This Monstrous Thing(8)

“Don’t say that,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”

Oliver pressed his chin to his chest. “Some days I do.” His voice still shook, but he’d gone quiet again. “Some days I want to tear myself apart.”

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Don’t . . . do that. I’ll come more. I’ll come stay with you for a bit. I’ll tell Mum and Father I’m going to see about a job with Morand—”

“Just because you don’t scream out loud doesn’t mean I still can’t hear you screaming.” He turned suddenly away from me and leaned forward, forehead to the wall. His silhouette against the firelight was so strange and twisted, like a too-sharp skeleton sewn into empty skin.

I sank backward into the chaise and blew a long breath out through my nose. The goggles around my neck fogged. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going to Ingolstadt, and I’m not letting you out. It’s horrible out there for people like you.”

“No one is like me,” he replied.

“For clockwork men,” I corrected. “Especially in Geneva. Oliver, people would rip you apart out there. They’d dissect you.”

“I know.” He jammed his pipe between his teeth and slumped down on the chaise beside me. We sat for a while without speaking. A log in the fireplace collapsed into embers, sending a spray of popping sparks up the chimney.

Then I remembered why I’d come today.

“I got you something.” I retrieved my bag from under the desk and pulled out one of the books. “Happy birthday.”

“Is that today?”

“December first, same as every year.” I meant it as a joke, but Oliver didn’t laugh. He took the book from me and stared at the cover like it was a portrait of someone he almost recognized. “Coleridge,” I prompted. “You used to like him. You and . . .” I stopped and swallowed hard. I’d never mentioned Mary, mostly for the sake of my own broken heart, and I didn’t know if Oliver remembered her.

He glanced sideways at me. “Me and who?”

“Just you,” I said. “You liked Coleridge.”

“What does he write?”

“Words.”

He elbowed me sharply with his mechanical arm, and I yelped. It hurt more than I hoped he meant it to. “What sort of things, you ninny?”

“Poetry. He’s a poet, I think. I don’t really know.” I reached for the next book on the stack.

“Like one, that on a lonesome road . . .”

I stopped. “What?”

“That’s . . .” He screwed up his face, eyes closed in tight concentration. “Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread.”

Behind us, another log snapped in the fireplace. “That’s pretty grim,” I said.

“I think that’s Coleridge. I remember it.”

“Oh.” My stomach jolted at the word remember. I dumped the rest of the books onto the floor without looking at them and reached for my coat. “Well, you can read it in your spare time, when you’re not tearing the furniture apart.”

Oliver looked up as I stood. “Are you going already?”

“I’ve got somewhere to be.”

I didn’t say home, but I knew Oliver heard it anyway. He tossed the Coleridge book onto the floor next to Paradise Lost and pulled his feet up onto the spot I’d just vacated. “Tell your parents I said hello.”

It was a jab wrapped up as a joke, which aggravated me more than if he’d just been mean. “They’re your parents too.”

“I thought that was your honor now. Or do you prefer creator?”

“Hell’s teeth, Oliver.” I snatched up my bag and my scarf—I didn’t even bother to put it on, I just wanted away from him so badly. It felt like I was suffocating. “I won’t be by much this week,” I called as I headed for the door. “We’ve got the Christmas market and Father’s going mental over it.”

“Just like every year.”

“Just like every year.”

“I remember that.”

I turned in the doorway and looked back. Oliver was cross-legged on the chaise with his shoulders slumped. He had picked up another book from my pile, and as he turned the pages, he reached up and ran his fingers over his bottom lip—an absent, deep-in-thought gesture I remembered from when we were boys.

I watched his fingers cross his lip, and thought, I miss you.

He was right there in front of me, close enough to touch. And all I could do was miss him.

I turned the knob behind my back and offered what I hoped was at least close to a smile. “I’ll see you soon,” I said, and retreated into the castle darkness, back toward the setting winter sun, before he could say good-bye.


I was six minutes late for supper.

When I let myself into our flat above the shop, both my parents were already at the table, Father staring at his pocket watch, Mum looking rather sheepishly at me as though apologizing for the whole show of waiting. I knew it hadn’t been her idea. The table between them was laid with a roast goose, flanked by a dish of leek-and-potato papet vaudois and a whipped meringue. It was a far cry from most of our suppers, which were usually cold and stale and eaten standing up in the workshop between appointments.