Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (27 page)

Mose prodded the smoldering sky stone with the stick, and then scampered off to steal a bucket. He returned a few minutes later with a wooden pail liberated from the back of an unattended wagon. He then trudged to and from the nearby river, like a one-man bucket brigade, dumping gallon after gallon of water onto the meteorite until his arms and back ached. As the first blush of dawn started to tinge the morning sky, he finally succeeded in cooling it down enough so that it could be handled. Wrapping it in cast-off burlap bags, he cradled the still-warm rock to his chest and hurried away. Although the misshapen lump was no bigger than his closed fist, Mose was surprised by its weight—if it had been any heavier he would have had to steal a wheelbarrow to transport it.

M
rs. Murphy’s Boardinghouse was located on Baxter Street, and was a ramshackle, four-story building barely two rooms wide, with a crumbling front stoop. As Mose entered the foyer, Mrs. Murphy’s door opened and the landlady reached out and grabbed him by the arm, like a trapdoor spider snatching its prey. She was a large, meaty woman, whose face seemed to be set in a perpetual suspicious scowl.

“Trust ye t’ be creepin’ in at the crack of dawn!” she snapped, giving the startled boy a shake. “Where’s my rent?”

“This is all I’ve got,” he replied, shoving his last remaining penny at her.

“All you got, eh?” she said dubiously, eyeing the gunnysack he held cradled under one arm. “What’s that, then?”

“Just some rotten bits of food I scavenged from the bin, that’s all,” Mose assured the landlady. “I’ll have the rest in a day or two, I promise.”

“Ye ‘promise’!” Mrs. Murphy snorted derisively as she dropped the coin into the pocket of her apron. “Here, I’ll make
ye
a promise, laddie—if I don’t have my half dime by sunup tomorrow, ye’ll be sleepin’ in the gutter along with the slops and road apples, where ye belong!” With that, the landlady retreated to her apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard it made the entire building shudder.

Mose climbed up the narrow, winding stair, making his way toward the top of the house. Some of the other boarders, those who held jobs working the docks or the nearby fish market, were already up and about. On the third floor he had to step around a small cookstove set up at the head of the stairs, careful not to upset the pot atop it. A weary-eyed woman crouched in a nearby doorway, watching her porridge bubble and hiss. Mose glanced past her into the windowless, reeking room beyond and saw that it was empty of furnishings, save for a pile of filthy rags. The boy sighed wistfully.

Because of the pitched roof of the boardinghouse, the wardrobe on the attic landing was set on its back, like a packing crate—or a coffin. This worked out for Mose, as it allowed him to stretch out as he slept. He opened the cabinet door and dropped his prize onto the bundle of old clothes stuffed with scavenged straw that served as his bed. He then boosted himself inside and closed the wardrobe behind him, securing it from the inside with a twisted piece of wire so he could sleep in relative security.

It was dark as death inside the wardrobe, and smelled strongly of mouse piss, but it was the only place in the world Mose felt anything resembling safe. At least the only things he had to worry about inside his shelter were bedbugs and cockroaches. As he settled in to sleep, he pulled the sky stone from its gunnysack, holding it as a child would a beloved toy.

Tomorrow he would make his way to the university on Park Place and find Professor Tolliver. Back when his mother was still alive, she used to read aloud to him from the papers. She had been particularly intrigued by the account of Professor Tolliver’s incredible Automatic Man—a clockwork automaton capable of not
only dancing the waltz, but playing chess. Professor Tolliver claimed that someday all the dangerous and unpleasant tasks would be handled by such so-called automatonics, and that mankind, once freed from scarcity and soul-grinding toil, would finally attain utopia and explore its full potential. While Mose wasn’t sure such a world was completely possible, his mother had embraced it wholeheartedly. As far as the late Mrs. Humphries was concerned, Professor Tolliver was the wisest man in America since Benjamin Franklin. There might be other learned men of science in the city of New York, but the professor was the only one that mattered.

As slumber claimed him, he briefly wondered from what far-flung star the rock had fallen from, and if that would make any difference to the asking price.

M
ose was drawn from the pit of sleep by a loud rapping noise. He opened his eyes to find himself still sealed away in darkness. He yawned and automatically stretched his limbs, only to be unexpectedly brought short, as if he had been transferred, sometime while he slept, from the wardrobe and placed in a small wooden box. What if Mrs. Murphy had come to collect her rent, and found him in such a deep sleep that she had mistaken him for dead? His mind began to race and his heart began to pound in fear. Within seconds, he had convinced himself that the pounding was that of nails hammered into his coffin. Believing he was being buried alive, Mose flailed about in mortal terror, banging his fists against the coffin lid—only to have it shatter into splinters. To his surprise, he saw Mrs. Murphy staring down at him, her usual scowl replaced by a look of shocked disbelief.

“Merciful God in heaven!” the landlady cried out in fear. “What have ye done with Mose, ye great beast?”

“What do you mean? I
am
Mose,” the confused youth replied.

As he sat up, Mose came to the realization that what he had mistaken for the undertaker nailing down his coffin lid had been Mrs. Murphy banging on the wardrobe in search of her half dime.
As for what had once been his home, it looked as if someone had attacked it with an axe: the bottom had been reduced to kindling, and the side panels were split wide open.

As he climbed out of what remained of the wardrobe, the top of his skull abruptly smacked against the ceiling. Mose cursed and reached to massage the top of his head, only to freeze at the sight of a huge, hairy hand dangling from his wrist. He looked down and saw that his moldering boots had finally disintegrated, destroyed by the pair of massive feet that now grew from his ankles. He took a tentative step forward, only to go crashing through a rotten floorboard. This proved far too much for Mrs. Murphy, who threw her apron over her head and ran downstairs, screeching at the top of her lungs for her husband.

Mose stared down in amazement at his transformed body. Gone were the spindly arms, twiglike legs, and sunken chest, and in their place were limbs and muscles more in keeping with Goliath and Samson. Although his miraculous metamorphosis had reduced most of his tattered clothes to rags, his trousers—which he’d been forced to triple-cuff to keep from tripping over—were still in one piece, although they were now stretched to the point of bursting and came no farther than his kneecaps.

As he marveled over his “growth spurt,” Mose remembered the meteorite he’d scavenged from the riverbank. He reached down into the ruins of the wardrobe to scoop it up, only to find that it had dissolved into a handful of rust.

T
he ever-present cigar dropped from Horseshoe Harry’s mouth as Mose entered the Green Dragon Saloon. The half-naked colossus had to stoop to enter the doorway, and when he stood erect his long, powerful arms dangled so low he could scratch his kneecaps.

Sykesky came forward, staring up at his transformed friend in disbelief. “Mose? Is that you?” he gasped.

“It’s me, all right,” he replied with a voice so deep it rattled the
bottles behind the bar. “I come back to join the gang.” The way he said it made it clear it was not a request.

“The Dead Rabbits and Chichesters ain’t gonna know what hit ’em!” Sykesky grinned.

The Bowery Boys cheered in agreement, and raised their beers and whiskies in salute to their new secret weapon. All, that is, save Horseshoe Harry, who looked as if he’d just swallowed a bag of nails.

Mose sat down at the nearest table and called out for food and drink, and for someone to bring him a decent suit. While the other gang members yelled at the saloon-keeper to prepare a feast worthy of their new comrade, Sykesky ran off in search of clothes. Ten minutes later he returned, accompanied by a tailor, who carried a sizable bundle of ready-to-wear clothes over his arm and a tape measure about his neck. By this time Mose was busily devouring his second bushel of oysters and drinking beer from a bucket.

The tailor cringed as the redheaded giant pushed himself away from the table, and dutifully stood by as Mose tried on different articles of clothing, flinching every time a seam burst or a button went flying. Mose finally found a suit that more or less fit him, even though the pants ended halfway down his shins and the shirtsleeves stopped halfway down his forearms.

Just as the tailor hurried out of the saloon, one of the Boys came charging in. “There’s a fire on the corner of Mulberry and Spring!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “And the Dead Rabbits are on their way!”

The assembled Bowery Boys jumped to their feet and grabbed their stovepipe hats, shouting in excitement. Upon reaching the firehouse, Mose pushed aside his fellow gang members and stepped between the traces of the engines.

“Hang on and enjoy the ride, lads!” he laughed, and took off in a dead run, the pumper and its hose cart bumping along behind him like a rickshaw, while his comrades clung on for dear life, clutching their hats with one hand for fear of them flying off.

Mose galloped through the narrow, cobblestoned streets of Old New York, with Sykesky ringing the engine’s brass fire bell to warn pedestrians and other traffic to clear the way. A pack of mongrel dogs chased after them, adding their barks to the general cacophony. As they neared their destination, a plume of black smoke could be seen rising above the surrounding tenements and other buildings.

Suddenly, as they rounded the corner, Mose came to an abrupt halt that sent several of his passengers flying. Blocking the road was a wagon with a broken axle that had spilled a garden full of vegetables onto the street. The greengrocer who owned the wagon was desperately trying to salvage his inventory, which was being pilfered by a band of guttersnipes. Only a day or so ago, Mose would have been one of their number, snatching up errant cabbages and stuffing potatoes in his pockets; but now he had a better way to make a living.

“Take my place, lads!” Mose shouted. “I’ll take care of this!”

The greengrocer yelped in fear and hurled a head of cabbage at the redheaded giant striding toward him. Mose merely laughed and popped it in his mouth like a plug of chewing tobacco.

“No need for violence, friend,” he assured the trembling merchant. “I mean you no harm.” With that, he slipped his shoulders under the wagon tongue and, with a mighty grunt, lifted the wagon—horse and all—over his head like a circus strongman so that a brace of ten Bowery Boys could hurry the pump engine toward the fire.

A block away from their destination, one of the Boys hopped off the engine, carrying an empty pickle barrel under one arm, and ran off in search of the nearest hydrant. Once he found it, he staked the Bowery Boys’ claim to the fire by covering the hydrant with the barrel and then sitting atop of it, arms folded and ready for a fight.