The Best of Penny Dread Tales (2 page)

I bob my head, hiking the bag off my shoulder and ripping open the drawstring. My fingers search for the motor and find it easily, holding it out for him to see.

“It’s twice as light as the other one,” I say, unable to keep the edge of juvenile excitement from my voice. It is a very neat toy resting in my hands, even though the small knot of metal and gears may not look like much. “This thing might actually
work.
”

There’s a glimmer of madness in my brother’s eyes to match my own as he hauls himself over, his eager fingers absorbing the motor’s surface. He picks it up, weighing it in the palm of one hand. “It might,” he whispers, every word drenched in disbelief. “It actually might.”

Deryn

It’s been a month now since Corbin’s been here for any longer than a quarter of an hour. It feels like pixies snuck into my room in the middle of the night and sawed off the top of my skull so they could steal my mind. I used to always be scared as a child that they would do just that, and now it seems like the fear has finally become reality. I can hardly think anymore. Corbin was the one who made the world I hardly knew make sense, and now everything’s gone wonky.

Arlette stops by to visit more, but it isn’t the same—listening to my tiny, emotional sister rattle off stories—as it would be listening to my best friend do the same. Maybe you think I’m pathetic, going so crazy over something so small in the grand scheme of everything, but you have no idea. You don’t know what it’s like to be so completely imprisoned and have your link to the outside world severed.

You don’t know.

Corbin

I can picture Deryn laughing at me as I truss up a stack of books like a present, my fingers fumbling at the knots they can’t seem to manage. The thought makes me ridiculously sad. Even if I had a perfectly good reason for not visiting these last few weeks … that doesn’t make me miss her less. The build has needed my full attention, and I couldn’t risk letting something slip or forgetting to take a sketch out of my folder, but still … I wish she was here now, sitting on the end of my bed like I’ve sat so many times on the end of hers. Maybe, if this works, she’ll be here before long. If she forgives me.

No, no, I
know
she’ll forgive me.

The image of the smile that I
know
will break across her cheeks keeps my hands moving, dragging the books across the floor because they’re too heavy for me to lift on my own. They weigh as much as Deryn does, or as much as I remember she did. Hopefully she hasn’t put on much weight since then.

Bran walks in from outside to give me a hand, and together we manage to haul the ballast onto the balcony where my baby is waiting. It’s not literally my
baby
, of course, but it might as well be. It’s been swallowing my blood, sweat, and tears for four weeks now, and consuming my mind for three times as long.

I can hardly believe that it’s sitting here, in front of my own eyes, completely finished. It’s beautiful, with wooden bones and metal skin, clockwork organs and a leathery smile.

They’re the wings of an iron angel. They’re Deryn’s wings, or they will be: if they fly now, if they can bear the weight and keep on going. My people don’t have any specific god like the humans do, but I send out a prayer towards the general vicinity of the sky, figuring that it can’t hurt any.

“You ready?” Bran asks me, setting the stack of books in front of the wings and wiping his hands on his trousers, leaving greasy smears where his fingers were.

Bran was the one who was at my side every second, warning me away from stupid mistakes, advising on the shape of the feathers, the positioning of the motor and throwing in an extra bit of muscle when brute strength was needed. The idea might’ve spawned from my head, but he built the contraption as much as I did. I still haven’t quite figured out how to thank him.

I nod and set to work affixing the books so there’s not a chance they could fall if they tried. As I finish, I rise to my feet and flutter my wings a little, my toes just barely brushing the ground. Leaving one wing for Bran, I take the other, and together we lift it up and over the balcony’s edge. Even though I know its weight down to the gram, it feels shockingly light in my hands, probably because Bran’s taking more than his share of the burden, like always.

The books don’t plummet, and neither do either of us, though the art of hovering level has taken on new difficulty. We manage though, and I’m the one that frees one hand to pull the motor’s ripcord, setting it coughing and chugging with reassuring regularity.
It might work. It might fly.

The wings, with their sculpted aluminum feathers, start to whisper back and forth, faster and faster, until Bran and I are ducking every which way to avoid been smacked upside the head. The motor is snarling like a living beast now, curls of smoke polluting the air.

“Ready?” I ask. I can see people peering out of their windows and stealing onto balconies to watch with huge, curious eyes. I hear children shouting and laughing, and I know they’re pointing. Maybe they think we’re mad. Probably they do, and probably we are, but I start counting down anyway when I catch Bran’s nod.

“Three, two, one!”

And without another word we let go, our fingers uncurling at the same moment, our wings twitching in anticipation of a dive that’s never necessary.

Because it flies.

Deryn

I’m lying on my bed on top of the blankets, my head propped up against the headboard, when my favorite voice breaks the non-silence of the forest at midday.

“Is the ceiling really all that interesting?” he asks, sending my neck snapping upwards. My gaze locks onto the entrance to my balcony where he’s waiting. He looks just the same as ever, if a little wearier. There are darkish purple rings hanging under his sky-blue eyes, a pale undertone lurking beneath his sun-browned skin. His arms are hanging limply at his sides, his palms turned outward in a gesture of peace. The set of his shoulders is hopeful as he stands completely, utterly still, waiting for me to make the first move.

That move takes a minute, because first I have to work through the surprise that has flash-frozen my thoughts. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I mean,
really
seen him … like this. No walls wrapped around him, no apprehension hiding in his eyes. My instinct is to jump to my feet and fling myself into his arms, but even if I
could
do that without fracturing something vital, I’m wary. I have no explanation of his disappearance, and I’m not sure how angry I am with him yet. Maybe he had good reasons, but until he shares them, I think I’ll stay right here, thank you very much.

“Not gonna talk to me, are you?” he asks. I know he’s expecting no answer, so I give none. I just sit up a little straighter, folding my hands into my lap as I watch him, waiting. “That’s okay; I didn’t really expect you to.” He takes half a dozen steps forward until he’s barely a yard from me, approaching like I’m prey that’ll bolt any second—as if I
could
bolt. That’s almost funny.

“I’m sorry, Der,” Corbin says, real pain and remorse saturating his voice, care weighing down his nickname for me, the one I don’t let anyone but him use. “I’ve been really,
really
busy. I’ve been building something, and I couldn’t risk you finding out about it until it was finished.” He polishes off the sentence with a sweet, white grin, shocking my defenses. “It was a surprise; I didn’t want to ruin it.”

That brings a withering look surfacing from under my impassive mask. “I can’t imagine any surprise that would be worth a full month of near-solitude.” I shake my head, knowing he can’t imagine, can’t step into my shoes and see exactly what I’m getting at. No one could, so I can’t really blame him for it. “I’ve being going insane here, Corbin. There are times when I think I already am. I can’t imagine anything you could’ve made that I would have chosen over your company, had I known.”

And I really, truly can’t. Corbin’s companionship is one thing I will never, ever be able to put a price on, because he has no obligation to me, and we both know it. He spends time with me—or did—out of a genuine like of me, out of compassion, and—I might as well admit it—there was some pity there, at the beginning at least. I would never even consider trading something as precious as his true, pure friendship away.

The smile he gives me is unhinged, the sparkle in his eyes just as strange. I wonder if he’s joined my spiral into madness. “Of course you haven’t imagined it,” he says, not like I’m an idiot but with an irrepressible excitement that has me intrigued. “I’m the only one crazy enough to do it.”

When he reaches out a hand to help me up, I take it without question. I don’t know if anything could ever make me stop trusting him. I’d probably jump from a thousand foot cliff if he was right there beside me, fingers wrapped around my own.

Clearly pleased with my reaction, he takes nearly all of my weight as he leads me along. First, off the bed and onto my feet and then, more slowly, across the open floor. I can feel him pulsing
with exhilaration, and it’s got me shaking too.

I ponder and ponder what he could’ve possibly built, but I can’t think of anything. He hasn’t really given me much to work off of, except that whatever it is, it’s insane and wonderful.

I realize that it’s not just the two of us there when we’re halfway across my room. I can hear a set of pacing footsteps that clashes with our own. And, if I listen hard enough, I can hear someone whistling, low and soft, under his breath. I’m eighty-percent sure I know who it is when we cross the threshold, and then it jumps the extra twenty-percent to make it an even hundred.

Bran tosses me a wave and one of his rare smiles from where he’s leaning against the rail. I make a move to smile back, but then the entirety of my attention is stolen away by something waiting just to his left: something amazing, something beautiful, something that tears a squeal from my gaping lips.

A pair of wings built from wood and leather and metal, covered in layer after layer of perfectly wrought feathers. The sun beats down, setting the edges aglow with light, turning the silvery surface to deep orange-gold, the color of phoenix wings. There are no words to capture the beauty before me.

I’m even more floored when I realize … these are meant for
me
. I see the motor strapped to the back, and I know that they will fly, that they will bear me as they do so. This is Corbin’s secret—he’s been building me my freedom.

Before he can say anything, I spin around and pull him into the tightest hug my fragile arms can stand and press my lips to his in a moment of whimsy. “Thank you,” I say, the words shaking as they fall from my mouth just as badly as the rest of me is. I think my mind’s stopped working, because all I can do is say “thank you” over and over and over again.

Corbin is grinning at me, gentle color flushing his pale cheeks as he takes both my hands in his and leads me over to the where the wings are resting. They’re even lovelier up close. My breath catches in my throat, and my eyes prickle with the forerunners of a flood, no matter how ridiculous I know that is. Why the hell should I feel like crying now?

“I hope you forgive me, Der,” he says, watching from behind as he lets me go, lets me sink to my knees and explore every inch of his invention, my eyes wide and shimmering. I want words for this moment, but no matter how hard I search, I find none. “I figured it would be more special this way.”

And I’m just giggling like an idiot, my hands resting atop the motor, the sun warm on my cheeks. “Can I fly?” I plead, beaming up at him and Bran who’s lurking and snickering behind his shoulder.

Corbin laughs a laugh that morphs into a smile as he crouches down beside me. “’Course you can,” he says, reaching around my hands so he can get a good grip on the leather backing. Bran joins him, holding onto the wingtips so that, together, they can lift it off the floor and maneuver it around to my back. I stand and spread my arms in anticipation for the straps that come up onto my shoulders, the whole thing sitting like a backpack. I bear as much of the weight as I can. Bran easily takes the rest so that Corbin can focus, tightening me into the harness until the leather straps are on the verge of suffocating me, and I have to tell him to stop.

Corbin nods at me and then at Bran, who tears at something attached to the wings. I feel my torso jerk, and the motor grumbles against my back. I cough as a puff of greasy smoke ventures down my throat.

Hands on my shoulders, holding me fast, Corbin appraises me with his eyes as the wings begin to flutter, growing lighter as they start to support their own weight. I hear Bran fumble out of the way,

“I tested these with some weight, so there shouldn’t be a problem,” Corbin says, each word slow and steady. “But if there is, Bran and I will catch you, I swear. We won’t let you fall.”

I bob my head, not in any sort of mindset to care about my own well-being.

He shows me a set of dials affixed to the straps. “This one will let you go higher,” he explains, pointing to the larger one. “This one will drop you down,” he adds, indicating the smaller. “You’ll need one of us to come to a complete stop, okay?”

I’m just nodding and nodding, so eager to fly that I might shake my way right out of the harness.

“Alright then.” Corbin lets me go and hops easily onto the edge of the railing, holding out a hand to help me up. I take it gratefully and stand there a moment, my bare toes hanging off into the abyss. “Let’s hope this works so your parents and Arlette don’t have anything to kill us about, yeah?”

I snort and flip up the big dial, my teeth chattering as the wings work so hard my feet are already slipping away from the wooden rail. I’m nearly hovering, and it feels amazing, but it’s not enough.

I was born to fly, and instead I’ve been grounded all my life.

I throw myself off the edge, laughter torn carelessly from my lips as I spread my arms to catch just that extra bit of air …

And I fly free of my cage on iron angel’s wings.

***

The Dirges of Percival Lewand

Aaron Michael Ritchey

Doctor Davyss circled the skeletal piano and my beautiful automaton like an African lion stalking his prey. Around my basement chamber lay derelict parts of pianos and castoff brass gears. Crumbling stone walls leaked water from the street, and the ceiling’s rough-hewn wood showed the soot from my candles and lamps.

No windows. A single door. No other means of exit out into the cruel streets of East London.

I stood by my slender mattress and watched Davyss pace. Both hope and horror left me breathless.

My benefactor smiled at me then returned to scrutinize the automaton, Christine, seated on her wheeled cart, her slender, gloved fingers resting above the ivory keys, motionless.

“Surely, your cabinet player staggers the imagination, Mr. Lewand, yet as I have said before, her playing is only adequate. What she lacks is that primal passion and vitality we feel pulsing through our veins.”

“So you really do believe in …” I whispered, but could not finish the sentence.

“Blood,” Davyss murmured, a dreamy look on his face. “Christine has bones of brass and sinew of rubber, but at her core she is empty. Where do our passions lie? In our blood.”

The anxiety pressing down on my chest increased. I felt ill.

Davyss leaned forward, his clean-shaven face inches away from the porcelain mask covering Christine’s clockwork head framed by a silk-spun wig. A gown covered the rest of her brass gears and wheeled cart. I had fashioned her to have a woman’s curves, yet I made sure she retained her feminine modesty. I was proud that Christine’s clothing was every bit as fastidious as Davyss’ dress. Both were as well kempt as they could be.

“You say she sees the music as ones and zeroes,” Davyss said. “That I quite believe, but I am resolved that she be less mathematician, more musician. Did you make the modifications I requested?”

“To the letter of your instruction,” I returned, desperate to impress my benefactor.

Davyss eyed me skeptically. “Really. Including the burning of the black candle at 3 a.m. followed by the Latin incantation.”

“Yes, just as you told me.” I fought to keep my countenance blank. Such violent emotions stormed through me. Davyss’ descent into the occult had made me question his sanity … and my own. He had a patient—a denizen of the London Hospital’s mental ward—who claimed to be adept at the dark arts. This lunatic had led my benefactor down a path that had nothing to do with science, all in hopes of improving Christine’s playing.

I hurried forward, always so obsequious—driven to please by a shrinking belly and a chilly bed. With a shaking hand I motioned to the strange black candle, half-burnt, resting on the piano. I then showed him the port at the base of Christine’s neck, large enough for a single glass vial. “Through tubing, whatever liquid we add will mix with the automaton’s whale-oil lubrication system. Although I have tried to keep my mind scientifically detached, I have little hope that this will work. My cabinet player is a machine. Hence, blood should have no effect on her playing.”

“But you will humor me, yes?”

I nodded.

“Then we will give our thirsty girl a bit of your blood, Lewand.”

I gulped. Such superstitious nonsense, fit only for women and primitives. Still, my debt shackled me to Davyss. I removed my coat and pushed my shirtsleeve up above my elbow. He unpacked needles, vials, and other medical supplies from his black bag.

Davyss’ face was positively glowing. “If your cabinet player could but know the fiery passion at the heart of life, she could play to packed theatres, and your miracle could rise above the petty machinery of the Aeolios Company.”

At the mention of my competition, I paled. “But surely, Dr. Davyss, the engineering itself could be impressive enough for you to invest further. Please …”
I’m so very hungry
, I wanted to add. But I could not. Davyss was a man without pity. He expected results. At times I was honored to have such a unique relationship with Dr. Martin Marquavious Davyss. Other times, my connection to him felt like a morass, offering no escape save death.

Blood was what Davyss wanted, and blood he got. Moments later, he took a thick needle and without ceremony pressed it into my flesh. Icy pain churned in me as he twisted the needle to affix the vial until my own dear essence dripped out, leaving me even more lightheaded and nauseated. I had not eaten in days. All money went for parts and rent. I had even abandoned tea for the project.

Once the vial was full, Davyss pulled out the needle quickly, gave me cotton for the puncture, all the while buzzing with excitement. Odd, I had never seen him so full of what the French call,
joie de vivre
.

“Now, give her music to play.” His voice blistered with expectation.

“Yes, but first, I must prepare the gears.” From around my neck, on a simple chain, I held the key to Christine’s heart. I took the key, found the aperture on the left side of her head, and slowly turned. Once her gears were wound, I inserted the vial into a slot at the base of her neck and snapped it into place. She was ready. “Now, what piece of music should I have her play?”

“It does not matter!” Davyss struck his hands together. A deep breath followed as if to calm himself. Then, casually, he said, “I understand that you think the stimulus of the music will affect this experiment, but I assure you, your wonderful simulacrum could play a child’s lullaby, and we would instantly know if our efforts have been in vain or not.”

So I chose Beethoven’s
Piano Concerto Number 5 in E-flat Major
, a favorite of mine.

Gearing set, I gently pulled down the lever hidden under her hair. The cylinders inside of Christine began to turn, and through a slot in her back, I fed a thick piece of perforated paper. Machines could not read sheet music, and so I had created a language all my own, far more ingenious than my cabinet player’s metal body. Each perforation on the page represented a zero, otherwise a one. The instant the sensitive cilia covering the cylinders discovered the first perforation, her brass fingers pressed down on the keys.

Both Davyss and I listened intently.

“Yes.” Davyss hissed the word.

I had a sensitive ear, and yet I could not discern any difference. The notes came out in perfect time, but a machine could play perfect time, and each note was crisp and clear, but that too was a machine’s forte.

She finished the first page and returned to her primary position, thumbs hovering over middle C. The paper emerged from her back and drifted to the floor. I pushed the lever to stop the cylinders.

Davyss shrugged off his jacket in a single violent motion. “Lewand, you have a scientist’s blood, cold and logical. Do not think ill of that. To be so very levelheaded with such lazy passions is a gift. I would be such a man if I could. However, I am anything but.”

He did not stop undressing until, to my shock, I saw the pale skin of his chest and arms.

Adding to my discomfiture, he wrapped tubing around his arm and stabbed the needle into a tumescent vein. Thick crimson oozed into a second vial.

He pumped his fist. “Oh yes, I believe that what our girl Christine will require is the very heights of animal passion. She is a machine. Dull emotions she would ignore, but not intense, primal feelings. Our girl is bloodthirsty, oh yes she is.”

Jerking out the needle, he gave me the vial, warm to the touch. More blood gushed across his skin.

“Your wound, Doctor,” I said, having to swallow my gorge.

He ignored me. “Replace your blood with mine. Give her the same song to play.”

I rewound the key, to make sure we had the same parameters for this next experiment, then replaced the vial with Davyss’ blood. I fingered the lever down and fed the same music into Christine’s cylinders.

The same cylinders processed the same perforations. Her mechanics interpreted the same notes. Yet what a joyous difference! How can a zero not be a zero? How can a one not be a one? And yet, she was interpreting the mathematics so very differently.

My mouth dropped open. Such passion, such desire, I felt tears sting my eyes. I shamefully squeezed them shut.

Davyss had no such sensitivities. Tears stained his face and chest as he stood nearly naked in my apartment. His left arm was gloved in blood. I saw his mouth moving.

The paper once again spun out of the cabinet player’s back to float to the ground. That’s when I heard his quotation.

“… I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,

And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d,

By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound …”

He caught me staring. “Do not those words capture the very essence of your creation? Next Friday evening, August 31
^st
, you will bring Christine to my estate. She will play for all of my colleagues, the best ears in London. In the meantime, my man will bring you more blood, and I shall make arrangements on delivering Christine.” He reached into the pocket of the coat he had draped on the chair and removed a stack of pound notes. I took them, noting the bloody fingerprints.

I levered off Christine’s mechanism even as my head swam. First, I was stunned that the occult was real. How else could simple blood have such an effect on my automaton?

Next, my engineering mind filled my head with questions. Would the blood last through multiple windings? How many iterations? Most importantly, how did it all actually
work,
and could I find the answer to that question in the realm of science?

The amount of study I had to do was staggering, all in a week’s time before Christine’s first official performance. I had only inscribed a few lines of music. Now, I had to encode an entire piece onto a rolling scroll so Christine would not be limited to short passages. That in itself would take me most of the week. More sleepless nights lay ahead of me. This time, however, I would labor on a full belly.

“You will be a very rich man, Mr. Lewand.” Davyss beamed, and then his eyes seemed to glaze as he whispered. “I have always known that the vapors in our bodies coalesce in our blood, and thus, a frightened man’s blood would be very different from a kind man’s, or a savage man’s. So much has been proven tonight. So much more lies before us.”

His eyes met mine, and he returned to a more serene state. “You and I have started a journey, my dear Mr. Lewand. Where will it end?”

“Hopefully at a dinner table in a finer room than this hovel, my good doctor.” I smiled. For the first time, I had spoken my true mind.

“Oh, yes,” he said. The gleam was back in his eye. “We shall all eat our fill.”

Perhaps I would have found his words and demeanor unsettling, had I not been so preoccupied with more mundane appetites.

***

As promised, more blood appeared on my doorstep. Davyss sent his man, a whiskered, laconic brute armed with a walking stick, more cudgel than cane, which he used with abandon on street urchins and prostitutes. I watched him beat them for his own amusements as he left my door, walking through the wet streets like a rampaging mammoth.

Some vials were marked with my benefactor’s initials, MMD. Others had different initials, patients from the hospital, I assumed. He had sent along an anti-coagulant that kept the blood from thickening, though the vials were cool to the touch.

Each vial affected Christine in a different away. Most simply had little effect, like my own. Davyss’ blood, as always, made her passionate, full of bright expectation, while only one other vial, marked RDS, affected her. With the RDS, Christine’s playing became melancholy. Such a radical difference it was, I immediately sent Davyss a letter with my findings.

He responded that he would ensure I had the proper blood for Christine’s first performance.

In amazement, in victory, I spent long hours running tests. Christine’s passion, fueled by Davyss’ crimson ichor, would last approximately two hours, during which she would play with such joy that I could scarcely keep from dancing. Then slowly her musicianship would degrade until she was once more a machine, plinking through notes.

I did my work, stuffed with beef and bread. I drank tea without ceasing. What is an Englishman without tea? I daresay, an American, and I had lived as such for many months, every farthing going to the landlord and for parts. However, one positive aspect of being poor meant I could not afford gin, which was a blessing, for drink was a danger to me.

The week passed quickly. Thursday evening I worked to put the finishing touches on Christine, adjusting the joints on her three-toed foot attached to a single brass leg, hinged at the knee. When I finished, she articulated the pedals on the piano perfectly.

Davyss had arranged to move Christine to his manor for her evening performance. It was just past midnight on that Friday when I heard a knock on the door.

It could only be Davyss or his brute, for I had no other visitors, no other connections. To my surprise, it was the former. His face was streaked with sweat, his eyes wild to the whites. He pushed three vials of blood at me, all three marked with the number one. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, rushing his words, “and I wanted to stop by. More blood for our girl. Tomorrow, have her play using these vials. It will be a triumph!”

With that he was gone, as quickly as he had come. Strange, shocking.

Why would he be out delivering blood, and why mark it with numbers instead of initials? And I found it hard to believe he was in the neighborhood. One who lives on an estate in West London does not simply find himself in Whitechapel.

Oddest of all, why were the vials still warm?

***

In the music room of Davyss’ manor, I felt out of place. No one knew who I was. Lords, ladies, the rich and powerful, all ignored my cheap dress and balding pate as I stood nervously holding a wine glass that seemed almost magical. Whenever I looked down, it was empty, though I could have sworn moments prior, it had been full. I was becoming intoxicated, and that would not do. Christine and I had our work. Draped in a sheet, she sat expectantly at Davyss’ grand piano.