THIS IS JUST AN ILLUSION, IRIS told herself, remembering how she, Max, and Jinn had battled the Sparrow twins the first time. The frost forming across her skin. The chill that bit deep into her flesh. The snow and fog blurring her vision. It felt so real, but it wasn’t. The Sparrow twins were playing with her mind.
What was real was the strong chop to the neck landed by one Fool. It had almost knocked her out, but she managed to hold on to her senses as she fell to the floor.
“Oh goodness, I’m so sorry.” The Fool who’d struck her helped her back to her feet and immediately began begging her forgiveness. “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have done that!”
What? Iris pulled her hand away quickly and rubbed the back of her head in confusion, while the Fool lurched over and clasped his hands together.
“You fool!” cried another, flipping through the snow overhead and landing perfectly behind him. He gave the other Fool a smack. “Grab her and take her to the incinerator. From there, we’ll gather her crystal heart and present it to Bellerose.”
“Her crystal heart, her crystal heart!” Through the fog, she could just barely see a Fool rolling on the ground and laughing. “Such a fun sight that will be. Don’t leave me behind….”
This was chaos. Iris shook her head, but a Fool behind her clasped her wrist.
“You’re coming with me, you little wench.” And he didn’t apologize. She could smell his bloodthirst from beyond his gold-and-white mask.
She didn’t have time for this. A shift in the ground told her the Ark was lurching along.
There was an easy way to solve this. She could get rid of them all with just a thought. Just one little thought.
She thought of Max’s heart in her hands and bit her lip. No. No more killing. She had to find another way.
“Miss Iris! Oh, Miss Iris!”
She couldn’t see the Sparrow twins, but she could hear their voices, carried by the blizzard. “Do you know what they did to us in the Basement?”
“They strapped us up,” said the other.
“They poked us.”
“They zapped us.”
“They made us cry.”
“They told us not to cry. And then made us cry again.”
“Again and again and again.”
She remembered. The experiments. The blood. The human feces. The waste of life. All thanks to the heartless Enlightenment Committee, who had thought they could discover some new scientific revolution inside the bodies of the supernatural.
Iris wrenched herself from one Fool’s grip and dodged another. Her warrior training was in full swing as three Fools descended upon her at once. She flipped over one and crashed the second’s head into the third’s. She jumped upon a fourth Fool’s back, striking another as he cursed and promised to tear her to shreds “like all the others.”
“We had a mother once, but she died.”
“We had a father once, but he abandoned us.”
“That old marm at the orphanage hurt us.”
“And then you sent us to the Basement.”
“Tell me, why did our lives turn out like this?”
The question had come so suddenly that Iris paused, leaving herself open to a swivel kick from one of the Fools. She landed painfully on her back as he stomped on her stomach again and again and again.
Why did our lives turn out like this? It was the very question that Iris had asked since the moment her memories had returned to her.
Why had she been born? Was it only to destroy?
Why had humans been created? Was it only to hurt and be hurt?
Why did the earth exist? Would it one day crumble too?
One day everything would fall apart. Perhaps time was the enemy. But why did things seem to fall apart so quickly when the greed of humans was involved?
As the pain of the Fool’s kicks shot up to her head and addled her mind, the shock of each strike felt almost purifying. In the midst of the torment, she understood it clearly. She just wanted a better world. For the Sparrow twins. For the Fanciful Freaks. For herself. For—
“Yeah! Tear off her head, and let’s feast upon her brains!” One Fool crouched down next to her, twisting his head here and there, reaching out to grab her hair. He would have too, but another Fool gripped his wrist and grabbed the arm of the Fool stomping her.
“Stop it,” he said. He sounded lonely. Somewhere far off in the distance, another Fool was still rolling on the floor, singing, “Don’t leave me behind. Don’t leave me behind!”
The lonely Fool shoved the other two away from her. “I’m sorry,” he told Iris.
“Oh? You’re turning traitor, aren’t you?” the brain-lusting Fool accused him. “Or is this another order from your true master, Adam Temple?”
Adam? Throwing up saliva on the floor, Iris rolled to a sitting position, gripping her stomach. One of the Fools worked exclusively for Adam?
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you being so friendly with him,” the cruel Fool continued. “Did you think you could betray us?”
“No, no, we should be friends,” said the Fool rolling on the ground. “Though I’m Adam’s Fool too! Boo-hoo!”
“Treachery!” The snootiest of the Fools clicked his heels together. “I will not stand for this! We are the Committee’s greatest tool in the war against all that stands against Enlightenment. Tell me, Fool, why would you stoop so low as to help this creature? Was it Adam’s wish that you protect her? Out of love?”
The Fool that had saved her from his brother’s beating stared at Iris for a moment. “No,” he said. “Lord Temple’s plans for the girl are quite different now.”
Different? Different how? Groaning, Iris stumbled to her feet, dusting off her black valet jacket and holding her head to keep it from spinning. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’ll see,” answered the Fool. “All I know is that I’ve been abandoned once again.”
There was something so sad and broken about his voice. The moment he mentioned this mysterious abandonment, the other Fools seemed to fly into a range of different explosive emotions.
“Abandoned? Us? Never! We were never abandoned by Mr. and Mrs. Heidegger! We abandoned those lowly working-class buffoons and climbed through the medical ranks with our own two hands! Abandoned?” The Fool scoffed. “Us?”
And on he continued.
“I wish I could rip them apart. I wish I could taste the iron in their blood. Everyone else will pay too, I swear it….”
“A mother who couldn’t cook and a father who couldn’t work. We were better off without them!”
“No… no… don’t leave me… Mummy… Daddy…”
It was too much. Covering her ears, Iris ran past the Fools and through the winter snow to the statue of the angel.
No, don’t cover your ears, she scolded herself. This is just another example of the sorrow of humans. Face it!
She did. She ran up to the Sparrow twins and ripped their clasped hands from each other, breaking the spell. Then, without even stopping to think first, she swept them into a strong, warm, desperate hug.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Faith. Virtue. I’m so sorry about everything.”
The snow fell away. The chill disappeared. The frost crawling up her skin was gone. The Sparrow twins fell into her arms and wept.
As warmth returned to the clear ballroom once more, Iris heard a door open behind her. A Fool, the one who’d saved her, opened the door and walked out.
“Heidegger is close to dead,” he said. “Lord Temple is allowing him to die. That means he has no more use for me.” He looked at his brethren. “Detach your minds from the will of your masters, and for once, search inside yourselves. Then and only then will you come to realize the truth: our time is limited. This is all meaningless.”
The moment he spoke this truth, the other Fools seemed to feel it too. After a period of silence, one Fool shut his eyes for a moment, then stumbled back in shock.
“It is true,” he said. Iris couldn’t recall which Fool he was. “I can feel my life escaping from me, my energy diminishing, my time growing short!” He began clutching at his throat with shaking hands.
“No! It’s cruel!” One Fool grabbed another by his jacket. “Heidegger can’t die. We can’t die. If we die… then why were we born?”
Why were we born? What was our purpose? That was, perhaps, the lament of all men.
Once they quieted down, the reality seemed to pin them where they stood.
“Where are you going?” Iris called to Adam’s Fool.
“To die in peace. I suggest you all do too,” he told the others. “But, Miss Iris, do not think that this is over. For what Lord Temple has in store for you may be the worst to come.”
He left her with that warning. The other Fools lingered for a moment before filing out after him. Their circus had ended.
With a sigh of relief, Iris turned to Faith and Virtue Sparrow. “Do you two wish to stay aboard this ship?”
A beat passed as they looked to each other. Then they nodded.
“Perhaps the New World will treat us better than this one did.”
As Hiva, she felt responsible. Her culling of the Naacal had begun when she watched Nyeth, the priest, murder a shelterless man in cold blood. Destroying the world because of the pain and suffering of others. There had to be another way to bring about peace.
“Good luck,” she told the twins, who smiled at her as she left the ballroom.
Iris ran through the labyrinthine halls to a narrow metal door. Down a flight of stairs.
The clanking of gears and fizzing of steam through pipes grew louder the deeper she descended. With the heavy rumbling in the metal walls, it sounded as if there were something living down here. The entrance opened into a large engine space, crowded with a bustling, shouting crew. Steam gushed out of the metal cylinders and pipes she saw lined in a row beneath the woven metal walkway she stood upon.
“Out of the way,” one dirty-faced man in overalls cried, pushing past her, and there was more where that came from. She stuck out like a sore thumb, but at least members of the crew were too busy with their work to notice or care that a “valet” was traipsing around.
Iris checked the schematics. “Exhaust manifolds, fuel pumps, crankcase…” And in the northmost direction was a rotunda. That was where Uma was. She could sense it.
The Ark suddenly rumbled. Many in the crew yelped in surprise but stayed steady on their feet.
“We’re about to rise, boys!” said one, to the cheers and hoots of the crew. “Keep up the work! Don’t stop until we’ve launched out of the hatch!”
She was running out of time.
A large, rough hand clasped against her shoulder. “Hey, what are you doing here?” said a man behind her with a Cockney accent. “Aren’t you supposed to be upstairs sorting the luggage?”
Iris swiveled around but kept her head low. “Yes, I’m here to deliver a package to Uma Malakar,” she said with a deepened voice. She didn’t know why, it just seemed appropriate.
“I don’t see nothing on you.”
“I meant a message, sir.”
A hesitant snarl and the sniff of a nose. “Fine—quickly! Don’t get in our way.”
She didn’t. As the Ark shook and lumbered forward, she delved deeper into the engine room, sweat pouring from her face as steam and red waves of heat colored the air. She avoided the men shoveling coal into large furnaces and others swiveling around giant wheels. In the center of the room was a rotating black shaft, round and large. The schematics said they generated power for the propellers. And yet Iris couldn’t see how any of this had been able to make the Ark perform any differently than a regular ship.
That is, until she finally slipped through a set of heavy iron doors into the rotunda.
The Naacal had once created physical screens made of pure electrical light. Like windows—except with a touch, one could open doors and operate machinery on them. Their research and leftover technology had certainly come in handy here. Discoveries that shouldn’t have been possible manifested right before Iris’s very eyes. The three screens screwed into the curved front wall were not made of light; they were metal, with a glass surface that displayed a diagram of the entire Ark from the hull to the deck. Uma stood in front of the central screen. On either side of her, facing the other screens, were Boris Bosch and Madame Bellerose.
The loud slam of the iron door behind Iris drew all eyes to her—including the guards’.
“What in the blazes?” Bosch said, tilting his head as he stared at her like the stowaway livestock she was supposed to be.
Uma’s eyes widened. “Iris?”
Damn it, Iris thought. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Uma’s anima, she would have realized the scientist wasn’t alone.
The Ark’s forward speed was quickly increasing. The spacious rotunda, with its simple white curved ceiling and walls, was not nearly as well furnished as the rest of the ship. There was an elevator to her right side within the wall—something that reminded her of the contraption in Heaven’s Shrine that had taken them down to the Coral Temple. But everything here, from a decorative perspective, felt drab and uninspired. It didn’t suit Bellerose, who wore mink draped around her elaborate gown. The woman appeared satisfied nonetheless. As she looked at Iris, her red smile sharpened.
“And here I was thinking I had been blessed with too much luck!” Madame Bellerose clapped her hands and, turning, tapped her screen with a finger.
The floor vibrated. A square panel shuddered and slid to the side. Out of the newly formed hatch arose a cylinder. A storm seemed to brew inside the glass. Smoke and cracks of electricity mingled, and it seemed as if thunder would soon follow. And in the middle of it, twisting and turning inside an invisible magnetic field, was the Moon Skeleton.
“We have one power source for the Ark, but why stop with one?” Madame Bellerose said, rubbing her hands together. “Let us prepare to take another.”