Quite Contrary (26 page)

Forget that. It was over. I twisted, testing my knees. Yes, I was fine. Scarecrow copied me, standing up and twisting from side to side. I couldn’t believe how well she’d been made. Elizabeth was a craftsman, or craftswoman, or whatever.

I tried to recover my scattered thoughts. “No one is going back in there, but we’re not giving up. Go through all that and not get the prize? Do you think I’m stupid? Rat and I are going to make you a princess. Even better, you’re going to earn it, and we’re just going to be your helpers.”

Elizabeth lowered her eyes, doing that ‘demure’ thing. “I shall try.” She let go of Rat reluctantly. Very reluctantly. He sat up on the floor between us as she rose on her own unsteady feet. The glittery fairy gown was long gone, and the heavily patched dress she wore now would have suited a shepherdess. On Elizabeth it looked completely out of place.

“Do you have a plan, Miss Mary?” Rat asked.

“I don’t need one. When in doubt, kick something.” I gave the nearest column a good kick. It made a hollow gong and that was it, of course. “Do you know anything about machines, Elizabeth?”

“I only truly know wood, but carpenters, engineers, and machinists work together too much not to socialize,” she answered. Lowering her face, she dusted off her dress, a nervous gesture for shaky hands. “What I mean to say is, I know a bit. I’d be an expert if I could remember half of what Doctor Ramfin told me. Truth to say, I think he was a bit sweet on me.” She started to look distant and haunted again. I couldn’t imagine how bad two days in that room must have been. I couldn’t let her sink back into it.

I raised my voice to get her attention. “Rat says you have the keys. Use them. Knock the temple down, knock the whole floor down, knock the whole place down, and pick the crown out of the ruins if you have to. If we can’t go in, we’ll just destroy the place.”

Her eyes widened, and she stared at nothing as she turned that idea over in her head. Finally, she lifted her head, stood up straight, and looked at me with hope, almost with a smile. “I certainly can do that. I saw all kinds of things downstairs. I know just where to start. Can I have that key?”

I handed it over, Rat grabbed her skirt, and Scarecrow and I followed as she circled around the temple. Scarecrow looked completely recovered, hands clasped behind her and walking with a bounce in her step. I had to envy that. I wished I knew how to be that happy.

The elevator on this level was just a hole in the floor and a box on a stick. Elizabeth stuck the key into a keyhole on the box, turned it, and with a little squeaking and a lot of grinding, a platform rose up to fill the gap. We got on, and she turned another key and the elevator took us down to the first floor.

I’d thought the other floors were chaotic. Down here, pistons thumped, carts rolled around on tracks, and conveyor belts carried chunks of rock into pits and grinders and ovens. Less than a third of the machines worked, but that was enough to make it hard to tell what all was going on.

None of it fazed Elizabeth. She threaded the maze like aisles with ease, and laid her hands on a small train. That’s what it looked like. It didn’t quite reach my chin, had wheels, and was made out of metal, and had a scoop in the front, and lots of levers attached to the wheels. I couldn’t make much sense of any of it.

“I should like to try this first. It’s not safe to turn it on yet, but I hope we can push it to the elevator together?” she asked.

Rat perched on top of the machine, and Scarecrow, Elizabeth and I got behind it and pushed it slowly on rusty wheels back to the elevator. The thing was heavy and I didn’t feel up to manual labor at the moment, but I absolutely had to see what this did. The weight of it promised destruction.

The elevator brought us and the machine back up to the top floor, and we shoved the heavy thing out onto the main platform. As soon as we did, Elizabeth stuck a key into the top of it.

“Help me turn it a bit?” she asked, but it only took an instant for her to pull and Scarecrow to push and aim it right at the throne at the center of the temple. “There.” She gave the key a twist, yanked it out, and told the temple in a distinctly satisfied tone, “There’s much more where this came from, as well.”

‘This’ took a minute. The machine made a few thumping noises, and lurched forward an inch on its wheels, hesitated, then jumped forward again. It rolled. It sped up. It was a train, after all. No, more like a high speed bulldozer. The miserable gray inside the temple didn’t bother it at all. The machine kept speeding up, and it slammed into the throne like a freight train. The noise stunned me, screaming metal and banging. Bits flew everywhere. The machine spun and hit the pedestal, and the crown flew off and skidded out the other side of the temple.

She’d gotten it on the first try. No one quite felt like laughing, but we all ran around the circle of columns to where that shining crown lay. It cast a gleaming circle on the dull iron floor, and I skidded to a halt outside that circle. Only after I’d stopped did I wonder why. It just looked too nice, too pretty. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t want to get near it.

I didn’t have time to think it through, either. Scarecrow and Elizabeth did not have my reluctance, and Scarecrow picked the crown up off the floor and set it gently on Elizabeth’s head.

She gasped. Not a gasp of pain, but surprise. Then she sighed, and she smiled. This was that same charming, happy smile from Fairyland, but not quite as drunk. I hadn’t realized how tense and pained she’d looked up until now, because it all lifted off her in the time it took to take that deep breath.

“I feel so much better,” she whispered. Her smile widened, became sunnier. Literally. The crown didn’t shine anymore, she did, and all the color had come back. She curtseyed deeply, and as she lifted her skirts, I got to watch fabric unwind and re-ravel, smoothing patches into one pale, graceful dress. It got whiter by the second, and the fabric less coarse. “Thank you, Mary Stuart. And thank you, Rat-In-Boots.” Before she rose, she took Rat in both hands and lifted him up to kiss him on the muzzle. She knew how to pick her rewards. When she set him down again, he sprawled on his back and I thought he was about to have a heart attack from joy.

Stepping past us, Elizabeth reached out and stroked her fingers up one of the pipes forming the temple’s columns. Rust disappeared, replaced by a wave of gleaming metal that ran up and down from her touch. She didn’t look like she noticed it, but she must have. “There’s so much to do. Come on!” she called out. To us, I suppose. She didn’t look back, taking off at a run, laughing as she swung into the stairwell and bounced down it with enthusiasm Scarecrow couldn’t match.

lizabeth’s touch spread like rust going backwards. It was a dumb and redundant way to put it, but it did. She left shiny footprints on the stairs as she ran down them, and would hardly get two steps ahead before the footprints spread, shininess creeping over the dull metal.

I didn’t much feel like running, but she was leaving us behind. I scooped up Rat, dropped him in my hood, and followed down the stairs.

Elizabeth’s magic didn’t just clean. It rearranged. Down on the third floor I saw chain railings threading their way around the edges, and tubes twist like spaghetti only to line up in neat rows. Those rows looked suspiciously like walls. Broken tubes gleaming with molten gunk sealed up, or just lined up along the ceiling to keep the hall lit without risk of burning. A tube spilling goo into a basin stopped flowing, the glowing mass drained, and clear water poured in instead. She was making this place safe.

Water. I hadn’t drunk in, like, a day, and I’d been tromping around a hot factory. No wonder I felt so bad. I rushed over and stuck my head under the downpour. It felt so cool and soothing as it wet down my head, and when I risked a taste, it just tasted like water.

I didn’t have a bottle. I didn’t even have my bag of food. I’d left it in the street when the fog attacked, right? Forget it, direct approach time. My head was already wet. I stuck my face in the basin, opened my mouth, and guzzled until I had no choice but to yank myself out and breathe.

Oh, yeah. That felt better. Water streamed down my head and into my ridiculous, tarty Red Riding Hood dress, and I didn’t mind a bit.

Where was Elizabeth? Oh, there she was kissing a big rusty box. Instead of spreading, the gleaming lip print bubbled up to form a little metal rose.

“How does that feel?” I asked.

“Like I can fly!” Flashing a giddy smile, she leapt away from the shiny metal flower box. There was still a gap at the edge of the platform that the new railings hadn’t reached, and Elizabeth plunged towards it, and leaped off the edge. A chain thicker than my waist swung past, and she grabbed it in one hand and set her foot securely on the hook it held. Rocking back and forth, she laughed as the crane lowered her down past my vision.

Drunk. I’d saved her from fairy drugs to hop her up on a different kind of magic.

I ran down two flights of stairs to the bottom floor in time to see the huge double doors spread wide while Elizabeth walked out through them. A trail of gleaming metal and smoothly sanded concrete spread behind her. When we’d gone up, just enough machinery worked to make this level a death trap. Now I couldn’t see anything broken, and little engines scurried this way and that, puffing quietly as they handed crates to each other, loaded conveyor belts, and did nothing I could identify in a very busy way. Despite all the motion, there was hardly any noise, and I only had to turn for machines to clear a path for me to walk. I walked towards the door, following Elizabeth, and looked back at the layered central platform. It looked like a giant cake now. A ladder fell off the outer wall and turned into another catwalk joining it to the center. Squares of metal flaked away from one of the largest hanging pipes, turning into a spiral staircase. It wasn’t a pipe anymore. It was a tower. The factory was turning into a castle after all.

Scarecrow came spilling down the stairs. She must have lost her footing, but I didn’t have to catch her. Another crane swung a pallet past with perfect timing to scoop her up and deposit her next to me.

“That was fun. Can we get my feet fixed?” she asked me.

“That depends on how drunk your mother is,” I snarked. I couldn’t put the sarcasm into it I’d wanted to. Elizabeth had looked so happy, and I was hoping she’d get herself back under control when she stopped dripping magic everywhere.

Rat must have known what I was thinking. “It’s just a rush at first, Miss Mary. She’ll be fine.”

I clomped after Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth now, I supposed. I was losing her in the smoke. No, it smelled too good to be smoke. I stepped into the muted sunlight, and thick mist rolled in billows around me rather than obscuring everything. I could smell charcoal. This hadn’t stopped being a factory town. Still, this was a wholesome smell, and the fog was just thick fog.

I looked back over my shoulder at the shining metal factory still rearranging itself, and the white mists curling decoratively around it.

I gave up. Elizabeth had a castle on a cloud. After losing her family and spending a hundred years as a fairy prisoner, she’d earned one. I’d asked Rat to give her this, and he’d delivered.