The Hotel Under the Sand

by Kage Baker

  “I should think so!” said Winston.

  “But I had a generous insurance policy on my eye, luckily, so I bought a dog and went on a nice holiday with the money. Walking on the beach one day, I met Mr. Wenlocke. He needed a cook for the kitchens of his new hotel, so he hired me. I don’t generally like wealthy folks, but Mr. Wenlocke was a charmer, so he was. And everything went smoothly until this dismal occurrence! Whatever shall we do now, Winston? Or, at least, what shall this castaway child and I do? For I suppose you ought to go on up to heaven, if you’re dead.”

  “Aren’t you scared that he’s a ghost?” asked Emma, who was surprised that Mrs. Beet wasn’t more upset.

  “Looks all right to me,” said Mrs. Beet. “I mean, if I’ve been marooned in time, a ghost is the least of my problems. Mr. Wenlocke did ask me if I minded working around strange folk!” She laughed and shook her head. “And I’ve seen stranger folk than Winston, when you come down to it.”

  “Well, I believe I am in heaven,” said Winston. “This is just the sort of place I’d want to go, after all. And as for what we’ll do, isn’t it obvious? We’ll do our duties!”

  “But the hotel’s abandoned and utterly deserted,” said Mrs. Beet. “For whom shall I cook?”

  “For Miss Emma!” said Winston. “She’s the only guest we have, after all.”

  “Oh, yes, please,” said Emma, who had been making friends with Shorty while they talked. “Except I don’t have money to pay for anything.”

  “That’s all right, Miss Emma,” said Winston. “Complimentary service for castaways! Now, Mrs. Beet, perhaps you’d be so kind as to prepare luncheon? And I’ll get to work tidying up around here. The storm made a terrible mess.”

  “Very good,” said Mrs. Beet, standing up. She looked at Emma and frowned thoughtfully. “You might think about a bath and a change of clothes, dearie.”

  “Oh,” said Emma, looking down at her dress, which had been through a storm, slept in, and stained with blackberries, machine oil, and tar from shipwrecks. “But I don’t have any other clothes.”

  “Well, there were all sorts of trunks delivered for the rich guests as was coming to the grand opening,” said Mrs. Beet. She chuckled, and her one eye gleamed. “I don’t imagine they’ll need them now, after a hundred years have gone by! So just you go upstairs and look around in the rooms. I’ll wager you’ll find yourself something to wear. Give the child a pass key, Winston.”

  “Dee-lighted,” said Winston, and pulled an old-fashioned long key from a pigeonhole behind the registration desk. He presented it to Emma with a bow. “You have your choice of rooms, Miss Emma.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Emma. She tried to remember how little girls curtseyed in the movies, and made a pretty good attempt.

  Mrs. Beet went back down to the Kitchens, and Winston hurried off to continue tidying up. Shorty followed Emma as she climbed the wide staircase and set off to explore the hotel.

  The upper floors were all carpeted in an interesting blue pattern of scalloped waves, with a beautiful lush pile that felt very nice on Emma’s bare feet. Each door had a fanlight of blue and green glass above it, and a porcelain doorknob like a china egg. At the end of each landing were tall windows of beveled and stained glass. Some of the windows showed ships sailing; some had undersea pictures offish and seaweed. One showed a mermaid looking out with an enigmatic smile.

  On the topmost floor, Emma saw a little narrow flight of stairs leading up to what must be one of the turret rooms. She stepped outside on the fourth-floor verandah and looked up. Yes, there was a round room with a pointed roof like a witch’s hat, topped by a weathervane in the shape of a sailing ship. Shorty barked excitedly at a seagull that glided past the verandah, almost at eye level.

  “I wonder what’s up there?” Emma said to him. She went back in and ran along the corridor to the stairs, and Shorty galloped after her. She peered up.

  The stairs led to a small door, with pink roses painted on its porcelain knob. Emma climbed the stairs and tried the pass key in the old-fashioned keyhole. It clicked, turning easily. The door swung open.

  Emma picked up Shorty and went in. “Oh!” she cried, “It’s a little girl’s room!”

  There was no way it could be anything else. The carpet, unlike the carpets everywhere else in the hotel, was a deep raspberry pink, and the four-poster bed had a canopy patterned with pink and white roses. The white satin coverlet had roses embroidered on it too. The dresser and other furniture in the room was painted white. The windows that went around the walls had fine views of the sea and the Dunes.

  A traveling trunk had been set down at the foot of the bed. It was bound with brass, and had stickers all over it from fine hotels in far-away places. Just above the catch was a brass plate, on which was engraved:

  Miss Lucretia Delilah Wenlocke

  7

  SETTLING IN

  EMMA READ AND re-read the name on the brass plate.

  “Maybe Mr. Wenlocke had a little girl,” she said. “But she must have grown up a long time ago. I guess it would be all right to open her trunk.” Shorty wagged his tail in agreement.

  She set him down and threw back the latches, undid the buckles, and opened the trunk. Tucked into its curved lid was a pink leather case. It contained a little girl’s brush and comb set in silver, with a matching hand mirror, and a funny sort of long hook with a silver handle.

  Emma laid these out carefully on top of the dresser, and lifted the layer of tissue paper that protected the other things in the trunk. The first thing she saw was a white lace parasol, furled up tight. Beside it was a doll—not a baby doll but an elegant lady in Victorian clothes, with a smiling face painted on china. She looked as though she were about to wink at Emma and say something funny. Beside her was a hatbox covered in rose-patterned cloth, which when opened proved to contain a white straw sun hat with trailing pink ribbons and a pink silk rose decorating it. Emma tried it on, and it fit perfectly.

  “I wonder how old Lucretia was?” she said aloud. She lifted out the hatbox and set it on the dresser too, and pulled out the other things in the trunk one by one.

  There were three dresses of calico, patterned with sprigs of pink flowers, and there were white ruffled aprons that seemed meant to tie on over them. There was a girl’s sailor suit all in white, with red and blue trim. Under that was a very fancy pink silk dress with white ruffles. Next were white silk pantaloons and stockings, and two long white nightgowns. Beneath those were a short jacket of white wool and a longer coat of rose wool.

  At the bottom of the trunk were two pairs of high-buttoned boots—one white, one black—and a pair of pink dancing slippers that must have been meant to go with the fancy dress.

  I wonder if she went to parties? thought Emma. She took out the slippers and almost tried them on, but her feet were so dirty she thought better of it.

  There was a tiny door to one side of the bed. Hoping it might be a bathroom, Emma opened it. She found that, indeed, Lucretia had a private bath. It was a tiny one, with barely room to turn around in, but all the porcelain in the room was painted with pink flowers, and the taps and faucets were gold. There was even a bar of pink soap, and a big glass jar full of pink bath salts, and pink fluffy towels.

  “Hurrah!” said Emma, punching the air the way Winston had when they’d gotten the Temporal Difference Engine started. She wasted no time in putting the plug in the tub and turning the taps. At first nothing happened, and she was very disappointed. But then, with all sorts of strange gurgles and bangs and whistles, hot water came rushing from somewhere and quickly filled the tub. Shorty growled at the noise. He put his paws on the edge of the tub and peered suspiciously at the plumbing.

  Emma had a very nice bath indeed. The bath salts were perfumed.

  Afterward, she tried on the clothes. They fit her quite well. She longed to wear the party dress, but settled for one of the calico dresses and aprons instead, since she knew there was more work to do helping Winston tidy up th
e hotel. The high-buttoned boots were hard to fasten up, until she tried pulling the buttonholes into place with the silver-handled hook, and found that it worked like a charm. Last, she brushed out her wet hair, looking at herself in the hand mirror.

  “So there, you stupid old storm,” she said, and smiled as she went down to luncheon. Shorty galloped ahead of her, happy to be running.

  Back in the Lobby, Emma followed her nose and found a pair of tall swinging doors, above which was a sign that said DINING ROOM. Winston was busy in there, picking up candlesticks that had fallen over, and Mrs. Beet was just setting down a big plate of sandwiches.

  “Why, how nice you look, dear,” she said, focusing her eye on Emma. “Found something in your size, did you? That was lucky, I must say.”

  Winston came and pulled out a chair for Emma, and handed her a folded napkin when she sat down. “Thank you,” said Emma. “Who was Lucretia Delilah Wenlocke?”

  “That must be one of the nieces,” said Mrs. Beet, sitting down herself and reaching for a sandwich. “Mr. Wenlocke’s brother has seven girls. Little minxes, most of ‘em. Good heavens!” She took a bite of sandwich and chewed. “I suppose I ought to start using past tense now. They must have all grown up and opened absinthe salons in Paris long ago.”

  “Ahem,” said Winston, in the way that grownups do when other grownups say things children shouldn’t hear. “Perhaps we ought to let Miss Emma have her lunch in privacy.”

  “Oh, why shouldn’t I eat up here?” said Mrs. Beet, through a full mouth. “It’s not as though the millionaires are going to walk through those doors and throw me out. Have a sandwich, dear.” She piled three of them on Emma’s plate. “Ham on fresh bread with butter, eh? And some of that fancy foie gras stuff with truffles, too.”

  “Yum,” said Emma, and took a big bite of ham sandwich. It was delicious. “Won’t you have some, Winston?”

  “Thank you, but I don’t seem to need to eat anymore,” said Winston. He lifted a pitcher of milk and filled Emma’s glass for her. Shorty curled up under Mrs. Beet’s chair, putting his nose on his paws.

  “Don’t you think it’s all right that I took the little girl’s clothes, Winston?” Emma asked, because he was looking rather sad.

  “Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” he said. “I was just remembering poor Mr. Wenlocke. Half the family had booked suites on the fourth floor for the grand opening. They were coming out on a steamship. It would have been a lovely reunion for them.”

  “With no end of quarreling, you know,” said Mrs. Beet, shaking her head. “They didn’t get on, the Wenlockes. Let’s see, what were the girls’ names? There was the eldest, Jezebel; then there was the twins, Livia and Messalina; and one was called Urticaria. A bit odd, she was, if I remember. I heard a rumor she was born with black wings. What was the name of the one that kept the pet snake?”

  “AHEM,” said Winston.

  “No,” said Mrs. Beet, taking another bite of her sandwich. “Pandora, that was it!”

  “Have you found a room you like, Miss Emma?” said Winston.

  “Yes,” said Emma, and told them all about the lovely turret room. “Do you think I could stay there?”

  “No reason why you shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Beet, pouring herself a glass of milk. “The hotel’s yours now, isn’t it? You found it.”

  “Well, Winston and I found it,” said Emma.

  “Yes, but he’s dead,” said Mrs. Beet. “And I’m just a servant. I don’t count.” She winked broadly, or at least Emma assumed that was what she was doing; it was hard to tell with the eye patch. “But you’re a proper little lady, and from what Winston tells me the Grand Wenlocke wouldn’t have been uncovered if you hadn’t built that fence up on the bluff there. I say the place is yours by right of salvage! I could work for you. Bet we’d make pots of money.”

  Emma thought about that, and decided she liked the idea. “I wonder if we could open it again, so people could stay here?”

  “Why, I expect we could!” said Winston, brightening up. “There’s a telegraph station on the Mezzanine. We could send out word that the Grand Wenlocke is back in business! Yes, that’s just what we ought to do!”

  “Mind you, it’s been a hundred years,” said Mrs. Beet, doubtfully. “We won’t be up-to-date anymore. I reckon they’ve even sent balloons up to the moon by now.”

  “It was a space capsule, actually. But people like old-fashioned things,” Emma assured her. “I could sit at the big desk and make people sign their names in the book, and give them their room keys. Winston could carry their bags. You could cook for everybody.”

  “What a capital plan!” said Winston. “Oh, how I’d love to see this place full of happy folks, just as Mr. Wenlocke would have wanted!”

  He was so excited by the idea that he ran up to the Mezzanine as soon as luncheon was over, and spent the rest of the long day in the Telegraph Office. Emma helped Mrs. Beet carry the dishes downstairs, and was astonished at how big and echoing the Kitchens were. They were full of cupboards and shelves crammed with every kind of preserved food. The Electrified Icebox alone was the size of a house.

  In glass-fronted cabinets against the wall, the hotel china was arranged like crown jewels, ivory service trimmed in gold, with THE GRAND WENLOCKE printed on every plate, saucer, dish, teacup, and napkin ring. There were all sorts of strange utensils besides plain knives, forks, and spoons: marrow-spoons, asparagus tongs, grape scissors, pickle spears, oyster knives. Emma stared, fascinated, and tried to imagine the long-gone millionaires who had needed all these special tools just to eat dinner.

  Afterward, Mrs. Beet settled in a comfortable chair and put her feet up, and Shorty curled up in a basket by her chair for a nap. Emma ran back upstairs to the Library. She sat down in one of the big chairs and read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland all the way through.

  She was especially interested by the part in which the Mad Hatter explained to Alice that Time was a person, and if you kept on good terms with him he’d do whatever you wanted with the clock, including speeding up or slowing down time. Emma was rather pleased to think that, although Alice had been written as a nonsense story, parts of it might be true.

  After all, Time could be changed around even without a remarkable machine. Emma knew that Daylight Savings Time could drop hours out of a day, or add them. She knew that it was possible to live through the same day twice, if you went to the International Date Line and sailed east across it. Maybe it wasn’t impossibly strange, then, to be sitting in a hotel that could slow down time, reading a hundred-year-old book that looked as though it had been printed yesterday.

  The long afternoon did creep past, though, and after a while Emma could smell dinner being cooked downstairs. She went down to the Dining Room just as Mrs. Beet carried a big tray in, with Shorty frolicking around her ankles.

  “There you are, dear,” said Mrs. Beet. “Look what I’ve made for us! Beef Wellington with new potatoes and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce! And a nice bottle of lemonade for you, with a lovely rum punch for me.”

  “Thank you! Where’s Winston?” asked Emma, sitting down and shaking out her napkin.

  “Here,” he said, entering through the double doors. He looked dejected. “I feel like such a knucklehead! After all the time I spent up there, tapping out messages to half the papers in the world, I looked out the window and saw that the telegraph lines go into the sand. They must have snapped off when the hotel sank.”

  “Never mind, love,” said Mrs. Beet cheerfully, ladling Hollandaise sauce over Emma’s asparagus. “When you set up a high-class establishment, folks will get to hear about it.”

  That night Emma went to bed in the turret room, curled up snug and safe under the white satin coverlet. Winston gallantly stood at attention outside her door in case she should want anything in the night, for it seemed he didn’t need sleep anymore either. She watched the moon shining over the sea and thought how much things had changed for her since the first night she had come to the Dune
s. How funny it was, she thought, that she wasn’t afraid because there was a ghost outside her door, and not the other way around.

  She thought for a little while about her life before the storm, and wondered what she’d be doing right now, if the storm had never happened. It cheered her up a little to think that even if things weren’t the way they used to be, she was safe and warm and had made new friends.

  8

  THE SAILOR

  NEXT MORNING EMMA woke up and washed, thinking to herself that she would have to try to find a toothbrush in the hotel shop. She had dressed and was just making the bed when she heard someone say, “Ahem.”

  It wasn’t Winston’s voice. It was a lady’s voice. Emma looked around quickly, but the only lady in the room was the Victorian doll. Emma walked over and looked at her. “You can’t have said ahem, can you?” said Emma. “Unless you’re a magic doll.”

  The doll did not reply, but seemed to stare out the window in the direction of the sea. Emma followed her gaze and saw a ship, anchored offshore.

  “Oh!” She ran to the window and opened it. Yes, there it was, riding at anchor and moving gently up and down with the swell: a big, rusty-looking old tugboat. It had no sails, of course, but there was a radio mast above its wheelhouse, flying a black flag. As Emma squinted at it, the wind flapped the flag out straight for a moment. She clearly caught a glimpse of a skull and crossbones.

  Lowering her gaze, she saw footprints left by someone who had come up the beach. Only the left-side print was a foot, however. The right print was a small round hole. They led in a straight track over the sand, right up to the hotel, and where they went after that Emma couldn’t see, because the edge of the verandah roof got in the way. And at that very moment she heard someone coming up the verandah: step thump, step thump, step thump.