Copperhead

Helen’s necklace warmed in response, grew hot. It felt like a smaller, more focused version of when she had touched the box herself and seen all the glimpses of the city.

She did not know what Grimsby was doing, but she knew that it clearly was not good for Millicent. Helen could think the best of Grimsby and wish it was something to roust Millicent from her coma—but she knew it was not. And all that remained to Helen was to shove her manicured nails into the glass window, trying to prise it all the way open and get in to stop it.

But before she could get the window all the way open, the sounds and sights of the box doubled, expanded, grew sudden and violent, raging over her with such force that she could only cling to the window, staring at things that were not real.

She was plunged into a waking dream, a feverish world where the city flickered behind her eyes in shades of blue and white and black. There were so many sights and sounds she could not make sense of it. Until one sound, one pair of sounds, seemed closer than the rest, and she let everything go, let it all float away, until she could pick out the echo of those two talking, like a scratchy gramophone.

<<You’ll let your hatred of dwarvven destroy us all.>>

<<I’m finishing the task I’ve taken up. I am the only one who can do what needs to be done.>>

<<You’re mad.>>

<<Aren’t we all?>>

They were like the not-voice she had heard three nights ago at Grimsby’s meeting. They didn’t even seem to be words, really, though she heard them as words. More like feelings, colors, intuition.

<<How far can you get? Can you find all of you?>>

<<Not yet. Need more juice.>>

<<There’s ten lined up for tomorrow.>>

<<Need more now.>>

In the warehouse, there in her half-waking state, Helen suddenly knew what that meant. She willed her feet forward, but as in dreams they would not go. <<Millicent,>> she shouted, and somehow it seemed to break and fall into that ocean of sound and hue that was all around them. She was part of it as she called <<Millicent! No, no, no!… >>

There was a horrible sucking feeling. That horrible copper machine was using fey to power it, just as Grimsby had said at the meeting. And right now the fey it was using was the fey in Millicent’s face. It was pulling it right out of her—and with it her life. She could not sustain it—Millicent had already wasted away so much in the three days of fey-induced coma that there was hardly anything left to her at all. She had nothing with which to fight.

And Helen said to the sound, <<I’ll fight for her then.>>

But she was small, far too small, and far too late. The main voices could not even hear her tiny words as she forced her frozen feet up the wall one centimeter at a time. She could feel the machine reaching into the bit of fey in Millicent, and spreading out across the city. For a moment Helen saw the city like a grid, with a few random little bits extra lit up here and there, few and far between. There was a strange pressurized feeling, as if those few random bits were struggling to coalesce somehow. But Millicent was too weak. <<I’ll fight for her. I will.>>

And then the storm of movement finally took the last drop it could from Millicent, and imploded in a spot of grey light. The bits did not coalesce. The city faded out.

<<Never mind,>> came one of the voices as the grey light vanished, <<it will all work when we have more power.>>

Everything faded and then Helen was looking at Grimsby in the center of the room, tall and stoic, examining Millicent as if she were merely a failed experiment.

Helen clutched her necklace, willing him not to see her.

As if in response he looked over to where she was. But all that happened is the air seemed to suddenly go out of him, like a popped balloon. He sagged, a ventriloquist’s dummy gone slack, limp in every joint.

“Millicent,” he said, softly, brokenly. “This is all my fault.…”

He reached down and gently unclasped the rubber funnel. Helen saw Millicent’s face then, blue-white as if all the air had gone out of her. The funnel and black rubber tube fell to the ground, one in a sea of tubes. Her eye traced the tubes back to their cages, where the funnels hung on the outside of the iron bars. With dawning horror she realized what the oval mountings actually were. She looked around—yes. There was one without the funnel.

Rows and rows and rows of them, that’s what Jane had said, looking at you with their black blank eyes.

It was a woman’s face. The original face of someone who was now startlingly beautiful, like all of them.

Calendula Smith.

The masks were placeholders for where the women were to go. This was his machine, this is why it had a hundred tubes leading to a hundred cages. It will all work when we have more power.

What will work?

With great effort Helen tore her gaze away from that oval mask, that caricatured skin, as ugly as the current Calendula was beautiful. She remembered Jane telling her how the rows and rows of masks looked when they still hung in Mr. Rochart’s house, their skin sagging and wrinkled from drying on the wall.

Helen’s eyes were tight as she watched Grimsby delicately close the eyelids of his wife. She did not know what to do. Did he care? Was this an accident? What was he?

He sank to his knees and buried his head in the long trail of dress that hung over the side of the bed like a torn banner, fraying in the wind.

Helen stood up, her eyes stinging, and pushed herself away from the window.

She pushed herself through the numb cold and black night, back through the shadows toward the dwarvven underground. There near the bookstore she stood out of sight, and waited for the next black car to drive down the block. They were circling. They knew where the dwarvven were. She did not know what they were waiting for, but she knew if she went down to the underground, she would be found with them.

She went.

She went through the bookstore and down the stairs. She had seen Millicent go and so she went through the underground tunnels to the dance to find Rook. She did not fully think through why being miserable and lost meant she wanted to find Rook, she just went and stood in that gay mad atmosphere of dwarvven who were going to damn well enjoy the dance of the last night on earth and she saw Rook dancing.

He was dancing with a girl and Helen’s heart thudded to her knees.

He was dancing with a girl, slim and lovely and so petite that Helen felt like a big oaf, even though she and Rook were of a height, and she was slim herself.

She was there and he was dancing with another and that was the way it was going to be forever and ever, all because Helen had once told herself that the true things inside didn’t matter, and that you could tell your heart what to do and it would obey.

She knew how wildly wrong she had been and she was stuck.

The music pressed in on her as they danced, laughing. Helen turned to a dwarvven man next to her and said things, all manner of things, let them tumble out of her mouth, and she had no idea what any of them were a second after she said them, because her heart was breaking. She was witty, she was bright, she was a whirl of apple green ruffled voile. She made the man laugh, head thrown wildly back, and another dwarvven man brought her a bathtub gin, and Helen made him laugh, too. She let this one lead her into the dance, and she whirled around and around with the skills she had from a lifetime of tenpence dances, dances with Alistair, dances from every moment of her existence. The city could burst into blue flames and still Helen could dance.

The dance ended and Helen drew back, waving her gin glass as an excuse. “It’s not empty,” the man said,