by Peter Bunzl
He sat a little way off, with his back against the curve of a large wooden wheel, his chin on his knees and his arms hugged around his legs. His cheeks were streaked with sooty tears, and his dark curled hair was tangled with leaves and dust. “Nightmares?” he asked.
She nodded.
He leaned towards her. “I didn’t sleep much either. It’s all so different. I miss the ticking of our clocks. When I did sleep, I dreamed of Da and the fire. I don’t want to think of how it must’ve hurt.” He took his penknife from his pocket and turned it over in his palm. “This is the last thing of his I have. He gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday.”
A wave of sadness flooded Lily, and she wondered what she’d done to bring such misery down upon them.
“Your dream was about your parents too, wasn’t it?” Robert asked, putting the pocketknife aside.
“Yes.” She fiddled with the blanket. Damp had soaked through into the wool. “How did you know that?”
“I heard you cry out their names.” He took a deep breath. “What happened to your mama? You said she was killed?”
Lily nodded. His words floated sharp between them. “What happened to yours?” She asked, trying to change the subject.
Robert shrugged. “She left when I was very small. I don’t really know where she is now. All I know is her name: Selena.” He swung the coat around and put it on. “You said you were in a steam-wagon crash?”
Lily shifted uncomfortably under the blanket. “I dream about it. The details are coming back to me. I used to think it was an accident – at least, Papa talked of it that way. Now, because of his letter, and the things I’m remembering in my dreams, I know that was a lie.” She scratched at her chest through her damp shirt. Her scar felt unaccountably itchy. She never liked to speak of the past, and no one had asked her about it in a long time. No one except Robert. He sat there, expectantly. Staring at her, waiting for her to elaborate on her suspicions.
She rubbed her hands together and massaged the stiffness from her neck. She should tell him the truth – at least what she knew of it. She owed him that much.
“The crash was terrible,” she said. “The other steam-wagon hit us on purpose. Mama was killed instantly, and I was injured…but Papa, Papa was fine. He was the one who saved me… In fact, in my dream, he had the box. Someone was trying to wrestle it from him. I think it was Mr Mould.” Robert gasped. Lily glanced down at the box. “After the crash, Papa nursed me back to health, healed my injuries. But, with Mama gone, and all the awful things that had happened, he didn’t want to stay in London.”
“So you moved here?”
“Yes.” She brushed her hair back from her forehead and wedged it away under the cap. “We came to hide in the country. But it was hard to live without Mama. He was so lonely, we both were. So he made Malkin, to keep us company.”
Lily stood and crouched beside Malkin. She took his silver winder from her pocket, stroked his head softly, put the key in the hole in his neck and wound it, feeling the fox’s springs tighten. “Then Papa got me a governess, because he said we needed a woman around.”
“She was the one at the house?” Robert prompted.
“No – the first three didn’t seem to like being shut up in the house. They left. Then Madame Verdigris arrived. She and I never really got on. Papa ended up sending me to Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy, on her recommendation, and she stayed on at home as our housekeeper.”
“I didn’t know you went to some fancy academy,” Robert said.
“Fancy’s not the word for it.” Lily finished winding Malkin, and watched as he blinked awake.
The mech-fox yawned, smacked his lips together, and stretched like a cat. “I’ll go and check ahead,” he said, “get the lay of the land.” Then he stood and shook out his four black paws, and before Robert or Lily could answer, he’d leaped through the hole in the door and trotted off.
Robert scratched his cheek as he watched the red shape disappear into the white outside. “I never went to school,” he said finally. “Da taught me everything I needed to know – about clocks and chronometers, the business, and whatnot. ’Course it’s useless to me now.”
Lily didn’t disagree. “He seemed a good man, your father.”
“He was. I only wish I’d been a better son. A better apprentice.”
She patted his shoulder. “Robert,” she said, “I reckon you were the finest son and apprentice he could ever have wished for.”
“Thank you.” He gave her a nervous smile, and glanced at the box at her feet. “What on earth are we going to do now?”
“I’m not sure.” Lily stood and paced about between the broken cogs of the old mill. “But I think we should carry on with your da’s plan. We’ll walk to the next town and catch a train to London. Then we’ll go and see my godfather, ask for his help.” She kneeled down and pulled the blanket around the box once more, then she stowed the hacksaw and the screwdriver in beside it.
Robert watched her. “Have we got enough money for tickets?” he asked.
“If we don’t we’ll have to hide in a compartment somewhere. That might be a better plan anyway.” Lily knotted the top of the blanket tightly around her few possessions.
Then they sat in silence for a while, listening to the steady drip of water melting somewhere, which sounded like the tick of a clock. Finally, Malkin’s snow-covered snout poked through the doorway.
“The path ahead’s clear,” he yipped. “But there’s something else you should know – I think we’re going to pass by the place where Dragonfly crashed.”
Robert jolted forward. “Are the police there?” he asked. “Or Roach and Mould?”
Malkin shook his head. “Neither. The whole site looks mysteriously empty. Untouched even.”
“Oh.” Lily bit her lip. “In that case,” she said queasily, “perhaps we should take the opportunity to go and investigate.”
For the rest of the morning they followed the river southwards from the old mill. As the day warmed, shards of ice broke apart and melted into the free-flowing water. Soon the crunch of the snow under their feet became a soft slush and rays of dappled sunlight drifted through the bare branches above. Otherwise, things were ominously quiet; Robert heard no sign of their pursuers, nor saw any evidence of them.
They took turns carrying the box, bundled in its damp blanket. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it gnawed at Robert’s mind, along with the loss of his da, and all their other troubles.
He worried they wouldn’t find evidence of Lily’s papa in the wreckage of the airship. Or, worse still, that they would. Another body would be too much to take at this point, and he could not help but think, after everything they’d been through, that the crash site was not the safest place to be heading.
Late in the afternoon, Malkin’s ears pricked up and he stopped further up the track. “This is it,” he called, pointing with his nose through the trees.
Robert and Lily stepped through a gap in the foliage into a blackened clearing, eerily dead of sound.
To one side, smashed into the trunk of an old oak, they saw the dented shape of Dragonfly’s escape pod. Thirty feet away, further fragments of the ship lay scattered on the ground, as if an explosion had strewn them across the landscape.
“Oh, Papa,” Lily whispered.
Robert tried to take her hand, but she flinched and pulled away, running through the melting drifts towards the clusters of burned metal. When he caught up with her, she was searching through the fragments for any sign of her father.
“Lily, stop,” Malkin barked. “There’s no one here, and if there was they left days ago.”
Lily shook her head. “There must be something. Some clue to what became of Papa after the silver airship locked together with Dragonfly.”
Robert shifted the bundle across his back. “Perhaps the flight recorder,” he said. “All airships have them.”
“What does it look like?” she asked.
“It’s a grooved silver cylinder cove
red in markings, like the metal roller of a music box. It records sound – it will have recorded the last few minutes on the ship. After the pod ejects it kicks in automatically so it would tell us what happened after Malkin’s escape, before the crash. If it’s here, it would be somewhere in the cockpit wreckage.”
Lily bent low over the remains of the pilot’s chair, which lay hump-backed on the ground. Beside it, twisted metal tubes exploded from the cracked front panel of a control console. She pulled the panel away and focused on the tangle of wires.
“It’s meant to look as if it was an accident,” she said, “just like with Mama, or your da, Robert. They want people to think he crashed, but that’s not the case. We know they destroyed the ship for whatever’s in this stupid box.” Her voice, loud with rage, echoed around the clearing.
“This isn’t a safe place for us to be,” Robert said. “Roach and Mould might guess we’d come here. I don’t think we should stop too long.”
Lily ignored him and rooted through the rest of the wreckage. “I’ve found it,” she shouted, pulling a silver cylinder from within the interior casing of another mangled console box. “This’ll tell us what happened to Papa.”
Robert furrowed his brow. “It’s no good yet. We’ve nothing to play it on.”
“We’ll find something when we get to London – listen, we just need to—”
Her breath caught. There was a crunch of feet across the snow.
“Hush,” Malkin snapped. “Be quiet. I think someone’s coming.”
“It might be Papa!” Lily felt a rush of hope, and made to run towards the noise, but Robert grabbed her arm and held it tight.
“It might not be,” he said.
“He’s right,” Malkin growled. “The footsteps are not John’s, they’re too heavy.”
They ducked behind the broken ribs of Dragonfly’s hull and waited. On the far side of the clearing, they heard a clang. And another…followed by a ripping noise. Someone was rummaging through the rest of the wreckage. Lily peered around a burned-out section of fuselage.
Half hidden behind the broken shape of a hydraulic pump, a figure in an aviator helmet examined a littering of flywheels and exhaust rods. Its stout body, wrapped in a bulky leather flying jacket, resembled a half-filled flour sack, Lily thought. “Who is that?” she whispered.
The figure stopped and scratched its forehead with one fingerless-gloved hand, muttering to itself.
Malkin peered at it. “I’ve no idea,” he said. “But they’re taking parts from Dragonfly.”
There was a loud screech of metal as the figure wrenched an exhaust pipe from a row of clips. It turned and threw the piece with a clatter onto a pile of scrap, then wiped its hands on the front of the leather jacket and, in one deft movement, pulled a gun from a holster strapped to its back.
“I know you’re over there,” the figure said, stepping between the broken pieces of the stern. “I can hear you. And, whoever you are, know this: there may be only one of me, and perhaps you think the three of you could take me easy in a fight, but I’ve got a pistol full of big exploding mechanical-piercing bullets. So, why don’t you come out and we can talk about splitting this salvage fifty-fifty – or sixty-forty since, by salvagers’ law, I was here first. Then we can all be on our way.”
Lily and Robert shuffled out from behind the fuselage with their hands in the air. Malkin slunk sheepishly behind them, head bowed.
When the figure pushed the scarf and goggles from its face, Robert saw it was a woman. Her cheeks were round and ruddy from the cold. Her blue eyes looked them up and down, pausing on the tube in Lily’s hand. “A recording cylinder,” she said, “now that is an interesting find.”
Lily didn’t reply, just pulled her jacket tighter around her.
“Lost your tongue, have you, young man?” the woman asked.
Robert shifted the bundle to hide it behind his back.
“And what’ve you got?” the woman asked him.
“Nothing,” he said.
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.” The woman pointed the gun at him. “Looks like you two boys have found the catch of the day. Now, hand it over.”
“No,” Lily blurted out. She stepped forward. “We’re not going to give you the cylinder, or this box, or anything else. Not after what we’ve been through. If you want them so badly, you’re going to have to take them from us.”
The woman laughed. “I see. It’s like that, is it?” She holstered her weapon. “I think you’d better both come with me. Maybe I can help you.”
The three of them marched through a nearby field, the woman, walking a few steps behind, carried an armful of various mangled engine parts. Robert clutched the bundle containing the box against his chest. “Do you think we can trust her?” he whispered.
Lily shrugged. “What choice have we got?”
“Let’s keep on our guard,” Malkin advised.
The woman ushered them downhill and into a small clearing behind a line of frosty trees. A bulging patchwork balloon, tethered to the ground by an iron anchor, bobbed jauntily in the breeze. Rigged to the hull of its weathered wooden gondola were scraps of rusted wreckage – pots, pans, buckets, boxes, baskets and bundles of wood – that clanked and clattered together in a syncopated rhythm, like a motley wind chime. One word was stencilled on the airship’s prow in white paint: Ladybird.
“What is all this stuff?” Lily asked.
“Scrap,” the woman said. She deposited her gleanings in the various boxes and bags scattered around the snowy clearing, and tended to a blackened cauldron that hung on a trivet over a smoking campfire. As she lifted the lid on the cauldron the hearty smell of stew wafted out, making Robert’s mouth water.
“Can we have some food?” he begged. “We’re starving.”
“You look it,” the woman said. “Go on then, fill yourselves up.” She doled out two bowlfuls for them, and scooped a mugful out of the cauldron for herself. Then she handed them each a spoon. “Lunch is served.”
After a night and a morning of walking on an empty stomach, it was a pleasure for Robert and Lily to have hot food, and bread to soak in it. They set to eating as quickly as they could. The stew tasted spicy and delicious, and the warmth of it suffused their bellies.
“What are your names, boys?” the woman asked.
“I’m Robert and this is L—”
“Lenny,” Lily said, interrupting. “We’re Robert and Lenny.”
“I’m Anna Quinn: scrapper and aeronaut.”
After they’d finished eating, and cleaned their plates with the crusts of bread, Anna offered them a second plateful. She even had some scraps for Malkin, but he turned his nose up at them, and lay with his head on his paws, facing in the other direction.
“He’s not hungry?” Anna asked, tipping her head to the fox.
“He doesn’t eat,” Lily explained, “he’s a mechanimal.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened. “I’ve never seen one that looks so lifelike before. Or acts it. How’d you get hold of him?”
“My da repairs clocks.” Robert spoke with his mouth full. “He’s a horologist. The fox was left with us when his owner never came to pick him up.”
Lily gave him a smile for such a quick-thinking lie.
“Does he speak too?” Anna wondered.
Malkin’s ears pricked up. “Only when spoken to,” he muttered, glancing at her over his knitted shoulders. “And by the way, it’s very clanking rude to discuss a person as if they’re not there.”
Anna guffawed, and slapped her knees with a hand. “Blimey, he does! Has he got a moniker?”
Lily looked up, spoon halfway to her mouth. “A what?”
“A handle, a denomination, an appellation, a name.”
“His name’s Malkin,” Robert explained.
“And what were the three of you doing at that crash site?”
“Nothing,” Lily said. “Just scavenging, like yourself.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Anna said.
She leaned forward in her seat. “Let me tell you who I think you are: you’re Lily Hartman, and this mechanimal belongs to your father, Professor John Hartman, whose airship, Dragonfly, crashed here.”
Lily felt her eyes widen with shock. “How do you know all that? Who are you really?”
The woman smiled. “I told you, my name’s Anna Quinn. I’m a scrapper of metal. And sometimes I do a bit of investigating and writing on the side.”
“You’re the reporter who wrote the newspaper article about Papa,” Lily said.
Anna nodded. “That’s right. I’ve been looking into his disappearance for a couple of days. The whole thing seemed fishy to me – the scant coverage in the other papers, the lack of a proper police investigation. So I thought I would come up here and find out more, and do a bit of salvage work while I was about it.”
“But why didn’t you contact me?” Lily asked.
“I tried to,” Anna said. “But I don’t think your guardian passed on my telegram. It’s lucky we found each other though.”
“Lucky how?” Robert asked.
“As I said, I can help you.” Anna poked at the fire with the tip of her boot. “And then you can both do an interview for me. An exclusive.”
“We don’t know any more about this business than you do,” Robert told her. “The people chasing us, they—”
Anna grasped his arm. “You’re being chased? This does puts an exciting new spin on things! Tell me more about that.”
“Papa told me not to talk to strangers about myself.” Lily clasped the cylinder to her chest. “Look, we need to find out what’s on this. Do you know how we can play it back?”
Anna held out a palm. After a moment’s consideration, Lily passed her the cylinder. The woman turned it over, examining the dents and grooves on its surface.
“You need to plug it into the workings of another airship,” she said. “That’s the only way you’ll get anything out of it.”