MAKE YOUR OWN MIRACLES
Nikki Magennis
Violet takes a steamcab to the dirty end of town. She suspects the driver is taking her on a tortuous, inventive route, but she doesn’t mind as much as she should. She likes these dark, narrow streets, the pockets of decrepit and dangerous buildings populated by fiends and outlaws. In addition, she herself is up to much the same kind of misadventure. This whole trip, in fact, is part of a tortuous, inventive route to increase her personal gain. Her very personal gain.
She raps on the ceiling.
“Here will do,” she calls, over the hissing of the pistons. The wheels grind to a halt against the cobbles. She’s on the corner of Trongate, could almost be visiting a hat shop, looking for a suitable frippery to wear to her next afternoon garden party—if she weren’t dressed in rather unusually somber clothing and if she were not draped with a dark, voluminous cloak of thick velvet.
“Tenner,” said the driver, turning to spit into the gutter.
“That’s outrageous,” she said.
“My usual rate for such a precious cargo. Sir Catter wouldn’t like to think his daughter were bein’ carried round by some fly-by-night villain, now would he? ’Specially in these parts of town. A woman needs lookin’ after round here, don’t she?”
He leered at her with a mouth full of broken teeth.
Violet passed him the note, her fingertips feeling greasy although she didn’t touch his grubby mittens.
Once the cab had spluttered along the street and was lost among the afternoon traffic, Violet slid down the alley between the baker’s and the music hall. The smell of hot bread made her mouth water, as it always did. Or perhaps it was anticipation of another sort.
The door was heavy, but Violet had learned the trick. With one sharp kick of her leather boot, it sprang in the hinges and gave enough that she could tug it open. She lifted the cape to cover her face. The smells down here were of the night soil variety—thick enough to make you retch.
The lift was a fearsome cage—rusted so thick that it appeared made out of dried mud. Flakes of old paint came away on her glove when she closed the doors behind her. She swallowed her fear. Four floors, she said to herself, pulling the lever to raise the lift upward. The higher she rose, the more lightheaded she felt. Her palms were damp, and she rubbed them against the soft fur of the cape.
He knew she was coming. Of course he knew. Would he be waiting for her? Automatically, she reached to her face and buried her hand in the wild black frizz of her hair. She drew her shoulders back and watched the floors roll slowly past outside the crisscross lift bars. Something clicked as she rose higher: A cog complaining of the strain. Cables stretched to their breaking point.
Violet closed her eyes.
The lift drew to a halt. She got out and arranged her skirts before ringing the bell.
“Hello,” he said, pulling open the studio door.
“You were expecting me.”
“Of course.” He stood watching her. His—she didn’t know exactly what to call it—his machine hand, the prosthesis, gripped the door frame.
“It is cold out here, sir.”
“Come in, come in.” At once, he flung open the door and turned to the dim chaos of his studio. Violet followed with as much dignity as she could muster, even though her knees felt horribly like they were not connected to the rest of her. As if she were cobbled together, like Gustav, a broken person who’d been remade and was now something other than entirely human.
“Care for a drink?” he threw the question over his shoulder.
“Yes.” She needed something sharp.
Gustav lived like a wild animal. His workshop was also his home. Violet had been shocked, on her first visit, to see a heap of blankets and animal skins tumbled in a corner, disheveled and obviously recently slept in. Women like her were not raised to visit the sleeping quarters of males. The sight of Gustav’s bedsheets was enough to make her cheeks burn. But Gustav laughed when she blushed, and now, after two subsequent trips out here to Hell’s western outpost, she had taught herself to ignore the depraved manner in which the man chose to live.
“I’ve made some modifications,” Gustav said as he reappeared and handed her a shot glass. “I think you’ll be pleased.”
“I know what I want.”
“And you are all the more admirable for it.” Gustav said. He raised his glass to her. When he threw back his drink, Violet’s treacherous gaze hooked onto his throat, the jut of his Adam’s apple. Her eyes slid inexorably down, toward the second, more shadowy jut, the slight protuberance at his crotch. It wasn’t the first time she’d been secretly fascinated by the workings of a man’s body. Only Gustav’s seemed, somehow, so much more… vivid than those of other men.
“Unusual,” Gustav said. Violet’s eyes jerked up to meet his. She swallowed, and tasted the fumes of whatever potcheen he’d just served her.
“What is?” she asked.
“A woman who has the gall to demand what she wants. But then, you are born to a family that is used to doing whatever it pleases.”
“I’d be grateful if you would not mention my family,” Violet said. “While I’m here, I’m your employer, not anybody’s daughter. Is that clear?”
Gustav stared at her.
“You’ve been amply rewarded for your compliance,” Violet continued. “It would be wise not to forget that.”
“And it would be wise of you to learn not to try to buy someone’s loyalty,” Gustav said, his voice low.
“I beg your pardon?” Violet clutched her glass. Somehow, it was empty. Her mouth was burning dry.
Gustav didn’t answer. Instead, he set his glass down with a click and moved toward the bench in the center of his studio. The table was strewn with detritus, piled high with spanners and cutters and hammers and glass tubes, all discarded over scribbled plans and intricate drawings. Gustav abandoned projects when his attention was drawn to something else, the newest, ever more exciting inventions that his brilliant, daring mind came up with. Here and there among the rubble, there were tiny marvels. Violet noticed a clockwork bird, its feathers minutely engraved and its one wing perfectly constructed. She knew without asking that it was a working model; that it would fly if it were ever finished.
Because Gustav was a genius. It was how she’d heard of him, all those stories the servants retold in backrooms when they thought none of the gentry were listening. The outraged claims of her married lady friends, the hotly whispered secrets. What she’d overheard. How he’d fought as a young man, in the Clockwork Revolution, and nearly been killed. And how he’d rebuilt himself. A firebrand beholden to no one, living on the edge of society, building his awful toys for the idle rich.
“I think you’ll find it still fulfills your demands,” Gustav said. His voice was flat now, like any servant’s. His face turned away, Gustav pulled the tarpaulin from the lurking shape in the center of the room.
The chair was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Anyone would be taken with the skill of the carving, the finely wrought detail on the headrest, the way the wooden spindles virtually melted into the metal. The seams were invisible. It looked almost as though it were something alive. Violet’s mouth watered as she ran her eyes over the curves of it. In particular, she lingered on the special additions, the hidden components that made the “fainting chair” such a very special piece of art.
“Rather wonderful, isn’t it?” Gustav said. His hand stroked the undulating backrest, as if it were the shoulder of a friend. “I’ve grown quite attached.” With this, he held out his hand—not the flesh and blood hand, but the other one, his wire and steel simulacrum.
Violet hesitated for a fraction of a second. Long enough for a shadow to pass over his eyes.
“It won’t hurt you, you know,” he said, voice full of spite. “I do control it.”
He reached for her hand and took it, his grip surprisingly warm, as though the metal fingertips had a pulse, and the smooth battered leather of the palm were still living skin. Still, Violet flinched.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shrinking back.
“You? Sorry?” Gustav raised an eyebrow. “A Catter, apologizing to a miscreant and a rebel?”
“Don’t,” she said, tugging at her hand. But his grip was firm. Of course it was. It wasn’t entirely human. He probably couldn’t read her signals, Violet thought, trying to stop herself from panicking. Couldn’t feel her try to shake him loose. There was no feeling in his arm, after all—
“Oh, come now,” Gustav said, almost whispering. He smiled at her. “We have to try out your machine, after all.”
“No!”
“No? It was a very expensive commission, my lady. Surely you wish to satisfy yourself that it works?”
“I trust you,” she said, hopelessly. His hand held her wrist casually, belying the strength of his hold on her.
“Do you?” he said. “Do you really?”
Their eyes met. His were a deep, dangerous brown, like metal that had rusted, been tempered by time and experience. Violet was no weak, simpering girl. But she wasn’t used to meeting people as forthright as Gustav. The men in her circle were powerful, buoyed up by riches and inherited empires. They put on a good show of force and bravado.
Gustav was different. He had virtually nothing, yet he carried himself with the ease of a prince. With his rough, ragged shirtsleeves and his wild, shoulder-length hair he managed to wear the look of a man beautiful enough not to need polished boots and well-cut clothes. It was the way he moved, Violet supposed. The way he held himself. The way he…touched her.
She was silent as he pulled her toward the center of the room.
“You want me to sit?” she asked, obedience coming far more naturally than usual.
It was, in fact, a fainting couch, he’d told her. Not for sitting in. She would lie prone over it. Facedown. The thought did indeed make her feel faint.
“First things first.”
His voice was as low and quiet as an idling engine. “Remove your clothes, please.”
Violet felt the blood drain from her face.
“How dare you.”
Gustav merely inclined his head. “Violet.” It was the first time he’d used her name. “Remember the measurements I asked for?”
Though she thought it impossible, she blushed harder. Her face must be as beetroot red as a scolded child’s. She gave a hard nod. How could she forget? Sharing her intimate details with a stranger—it had been the most intrusive and excruciatingly embarrassing conversation. Well, almost. Asking for the machine itself should surely have been her worst nightmare. That first visit, that exhilarating leap into the unknown. She had felt herself on the edge of life, that day, ready to scream or swallow the muzzle of a gasgun. Desperate enough to do something insanely reckless. You’re hysterical, she’d told herself, and then she’d gone out to find a steamcab.
She had found herself in Gustav’s infernal den, and she had met the man with a bravado and daring to match his own. “For my health,” she’d said, almost smirking. “As my dear friend Amelia was advised by her own physician.”
Of course, she wasn’t married. But meeting Gustav, she was certain that this detail would not bother him. Not with a purse full of coins and not with a customer as formidable as the daughter of Lord Catter himself. She’d almost felt dizzy, as she stood in front of Gustav’s laughing, bold brown gaze. For once, the idea struck her that she might use her power for her own satisfaction, rather than let it use her.
At the same time, she had felt herself so overtaken by rising sensation that she had barely trusted herself to stay upright. As though her body might swoon with the rushing tides of pulse and breath, as though she might lose control at any moment.
The feeling had returned.
“Measure twice. Cut once,” he said. “I cannot check the fit through thirty layers of lace.”
“This is necessary?” she said.
“It is, if you wish your commission well made,” Gustav said reasonably. “And I did warn you this would be an intimate process.”
“Your threats have not been forgotten!”
“I merely reminded you of the need for discretion. A project like this is not without risks, as you know. Sensitive information must be kept under wraps, for protection.”
“Whose protection? I think you care not for my honor, sir! If my father knew what you were doing…”
“He’d disown you,” Gustav said mildly, refilling his glass and taking a leisurely swallow. “You’d be cut off with nothing. Milady.”
Violet trembled. But it was rage, not fear, that spurred her onward.
“You would not emerge unscathed,” she said. “Remember that.”
“No. But I think of the two of us, you have more to lose.” He came close, then, and the smell of whisky on his breath swept over her. “Far more at stake than your inhibitions, don’t you think?”
“You’re enjoying this,” she said, reaching for the button at her throat. “You want to see me broken.”
“Not broken,” he said. “Merely—undone.”
She shrugged.
“I am not afraid of your scorn,” she said.
Then there was no sound, only the muffled pop of her buttons and the swish of silk as she pulled her bodice apart. She would not let him see her cowed.
“I have defied men greater than you, sir.”
“Yes. But I bet you never let them see your underwear,” he said, idly, walking round his machine as if he’d lost interest in Violet’s striptease already.
She barked a laugh at him.
“Don’t fret, madam.” He eyed her gravely. “Remember, I am doing this for your pleasure.”
“Pleasure. You make it sound like a mere whim.”
“Were not for the whims of the rich, I’d be a pauper.”
“It’s more than idle fancy!”
“How so?”
“I am not married, sir.”
“I had noticed,” Gustav said.
“Unmarried ladies are not greatly popular, you know. Even if they have chosen to be so. If I wish to live alone, I must—Oh, what would you understand about it? Having your whole life mapped out already. Having to fight for every scrap of independence.”
“Perhaps more than you think.”
Gustav was bent over the machine, adjusting a strap. Violet looked at his false fingers, noticed how delicate they were, how skilled the movements. As she watched, a calm came over her, like a draft of cold air after a thunderstorm. She dropped her arms. Her heart fluttered in her breast, like a bird trying to escape a calico cage. Violet removed her dress in silence, only the rustle of fabric disturbing the air in the studio. Outside, there were shouts in the street and the whistle of steamships passing, floating into the Upperspace where they would circle above the smog and bustle of the city.
“Good,” Gustav said lightly. “Now, here.” He touched her arm more gently than she’d thought he could, with his warm, flesh and blood hand, and motioned for her to lie, facedown. With as much grace as she could muster, Violet kneeled on the padded leather and slid down until her body was nestled against the curves of the chair.
“Part your legs, this way,” Gustav murmured, touching her calves very gently. He circled her, making small adjustments to her position, checking that she could reach the levers and handles. Lying prone, with her cheek against the cushion, Violet noticed a curious sensation. Despite her agitation, the chair invited her body to unwind. It supported her, like the body of a lover, she imagined—it was firm, generous, enveloping. Rising to meet her between her legs, with dips and hollows at her breasts, chin and knees, it molded to her shape perfectly.
The leather warmed and softened under her, and she felt herself melt into the chair—had she ever felt this cared for, this mellow? A fleeting word tickled the back of her thoughts. Was this how it felt, she wondered, to be loved?
“Ridiculous,” she murmured.
“Beg your pardon?”
“It fits,” she replied, “very well.”
“Of course,” Gustav said. “But we need to test the working of it. Here, let me.”
Violet bit her lip. Gustav’s hand had fallen on her thigh. He dragged her legs apart, not roughly, but as though she were a doll to be posed and adjusted according to his whim.
“Ready?”
Violet murmured her assent. Gustav bent down low so that his mouth tickled her ear.
“Don’t struggle, now. This will be easier if you hold yourself still.”
He took her left hand and led it to the polished wooden handle.
“Just very easy, now, pull this back.”
Violet did as she was told. Underneath her, cogs ground against each other. A pulley creaked. There was a loud sigh, as steam escaped, and an insistent hum as the power ran from the central steampillar and entered the machine. And she felt pressure rise against her pubis, the chair extend and curl upward, as though a large, stiff tongue were pushing against her, digging between her legs. The chair shook and hummed, as though the tongue were singing to her, a song so unbelievably warm and expansive it terrified her.
She pressed her mouth tightly closed.
“Good. A little more,” Gustav said, his voice tight. She felt his hand burrow into her drawers, and let out a gasp.
“Shh,” he said, laying his other, mechanical hand on the small of her back. “I’m just checking.”
It was enough, she thought, to be lying half undressed in the crepuscular, squalid studio. Enough that she had shared her most shameful and abominable desires with him and found herself trapped in a cage of her own making. That he would now lay his hands on her—
“Stop,” she said, suddenly. With no little difficulty, she pulled herself upright. Her bodice was awry and her clothes crumpled. Yet her defilement had not made her a mewling wreck, at least. A hot coal burned in her breast. This feeling was familiar. Violet was angry.
“Sir,” she said. “This has gone far enough. I cannot tolerate you mocking me any longer.”
Gustav stood, his face a mask.
“I do not mock,” he said.
“I came here,” Violet said, standing and pulling at her clothes, trying vainly to cover herself though everything seemed to be slipping. “I came here because I needed something from you.”
“And I have made it,” Gustav said. “Haven’t I fulfilled the brief?”
Violet looked down at the chair, which was still buzzing, gently. Its curves suddenly seemed treacherous, its embrace just another cage that sought to trap her.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “How could I have thought you ever would?”
To her fury, tears rose up to accompany the words, spilling generously from her eyes. She turned her head away.
Gustav sighed.
“I believed I was providing you with a machine to service your needs, my lady.”
“No. More than that.” Violet fixed her eyes on the closed doors of the furnace, behind which burned the engines that kept the buildings running.
She had never fully understood the exact workings of the city, the giant burning columns that provided the power harnessed from the steam, the railways that crisscrossed the streets, carrying coal and wood, the curious and complicated machinery that converted that power into useful apparatus—she knew only that when she needed something, it appeared.
Her every wish, dream or fancy, instantly fulfilled—just so long as it was approved by her mother, father, the gentlemen of the court, and the unwritten and unbendable rules of etiquette that governed her everyday life and it seemed, by some unarguable and inexplicable logic, kept the world running smoothly.
“I needed something to sate my wants,” she said, her voice flat and dim. “A machine that would assuage my frustrations—”
She bit her lip. “The inner life of a lady, sir, is not as peaceful as you may imagine.”
Gustav laughed.
“I do believe you’re admitting it at last.”
“Sir?”
He stood and approached, scratching his stubble with his machine-hand. Violet had an inkling that he knew it frightened her. She suspected he enjoyed the shiver that she could not quite suppress.
“That underneath all that fine lace, you have what everyone else has.”
Violet narrowed her eyes.
“Could you stop yourself from being coarse for once? Do you even have it in you?”
“I’m not talking about your body’s natural appetites.” Gustav nodded at her. “That’s your own imagining, my lady.”
“I’m talking about…” he laid a hand on her chest, where the shelf of her bosom rose and fell faster than it ought to, “…your heart.”
His hand was warm. He kept it there. Nestled in the valley of her breasts, she was surprised to find it comforting, rather than threatening. She looked up at him. For once, there was no rusty fire in his eyes, only a deep and quiet warmth.
“I do not need to love,” she said.
“Or to be loved? Forgive me, but I do not believe you.”
She pulled away, but he tugged her back, replaced his hand.
“It beats,” he said, softly. “I can feel it.”
“Yes, it beats. Whether I wish it or not.”
Violet raised her chin.
“When I lie abed, alone in the darkness, I am at last able to let go of the damned smile I must wear day in and day out, the cursed, cultivated, ladylike mouth that I paint on in the morning and loathe from the moment I wake until the hour I retire. I jam my hand between my legs. I stroke myself. I induce such paroxysms that I could scream.”
Gustav did not let his eyes drop.
“And yet it is not enough,” he said. “Is it?”
Violet stepped forward. She kissed him hard. Hard enough that his stubble scraped her cheek. At first, her tongue darted into his mouth as fast as a flickering flame. Then, as they sank against each other and his warmth flowed into her body, she let it meander a little, over his lips, to taste the salt there, the fire of the whisky.
He broke away, breathing hard.
“My lady,” he said, “Violet.”
“Quiet,” she said. “I am not paying you to talk.”
“I trust you are not paying me to make love to you, either.”
Violet held his face in her hands.
“I have spent my life paying people to do what I wish. I have never wanted for anything. Why should I stop now?”
“Because what you want can’t be bought.”
They stood with their faces inches apart, so that their hot breaths met and swirled together. Violet felt again the grip of his metal hand and this time she wanted him with a violence that almost overwhelmed her.
“What do you want?” she whispered. “What is your price?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everything you own.”
She searched his eyes.
“You think I’ll give up all that, to soothe the lust in my heart?”
“Not lust. The one thing you are really afraid to admit.”
“Which is?”
“Love,” he said, simply. “To live here, with me. As a free woman.”
Violet laughed. “It seems a veritable bargain.”
Gustav didn’t laugh back. Instead, he held onto her with his machine hand and started, with the other, to loosen her corset. The lacing pulled from the eyes with a little ripping sound.
“Give up your life,” he said, “and you will win me.”
“My flat?”
“Abandon it.” He tugged at the laces around her waist. As they came free, she exhaled noisily.
“Thirty servants. A steamtrap and driver.”
“Set them free.”
He pulled the shell of her corset away in two halves, as though he were removing the shell from some sea creature. Underneath, her bare skin was marked with lines where her underclothes had bitten into her skin.
“A place at court. Invitations to the very best parties.”
Gustav raised an eyebrow. He took hold of her petticoat and ripped it apart, tearing it from her waist to her knees. Violet shrugged, and stepped out of the ruined skirt. She laughed as though she had breathed in for the very first time.
“The proceeds of my trust?”
Gustav paused. “How much?”
“More than I need.”
He nodded; traced a line from her chin, down her collarbone, to the gentle curve of her breast, where he circled, as if entranced. Her eyes dropped to the twitching fingers of his metal hand.
“How did you lose it?” she asked.
“I was impatient,” he said, lifting his wooden-tipped fingers, as if to surrender. “I wanted to master the world. Be the greatest inventor that ever lived. And I refused to listen to anybody.”
“Sounds familiar.”
She took the hand and examined it. He held it still, not flexing the spring-loaded joints, not curling the delicate, beaten-tin fingers.
“I built it myself,” he said.
“That must have been difficult.”
“Yes. But now it works. It is part of me,” he said at last. Violet looked up at him, then bent to kiss the worn leather of the machine palm. She drew the hand down, to her drawers, and placed it between her legs, pressing against it through the slit in the cotton.
“It works?” she said.
Gustav nodded. He pulled her toward him, crushing the awkward metal of his hybrid hand between them, making her moan.
“Like any man, my body is weak,” he said. “Only I have been blessed with a hand of my own devising.” He interspersed each sentence with caresses, raining kisses down on her bare neck and shoulders like molten lava. “With it, I can create miracles.”
The blunt tips of his fingers pressed and pushed at her, the polished wood hard, but curiously supple too, so that it felt he was making love to her with a wondrous mix of urgency and tenderness, the sensation circling, rising and dipping to some intricate pattern of his own creation. Violet felt a scream build in her belly, low and urgent, as though her voice were not her own.
With his other hand, Gustav had freed his cock from his trousers and pushed her against the couch, lifting her buttocks so they perched on the curve of the headrest.
His first thrust was almost desperate, rushing her hard and deep so that she cried out involuntarily. At the sound, he lunged again, and bit down hard on his lip.
“Forgive me,” he started to say.
“Never,” she replied, and pulled him to her. This was what she had been seeking, she realized, as he sank into her, meeting the rock of her hips with the jut of his own. This unbearable proximity, this suffocating closeness; to be filled with him, to swallow him up: this was the prison she would never wish to leave.
He ground against her, and his mechanical fingers drummed a fantastic tattoo around her sex, thrumming there on the most sensitive part, the little screw that held it all together, as she thought of it.
They beat against each other as if locked in a struggle, both reaching, clutching hold, writhing as if climbing the ladder of each other’s body. She felt herself rise and grow furiously dizzy, calling out to him as she did so, slamming against him as if she could join their flesh by violence.
As the sensations grew ever more urgent, she dug her fingernails into the flesh of his back. He moaned and bit down on her neck. That moment, she wanted to be marked by him, wanted them to both be changed, irrevocably changed. As she milked his cock and wrung a climax out of his heated, struggling body, his mechanical hand worked at her and she felt herself tumble, a wound-up machine gone wild, spun out of control, overtaken by the exquisite and miraculous machinery of the body itself, fueled by blood and spit and desire, attracted irresistibly to this man by some inexplicable force, both damned and redeemed by this fabulous creation, this wonderful cage, this beautiful trap that she found herself, for once, glad to be contained in.
Their ecstasy split the moment in two, and they collapsed onto the couch, knocking levers and bruising themselves on protruding parts. Violet lay across her incredible machine, overtaken by waves of laughter as Gustav rose and disentangled himself, reached for the bottle and returned to lie with her in glorious, foolish disarray.
“May we live long and never leave each other,” he said, his dark eyes locked on hers as he took a swig from the open bottle.
“And cherish our freedom,” she said, taking the bottle from him. “Us penniless outlaws.” She spilled whisky and he leaned forward to lick it from her arm, sending a fresh wave of laughter rippling through her.
“May we make our own miracles,” she said.
“And recognize them when we find them,” he said, bending to kiss the whisky from her lips.