Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  Someone checks my pockets and finds Mesmer’s address. They lift me up into a coach.

  ~ ~ ~

  The coach jostles. Soon the tangled streets spread out into Old Paris. When we arrive, I check the house number. It is the home of the hostess from the last concert, and the driver assures me he has made no mistake.

  The front door opens, and a maid pulls me in. “They are waiting for you, Monsieur Durand.” She eyes my disarrayed clothes.

  Questions stumble off my tongue, but half of them are answered at a glance.

  The sitting room is full of women: the hostess, her admiring daughter, and Sophie. An armonica faces their semicircle.

  I walk among them half-convinced I’ve slipped into a dream. Cold sweat beads my skin.

  The hostess gives me both hands to kiss, but her eyes are worried. “I’m so glad you could come on short notice, Monsieur Durand.”

  I kiss the daughter’s hand.

  Sophie leans in as I brush her cheek. “Where have you been?”

  “Forgive me. I must have missed your message.”

  Sophie’s words are missed notes in an already-mangled refrain. “If you missed the message, then why are you here?”

  I glance at the hostess’s daughter and damn myself in Sophie’s eyes.

  “It’s just a mistake,” I whisper urgently. “I had the wrong address. I’ve been all day running errands, and I must have given the driver yesterday’s address.” But every word I say is a nail in my coffin.

  Sophie reaches into her purse and hands me an envelope with Madame Geoffrin’s seal. My heart sinks.

  “Another assignation,” says Sophie.

  I slip the letter from its envelope. It reads, My inquiries returned negative.

  I want to show it to her, risk her jealousy and explain everything, but this is not the place. The glitter in her eye makes me wonder if she’s been taking belladonna.

  “Monsieur Durand, would you care for refreshment before you play?” the hostess says.

  Sweat trickles down my back. I loosen my cravat. “Water, please.”

  I cannot look at Sophie’s over-dilated eyes. I cannot look at the hostess’s daughter. I fix my attention on the hostess. There is no chair for me, only the armonica bench.

  I down the water and take my place. My body tenses. This time I know what I will see. Amarante hears what I play. Could it be she hears as I do, music from elsewhere caught on the wind? Does she hear it so strongly that it drowns out the sound of a team of horses, or crackle of fire or rush of the Seine? If that is true, every time I play, I put her life in danger.

  “I cannot do this.” My voice is harsh, even to my ears. Hoarse. Ragged.

  The daughter stiffens. Sophie’s cheeks redden.

  The hostess rises and extends her hand. “Come,” she says, when I remain transfixed.

  I push back the bench and hurry after her. We pause in the next room.

  “You are overtired,” she says. “You’ll burn out if you keep this pace.”

  I nod, and all I comprehend is gratitude. “Perhaps I can come next week and play a piano concert.”

  The hostess hesitates. “Didn’t Sophie tell you? Next week you’ll be gone. Joseph Haydn has invited you to Vienna.”

  Vienna. I press a hand to the wall to stop the world from tilting.

  “Sit down, dear boy!”

  “I have so much to do.” And then I remember. “I have to see Dr. Mesmer. Today, if possible. I had this house as his address. Do you know where he is?”

  “Why, he’s gone to see dear friends in Versailles. But he’ll be back tonight to collect his things. It’s possible he might have a moment for you then.”

  I almost cannot speak. “Please tell him it is urgent.”

  “Of course. And congratulations on Vienna.”

  But then I remember: I can never play again. Every song risks Amarante.

  I swallow a laugh before it swallows me.

  ~ ~ ~

  That night I come to Mesmer’s rooms through air as thick as sable. A maid takes me in through the back door. It would be best if no one knew of my treatment.

  The room is bare except for the armonica. Mesmer’s eyes are bright with interest. It is impossible to say which gives me more unease.

  “They say it is possible for music to cross between worlds. Yours is the first case I will have the chance to study personally.” He takes my hand and bids me sit while he makes passes over my body. One hand hovers over my head, my chest, my abdomen. He transfers to a low stool and passes his hands down my arms and legs and feet.

  “I find no blockage,” he tells me. He makes a second pass. “You have very strong animal magnetism. Perhaps that is what draws the ghosts.”

  The hairs on my skin rise. “Ghosts? Not visions?”

  “The instrument has never induced visions.”

  I close my eyes. “But if what you say is true, I saw ghosts of myself.”

  He moves closer until his knees touch mine. “You do not think this is the only reality, this world we can see? Whole worlds emerge and collapse between one decision and the next.” He gazes deeply into my eyes. Pressure on my thumbs sends convulsions up my arms. “Just let it happen.”

  A peculiar sensation rises from the base of my thumbs. I do not want to believe that Amarante is a ghost. How can it be true? Every time I play, she listens as if her heart is breaking. Could it be it is not the music that moves her, but helplessness? And have I been risking her life? What if, like me, she is alive, even though I see her ghost?

  Mesmer moves his hands and my disorientation intensifies. Fluid moves beneath my skin. A tide rises up into my head and washes me cold. Mesmer’s hands drop away.

  “Now,” he says, “to the instrument.”

  My eyes snap open. “No, Doctor. Not that.”

  He holds up one finger. “To cure madness, we must first provoke it.”

  My hands shake. “You said they were ghosts.”

  He guides me to the water, the treadle, the rims. “Call them, and we will see.”

  The tremors intensify. “I can’t, I can’t.”

  He presses my fingers to the glass.

  We look up. I don’t know if he sees them: Amarante weeping; behind her, row upon row of men with my face. Some are barely whiskered. Others are gaunt, weathered. Rich clothes, workmen’s clothes, exotic clothes, rags. Face upon face, no two the same.

  A new death for each man. But only one Amarante.

  All of them, all of them, listening.

  The door slams open behind us, and I hear the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking.

  We turn, the doctor and I. The moment holds the slowness of movement underwater.

  Sophie holds the gun at arm’s length as if she is afraid of it. It wavers in her two-handed grip. Her face is blotched, her eyes puffed. She steps forward and trains the barrel on me.

  Mesmer raises both hands. “My dear, you are overwrought. Please, sit down.”

  “You made me look a fool,” she says. “I gave you Vienna.”

  I look into her haunted eyes. Madness. Ah, yes. The instrument causes madness. I see my death reflected a thousand times.

  The bullet buries itself in my heart.

  ~ ~ ~

  Like starlight on waves, the softest melody slides into my awareness. I rise and push through a throng of men with my face. I am bodiless. We are bodiless. The room holds the dim light of a study, but the air clings to my skin with the reek of an abattoir.

  Hair rises along my scalp. So many deaths. What have I done? I slip through them as through a minefield. I feel their eyes, but each is naught but a fleeting brush.

  My body tingles like a phantom limb. Even in death, I hear the haunting armonica music. I whisper a prayer in my mother’s dialect and push through the shades of men I have killed to whatever lies at center.

  I stop in confusion. An armonica.

  A living man hunches over it. Matted hair and beard obscure his face. Water glasses filled to varyin
g levels crowd every surface; dusty bottles of wine spill over drifts of sheet music; candles in waterfalls of wax flicker around the instrument and the unshaved man, all of them burned nearly out.

  He sees me, the man who plays. Desolation waits in his eyes.

  A strange, creeping recognition closes over me. I am he. He and I are shadows of the same life, variations on a theme. All around us are other shadows, other variations, choices we did not make. We all hear the music.

  I do not understand, and then his song turns to the bittersweet melody that floated on the wind. Here is the composer. Here is the source of the music that drew me, must have drawn all of us, to the instrument.

  Across the room, I see the man with powder-burned lips listening with closed eyes. Was it the composer’s music that put the gun to his lips, or was it mine? How many of us play? How many of us loosed our songs upon the world and tranced each other into madness?

  No, not all. Not all went mad. Some of us called ghosts.

  The melody changes. Sorrow so fresh and sharp I can scarcely bear it breaks across some of the other faces. I realize then that all of the others stare, not at the composer but at something behind the instrument.

  Emptiness stares back from the composer’s eyes.

  A thought electrifies me. If we are here, where is Amarante?

  I come slowly to see what lies beyond the composer. The smell of roses wafts over the scent of decay. A white coffin. Inside, a carmine dress and auburn hair caught up with combs of amber. Her face is transported stillness. A ring glimmers on her finger. Beneath her dress, the smallest, saddest swelling.

  I feel myself scream, but if my voice makes a sound, it is not in this world. I fall to my knees beside her. She is real, in this world. Her cheek, so fresh—

  When had I played? That first night I saw her fall, could that have been. . . ?

  The abyss opens inside me.

  Through the emptiness of that moment, a thought percolates. The instrument causes death and madness, but I am not the only one who plays.

  My eyes turn to the composer.

  Bodiless, I cannot feel hate, but envy sinks down where my heart would be. She loved him. He loved her. But I am he, we are all of us one soul. One life, one shattered mirror.

  In all possible worlds, I love her.

  I press my head to her coffin.

  Another man with my face pushes in beside me. His face is shocked confusion. A newcomer. The composer glances at him, and then down at Amarante. Across the composer’s face, I see the hope of a thousand possible worlds shatter into inescapable self-condemnation. Something like a sob tears from his chest, but he never misses a note. He plays as if his heart would stop with the song.

  The candles burn down.

  Would I have made the choice he made? Knowing, as he must know, that every song takes a life?

  What would I risk for one more moment?

  I understand the man who reeves every world in search of what he lost.

  He plays for Amarante.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  A.B. Treadwell is a nomadic wordsmith who has hailed from Moore, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Fairmont, West Virginia, and that’s just in the last two years. Her stories have been published in Flash Fiction Online, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and the Triangulation anthologies. She is also on staff at the Alpha Teen Writing Workshop. Visit her website at abtreadwell.com.

  SIX SEEDS

  Sara M. Harvey

  MY MOTHER’S BROTHEL was called “Mrs. D------’s orchard,” and was said to have the ripest fruits around. It was all marketing, inspiring images of a lush and fleshy harvest, but really the house was stocked with gleaming clockwork Dollies. It had been my job, for as long as I can remember, to rouse them every morning, winding them up with the great gold key that Mother kept at the bottom of a barrel of salt water. I wound them everyday, just enough to get a full shift of work from them before they ran down. She named them clever things like Apple and Cherry and Nectarine, Almond and Hazelnut and Cashew, Papaya and Quince and Persimmon, after all the wonderful things that grew in orchards. And every morning it was like Spring coming as I moved among them and brought them to life.

  We catered to all sorts at the Orchard, from businessmen to airship pilots. Dollies are splendid things, they come in just about every shape and size from tall and statuesque to wispy and waifish. Some have quicksilver skin of hard, cold, chrome and they hiss with pneumatic sighs. The ones made of bronze seem to glow as they catch the light and reflect it with a golden cast; they have some of the tiniest, most intricate gears what whirr and clickclickclick and sometimes chime softly. Deluxe Dollies look like any human, with plump padded skin and real hair and makeup that never smears and hand-set eyes faceted like jewels that weep real tears.

  Dollies had been such a boon to male and female relations. The men loved them, for they came in all shapes and sizes and types. They were always clean and so easy to care for. They were not prone to diseases and they were always eager to please. It left women with precious idle time away from the voracious cravings of their men.

  Of course, this was very nice for all the other women of the world, but not for me. For me, Dollies were the chore of my life: winding them, bathing them in oil, mending gears and joints, and keeping good care of their pricier parts which pleasured the men. I cannot say that I hated it, nor that I was fond of it, only that it was my task every single day to care for these immortal metal beauties.

  And they were, as any creature with a mind of its own tends to be, kind and cruel by turns depending on the day and governed by the mood. The most elitist of all of the Dollies were the Deluxes, who never missed a moment to remind me that while my skin was taut and supple now, it would grow sagged and gray while they held onto youth for all time. I never played that game, flaunting my soul and my beating heart. But there were days when they were particularly vicious, especially Apple and Peach, and I would be drawn to the parlour where the men would sit and smoke ornate pipes and thick cigars while discussing politics, gossip, or the cost-benefit analyses of switching from faithful gaslight to fitful electricity. I sat still and I listened, eager to always know more. And they were indulgent and allured by the blush in my cheeks and the trembling of my lashes as I opened my ears to such indecent learning.

  Which is how I came to the attention of Mr. H----. He was a handsome gentleman with a smooth, unlined face that was at odds with his black hair streaked with silver. His deep gray eyes tilted slightly downward at the corners giving him a look of profound sadness, even if he was otherwise merry. He was a soft-spoken man with quiet mannerisms who always waited until last to make his point. And that was what struck me most about him: his extraordinary patience.

  “My darling girl,” he told me once when I remarked upon it to him, “in my line of work, one must be patient. There is never any sense in rushing.” He then smiled at me and sipped his brandy.

  Later that night, I was able to ask Mother what exactly was Mr. H----’s line of work. She looked quite ruffled for a moment before composing herself and asking if he had spoken to me himself.

  “Yes, Mother, but only to inform me that his patience was due to the nature of his work, but he declined to mention what that was. Do you know?”

  “He used to be an undertaker. And you will not engage him in conversation again.”

  I was shocked by her crisp reply and the silence that followed, which allowed me no more questions. This of course only piqued by curiosity and served to assure that I would plot and scheme to find out everything I could about Mr. H----. This included speaking to him once more, and it had to be without Mother’s knowledge.

  It proved a difficult task. Evidently, it had gone ‘round that Mother did not approve of my interaction with Mr. H----, nor did she appreciate him being in the same room with me at all. I found that I was stonewalled even by the other men, who met my inquiries with silence and would not risk my mother’s ire by speaking to me of this now-forbidden topic.


  But while scholars and clerks and scientists and philosophers might have been able to resist the petulant charm of a frustrated girl, I’ve yet to meet an airship captain that could. It did not take me long to encounter a gangly blushing lad with the last hateful vestiges of adolescence on his face. His uniform was still new and sharply pressed. It did not take long to convince him into the hall closet with me. There, amid the cloaks and coats that smelled of damp wool, tobacco, and kerosene, I let him put his sweating, nervous hands on my breasts and steal a kiss. Only then would he tell me the story.

  Mr. H----, the boy explained, had started his career as a doctor some years ago. It would seem that he had a distinct fascination with the inner workings of the body, most specifically how the soul was attached to the body and the mechanisms that separated life from death. He soon began to attract unwanted attentions when the patients in his care tended to die more often than they recovered. When H---- was removed from the medical practice, he went into the funerary field to further his knowledge of and experience with death. But when he began to go above and beyond the call of his embalming duties, often removing organs and tissues to keep for experimentation, he was relieved of this employment as well.

  “And so, what does he do now?”

  “Now. . . .” The boy pressed very close to me, hooking his thumbs beneath the neckline of my blouse and pushing it down over my shoulders, sending mother-of-pearl

  buttons clattering to the floor somewhere below us in the dark. “Now, he is a rogue scientific philosopher, claiming to have cracked the code that binds soul to body, and therefore body to life.” He inhaled the scent of my hair and began to hitch up my skirts.

  For a moment I was lost and drifting on the elation of that thought. Mr. H---- had found the key to life itself? To the very soul?

  “How?” I whispered, coming to my senses and my situation with a sharp pang of adrenaline.

  “Gently, I promise,” he moaned hungrily, intending no such thing. My fragile, tender human life was so much more appealing than any Dolly, Deluxe or otherwise, and I could see his desire building.