Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

The Contessa turned, and upon seeing Miss Temple smiled with a grace and weariness that took Miss Temple by surprise.

“Go back inside, Celeste.”

Miss Temple did not move. She gripped the gun tightly. The Contessa saw the gun and waited.

“You are an evil woman,” shouted Miss Temple. “You have done wicked things!”

The Contessa merely nodded, her hair blowing for a moment across her face until with a toss of her head it flowed once more behind her. Miss Temple did not know what to do. More than anything she realized that her inability to speak and her inability to act were exactly how she felt when faced with her father—but also that this woman—this terrible, terrible woman—had been the birth of her new life, and somehow had known it, or at least appreciated the possibility, that finally she alone had been able to look into Miss Temple’s eyes and see the desire, the pain, the determination, and see it—see her—for what she was. There was too much to say—she wanted an answer to the woman’s brutality but would not get it, she wanted to prove her independence but knew the Contessa would not care, she wanted revenge but knew the Contessa would never admit her defeat. Nor could Miss Temple prove herself—overcome the one enemy who had always bested her effortlessly—by shooting her in the back, any more than she could have made her father care for her by burning his fields.

“Mr. Xonck and the Comte are dead,” she shouted. “I have sent Colonel Aspiche to kill the Duke. Your plan has been ruined.”

“I can see that. You’ve done very well.”

“You have done things to me—changed me—”

“Why regret pleasure, Celeste?” said the Contessa. “There’s little enough of it in life. And was it not exquisite? I enjoyed myself immensely.”

“But I did not!”

The Contessa reached above her, the spike on her hand, and slashed a two-foot hole across the canvas gasbag. Immediately the blue-colored gas inside began to spew out.

“Go back inside, Celeste,” called the Contessa. She reached in the other direction and opened another seam, out of which gushed air as blue as the summer sky. The Contessa held on to the strut within this cerulean cloud, in her windblown hair and bloody dress a perilous dark angel.

“I am not like your adherents!” Miss Temple shouted. “I have learned for myself! I have seen you!”

The Contessa ripped a third hole in the slackening gasbag, the plume of smoke roiling directly at Miss Temple. She choked and shook her head, eyes stinging, and groped for the hatch. With one last look at the glacial face of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Miss Temple pulled the hatch shut and dropped with a cry to the slippery wheelhouse floor.

“We are sinking to the sea!” she shouted, and with an aplomb she scarcely noticed stepped past and over mangled bodies all the way down to the others, never once slipping on blood or nicking herself on the scattered broken glass. To her utter delight, Chang was on his hands and knees, coughing onto the floor. The spray around his lips was no longer red but blue.

“It is working…,” said Svenson.

Miss Temple could not speak, just glimpsing in the prospect of Chang alive the true depths of her grief at Chang being dead. She looked up to see the Doctor watching her face, his expression both marking her pleasure and vaguely wan.

“The Contessa?” he asked.

“She is bringing us down. We will hit the water at any moment!”

“We shall help Chang—Eloise, if you could take the bottle—while you attend to him.” Svenson looked over his shoulder at Roger Bascombe, sitting patiently on a settee.

“Attend to him how?” asked Miss Temple.

“However you like,” replied the Doctor. “Wake him or put a bullet through his brain. No one will protest. Or leave him—but I suggest choosing, my dear. I have learned it is best to be haunted by one’s actions rather than one’s lack of them.” He re-opened the hatch in the floor and sucked his teeth with concern. Miss Temple could smell the sea. Svenson slammed the hatch shut. “There is no time—we must get to the roof at once—Eloise!”

Between them they caught Chang’s arms and helped him up the stairs. Miss Temple turned to Roger. The dirigible shuddered, a gentle kick as the cabin struck a wave.

“Celeste—forget him!” shouted Eloise. “Come now!”

The airship shuddered again, settling fully onto the water.

“Wake up, Roger,” Miss Temple called, her voice hoarse.

He blinked and his expression sharpened, looking around him, taking in the empty room without comprehension.

“We are sinking in the sea,” she said.

“Celeste!” Svenson’s shout echoed down the stairs.

Roger’s eyes went to the pistol in her hand. She stood between him and the only exit. He licked his lips. The airship was rocking with the motion of the water.

“Celeste—” he whispered.

“So much has happened, Roger,” Miss Temple began. “I find…I cannot contain it…” She sniffed, and looked into his eyes—fearful, wary, pleading—and felt the tears begin in her own. “The Contessa advised me, just now, against regret—”

“Please—Celeste, the water—”

“—but I am not like her. I am not even like myself, perhaps my character has changed…for I am awash in regret for everything, it seems—for what has stained my heart, for how I am no longer a child…” She gestured helplessly at the carnage around them. “For so many dead…for Lydia…even poor Caroline—”

“Caroline?” asked Roger, a bit too suddenly, the words followed by an immediate awareness that perhaps this wasn’t the proper subject, given the circumstances, and the pistol. Miss Temple read the hesitation on his face, still grappling in her heart with the fact she had been found wanting twice in Roger’s rejection—first as a matter of course to his ambition, and then as a companion—and a lover!—to Caroline Stearne. This was not what she intended to talk about. She met his eyes with hesitations of her own.

“She is dead, Roger. She is as dead as you and I.”

Miss Temple watched Roger Bascombe take in this news, and understood that his next words were spoken not out of cruelty or revenge, but merely because she now stood for everything in his life that had thwarted him.

“She is the only one I ever loved,” said Roger.

“Then it is good that you found her,” said Miss Temple, biting her lip.

“You have no idea. You cannot understand,” he said, his voice bitter and hollow with grief.

“But I believe I do—” she began softly.

“How could you?” he shouted. “You never could understand—not me, nor any other, not in your pride—your very insufferable pride—”

She desperately wished Roger would stop speaking, but he went on, his emotions surging like the waves that slapped against the cabin walls.

“The wonders I have seen—the heights of sensation—of possibility!” He scoffed at her savagely, even as she saw tears in his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks. “She pledged herself to me, Celeste—without even knowing who I was—without a care that we must die! That all is dust! That our love would lead to this! She knew even then!”

His hands shot out and shoved her hard, knocking her back into the cabinet. He stepped after her, arms flailing as he continued to yell.

“Roger, please—”

“And who are you, Celeste? How are you alive—so cold, so small of heart, so absent of feeling, without surrender!”