In a hushed voice, my crooked features hidden behind the bronze mask, I spin the tale Elena has given me.
I describe my beloved daughter, my only reason for living—lost to the Black Death that scarred my own face. Hoarse with grief, I speak of a beautiful doll, an eternal reminder of the angelic child who I’ll never see again. She is my last link to a world that has taken everything from me. And feigning the heartbreak of a father, I finally beg the leatherworker to practice his craft—to give this doll the face of a living girl.
It is a strange request, but tragedy and its warped aftereffects are common here. The leatherworker hesitates, then drops to his knees beside the small, limp form of the girl and begins to efficiently unpack his satchel. The first time he lifts her, he does so roughly, and I put fingers on his shoulder like the pinch of an iron gate.
“Gently,” I tell him. She is precious to me.
After that, the leatherworker touches Elena’s face as if she were a real little girl.
His fingers are nimble and confident as he pries the porcelain mask away from her head. Nostalgia floods my heart as I see her beautiful face discarded on the floor. The innocence of her simple facade will be lost, her beautiful clean doll’s features transformed into something so much more complex. I wonder, as I often do lately, if I am going to lose her.
My darling Elena, to her credit, does not so much as tremble, completing the illusion of a doll under the man’s needle and thread. At the sight of her clockwork, the leatherworker turns to me.
“Sir,” he says, “this doll of yours is ingeniously constructed. She’s a treasure, fit for showing in the finest wonder room. Have you considered…”
Seeing my masked face, the sentence evaporates on his lips.
“Apologies, sir,” he says.
He sets Elena on a wooden chair, her liquid eyes staring vacantly across the room from within a skinless face. I cannot bear to look, and I go on long walks or simply wait outside on the stairs, hearing the click of needle and thimble.
Working from a small bust of Aphrodite and a collection of hand-drawn sketches, he crafts the best face he can. Losing himself in a place of focus, the leatherworker falls into a reverie, hands flying, unaware of me or of anything besides the little girl who is coming to life beneath his hands. The thin leather, dyed and dusted with powder, becomes a simulacrum of the pure unblemished skin of youth, bright red lips and wide eyes taking form under his expert hand.
The young man works for days, from morning until late in the night. Stopping only to take meals and short naps, he continues under the meager radiance of candles as the sunlight fades. Finally, near morning, the sound of working stops and does not resume. Rising from the stairs, I steel myself and enter our room.
I find the leatherworker standing with his back to me. Holding a brush, he has just finished applying a final layer of pigment. His shoulders are rising and falling as he takes manic breaths, staring at the girl in the chair. Hearing my creaking footsteps, he turns to me with shining eyes.
Over his shoulder, I see Elena has become a real girl, with a real face.
“My god,” he breathes, “she’s…alive.”
Quickly, I clamp a hand over his bicep and guide him to the doorway. I press a bulging wallet of coins into his palm and thank him brusquely. Confused and overcompensated, he mouths his thanks and stumbles out into the dark hallway.
I close the door firmly behind him and lock it.
Under the familiar flicker of candlelight, I meet my sister for the second time.
“Darling,” I say, kneeling before her chair. “He’s gone.”
Elena slowly blinks. This time, I do not hear the click of a doll’s eyes.
Now, I see the contours of Elena’s true face. From the sculpture of Aphrodite and her own drawings, she has chosen the woman she wanted to become. And now that she has, I realize this was always who she was.
“Peter,” she says, smiling, her red-tinged cheeks bright beneath sparkling eyes. She slides off the chair on slippered feet and pushes down the ruffles of her dress. Standing face-to-face with me, her familiar black curls now frame the beguiling face of a young lady.
Reaching out, Elena takes my broken face in her hands.
“Let me fix yours now,” she says. “London awaits us.”
21
SEATTLE, PRESENT
Knifing through the heart of Seattle, Peter leans behind the wheel and drives with his thumbs, barely moving. A flap of skin from his damaged face has peeled away from the golden skeleton beneath. Struggling, he reaches up and tries to push his wound closed.
“We need to fix your face,” I say, crinkling my nose.
“Not now,” he says.
“You look like Frankenstein’s monster. Somebody is going to notice and call the cops. Or the morgue.”
“No,” Peter replies. “The sooner we arrive the less chance our enemies will have—”
“Look,” I say, interrupting him. “I can stitch you up. It will take five minutes and then we can go meet your friend. But if somebody in Seattle sees fucking metal under your face, then we’re going to end up on the news.”
Peter regards me silently for a long second. From his expression, I guess he must not get interrupted very often. Or at all.
“Trust me,” I say quietly.
Something in his expression twinges, some obscure emotion rippling across his face. With one hand, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small leather satchel. He tosses it on my lap.
“Are you familiar?” he asks.
I nod, the satchel looks strangely similar to my own tool roll.
“Very well,” he responds.
Soon after we pass the tower, Peter pulls off the highway and drives through the industrial area along Lake Union until he sees an empty lot. It’s weedy and abandoned, leading to a warren of buildings heaped onto a long jetty reaching into the lake. Beyond a chain-link fence, the rusty hulls of dry-docked freighters loom over gritty concrete. Loose gravel grinds and pops under our tires as the loud, gasoline-smelling car rumbles to a stop.
Nobody is around this early in the morning.
“This will work,” I say, cracking open the groaning door.
I toss the satchel on the warm hood of the car. Unfolding it, I see an array of fine clockmaker’s tools. Some of the pieces date back hundreds of years, forged in bronze and shaped by hand. Other tools I don’t recognize, modern creations wrought in sterile titanium. Picks and microscopes and narrow drills crowd the loops of the satchel.
“Wow,” I say, pulling out a scalpel.
“Are you able to do this?” Peter asks, climbing out of the door without putting weight on his shattered knee. He cradles one arm to his chest in a way that worries me. “I can do it myself if necessary.”
“I’m fine,” I say, running my fingers over the other tools. “Most of my projects are a lot further gone than you.”