Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (7 page)

I hurried up the path toward the bungalow, torn between the people before me and those trailing behind. Bertha clung helplessly to Rowland, who smothered her with solicitous attention.

The darkening mantle scuttled across the sky. Another cloudburst broke loose, and I surged forward. A sound of pain—a grunt? A cry? Shredded by the growing gale, only the hint of distress reached my ears. As I turned, Bertha flashed past me. Behind me, Rowland had fallen to the ground.

I hurried to him. He held his head but rebuffed my attempts to assist him. His hand came away stained in red. I insisted, applied my handkerchief; dragged him to his feet. Talking into the howling gale proved useless. I compelled him up the trail and into the bungalow.

My people had been diligent: everything secured, the storm shutters in place, the house deserted. Hasty and careless, I tended to Rowland’s wounds as much as time would permit.

“Why would she do such a thing?”

“You tell me. What did she say?”

“I do not . . . something about . . . bond-yee? Gree-gree? Akachi making some sort of blood sacrifice . . . How the devil am I to know? It made no sense.”

I knew where she had gone and compelled my brother back out-of-doors. “Move, Rowland. The storm comes.”

“Are you mad?”

I wanted to smack some sense into that thick head but reminded myself he was Rowland. And English. He could not see how fragile became the bungalow in the face of the cyclonic forces bearing down on us.

We stepped from the lee of the house and the wind and rain slammed into us, nearly knocking us off our feet, saturating us to the skin. I pointed him up the path toward the rising hills.

“Follow the trail!” I shouted. “Do not stop until you get to the caves! Go! Run!”

Rowland turned to confront me. “Where are you going?!”

“After Bertha!”

“Not without me! You will never lay another hand on her!!”

I hadn’t the time to argue. He could keep up, or get left behind.

Our way wended through thick rainforest. The wind lashed us with vines and foliage, raising welts and breaking skin. I burst into a small clearing wherein a small shack stood on stilts in a rising torrent. We ducked into the lee of the house to reconnoiter. I knew better than to approach blindly. Bertha had before caught me by surprise. I had the scars to prove it.

Bertha’s shrill voice reached me, and I peered through the whipping curtains and into the shack. The room resembled a crow’s nest, with all manner of trinkets and baubles, strings of feathers and beads, bones of small animals, all flailing wildly in the wind which buffeted the scanty shelter. The extinguished wicks of candles still smoked—a crucifix hung on the wall above a shrine to the Holy Virgin, surrounded by other symbols I have never seen elsewhere. A human skull sat on a shelf. An iguana blinked at me from beside it. I imagine Rowland looked on with the same mixture of aversion and curiosity I had felt when I first came upon the place.

Bertha argued vehemently with Akachi, the old woman from the balcony the first time I laid eyes on the pair. She brandished an ornate dagger. “You were wrong! Rowland
has
come for me. He is mine. You cannot stop me from leaving the island now!”

“Ye hab an époux, Berta—a good man.”

“And I will be rid of him. But nothing I do touches him! Time and again he escapes. You will help me,
mémère
. Fairfax will not
die
! Kill him! Perform the rite! Do it now!”

Akachi wagged her head. “I tol’ ye eet weel no’ work. Hees
gris gris
, eet be too strong.”

“Then give me something stronger!” Bertha appeared purple with rage. “I will be free of him! I will see him dead!”

Akachi’s eyes betrayed her grief. “Ye hab crossed the Ioa,
fille
. Ye no respect dee speereets. Dey comb for ye. Be gone weed ye lest ye bring dere fierce angah upon me de sem.”

Bertha sneered her hatred at the woman. What light remained seemed to flee. “I
call
this storm, you fool!” she shrieked above the howling wind. “The spirits do my bidding! I will be free of Edward Rochester if I have to destroy this island and everyone on it!”

The shack creaked and shifted on its pylons, knocking Rowland from the post upon which he balanced. I dragged him from the onrush of water and onto high ground. I fumbled for the picture Bertha had planted on him. He fought me savagely. He landed a firm right hook on my jaw. I pushed him down and tried to reach into his waistcoat. He sunk his teeth deep into the side of my hand.

Both of us muddied and slick, I struggled to retain him. On a sudden impulse, I pulled the chain from beneath my shirt and forced it over Rowland’s head. He attempted to fight me off, but I prevailed. I slung the crystal talisman around his neck, bloodied as it was.

“From Yvette,” I shouted into the gale. “To keep you safe!”

He landed another blow, then scrambled away from me and to his feet just as Bertha fled the shack and into the rainforest. “Get her to the caves!” I shouted as he ran after her. “Hurry!”

The wrenching of wood and iron added to the shriek of the storm. The ground gave way beneath the shack and it listed to its side. I ran inside and found Akachi lying in a heap on the floor, unconscious. With a jolt, half the stilts failed and the structure fell into the stream, knocking me off my feet. I managed to extract the frail old woman from the wreckage just as the flood swept it away.

I lay Akachi onto a pallet deep in the caves. Her friends rushed up to assist her. “Where is Rowland?” I demanded. “Where is Bertha?”

Julian strode forward, two heavy lengths of rope slung over his shoulders like bandoliers. “Dey hab not comb.” He expertly knotted the ends together as he spoke. Grabbing two coils myself, we stepped out into the hurricane.

I cannot say what directed my steps. Perhaps I followed that invisible tether that bound me to Yvette’s crystal. It felt attached to a rib just beneath my heart. It drew me onward, and I followed the compulsion.

We slipped and slid down the path to the shore, compelled from behind by the blow. The palms bent to the ground or snapped like twigs. Great shrieks of splintering wood transcended the continuous howl of the tempest. Debris filled the air: bits of plank and net and limbs of trees as thick as my thigh. We navigated a minefield of destruction, and God only knows why we survived.

We came to the bungalow, but I pressed on to the sea, the top of the lighthouse my beacon. The pounding of the surf surmounted the scream of the gale. I rounded the bend and stopped short. Despite my reputation of imperturbability, the sight paralyzed me with fear.

The storm rushed the tide forward. With each crashing wave, the thirty-foot cliffs upon which the lighthouse stood became less significant. In very few moments, the shoreline would vanish beneath the surge.

In the distance, a waterspout—a cyclone spawned by the hurricane—began to rise up from the sea. Another snaked away from it, while a third cyclone swirled its way over the ridge, the bungalow in its path. In the deafening roar, the three seemed bound in a sinuous, serpentine dance about the lighthouse; and there, in the center of it all, perched on the edge of the cliffs, stood Bertha and Rowland, my brother.

The lighthouse door had never required securing. The thick stone walls had defied the tropics for more than one hundred years. It gave us hope. We secured the lines about ourselves to the iron staircase within, then ventured out toward our object.

Bertha had freed herself of her blouse and skirt. She stood shoeless, wearing nothing but wet leather. Her hair flew in great long black snakes, whipping about in the wind. Her contorted face completed the image of Medusa. She raised her hands high above her head and danced in the spray of the surf. She threw back her head and screeched at the heavens, reached toward the cyclones swirling in the near distance, as if she held them in her hands and ruled their motion.

Rowland appeared small and frail beside her, perhaps because she so easily threw off his attempts to control her. Both Julian and I understood. When the woman became so crazed, the most primal forces within her engaged and overcame men stronger than my brother.

In the face of such wind, I could not understand how he remained upon his feet. I motioned to Julian. He jerked his chin in understanding. We pushed off into the gale and pressed for the pair at the ledge.

Absorbed as Bertha was in her maniacal incantations, I managed to avoid her notice as I approached. Rowland leapt upon me, catching me unaware. We both fell hard onto the stone. Rowland raised his fist to pummel me. Julian pulled him off before he could strike.

Rowland fought against Julian. He could not hear reason. Bertha’s dance became more berserk. Rain and spray flew into my face with equal measure and clouded my sight. Bertha, wet and slick, slipped from my hands. She seemed intent not on escape, but in completing her insane ritual. I at last managed to grapple my wife, when again, Rowland assaulted me and wrenched her from my grasp.

The inexorable tide surmounted the cliff. With one relentless blast, it knocked us all from our feet, then sucked us toward the ledge as it drew back for the next wave. Bertha screeched and scrambled for some sort of hold. I lunged for her, but came up with naught but a fistful of hair. It was enough.

Secured by my line, I dragged her toward me by her tresses. Her last fall had rendered her unconscious. I preferred the dead weight to a continuous battle. I wrapped the rope about her, then struggled to my feet as the waves pummeled us. I pulled myself up our tether, my wife strapped to my back, until at last we reached the lighthouse. I stumbled over the threshold. We dropped in a heap on the floor.

I dragged Bertha up a few stairs and away from the encroaching water, then plunged again into the storm. I made my way down Julian’s taut line. To my great relief, he had managed to secure Rowland. Even so, my brother retained his consciousness and his loss of reason. He fought against all attempts at rescue, and Julian could not get back to his feet.

I returned to the lighthouse. With the next wave, when the line loosened, I looped it around a pylon in the lee of the thick stone, then began to haul.

As quickly as I could, I dragged the line through my makeshift pulley, betimes making great progress, betimes losing ground. I ignored the searing pain in my muscles, my throat, lungs, and eyes, burning with the salt of the sea. My serrated hands stained the rope red.

An eerie, gray-green light glowed beneath roiling black clouds, broken only by blinding bolts of lightning. The sounds of thunder, surf, and wind, like a locomotive bearing down upon me, became so much meaningless din. I concentrated on the growing pile of rope at my feet, and the line that went taut, then lax with each crashing wave. 

I felt certain I had all but achieved my task. I wrapped the line about both my hands and leaned all my weight into one mighty heave. With a jerk, the rope cinched around my fingers. It shot straight up in the air, and me with it. I screamed as muscle and tendon ripped from bone. I hung like a kite tethered to the earth by a string. Buffeted in the whirl of wind and water, I thought Rowland’s rope would surely sever my fingers. Then, of a sudden, it went lax, and I dropped again into the surf around the lighthouse.

The tide had risen several feet—enough for me to survive the fall. The surge tossed and rolled me along what had once been dry ground. I snatched a scant breath before the opposing force sucked me back. The ground beneath me disappeared. I had been towed beyond the ledge and into open sea.

It seemed everything slowed, then, like a wind-up toy at the last of its spring. I can still recall every thought, every tick of that internal clock, every sensation of that second of time.

I knew my life over. My thoughts flew to Yvette. Perhaps I would soon greet her beyond the veil of death. My soul already reached out to her, grateful—almost eager.

And then I felt the fierce yank of the rope securing me as it reached its extremity. It forced out what air remained in my lungs.

The realization flooded me that I yet could live, were I of a mind. The next instant, ferocious pain bloomed throughout my body as, unable to wrest me free, the enraged sea hurled me against the jagged stone of the cliff-side.