Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (44 page)

“How'd that go?”
he asked me as I came inside.

“How do you
think?”

“Come and sit
down.”

“I’m sorry. He had
no right to speak to you like—“

“He'll get over
his tantrum. And perhaps he had a point about the danger we have put you all
in.”

“Garbage! He was
talking like an absolute—“

“Shhh...please,
Mister Pocket,” the Priest said, putting a finger to his lips. “No more anger.
We just now managed to calm the girl down a little.”

“Eh?”

Dolly was hunched
over in a corner, her back to us, with Jack and Quill on either side. She
seemed to be making a low sound, and I worried that she was weeping.

“Hey there,” I
said softly, walking to her. “Listen Dolly. Don't you worry about...ehhhh?”

She tumbled slowly
backward to the floor, giggling. Not weeping. Giggling. Wrapped in her arms and
upon her chest sat two extravagantly long-haired cats. Two white cats, one
coated on top with creamy orange, the other with black spots, and both
stretching little, bobbed tails that more resembled the end of a small rabbit.

“Adorable!” she
said.

“Where did...” I
began, before looking back to the Priest. “Ah, yes. I believe Dolly mentioned
that you keep cats.”

“Oh no,” Quill
said with a laugh. “They keep
him.
”

“Watch this,” Jack
said, getting up. He grabbed an old tablecloth from the room and threw it over
the captain's head as cover.

“Oh no!” Quill
called out in mock concern. “The Red Priest has disappeared!”

“No!” Jack added,
playing along. “Where did he ever go?”

The twin cats on
the Doll stopped their duet of purring immediately and ran over to where the
Priest stood in hiding.

“What?” I said.
“You're kidding me.”

“Wait,” Jack
snickered.

And then it
happened. Cat after cat after cat appeared from seemingly nowhere. They
appeared upon tables, down from rafters, from under furniture, and all moved in
congregation to a huddled mass before their hidden captain. They all began a
bothered cry for an appearance and, granting their wishes, the Priest revealed
himself. The small creatures all leapt upon him, delighted for his return.

“Wow,” I said.

“Popular, isn't
he?” Jack laughed. “Yeah, I tell ya, Pocket. You'd think he's carrying around
fish in his boots, the way they keep after him.”

The Red Priest
shrugged. “I can’t explain it any better than that.” He picked up the nearest
cat, a rather proper-faced lady cat, the very sort I've seen in dreams, and
began scratching her behind the ears. “It just happens whenever I enter town.”

“What happens?” I
asked.

“Strays,” Quill
said. “They just come out of the woodwork. Follow him around.”

“They
love
you!”
Dolly said in ultimate amusement, clapping her hands.

“They kept trying
to shadow me,” the Priest said. “Would run up into the
Lucidia
every
time I climbed aboard. After awhile, I stopped trying to shoo them away.”

“Gave up the good
fight?” I asked.

“Don't say it like
that!” Dolly said to me. “Don't make the poor things sound like enemies.
They’ve had a hard enough day, I’m sure, dealing with the crash!”

“Retracted,” I
said with a laugh. I wish I could say that the production of laughter from my
body was completely genuine, but that sadly wasn't so. It’s not that I
disagreed with the Doll's argument, but just that my wounded pride was still
clinging to Kitt's bitter words. I told myself that I was a man of mettle too
strong to be cut to ribbons by one abrasive rant, and that Kitt was probably
just speaking out of anger, anyway. I told myself this again and felt even
worse for dwelling on it.

I didn’t say a lot
else for the remainder of our meeting in the captain’s cabin. Instead, I
watched with a smile as Dolly and the others cooed over the Red Priest’s mob of
cats.

The Red Priest’s
mob of cats. The concept is just so obviously, ridiculously un-pirate-like,
so…adorable and docile, that it still makes me want to laugh. But you know, in
that moment in the oil sea, the cats were to me an absolute godsend. They
brought levity, if only for a moment, to the sinking ship, and I couldn’t have
been more grateful. Perhaps those resilient, sky-faring felines, which so
reminded me of the cats that oft fill my dreams, were of some magical ilk.
Maybe they were the very same from my dreams and I had somehow summoned them to
lift the spirits of those around me. Heh, that’s it. Magic familiars.

I glanced at the
Doll, her slender fingers weaving through the fur like she had practiced the
act for years. Just maybe she was a familiar as well, kindred to the cats,
having spent just as much time waltzing through my dreams. Yeah, that’s it. A
clockwork cat. I sketched such a thought in my head, picturing the whimsical
girl smiling with a set of gilded cat-ears bolted to the sides of her head, a
long fabricated tail swaying behind her in place of a turnkey.

I felt momentarily
amused while thinking on these thoughts, but Kitt’s words again invaded,
prompting another nosedive into sadness.

But, as I’ve said,
I remained quiet, choosing not to give my wounded pride a voice. Instead, I
tucked away my fallen mood and tried my best to maintain a casual and upbeat
appearance for the others, not wanting to risk breaking the fragile
cheerfulness that was sustaining my company’s collective morale. I listened
like a student as they all discussed the cats, the ship, pleasant little
anecdotes, and possible spices that the Doll might wish to employ in her
culinary experimentation. Madame B never returned to the proceedings. Neither,
as expected, did Kitt. For the best, I thought. Best they nurse their
temperaments privately. When the talks were coming to a close, the Priest
rubbed his beard and excused himself to check on his lady. His devoted cats
followed suit. A moment later, the sounds of something shattering—I'm guessing
ceramics plates thrown by a woman not yet fully recomposed—sent Hack-Jack and
Quill racing out to assist.

And the Doll and I
were alone once more.

She looked at me,
smiled. I looked at her, smiled. She frowned and told me to stop lying.

“Excuse me?” I
said in confusion.

“Stop pretending
to be happy,” she said. “It's irritating.”

“You assume I'm
putting on a pretense?”

“I
know
you
are.”

“Oh, are you
weren't a moment ago?”

“Of course not! I
was
upset. Then I got to play with some cats. I became happy again.”

“Doesn't seem like
it.”

“Because you're
acting so false. It's souring my mood.”

“Fine, be sour.
You're in great company.” I kicked my boot against a small rubbish bin in the
corner. It tumbled over, spreading old scraps and tobacco ash across the floor.
I swore and bent down, using my sleeve as a push broom, sweeping the debris back
into its container.

“You're in top
form as always, Pocket,” I muttered to myself.

“All right,” Dolly
finally said. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“What did he say
to you out there?”

I rose and wiped
the ash from my fingers to my pants. Looking away, I moved to the windows.

“What does Kitt
ever say?” I responded, a loaded bitterness under my tongue. “He just stated
the very obvious.”

The girl's only
response was a drawn out sigh, and I returned it to her as I stood before the
sunken view. I pressed my palms against the frosted glass. The thick black on
the other side bubbled and slid, eternally dark as midnight, as it clouded and
dirtied the sea. I left my breath on the glass as souvenir and looked out as
far as I could through the slop. I couldn't even see my face in the reflection
of the oily soup, the spilt blood of great industry.

“What are you
looking for out there?” the Watchmaker's Doll asked.

“Myself.”

“Oh. Any signs?”

“No.” The white of
my breath on glass faded to transparency, leaving no visible evidence that any
boy ever stood against a wall of spotty black and sent air through his throat.

“I'm sorry,” she
said.

“It's all right,”
I replied. “It was a vain conquest.”

I turned my back
to the window and was stunned to see the Doll holding a skinny dressing mirror
before me, gold-framed and well-polished.

“Put that back,” I
said with a halfhearted laugh.

“What do you see
in the glass?” she asked.

“What do you
think? A reflection.”

“Of?”

“The same silly
sot that's always there.”

Dolly nodded and
put down the mirror.

“Well,
there!
”
she said. “We've found you right here. You can stop looking around outside.”

“I'd like to think
that I could find myself out there as well.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “Dolly,
it's been a long time since I've had answers to those sort of questions.”

“You're quite
dramatic.”

“I know.”

“Well, that's
just...”

“What?”

Her lips began to
quiver.

“Dolly, what?” I
said.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh
my!”

“Hey, relax.”

“The oil! All of
that dirty oil!”

“Hey, who's being
dramatic now?”

“No, look!” she
shouted, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me back around toward the windows.

“Well,” I said,
“I'll be damned.”

Glistening golden
shapes appeared and disappeared through the petrol, little circular sparks that
swam like metallic fish upward to the surface. One of the shapes slid
momentarily up against the glass.

“It's a gear,” I
said.

“Mine!” Dolly
gasped. “Those are
my
gears!”

My mind moved back
to the Doll's impaling, to the flow of shiny metal she spilt over the side of
the
Lucidia.
  “I suppose they are. My, my.”

Dolly ran
immediately up to the glass and began pushing her fist against the spot
opposite of the gear.

“Hey,” I said.
“What are you trying to do?”

“Break it!”

“Break it?!? Are
you mad?”

“I need it!”

“No, no. You're
fine. The Priest replaced each of them. You'll be—”

“They're mine!”
she shouted, punching harder. I quickly caught her fist.

“I'm serious! Cut
that out! You'll injure your hand!”

“I don't care!”

“So what, you're
going to break that glass, flood this chamber over a few pieces of—”

“Yes! Now let me
go!”

“No chance.”

She struggled
against me, tried to twist her hand from my grip. I caught her opposite
shoulder and tried to hold her in place until she calmed down. She kicked me
and I fell, pulling her down with me. The kicking continued, so I pinned her
leg down with my thigh and clutched both of her tiny hands to the carpeted
floor. She wrapped her free leg around my torso and attempted to pry me off. We
battled for awhile, spinning and twisting and knocking over many of the
captain's displayed possessions.

“You don't
understand!” she cried, sliding against my rib cage. “Those are mine! Let me go
so I can punch you!”

“Why the hell
would I do that?” I said back, digging my knee into the carpet.

“Because you don't
fight girls!” she yelled. “You let them win!”

“Who's fighting?”
I retaliated. “I'm just trying to keep you from destroying everything!”

“Then you're not
letting me win!”

We rolled and
pulled and gripped for awhile longer, and just when I was about to finally
concede, she gave in, dropping her shoulders as I arched over her. She breathed
heavily, for reasons unknown, and looked up at the dark strands of my hair that
hung above. I could faintly hear the ticking inside of her as her chest lifted
and fell in rhythm.

Carefully, gently,
I released her right hand and with my thumb, the only finger not sullied by
tobacco ash, I wiped away a spot of smeared makeup from below her eye. When did
she start wearing makeup? Apart from the lipstick she had received on the
zeppelin tour, I’d never noticed her receive or apply such luxuries. Tracing
her soft facial features with my eyes, I noticed new, subtle touches of color
and shadow around her eyes as well. Must’ve been some of Alexia’s doing. At
least, that was the most logical—

I stopped,
realizing that the Watchmaker’s Doll seemed to notice that I was observing her,
so I quickly smiled in apology and spoke in a whisper.

“What is it,
Dolly? What's bothering you so much?”

“Those gears,” she
pouted, “they're mine.”

“So?”

“So, they're...me.
And I need them.”

I took a deep
breath and asked the inevitable.

“What did you have
in mind?”

The next thing I
knew, I was topside, standing at the railing and peering at a cluster of clock
gears poking up from the odorous sea.

“You’re kidding.”

“Hurry!” the Doll
said, hopping in place, her heels clicking like the keys of an electric
telegraph.

“Why are they
rising to the surface instead of sinking?”

“Who knows?” Dolly
said, clicking away. “Just get to it!”

“
I
know,”
the Red Priest offered, leaning cross-armed against a beam. “Or at least I have
a theory. I imagine they aren't
actually
rising and falling, but the
ship is. Sliding around in this bathtub. It's probably creating little waves,
shuffling the sunken debris about.”

“Don't call my
pieces 'debris!'” the girl said.

“My apologies.”

The Doll pouted
and stared at me. “Hurry now, please. Get my shiny pieces, okay?”

“I still don't
understand what you expect me to do,” I said with a shrug.

“Do I have to tell
you everything? That's not how men are supposed to—”

“Sure, sure. But
what, you want me to take a swim in that slop?”