“I liked the one about Thor dressing up as a bride to get his hammer back,” Lizzie offered. Needle and Max laughed, clearly remembering the tale.
I nodded as if I knew what she meant, but I didn’t. Who was Thor? I had no idea. I certainly appreciated the efficacy of a hammer, but for the life of me I couldn’t see why a gentleman would be inclined to dress as a bride to get his hammer back. Surely it’d be simpler just to purchase a new one?
“It was like we sat as guests at the wedding ceremony with the wedding feast laid out before us,” Griff said. “As you spun the tale we saw the big fellow in the dress – looked right ridiculous he did, beard and all – eating the groom out of house and home, and that before the ceremony, no less!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I managed, my mind straining to remember the details that didn’t seem to exist in my brain. What had I done? And how?
“Then there was the bit with Aeneas and the fall of Troy,” Max said. “Squire Howland made me read that blasted poem in school. ‘Vergil was a great poet’ he’d croak, and then assign fifty lines to translate for the next day. I hated the damned thing.” He stood up. “But when you told the tale of Aeneas going back into the burning city to find his lost wife, I couldn’t believe how real it was. We smelled the smoke of the burning buildings, the fear, and the blood… heard the cries of the dying and the screams of the women…” He met my eyes and I saw his tears welling up.
“I swear I saw the ghost of his wife hovering in the middle of the room, and all of us were as stupefied as Aeneas was. And then… when he tried to embrace her ghost – “
“Twern’t a dry eye in the place,” Needle said. He shook his head. “That poor, poor man.”
I looked up at Max, feeling fear start to scurry up from somewhere in my ribcage. I forced it back down.
He wiped his eyes and smiled. “If only Squire Howland had brought you into the classroom… if he had, we poor long-suffering lads would have loved Vergil, the poor bugger.”
I swallowed, buying time so my brain could digest the new information. “So you knew the story, then? Of Aeneas?” I asked. I didn’t, but I couldn’t very well tell my friends that.
“Oh, aye,” he agreed and moved over to sit at his post in the command chair. “I knew it, but it wasn’t the familiarity of the story that appealed, Ari,” he said. He sat, then leaned back and thought for a moment. “It was… it was like you put all of us – the entire pub – within the story. We saw what the characters saw, felt what they felt… like we were them, in some way.”
“That’s not a magic lantern show...” I said, a little dizzy and more than a little worried. The desperation began its slow climb again.
“You’re right,” Lizzie agreed. “It was just plain magic.”
The word magic set the fear I’d forced down afire. It reached my brain in a whoosh, releasing a panic into my already whirling thoughts. I didn’t recall anything I’d said. I didn’t know the stories they said I’d told. I didn’t know how to do magic. Magic didn’t exist.
“If I didn’t think it would be too distracting, I’d have you tell more stories while we’re flying about in this bucket of bolts,” Max said, smiling gently.
Oh, God, I thought, feeling a little lightheaded at the prospect. I couldn’t do that. I just… I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how I’d done it in the first place, and Max wanted me to do it again. Oh God. My stomach lurched in distress, but I had no wish for the Bosch’s crew to see how I really felt. They thought of the evening as a triumph. I saw it as an increasingly unpleasant nightmare. I swallowed hard to keep both the rum and my worry down.
“But so far as the storytelling goes, I wish you’d done that earlier,” Max continued, thankfully oblivious to my distress. “We made as much from the tales as we did from the darts.” He laughed. “I dare say, you enchanted everyone in Penzance like one of the bards in the myths of old. They couldn’t give us their coins fast enough!”
Panic flared white hot within me, which I hid with difficulty. The others turned back to their stations and instruments, their pleasure in the night’s success palpable. I turned to face my wall of instruments, with its gears and pointers spinning. It was a device of my own creation, but I barely saw it as my mind rolled in alarmed confusion.
What had happened?
The disconnect that occurred when I had a challenge requiring projectiles made archery, target shooting, in fact, anything that involved hitting a target easy. I’d grown so used to it I’d not wondered about my evident prowess or how I came by it. No one else had seen a change in my demeanor or seemed to notice what happened in my mind, so no one knew it wasn’t quite me doing the throwing. They had just thought I had excellent, if somewhat unusual, aim.
My parents, once they realized how good I was, had steered me away from such pursuits. Mother explained it was unseemly for a woman to be an expert marksman unless she worked in a Wild West Show. Unfortunately, my request to apply for such a position was summarily rejected. Father pointed out that where we lived in London was neither ‘wild’ nor ‘west’, and therefore, since both civilization and geography stood against me, I should try something else. I quickly turned to mathematics and mechanicals. I loved mathematics because it was logical and precise, and mechanicals because I enjoyed creating new machines almost as much as dismantling old ones. Getting gears and cogs to line up and move on their own was a wonderful puzzle to solve. I’d only picked up the darts again as part of a bet with Max about eighteen months ago.
Letting my consciousness float while something else – whatever it was—took control had seemed natural. I’d never been frightened by it before.
Now that seemingly benevolent… thing, for lack of a better word—had started to take liberties with my body and mind. How could I tell such fantastic stories? How was I neither aware of it while it happened nor remember what I’d said afterward? What if this… thing... decided to try other activities, like tightrope walking or burglary? If I didn’t know I did it, how could I stop myself from doing it? I wondered.
I gripped the edges of my chair. I had no idea why this was happening to me. My life-long trust in my unusual ability now seemed foolish and potentially dangerous. Was I going mad? Was I already mad?
Suddenly the bridge felt too small. I stood up, startling the other members of the Bosch crew. Max looked up from his charts.
“Do you mind if I take a turn around the deck?” I asked in a tone that was a bit too loud.
Max nodded though his brow furrowed a bit in concern.
I took a deep breath and tried again, modulating my tone to the proper level. “I need a bit of air.”
“Are you all right?” Lizzie asked.
“Just tired,” I lied.
Max looked skeptical but decided to let it pass. “With the wind and cloudless sky it’ll be cold as blazes out there, so grab your coat. Tether yourself to the rail for safety’s sake,” he said and turned back to his charts, but he kept one eye on me.
I fled the room, made my way back to my cabin, and dragged a thick brown wool coat from my trunk under the bunk bed. I pulled the coat on, grabbed the matching mittens and knitted wool hat out of the trunk, and made my way up to the deck as fast as I could go.
I needed out. I needed time to think.
I climbed the stairs from the cabin and burst onto the deck that ran above the airship’s cockpit and crew cabins. The wood decking was solid under my feet and the rigid aluminum struts of the balloon covered in pegamoid silk curved above me. The bow of the gondola stretched out to my left, with the full moon in front of it illuminating everything with a grey light. I gasped for air as panic overtook me. My heart raced and I felt my palms start to sweat. I closed my eyes and focused on slowing my breathing, and managed to bring my racing heart to heel.
As Max predicted, it was frigidly cold, due to it being early spring and the altitude we’d reached. I tucked the hat and mittens under one arm, reaching for the safety harness on the wall by the door.
My hands shook as I buckled it around my waist over the coat, but I managed to cinch the belt tight. I grabbed the railing with my right hand, holding tight as I moved to the front of the deck. Once I got there, I clipped the harness to the front rail, thereby ensuring I’d not go far if I fell.
Wind whipped around me, pulling at the bottom of my heavy coat and causing my braid to loosen and strands of hair to flap wildly about my face. I tugged the wool cap onto my head and over my ears, tying it in place under my chin, then pulled the mittens on my hands. I looked out over the countryside below me, illuminated by the full moon. I could see the lights of cities in the distance ahead of us, illuminating the sky above them with a yellow hazy glow. The sky above held a few dim stars and an occasional wisp of cloud. The rigid balloon sloped up over my head and out about seventy feet in front of the gondola. Its grey-brown silk moved with the wind and ripples flowed up and down the sloped surface above me like wheat waving in a field. The contours of the landscape below wavered between shades of grey, brown and black, with the occasional dim light from a lantern in a farmhouse visible. I could make out forests with skeletal trees, fields beginning to frost over and muddy roads stretching in all directions. The air smelled crisp, and I only caught whiffs of smoke from fireplaces somewhere below us. The propellers beat the air behind me as we moved forward, and over the rush of the wind I could hear dogs barking in the distance. As my mind cleared with help from the solitude and brisk wind, I thought about what had happened to me as calmly as I could.
How bad is my situation, on balance? I wondered. I’ve not done anything illegal, and I’ve not actually been hurt. Disconcerting as it is to hear reports of things I’ve done that I don’t remember, I suppose it’s not all that different from what inebriates suffer after a night of overindulgence. It’s an unsavory comparison, but a valid one, based on what I’ve seen others experience.
I hadn’t hurt anyone, thankfully. No darts had struck anything other than the target, and my stories hadn’t caused a brawl. I knew Max and the others would have stepped in if something had gone wrong, which, clearly, it hadn’t. If anything, the stories had increased the happiness and camaraderie of the Crown’s patrons. And, despite the press of the crowd and sheer volume of humanity I’d seen when I’d ‘come to,’ for lack of a better term, I was myself uninjured.
We’d made a great deal of money as a result of both my dart throwing and the storytelling, which we needed. Is my concern enough to put a halt to our collective plan? If it is, what possible reason can I give? I certainly couldn’t tell my friends what happened to me when I threw darts. They’d think I was insane, particularly when they discovered I didn’t remember telling the amazing stories they’d heard.
I gripped the railing tighter. What happens if I start to do more than throw darts and tell stories when I’m in the semi-conscious, highly focused state? What will I do then? It was troubling and frightening to know I’d done things I didn’t remember, but… is it so frightening that I want to stop? My heart sank as considered my options. Can I afford to stop? I wondered. I wasn’t sure.
I sighed and looked up at the impassive and ancient moon, idly wondering if it could answer my questions. As a child, I used to believe it could, and I smiled grimly at my own childish fancy.
At five or six years old, I’d thought the Man in the Moon was my personal protector. I believed he followed and watched over me, making sure I was safe. On the rare occasions my parents took me out for a function at night, I refused to leave the house if I couldn’t see the moon. In fact, I’d learned to read Mason’s Almanac so I’d know its monthly phases, and left my bedroom curtains open during the full moon so the Man in the Moon could visit me. I even remembered having some sort of tea party with the fellow one late summer evening, waking to find the cookies eaten, the weak tea drunk, and myself tucked in bed with my rag doll, Bow-Bow. It had probably been Papa or Nanny who had eaten everything and put me in bed, obviously, as if my phantom protector had been Father Christmas.
Standing on the deck of the Bosch at nearly eighteen years old, I knew there was no Man in the Moon, just as I knew there was no Father Christmas. The moon didn’t pay special attention to me, and it certainly couldn’t protect me. I crossed my arms over my chest, the heavy coat making the move awkward. How much better I’ll feel if he, or anyone, watches out for me as I thought the moon did all those years ago, I thought wistfully.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said, staring up at the lunar body hanging in the sky. “I need help, or an explanation or… I don’t know… something.”
I shook my head. It was a foolish statement made from the heart, more suited to my childhood self than who I was now. It was neither logical nor reasonable, and I prided myself on being both. Better to use my head, I mused, turning from the rail, unhooking the harness from it and heading back along the deck to return to my cabin. I’d try to sleep, and leave finding the answers to my dilemma for later.
Chapter Three
The Monday night following my excursion to Penzance found my nose back in my mathematics books, working on my most recent assignments from my tutor. I’d been so absorbed in my derivations and equations I’d missed dinner, mostly because I didn’t want to think about the revelations of the previous evening in Penzance. Immersing myself in my studies kept my worries and unanswered questions at bay.
As the clock in the hall struck midnight my stomach, usually sanguine about food, complained bitterly about its empty state. I tried to ignore it, but the noises it made and the ache of hunger pains forced me into action. Sighing, I rose from my desk and books, picked up and lit my candlestick so I could see in the hallway and turned off my phosphorite desk lamp. I tip-toed down to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I’d find that was edible and accessible, but it was worth a look.
I snuck into the dimly lit kitchen, my candle a tiny beacon in the darkness. I scanned the counters and shelves for a quick snack. I wanted to get in and out as quickly and unobtrusively as possible with enough of something edible to stop the hunger pangs but not so much it’d be noticed. Mrs. Gildersleeve frowned on residents of Towson House helping themselves to the larder at ungodly hours, and the stories of her pouncing on hungry late-night scholars were legendary. I definitely didn’t want to be her next victim.
I thought I saw a wheel of cheese on a far shelf and made a move to investigate when I heard a snuffle in the darkness. I froze. The noise had been human in origin, but the expected verbal assault from Mrs. Gildersleeve for being out of bed and in the kitchen ‘trolling for vittles’ didn’t materialize. The snuffle came again.
“Who’s there?” I hissed into the darkness, turning my candle toward the sound.
“Sophie,” was the soft Gallic response. “Good evening, Mademoiselle Trevelyan.”
I moved toward the voice and my light revealed a figure seated in a corner, dressed in a black dress with long sleeves. A prim white cap sat pinned on a head of dark curls. She held her right arm cradled close to her body as if she had an extremely bad bellyache, the hand flexed as if cramped. Her reticule, also black, sat in her lap.
I relaxed somewhat. Sophie Gaspard was a French girl on staff at Towson House. Well-liked and constantly busy, my fellow students appreciated how she assisted the poor unfortunates struggling with the finer points of the French language. More than once I’d heard her helping someone conjugate French verbs while she dusted, the words flowing off her tongue in melodious alto tones in stark contrast to the halting, uncertain utterances of the girl she helped. Sophie’s command of English was very good though she did speak with a bit of an accent. Since I wasn’t a language student, I didn’t know her very well.
No one knew what part of France Sophie came from, or how it was that she ended up working at our residence. I’d guess she was perhaps in her twenties, but I had no way of knowing for sure. She was very private, even living in her own rooms away from Towson House rather than in the servants’ quarters the residence hall allowed. It was un
usual for her to be here so late.
I moved over to Sophie, bringing the candle down so my body obscured its light from the hallway. No point both of us getting ambushed. “Why are you still here?” I asked. “Gildersleeve put you on guard duty?”
Sophie shook her head. “No. She knows I would not inform on anyone no matter what they took.” She paused, obviously considering her next words carefully. “I had nowhere else to go. I am… unwell, I am afraid.”
My stomach gurgled. “A stomach complaint?” I suggested, looking down at the noisy region of my own body. “Must be the season for it,” I added ruefully.
“No,” Sophie said, lifting her right arm and hand briefly. “It is my hand, you see. It is damaged and does not work. I have had to make my way for the past few days working with only one hand. Madame Gildersleeve has ordered me to the doctor to have it checked. She says she has no use for a girl on staff who has but one arm.”
I took that in. She was frightened, which seemed misplaced to me. “But you’ve not gone to the doctor, I take it?”
“No.”
“Is it a financial concern?” I asked. “You know there’s money set aside—“
“You are very kind, but, no, it is not the money.”
That stymied me. “Are you in pain?”
“No, there is no pain. The arm does not function, and I am afraid a doctor cannot assist me.”
That was a puzzler. I tried to think what would make a doctor unable to help. It wasn’t a language barrier. Dr. Sanburne spoke French, for a start. He was a gentle man who Towson House residents saw when they had medical issues. I’d heard nothing but good reports of his medical knowledge and ministrations.
The unusual words she’d used to describe the problem resonated in my mind. ‘Damaged,' not ‘hurt.' ‘Does not function’ rather than ‘broken’ or ‘injured.' Then it hit me. “You’re Enhanced, aren’t you Sophie?” I asked in a whisper, astonished by my own realization.
The Odin Inheritance (The Pessarine Chronicles Book 1) Page 3