Tears of Pandora- a Steampunk Short Story of the City of New Avalon

"That was absolutely lovely," Minerva said, turning into my arms and holding me tightly. "Thank you Timothy, it was so thoughtful of you!"

I held her, and tried to smile back. It hurt in only the way that a facsimile of the real thing can hurt. A contortion of the face that comes by force rather than a natural flexing brought on by joy. I squeezed her, adding a flourish to my masquerade.

"I knew how you'd been missing the theater, so I thought you deserved a present," I told her. The smile grew, if possible, wider and she lifted herself up on her toes to kiss me.

"You are perhaps the most thoughtful husband in the whole city," she said, linking her arm through mine as we walked again. It felt like a manacle over my wrist, her head a warm, sick weight on my shoulder. We walked slowly, our steps flat on the cobbles as we made out way across the border and into Wrightman's Circus. Most of the stores were closed, steel veils rolled down like the lids of righteous sleepers. There were still public houses and eateries open, places where those that worked with metal and wood came to buy from those who worked with yeast and wine. The neat streets were clean, and aside from the occasional bawdy song they were quiet. A place where a hard day's labor and the smell of sweat lingered on the street, sweetened with sawdust and a touch of copper.

At the third crossing we turned north, and it was as if with that simple wind shift we'd entered another world. The storefronts here were just as closed, but fires burned in many of the windows like the over-active dreams of madmen in fitful sleep. Smoke rose from chimneys in a myriad of colors and scents, with occasional sparklers of light erupting into the sky like fleeing dragons. The businesses that were still open offered anything you could want, and several things you couldn't. Potions to bring good dreams and tonics to cure unhappiness. Salves that had been made with quicksilver that were guaranteed to bring you flawless skin and jewelry that would win the fairest heart at a price any pauper could afford. Alchemist's Alley, where the streets were occasionally paved with gold until the chemical bonds fell apart and where only the skeptical and shrewd could escape without buying even a single, small dream in the hopes of it turning out to be genuine.

Minerva and I made our way to my small shop, closed and dark like a gap in an otherwise bright smile along the street, and we walked up to the second floor. The trip home hadn't been long, but I felt wearied from it. I looked at Minerva, who brushed aside a perfectly curled ringlet of her dark hair and gazed at me with her warm brown eyes. It was a look of happiness and innocence, and of complete contentment that I was there with her. I couldn't meet that gaze for long; I knew that she was play acting even if she didn't.

I'd barely entered when Minerva busied herself in taking my outer clothes, deftly sliding my hat from my head and taking my coat. It was an affectionate gesture, and I felt the tips of her silk gloved fingers stroke the back of my neck. Something that had once sent a bolt of lightning through me that now made a sick thing clench in my guts. I turned to light a lamp, the crackle of an electric spark like applause from a long way off before it flared into light.

"Timothy," Minerva called, her eyes slightly downcast and a blush on her pale cheeks. "Would you come to bed?"

For a moment I couldn't breathe. She stood there in the soft light, resplendent in her finest gown with desire burning on her cheeks. I could smell her perfume, and the light, womanly scent of her under it. My mouth grew dry, and for just a moment I wanted to believe it all. To just close my eyes and forget and take everything at face value. But I could not, and I'd lived in Alchemist's Alley too long to do otherwise. I smiled at her, trying to scrape up any ounce of truth and love I had left for it.

"In a moment dearest," I said, loosening my shirt collar. "Let me get us something to drink, and I'll be in shortly."

Minerva turned, and I could see the small smile on her lips that I'd once spied only from secret glances and in the darkness where she thought no one would see. The one that said she had something planned. I shivered again and walked into the small kitchen. I took down two glasses and poured a generous draught of the strong liquor that was a jealously guarded secret of the Ferntree Brewery. It was was thick, and perhaps more importantly it was a dark green and tasted of licorice and spearmint. I glanced over my shoulder once like a journeyman thief, and then took a smaller bottle from another cabinet. I had thought my hand would shake, but instead it was as calm and steady as if I were mixing solvents for a once weekly order. I replaced the bottle and stirred the glass before taking them both and heading to the bedroom a moment later.

Minerva was on the bed, reclining and looking off to one direction as if lost in her thoughts. Gone was the fine, blue gown and her demure cap. Her dark hair was let loose in a cascade of inky blackness, and she was covered by little more than dressing gown that was woven of gossamer and moonbeams. Light bled in from between the window slats to show a mouth that looked stained with blood, a small pool of lies surrounded by the pure white of her pale skin. She slowly turned to look at me, and as she did her tongue darted out over her lips. The smile she gave me now was not soft or subtle, and it spoke volumes.

"You're still dressed, Timothy," Minerva said. Her voice had grown a little huskier, and her dark eyes burned as she watched me. The gaze was fever hot, an accusation that lit on my skin like embers from a forge. I'd seen it almost every night now, and there was no escaping it.

"A problem soon to be remedied, I assure you my love," I said, extending one glass towards her. She took it and sipped, eyes still on me. I took a drink from my own glass. It tasted like sweet poison. As I opened my shirt I extended my glass, and we toasted. Then, eager to move forward, Minerva let the whole contents of her drink slide into her mouth and she swallowed.

I held my breath and watched her. Minerva took a deep breath, her chest swelling out, and she blinked as if surprised. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came from her numbing lips. She reached out, perhaps to set the glass down, and dropped it. It landed heavily on the rug, and rolled towards the wall. I watched as Minerva's eyes unfocused slightly as she lost her balance and fell backwards on the bed.

I didn't speak, I could barely breathe, but I climbed atop the bed and looked down at her. She was beautiful, as perfect as she had been before this had all happened. Before the madness had crept into my soul and lead me to poison hers. I kissed her cheek, and I could feel the warm life in her like a banked coal. I reached out slowly, and I cupped a hand over her mouth while I pinched her nose closed.

It was short, and swift. Her body barely knew what was happening, and she only jerked once as her lungs tried to laconically draw in air. The sedative had been enough, and she'd taken it so quickly that she had been lost in a waking dream before I'd ever touched her. But she watched me, her eyes filled with that same joy that always came to her face when she recognized my own. I forced myself to watch as all that love drained from her eyes, and left nothing behind but the glassy, empty stare without even the smoke of the snuffed lamp left behind. I took my hands off of her and looked at them. Not a tremor; they were just eager dogs willing to follow the commands of their master. No matter how disturbed he had become or what he would make them do.

I stepped away from Minerva, and from the bed that I would never sleep in again. I took her glass and mine to the sink, and I washed them carefully. No bile crept up my throat, and nothing assailed my senses. There was just an emptiness, as if everything that had once been inside of me had been burned up. The yawning cavity was now all that I had left, and it could be filled by nothing no matter how beautiful or terrible it was. I reclaimed my hat and coat, and took a small valise downstairs to my shop.

I pulled aside the secondary work bench that I never used and revealed a safe built low into the wall. I turned the tumblers, and I could feel the heavy lock give way beneath the combination. Inside there was only enough money to last me the rest of the month, the deeds to my shop and home, and forced to the back like a repugnant memory was a small flask and a leather bound journal. I packed the money and the items into the bag, and I left the deeds. I wouldn't need them no matter what the rest of the night promised me.

Outside a chill had crept into the air, or at least I imagined that one had. I pulled the brim of my hat low and walked briskly, a man on business despite the late hour. I walked South, down the Alley until I'd reached the fashionable areas where the hill began. The places that made the impossible for those who could afford the expensive. Unbreakable glassware that kept its beauty, dark wood that would stand up to iron and other pieces of magic and fairy tale made reality through science and art. It was quieter there, as those who worked at these shops rarely lived there as well. Such was the benefits of patronage.

The shop I sought was an aggressively ugly property that sat like a lopsided midden heap that had been decorated and gilded to the point that you could almost overlook its poor design. The windows were wide and breezy, the doors always slightly ajar. Even out in the street scents battled one another for the attention of the nostrils; jasmine, rose, honeysuckle and on the list went. The place smelled of romance, and unless you paid very close mind you wouldn't recognize the scent of fear sweat beneath it. I went in the front doors, a small chime announcing my presence.

"Well, if it isn't Timothy Faust," a voice said from behind the counter. I turned, and between the flowers and the bottled fragrances in cut glass bottles I saw a long beak of a nose. It lead to a face that looked like a balding vulture, all done up in a high collar and dinner jacket to look respectable. His tone was cordial, even respectable, but his eyes were wary, and beady behind his spectacles. "What brings you up the hill at this late hour? Find that you need a little gift to keep your well bred wife satisfied, eh?"

"It's business actually, Mr. Caldwell," I said, turning to the stoop-shouldered shop owner. As I came closer he stared at me, looking me up and down once before he shook his head.

"You should have come in the side door like all the other whores and beggars boy," he said, his mouth pulled down into a sour face. "People see a fright like you walking into my shop it will be bad for business."

"And business is bad enough as it is, I understand," I said, my smile tight and sharp. "I believe that I have something that will change all of that for you."

Caldwell was silent for a long moment, his mouth pulled into a tight, white line. I could see the gall rising up in his throat, but at the same time he was curious. And perhaps just a little bit desperate.

"Shutter the doors boy," he said, the usually ingratiating tone gone from his voice as he shuffled out from behind the counter. "This had better be worth my time."

I did as asked and then walked into the back room of the shop. If the front was a gilded cage displaying fine perfumes and cologne like prized falcons and exotic parrots, then the back was the stoney aerie where those birds were painted their dazzling colors. Rows of carefully cultivated plants grew under skylights, and a long table with several stools took up the center of the room. Racks of bottles and ungents lined the walls, along with a few heavy tomes that were no doubt the trade recipes. Caldwell had already seated himself and he was watching me like a truculent child daring a magician to amaze him.

"You may advertise that the scents in your windows will make a man, or a woman, irresistible to their heart's desire," I began. "But you and I both know that isn't true."

"Of course it isn't," Caldwell spat. "If it was I'd be a rich man by now. Likely have my own pretty young wife who had poor sense enough to marry me, eh?"

"It wasn't poor sense that caused Minerva to give up her life Uptown and marry me," I said, stumbling only a little bit over her name. I reached into my valise and I took out the flask, now only half full, and set it on the table between us. "It was this."

Caldwell leaned very carefully forward, his neck stretching as he examined the bottle. It was simple glass, and inside it swirled a noxious looking liquid that glinted like a swamp stream with gold in its depths. He reached for the stopper, and then thought better of it as he looked at me. His gaze was serious now, and there was a glimmer in it as the carrion feeder in the man sensed an opportunity.

"And you expect me to believe that the owner and proprietor of Faust's Fancies conjured from the depths of his extensive imagination and limited education a tincture that will sway the heart and win the mind of anyone you set your eyes on?" Caldwell asked me. I shook my head once, slowly.

"No," I said, laying the small journal next to the flask. "Not I. But someone that desperately needed to leave the city who wanted to pass this burden on to someone else. For a price."

Caldwell snatched up the journal in his claw-like hands and turned through the pages. I knew them all by now, covered in a spidery, ungraceful but definitely feminine hand. A book that recorded all the thoughts of a woman with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a romantic. I saw when Caldwell found her name because his eyes widened perceptibly.

"Margaret Mitchum?" He asked. "The Witch of Whately Place?"

"The same," I said. "She knew my father, and had known me when I was younger. She needed help, and was willing to give me this last secret of hers in exchange for it."

Caldwell was silent for another long moment, his eyes scrolling through the book. Despite her learned disposition, Margaret had been born to a miller and she had the plain look of stone that hadn't been worked to beauty. Her prose too had always been the straightforward descriptions of an engineer. One reason that her books, once her estate had burned down around her husband's ears and she had vanished, had become so highly coveted among those that didn't have enough trade secrets of their own. The formula, the research, was so basically written that a child with a chemistry set and a kitchen sink could make what was listed. As always Margaret had reached into the soul and had created the astonishing from the ordinary. But she'd been so preoccupied with the amazing thing that she'd made, she couldn't see that its unnatural heart beat with rotting meat that would corrupt the finest dreams. I saw that, just as I had, Caldwell stopped reading once the formula and the results were complete. He didn't continue onwards to the end of the journal. The place where Margaret had written her warning in an unsteady hand.

"So what is it then?" Caldwell asked.

"What is what then?" I asked him, my voice scraped raw and tired. Caldwell waggled the book at me.

"You're not stupid, Faust," he said. "I know you could make this. You have a sample right here, so why bring this to me? Does it not work, is that it?"

"It works," I said. I took a deep breath, and I smelled sweet jasmine. It made me think of Minerva, and all the nights I'd watched her. I'd snuck away from my responsibilities and worn holes in my shoes to catch a glimpse of her at the theater, or strolling the walks of the Gearbox Gardens near the wealthy blocks of the city. She'd seen me a time or two but she never remembered me, never felt anything. Never responded to the presents I'd sent her, or gave me so much as a hello when we passed. I remembered the desperation I'd felt, burning white hot as only someone that's young and stupid can feel it. My throat clotted with vomit, and my eyes felt like someone had rubbed hot cinders into them. "Perhaps too well."

"And what would you want for it, eh?" Caldwell asked, his eyes still on the book. "A small fortune for something that for all I know might be a fraud you cooked up out of a failed experiment, hmmm?"

I told him my price. Caldwell's eyes went truly wide, and he looked at me as if wondering after my health or my sanity. I didn't meet his eyes. All I could see was Minerva. See how love had filled up in her gaze, and how a flush had come to her skin whenever she'd seen me. How passion had overflowed her heart when we'd made love. How she'd left everything behind to come and marry me, to live down with the other half. How I had felt in her an echo of what beat in my own breast. And how I'd stared at that empty glass for hours while she slept by my side, wondering whether or not I was in a dream. And then later wishing that I had been.

"I can cover that right now," Caldwell said as he pushed back his stool and took up the flask and the journal. His hands were clutched around them as if they might try to escape. I followed him out to the main room and he opened up his cash box, counting out the coins and putting them in a velvet, draw string bag. He handed it to me, his polite and unctuous smile back on his thin lips. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, young Master Faust."

I weighed the gold in my hand for a moment. It was heavy enough that I could tell it was the real thing. I put the coins in my coat pocket, and then I spoke softly.

"You aren't going to listen Caldwell, but if you want my advice you'll never use that formula," I said. The look that the old scent monger gave me was wary, as if wondering on if he'd been swindled.

"And why is that?" He asked, still all politeness and gentile curiosity.

"Alchemists sell dreams, Caldwell. It's our stock in trade," I said. "But dreams can only live in the heart and in the mind. You can't make a dream happen because if you do you have to find the clay somewhere and reshape it to what you want. There's no illusion, no magic, and once you strip that away you've lost all the joy that it might have brought."

Caldwell just laughed politely, as if humoring a customer who had attempted a joke.

"What we sell here is lies, Faust," Caldwell said, his voice indulgent as he held the bottle up to the light. "And people will pay good money for a lie that fools them."

I paused at the door with my hand on the knob. I thought once more about truth and lies. I thought about all of the things you never knew until it was too late. I thought about passion and murder. And I thought that sometimes it was better to hope that someone might love you, than to know that they didn't and never could no matter what you did to make it happen. I smiled. It hurt in only the way a facsimile of the real thing could.



For other stories by Neal Litherland please refer to:

The Watchmaker's Daughter- In the 3rd installment of the New Avalon series a brilliant young woman unlocks the key to time itself. But there is a difference between observing time as it passes, and being able to see the pattern of its weave. A horrible, terrible difference.
Dead Man's Bluff- James Garnett was just a wandering gambler, who made sure that luck never figured in his deals. But all of that changed one day when the luck he didn't believe in ran out, and his past caught up with him.
Love is a Broken Clock- In New Avalon science has risen to pinnacles never before dreamed of. But in the Grates, the low quarter where madness pollutes the engines and equations, anything is possible. Even true love.
Monster- A short introduction to a broader world. In a world where monsters live in the dark places of the world those who hunt them should take great care, lest they become something infinitely worse.