Engines of the Broken World (11 page)

The box may have been shut, but in my head I could still hear it plinking along, only there was also an echo like Mama’s voice running through my head.

Hush, little baby, don’t you cry …

I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding in. “Miz Cally, there’s something else I got to tell you,” I said, and looked up at her. I didn’t suppose this was the machine I was expected to find. But it was a sign from God, clear as day, that I needed to talk. I needed to tell what I knew.

“There’s troubled times coming,” I said, and Gospel, he let out a little laugh but waved his hand for me to go on when I glared at him. “The world’s in a bad way, and no mistake.”

“Merciful, people have been saying that since I was younger than you are,” Miz Cally said.

“Yeah, well, eventually somebody had to get it right,” Gospel said. “You gonna tell her quick, or should I just get into it?”

“Get into what?”

“There’s a fog closing in on us that’s like to kill us all, and it ain’t but a couple hours from here at most, and the dead won’t stay dead, Miz Cally, and the Minister’s lying to everyone.”

It wasn’t exactly how I would have said it, but mostly Gospel had it right. I was mad he told it out plain like that, so I gave him a look, but it didn’t have much venom in it because I guess he said what needed to be said. Miz Cally was looking at him too, but it was a different look: the same one she gave when we used to say we didn’t know how the stair got broke, or what happened to the cider.

“He’s not fibbing, Miz Cally,” I said. “He ain’t even told you all of it.”

“Well, why don’t you two tell me the rest, then?”

I skipped my eyes over Gospel, but he just grabbed the jar of jam and dug his dirty finger into it, and slurped strawberry preserves. He’d got to shock someone with starting it, and now he’d get to avoid the work of actually telling it. So I took a deep breath. I started to talk about the angel in Mama, and about Jenny dying, and about the closing of the world. Miz Cally just clasped her hands on the table, the jewels catching the light off of her lamps, and listened to me carefully, and didn’t nod or frown or give much of any sign. Only her brow tightened up a little, and eventually her lips did the same, and then finally I was all done.

“Get your layers on, Gospel,” she said. He was running his fingers around the inside of the empty jam jar and looked up at her, startled. “We’re going back to your place. I need to speak with the Minister.”

She stood up, so tall and narrow and strong, and went to get her things, and I grabbed my one scarf that I had pulled off. Across the table from me, Gospel set down the jar, and then he reached out and put both hands on the music box.

“This’s the song Mama sings to you now, ain’t it?” he whispered.

“Yes. Yes, that’s the song.”

He nodded and pulled the music box back to himself, and tucked it into the big pocket in his baggy coat. He put his finger up to his lips to tell me to keep quiet, and I did, but I didn’t feel good about it.

Only I thought that maybe we’d want to smash that machine at some point, and maybe I wanted to have it nearby, just in case.

T
WELVE

When we got back to the house, Miz Cally didn
’
t get directly to whatever it was she meant to do. First thing, right off the bat, she tutted and fussed about how the place had got so cold and uncomfortable, and so we built up the fire in the stove and set up candles in the sitting room. The Widow had us tuck rags under the cracks of the doors because that would keep out a little of the cold air. She had brought her last bit of tea, and a bag of odds and ends of food, and she put that all away in our cabinets just like she meant to move in. I gathered, since I’d told her everything, that she didn’t mean to go back to her house at all, and I felt a little sad to think that was the last I’d see of the place, most likely. Except that in the back of my head was a notion that the old lady had a way to fix all of this, because why else would she have even come on over?

The Minister just watched from the sitting room floor, big head resting on its crossed paws, all through our odd jobs. It stood up and tromped into other spots out of the way when we needed to set up more candles or get to the front door, but otherwise just stared, and mostly at Miz Cally.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it this cold around these parts,” the Widow said as she set the kettle onto the stove to heat up water for tea.

“Don’t know that any of us will again,” Gospel said. “This is once in a lifetime, for sure and certain.”

“It has been getting colder for the last few winters,” she mused, pulling down chipped teacups and saucers from the cabinets. I wasn’t quite sure what she was about, but Gospel seemed to have a handle on it.

“Yes, it has, at that,” my brother said, and I could tell he was holding back a smile. He wasn’t the sort to pass the time of day this way. The Minister for sure would notice that much. “But I think this winter’ll be the last of the real cold ones.”

“Minister, what do you think?” Miz Cally asked, because she knew as well as we did that the Minister had a touch for the weather.

“It will not be much colder than this,” the thing said, sitting up.

“I don’t suppose it could be, could it?” the Widow said.

“It could, but it will not,” the Minister said in its gentle voice, and I could tell that it probably knew better than we did what was happening. The Minister knew the end was coming. It would have been hard not to know, when we were talking about it all the time. And it had such a feel for the weather, surely it could sense the fog creeping toward us. How much did the Minister really know, though? I wondered, did God ever tell it anything, when it was talking to the Lord above about us and our little sins and problems?

“How can you tell about the weather, Minister?” I asked. I realized it had never before occurred to me to ask.

“Some things are just given to me to know, Merciful. The Lord God has shown much of the world to the Ministers, so that we could care for you.”

“Didn’t do such a good job with Jenny,” Gospel said.

“She was halfway to the Devil just as you are, Gospel Truth; halfway, and far enough that she would not have heard words of salvation even if I had spoken them. The Lord’s mercy is boundless, but some can’t be brought to accept it. No matter, though: I would have saved her if I could.”

“Oh, would you?” Gospel said. He pushed back from his chair and stomped over to the Minister, which only looked up at my brother. “
If you could
. Is there anyone you can save, Minister? Anyone at all?”

“Gospel, you sit down,” Miz Cally said. There wasn’t any fire in her voice, but that made it all the more serious. He turned around with a hard face meant to scare her, but after all he wasn’t quite a man yet, and she’d been walking this world longer than both of us combined and maybe the Minister added in. Gospel swallowed and backed away from the Minister and sat back down in a loose sprawl, his hand settling on the worn leather of his knife’s hilt.

“What do you know about what’s happening, Minister?” Miz Cally asked.

“Even in this world, even in this little village, there is so much happening that I can’t begin to answer you,” the Minister said. “Do you wish me to tell you about the swallow huddled under its wing in a hollow of the Great Tree? Or about the mole that’s dying under the garden? Or that there are still a few pale flowers under the snow, trapped and frozen and perfect but dead just the same?”

“Is that stuff really happening?” I asked.

“That, and so much more. The Lord notices everything, Merciful, and it is part of my task to see some part of it.”

“Oh, come now. You’re not answering me at all.” But if the Widow meant to say more, she didn’t because of what happened right then. At first I thought Gospel must have got himself up to a trick to get back at Miz Cally. That was what it sounded like. The little tinny tinkle of notes that made up the music box’s song haunted the air all around us. Only Gospel’s hand shot into his pocket fast as lightning, so that I knew he didn’t have nothing to do with it.

“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry,”
the Widow sang softly, fixing her eyes on the dog’s shape of the made thing. The Minister’s head darted from side to side, as if it were looking for a rabbit out in a field. I thought about Auntie lying there still and silent in the cellar and wondered if she was making this happen somehow. Was she dreaming just now and hearing the song in her sleep? “What do you know about that song, Minister? Where’s it coming from?”

“Rebekkah was very fond of it,” the Minister said.

“It’s true, she was,” Miz Cally said. “But you don’t know where it’s coming from now? Or are you saying her ghost is here, making some noise? Is that what you’re telling us, Minister?”

It said nothing, ducking its head.

My heart was pounding in my chest, and like the Minister I kept looking around to try to find the cause of the song. But I knew where it was coming from. “We need to break the music box,” I said.

“It’s not here,” Miz Cally said.

Gospel pulled it out and slammed it down on the table. He smirked at the old lady, so that I wanted to give him a clout. I didn’t because the Minister suddenly lifted its head back up and stared at the music box like it would at a sinner. Even though the box was closed up, I could tell now that the music was coming from inside, not down in the cellar like I had guessed. I didn’t think it was supposed to work when it was closed, ’cause the Widow had shut it to make it stop before, but here it was making those same notes when it was snapped tight.

“You little thief,” the tall woman said, and smacked my brother on the side of his head. “That’s mine, and it’s precious, and don’t any of you think of smashing it up.”

“But it’s got to be the machine!” I said. “It’s making the music, the song that I keep hearing!”

“No it ain’t, it’s just an old music box.” Her long arm snaked out and covered the shining shape with a hand big for a woman, and she drew it in close to her on the table.

“But, Miz Cally, it’s playing the same song that my mama sang to me! How’s it playing that, when it’s shut down?” Because we could still hear it in the air, that song.

“I don’t know that, Merciful,” she said. “I know your mama used to listen to this box playing the music, and she loved it. Maybe it’s a sign from beyond the grave, though I don’t hold with that sort of thing. The dead are in Heaven; they don’t trouble us here on Earth.” Carefully, like she was handling a badger or a snake or something that Gospel would’ve loved, she flipped the lid open. The tiny ballerina twirled about, and the music plinked on.

“Take out the key!” I said. The Widow did, pulling it from the little keyhole, but it didn’t matter. The music kept coming.

“Dear Lord who loves us, stop this deviltry,” Miz Cally said, but the music didn’t listen. She clapped down the lid and covered the box with her hands.

“If it’s so full of the Devil, maybe you shouldn’t be touching it?” Gospel said, smirking again. “And if it ain’t your music box causing all these tribulations or what have you, then what machine is it?” he asked. “Unless she’s got spells coming on her, Merciful got told there was a machine by that old ghost angel.” The Minister whimpered a little when it heard that, so quiet that maybe nobody but me noticed. “Though it’d be nice if someone could tell me what the Hell a machine really is.”

“A machine’s a thing built by people to do things for them,” Miz Cally said, and that made me think of something. The brown-furred doggy face of the Minister, only a couple feet away, turned to glare right at me, and I got a kind of sick feeling; suddenly, I was dizzy and had to blink a few times to clear my head. I didn’t know what I had been about a moment before, but I caught up with what Miz Cally was saying. “There ain’t no other machines around here, child, leastwise not any that work. I got a few broken things over at my house, things we used to have when my husband, rest his soul, was still with us. Not a one that’s worked these twenty years or more, and I think most of them are gone to rust and ruin by this time. Maybe you got something here, but I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

And then her face scrunched up, as if she was thinking hard. “Minister,” she said, and her mouth hung open like she meant to say something more. Then she made a little noise in the back of her throat and set both her hands palms down on the table, and then she fell right out of her chair. Just at that instant the music plinked to an end, and there was a moment of such complete quiet that I could hear the snow falling on the rooftop.

Gospel was up before I could do much of anything at all, up and at the Widow’s side and with a hand taking her wrist to see if her heart was still beating. I didn’t move, though, because I’d noticed something.

The Minister was staring right at Esmeralda Cally, with its fur all hackled up, and it had been staring at her when she fell, and its eyes followed her down and kept right on staring. I could almost feel something in the air, and I knew the Minister had made her fall. I knew it. So while Gospel felt around at the Widow’s wrist, and her feet started to drum on the ground because she had started to shake, I jumped up and grabbed a saucer with a teacup still on it and I threw it right at the Minister, though I cringed to think on what I was doing. This was the Minister, and me throwing something at it like I was a girl still in diapers what didn’t know any better. I was grateful that the Widow couldn’t see, even though I thought she’d understand in the present moment.

The saucer sailed through the air, losing the teacup, which spilled as it went, and smacked right into the Minister’s neck. Or it should have—somehow it bounced off without seeming to really hit the thing, though the black eyes blinked and Miz Cally’s feet stopped their dancing. I was already following right after the dish, heading for the Minister to yank it out of the room like it was nothing more than the dog it seemed, but I slipped on spilled tea and tumbled forward. “Do not touch me, Merciful!” the Minister said, quick as could be, but I was already falling right toward it. There was a smell in the air like after a storm, and as I fell I could feel my hair stand on end, and I landed on the Minister and everything went pins and needles and then dark, and I wondered as it all went away if this was what it had felt like for Jenny Gone.