The Wingsnatchers

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  It seemed ages before Gideon finally left, gathering up a few things (including the Mechanist’s gruesome cloak) and tidying the vanity on his way out. Carmer almost felt sorry for the other boy, then thought of his attitude at the stables. Clearly, the student was learning manners as well as magic from his teacher.

  Carmer briefly studied the Autocat before he snuck out. Its aquamarine eyes were still motionless, as inanimate as the armoire it sat in. Yet the potential for life seemed to ooze out of every orifice. Carmer hurriedly closed the armoire door in its face. Though he knew it was impossible—well, at least improbable—he could almost feel the stare of the pale blue eyes boring through the polished wood, as if they knew an intruder was near.

  At the very least, Carmer’s visit had taught him one thing. The nickname Wingsnatcher was more accurate than any of the faeries knew.

  “Hello?”

  Grit crept through the browning grass and weeds that hung over her head and listed in the breeze like tall weeping women. The overgrown garden linked a pair of once grand but now abandoned town houses; they were nothing but empty shells now, long since looted in a neighborhood that had seen much better days. Side by side, they looked like two old eyes in a sunken face. The house on the right had been ravaged by fire some time ago, and now the face was half skeletal.

  Sootlink would only go as far as the rusted front gate and cawed in protest when Grit tried to coax him onward. She’d made the rest of the way on foot through the narrow, overgrown path between the houses. The weeds were so thick she could barely see between them.

  “Hello?” she called again. “Echolaken? It’s Grit—ouch!” She stubbed her toe on a rusty old wheelbarrow that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the sea of tall grass. Grit hopped around, clutching her foot, until she quite suddenly found herself out in the open.

  The grass was cut off by a stone walkway that spiraled inward until it reached an empty fountain in the center of the yard. A statue of a girl with birds resting along her shoulders and taking off from her fingertips festooned the top of the fountain, but no water ran from her extended hands.

  Grit followed the pathway to the fountain warily, conscious of how out in the open it was despite the tall garden walls. This was not a wise place for a faerie with one wing to live, especially not with those awful cats prowling about.

  Grit gripped the mossy stones on the side of the fountain carefully, finding purchase in the wedges between them, and climbed. Her fingertips had just reached the top when a weak voice called out.

  “Go away,” said Echolaken.

  Grit hoisted herself up onto the fountain’s lip and sat down, her feet dangling over the inside. “Sorry,” said Grit, slightly out of breath. “I heard you could use some company.”

  Echolaken leaned against the base of the fountain. A cheerful, pastoral engraving of shepherdesses frolicking with their flocks stood in sharp contrast to the miserable-looking faerie in front of them. Someone had cropped Echolaken’s mossy hair short, perhaps to better disguise the patches that were torn out, but it only made her look skinnier and more forlorn. Her right arm was braced to keep her from jostling her wing muscles, but it looked like she hadn’t cleaned up from the accident much. There were still oily streaks on her pale face and legs.

  “Do you remember me, Echolaken?”

  “I told you to leave.”

  “My name is Grit. I’m the one—”

  “Who told them to cut it off,” said Echolaken. “I know.” The water faerie curled her knees in and hugged them to herself with her good arm, shivering and glaring at Grit.

  “Why did you leave Abby’s?” asked Grit. “You’re not well yet.”

  “And I’ll never be well, will I?” snapped Echolaken, her eyes filling with tears. “So what’s the point?”

  Grit leapt down into the fountain in one expert jump, landing lightly on her feet. She didn’t even slip in the wet leaves that lined the bottom.

  “Do I look like an invalid to you?” Grit asked.

  Echolaken sniffed. “It’s different for you. You’ve always been that way. And . . . and you’re a princess, for goodness’ sake.”

  Grit had little to say to that. “Is someone at least coming to check on you?”

  Echolaken nodded. “I just couldn’t stay at the Goddess. Not with everyone looking at me like . . .”

  “Like you’re a two-headed toad from down the marsh?”

  Echolaken chuckled weakly. “It’s not the toads’ fault!” she protested. “It’s all the rubbish the humans dump in there.”

  “And this isn’t your fault, either, Echo,” said Grit, sitting down next to the water faerie. Grit put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “You fought off the Wingsnatcher. You were the only one who could.”

  “And my sister? What was she?” asked Echolaken, shrugging away from Grit’s touch.

  “Brave,” said Grit simply. “Just like you.” Grit looked up at the stone birds taking flight, frozen forever. “Echolaken, I’m trying to find whoever’s behind this, but I can’t do it without your help.”

  “Oh, that’s rich,” said Echolaken, crying in earnest now. “We all know perfectly well you and the Seelie Court aren’t going to lift a finger to help us.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Queen Ombrienne’s called in all the faeries in her kingdom and closed off the Arboretum. None of our kind can get in or out—not since her daughter’s gone missing.” Echolaken narrowed her red-rimmed eyes.

  Grit’s mother had refused to help the Free Folk because of her. Queen Ombrienne thought the Wingsnatchers had captured Grit, and now she wouldn’t risk any of her own subjects to help the street fae. It was exactly the kind of paranoid move Grit should have known she’d make.

  “I’ll get a message to her to let her know I’m safe,” insisted Grit. How she would manage that without getting dragged back to the Arboretum, she didn’t know, but she would try. “But I’ve got help on this, Echo, real help, and I think we might be onto something. But I need to know what happened the night you were taken. Anything you can remember.”

  “I . . . don’t want to talk about it,” sobbed Echolaken. “Why can’t you just leave me alone like everyone else?”

  “You may have noticed,” Grit said with a wry smile, “I’m hardly like everyone else.”

  Grit flew Sootlink to the nearest spot of running water she could find, a leaf-filled, mealy creek gamely fighting to make its way to the Bevel River to the west. She clutched a lock of Echo’s mossy hair in her fist and swirled it under the murky water, whispering the words of encouragement the water faerie had taught her. It took a few tries, but the ripples soon danced at her touch, and she found herself looking at another reflection entirely—this one from one of the fountains in the Arboretum.

  No one seemed to be around, but that didn’t mean no one was listening.

  “Tell my mother I’m safe,” Grit said into the water, willing it to carry her words through the faerie kingdom. She heard a branch snap and flinched, but it was only Sootlink poking through the moist earth for worms. She wondered how long it would be before she stopped expecting mechanical beasts to leap out at her from every shadow.

  “Or at least,” Grit conceded, “I’m working on it.”

  10.

  THE PHOENIX ENGINE

  Though Carmer knew it wouldn’t be wise to follow Gideon all the way to this mysterious “factory” alone, he couldn’t resist sneaking behind the other boy as Gideon made his way out of the Orbicle, the Mechanist’s cloak tucked in a suitcase under one arm. Gideon showed no signs of the tongue-lashing he’d just received from his master, and in fact looked haughtier and more like he owned the Earth than ever.

  Carmer tailed him through the crowded streets to the theater district’s Relerail station. Gideon pulled out a ticket from his wallet and fed it into a slot at the gate; it swung open to the stairs going up to the platform. He strode to the other end and out of view. Carmer scurried after him, only to realize he didn’t h
ave a ticket.

  “Please insert your ticket,” said a curt, if rather fuzzy-sounding, female voice.

  “Whoa,” said Carmer.

  “Please insert your ticket.”

  Carmer looked around until he spotted the row of phonograph horns peering down from the gate’s archway overhead. Somehow, the contraption was registering his movement and playing prerecorded messages accordingly.

  Fascinated, Carmer squatted down to examine the ticket machine. He felt something beneath his feet give way just slightly as he moved.

  A second phonograph horn crackled on. “If you do not have a ticket, please move away from the gate.”

  “Brilliant,” said Carmer. The foot or so directly in front of the gate was actually a separate platform, not part of the sidewalk at all. He bet that when it registered his weight, some sort of spring mechanism was triggered to let the machine know a passenger had approached.

  “If you do not have a ticket, please move away from the gate.”

  “How do I even get a ticket?” Carmer muttered, but the churning sound of an incoming train interrupted him. Gideon Sharpe was going to board that train and get away, and here Carmer was wasting time poking around the gate!

  Carmer edged past a few people rushing up to make the train, hoping to sneak in with the crowd, but a purple satin – gloved hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “And just where do you think you’re going?” demanded Kitty Delphine. She was carrying a large carpetbag and looked about as stern as anyone in such a shocking shade of violet could manage.

  “Kitty, not now—” Carmer protested lamely as she dragged him away by his ear.

  “I hope you’re going to the Orbicle to set up some awe-inspiring trick that’s going to save our sorry backsides, Felix Carmer, because we’re sure gonna need a miracle to make it past the second round of this thing.”

  Kitty swung them around to the underside of the platform. Carmer thought he had misheard her under the train’s rumble.

  “The second round?” repeated Carmer, amazed. “You mean we made it? We didn’t get cut?”

  “No thanks to you,” Kitty sniffed, shifting the heavy bag slung across her shoulder. “We’re just lucky Madame Mystique set her hair on fire.”

  “Ah.”

  “Thank goodness for small blessings!”

  “Kitty, what are you doing here?” asked Carmer. He gestured to her bursting carpetbag. “What’s all that stuff?”

  “Never you mind. You’re coming with me back to the camp.”

  “But—” Carmer glanced up to see the Relerail pulling out of the station. Gideon Sharpe was getting away!

  “No ‘buts.’ The Amazifier says ‘just because our fortunes are in the flighty hands of fate,’ there’s no excuse for you to neglect your schooling. Do you have a Relerail pass?”

  Carmer shook his head.

  “Honestly, Carmer, we’ve been here for days. For a boy who plays around with machines so much, you sure are slow to join us in this century.”

  Defeated, Carmer followed Kitty to the ticket kiosk attached to the nearest theater. Gideon Sharpe was long gone.

  Carmer sighed, half with relief and half with worry. He wouldn’t be able to rely on misfiring pyrotechnics to inch them over the line into the final round the next time. What they needed was a miracle, and he wasn’t going to find it by chasing Gideon Sharpe into the underbelly of Skemantis. It was time to start holding Grit to her end of the bargain.

  It was time for some real magic.

  The Moto-Manse was easy to spot even in the middle of a circus camp, the pointed turret of the attic laboratory sticking up as high as the biggest striped tent. Grit steered Sootlink down to the window and found Carmer already there, his nose buried in a sketch pad. Sootlink tapped the glass with his beak to get the boy’s attention, and the boy let them in.

  “Thanks, Sootlink,” said Grit, clambering down from the raven’s silky back and onto the windowsill.

  The raven looked expectantly at Carmer.

  “Oh, yes. Thank you . . . sir,” he muttered.

  “Caw!” shrieked Sootlink, tossing his head dismissively. He flew away into the fading light.

  Grit hopped down onto the shelf below the window, carefully avoiding landing in a jar of pickled somethings. “Sir?” She laughed.

  “I don’t think he likes me very much.” Carmer tore the sketches he was working on out of the pad and stuffed them in a drawer.

  “I wouldn’t take it personally. Neither does Ravene!” Grit added cheerfully. She strolled around the jars on the shelf, squinting at the labels and occasionally making faces at the specimens inside.

  “Well, they’ve got good reason to be suspicious of humans,” said Carmer. He told Grit about his visit to the Orbicle and the Mechanist’s gruesome cloak.

  Grit shivered and paced along the shelf.

  “All of those faeries . . .”

  “And why?” asked Carmer. “I mean, winning the Symposium competition would be great and all, but . . . I think there’s more to it than that. The Mechanist mentioned meeting Gideon ‘back at the factory’ today. I tried to follow him, but—”

  “I think I know where that is,” interrupted Grit. “Echolaken told me that she and her sister were investigating a chemical spill at an abandoned factory in the Vallows when they were ambushed.”

  “What are the Vallows?”

  Grit shuddered again. “The Hollow Valleys. Even the humans call it that. It’s not far from the circus camp, actually. The hills used to be a mining town—I think you humans call it ‘pyrite’—but they sucked the place dry. Whole streets sank into the ground from all the blasting and digging they did. All the factories finally closed, and no one goes there anymore. The water and earth faeries are the only ones who’ll go near the place, to help some of the animals still left. And the Free Folk, of course, but they go lots of places other faeries won’t.”

  Carmer looked at her blankly.

  “The street fae who live on their own, like Ravene,” Grit clarified. “Keep up, will you?”

  “We’ll visit the factory, then,” Carmer said, ignoring her, “but after the performance tomorrow.”

  “But what if there are more of those Autocats prowling around? We didn’t do such a great job of handling that one last time, if you remember.”

  “That’s because we didn’t know what we were dealing with last time,” explained Carmer, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. He tore off another piece of paper from his notebook and beckoned Grit forward. “I was scared out of my wits by that thing in the closet, but I was able to get a closer look at it, if only for a second.” He made the finishing touches on a surprisingly accurate sketch of an Autocat.

  “The eyes are gleaming and creepy, yes, but they’re just colored stones for all that. Some other power source is what really keeps them alive.” He pointed to his sketch. “I noticed that the most heavily armored part on these things is the chest. It stands to reason that whatever powers them is probably located behind there—where the heart is, if you will. It makes sense you’d want to keep the heart protected.”

  Grit stared at the Autocat on the paper, then at Carmer’s enthusiastic expression. “You’re kind of crazy sometimes. You do know that, right?”

  Carmer’s shoulders sagged.

  “Besides,” Grit added, “how does this make them less scary, exactly?”

  “Everything is less scary when you know how it works.” Carmer shrugged. “The next time we meet the Autocats, we know there’s a good chance of disabling them if we go for the heart. We’ll be ready for them.”

  “Sure, I’ll just stab them with my hatpin,” deadpanned Grit. “I’m sure that’ll do lots of damage.”

  “If you know where to stick it,” countered Carmer. “And I’ve seen you do plenty of damage on your own.”

  Grit shook her head. Like it or not, it was time to admit she’d been less than honest about her capabilities. “I made a lamp explode,” she
said. “Your average poltergeist can do that.”

  “Wait, there are poltergeists?”

  “Never mind. The point is, don’t get your hopes up.” Grit sighed. “The Mechanist might have dozens, even hundreds of faeries at his command.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . I may have slightly exaggerated my powers when we made our deal.”

  Carmer frowned but didn’t look terribly surprised. “How much exaggeration are we talking here?”

  Grit gazed out of the open window, avoiding his eyes. “A lot of faerie magic comes from faerie dust, which I can’t make with one wing. You need the friction they generate. I . . . I’m not as strong as other faeries,” admitted Grit. “I’ll never have enough power to make something like we saw the other night.”

  “Well . . . who said we have to be like the Mechanist?” asked Carmer. “There must be something you’re good at that we can ‘glitz up a bit,’ like Kitty says.”

  Grit watched the flickering of the other campers’ fires in the distance. “I am a fire fae,” she said slowly. “Most faeries are more attuned to specific elements than others—earth, water, fire, air. We draw our power from their energy.” Grit took a deep breath and rubbed her palms together. It had been a few days since she’d practiced, but when she turned to face him, it was with a handful of dancing flames.

  “Spirits and zits,” breathed Carmer. “That’s incredible!”

  “Not by fire faerie standards,” disagreed Grit, extinguishing the flames. “I can’t do much more than that.”

  Carmer looked thoughtful. “Did you use fire to blow up the lamp in the street?”

  “Well, no,” said Grit. “Not exactly. That move is sort of a cheat.” Grit snapped her fingers and a gold spark flared to life with a crack, like flint struck against steel. “It’s more like . . . the spark before a fire. At least, that’s what it feels like. It’s easier for me than making a whole flame.” She sat down and hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about the limitations of her powers with a human boy—or with anyone, for that matter. It only served to remind her how different she was from the other faeries. “I haven’t found a good use for it, but I guess if you want something to explode, I’m your gal.”