Godspeed Read online

  He parted his lips as if to speak again but no words followed. He nodded, smiled, and then released the door.

  First I saw the boy. He startled when he noticed me, and his eyes questioned Schuyler as to whether or not it was a wise thing, bringing me into this gathering.

  “Worry not, Penn. This action is completely sanctioned by Doctor Godspeed himself. It's long since time.”

  The young man who, to my mind, finally had a name, rose from his chair and bowed to me slightly in welcome. I responded with an uneasy smile, uncertain what I should expect from the room's other inhabitants.

  “Everyone, we have a new friend to welcome to our happy little jigsaw family.” Schuyler announced. “She is under the care of our doctor and will be with us for, oh, as long as she needs to be with us.”

  That comment twisted in my stomach, but I tried to dismiss it. I did not want a shift in my expression or my manner to make me seem disinterested, or worse, unkind to those present.

  “You've already met our young friend Pennington Renfrew, or Penn as he's called. May I also introduce—”

  “Hello there, lovely young woman,” a voice said from across the room. A boy who appeared to be younger than Penn came toward me, but I was unprepared for his manner of approach.

  He was seated in a chair with wheels affixed to it where stationary legs should have been. “Where have they been hiding you?”

  Before I could answer, he reached out a hand toward me and grasped hold of my fingers.

  “My name is Jon Robeson Weatherall II, but everyone calls me Jib.” He precociously, and enthusiastically, looked up at me from below, his eyes affixed to my own as he placed a kiss upon my hand. “Lucky we are, to have you here with us tonight.”

  “Oh for heaven's sake, Jib, really.” A young, feminine voice addressed us now, and I turned to see a girl standing behind me.

  She was a little taller than I, with beautiful auburn hair escaping her proper, braided style in unruly curling tendrils at her ears and nape. She was dressed in the most interesting outfit; a lace overskirt that split to reveal menswear tailored pants beneath, closely fitted and oddly very stylish. Her blouse and jacket were all ruffles, buttons and lace and, analyzing it carefully, I thought to myself that surely she and I must have the same tailor. Her blouse was pink, her jacket, skirt, and pants all heather gray. It was an elegant outfit, if something I knew would never be found in any of the shops down on the main thoroughfare. Perhaps that was why it was so striking; every fashion Schuyler created seemed to be suited specifically to the person who would wear it.

  The most remarkable thing about this girl, however, was the pair of tiny, gold-rimmed and rose-colored spectacles that were perched upon her tiny, upturned nose. They kept sliding down, and she'd have to reach up with a hand to push them back into their proper place. She blinked, repeatedly, and seemed to both squint and strain to look at me, causing me to wonder just how much success she was having in trying to see my face.

  “Hello,” she said at last. She reached out and did not quite find my hand on her first attempt as she tried to snatch it away from Jib. “I'm Marielle Sterling. It's going to be nice to have another woman around this place.”

  “Woman!” Jib laughed. “Listen to you, Marielle. All of fifteen and you're a woman now.”

  “Well, what about you? You're only seventeen and you try to charm every woman you meet like a well-traveled man of the world.”

  “I am a well-traveled man of the world,” Jib protested. “Seventeen years, six months, and two days old, thank you very much, and every single one of them has been a complete adventure!”

  “I don't doubt it,” I said, lowering my eyes slightly.

  “You have a few years to go yet before you can say you're anything near a woman.” Jib persisted, unwilling to let Marielle's remarks stand.

  “Now, Jib, Marielle is a young woman, but a woman nonetheless,” Schuyler interjected. “In fact, it is my opinion that you will find as you grow older, all females are actually women the day they're born. It just takes a few years for the men in their lives to accept the fact.”

  “Very well said.” Marielle nodded with approval. She began to feel her way along the table before us, apparently using it to guide her back to the rocking chair in the corner. Once she reached it, I noticed there was a white cane sitting propped up against the wall next to it, and upon it a pile of yarn and knitting needles awaited her. She picked them up and reclaimed her seat, beginning to rock gently.

  It was then that I first saw the last person to whom I had not yet been introduced.

  Beside the rocking chair was a girl who appeared to be younger than Marielle, by a year or two at least. She was much smaller in stature, and she sat silently on the floor, rocking to and fro with legs crossed, mimicking the motion of the chair beside her, or rather, I thought, not even noticing it.

  “It seems there is another young woman here already.”

  “That's Lilibet,” Schuyler said, lowering his voice and leaning toward me. “She is very special.”

  Before he could elaborate, Marielle took over. “That's my little sister. She doesn't talk.”

  “I see.” I stumbled over the words, as I was about to say “I'm sorry,” but I didn't want to seem to pity the girl when it appeared her sister clearly did not.

  “She does other things, though, don't you, Lilibet?” Schuyler spoke to the girl as if assuming that she understood his every word, yet the girl did not cease her motion or acknowledge him in any other way; she simply kept rocking.

  Though I doubted the wisdom of doing so when I was unsure that I would have the strength to rise back up to my feet, I could not resist the temptation to try to greet Lilibet myself as properly as I possibly could.

  I lowered myself to the floor and sat by her, drawing curious looks from the three males in the room.

  “Hello, Lilibet, it's nice to meet you.”

  Lilibet continued her rocking undeterred, but then suddenly her head tilted, slightly. She began sniffing the air as a curious puppy would, and leaned her head closer toward me. She lunged and grabbed hold of my hand, turning it over and bringing my wrist up to her nose, sniffing even more enthusiastically. The sound did not go unnoticed by her sister, and she remarked upon the reason for Lilibet's sudden interest in me at the same moment Lilibet let my hand fall to the floor with a thud and resumed her rocking.

  “You're wearing the scent of rosewater,” Marielle explained. I wondered if I had applied too much, but as the two younger men in the room looked at each other in confusion, I realized that it was the keener sense of first the girl who could barely see and then of her very special sibling that detected the fragrance upon my skin before anyone else was aware of it. “Our mother always used to have the nanny bathe us with rosewater. Lilibet is accustomed to it, it must make you seem familiar to her.”

  “The nanny?” I wondered what sort of a mother would have the nanny always bathe their children, but my chance to ask was cut short by the sound of hands taking up the keys of the piano and launching into a brisk, spirited rendition of a currently popular song.

  “Jib, not so loud,” Schuyler groaned, holding his head in his hands a moment. “I've had a very long day, and my head is…”

  “Why don't you go ask the doctor for something for it?” Jib replied, as he kept right on playing away. I noticed that though some sickness or malady had rendered his legs useless to stand or walk, his hands apparently still had a measure of dexterity, even if he did fumble occasionally over the notes.

  “You know I don't like to bother the doctor with this sort of trifle.”

  Jib struggled with his notes again and everyone in the room cringed, save myself. I had no musical ability whatsoever, so watching anyone with any measure of it at all always left me entirely mystified.

  “Sorry. Still learning this one,” he remarked. He shook his head and continued on.

  It was at this moment that something about someone else in the room caught and
held my attention. Penn was huddled up in a chair at the far end of the space now, as far away as he could get from the piano. He held a book in his hands but stared blankly at the pages, and as he hid behind its large cover, I noticed that he seemed to be continually wincing in perfect time with the striking of Jib's fingers upon the keys. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he lowered the book back down and actually tilted his head to one side, propped his elbow on the armrest of the chair, and then leaned his head toward it, ear resting upon his open palm.

  It appeared as if hearing the music was physically painful for him.

  “You didn't tell us your name,” Marielle suddenly said, as she clacked away with her knitting needles, feeling her way along the stitches as she worked to count them without the necessity of her vision. The work she was producing was absolutely lovely; I watched as just over the course of a few moments many stitches joined the ones she'd made before extending the length of what appeared to be an elegant scarf.

  “No,” Schuyler intervened on my behalf. “She didn't.”

  “Don't you have a name?” Jib teased. “Or maybe the doctor decided he didn't like it and snatched it away from you?”

  “Of course she does, everyone has a name,” Marielle interrupted.

  “I—” I tried, but could not get a word in edgewise.

  “She doesn't have to tell us her name if she doesn't want to.” Penn had set his book aside, sat up straighter again, and took up for me immediately, something that I found to be instantly endearing. Of this group of youths, only he knew anything of me beyond the confines of this room. Only he had seen me in the laboratory, strapped to and suffering on the surgical table upon which Godspeed had saved my life.

  “But we have to call her something.” Jib insisted.

  Suddenly I felt uncomfortable here, in this room and around everyone in it. A panic rose in me as I looked at this collection of young people, children really, and I wondered just how they had come to view themselves as freaks. Of course that was a word I would have applied to myself, truth be told, given the way that I had transformed since my arrival here; given that I felt now as though I was nothing of the girl I'd once been.

  “She looks like there's someplace she'd rather be,” Jib observed, sounding as though he was dangerously close to taking offense.

  “No, not at all, in fact I…” I began, but my voice trailed off because I didn't know how to explain that even though I had nowhere else in the world to go that here, with Quinn and Schuyler, was exactly where I would want to be even if I was a queen and had a palace to go home to.

  “She wants to belong. Just like the rest of us,” Penn said, again taking up for me in front of his friends. “But…” He paused, shuffling his feet.

  “But?” I asked gently, too curious to let the last word go.

  “But you do look like you think you belong elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere!” Jib clapped his hands together once. “That's what we'll call you. In fact, I think I'll call you ‘Else’ for short.”

  I didn't think to object because it was entirely true. I was a girl who always felt as if she belonged somewhere other than where she was. Even with a lifetime of quiet contemplation and thoughtful searching, I still did not believe I would ever find a place I could truly call home.

  Schuyler observed the exchange but said nothing. He watched as my eyes moved from person to person in the room, wondering where the discussion would take us next. I just wished that I knew what I should say, or how I should act.

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” he said finally, as the conversation had stalled and my discomfort was apparent.

  I began to try to rise to my feet, but as I had expected, fighting the effects of gravity to stand was much more difficult than sinking to the ground had been. With great effort, I finally succeeded.

  “Might I be of some assistance to you in the kitchen, sir?” I asked.

  “No, you should mind your strength, Elsewhere.” Schuyler tested out the nickname that had been affixed to me and rolled his eyes upward, considering it for a moment. Finally he looked upon me again and offered a curious half-smile. “It's not the worst thing anyone's ever been called, I suppose. There is something lyrical to it. What do you think?”

  “I think that you are right.”

  He nodded once and gave me a gentle pat on the back before speaking again. “Penn, it is time to finish setting the table and fix the doctor's dinner tray.”

  Schuyler moved for the door and Penn fell into step close behind, prepared to leave me in the room with the others.

  “Doctor Godspeed won't be joining us for dinner?” I spoke the words before I could stop myself, and instantly I wished that my curiosity had not caused me to ask the question so plainly.

  “He never does,” Penn replied, then followed Schuyler out the door and pulled it shut.

  I noticed that Lilibet had ceased her rocking and had begun drumming her fingers against her thighs as she sat cross-legged, still, on the floor. It was then that I took a moment to truly analyze her appearance.

  Her manner of dress immediately captured my attention, as it became apparent that she was dressed more like a boy than a girl. She wore the same tailored menswear pants her older sister did but with no skirt over it; instead they featured black suspenders that held them up over the shoulders of her plain white shirt. She wore a small golden clock face on a chain around her neck, but it did not appear to actually keep time.

  Her hairstyle, comprised of simple braids that clearly had been done for her, was squashed flat, as if she had been wearing a hat; but I saw none nearby. She looked much like her older sister — the same fair, freckled skin and auburn curls fighting to desert the braids—yet the shape of her face was different, as were her actual features, and I found myself wondering whom in the family she favored, her mother or father.

  I also began to wonder where her mother was: how and why she left two children with such obvious challenges to spend their evenings with Schuyler Algernon and the other patients of Doctor Godspeed.

  She tapped her fingers faster and faster and emitted a low sound in the back of her throat; not quite a growl, not quite a moan but something I couldn't quite put a name to. She sounded, if I'd had to hazard a guess at attaching an emotion to it, irritated.

  “Better play another song, Jib. Lilibet is boring of the silence.”

  “Any requests?”

  “Something that will calm her down a little before dinner,” Marielle requested. “If you please.”

  “I'll do my best.”

  Jib looked over at me, wiggled his eyebrows, and then played the famous opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. He dropped the dead weight of his foot down on the sustain pedal and kept it there for a long moment, holding his hands dramatically up above the keys, waiting for a reaction from his audience.

  I simply blinked in surprise at the volume and strength with which he'd played it. Marielle sighed, but Lilibet had a much stronger, unhappy reaction.

  She made another sound — something akin to a screech, and I jolted. The unexpected noise went right through me, and I felt my heart race faster as Lilibet began to rock back and forth once again.

  “Jib! That wasn't nice!” Marielle tossed her knitting aside, abandoned her chair, and found her way down to the floor beside her sister. “You know how she feels about that song.”

  “Okay, okay, I'm sorry,” Jib said, but the apology really wasn't convincing. He lived, it seemed to me, to get a rise out of people, and Lilibet was no exception. Though seeing how detached she was from the world around her, lost in her own head, I started to wonder if he wasn't simply trying to get through to her by any means possible, even if it meant angering her. “What about this, then.”

  He began to play a gentle, lilting, romantic song. For as little as I knew of music, I knew at the very least that it was a waltz, and I also knew that whatever else she did or did not know, that Lilibet seemed to be very fond of it.

  She ceased m
aking any sort of sound and began to sway in time with the music; her fingers still moving over her legs, up and down, almost as they would over the keys if she had been the one playing the piano instead. Her eyes were clamped shut and she had the most serene expression now, as if everything else in the world had ceased to exist but the melody that the piano was making. For some reason, whatever it was that prevented her from interacting as an everyday person would with those around her, on some deep and important level the music reached her.

  “Dinner is ready,” Schuyler called, and in that instant an unexpected figure entered the room. “Doctor?”

  “I believe that I will join you tonight,” Quinn replied.

  Schuyler tried to contain his joy and surprise. “Right. Everyone… wash up.”

  As one by one everyone else filed out of the room, I waited.

  I wasn't even certain what I was waiting for, perhaps nothing. Perhaps I was only taking advantage of any chance I had to be alone with him, even for a moment. Especially when his mind was so otherwise engaged that he had no chance of discovering that I was staring at him. Or it could be, I realized, he was just too much of a gentleman to let on that he already knew.

  “It doesn't trouble you, does it?”

  “Doctor?”

  “The name they called you.”

  I was surprised he'd overheard, and shrugged. “No, sir.”

  “Because if it does, I'll tell them to stop.”

  “No.” I suddenly felt the room had become much too warm with just us two in it; breathing the same, still air. I turned toward the door. “But I thank you.”

  * * *

  I waited and watched as everyone took a seat at the table — everyone save Schuyler, who was serving the food, and Doctor Godspeed, who seemed quietly amused by my inability to decide upon a place to sit.

  “Anywhere you like,” Schuyler said, saving me from the endless-ness of the moment. I chose the chair next to Marielle; the doctor took up the one straight across from me.

  I wondered how I would ever manage to put a bite of food into my mouth with him watching me so closely.