Auraria: A Novel (38 page)

Abigail was wearing a heavy overcoat and had a length of cloth wrapped over her face. She had rigged together an oil lamp—a forbidden device—with an extra hand bellows, which boosted the flame and gave it a short range. It might have worked fo
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, but it was pathetically inadequate to this task.

“Your flamethrower isn’t going to melt this,” said Holtzclaw, turning his face from the wind. Icicles dangled from his eyebrows.

“It may get me as far as the refrigerator motor,” said Abigail, “to disable it.”

“Can we cut the power farther up the line?”

“Not unless you want to put the whole hotel into darkness,” said Abigail. “I think Shadburn’s wrath would fall upon us both.”

“Then you must go,” said Holtzclaw. “For the greater good.”

Abigail vanished into a whiteout of snow. Tongues of flame were visible through the driving curtain of flakes, but then they too were gone.

Holtzclaw and Cannie and the other anxious employees retreated to a sheltered camp in the corridor, where they could still peek out across the frozen wasteland. For many minutes, they waited. Holtzclaw shivered and paced. Icicles hung from the eaves of their shelter. Cannie rubbed her hands, trying to work some life back into them. If they were thus afflicted here, what was Abigail facing?

“She should have reached the motor by now,” said Holtzclaw. “I have to go after her.”

Cannie restrained him. “She doesn’t need rescue,” she said.

A groan and a high whine filled the kitchen. The walls trembled. There was sputtering, coughing, and then a gnarled death rattle of metal on metal. The wind ceased and the weather improved. Snow settled down in drifts between the stoves and along the pantry shelves.

“See, I told you,” said Cannie.

Holtzclaw ventured toward the storeroom. His boots slipped along the stone floor, which was thick with ice. He nearly skittered into a table arrayed with paring knifes but arrested himself by clinging to a counter stacked with flash-frozen vegetables. Walking and skating, he arrived at the icehouse door, which was frozen open.

Abigail stood over her slaughtered foe. A spanner emerged from the mechanism of the refrigerator motor. Springs and gears hung loose and lifeless. Pipes were twisted, burst, and splayed from its innards.

“You killed it,” said Holtzclaw.

“It was life or death,” said Abigail. “The hunter or the beast.”

“Things cannot break here in the usual fashion, can they? In Milledgeville, a broken refrigerator causes only half an hour’s annoyance, not a blizzard. It’s only in Auraria that a refrigerator door left open can turn a kitchen into a tundra.”

“Why, Holtzclaw, you sound rather proud of us.”

#

Without a refrigerator motor to stand against it, the Georgia summer began its assault on the kitchen. Hardly an hour passed before the thickly layered frost melted. The salad greens withered, and consommés could not be chilled. A replacement motor was on order, but if there weren’t ice cubes in the baronesses’ whiskey glasses by the evening, Holtzclaw feared for the hotel’s reputation.

He rode out to the Terrible Cascade, ready to pay handsomely for the Sky Pilot’s assistance. But the Sky Pilot did not ask any more than his ordinary rates. He promised regular deliveries of clear, perfect ice cubes to the hotel until the motor could be replaced, and he offered straw and blankets to help preserve the salad greens and sorbets. It was a very agreeable resolution. Holtzclaw would have been suspicious of the dealing had he been negotiating with anyone other than the Sky Pilot, who throughout their fraught acquaintance had always been guileless and plain spoken.

As Holtzclaw was returning from the Sky Pilot’s cabin in the shadow of the dam, he met a party that was departing from their visit with the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin Under the Mountain, and they harangued Holtzclaw with complaints.

“It looks like a leather puppet,” they said. “You can see the seams and stitches. What is it? Six people inside a mechanical turk?”

“I assure you, there is no trick,” said Holtzclaw. “It is an honest terrapin.”

The guests spilled out a mess of dissatisfaction. All the terrapin’s stories were about the old days, with no regard for a modern audience. Also, it was a liar. The raven is not black because it stole fire and escaped through a hole in a tree—it is black because it tried to steal grapes from a chimney. The terrapin’s stories did not even have an internal consistency: first it said the river valley was carved by a Great Serpent, then by tears of a weeping mountain that is weeping still, then by some sort of footrace and the paws of animals great and small. Sometimes the terrapin began a story well but then spoiled it with details. It told of beautiful women that descend from the moon to bathe in the water of the valley, but then the terrapin said that these women have long ears and little rabbit noses and eyes that are solid black. How can a woman be beautiful if she does not have eyes of cloudless blue or gemlike green? The terrapin had no gift for storytelling, and charging such prices for a ticket was highway robbery.

“The fundamental problem with your show,” said one of the guests, “is that your star is just a big terrapin. You can see a big terrapin anytime. All you have to do is get very close to a small terrapin. What’s the difference?”

“So if the spectacle featured, let’s say, the Great and Harmless and Invincible Giraffe Under the Mountain, but it told the same stories, you would be happier about that?”

“Giraffes are already big.”

“But they don’t live in caves under the Georgia mountains,” said Holtzclaw, “and that would be novel, at least.”

The guests were ambivalent. Novelty was not their primary concern. “Forget the animal. Let’s have something with more spectacle. A real show!”

“The Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin does sing,” said Holtzclaw. “Did it not play a melody for you from its shell? Perhaps the Song of Gladness or the Rondo of History or the Melody to Sever the Water from the Sky?”

“It should play show tunes instead,” said one of the guests.

“It should play accompaniment for a singer,” said another.

“A famous singer!”

“Dasha Pavlovski!”

Pavlovski was an Old World sensation who, for the last ten years, had made an unceasing tour of national and provincial capitals. His warm tenor caressed his favored themes: purity, eternal love, the blossoming of a flower, sad partings, warm returns. His brown eyes pierced through layers of fashionable clothing and stirred the hearts of women who had never permitted themselves to feel so much as a flutter of romance.

“If you have Dasha Pavlovski, then you don’t need a boring old terrapin at all,” said the guests. “Or a giraffe.”

There were squeals of excitement—not only from the women, but also the men. They knew that they would be the beneficiaries of any passions Dasha might stir.

“If you are going to have Dasha Pavlovski,” said one of the guests, “then you should build him a different theatre or have him sing in the ballroom. It is much too far to go all the way down the cliff stairs and into that cave. A pox on that. Our legs and feet are tired before we even sit down to enjoy a show. Why didn’t you have an elevator put in instead?”

#

Holtzclaw would have passed up his bath but for a sharp jolt of pain that leapt through his midsection. Weary though he was, he decided he could not forgo his treatment.

He descended in the elevator into the basement of the hotel, changed into a swimming costume, and was about to open the door into the bathing hall, but he stopped. From behind the door came splashes and patterings of feet and the glow of green light.

Holtzclaw turned the handle, careful not to make a sound. Moon maidens, nine by Holtzclaw’s count, reposed in the mineral baths. As they cavorted, they dove below the water, leaving just their rabbit-like ears visible above the waterline. They let the gentle current of the springs carry them from one end of a pool to the other. They chased each other like children, running on the slippery tile but never losing their footing. They laid themselves down and drew curious hands through the water, as one might feel fabric or fur. Their skin glistened with gold, coming from their pores. Gold floated on the surface of the water.

Princess Trahlyta traveled among the moon maidens, executing chores. She fetched a towel for a moon maiden who rose from the epsom bath. The moon maiden’s damp ears drooped forward, becoming tangled with her long silver hair. Across her midriff was written an alien anatomy—the muscles and sinews did not knit together in a human way.

Another moon maiden emerged from the water and crossed to the reservoirs of mineral water that were mounted on the wall. She sniffed at the tank, sniffed at the drain, sniffed at the descending chain. She wrapped two of her fingers around the handle and pulled. A cascade of water fell upon her back—the hot water sizzled and spit against the maiden’s skin, sending up clouds of steam. Gold flakes swirled into the drain pipes.

Holtzclaw remembered himself. These creatures were in his baths; they were his guests.

He tried to close the door gently and slink away, but he fumbled the handle. Metal raked against tile and stone. The moon maidens whirled toward the noise. Their black eyes were upon him. Holtzclaw realized he had left them no route of escape. How would they flee if there were no paths leading into the woods, no clear routes up the mountain and into the sky? If trapped, would they fight? Would they fix Holtzclaw with paralyzing stares? Would he fall into a stupor and awaken in some starlit clearing, miles away?

Instead, the moon maidens popped like soap bubbles. Their solid forms shimmered, iridescent, and then vanished into droplets. They vanished in the space of two seconds, and their lights were extinguished, too. Holtzclaw was left in darkness.

He fumbled for the switch to turn on the electric lights. The bulbs snapped on, one by one, and buzzed overhead. In the sickly, flickering light, the gold residue that had stuck to the drains and grout was green and unappealing. It would have to be cleaned up before the first guests came for the morning baths. In the best case, the green slime would reflect poorly on the hygiene of the pools; in the worst case, someone would recognize the slime as a form of unsettled gold, and there would be a flurry of interest. Pans and shovels and drills would be brought into the bathing hall. People would dig up the lawn with whatever they could find—the ends of brooms, old shoes, candlesticks, lamp stands. For all of the signs of reconciliation, Holtzclaw did not yet believe that the tourists could bathe alongside the moon maidens, or that the rich could see a glimmer of gold and leave it alone. The metal would excite a wonder that no reason could diminish.

Holtzclaw unlocked a supply closet, looking for a brush and rag. The princess grabbed a bucket from beside him.

“I thought you vanished with the moon maidens,” said Holtzclaw.

“Too much work to be done, and it isn’t right to leave all the clean-up for you.”

“I’m grateful for the help.”

“If it’s only a little gold, in a little place, then the task is simple,” said Trahlyta. “I’ve done much harder work. I’ve negotiated with oreads that want higher mountains and whispering shadows that want darker valleys. I’ve tried to please the great and harmless and invincible creatures that want new lodgings. I’ve made channels for flood waters and kept the lakes in their borders.”

“Why would a princess do such chores? Do they at least pay you well?” Holtzclaw filled his pail with water from a spigot.

“They pay me nothing,” said Trahlyta. “Only lesser beings need rules and rewards. The catfish sweep the riverbeds because I give them peaches from my orchard. The rain falls because I promise it release.”

The work went quickly for two collaborators. At the princess’s suggestion, they used the chalybeate waters, which provided superior scouring power. The greenish gold foamed up when the water was applied, and a rag wiped the white residue away with little effort. Soon, any conspicuous traces of the moon maidens’ auric tailings were gone.

“But there’s a lot more gone through the pipes,” said the princess. “It’s swirled down into the lake and it has ended up in great drifts. We can clean up here all we like, but there will still be gold in the water.”

“Sounds like quite a mess.”

“It’s a thousand years of work, James. A rainstorm couldn’t get rid of it all, and a rainstorm is all that I can do.”

“Then we’ve done you a favor, putting a lake over the gold.”

“You’ve only swept the mess under the rug,” she said. “But yes, you have done me a favor, which I intend to repay.”

Holtzclaw picked up one of the towels that had fallen when the moon maidens vanished. The towel was not the monogrammed terry cloth variety provided by the hotel; instead, it was very thin, made of a sheer cobalt-blue silk, and it glistened with moisture and tiny colors of gold.

The princess took the towel from his hand. “They’re delicate, James.”

“I know how to handle silk,” said Holtzclaw. “My first business was a silkworm concern.”

“It’s spun moonlight,” said Trahlyta, “or woven ice or some such.”

“No,” said Holtzclaw, catching a corner. “It’s silk. See the wicking on the fibers? The change in the sheen when it’s turned in the light? It is perfect silk, and with a magnifying glass, I could even tell you from what province it came, if it is foreign or domestic.”

“Let’s assume foreign,” said the princess. “Moon silk from moon silkworms.”

But Holtzclaw was certain that there was nothing remarkable about the towels. They were ordinary silk.

The bathing hall was silent, save for the faraway hiss of pumps and pipes. Holtzclaw wished for the soft splashing of the moon maidens, the susurration of their silver hair through the water. He wished for their footsteps across the tile and for their voiceless laughter when the ice-cold water poured down on them. He turned, expecting that the princess would have vanished silently, as was her wont. But she still stood among the baths, contemplating the electric lights.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Emmett, the apothecary, mounted a stage that he had built onto the rear of a mule-drawn cart. From here, he declaimed his cure in a sonorous voice punctuated by chords strummed on a fretless banjo. His white suit was gleaming and spotless in the midmorning sun. He had already attracted a crowd; Holtzclaw stood at the edge of the assembled mass.

“Step right up, step up, please don’t be shy, you’ll want the best view, the very best view, for what promises to be a sellout wonder. Those of you hanging near the back may not get a chance to buy—the happy folks up front will snap up all I have!”

Emmett took a deep breath.

“Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught! It’s a mouthful, but if we put into its name all the wonders and works, every healing herb and efficacious effervescence that the good Professor W puts into his elixir, we’d be here half the afternoon just to say it once!

“Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught! It goes down cool and smooth but warms your belly from within! A pleasing drink served warm with honey or over ice in a mint julep glass. Yes, every season is a fine one for this drink.

“Drink Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught at breakfast time to oil the mechanism of your body and lubricate it to run its best! Pour it at night to still the thrumming activity of the day and replace the buzzing whine of gears with the hum of nightingales.

“Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught is known to medical science to benefit the sufferers of diphtheria, scrofula, explosive dysentery, suspended rickets, mountaineer’s bends, Elder’s tremblers, catarrh, athlete’s catarrh, meretricious vapors, chronic and acute bubo, Picket worms, ice mites, accreted detritus, and any other disease or disorder that gnaws at the human condition. Yes, one draught treats them all—even the ones we don’t know about yet! How many diseases will never be discovered, thanks to Professor W’s powerful creation?

“Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught treats all female complaints better than Andrew’s Cold Sarsaparilla Tea—pour that swill out the window! Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught treats male complaints better than General Tamlin’s Gunpowder Thunderbolt and Strawberry Cordial—feed that useless powder to your dogs!

“Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught has a thousand uses in the marriage bed—but you already know that, clever girl!

“Now folks here at this hotel think that they have a monopoly on cures. But what have they got? Water! Some of it smells bad. Some of it is hot; some is cold. But it’s all water! See, there’s Mr. Holtzclaw right now. Jimmy, it’s nothing but water, is it? Your silence, sir, is deafening. Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught is an actual medicine! There are chemicals, ingredients, natural herbs, formulated cordials, and extracted essences. For the easing of your pains and the curing of your infirmities, which will you choose? A glass of water or a potent potable?