my side.
“Pocket!” Gren shouted from below me. “That better not be who I think that is!”
“Would you rather keep riding this?” I retorted.
He groaned and yelled to the Marins. “All right, boys! Over here!”
We continued to circle as they bobbed closer to us.
We continued to circle as they bobbed past us.
We continued to circle as they bobbed away, waving a gleeful goodbye to us.
“Adieu!” Doctor P shouted.
“Happy sporting!” Doctor D followed.
And they were gone. And we continued to circle. I think I heard Gren cry.
Four spins later, I decided that I was quite ready to disembark. I tugged and pulled my left wrist and at last yanked it free. As my sail approached the ground, I let go of my bottle. It bounced upon the soil and, to no surprise, landed completely unharmed. With my free hand, I started yanking at my other entangled limbs. I cheered in victory as my right hand slipped loose.
My feet, however, were still quite held in place. And as the windmill continued to turn, I was soon thrown downward, hanging by my ankles, coat draped over my face, as my sail turned back up to the sky.
“Now this is just sad,” I heard Gren say.
I ultimately worked my way out of my coat and sent it, along with my hat, sailing down to the earth.
I sighed. “Tough day.”
Exhausted as I was, and with blood quickly rushing to my crown, I tried to muscle up the strength to pull my dangling body back onto the whole of the sail. I was unable to do so, but I did manage to dislodge my legs and fall headfirst onto the sail below me, nearly crippling Gren as I landed.
“Ow!” he snapped, the bubblemaker fumbling out of his clutch. “Get off of me!” I rolled over the side of the beam and caught the sailcloth just in time to keep from falling off.
“I told you not to drop that!” I yelled at Gren.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to land on me!” he yelled back.
“Neither was I!”
I took a deep breath, commanding my aching fingers to hang on until the mill had circled back toward the ground. And then, of course, the cloth ripped.
“No, no, no, no!” I yelped, falling down and catching the sail that was coming up beneath me.
“You all right?” Gren called out.
“I’m still alive,” I bitterly retorted, “so, no!”
But at the very least this procession of tumbling had left me in a much better position to make a jump for it. Or rather a weary, half-hearted drop.
Thud! I smacked against the ground and rolled off onto my back. Thoroughly worn down, I laid still, breathed deeply, and considered taking an impromptu nap. Sleep upon the grass and soil? Didn’t seem like a bad prospect. I turned my stiff neck to the side and saw that, like my bottle, the Doll’s toy had come to rest perfectly unbroken. I closed my eyes in peace, glad that for a single, passing moment, everything was calm, at rest, and thoroughly as it should be.
“Damn you, Pocket!” Gren screamed. “I am going to stomp you into pudding if you don’t get up and pull me off of this overgrown pinwheel right now! Do you hear me?!? Right now!”
Everything at rest. Everything in a lull.
My tension melted into the soil, and I breathed in the day’s air.
“Pocket?!? I know you can hear me!”
And with our hero’s final taste of serenity, so ends the terribly great or greatly terrible comedy of the windmill. God save Alan Dandy, may his followers remain forever joyous and for never sober.
Chapter Twenty-One
Damnable Pity
“Satisfied?”
“A bit short for a chapter, Pocket.”
“Come on, Alan. What do you want? That’s all the comedy I have left in me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. We got off of the windmill. The end.”
“But Gren was still—”
“He cracked the wood around his ankle and got down within five minutes. The end.”
“But those Marins and their balloon—”
“They passed and were gone. The end.”
“But—”
“The. End. Okay? If you want more laughs, I may as well stop right now.”
“Okay! You don’t have to get so angry! What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve told you, Alan! I’ve been telling you! This story, this whole, stupid story, it’s not easy for me to tell!”
“You haven’t seemed to have much trouble up to now.”
“Well, now we’re reaching the beginning of the end. And I can’t say you’re going to find much more laughter.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Sorry. If you want me to leave, I’ll—”
“No, it’s fine, Pocket. I want to listen. But, really…is it that dreary?”
“Sigh…I promised you a story, Alan. But I never promised a happy ending.”
“Well, Pocket, the sun’s not up yet. Tell me whatever one you’ve got.”
“Very well.”
And as the two of us at last planted our feet onto the soft soil at the bottom of the mill and surveyed the fields beyond, Gren and I shared a moment of silent recognition of what we had done. Our freedom again rewarded to us, we turned our backs on the powder mill and began to retrieve our possessions amongst the grass.
“Any idea where we are?” Gren tiredly asked as he bent down to retrieve the Half-Luck. He had thrown his weapon to the dirt before climbing onto the sail. I had done the same with my boots, not wanting the heavy pair to weigh me down.
“None,” I glumly said, taking my coat and hat before shoving my socked feet back into my boots. It dawned on me that I still had in my possession my green-lensed eyeglass, which I had absentmindedly tucked into my pants pocket before heading out flower-shopping the night before. I would’ve thought the remaining glass piece would be completely crushed during either my abduction, interrogation, or escape, but as chance had it, the piece survived with only the golden frame being slightly bent.
“You sti
ll wearing that ridiculous thing?” Gren grinned.
“Got to hold onto whatever I’ve got left,” I said as I straightened the frame, “ridiculous or not.”
“You realize it’s only keeping half of the sunlight out of your sight.”
“Yeah. But no matter,” I said, sliding the eyeglass up my nose. “I’m fine with keeping one eye in the shade.”
I gathered the faerie juice and the bubblemaker, a box of her body and a bottle of my soul. Or just trivial baubles. Gren began smacking the barrel of his scattergun to loosen the caked-in dirt.
I threw on my overcoat and stuffed my hands in the pocket. The contents were more or less still inside: the same scraps of paper, the same ridiculous calling card, the last remaining purple cigarette, and the…wait…
I dropped to my knees and began clawing at every stitch, every seam, every corner and cranny of my overcoat. I felt sick.
“What’s wrong?” Gren said, walking over.
I started to pale. I looked up at him, shaking, and swung my head. “It’s…it’s gone…”
“What are you talking about?” Gren said. “What’s gone?”
“The turnkey. It’s…it’s not here.”
Gren’s jaw dropped. “What?!? Are you sure?!? Are you checking the right pocket?!?”
“I’ve checked them all.”
Gren practically dove into the earth. He crawled and swayed and tore handfuls of grass in his fists.
“It’s not there,” I weakly said.
“Must be!” he barked. “Must’ve fallen from you on the way down!”
“No.”
“Must’ve landed somewhere in the brush! Damn it, why isn’t it reflecting in this light?”
“Because it’s not here.”
“Don’t say that! I mean, you’re sure you took it back from the Motorists?”
I was sure. Despite the blinding smoke and surrounding clatter, the one task I was completely determined to perform was the retrieval of that turnkey. Oh, I had it, all right. And I would’ve damn sure noticed if I had dropped it as I went. No, in that moment, watching Gren beat down on the earth, I was certain. The only way that the turnkey of the Watchmaker’s Doll could’ve disappeared is if it was taken directly from my person in the dark.
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 55