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Hainey said, “I’d like to see you try it. ”
And Cly replied, “I know you would. But for now, let’s give the lady the time she’s asking for, all right? Go on now, before the rotters get wise that all the action isn’t down there at the station and make for the hills again. ”
Zeke didn’t need to hear it twice. He dashed for the hold, and the rope ladder, and before Briar could catch up Cly was out of his seat. He caught her gently by the arm and said, “Are your filters all right?”
“They’re fine, yes. ”
“Is there something… ? Is there anything… ?” Whatever he wanted to ask, Briar didn’t have time for it and she told him so. “Let me go after him, will you?”
“Sorry,” he said, and let her go. “You’ll need light, won’t you?”
“Oh. Yes, we will. Thank you. ”
He handed her a pair of lanterns and some matches, and she thanked him for them. She jammed her wrist through their handles and held them by her forearm so she could freely climb the ladder.
Moments later she was standing in her old front yard.
The grass was as dead as the big old oak tree, and the yard was nothing but mud and the slickly rotten film of: long-gone grass and flowers. The house itself had turned a yellowed shade of brownish gray like everything else that’d been smudged by the Blight for sixteen years. Around the porch where rosebushes had once grown there was only the skeletal aftermath of brittle, poisoned flora.
She set the lanterns down on her porch and struck the matches to light them.
The front door was open. Beside it, a window was broken. If Zeke had done it, she hadn’t heard him, but it would’ve been easy for anyone to reach inside, unlock it, and enter. “Mother, are you in here yet?”
“Yes,” she said, not very loud. She couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t the mask. Inside, everything was not as she’d left it, but it was close enough. People had come through; that much was obvious. Things were broken, and the obvious objects had been looted. A white-and-blue Japanese vase lay in shards on the floor. The china cabinet had been smashed and everything within it was missing or shattered. Beneath her feet, an Oriental rug was curled around the edges where it had been kicked by trespassers; and several sets of dirty footprints streaked across the parlor, and into the kitchen, and into the living area where Ezekiel was standing, staring at everything, taking all of it in—all at once.
“Mother, look at this place!” he said, as if she’d never seen it before.
As she handed him a lantern she said, “Here, have some light so you can actually see it. ”
Look, there was the velvet couch, covered in dust so thick that its original color could not be told. Look, there was a piano with sheet music still clipped into place, ready to be played. And over there—above the doorway—a horseshoe that had never brought anybody any luck.
Briar stood in the middle of the room and tried to remember what it’d looked like sixteen years go. What color had that couch been? What about the rocking chair in the corner? Had it once had a shawl or a throw slung across its back?
“Ezekiel,” she whispered.
“Momma?”
She said, “There’s something I need to show you. ”
“What’s that?”
“Downstairs. I need to show you where it happened, and how it happened. I need to show you the Boneshaker. ”
He beamed from ear to ear. She could see it in the scrunch of his eyes behind the mask. “Yes! Show me!”
“This way,” she said. “Stay close. I don’t know how well the floor’s held up. ”
As she said it, she saw one of her old oil lamps hanging on the wall as if she’d never left. Its blown glass reservoir was untouched—it wasn’t cracked, or even crooked. As she walked past it, the light of her cheap industrial lamp flickered against it and made it look briefly alive.
“The stairs are over here,” Briar said, and her legs ached at the thought of climbing yet more of them in one day; but she pushed the door open with her fingertips and the hinges creaked a familiar squeal. They’d rusted, but they held—and when the door was opened they sang with exactly the same old notes.
Zeke was too excited to talk. Briar could sense it in his quivery fumbling behind her, and in his permanent grin inside the mask, and in the quick, happy breaths that whistled through the filters as fast as a rabbit’s.
She felt the need to explain.
“There was a contest, years ago. The Russians wanted a way to mine gold out of ice in the Klondike. Your father won the contest, so they paid him to build a machine that could drill through a hundred feet of ice. ” With every step down, she added a new piece of exposition, trying to slow their descent even as she forced herself to make it. “It hardly ever thaws up there, I guess, and mining is a tricky thing. Anyway, Levi had six months to build it and show it to the ambassador when he came to town for a visit, but then he said he’d run the drill engine early, because he’d gotten a letter asking him to. ”
She’d reached the basement.
