BOOK II: CITY oF LIGHT
Chapter 1. 108 Bowery Street - Monday, July 29nd, 1912
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was raised in a tower. She didn't have overly long hair nor a wicked step-mother holding her hostage, well, not precisely...she did have a mother who very much did not like her, and a wicked father, which was how she came to be alone in the tower. Attended to by the finest tutors in literature, mathematics and politics, the girl was given all she could possibly want save for one thing...love. Despite all the attention, she was very lonely and over the many years began to let her tutors know so. Frightened by her tantrums, one by one the tutors refused to come, leaving the girl even more alone with only her drawings and singing and books to keep her company. And then, one day after she'd nearly lost all hope, a man fell into her life...literally.
As the ink dulled upon the yellowing paper a breeze wafted through the open window, rustling the curtains, turning the page corners up where they sat upon Booker's old wooden desk. As I hovered there with black pen in hand I knew written words could never capture the horror of what Booker and I had been through in that far off, terrible place called Columbia. I wondered, would anyone even care, here in this foreign land of so many people, one so different than that I'd known? Had I truly even known it, Columbia? All I'd really known of my home were the velvet lined walls of my prison, what I'd read in books and the vista of a fantasy from windswept heights. Like Booker had said, this place now was home.
And Columbia had never existed.
In our weeks here Booker had been good to me, taking me out to a nearby dress shop to get some cheap clothing. He'd said it was as far as he'd dare take me for fear of being sighted, as if we went any farther away I'd disappear. And though he'd been happy to do so, I'd known it must have cost his last pennies. With all the effort he'd gone to, I hadn't the heart to tell him I didn't like the dresses. Even now the white ruffled blouse he'd bought made me feel like a peacock. Its 'matching' skirt hung rather heavily upon my lap.
I placed the pen into the inkwell and stood, gazing out the window, feeling the perspiration damp beneath the cloth. With the green skirt heavy I pressed my palms upon the sill...felt the roughness of the wood. The breeze caressed my face and I closed my eyes, feeling it tease my hair on a warm and blue New York City afternoon. As my eyelids opened I could see automobiles trundling by on the street below, some glinting black in the morning light, others dingy, their engines puttering, horns honking as they negotiated the ancient brick valley Booker had called Bowery. People of all sorts coursed beside them, moving north and south in a crush beneath the tracks of the El, crying and shouting. All along the ruddy frontages, above the rainbow of awnings, laundry hung out to dry, white sheets and pants and unmentionables wafting in the wind. My laundry had always come from a dumbwaiter.
Emporia had apparently had automobiles like these, though I'd seen their wrecks only after its fall. Upon the raised tracks outside a train approached at eye level, cyclopean eye brilliant, five cars racing by such that they rattled the walls and jostled Booker's shadow box, jiggled the jewelry case and my inkwell. Planting the toe of my boot firmly to brace myself, I drew the window pane down with my hands and cut off the cacophony. The noise took me back now, beyond the days here in New York and through the doors I vaguely remembered…back to the city in the sky. Even now I could see Cornelius Slate's terrified face, the hand of his mechanical monstrosity clinging to the Prophet's railing as the airship exploded and fell. Poor Joshua too, his men and the Prophet's alike. I closed my eyes, feeling tears, wishing I could have done something to save them. It hurt so badly. They'd been such good men, and the world needed good men.
The morning had been warm and with Booker out I'd been bored, trying my hand at prose, pacing the apartment against his orders to remain inside. He didn't have any books and the ones I'd managed to find on the history of this city and America from the nearby tenements I'd already devoured, leaving me alone with stilted words upon old paper.
It had been two weeks since in a daze of jumbled memories we'd returned. With nothing better to do, I wiped futile tears away and made for the broom, sweeping anew his floorboards of dust for the umpteenth time and pondering if cages did indeed have their advantages. Studying these yellow papered walls I'd seen so many times before yet not seen, I wondered how any of what we'd been through was possible.
My finger twinged.
I looked upon it like the devil, knowing that after living with it my whole life that neither cradle nor rub nor even shake would lend relief. Yet shake it I did as one would to clear a thermometer. What would help it, I knew, was to open a tear. Out of instinct and a profound desire for relief I tried...only to find nothing.
Nothing.
I'd tried not to look since Booker had shown it to me, and anxious about the matter I began to hum and sweep in order to distract myself. Then, for the first time since Columbia, I added to my wistful tune words. They were words I knew yet didn't, coming to me like a dream, Italian words whose meaning tugged at me yet eluded my waking mind.
With housekeeping apparently not my forte, I set the broom aside and gave in, walking to the jewelry box...my mother's prize. Her name had been Annabelle, he'd told me, and said I looked like her. At that thought I felt ill, realizing where my thoughts were leading...and perhaps why I couldn't write any longer. Throughout the horrors of that city he'd been at my side, there to protect me, and risked his life to save me. Wasn't it right that I'd hoped for something more?
Opening the lowest drawer of her keepsake, I found the little ceramic case and opened it to reveal the tiniest tip of a withered finger, so small next to mine. Drawing the thimble from my finger was never a comely thing, but I was familiar enough with the sight of my nub to avoid any upset. For years it had been something I'd kept studiously clean lest infection trouble...a stub that had, until late, had the power to move worlds. Following a forlorn study I placed the thing back inside the drawer and carefully closed the chest, turning back to my writings, knowing the bitterest pill...that even though the girl was rescued, there would never be hope for her and her hero. They would never be together, for there was no universe wherein she both was and was not his daughter. I sat and lent brow to hand, only to hear footsteps approaching from outside in the passageway.
108 Bowery was not the quietest of buildings, nor the best kempt, and every time a person passed down the hall the boards creaked and groaned and everyone on the floor knew it. Outside the boards creaked and strained as if the whole enterprise might collapse, and for a moment I thought it must be him. My heart began to race and I couldn't help but smile, looking hastily into the faded mirror to fix the strays of my brown hair. Blue eyes flashed and my smile was unquenchable...at least until the footsteps stopped at the door and I saw through its frosted glass that there were two of them. I saw one of them raise his hand, speaking quietly to his companion in muffled words I also realized to be Italian. Briskly his hand came to pounding on the door. "Mr. DeWitt...Mr. DEWITT! We know you in there, for we see your window open from street! We hear singing! Open the door...we have business to discuss!"
Again came the pounding, those same words, louder and more excitedly. I'd been frightened before, but somehow I knew by their intensity that the door would open one way or another. "Please, just a moment." I said against my better judgement. I'd no idea of who these men were, but hoped a more cooperative response might make the inevitable lie to come more palatable. When I turned the knob two men stood before me in long coats, gray suit and tie beneath.
"May I help you gentlemen?" I asked, looking upward and feeling small. A glance down the hall confirmed we were uncomfortably alone, and that there would be no mobile turrets barging through shimmering tears to protect me. I had to choose my words carefully.
The first of them adjusted his collar and smiled, which was a mistake on his part. Though handsome in a well-dressed, clean cut way, his teeth were not a pleasant site. "We are looking for Mr. DeWitt, young lady." He said with an offhand glance to his fellow. Unlike his dapper friend, this one had an odd head rather like a potato, with an overly large nose and downturned lips that evoked the worst aspects of a Largemouth Bass. His ears bowed outward like an elephant's. I did my best not to notice.
"Mr. DeWitt?" I said, brow furrowing. "I don't believe I'm...oh, wait...would that be the fellow Mrs. Neary informed me of?"
"Inform you of?" The dentally challenged one said with a brush of dark hair, doing his best to keep his lips over teeth.
"She said that he moved out in some haste several days ago...left the apartment abandoned. My brother and I were lucky enough to happen upon it at a good rent. With prices these days one can hardly afford to pass up a bargain, don't you think?" They simply stared at me and I felt terribly uneasy, clasping arms half consciously about my waist. "I'm afraid I've no idea where the man has gotten off to, though I must say that from my own luck and the anecdotes I've heard from the other tenants, he mustn't have been a very savory or responsible sort."
"And you are?"
I swallowed uncomfortably and brightened my smile. "Elizabeth. Elizabeth, uh, Comstock."
"Elizabeth...Comstock?"
"Yes." I said, heart pounding. "I've moved in here, with, uh, my brother Zachary only but recently. And you gentlemen are?"
"Nicholas Terranova." He said with a sly smile and slither of eyes down my figure. I'd not been drunk in by a man before New York City, indeed hardly even known what that meant. In my few trips on Booker's arm into the great outside, by now I'd had more than enough of it. "This is my brother, Ciro. It is unusual to find such a pretty lady in this neighborhood. And of such refinement."
At his words his 'brother' smiled and Nicholas drew closer. Even as I drew away he turned the back of his hand to my cheek, and I could feel his breath warm upon my neck. "Indeed...so lovely. This brother of yours, Zachary, you say...why would he leave such a young thing as yourself here alone?" Down the hall a door opened and Mrs. Donlietti emerged, her four sons whining and punching one another. I'd seen them before, the children often alone and up to marvelous mischief I'd in a short week come to dread. Today I thought them to be the most blessed thing in the world. With her glance down the corridor and hellions' approach, Nicholas and Ciro seemed to lose their interest, perhaps from her mother's eyes or the chastisement of the prominent brass cross upon her chest.
"Well, dear lady, if Mr. DeWitt happen to wander this way, please...tell him that hour is past and Mr. Crookshanks looks for his money." At the family's passage he smiled, eyes following before turning back to tip my chin with a bony finger. "Maybe there will be reward in it for you."
I pulled away, trying hard not to let on how fearful I was. They chuckled at my expense, departing with a considered turn down the hall, drifting down stairs through a mote speckled sunbeam pouring in from the stairwell window. I was thoroughly glad to see them leave, and after pausing to confirm they were indeed going, followed them outside to ensure they were not laying some sort of trap for Booker.
Tarrying upon the stoop the sunlight hit me full force and I raised a closed hand to shield myself. To the south I spied Mrs. Donlietti whipping her boys, yanking one of them back as a racing automobile nearly mowed him down. I winced, hearing the curses of the driver and wondered whether they'd make it back alive. Perhaps she'd at one time had more than four. To the north below the elevated railway the Terranovas merged with the sidewalk crowd in its striated shadows.
These were the men Booker had warned me of all the way back in Columbia, back in the flight up from Battleship Bay where I'd first railed against the true nature of a world I'd only thought I'd known. A world out to enslave me...a world that had enslaved me. And these men were worse...petty killers who murdered for money and had this city in their thrall. They would not fall for a girl's dissimulation a second time.
After a time I realized my hand was upon my chest and I could feel the perspiration trickling down the back of my corset, pooling uncomfortably at the small of my back. How different this city was from Columbia, hot and humid, unpleasant in ways I'd never considered possible. Yet as I looked up and about, its architecture reminded me of home, the skyscrapers to the south in the Financial Districts and uptown, towers and airships visible over the eaves of buildings as they had been in Columbia. Perhaps, I thought, that despite all reason, I was homesick for the place.
Sweltering might have been a good word for what I felt just then, and perhaps nausea. As I stood there the thought of Booker's breezy loft and creaky old fan beckoned. I turned back, but as I placed my hand upon 108's doorknob the strangest feeling struck me, one that electrified every nerve in my body. Slowly I turned, hand still within the ruffles of my now damp blouse, gazing eastward as the sun beat down upon hair and contorted brow.
Rubbing my finger, I knew what it was, for I'd known this feeling my whole life. Out there, somewhere, I felt a tear.