The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 27

When I wake up, I ache all over as if my bones have been broken and hastily reassembled. Something is breathing under me. At first, I think I’m lying on a great, billowing bed. Something takes slow, steady breaths, breaths that inhale the world and let it back out again. The Beast in the Well sleeps deep beneath me. For a moment, I think I might have reached my destination after all, that everything is safe, that victory is assured.

Then, I smell something familiar—the must of old books, dust, forgotten displays. My eyes don’t want to open, but I sense the light going by in a circuit. I manage to peel my eyes open. I’m in the storage basement in the Museum, that room where Bayne and I first kissed. I’m lying on a pallet and an old blanket from Father’s office.

The illusion of breathing remains just for a moment. Even the walls stretch and snore. Then the light passes the door and a paralytic field glimmers, the wards snug inside the door frame. Everything returns to normal. Except nothing is normal anymore.

A tall shadow passes, so familiar the cry is out of my throat before I can hold it back. “Father!”

He looks in at me through the shimmering field. His eyes are sad, so sad.

“Father, let me out!”

He shakes his head. “Charles told me you would try to use your witchery against me in any way you could. I can hardly believe it of you, my little girl.”

There’s so much sadness in his voice that I get to my feet and go to the door. I walk as if I’ve never used my feet before. I look down. I’m still in my torn stockings. My gown is tattered and streaked with dirt and blood. And I remember. I remember the Manticore’s death, changing into the Phoenix with the Heart safely in my own chest, the Guard coming after me in a twisted cloud.

The field is so strong that it snaps and hisses at me the closer I come. There’s definitely no way I’d be able to trip this field as I inadvertently did with the Sphinx’s field. This one is a hundred times stronger. I stumble back, but I put out my hand toward Father.

“Father.” I swallow the sharpness that rises in my throat. I won’t apologize, nor will I beg. Charles—or rather, the Grue inside him—has been the puppet master all along. The puppet, even if he is my father, won’t suddenly grow a will of his own. But I try to appeal to the inner recesses of his heart. “Father, I may be a witch, but I am still your daughter. I’m still your Vee.”

He puts his hand up—the mirror image of mine, only larger, more gnarled. For a moment, for a single breath, I think he might free me. But instead he shakes his head. “Minta warned me you would turn out just like your mother. I tried to dampen your abilities, tried to shelter you from them while giving you at least some rein to enjoy what you loved. But Minta warned me. And I wouldn’t listen.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “Father? What do you mean?”

He comes back to look at me through the glowing field. “Your mother was a Tinker witch, an opera singer who managed to hide her true origins behind the beauty of her voice. I didn’t realize until I was so deep in her enchantment that I couldn’t find my way out. I thought I could make you different with her gone. I thought if I just brought you up Logically, you would never stray. You were my Great Experiment, my attempt to prove, if to no one else but myself, that Tinkers could be normalized into Society. And I’ve failed. I’ve failed utterly.”

I can’t think of any Doctrine of Logic that could save me. Not that I believe in it anymore, anyway. It’s not that the news is so very shocking—why else would they hide everything about my mother but the one thing that took away her power?—but the perspective is so very skewed. There is no language to express the wrongness of it. I don’t even want to think about what must have happened to my mother, trapped as I am in a society that feared and reviled her gifts.

There is nothing more to say.

Father slouches off down the corridor, back toward the main stair.

I pace until my feet remind me that they’re incapable of such abuse. I return to my pallet, thirst turning my throat and mouth to nettles. They haven’t left any water or food for me. This is not a good sign.

I think about what he said about my mother, how Aunt Minta never wanted to discuss her. I was told she died in childbirth, something which is still all too common. Aunt Minta had moved in to help care for me and Father had never remarried, his heart too broken. But now I’m sure there’s more than I will ever know.

I press my hand against my chest. The Heart ticks under a thin layer of skin. When I touch it, the skin dissolves and the Heart rests in my palm, singing out its ancient song. I look at it, trying to understand who made it, where it came from, how it came to be. There are characters I can’t read incised into its metal chambers. All I know is that it, like me, yearns to be in the place it most belongs.

Ironic that I thought the Museum was where I belonged and now I’m imprisoned here. I frown, remembering how I soared toward New London, as I looked down and saw my purpose laid out so clearly before me. And now I know I’m only a few feet from the goal. A powerful field and a rusting iron gate are all that separate me from it, but they’re enough to allow Charles to win and everyone else—the people of New London, the Elementals, the Tinkers—all to lose.

A slurring step. Charles. I press the Heart against my own again. My skin moves to accept it. Power surges through my limbs and I wonder . . . I wonder.

He is there in the doorway with his cursed jar.

The field dissipates.

I try one more time.

“Charles,”—I can’t help but keep addressing him that way, even if he’s not really Charles anymore—“what is it that you want? Is it really worth destroying everything for?”

He half-smiles. “Amusing that you should ask. We want the same things, little witch. Adventure, exploration, a means for our legacy to go on. It’s only just circumstances that Charles found me in my lair first and offered me a bargain I couldn’t refuse. In exchange for his body, I give him power. And soon, when he’s cut that Heart out of your chest and placed it in the Etheric Engine, he’ll give me what I crave.”

“And what is that?” I say. The Grue’s words coming through Charles’s lips and tongue make me shudder. His menace and cunning are darker and more ancient than any Elemental I’ve ever come across. I curse Pedant Mervold in the back of my brain for ever thinking he could contain this thing.

“New worlds. New bodies. New powers. A place free of the machinations of my kin, where I will no longer be confined to some stinking marshland eating muskrats in the dark.”

“But in your greed you are destroying everything!” I say. Charles’s hand closes on my upper arm like cold iron.

He nods. “Some things must be sacrificed. It was a shame to destroy my sisters, but their energies were necessary to increase my power. You are not the first, little witch, and you certainly won’t be the last.”

I start to summon energy to defy him, but he sends a deep, cold shock down through my arm.

“Naughty, naughty,” he says, rattling the jar to make sure I see it. I hear the Grue laughing underneath his words and I feel sick. “Up you go, now.” He pushes me before him. I don’t try to dissuade him any longer. I must figure out how I’ll get the cursed jar out of his hands so that it’s no longer a threat to any of us, how I’ll be able to run back down and get through the gate on my own.

The Heart whispers in me that I have the power to do all things. I’m comforted by that knowledge, even if it turns out to be ultimately false.

We enter the old observatory. The Empress is there with her daughter. I take one look at Olivia and her sealed lips. This at least is something easy I can do.

Open, I whisper. The threads unravel and fall as dark dust from her mouth. Though she still says nothing, her eyes are shining as she watches Charles push me toward my doom. I look at her mother and then I understand completely.

Hiding inside the Empress’s skin is a shriveled old man barely holding onto life. A warlock so ancient he saw the dawn of the New Creation with Saint Tesla. John Vaunt. The First Emperor and father of Athena. He is still alive, hiding inside a woman’s skin. And he wants his Heart.

And this is why the girl, the Princess Olivia, has been bound from speaking. She saw early on what hid behind the Empress’s stiff skirts. Is she truly the Emperor’s daughter? Whether she is or not, I see her heart. And she is far more fit to rule than that wizened thing ever was.

My Aunt Minta is there and Lucy and other people I don’t know—Pedants, Refiners, Lords . . . But why is the new Lord Grimgorn not with his wife? Perhaps he’s still so angry at me that he’s glad I’ll soon be gone.

The Etheric Engine looms over me like a great octopus. Its tentacles lie quiet beneath the dome; the Waste stirs inside its nevered beaker. I stop.

“Give me the Heart,” Charles says from behind me. “And we can end this ridiculous charade.”

“No,” I say softly.

Charles’s lips curl. The Empress’s dead eyes glint.

“If I have to, I will strap you to that table and cut the Heart out with my own hands. I know you’re hiding it under your skin. Give it here or else prepare yourself to suffer.”

“Do what you like,” I say. “Just know that the Waste will sweep through this place faster than it did at Virulen. All will die if you use the Heart in this Experiment, I promise you.” I’m stalling, hoping something will occur to me. If there was a way to control the Waste, to stop it from leaving the observatory and swallowing all of New London, I might be able to stop Charles and the Empress at one go.

“What are the promises of a witch?” Charles laughs. “I will have the Heart. And your soul. And everyone’s in this room if I so choose.”

Then he begins to chant. The Waste whirls; the tentacles of the strange Engine rise. There’s a noise like a clap of lightning and then a fan of light opens just under the mouth of the Engine. Things move in it—ribbons of roads, people in odd clothes. A peal of bells from some distant church echoes underneath the dome. I smell the breeze from an ancient world I’ve only heard of but never visited—Old London.

Charles laughs. “And now the Heart to speed me on my journey!” He reaches for me.

I hear the sound above the wildly ringing bells before he does. A thundering . . . the sound of hooves and wings and . . . song.

I want to laugh as the dome breaks above us. Tiles rain down and a huge, blocky face peers in at us. I glance at the grains of the Waste stirring, stirring, stirring in their beaker.

Charles’s gaze moves upward to meet that of the Giant glaring down at him.

And that’s when I do it. I reach forward and grab the horrid jar out of his slackening hands. Before I can think, with all the power coursing through my veins, I throw it to the ground.

Charles’s gaze returns to me, his eyes nearly white with terror. He screams.

It’s an echo of that day long ago when I unwittingly freed the sylphs with my growing magic. I don’t hear anything else because the release of souls nearly deafens me. They rise in a ghostly whirlwind, singing, screaming, crying, mumbling . . . so much noise I clap my hands over my ears. Their sound breaks the glass in the Engine. Together, the souls and the Waste whip up in a devilish dance. They sweep up people like matchsticks—I watch in horror as Lucy, Charles, my father, the Empress . . . all are thrown through the air like dolls. Olivia crouches under the orrery, holding to it for dear life. Aunt Minta I can’t see at all.

The portal to Old London sucks Charles and hordes of whistling souls toward it. I watch, horrified and helpless, as Charles grabs Lucy’s arm and drags her in before the portal claps shut like a fan.

The Giant sneezes above me like someone inhaling pepper. He frowns and retreats from the smashed dome.

And then Syrus and Bayne are beside me. Bayne’s grabbing my elbow and forcing me to run as the Waste begins to devour the observatory.

The last thing I see is Father lying and staring up at the falling cloud, his mouth open in terror before Bayne pushes me down the corridor and toward the stair.

“You must wake the Beast now,” he says. “He’s our only hope of stopping the Waste from spreading.”

“Father . . .” I say.

“He’ll have to find his own way. The best thing you can do now is return the Heart to its rightful owner.”

I nod, too breathless to form words. The Wyvern and Dragon hatchlings, freed at last from their long confinement in the Exhibit Hall, bow as we pass. But the sad plinth of the Sphinx remains empty. I still cannot believe the Grue destroyed her. Evidently, there are all kinds of greed.

We are down the stair and at the gate faster than I thought possible. The Heart beats out the time through my entire body. The Waste follows us in a black wave.

Bayne gets us through the gate with a burst of magic. “Into the tunnel!” he shouts.

I run until I can’t anymore. The jagged rock simply hurts too much and my feet refuse to move. Bayne scoops me up as if I weigh no more than a sylph. I’m embarrassed, deeply embarrassed, but I put my head against his neck for just one moment. I smell his wonderful smell and my heart, my true heart, aches at my own foolishness for casting that spell.

I feel the line of his shoulders and neck tense under my cheek. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. My throat is so dry I can barely speak.

“I am too,” he says.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

“If you will forgive me.”

I lift my head and look at him, but we’ve come to the stairs above the great pit. The breathing is so loud now, I can’t speak over it.

The stairs just end in a great open space that would terrify me if the Waste behind us didn’t terrify me more. Pipes run this way and that, but I can see the glimmer of golden scales petrified by time far beneath them. There’s a well, a space where the breathing hitches. And it’s below us, far, far below. Far deeper than any of us can reach.

“Down there,” I say.

Perhaps if I could be a bird again . . .

Bayne looks at me and shakes his head. I haven’t noticed how terribly pale he is until now. “I’m using all my energy keeping us safe from the Waste, blocking the tunnel against it,” he says. “You must get there yourself.”

Syrus says in a small voice, “I can do it. I can climb down and put it there. If you’ll give me the rope.”

I smile, remembering a day long ago when he started this whole mess by stealing that seemingly harmless toad.

I pass him the Heart. My chest, my whole body, feels hollow without it. I understand why everyone wants to keep it; its tremendous power is alluring. But it’s not mine. It has never belonged to any of us who stole or borrowed it. It belongs here, in this world, with this Beast.

Syrus shows me the characters incised on the heart. “Endurance,” he says.

I am stunned. He can read it. And if he can read that, I wonder what other mysterious texts he can read. I long for the Ceylon Codex with its strange Unnaturals, but it’s probably still in my room in Virulen, if it’s not been swallowed by dust.

I say what the Manticore said to me, “Heal this world.”

We take the rope that Bayne hands us and secure it to the railing. It falls down into the abyss. Syrus climbs down it like one of St. Darwin’s most agile apes. Bayne sinks to his knees, gritting his teeth. I can feel the pressure of the Waste bearing down on us, everything above dissolving—the push and pull between Unnatural forces and the dread disease of the black sands. I put a hand between Bayne’s shoulders, offering what power I can to hold the Waste at bay. I watch as Syrus vanishes into the well.

I close my eyes. The ticking sound of the Heart is lost under the weight of the building collapsing above us.

And then I hear it. Louder and ever louder. A chorus of clocks, as if the thousand clocks in the Tower were all ticking in unison in this one great chest. And then comes a great, belling chime.

It reverberates through the rock around us, driving it all back.

“Hold on!” Bayne shouts. And I only know what he means because I see him wrap an arm around the buckling railing.

The power courses under our feet and then we’re falling. Beneath us, emptiness turns to golden-scaled skin. My breath whooshes out of me as I make contact with flesh solid as stone, and claws clutch me, carrying me faster and faster up through the air, twisting like a bucking horse. I glimpse the sun rising over New London below us, but it’s no New London I’ve ever known. Streets are rising and being shaken off golden scales. The Tower teeters and falls from a great, horned head that turns and snaps at the Waste boiling over the walls and along the riverbank as if it’s little more than an annoying cloud.

Color spreads from where the Beast rises, from where all the Unnaturals return to their native places. And where they go, they push the Waste before them, until it recedes utterly beyond the horizon in the West. Even though it’s technically winter, it looks like spring.

But the bigger problem now is how to get off this ride before we die.

Farther up the bucking body, Syrus desperately clings to the metal chest, a stupid grin on his face at the sheer wonder of it all. I don’t know how much longer we’ll all be able to hold on. I see him put his cheek against the golden scales and whisper something. A shudder moves along the great frame, and then the scales slide against the ground and the Dragon gently turns to allow us to disembark.

He bows his horned head to me over his shoulder. This is exactly the creature I saw in the Ceylon Codex—horns, beard, cloudy fetlocks, and golden scales.

“Tianlong,” Syrus says softly. “Heavenly Dragon.”

The Beast smiles at that and I see his long iron teeth. Then he rockets straight up into the air, his body rippling like a gold banner in the sun until he’s out of sight.

“That would be one hell of a way to get back to Scientia,” Bayne observes.

I elbow him in the ribs.

And then I stop, because I don’t know if I have the right to do such a thing. Here at the beginning of a new world and the end of all the struggles of the last months, I find my heart is heavier than ever when I look into his eyes.