UNDERGROUNDED: HANNAH HAWTHORNE AND THE STRANDED TIME SHIP
Vida Bailey
1 The Crash
The ship lurched and groaned as it hit the deserted building. There was a brief, ominous silence before it disappeared into the floor, leaving clouds of dust and debris behind it. Lights flickered on and heads poked out of windows, but to all outside, it must merely have seemed that one more roof in the dilapidated row had given up the ghost and collapsed on itself. Hopefully no one would believe that an air balloon had crashed through the laundry roof, then fallen through the floor to the subbasements below. Not many people lived round the crumbling old laundries anymore. This part of town was sliding into gradual decline.
After some moments the dust started to clear and the clink and chink of falling brickwork quieted. The door of the ship creaked open and a figure stepped out. The light revealed a slim woman, somewhere in her twenties, with wild copper hair that had been fought into a thick braid. She peered around the side of the airship, taking in the deflated silk of the balloon and the crumpled blades of the propeller. Her breath hissed when she saw the damage.
She was joined by a man with a far less restrained reaction. Clad in an undershirt and leather trousers, implements shining from his tool belt and others stuck in his high boots, he danced around the downed ship in frustration.
“Damn it! Damn the bloody thing to hell! Blast! Blasted buggering arse!”
He kicked a pile of rubble and stood fuming in the ensuing dust cloud. “Ah, Hannah.”
She reached out to him, wrapped her fingers round his arm.
“It’s all right, Darien. The professor can fix it, I’m sure.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sure he can, but we can’t get to him. We’re back in eighteen-twenty. We’ve no idea where he is.”
“So we’ll look for him, we’ll find him, I’m sure. We’re in London, aren’t we?” He nodded, disconsolate. “We’re resourceful. I’m sure we’ll find a way.”
The door of the ship resisted as it was forced open from within, and a dazed couple stumbled out. Hannah’s mouth fell open as she saw what her companions were wearing. Will looked respectable enough in boots, trousers and undershirt, but Elana was evidently naked underneath her silk kimono, and her hair was wild and loose, thick black tresses falling in silk ropes to the base of her spine. Her lips were swollen and red, and she was bleeding a little from her temple. They had clearly been caught in flagrante by the accident.
Elana shook her head, and wrapped her arm around her lover’s back.
“I thought otherwise before we got interrupted by the crash. But now I can clearly see that we’re f*cked.”
2 Grounded
Hannah and Will had left Darien and Elana crouching by the ship, banging things and cursing, and gone out to forage for supplies. When they returned, laden with bread and cheese and wine, things looked pretty much the same, but the cursing was louder. Darien looked up at them.
“We ain’t going nowhere without the professor, darlings. We’re all out of power. Did you see any sign of him?”
Will shrugged.
“We went to his workshop. There’s a faded sign on the door, doesn’t look like anyone’s been there in a while. Who knows where he is? Or when…”
“It looks like we’ll be here for a while, then,” Hannah said calmly. “Hey, Elly, I got some silks and things—if we’re going to be here for a while, we may as well make ourselves more comfortable.”
Darien looked up. “Eh, hang on, I had a thought. We might be a bit less conspicuous one level down—I know we’re fairly hidden, but this place seems to be on top of old London, there’re lots of undiscovered layers. I was thinking if we just got a bit of strategically placed explosive, we could pop the whole ship through the floor and be even more out of the way.” He raised an eyebrow at Will and their eyes gleamed with shared manly zeal at the prospect of an explosion. Elana looked quite excited too, so Hannah knew there was no point protesting.
“All right, you boys get on it, and I will sit here and drink and watch you singe your eyebrows.” She perched on a beam, boots swinging, their buckles glinting, and pulled a gadget from her pocket. Unfolding its workings, she wrapped it round the bottle top, pushed, pulled, and uncorked the bottle with a pop. Elana cheered and came to sit beside her, letting her passion for daytime red wine override her interest in explosives. She twined Hannah’s bronze curls in her fingers absently as they watched, cheering as the floor gave way and the ship bumped another level down without discernable damage. The men appeared triumphantly from the dust cloud. Applauding, Hannah and Elana passed the bottle on to them and went down to investigate.
A couple of hours later, the ship was made secure, a ladder was rigged up to the hole in the ceiling, and the underground room had been transformed with silks and cushions and candles. Hannah lay back on her bed piled with eiderdowns and cushions, full of soft bread and creamy cheese. Darien tripped his fingers over the straps of her corset, tugging at the buckles and stroking the leather. Elana got up and pulled Will into the ship by the wrist, sliding the door closed with a whoosh and a snap.
“Hmmm.” Darien began to pop Hannah’s buckles and moved up to kiss her wine-stained lips. “I could grow to like this desert tent arrangement. Gimme some velvet.” She kissed him again. He rolled over on his back, pulling her with him. She sat astride him and he loosened one more buckle. “I love this, Hannie, the way your bubs spill out over this tight leather.” He palmed them, one hand holding her cinched-in waist. “My girl.”
Hannah moved slowly on top of him, feeling his erection growing against her, pressing her * to it, harder as it hardened.
“You seem relaxed down here,” she said. “I thought you’d be climbing the walls to get out and find a way back.” He shrugged.
“We’ll see. For now, it’s nice to have a break from all the breaking and entering. Maybe just focus on the entering for a while.” He flipped up her skirts and ran his hands up her thighs. She raised herself so that he could undo his trousers, but he grabbed her silky buttocks and moved her forward until her sex hovered over his mouth. Hannah pushed her fingers into his hair and felt his tongue opening her up and teasing her, dipping in and out of her and sliding around her slit. He moved underneath her and she knew he had taken out his cock and was stroking it as he licked her. Darien was so good at this. He had once seduced her with a flying machine and time travel, but if she ever considered straying, it would be his clever tongue that kept her there.
She slipped back down and straddled him again, smoothly pressing him inside. They moved slowly together, until Hannah realized she could hear cries coming from inside the ship. Sharing a small space together had made the two couples matter-of-fact about their lovemaking, and now, knowing Will and Elana were about to climax too made Hannah all the more excited. And Darien loved that it did. He moved his hand from round her waist to her * and rubbed, making her buck and press him harder against her spot. Hannah couldn’t hold back the breathy moans that signaled her release was close, and Darien thrust harder, ready for it, ready to join her. She came hard, her hands on his chest, pelvis pushing against his as her aftershocks stilled.
“Lover.”
“Lover.”
3 The Underground Children
“Wotcha, Mister, Missus!”
Hannah jerked up with a shriek, causing Darien to gasp too. He peered around Hannah, who was rearranging her clothing and reaching for the little pistol that she kept in her garter. Darien fumbled his trousers shut and laughed.
“It’s all right, love, I think we’re safe enough.”
Hannah looked around and saw a small crowd of grimy faces staring at her. Children of various ages, clad in hats and boots, coats and goggles and fingerless gloves. You could tell the girls by their hair and flounced skirts, but that was about it.
“I see it’s a gruesome horde,” Hannah observed, but kindly. Growing up in an orphanage had left her with tender feelings toward street kids. Or underground kids; none of these pale little waifs looked like they saw sunlight too often. She handed them the rest of the bread and cheese and they tore into it like a wolf pack.
“What’s that, Mister, that big boat thing? Does it fly?” One of the older boys had noticed the ship.
“Not right now it doesn’t, lads,” Darien answered. “It needs fixing. We’re grounded for the moment.”
“I bet we could fix it, Mister! Or at least Doc could.”
Darien laughed.
“Maybe not this one, kids. Here, go buy some more.” He flicked pennies in the air, which they caught and were gone, all in a flash. All except one, a small child who lurked behind and stared at the ship with a gleam in his eye.
“Are you Doc, by any chance? Do you live down here?” Hannah tried to strike up conversation but only got nods in return. She assumed they’d blasted down into an old tunnel network, who knew how big or far reaching. She tried to imagine living in the dark indefinitely. Right now she felt safe here, but she knew she’d miss the sunlight soon enough. “Would you not be better off somewhere where you get fed? In an orphanage? Something?”
“Or the workhouse?” The child shook his head. “Nah, Miss, never. We likes our freedom. We make do.” He winked at her knowingly, and she realized she had just met a small school of cutpurses. Kindred spirits, in other words. She and her friends made their living from clever private acquisitions and negotiation of the timeline and antique markets, in various eras. And here was the rub: being a time bandit was no good to you unless you could access your money. And as they lived off interest from future savings, there wasn’t much to be had back in 1820.
4 Settling In Too Comfortably
Further searching for signs of the professor had proved fruitless. He didn’t seem to be in London at this time, and subtle inquiries at other workshops had not suggested any other time mechanics were working in London then. Elana had even spent some happy hours in a high-end whorehouse, reminiscing with some old toffer acquaintances of hers, and making careful inquiries. She and Will came home with nothing more useful than the smiles on their faces.
They all spent more and more time with little bespectacled Doc, who was transfixed by the ship. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge and it wasn’t long before they found out why. One day, in fun, Elana pulled off Doc’s hat. A great mass of dirty blonde hair tumbled out around the little grubby face, and Elana gasped. Not only was Doc a girl, but underneath the spectacles that had come askew gleamed a prosthetic lens. It fixed invisibly onto the child’s smooth skin, gold frames held in place without hint of scar or stitch. It was a work of beauty, that prosthesis, but alarming too, against the child’s face it inhabited. A sudden hush fell.
“Where’d you get the eyepiece, Doc?” Darien asked.
“From a friend.” The girl looked fearful, as if guarding a secret. Will held up his right hand, to reveal a silver and gold pinkie finger. He wriggled his fingers and the metal finger moved in synch.
“I think your friend might be our friend too, Doc. Can you tell us where to find him?”
Doc relaxed, visibly. “Nah, he’s gone away. Long trip. Said he’d be back sometime, but he didn’t know when. I fink ’e went to Africa or summink.” Ah. The friends looked at each other. The Egypt trip. That’s where the professor was then. They’d been gone for a good six months that time.
And so for now, that end was dead.
Yet Darien seemed happy to be stranded. Hannah had spotted him standing on a street corner, chatting with a rat-faced individual who couldn’t have been more shifty if he’d been hopping from foot to foot. She was mildly alarmed to learn later that Rat Face was a new contact of Darien’s, a fence.
“Darien, did you run a job today?”
“Just a little one, my dearest, only a little one. But it means we have steak pie and ale tonight!” And he opened a small sack and trickled a rain of coins into her hands, which had been outstretched in appeal, not for rewards. Hannah put the coins back in the bag without speaking. She looked at her man leaning back on their makeshift bed, content with his small-time robbery, and she felt a pang of worry tug at her chest.
“We can’t get away, if they catch you,” she warned in a hushed voice. “No escape off the roof this time.”
“Oh, Hannah. Why would you worry about that? You know I’m bullet proof.” He winked and left her even less convinced. The broken ship, the dark of their home, the scurrying past of the children. It was all expanding into a ball of disquiet and she felt that some action was necessary to dispel it. Perhaps that was why she’d gone to see her parents.
5 The Fight
Hannah’s nightdress swirled around her as she paced. She’d been listening for footsteps, and finally they came, too fast. Darien and Elana burst into the room, breathless and laughing. The laugh faded in his voice as he looked up and saw what she was wearing. Midnight blue silk clung to her breasts and fell in waves toward the floor. He could see her toes peeping out, a rare sight of them, so often boot-clad. The pink and white vulnerability of her naked feet made Darien all the more conscious of the softness of her stomach, freed of its usual bindings. Her breasts were looser than usual also, and the wider valley between them was captivating. Hannah caught his eye, let him know what she could read in his gaze. Her hair spread out like fire around her, crackling with static from the brushing it had recently received.
Hannah whispered in Darien’s ear, “I found something today.”
“You found this? I like it.”
“No, Darien. I had an idea. I’ve been talking to my parents.”
“What?”
Darien reared away from her, a familiar, stung expression on his face. “Why? You said you didn’t need to do that, not anymore!” Hannah shook her head, put her hand on his arm.
“Darien. Listen, a minute, calm. I haven’t changed my mind about telling her where to find me. I know the same rules hold true. I stayed with you. But I’ve been meeting my mother.”
“What are you doing? You know if she finds you, we’re all over, all changed.”
“I promised you! Will you listen to what I have to say?” Hannah fought down the familiar frustration as it rose at the sight of her lover’s compressed lips. Stubborn, unlistening man. “I’m not going to tell her who I am. She thinks I’m two, remember? I don’t want to send the poor woman doolally. I know I can’t help her find me.” Hannah’s eyes misted. Her heart was full of lost children and grieving parents. Darien’s insistence that she stay away seemed more unreasonable every day. “Let’s give them Doc. Give her a chance. Help them too.”
It was the perfect solution, she thought. A safe home for Doc and someone to fill her mother’s empty arms. She had seen the heartbreak in the eyes of the woman who was so like her, whose arms she longed to fall into. If I could just fix this, she thought.
Darien frowned. “She’s all right down here. She doesn’t want people telling her what to do, whipping her arse for not minding her Ps and Qs. It’s not so bad. She’d hate it the other way.”
“Darien, are you serious? She’s filthy and lousy, half starved and desperate for some light and stimulus! Don’t you want to see her warm and fed? What future does she have down here?” Her voice rose. Darien looked at her chest flush with the passion of her speech.
“She does all right,” he muttered and turned and stalked into the ship. She followed.
“What is wrong with you? You cannot for a minute think this is all right? For children? This pitiful existence?”
“It was fine for me!” Darien’s aggrieved roar startled her. “I came out of it all right! And you—you said it was good enough when we met. And now you’re running to Mama and Papa and their money the minute my coffers dry up! So, great, go, good luck!” He turned and stalked into their cabin, slamming the door behind him.
“Darien!”
But no answer came.
Will and Elana found her rooted to the spot, staring at the door to her cabin. They cooed and shushed and pushed and pulled until she was out of her nightgown and corseted and booted again.
“Elana, have you been doing jobs with Darien again?” Hanna’s voice was quiet. Elana’s fingertips lingered over the buckles at Hannah’s breasts until Hannah gripped them affectionately and held them at her side.
“Oh, well, a little bit. You know how I like to keep myself entertained, darling. And Darien likes to feel useful.”
“What’s he so angry about? He was like this when I wanted to go find them before. But there was more at stake then. And he knows which way I chose. Why is he being so, so…”
“Fear, Hannah, fear makes arseholes out of the best men, sometimes. There’s things he hasn’t told you yet, and your nobby background brings it out in him. You’re trying to bring the kids out of here, into your parents’ world, and he hasn’t had the nutmegs to tell you that’s where he…”
“Elana!” Will broke in. “Leave it to Darien, surely.”
Elana ducked her head, but said no more. Will gestured to the outsized copper tank in the corner.
“Help us, I have a project in mind.”
Elana handed Hannah a spanner, picked up the metal-saw and pulled her goggles down. The rest of the night passed in noisy hard work and quiet advice, and the door to the ship stayed resolutely closed.
6 Hannah Defiant
In a very different area of London, tall houses bordered a leafy park. Birds sang, and the flowerbeds were bright and well tended. Hannah looked back at the shining red door to Doc’s new home. She walked into the park and stepped onto the grass, seeking out the refuge of the trees before she crouched down, a hand pressed to her breast, the other to her mouth. She gasped back tears, breathed in the smell of soil and spring. She looked up to see Darien leaning against a tree, a torn expression on his face.
“You did it anyway.”
She nodded, hand still held to her chest.
“You wish it was you.”
“Well, who wouldn’t? For god’s sake, Darien! I thought you knew enough to understand this isn’t about you! Look at me! I’m right here!” She gouged out a handful of the damp loam they stood on and threw it at his feet in frustration.
“Nice, Hannah, nice form. I can hear someone coming, you’d better stop throwing things at me and start acting like a normal woman again.” Bristling, Hannah brushed off her hands and strode out of the park. Darien started to follow her, but turned and walked in the other direction.
7 The Art of Bathing
The tub was a sight to behold. A giant copper tank, it was big enough for a child to swim in. Portholes gleamed on its scrubbed and buffed sides. Round wheels turned on jets of steamy hot water and nozzles bubbled foam into the center of the bath. The heating mechanism sent streams of bubbles fizzing through the tub.
Hannah’s mouth fell open. She’d helped build it, but she hadn’t seen it at work. The air was full of steam and candlelight. She could hear the gush and hiss of the steam heater that ran the bathtub. The smell of perfume hung in the moist air. Elana encouraged her forward.
“You need to relax, darling, relieve some tension.” She pulled the pins from Hannah’s hair, pulled at her dressing gown and unlaced her corset. “It’s terribly uncomfortable, playing the lady, isn’t it?” She smiled charmingly, making Hannah suspicious. The lure of the bath called her, though, and she rubbed at the red marks left by the whalebone on her white skin.
“Thanks, Elana.” A titter came in response.
“You can thank me later!”
Hannah left her dressing gown where it lay and a trail of hairpins and underthings in her wake and nimbly scaled the ladder to the tank. She stepped down the rungs on the other side into a dim world of steam and bubbles. The hot water embraced her, she slipped up to her neck in it, felt the day’s tensions beginning to ebb. Will and Elana were so clever, she thought idly. Perhaps they could fix her conflict with Darien too.
A grinding shrieking noise made her jump and splash and she turned to see the ladder disappear from the high sides of the tub. Will and Elana’s faces appeared at a gleaming copper porthole, sporting gleeful grins.
“Enjoy, you silly children! We’ll let you out when you’ve made up. Resolved your differences. There’s plenty of hot water, don’t worry!”
The steam cleared and revealed her lover at the other end of the tank, looking sheepish.
“Were you in on this?”
He held up his hands and shook his head. “No, this is all their doing, and I plan to have my sweet revenge at a later date. But I don’t see them letting us out of here unless we make amends. So maybe you should come down to my end of the bath and we should talk, before my whirligigs get pruney.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Whirligigs, is it? We may be naked and captive in a giant bathtub, but I’m not so sure it’s time for talk of your whirligigs just yet. I don’t know who you were, in that park today. Watching my pain and walking away from it. They offered me a job, Darien! And the way things are going, yes, I’m this close to taking it. If that’s how you want to push me.” She splashed water at him in frustration and turned away.
Darien dipped under the water and surfaced at her shoulder. His voice was rough when he spoke in her ear.
“I’m sorry. Can I…? I need to touch you.” She sighed, and without turning round, leaned back against him. He sank his forehead into the crook of her shoulder. He was quiet for a moment, lips still on her neck. When he spoke, his answer was so low she had to turn to hear.
“I’m not part of that world, the one your parents move in. And you could be, if you chose. I was scared I’d lose you. That I’m not good enough, and once you’re out of the bubble of the ship, and the three of us misfits, you might see that.” Hannah shook her head, mystified.
“I didn’t grow up in that world either. I’m Miss Lowly Background too—an orphanage and a seamstress apprenticeship. That’s me.”
“Yeah, but Hannah, you didn’t grow up down here. If the professor hadn’t saved me the way he did Doc, I’d be…I don’t know what I’d be right now.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. You could have told me about that, Darien. You know that.”
“I wish I could offer you more. More than theft and moving and running away all the time. You never asked if we could take Doc with us. Maybe you think this is no life we live either.”
Hannah turned to him then.
“I love our life, Darien, when we do it properly. I just don’t feel safe right now, especially when you’re not on my side. And my parents…that was something I needed to do. I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d support me.” She finished in a whisper. He ducked his head and nodded into her breasts.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her chest. “I wanted to. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. It hurt to see you so upset.” He gently put his mouth to her skin, placed kisses along the slope of her breast as it floated in front of him. Bravely, he started nuzzling her nipples, distracting her.
“Shh.” She petted his tightly shorn hair, ran her fingers down his neck as he suckled her. The water lifted her, let her wind her legs around his hips and hold him as he licked her stiff nipples as they peeped out of the foamy water. Steam wreathed them, the pipes groaned and clanked, the water bubbled.
“You gave me a whole new life, Darien. Don’t mess it up. Don’t get arrested, or bring the police here, or slip away from me into the company of some rodent-man. I need you here, with me.”
“Rodent-man?” He laughed. “Oh, you saw me with Clive! Ah, Hannah, it was just a little business; he doesn’t have much to offer me. Not like you do, you give me so much.”
“I can give you more.” It had been a long separation for them, and they were naked together in the hot water and steam. Water beaded Darien’s shoulders and lips, and she longed for the feeling of his body against hers again. She slipped from his grasp and dived in, her hair spreading around her like a heavy cloud. Its seaweed wreathing worked the tension from her sore neck and scalp.
In front of her was Darien’s cock, standing proud, and she took its slippery length into her mouth and moved up and down it until she ran out of air. She surfaced for breath and a glimpse of his transported face before returning to the task, letting the heat of the water in her mouth do much of the work, then sucking him until his knees buckled and he pulled her back onto him. Darien turned her so her back was resting against the wall of the tank and eased her legs around his waist again. He crushed his erection against her * and thrust and she bucked and moaned and pushed back at him. The pressure was always a sweet, delicious pain that she loved. He tipped her mouth up toward his, and kissed her, deep and intense, claiming her again. At the same time, his cock worked to unfurl her labia, nudging its way in. Hannah felt herself slip onto him, hot and slick, different from the heat of the bath. Darien’s thrusts were slow and deep and she felt dreamy, floating on his cock and held up by the water. His hands found her breasts again, reached for her nipples, slippery in the water. Everything was heated and swollen, every touch magnified. She squeezed him closer and he groaned and pumped harder, sliding his hand between them to press and circle her *.
“Oh, velvet, Hannah.”
She lay her head back against the warm metal and shifted her hips, clenching down hard, making him gasp.
“Oh, easy, girl, easy.
Might as well go easy, she thought. We’ve nowhere to go for the moment, and Will says there’s plenty of hot water. Darien lifted a hank of her wet hair in his hand and leaned his face into it.
“You’re my mermaid in the water, Hannah. I’m sorry, Hannie, I’m so sorry, I’m a fool, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry I let you go alone. Angel girl.”
He rubbed her harder, thrust faster, and she leaned in and bit his nipple as the shudders broke though her.
“Augh, I love you,” he coughed out, and came, leaning down to bury his head in her shoulder.
“I like it in here,” Hannah said, when their breathing had cooled, and Darien had slipped out of her. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell them we’re okay.” She laughed, lifting her wrinkled fingertips to his mouth to kiss. “Though we must consider your whirligigs.”
8 Airborne Again, A Moonlit Ending
With a clank, the ladder splashed back into the tank and Elana’s smiling face peered over.
“I hope your rapprochement is complete in there, there’s something you need to see.”
They climbed out, gingerly. Before the ship stood a beaming Doc, clad in a new dress and a smear of grease and holding a multi-tool. A whum and a whir emanated from the ship. Will was looking stunned.
“It seems to be working. Doc, did you work with the professor?”
“Yeah, I was his ’prentice. He said I had raw potential.”
Darien frowned.
“He never made me his apprentice.”
“I think your raw potential was in a different area, old man,” said Will calmly. “Here, put some clothes on.”
“Told you I could fix it.”
Some nights later, in the small hours, a ship rose into the night sky, hoisted by a glowing green and gold balloon. At the helm stood Hannah and Darien, airborne again, united once more, hands entwined and steering for the moon.