Engines of the Broken World (13 page)

I knew it. I didn’t need this thing to tell me. “Well, what do you think it looks like?”

“A cat,” the voice said, fainter, “a dog.” Which made me think of something. I remembered the front door opening, the snow billowing in—something there, a shape, but it was like there was a pressure in my head and I couldn’t focus on it. I closed my eyes, dizzy for a long second, and then blinked them open. What had she been saying? About the machine? “Maybe a bird. Or a squirrel? Have you ever seen one of those?”

“Yes, ma’am. We have them in the woods, leastwise when it’s not snowing up a storm.”

“Look for that,” she said, so faint that I had to lean in close to catch even a hint of the words. I felt no wind coming from the lips, only a faint, sickly sweet smell that made me pull back now that she was quiet.

I didn’t know what she wanted me to look for any more than I had before. There were clues: it moved around, and it looked like an animal, and my mama had seen it. Something tickled at the edge of my mind, something I knew I should know, but it wouldn’t come to me for all the trying in the world. Something … something the Minister had said, maybe? I got really dizzy again for a minute and couldn’t remember what I had been thinking on. I blinked and frowned, feeling frustrated. I couldn’t figure it out.

But I knew where a bird was. One that moved around, and one that Mama had seen. That old hen that had lived through the cold, and didn’t that just make it seem like it was unnatural? I surely knew that it felt like a real living thing, and that it had laid eggs and clucked and scratched, but I couldn’t for the life of me guess what else it could be.

I wished Auntie’d said something useful about the Minister, and why it was playing its tricks, but it didn’t matter now. We didn’t need to worry about the stupid old thing. Let it play outside in the cold; we’d stay warm inside and make Miz Cally better and stop that moving machine. It’d be easy now that I knew what to do. I just needed to find the hen.

F
OURTEEN

I climbed the stairs with purpose, hurrying up them like when I was a little slip of a girl. Killing a hen was an easy thing, something even I’d done a time or two, though I didn’t relish it like Gospel did. I couldn’t recollect the chicken getting out of the house when the door was open, and didn’t think a machine would have been stupid enough to go out in the cold, so she had to be around somewhere. But any old normal hen could and would get into strange spots in a new place, and it might take a while to find the creature even with Gospel helping.

He was sitting on the floor by the Widow when I came up the stairs, staring right at where I appeared. “Did you talk to her?” he asked me when I stepped up into the kitchen.

“I did. She wasn’t too helpful, but I figured it out.” It felt like a brag, and maybe it was. If he thought I was messing up, I really wanted to make sure and rub it in that I knew what was going on. “It’s an animal, Gospel, one that Mama saw. It’s got to be the hen. That hen lived through the cold, and that’s not a normal thing.”

“That’s plain silly. Thing was near dead when we brought it over here, and no mistake. And it’s just a clucker, nothing special. I think you heard wrong, Merciful.”

I was right tired of him not believing me, no matter how obviously right I was. I thought I should just tell him that, but there wasn’t much point, I was sure, because he didn’t care. So I started to poke into corners and make scratches and clucks like another chicken, to call the creature out.

“You’re not seriously looking for it that way, are you?”

“The Lord knows I am. And you sure as your hope of Heaven should help me.” I didn’t look up at him or anything while I set to searching, and probably that made him mad, me ignoring him.

I heard the smash of metal on the floor and turned to see Gospel stomping the heck out of the music box with his boots. Bits and pieces of the thing scattered all over the floor, coming to rest against the cabinets, on top of the hatch to the cellar, right up against the Widow lying there quiet and peaceful.

“There. That’s your God-damned machine, all right? So it’s done, and we’re done, and we don’t have to worry no more.”

For just a moment I thought maybe he was right. It seemed so silent and still right after, with all the little pieces shining in the light, the jewels that were only glass sparkling, the ballerina without her legs lying right in front of me.

And then the music started up again, the tinny tinkling coming from the floor, from every bit of the cracked-up box. Plinking notes rang out, not quite as clear as they had, but it was still the same song. I fell back against the counter as the ballerina started to turn on the floor without a sign of how it was moving, as if it were still in the box, still attached to the machine.

“Make it stop, Gospel!”

“I’m tryin’,” he said, and brought down his boots again, those heavy boots that my father had worn right up until he got himself shot. But nothing Gospel did made a difference: the music just kept playing on and on, though the little fragments got littler and the jewels got smashed up into dust and the bits of the ballerina couldn’t even make themselves turn over any more.

I dropped to my knees and clasped my hands. “Oh, Lord, forgive us sinners, and save us from perdition, and please, please make it stop.”

“He ain’t listenin’, Merce!” Gospel said. He plunged to his knees beside me and shook my shoulders. “God’s not paying any attention to anything down here. Can’t you tell that?”

“Lord, forgive my brother. He’s a sinner, but he don’t mean to be wicked.”

“Hell I don’t,” he said. “Now stop your praying.”

“You better pray with me, Gospel, if you want this to be over,” I said. I reached out and grabbed his arms and brought his hands down from my shoulders, and I clasped them in front of him. He could’ve stopped me, but he didn’t. “Now pray with me. Just say the words after I say them.”

He frowned and his eyes narrowed. His hair had fallen down over the left one. “Dear Lord, preserve us from evil and from wickedness,” I said, and Gospel said it after me. I don’t know what all I babbled then, prayers like I had done when I was really little, begging and pleading and trying everything to get God to listen, and Gospel just went on saying whatever I did.

But the music didn’t stop. God wasn’t listening.

“Well, all right. I guess it’s Your will, then. Thank You anyway.” Gospel didn’t say that part, but he did chime in with me when I finished with an Amen, and right then, right as we said that one word, the music stopped playing.

“See? You see? God did it. He shut it off.”

“You think God did that? Why didn’t He shut it off when you asked, then, if He was going to do it anyway?”

“Because we weren’t done praying yet. I don’t claim to know what God’s about, and why He didn’t stop it directly when I asked. But we said ‘Amen’ and it stopped. Why else did it happen?” Sometimes I wondered how deep Gospel was in his wickedness.

“Aw, Hell, Merciful. I can’t believe you’re so gullible.” He pushed himself up from the floor. “Do you think it ended?”

“What?”

“The storm. The fog. All that stuff? ’Cause we broke the machine?”

“That’s not the machine,” I said. I pushed myself up and walked the few steps to the back door, and I pulled it open, just a crack, to let the the furling edge of the blizzard whistle in, and then shut it right fast. “No, sir, that wasn’t the machine.”

“Fine.” He kicked at the little bits and pieces, making up a pile of them by the water bucket. “Let’s find your damned hen, then.” His lips pursed up, and he looked mad as the Minister did back when we used to pull on its ears, but Gospel helped me look. He searched around the kitchen in the cabinets and such, because even if you think a chicken couldn’t get in them, you would probably be wrong. But the blasted thing wasn’t in the kitchen. It wasn’t in the sitting room either, when we went to looking there for a long spell that involved turning over everything in the room, looking in the baskets of sewing supplies and the chests and under the chairs where their fringes swept the floor. And then I knew of course that it had to be in the bedroom, only I couldn’t find it for all the looking I put in.

After a time, Gospel pronounced himself completely stumped and bothered, since it was just a silly old hen, and how could it get away from us, anyway?

Of course, there was one place we hadn’t looked, and that was in the cellar, where I had started the whole thing. I didn’t figure it was too likely that it could have happened, a hen sneaking past me, but the thing wasn’t anywhere else, so eventually, in the midst of all the disorder, I said I’d head back down and have a peek. Gospel got a look of such relief on his face that I realized he had figured out a while ago that it wasn’t just a hen, but something clever enough to creep on downstairs, and was too blasted scared to tromp on into the cellar. I wanted to shame him for that, him being the older and a boy besides, but then I decided it was a bit silly to trouble him when he already knew. I suspected it was shame enough to see me go down there again, my head high and unbothered.

Even after just such a short time, the air below seemed colder then I expected, though perhaps that was just because we had been moving so much abovestairs. In spite of the brave thoughts I’d had about showing up Gospel by being bold, I was still getting the shudders all along my spine. The body was lying there quiet and still, but who knew for how long or whether, finally hearing me, Auntie might sit up just when I started searching around?

I couldn’t help but stare at her for a bit, with the shroud half around her. For a minute I imagined that the fingers of one hand were closing, but I blinked and couldn’t see them moving anymore. Lord, how much of a fraidy cat was I, seeing things in the dark like I was still seven or eight? I mumbled prayers to myself as I started to go around and around the room, holding up the lamp to see into corners.

After I’d felt all around behind the barrels and crates and had started on the piles of wood, I realized there was a spot among all the logs that I couldn’t get to with my hands because it was too far back in the corner. I just knew the hen was hiding back there in that little dark nook, waiting for me to go away before it came out with some strange machine satisfaction at having tricked me, and no sir was I going to fall for that. I set down the lamp and clambered up onto the logs, scratching my shin. It hurt because right there was where I’d bruised it before; I bit my lip to keep from making a sound that maybe Gospel would get a laugh from, thinking I was scared down here.

I stretched back to the hidey hole, and there she was: the little chicken for sure hiding from me. I could tell then that she must be the machine because of her hiding in the cold like that. It made sense, the machine making the cold and hiding in it and living while all the rest of the animals died in the freezing barn. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure it out. And why else would the stupid thing have taken itself to such a strange place, a little cubby among big logs that I was having trouble reaching into, except because it knew we’d be looking for it?

The wind picked up fiercely outside, hard enough that even in the cellar I could hear it.
Hhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuu
, it sounded like, just like a long breath let out, like the world was exhaling.

Eventually, I got a grip on the creature and pulled it out. I didn’t have a hatchet or anything to kill it with, so I was going to have to take it up to Gospel and have him do it. But then, maybe I could just stomp on it and break it up, like the music box? It felt like a real animal, but the angel in Mama said it wasn’t and so maybe it would break. I guessed it was probably better to just treat it like it was a chicken, since it had spent years laying eggs and pretending to be a bird. Gospel could kill it, like he’d done to the stupid cluckers so often before. Only fair, really—since I’d done the finding—that he should do the killing. I crawled back, cradling the hen in my arms, but then it started to peck at me and struggle, which it hadn’t at all when it was getting caught.

“Stupid hen, just come on and let me get you out of here,” I said to it, pulling it in close, and then with a burst of energy it slipped out from my grip and fluttered away toward the stairs and bolted up them lickety split.

“Gospel, she’s coming up toward you!” I shouted. Then I realized what else he could think from that and added, “The hen, I mean.”

I dropped one foot to the earth and felt something under it. Right away I stopped, because there shouldn’t have been anything there at all, unless a log had tipped, and I’d have heard that if it happened. Slowly I turned my head and looked down the length of my body. And there she was: Mama, lying on the ground with her arm outstretched like before … but it was stretched a lot closer to me, and her eyes were open and looking at me while her lips moved without noise. The tip of my toe was right on her hand, and I flinched it up and away.

“Merciful,” she said, or I think so, because her lips moved that way. I couldn’t hear if there was an actual word because of the darned hen clucking and Gospel yelling up a storm.

“Are you back?” I asked, still holding my leg above her hand, which was shifting slowly toward me, the entire body twitching as it moved closer.

“Back?” she said, this time with a little noise that I could hear because the hen chase had gone on into the sitting room, sounded like. Nothing more was said, though, and it was starting to be scary again. This didn’t seem quite like the angel who had talked to me before, the one who was but wasn’t Mama.
She
could actually speak, and whatever was in Mama’s body now didn’t seem to have the knack.

I leaned back until my bottom was on the woodpile and crabbed away on the stacks, which were falling away under me. The logs weren’t placed in a good way to hold up a body, but I had to try to get away without going inside her reach, and sideways over the woodpile seemed the only way to me. Slivers sunk into my hands, but while I sucked in breath, I didn’t stop moving until an entire section fell away and sent me tumbling down with it. And then her hand, dragging her body with it like an anchor, clamped tight on my foot, and I did scream for real, a horrible loud scream like I had just been beaten. She had a weak little grip, but it was a horror that a body was holding on to me, not a person. Leastwise, I didn’t think there was a right sort of person in there.