The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [129]
I took the tube, the bits of copper and glass and aether that I’d taken for granted a week ago, with its enamel dial and thin tuning wires running along the inside of the glass, where the cloudy aether swirled, breathing like a sleeping animal.
I could feel the machine slither under my skin. The copper and the dial and the wire binding everything together. The aether prickled my Weird, like static electricity when I touched metal in the cold of winter.
My eyes fluttered closed. I saw all the components in my mind, the switch that sparked the aether to life with a static charge, the wires that reached out into the fathomless distances of the fabric of the universe to receive the signal beamed from one tube to another.
I knew the pressure now, the fullness. The machine coming into my mind, my Weird sliding out to the machine.
The tube came to life in my hands, and a sportscaster broke the afternoon quiet. “It’s the windup … the pitch … strike one for Susce, in a surprising performance.”
“Maybe this is the year for the Sox,” I said. “The curse can’t last forever.”
Cal stared at the tube, at me. “How’d you do that?”
“I told you, Cal,” I said. I pushed at the tuner, the small black slide on the side of the device. The station changed, big band music, the NBC comedy hour, back to baseball. “Take it,” I said, handing it to him. “See that I’m not just doing one of Conrad’s tricks.”
He accepted the tube with stiff fingers, and when it was in his grasp I pushed the static away from my mind, sending it back into the switch.
The tube shut off. Cal started. “Aoife. This is …”
“Unbelievable?” I offered. “Yeah. But there it is.”
“So back there, in the tunnel?” He dropped the tube into the leaves like it was a vial full of necrotic blood.
“Me,” I said quietly.
“The airship crash?”
“Cal, don’t be stupid. The Proctors caused that by blowing big holes in the Belle.” I picked up one of the leaves, a perfect skeleton, and stared at the pond through it.
Cal moved from the gate, standing between me and the water, twitching like I’d just covered him in ants. “This is … this is bad, Aoife.”
I crushed the leaf between my palms. “It’s me, Cal. You wanted to know.”
The gate creaked, and long shadows crept from beneath the trees and the headstones before Cal spoke again. “You’re my only friend, you know. Those guys back at the School aren’t my friends. I can’t tell them anything the way I do you. After Conrad … you’re it.”
“I still want to be it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have got on at the Academy without you, Cal. Without someone to talk to, a friend …” I stood up and brushed myself off. “I know you’re angry, but I’m afraid that’s all I can offer. You can stay and we can try it, or you can go home and turn me in.”
“Jeez, Aoife,” Cal sighed. “I’d never turn you in. Not to the Proctors.”
For all of his moods, Cal was honest to a fault. He wouldn’t turn me in. I reached for his hand, but he tugged it away. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it, even though my hand was hanging in midair like a fool’s. My face went warm again, Tremaine’s bruises turning rosy.
Cal shrugged. “It’s nothing. But I have something to say, if we’re still friends. That Dean … he’s bad news, Aoife. Conrad would slap sense into you if he saw what I saw.”
“I’m going inside,” I said, holding up a hand to end the diatribe I sensed in my future. “It’s cold and I have a lot of practice to do.”
Cal climbed back onto the gate as I walked away. The hinges spoke in the gathering dark, a dirge for something that we’d both lost.
The Cursebreaker
DEAN WAS STANDING in the shadow of the kitchen door when I returned, squinting into the sunset as he blew smoke into bird shapes that flew up and away around his head.
“Everything square?” he asked, flicking his ember into the damp grass.
“I don’t know about square,” I said, the look Cal had given me in the parlor still chafing.