Gears of the City
Page 50
Only the mirror stayed the same, and Ruth herself. If she turned away from the mirror she thought it, too, might vanish. Was Ivy still in there? It seemed a shame to let her go. “You’re the clever one. Can you tell me how to mend this?” Still no answer.
She remembered how once, in childhood, she’d walked in on Ivy’s room, meaning to ask her some question, and found Ivy sitting between two mirrors. One was taken from the bathroom. One was their mother’s old silver-backed mirror, from before she’d died, which Ivy must have taken down from the attic. Ivy was talking to herself, to herselves. What was she practicing for? Ivy had shrieked, childishly, lost her temper; and Ruth had backed away, red-faced, half guilty, half laughing. Later she sat between the mirrors herself. All she saw was her own reflection, flushed rose-red with embarrassment. She hadn’t understood then, and she didn’t understand now.
There was nothing to do but wait.
The corridors twined and twisted like vines. The cables took on a green and vibrant aspect. The gears creaked like oaks in a storm. The fires burned vivid floral shades. The machine attempted nature. Perhaps it was trying to save itself. Perhaps it was accommodating itself to her whims.
She remembered all the games she, and Marta, and Ivy used to play. The pale and scrubby and smog-poisoned gardens of Fosdyke, transformed into forests of myth. The new world should have something of that in it, she decided—not too much. She remembered how they’d lost themselves in the Museum, how they’d dreamed … Their long, long childhood. Too long. With the losses they’d suffered, how could they have been expected to grow up right? With the world around them all broken and twisted and full of fear, what should they have grown into? But that was all changed now; everything was ready to be changed.
One by one the fires went out. For a long time the walls bled dark sap, and blackened and withered; slowly they greened again. The corridors righted themselves. The machine was healing. All she had to do was wait. The city was all spread out below her. What did it see, as the Mountain transformed itself? She could feel the city holding its breath. What should she make of it?
About the Author
Felix Gilman lives with his wife in New York City. Gears of the City is his second novel.
GEARS OF THE CITY
A Bantam Spectra Book/January 2009
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Felix Gilman
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks and Spectra
and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gilman, Felix.
Gears of the City/Felix Gilman.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90606-6
I. Title.
PS3607.I452G43 2009
813’.6—dc22
2008035649
www.bantamdell.com
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