Engines of the Broken World (12 page)

T
HIRTEEN

I wasn
’
t dead, though, or leastwise I woke up and it seemed only a moment later. Footsteps thumped past my head, and the Minister’s claws scratched on the wood of the sitting room as it scrabbled away. I still felt all pins and needles, though, like I had lain on myself entire and gone sleepy, but it was everyplace at once. My hands felt both numb and hot at the same time. I was for sure and certain falling down a lot today.

I pushed myself up and blinked my eyes over and over, because I couldn’t really focus. There was some sort of fierce noise going on in the sitting room, thumping and growling and cussing and I don’t know what all, but I had trouble seeing what was happening. Some shape I half-saw was moving around, fighting maybe, and another thing as well, and maybe one of the things was Gospel. I was scarcely able to stand, leaning on the door frame, and I rubbed at my eyes with my left hand. When I blinked them clear, I could see Gospel trying to hold on to the Minister, which was snapping and snarling and being in general a ferocious thing.

“Gospel, keep ahold of it. I’ll help you,” I said, only I didn’t think much about how I would do that. When I moved from my post, I dropped right away to my knees and one hand, hardly keeping myself up at all.

“This thing’s got a lot of fight, but I don’t think it’ll hurt me none,” Gospel said. “Not for purpose, at least.” He was gasping out the words as he struggled with the Minister. Why it didn’t just do to him what it had done to me I wasn’t sure, but I guessed what it’d done to me was mostly an accident because of how it warned me at the last. I crawled around the edge of Papa’s big chair and saw them still wrestling on the bearskin rug, Gospel’s arms wrapped around the Minister’s belly, the made thing looking like it was trying to scratch and scrape itself away but couldn’t get a grip on anything for all its trying.

I pulled myself mostly up onto Papa’s chair, holding to the back and with one knee on the seat and one foot on the floor. My body wasn’t so tingly now and I felt almost normal, though my hands were still real hot and itchy. I watched and waited for a moment when I could help Gospel out, for though the Minister couldn’t get free, it didn’t seem like Gospel was wearing it down or getting any better hold on it. “Don’t you do it, Merciful,” he called out, but his grip looked like it was slipping and like the thing was going to get loose, and so I moved. I pushed off of that chair and into the melee, and I crashed into the Minister’s snout with an elbow and then my head, which I cracked down on its skull, but I regretted this, as the Minister’s got a very hard head indeed. But from there I kept falling, and ended up landing on Gospel’s nose, which I suppose must have caused him to lose his grip and let the Minister slip away. Or maybe it just got loose like I thought it was going to, but I knew which way Gospel was going to take it.

And then the Minister did something plain impossible, something I never had seen before. Somehow, without touching it or making any sign, it made the front door swing open. I hadn’t thought the made thing could do anything of that sort, had never seen the like, but there it was, the front door creaking wide and bleak wind sweeping the snow in. The Minister bounded for the door while Gospel shoved me aside and lunged for it, only he didn’t have near the reach and it was gone into the cold and the dark, gone as quick as lightning. I landed on my side and rolled away into Mama’s chair, and coughed and came up to see Gospel’s face red with rage.

“Now why’d you go and do that when I told you just a minute before to not do a danged thing, Merce?” he yelled at me.

“I was trying to help! The Minister was getting loose. I could see it.”

“It was not getting loose. You just messed the whole thing up. I could’ve had it if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“What, wear it down? It’s a Minister, for Pete’s sake, and they don’t sleep and don’t eat and don’t need rest—how do you think you’re going to make it tired?” We were both yelling now at the tops of our lungs with the cold air rushing in, and then Gospel turned and flung the door shut and plopped down with his back against it, glaring at me.

“It don’t matter now—the Minister’s gone for sure. Whatever you thought it knew, whatever answer it was going to give, it’s gone now.”

“I didn’t have any choice, Gospel. It was making Miz Cally sick.”

“How do you know that, Merciful? How in the name of anything holy do you even think you know what the Minister could do? Huh? How?”

He was so angry, his face like a beet and his eyes wide and wild, and I remembered that he didn’t much like me and maybe I shouldn’t have given him another reason not to, but I had to do it. There was no answer to his question. I just knew the Minister had been up to something bad, but I didn’t know how I knew. Which is what I told him.

“Just knew, huh? Well, that’s swell. Why the Hell don’t you
just know
where the danged machine we’re looking for is, then?”

Again I got that kind of dizzy, sick feeling in my head when he said that. Something about knowing where the machine was that we were looking for, only it made me feel wretched just thinking on it, so I didn’t. “I think Miz Cally was about to tell us, and that’s why the Minister used its power to shut her up.”

“And then didn’t use it to stop me wrestling with it?”

“Look, I don’t know everything! Maybe whatever Miz Cally was going to say was really trouble for it, and you wrestling it wasn’t any danger at all? It got away quick enough.”

“Thanks to you,” he said.

“I didn’t mean it to go that way, Gospel, and you know it! But doesn’t matter how that turned out. What I mean to say is that the Minister was doing something to Miz Cally. I bet she’s fine now that the Minister’s not here anymore.”

Gospel snarled and pushed off the door to his feet, holding out a hand that gripped mine with harsh painfulness. I was yanked up so hard that I almost lost the feeling in my arm again, and he dragged me out to the kitchen. The Widow was laid out on the floor, but it was clear right off she was breathing.

“See, she’s not dead or nothing,” I said.

“No, but she ain’t awake neither.”

And I couldn’t doubt that; nor could we get her to wake up, for all our trying. I thought maybe we should move her to the big bed, but she was tall and we were tired and, anyway, Gospel said he wasn’t about to shift such a weight. So instead I just fetched a cushion from Papa’s chair and set it under her head, and draped a quilt over her. She seemed fine to both of us except for not waking up, but then, we weren’t neither of us so skilled in physic that we knew all that much.

The house was colder even than it had been before, and I could see snow not even melted on the sitting room floor where it had swirled in. It was a little warmer in the kitchen, but the Widow on the floor not two feet from where Mama had been laid out made us a little less than comfy, so we both without a sign made our way to the bedroom. Gospel set himself on the bed and I climbed up into Mama’s rocker, and we sat quiet and ignoring each other for a time.

“Way I see it, we got two choices right now,” Gospel said eventually. “And they’re both stupid ones. Either you can go and try to talk to Mama again, not that I’m saying there’s anything to talk to, but maybe there is. Strange things are going on. A ghost angel might not be the strangest.” I was pretty surprised he came even that far in not making fun of me or just acting contrary, so I held back any smart words that I might’ve let loose. “Or else I can go after the Minister. It’s mighty cold out there, but I don’t reckon it’ll go all that far—it ain’t likely to just vanish into the forest or anything. Only reason it ever got very far away was to look after some trouble for people, and there’s no folk left but us here, maybe in all the world. So probably I can find it, I guess.”

He didn’t seem all that eager, though, and I didn’t blame him. The wind that blew in had shuddered my skin from just a hint of touch, and me still in a coat and boots and all. I didn’t even want to consider the outdoors, and what it would be like in the dark and wind and snow out there. I didn’t much like the other idea, though. Whatever was in Mama wasn’t much help, either because I was too simple to understand it or it was too different or something; and anyway, I was starting to think that Auntie was maybe lying, or maybe wrong, because it kept talking about machines and suchlike when there weren’t any to be found. But I guessed there must be some truth under the mistakes or lies or whatever they were, and if I talked to Auntie, maybe I could get to the bottom of it.

I really didn’t want to talk to her. There wasn’t a way to think about it that made it a good idea: either she was a dead person talking to me, and that wasn’t in keeping with the Good Book; or else I was touched in the head and going the way Mama did, which was a fearful thing to ponder. I didn’t feel like I was losing my mind, but I suspected that wasn’t a thing you really noticed.

Sometimes we all had to do things we didn’t want to. “I’ll go down and see if she’s back. Probably she is since we heard that music. She got real tired and couldn’t talk to me anymore before, so maybe she won’t be able to. But I’ll try.”

“You do that.” Gospel hadn’t looked at me while he was talking at all, just watched one of the candles’ dancing flames instead.

“I’ll be going now,” I said, slipping out of the chair, which creaked back and forth behind me. Gospel didn’t turn, and I decided I didn’t care. I walked calm out of the room and then ran with my boots thumping and the floor creaking across the sitting room and the kitchen, right to the cellar door. I crouched, taking a moment to look over at tall Esmeralda Cally lying there and make sure she was still breathing, which she was, slow and steady. I stood back up and grunted and strained to move the big old chair off the hatch.

“Hey, Merce?”

“What, Gospel?” I expected he wanted to complain about how much noise I was making or something just as stupid.

A long silence. “You be careful down there, now. Come on back up safe.”

I drew in a long, raggedy breath, half a gasp and half a sob. I glanced over my shoulder at the kitchen doorway, but I couldn’t see him: he was still on the bed, I supposed. “I’ll do my best.” And then I lifted up the hatch and propped it open, took a deep breath, and called down, “Mama? Auntie?”

I thought maybe she’d move if she was there, but I didn’t hear nothing at all, so I guessed I’d have to climb down. The lamp we’d gone down with before was still there at the top of the stairs, and I lit it with a punk from the fire in the stove, pardoning myself to Miz Cally for standing right over her while I did so. She didn’t seem to mind any, so I headed for the stairs again, careful not to trip as I went down slow.

I was getting to be an expert on degrees of cold, and it felt especially chilly down in the cellar ’cause we’d had fires going upstairs long enough to feel almost warm. Still, the cellar’s cold wasn’t a patch on that blast of winter that poured in when the Minister leapt out, so I kept on downward. Mama was still there, unwrapped and with the sheet pooled around her, just as I’d left her. One arm was flopped out to the side where I had pushed it when I was getting loose, and her mouth and eyes were open. I couldn’t move any closer when I saw that. I felt like I had so often in the last day, like I wanted to be sick, and the smell, which was stronger than the earth and onions of the cellar, didn’t make it better. I almost went back up and told Gospel I couldn’t talk to her and he’d have to go out, and wouldn’t that serve him right? I couldn’t, though. Hate me or not, he was my brother, and I’d never send him out alone into the cold night unless it was needful and certain. So I stepped down all the way and over to the body, and I knelt down by Mama’s head, careful not to touch that floppy arm, and I tried breathing real shallow while I leaned over her.

“Auntie, are you there? Can you hear me any? I found a machine, but I don’t think it was the one. And now the Minister’s gone wild, and I think it knows what machine we’re looking for. Can you hear me? Can you help?” My breath misted out to moisten her face. I knelt there, looking at my hands, which were red from whatever the Minister did to me, I supposed, and thinking about how I didn’t want to die and just wondering what was going to happen.

“I guess you can’t hear me. But if you can and just can’t say anything, we really need your help. If you can make it back here and tell me anything more, I’ll do whatever you want me to. Even Gospel, I think he believes in you too. So we’ll do what we need to, if you just tell us what it is.”

Still nothing at all. The cold outside was waiting for Gospel, and I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t tried everything, so I put my hand on Mama’s shoulder, which was getting kind of soft, and I shook her. I didn’t think it would wake her or anything, but maybe Auntie would notice it better than my voice. It seemed stupid, that I was shaking my dead mama’s shoulder to get an angel to talk to me out of her mouth, and for a moment I wondered if I wasn’t, in fact, just plain crazy. But I didn’t have anything else to try. Nothing happened, and I pulled my hand back and wiped it on my thigh.

“Fine. Don’t do anything. And when Gospel goes out and dies in the cold, it’s your fault for not helping me.”

I reeled back as breath hissed out of her lips. The air didn’t mist at all.

“Are you here?”

“Only for a moment.” Like a whisper forced through a door, that’s how quiet it was. I leaned in close to hear. “So tired. Find the machine. It’s moving. Always moving.”

“It moves?”

“It’s a machine, Merciful. They have moving parts—some of them move. This is one of those,” she said with an edge to her voice I hadn’t yet heard from Auntie. Mama had carried that edge around a lot. I started to get mad, because how was I supposed to know that machines moved? Machines I’d seen were just pictures, and pictures never moved none. But I thought of the little ballerina, and it moved when the box got wound up.

“Is it the music box? The one that plays the lullaby?”

“What music box? No. Oh, God, it hurts,” she said, but I didn’t think she was talking to me. I wanted to do something to help her, but there wasn’t anything I could think to do. It like to killed me how much she sounded like my real mama did in the worst of her spells. A shudder went through the body there on the ground, and Auntie gave a little cough and then started to speak again. “I don’t know what it is, exactly. Your mama saw it, but she saw it as all different sorts of things, and I only saw hints of it through her. She was a little crazy. You know that.” The voice was getting quiet, like she was moving away from me.