Tina Connolly - Copperhead

Steadying her nerve, Helen closed her eyes, reached through the iron railing, and grasped the copper box with both hands. Her fingers fit into and under the copper snakes disturbingly well. They seemed to mold their coils to her thin fingers. Perhaps they were hollow tubes, for patterns of warmth ran along her skin. The chaotic swirl started again, but this time she was expecting it. She tried to relax, tried to let her mind make sense of what she saw. Buildings, faces, voices … men, walking, talking. That face looked like the Prime Minister—was he nearby?

She thought she had seen the warehouse the first time. She tried to visualize it from the outside and the pictures of it increased in response to her focus. She felt bludgeoned by it, as if it were some strange dream where she could see the building from all sides at once, and even an image of the copper box, nearly from where she would be seeing it in real life, but a trifle lower. And then another image that seemed to be the back of the warehouse; a part she hadn’t seen, but she recognized the tubes and cages.

It was too overwhelming. Helen let go, extricated her fingers from the copper.

But she looked at Grimsby’s machine with respect. Is that what Grimsby had seen with it, when he was attempting to pull in a piece of fey? Certainly the machine did more than just destroy. Someone could see all over the city, if they learned how to cope with the barrage of sights and sounds. Someone with a more powerful brain—or perhaps, simply someone with more fey power, since Grimsby had said the machine ran on the fey energy. Maybe that’s why she was able to see a little bit with it—the fey in her face. Perhaps with a lot of hard work she could figure out what it did and how it worked, and why she saw the back of the warehouse but not the front.

The back of the warehouse …

Helen turned around. But there was no one standing there, was there? Not right behind her. But maybe farther back, around the crates …

There was a dark shape. Not a shape. A figure, a person. In the back, half-hidden behind the row of cages, holding a funnel next to her face …

Helen’s legs were running before her head completely knew what she had seen. “Jane!” she shouted, making all the blue fog swirl and unsettle. “Jane!”

Jane turned her perfect face to look at Helen. It was pale in the slanted light of the warehouse. Her green eyes were wide and vacant, and her dark brown hair all in a tumble.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Helen. “You won’t believe everything I’ve been trying to do in your name. I swear I’m making a hash of things. I know I thought I could help you, but honestly I am so ready to give this whole ridiculous The Hundred project back to you, and sweep it under the rug, and take you out for tea and cakes. It’s been a nightmare.” Helen slowed as she approached her sister. Was Jane listening? Helen repeated her sister’s name again, but now slower, wondering. “Jane?”

Jane blinked several times. “Helen?” she said finally.

“Yes, silly,” said Helen. “I’ve found you and will get you home. But where have you been? Did you come here on your own? And aren’t you cold?”

Jane looked down, holding the funnel with its attached hose in one hand like a bouquet. She was still wearing the dress she had worn to the meeting—it was silky and misty grey, and still she had no coat, for Helen had that. “Perhaps I am cold,” Jane said, as if testing out the idea.

“Well, I’ll get you your coat. Or—no, I’ll get you a better coat. That ridiculous old thing you had; it’s not even worth giving as a hand-me-down. I’d feel terrible if I saw Mary walking out in that coat. I have an allowance, and there are some new ones in fashion that would very much suit—wide shoulders, belted to a narrow waist; all these gorgeous slashing lines.”

“Slashing lines…,” said Jane, fingering her cheek. Up close the filtered daylight revealed raw pink lines crossing the white face. The lines where the iron had been.

Helen’s heart seized. Jane was so vulnerable. Jane had always been the strong one, when they had been together. And when Jane fled to the city she was defined by her absence. I cannot ask Jane about medicine for Mother, I cannot let Jane make the decision about the cow. Helen wanted Jane to be the strong one again. “What happened to you?” Helen said again, but gently.

“I was working with Millicent when the room went blue,” Jane said slowly. “Everything felt strummed and tense, like when your hair stands on end. Like a lightning storm. And then … I felt I saw you standing up there in the attic. And there were people around you, but you were shouting to me. I felt as if I was being pulled in two. It hurt—not physically, exactly, but if you could be pulled in two without it hurting, then that’s what it felt like. I saw you and a tangle of copper, and then I saw Millicent and the attic. Both on top of each other. It was too much. I couldn’t take being pulled apart. I felt like there was someone behind me? Someone grabbed me? I think I blacked out. And then…” Jane looked around at the warehouse as if seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know exactly. I woke up here, and my iron was gone—it feels as though I skinned my knee, but on my face.” She put a hand to the pink lines that traced around her features. “But I didn’t really wake up, not all at once. I feel as though I’ve been sleepwalking while I try to put the two halves of me back together.”

Helen did not like the sound of this. And the being pulled in two … “What are you doing with that funnel?” she said sharply. “Does it have chloroform coming out of it or something?” She took the funnel from Jane’s hand and sniffed at it from a good distance, but smelled nothing. “Not that that proves anything,” Helen muttered. She dropped the funnel on the ground and kicked it away. Took Jane’s hand and tugged her sister around the boxes to the copper box with its snaking black tubes. “Does this look familiar to you? Have you touched it?”

“Perhaps I should,” Jane said, reaching for it.

“No,” Helen said sharply, and pulled her sister’s arm away. “It might be dangerous to you.” She was so overwhelmed. Grimsby’s invention had done something to Jane two nights ago, and now here they were in this warehouse with the same device and a confused Jane. “Look, when I touched this I saw a whole bunch of things,” Helen said. “Is that how it felt in the house, with Millicent? Or maybe, your problem is because you were actually in a fey trance at the time, working on Millicent? And then she—” She bit her tongue, sure it would be too much of a shock for Jane to tell her about Millicent. Jane seemed so fragile.

“Millicent?” said Jane. “I met a Millicent, long ago. She was all in white with a green sash, and she was dancing.…”

Helen’s fingers clutched tightly on Jane’s arm. “Jane—,” she said, but then there was a rustle from the other end of the warehouse, a muffled thump, footsteps.…

Helen’s fingers tightened all the way and pulled Jane through the tangle of crates and cages and machinery, back to the open window. Up on the rickety table, teetering, and now the lock on the front door was rattling.

“Out you go,” Helen said, and locked her hands under Jane’s heel, lifting her up. Jane might not have gone as quickly as Helen would have liked, but she did pull herself through the window, and out, and Helen heard her jump to the piles of slag below.

The lock clicked as Helen pulled herself up after Jane. It was hard without the heel boost she had given Jane. Helen had not climbed anything since she lived in the country. She felt the seams of her skirt start to go and she hoisted the material higher, painfully aware that Frye’s slacks would be better for this sort of thing. Men had it so much easier—even unfit Alistair could have managed this window more efficiently, because he would have had better clothes for it. A most unusual idea occurred to her for the first time, which was that perhaps it was all too convenient for men like Alistair that women like Helen stayed in dresses that you couldn’t run or climb in.