Lumière (The Illumination Paradox)

by Garlick, Jacqueline E.

  “Eyelet, look up!” I shake off the pain and chase after her. “Look where you’re going!”

  Her chin swings up and I dive after her, catching her by the arm and throwing her back up against a tree harder than I intended. Her eyes pop as she smacks her head.

  “I’m sorry.” I breathe. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You’re a murderer!” She scowls. “A murderer who wears the mask of his victims!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t insult me by lying to me anymore.” Her lips tremble. “I saw them, up there, in your secret room. Your collection of masks. Like the one you wore last night on the stairs.” I gasp as she heaves for breath. “Tell me, what kind of a monster kills his own father then masquerades around in his face?”

  Oh Lord, what is she thinking?

  “Eyelet, please. It’s not what it seems—”

  “What else could it be? I found her, you know! The girl you held on the stairs. Up there, stashed away in your secret lair. I saw what you did to her. And that other poor creature, whatever you did to him! You’re a monster! A horrible monster!”

  She brings her knee to my gut and breaks away, arms flailing at her sides.

  “Eyelet, please…” I sprint after her, clearing the Vapour-laced mist from my path. I strip the gloves from my hands and place them over my nose like a mask. “Eyelet?” I shout, seeing just the ruffles of her skirts bobbing through the mist. “Please Eyelet, let me explain!”

  She ignores me, racing deeper and deeper into the forest. Vapours hang dangerously close to flooding over the ridge. I hear her cough and my heart jags in my chest. I’m running out of time to convince her. I’ve got to make her understand. If we don’t turn back soon, it’ll be too late. She coughs again and I lunge in the direction, pulling her down to the ground when I reach her, the two of us rolling to a stop in the dry grass.

  “Let me GO!” She pounds at my chest as I pull up onto my arms. “I’d rather die here alone in the Vapours than at the hands of your Wickedry.” She arches her neck and spits in my face. I pull back, astonished. She can’t mean this. She can’t possibly believe what she’s saying. How can she think so ill of me? What have I done?

  Frustration has me catch her hard by the wrists. I force her arms to the grass. She winces at me, like she’s expecting to meet her death. “Listen to me!” I shake her. “You have to listen to me!” She stops struggling, her eyes watching the spit snaking down the side of my purple cheek. “My father killed himself! I had nothing to do with it! You have to believe me! I am not possessed with Wickedry!”

  “Just as I’m to believe you never drugged me last evening?” Her eyes pinch tight. “You asked me to trust you last night, Urlick, and like a fool I did—”

  “You were not a fool.” My heart sinks. Iris is right, I should have told her. I should have told her everything long before now.

  She wrenches herself to one side and I pull her back. “Please,” I whisper. “Just listen. It was an accident! I had nothing to do with it. My father died the Night of the Great Illumination. The result of a bungled experiment. His experiment. I had nothing to do with it. I am not his murderer. I could never murder anyone.”

  “But you have no problem with mutilation, do you?”

  I furrow my brow. “What are you talking about?”

  “Iris! I saw what you did to her! How could you do such a thing? You cut the tongue from that poor girl’s mouth—”

  “No. That’s not what happened—”

  “Then what did?” Her neck juts toward me.

  “Iris has been tongue-tied since birth. Her parents brought her to my father, desperate for his help. They begged him to try and fix her, so he tried. But then infection set in and threatened her life, and he had no choice but to remove her tongue.” She makes a face. “There was no other way. You have to believe me—”

  “Why should I? The man who lies about everything? Himself. His father. The source of the screams.”

  I pull back, stung by her venom.

  She narrows her eyes, stares at me hard. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you think I was smart enough to put that together?”

  “Eyelet, I’m sorry, but you have to believe me—”

  “How am I to believe you now, with the lies you’ve been telling?”

  I take a breath, not knowing how to fix this. Not capable of making things right. I’ve lost her. The only girl I ever believed could understand me.

  “Is there anything else you’d care to lie to me about? Perhaps the armless man in the attic? Have you a story for him?”

  “No,” I say weakly. “No stories, just the truth, from here on in, I promise you.” I bring my hand to my chest, crossing my heart with a finger.

  She purses her lips, turns her head away.

  The stench of the encroaching Vapours burns in my nostrils. I know she must be feeling their grip.

  “He showed up at the door, a few years ago,” I explain to her as quickly as I can, “an escapee from a traveling freak show. He wore shackles around his ankles and a chain around his neck. He begged Iris and I to let him take refuge inside our house, just until his show master gave up his search for him and left town. When we did, he told us of his long journey through the woods, being hunted by dogs. How a friend that escaped with him was torn up by one. He shared how he’d been born without any arms from the shoulders down, and how his father, fearing he’d be of no use for farm work, sold him to the freak master for a loaf of bread at the age of ten. Since that day, he’d been forced to perform three shows every day, receiving beatings with a whip if the crowds weren’t big enough.

  Later that day, when the freak master came knocking, Iris stood by while I lied, telling him I’d found a dead body in the forest, and handed over his shackles and chains.

  He’s lived in seclusion with us ever since. That’s the honest truth, Eyelet. So help me God.” I cross my heart again.

  She blinks up at me, and I can tell she’s considering what I’ve said. “And the girl,” she finally says.

  “She’s a specimen. Donated by your precious Academy, to my father’s lab for the purpose of experimental surgery. She arrived at two and a half. My father was to take apart her brain in an effort to isolate the root cause of her mental affliction, in the name of science, without even so much as a drop of anesthetic.” Eyelet swallows. “But as cruel as my father was, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.”

  A look of terror floods Eyelet’s ochre eyes.

  “After his death, when the Academy came knocking, Iris and I again lied. We told the headmaster she died in surgery years ago and produced a fake death certificate my father had forged for just such an occasion.”

  “Does she have a name? The girl, I mean?”

  “Yes. Cordelia.”

  “And the man?”

  “Ernest. But he prefers to go by his old stage name, Crazy Legs. On account of the fact he can do most anything with his toes normal people can only do with their hands.” She almost laughs. “As for the masks, you’re right: I have been masquerading as my father since his death. But I assure you it was for good reason. In the mask, I can walk the streets of Gears freely, collect his pension, sell our wares, and pay the bills. Without it, I would be treated like a leper, possibly even jailed, a constant source of ridicule. By masquerading as my dead father, I’ve been able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. Otherwise, we’d surely have perished by now. It’s not something I wanted to do. But rather something I had to do. A choice I had to make.”

  I take Eyelet by the chin and stare deep into her eyes. “You’re right. I have been telling a great many lies to a great many people. But I hope you can see now, it was all for good reason.”

  She stares at me, tears in her eyes. A warm smile bridges her lips, but she quickly bites it away. “And the machine. Why did you lie about the machine?”

  I suck in a breath and hold it, my mind a muddle of worry. I can trust her. I can. I must. I let out the breath and begi
n. “You’re right, I did steal a machine from a warehouse in Gears. And I’ve hidden it from you all this time. But I did so in an attempt to help the people you’ve discovered, not to hurt them. You must believe me. I thought if only I could locate my father’s machine, I could use it to right what was wrong with them—”

  “Your father’s machine?” Eyelet’s eyes light like flares. She sucks in a trembling breath.

  “That’s right. The one he was experimenting with just before his death.”

  “His death?”

  Her pulse quickens inside my fists.

  “That is not your father’s machine.” Her voice is a whisper. “It’s my father’s.”

  “What?”

  “The Illuminator? It was my father’s last invention. The machine you stole from the warehouse that day. My father built it. I, too, sought to find it. That’s why I commandeered a ride in your carriage that day.”

  I pull back a million arguments running in my head as she bites her lip. Her eyes look so convincing as she continues. “He built the machine for a specific reason”—she hesitates, as if something catches in her throat—“but for some reason he sold it instead.” Her eyes shine with tears. “He, too, died the Night of the Great Illumination. Somewhere here in the Follies, on a business mission he never returned from. Clearly, whomever my father sold the machine to sold it to yours. Or perhaps my father sold it directly to him.

  “Either way,” I start, “someone from the Academy came and confiscated it the afternoon of the Night of the Great Illumination. He claimed to work for the Academy, insisted he’d been ordered to store the machine until further notice. He produced official papers from his pocket. Iris and I let him in, and he hauled it away. We were to tell my father, but he died that night.”

  The wind picks up at my back. I turn and see the Vapours cresting on the ridge, stalking rattler-like through the forest toward us, their metallic stench a brazen intruder.

  Eyelet’s hair spirals about her shoulders. Her arms flinch at her sides.

  I jump to my feet. “The Vapours,” I say. “They’re cresting. We’re running out of time.” I offer her my hand.

  She hesitates. Her gaze darts between the forest and me. Vapours spill down the hillside, thick and black as oil.

  “Please, Eyelet,” I shout over the howl of the wind. “Please, take my hand.”

  “It’s no use, we’ll never get there.” She gasps.

  “We will,” I say, taking her chin in my hand. “How much do you trust me?” I say.

  Twenty five

  Eyelet

  As much as the stars and the moon and the pesky ol’ sun…

  I sink my hand in Urlick’s. We run. Like I’ve never run before, my feet barely touching the ground, my body propelled solely by Urlick’s determined force.

  The Vapours rush down over the escarpment in an angry wave, swallowing trees and rocks and hillside behind us like the grim reaper wielding its scythe of death. My head twists back and forth, gauging its distance from us. Terror swamps my soul as its force closes in.

  “Don’t look back!” Urlick hollers to me. “Think only of the door on the Compound and getting through it!”

  I twist my head back around and squint to focus. “I don’t see it! I can’t see it!” I panic.

  “Neither can I! You just need to believe it’s there!”

  He tugs my arm, and I stumble along beside him, believing I see it, imagining the door to safety lurks just beyond the next patch of trolling fog, battling against the demons in my mind that say otherwise, Vapours roaring up behind us.

  The black rock that forms the escarpment at the back of the Compound finally appears. Jagged pieces of its rock pierce the cloud cover and my heart swells with hope. Dark smoke roils up from the bottomless pit that lies between the rock and the Compound’s edge. The one I peered into from my bedroom window the night Pan discovered me. Pan. Where is she now?

  I wrench my head around, catching a glimpse of the overhanging turret through the thick, black, rising smoke of the pit. “Where are we going?” I shout. “This is not the front!”

  “That’s right!” Urlick shouts, yanking at my hesitating hand.

  “But there is nothing past the rock. I’ve seen it. It just drops off. The turrets, they stand half over the edge of a bottomless pit. If we continue this way, we’re sure to fall into it!”

  “Embers,” he corrects me.

  “What?”

  “It’s called Embers, not a pit.”

  “Embers!” I gasp. “As in proverbial Hell?”

  “That’s the one.” He turns to me. “But there’s nothing proverbial about it.”

  My feet instinctively slow.

  The steam map was right. The Compound not only sits at the very edge of the Earth, but hovers over the very end of existence. No wonder Urlick told me there was nothing beyond his home but death. His home teeters over the threshold to Hell. No wonder the Commonwealth chose here to dispose of their discards. Could there be a more fitting place?

  But the map. It claimed the Follies used to be part of the Commonwealth. How could that be? My legs seize at the thought. Urlick hauls me forward.

  “Don’t worry,” he squeezes my hand. “I’ve no intention of diving in.”

  “Then how—?”

  He turns to me, eyes like beams of red hope in an otherwise blackening world. “How much do you trust me?”

  My heart warms in my chest.

  We push on and I begin to choke. My vision blurs. My head begins to spin.

  “Here!” Urlick reaches up, tearing the sleeve from his shirt. “Cover your nose and mouth with this.” I press his sleeve to my face and try to keep running, my legs like rubber beneath me, clutching his bare arm with my other hand, Vapours gaining on us like an angry, roaring, tidal wave.

  Urlick turns and scoops me up into his arms, then speeds through the trees. I have no idea how he knows where he’s going. One misstep and our lives could end. His heart lurches in time with my own. I cling to him, staring over his shoulder at the rolling froth that threatens to devour us, praying the pit doesn’t swallow us first. How has he survived in such a place all these years? Perched on the very doorstep of evil, on the very hearth of Hell.

  I close my eyes, overcome by dizziness, my eyes no longer feeling like they’re my own, instantly haunted by images of my Mother’s face as she hangs in the gallows, my Father as he lies asphyxiated on the road. Does a similar fate await me? Will I die, here, now, with Urlick?

  The Vapours pick up speed as Urlick surges forward, bidding me to hang on as tight as I can. The muscles in his legs strain to carry me. Breath chugs from his lungs. I close my eyes and beg the world to let us make it. Moments later Urlick slows and drops me to my feet.

  “Where are we?” I gasp, tuning my head.

  “The Compound.” He falls, breathless, back against a door.

  “It has a back door?”

  “Two, actually.” He palms the center of my back, pressing me toward him. “Be careful.” He flips his chin. “Don’t wanna step back too far.”

  I turn to see the heels of my boots straddling the lip of the pit. Black steam rises at my back. One false move and I’ll go over. I swallow and lean toward Urlick, steadying myself against his chest, not caring if it’s improper.

  He curses, his arms around me, as he tries to unlock the door.

  Vapours spiral toward us, deathly black. We’re running out of time.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. It won’t open.” He slams his fist against the door. “Blast it! The seal!” he remembers. “I told Iris not to break the seal until my return!”

  “What do we do now?” My lips tremble.

  “Iris knows we’re out here,” Urlick says. “She wouldn’t give up on us that easy. We’ll just have to get her attention somehow!” He turns and pounds at the door, the two of us screaming, kicking it with the toes of our boots.

  The squeeze of the Vapours pinches my lungs a
nd hitches my breath. I feel lightheaded again, woozy. I bend at the knees, melting down Urlick’s side. He rescues me, his hands clasped tightly about my waist. “I don’t think she’s coming,” he whispers. “We’re running out of time.”

  “She’s coming,” I say, refusing to give up faith. I let my head fall to his shoulder, burying my face in his neck, fighting to maintain my thoughts against the Vapours’ encroaching breath.

  At first I’m convinced it’s a dream. Iris’s moon-round face in the porthole window of the door, eyes wide with panic. But it’s not, it’s really her. A couple of clanks and bangs and a shoulder later, the door finally flies open, exhaling a rush of cleansing salty steam. Urlick launches me through the doorway, the two of us coughing just as the Vapours rush the gates. “The SEAL!” he screams to Iris as he slams the door and activates the lock.

  My legs give way and I crumple to the floor, feeling the cleansing steam working hard to pull the Vapours’ poison from my lungs, as Iris runs at the panel. The alarm squeals. The Guardian lights glow. The Vapours rush the side of the Compound, causing the floor to quake, colliding with the Guardian in a mighty explosion that curls them up and away from the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Urlick shouts. “It’ll settle down in a moment.” He flips a look out the window. “Or it won’t.” He bends. “You okay?”

  “Mm-huh,” I gasp. “And you?”

  “I’ve been better.” He grins, still heaving in breaths. “But better now we’re on this side of the door.” He looks to me, eyes shining like red stars in the night sky, and I can’t help but think how wonderful they are.

  “You—” He stands, reeling Iris in tight to his chest, planting a big fat kiss on her forehead. “Thank God for you!”

  Iris pushes him off, disgusted, turning red as her dress.

  “Can you stand?” He reaches out for me. “If you can, I’d like to show you something.”

  I reach up and he pulls me to my feet. I still feel wobbly, but my eyes have finally landed. I’m no longer as woozy as I once was, but my lungs still burn a bit.