Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series

by Danny Knestaut

  When his feet seemed to wander around underneath him even as he stood still, Ikey stumbled back to the house, climbed the stairs, and collapsed into bed. A cloud of scotch fumes hung over him in the dark. A fog. And inside it, he felt safe, secure. It hid him from the incessant pain of his shoulder. It dulled the itching of his eyes. It kept him from wondering why Rose no longer visited his room in the evenings.

  Hailie’s administrations became perfunctory on her visitation days, her concerns muted until her visits dwindled into strict business done in a hurry before she departed and left Ikey to shut the window and draw the curtains. This went on for two weeks before Hailie announced that the next time she came, Dr. Gretten would accompany her to examine Ikey’s eyes for himself.

  The night before the visit, Ikey laid awake in bed and wondered what he would find when the doctor lifted the bandages and told him to open his eyes. How much eyesight could he lose and still function? And he thought of Rose drifting through the house, queen of her domain, capable as any man, and more so in that most men would be lost in her condition. Yet the thought of life spent like her, in her shadow…

  When the time came, Ikey greeted Hailie and Dr. Gretten at the door. Dr. Gretten took Ikey’s hand in a firm shake, then announced his greeting to Cross, who sat in one of the chairs by the cold fireplace. After Ikey extracted his hand from the doctor’s grip, he motioned to the chairs and invited the doctor to have a seat. Dr. Gretten thanked him as Hailie scurried to the window, yanked the curtains back, and threw the window open wide.

  “As I told you, Doctor, he lives like this. Without the benefit of fresh air and sunlight. Look at him. He’s jaundiced, I swear.”

  “I’m fine,” Ikey said as he approached the chairs. “Shall we get started? I’m eager to get these bandages off.”

  “Certainly,” Dr. Gretten said in a deep voice tinged with a German accent. “If you will have a seat.”

  Ikey wished to be able to arch his eyebrows. Instead, he sat down and gripped the arm of the chair.

  The other chair creaked. Boot heels clomped away as Cross extricated himself from the seat. In return, leather creaked and a mess of instruments clinked against each other as a bag was tossed into the vacated seat. At the sound, Ikey felt like a machine, an engine Dr. Gretten had stopped by to repair. The sensation evaporated, and was replaced with a longing for the weight of his lost satchel on his shoulder, ready for his hand to slip inside and feel the tools arranged in their proper order within his tool roll.

  The snap on the bag clicked open. The doctor placed a hand on the crown of Ikey’s head.

  “Still, my son,” Dr. Gretten said. He placed the edge of a pair of scissors against Ikey’s cheek, below his ear, and snipped straight through the cloth.

  The bandage fell away and draped itself over Ikey’s shoulder.

  Dr. Gretten plucked away the wads of gauze then wiped roughly at Ikey’s eyes with a cloth. The heat from the lantern pressed against his face as the doctor took Ikey’s chin in his hand and lifted. He swung Ikey’s face side-to-side then let go. He replaced the lantern on the table and took a step back.

  “First, I’m afraid there isn’t much to be done for the left eye. The scar tissue seems to have grown in such a way that the eye is closed permanently.”

  Ikey’s breath stopped. His heart ticked in his chest.

  “But the right eye may open. If you would give it a try, young man.”

  Ikey willed his eye to open. It was stuck again. He reached up and dabbed at his eyelids and felt the crust there again.

  “One moment,” Hailie said. A bottle gurgled. Cool liquid brushed against his face.

  Ikey opened his eye.

  A blurry spot stood in a sea of black.

  “Well?” Cross asked.

  Ikey blinked several times. The blurriness didn’t resolve itself.

  “Can you see at all?” Dr. Gretten asked.

  “Everything’s blurry,” Ikey said. He squinted at the blob before him.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” the doctor asked.

  The blob shifted. A lighter-colored part of it rose up, oblong in shape.

  “I don’t know.”

  Hailie inhaled a quick breath.

  “Are you able to count?” the doctor asked. “Do you know your arithmetic?”

  “I can bloody well count,” Ikey snapped. “I just can’t see.”

  He turned his head to the left. A blurry, messy light stood out of the dark. Everything appeared as if he was gazing through a thick sheet of ice formed on a creek after a slow, prolonged freeze.

  “What can you see?” Dr. Gretten asked. “Anything at all?”

  “I see light,” Ikey said, and his words fell small and lost and blind off his lips. “I can see the window. But I can’t tell you what’s on the other side of it.”

  Ikey scanned the room before him. A halo of light glowed around a form standing off the line of sight between himself and the window. Hailie, perhaps. The doctor, a pool of beige floating in a puddle of tar, stood before him. Behind him, over his shoulder, stood a longer pool of beige. Cross.

  “I can’t see a blasted thing.”

  “Oh dear,” Dr. Gretten said. He drifted forward and picked up the lantern. Ikey pressed his back into the upholstery as the doctor hovered the lantern near. Ikey gripped the arm of the chair. He wanted to swat the lantern away, push the doctor aside. He wanted to reach up and tear out his one stupid eye, or tear away whatever lay between it and his ability to see. This wasn’t right. Something couldn’t… Something had to be wrong. Dr. Gretten hadn't washed all the ointment away. Ikey squinted his eye shut and opened it again.

  The doctor’s hand clamped onto Ikey’s forehead and his thumb pulled the upper eyelid up and pinned it in place like a butterfly pinned to corkboard. The lantern drew close. Heat swirled and eddied against his flesh.

  “Still a moment,” the doctor said, his breath thick and heavy as a quilt soaked in gin.

  “I think…” Dr. Gretten said, then hummed to himself.

  “You think what?” Cross asked.

  “I think the accident may have caused a slight deformity to the lens of the eye. If it hasn’t corrected itself by now, I’m afraid there isn’t much more that can be done. Perhaps an optometrist might offer some corrective lenses.”

  “What do you mean?” Ikey asked. His breath came off scorched and blistered, shimmering in the heat of the lantern.

  “I mean,” Dr. Gretten said as he straightened up and the lantern pushed away from Ikey’s face, “that I’m afraid your loss of vision is rather permanent. I’m most sorry. But I am gratified to see that you have retained at least some sight. By the grace of God, that alone is a small gift.”

  “At least you can’t see how ugly you are,” Cross said.

  “Piss off!” Ikey shouted.

  “Oy!” Cross countered.

  “Gentlemen!” Hailie called out.

  Ikey slumped back in the chair.

  The doctor stepped away from Cross and Ikey. “I release you from my care, young man. I recommend that, if finances suit, you seek the services of an optometrist. I’m afraid medical science can offer you no greater remedy.”

  “That’s it?” Cross asked. “That’s the best you got?”

  “I’m afraid I’m a doctor,” Dr. Gretten said, “and not a miracle worker. This man’s injuries are beyond the capabilities of even the most skilled physician.”

  “Well, what of his other eye? Can you get that open? See if it’s as bad off?”

  Ikey lowered his head and closed his eye. Seeing nothing was better than seeing the blurry smudges of people around him, hints of what was missing.

  “I’m afraid it isn’t practical. The severity of the burns to the left side of the face indicate that the damage to the underlying lens would be worse yet.”

  Cross blew an exasperated breath between his lips. “Well, we’ll take you to a bloody optometrist then.”

  “If that’ll be all, gentlemen,�
�� Dr. Gretten said.

  “Hardly worth the visit if that’s the best you got,” Cross said.

  “If I could have done more, I’d most certainly have done it.”

  The doctor collected his bag and left with Hailie in tow.

  “We can get another doctor,” Cross said as the door closed behind Hailie. “I’ve never liked him one bit anyhow.”

  Ikey pushed himself out of the chair. Behind his closed eye, he paced over to the window and grabbed the lower window rail. His grip tightened. The nails on his fingers hummed in pain as they dug into the wooden frame.

  He opened his eye.

  Light pressed against him. Shapes moved.

  “Look at—” someone said close by, the pace of her steps slowing over the granite setts. A shadow entered Ikey’s field of vision and drifted across it; a blurry moon eclipsing a fog-shrouded sun.

  Ikey closed his eye. He slammed the window down. Glass exploded from the pane and showered him in a jagged, sharp-toothed song that left the music boxes crying and whimpering.

  A woman screamed.

  “Bloody Nora!” Cross hollered.

  Ikey remained still. The music boxes tittered and chirped with each of Cross’s footfalls. An engine puttered in the distance. Hooves clopped along and sparrows chattered among the growing murmur of people on the street. Someone close by on the street asked if he was all right.

  Glass crunched under Cross’s feet. “Are you all right?” Cross echoed. “You cut anywhere?”

  Ikey stood behind the remains of his eye and waited to feel something other than the throb of his missing arm.

  Chapter Four

  After Cross examined Ikey for cuts and found none, he led Ikey back to the chair. Ikey leaned his head against the upholstered back as Cross swept up the glass shards. Their tinkling was another language, a lesser dialect than that spoken by the music boxes, which murmured and whispered about Ikey’s rash action after each step of Cross’s boots.

  Ikey lowered his chin and lifted his hand to his face. The tips of his fingers traced his brow and the divots and knots of scar tissue that marked where bits of flaming canvas had rained upon him as he pulled Cross away from the burning airship. His fingers traced the bare skin where his eyebrow once was, and then along the socket of his left eye. Thick flesh met his touch. He pushed at it, prodded it. It felt like a layer of rubber between his fingers and his face. He wrenched his lips up in a manic smile and felt how the seared flesh moved, but the scar tissue did not let the smile lift to his eye. He placed the butt of his palm against his left socket and pushed and rubbed his hand back and forth. Flashes of light danced through his vision. Streaks and specks and rays ran across the field of black.

  His eye was under there. Whole. And something responded when he agitated it.

  Ikey drew his fingertips across the raw bridge of his nose and felt along the right eye. He found no scarring, but the flesh along the top of his eye socket felt thicker, more tender. His hand dropped away.

  “I’m very sorry,” Rose said from the kitchen doorway.

  The sweeping stopped. “I got this,” Cross said. “Nothing doing. We’ll head off to the optometrist. Get him a monocle he can sport like a proper gentleman. A topper to boot.”

  “Did you want me to be like this?” Ikey asked. He turned his head toward Rose for the benefit of Cross.

  “Why would I want that?” Rose responded.

  Ikey shifted in his chair. His back hurt. His spine ached. “Don’t you get lonely? Here? Trapped in this house?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why else would you have…” Ikey trailed off as he recalled Cross’s presence.

  The music boxes sang and sang as Cross walked across the floor and into the kitchen.

  “I don’t get lonely any more than I miss being able to see,” Rose said. “I cannot miss what I’ve never known.”

  Ikey planted his feet against the floor and his palm against the chair’s arm. As he pushed himself up, his left arm’s memory throbbed and ached and told him it couldn’t find the other chair arm, that it wasn’t there, something wasn’t right. Ikey gritted his teeth.

  “You have it worse than me,” Rose said. “Worse than I ever did.”

  Heat flashed over Ikey’s face. He shook his head, surprised at how utterly punched and winded he felt.

  “I’m not…”

  Rose took a step forward. “It’s difficult, I imagine. This is the world I’ve always known. It is my world. It was nice to have your visits. To listen to you stumble around, because I got a vague idea of what it was like to see as I witnessed how you adapted to my world, which is something that no one else has ever been willing to do. It’s… very interesting. Sight must be… I can’t begin to imagine it. But it must be something that is at the heart of human existence. It is the first thing a person speaks of when asked to describe something. It is almost everything anyone talks about. How something looks. How it appears. The colors. All of it someplace I can’t visit. But you… I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean for you to become trapped here. To be a part of this. Your loss is something I can never truly know.”

  “I’m still going to leave,” Ikey said. The words came out of him as if wrapped in glass. “I won’t stay here. I’ll leave. I’ll go to Kerryford. I’ll find the man who can fix me up. I won’t remain like this.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll leave.”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “I’ll leave this house. I’ll walk out the door. I’ve already gone out to Cross’s workshop. Have you ever been?”

  “No. That is not my world.”

  “Why? What do you have here that is so…” Ikey spun around and slammed his fist into the back of the chair.

  The music boxes tsked.

  “How much am I worth to you?” Ikey asked. “All that we shared. What you said. How much was any of that worth? Because I don’t understand what you would have to give up in order to leave.”

  “I don’t give up anything. I simply don’t leave.”

  “It really hurt that you didn’t come visit, come check on me. I needed you. I needed to know that you would help me. That you would be there for me because I was so damned scared and I didn’t know what I would do, but I kept holding on because I knew you would know what to do. It was how you lived. You would show me. You’d help. You’d guide me. So I held on and waited for you and you never came!”

  “I did not,” Rose said. “And what did you do in return?”

  Ikey slumped back into the chair. “I hurt.”

  “And you would have done that whether I came or not.”

  “Rubbish. It would have hurt less.”

  “Where am I when I’m not making a sound? When I’m absolutely still, my breath held close?”

  “What?”

  “Do I only exist when I make a sound? If I’m not speaking, or walking, or touching you, do I cease to exist?” Rose asked.

  “Your point?”

  “The first lesson to be learned about this world is that there is a world outside of your senses. Things exist whether or not you can hear or feel or smell or even see them. Whether they come visit you in the hospital or not, they still exist.”

  “You’re not a thing.”

  “And now that you’re here, in this house, you would up and leave, walk right out that door, as you said, and leave me behind because my presence means so much to you.”

  Ikey turned his face away, then shook his head at the absurdity of it. Of himself. Of everything. He lifted his hand to his face again and still found the rubber mask that sat between himself and the world.

  “It did,” Ikey said, and he felt his jaw shifting, the slight tremble through his skin as the words left his mouth. “But how can I trust you now? You weren’t there for me when I needed you. And I don’t know what it costs you. If you’d only tell me. Tell me what you would have had to give up to come see me. If I knew—“

  “You accuse me of fai
ling your trust, yet you do not trust me. Is that what you are owed, Ikey? Do you feel entitled to an explanation without having to give one back?”

  Ikey’s hand dropped to his knee. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

  “What do you have to give up in order to trust me, that I have my reasons and they are valid and that I can still care for you greatly without trekking across town and showing up at the infirmary and standing around like a dutiful maid?”

  Ikey rested his head against the back of the chair. “I don’t know.”

  “Then why are you asking it of me?”

  When Ikey didn’t respond, Rose walked away and left him alone, eight feet from the teeming masses of Whitby’s streets at noon.

  The next morning, Cross threw open the bedroom door. “Shake a leg, Greg!”

  Ikey opened his eye. Darkness sat above him, but an odd film covered it. He lifted his head and blinked at a glowing orb of orange light.

  “Get up,” Cross said. “Breakfast awaits, and then we have to pack you a bag.”

  Ikey’s head fell against the pillow. “You’re kicking me out?” he asked the ceiling.

  “We’re off to Kerryford.”

  Ikey went to sit up, but he forgot he was an arm short. He tumbled over onto his reduced side. His left arm screamed in imaginary pain as he kicked his legs out and righted himself on the edge of the bed.

  “Kerryford?”

  “Yeah, Kerryford. I’ve been in touch with some old friends, a few contacts, and I traced down a… Well, I wouldn’t call him a surgeon, exactly, but a gentleman who is able to augment injured persons with full prosthetics.”

  Ikey ran a hand through the mat of hair atop his head. “Really? We’re going?”

  “Assuming you ever pull your arse out of that bed, we are. We got a train to catch. Going in style, we are. Too bad we didn’t get you that monocle and topper first so you could be all proper.”

  Ikey blinked at Cross, then looked down to the darkness his skinny legs dangled in.

  “What? Don’t tell me you don’t want to go now,” Cross said.