There Will Be Phlogiston (31 page)

Which, perhaps, might explain why I sometimes fancy
I feel the walls in the empty rooms breathing, and I become seized
with the fear that they may all inhale simultaneously and crush me
to pieces. And the other night I stepped onto my balcony for air
and for a moment, just for a moment, it seemed as though the sky
matched the sky in my nightmares: vast, cold, starless. But it was
probably just the weather, which has been dreadfully overcast of
late.

Dear me, I am turning into such a dull
correspondent. There is a noticeable and, to my mind, distressing
lack of Bavarian princesses here in Cornwall, and even the gossip
is about six years old, for conversation in the servants’ hall (not
that I pay it much heed) still revolves around the unsavoury
circumstances under which the captain’s wife passed away.
Mysterious deaths, it seems, are like hackney carriages. One can go
for extended periods without encountering a single one, and then
several turn up all at once.

Amalthea Vanstone’s portrait, painted not long
before her death, hangs at the head of the main stairwell. It shows
a remarkably beautiful woman, pale skinned, with a mane of thick,
curling black hair and eyes not one shade lighter. I think the
artist must have flattered her, for she looks no older than I do
(although it is possible I have grown prematurely raddled as a
consequence of my unnatural urges), and I am sure had I been
delivered of seven children in such improbable haste I would not be
sitting on a swing with my skirts full of rose petals.

It is a fine piece, I am sure, but I cannot like it.
There is something about her eyes. And the light catches the
picture so strangely sometimes that I think her feet are lumpen and
somewhat resemble— Oh, oh, disregard me, Miriam. This is nonsense.
I do wish I could sleep untroubled. I think I may have to take
action, I mean beyond that which you have already so eloquently
recommended.

Mrs. Vanstone must have been the daughter of one of
the neighbouring families, for apparently it was all quite sudden:
a love match. She died when the captain was away on active duty,
and the extremity of his anguish led him to take up permanent
residence in his old airship.

You know, if this is romance, I want no part of it.
But the tale grows even stranger still.

The other night, after I had finished marching the
children to bed, I was unexpectedly summoned by the captain
himself. Mrs. Smith eyed me most suspiciously as I ascended the
rope ladder to the ship, which I actually rather resented for it
was not as though I was thinking to myself, “My evening would be so
very much improved if I spent it in the company of a fecund,
grief-stricken eccentric.”

He met me in what must have been the captain’s
cabin, though it was now a sort of study, awash in books and papers
(I confess, I checked for deranged scrawling and was relieved to
note his hand was a precise copperplate), and full of complex
mechanical devices I presume are used to navigate the skies.

“Miss Grey.” He watched me just as intently as he
had the first time we met. “Sit.”

After a moment, I sat, and we were silent for some
considerable time.

“You must forgive me,” he said at last, “I have
grown too accustomed to giving orders. I have lost whatever
gentleness of expression I once possessed.”

“Please,” I returned, “do not trouble yourself on my
account. If I took offence every time someone addressed me without
forethought or courtesy, I should be an extremely angry woman.”

He frowned, I think in some confusion. Handsome,
perhaps, but like most of his sex not overly lavished in mental
acuity.

He tried again: “Miss Grey, no doubt you are
surprised that I would wish to speak to you.”

“Surprised that my employer would arbitrarily impose
upon me? Of course not, that is why I am here, is it not?”

“You are here to be a governess to my— Ah.” I think
he was younger than his manner suggested, for he flushed at that.
“You are severe, Miss Grey.”

“I prefer to think of myself as honest, sir.”

His fine eyes flashed at me. “Do you wish me to
apologise?”

“Not particularly.”

“Oh.” He looked almost disappointed. One of
those.

“Would you be so kind,” I asked, “as to tell me why
you wished to see me?”

As it turned out, he wanted to discuss, of all
things, my Uncle Ridgewell, and his manner throughout the thinly
disguised interrogation that followed was quite peculiar, even for
a gentleman who voluntarily passes his days in a metal sepulchre. I
told him what little I knew of my uncle’s life and death, which is
not much more than I have already relayed to you in these letters,
but he seemed dissatisfied with my answers and continued to press
me far beyond the point of politeness.

It was unsettling and, to be frank, irritating. The
whole business. As is the fact I seem to have misplaced my whistle,
which means I am reduced to communicating verbally with the
children.

I remain,

Your severely exasperated Jane

My dearest Miriam,

While I was in Altarnun, posting my last letter to
you, I was feeling somewhat, shall we say, frayed, so I paid a
visit to the local druggist in the hope of at least temporarily
soothing my sleep-related difficulties. Apparently it is not
uncommon for sensitive young ladies to suffer discombobulation as a
consequence of upheaval in their personal circumstances, and
admittedly, my personal circumstances have been somewhat uncertain
of late, so I allowed him to prescribe me a small measure of
laudanum. I was cautious at first, but I do believe it has helped.
I still dream, but somehow less vividly, and the house feels less
oppressive to me and the children less irritating. When I return
again to the village, I must procure a larger bottle. The tiny vial
I was given would barely medicate a distressed fly.

The captain continues to treat me with a strange
mixture of suspicion and curiosity. I am called to his study nearly
every evening now, and sometimes during the day I catch his eyes
upon me, though he acts as though it was merely happenstance that
he was near me at all. The other night, as I was preparing to
leave, he abruptly put out a hand as if to hold me back and said,
“Do you think me handsome, Miss Grey?”

Heaven save me. I confess I was in some eagerness to
depart, for the night had closed around us like a great black hand,
and it had been some hours since I had last taken laudanum,
otherwise I might have leavened my response with some degree of
tact. “No, sir,” I told him.

He looked startled, while I wrestled to conceal my
frustration. I mean, really. What had he been expecting? “Yes, sir,
your odd behaviour and air of brooding melancholy lubricates my
nethers”? Oh forgive me, Miriam, for my impropriety of expression.
I have been so out of sorts of late. And, of course, being a gently
reared young lady, I know nothing of nethers, nor of their
lubrication. But when the captain’s bewilderment had passed, he
laughed and said rather warmly, “You are a very singular
creature.”

And since that was certainly no topic I wished to
discuss with him, I went on hastily. “You must forgive me, sir, I
spoke too bluntly. You appear to have all your appendages in the
correct quantity and configuration, and that is truly all the
aesthetic judgement on the male form I may render. Good night.”

Thankfully, he let me go after that, and I hurried
to my bed. My gas lamp, which I was sure I had refilled earlier,
but perhaps I had not for my sense of time is a little disturbed,
sputtered out as soon as it was most inconvenient for it to do so,
leaving me stranded equidistant between the captain’s ship and the
house, with nothing to light my way. It is strange, is it not, how
night can distort one’s perceptions of distance, for I felt the
woods pressing terribly close just then, with a sort of dark weight
behind them, like bodies crushed up in a crowd. And the closer I
drew to the house, the closer the trees seemed to grow to me, as
though we were all engaged in an on-my-part-reluctant game of
Grandmother’s Footsteps.

Except, of course we were not, for they were trees.
Trees! And I have read Mary Wollstonecraft.

Though I heard them laughing, laughing in a jangle
of high-pitched voices, as I ran for the door, made it through, and
slammed it closed behind me. Despite the lateness of the hour, Mrs.
Smith was there in the entrance, and I almost fancied she had been
waiting for me. But she simply turned away, and vanished into the
shadows as though she had never been there at all.

In her portrait, Mrs. Vanstone smiles with sharp
teeth.

Oh, Miriam, Miriam, please write back soon.

Your,

Jane

SNEAK
PEEK: CLOUDY CLIMES & STARLESS SKIES

My dearest Dil,

I fear our lifestyle does not lend itself well to the
marking of dates or rites of passage, but I cherish the night on
which I first told you my story. Of my birth in Canton and my life
in England, and how—at last—I escaped from it to the skies. Of my
father’s attempts to make me his, and my struggle to make myself my
own. Of airship and auroras, the flying pirate city of Liberty, and
how I became who I am.

I’ve tried to write it all down for you as best I
can, so you may share it with me again whenever you wish.

Happy anniversary.

Love forever,

BK

Ebook: ISBN: 978-1-62649-225-7

riptidepublishing.com/titles/cloudy

When
Shadowless
makes slip in Temperance,
Byron Kae searches for a present for Dil. They don’t like being
ashore—everyone stares, and skytowns feel enclosed with their
jumble of platforms and people—but at least they have no need for
care on the narrow beams and swaying ladders. Byron Kae can’t
remember ever being afraid of falling, even when they had another
name, before they became who they are now. They could fly, if they
wanted, but they’re already wary of the way people look at them.
The way Dil had once, though he doesn’t any more. Hasn’t for a long
time.