Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Read online

  Tin Fingers

  Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series

  Danny Knestaut

  Contents

  Tin Fingers

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author’s Note

  Other Works by Danny Knestaut

  About the Author

  Tin Fingers

  Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl series

  by

  Danny Knestaut

  ©2017 Danny Knestaut

  Edited by Kathleen Kirvin

  Cover illustration ©2017 Damian K. Sheiles

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgments

  As with every book I write, special thanks goes to Vickie Knestaut for her heroic encouragement, her fantastic suggestions, her diligent work, and her willingness to allow these characters to share our lives. Also, thanks go to Kathleen Kirvin at Taledancer for the editing, the support, and the sharp formatting. Further thanks go to Damian K. Sheiles at DKS Art & Design for the brilliant cover illustration.

  To Vickie

  I can write these books because of you

  As for that, there is a saying, is there not, that Englishmen conceal only one thing—their love.

  —Agatha Christie

  Chapter One

  Ikey reached through the dark with his remaining hand. Outside, children shrieked in laughter and sparrows squabbled and chattered. His fingertips brushed the door as the carriage rocked with the efforts of the dismounting coachman.

  “Need some help there?” the coachman called.

  “We got it,” Cross grumbled off to Ikey’s left.

  Ikey moved his hand in growing circles along the door until he found the metal latch. He hooked his finger over it and pulled up. As the door popped open, the latch on the opposite side of the cabin clicked. The carriage rocked again as Cross let himself out. Before the coachman could come around, Ikey pushed the door open and grasped the top edge. With the toe of his boot, he probed for the running board beneath him. When it materialized against his foot, he stepped down, and then onto the street.

  Warmth baked into the top of his bowler hat and the back of his shirt. The sunlight wormed its fingers beneath the bandages on his face and tickled the scarred flesh. Ikey took a deep breath. Wood smoke, horse flesh, and sun-warmed horse dung met his nose. He rubbed his palm against the leg of his trousers to distract himself from scratching at his eyes.

  “Need help with the luggage?” the coachman asked.

  “I said we got it.”

  Ikey turned his face toward Cross’s voice, rough like a plank in need of sanding. The sunlight pressed against his jaw. As warm and strong as the sun was, the darkness that enveloped him ought to have been lightened some. He turned and lifted his face to the sky. The sun fell full on his mouth and neck. The darkness did not change. It failed to take on the red hue he had noticed when he had once closed his eyes as a boy and lifted his face to the sun warming the dales of his home.

  His old home. He’d never be able to go back to the farm. Not like this.

  Cross stepped up to the coachman. Metal clinked.

  “Then a good day to you both,” the coachman said. His boots plodded over the stones. Springs groaned. Reins rustled. More metal clinked. Hooves and clacking wheels threatened to smother the laughter of children and the squabble of sparrows.

  Ikey took another deep breath and sought the warm, stale air of Cross’s house as if tendrils of it might guide him to the quiet and secure darkness within. The odors of the street overwhelmed every competing scent. Where did the house sit in relation to himself? He wasn’t even sure which side of the street they stood on.

  A hand touched his shoulder and guided him to the left. Fingertips slid across his back, settled into the groove of his spine, and then delivered a second slight press.

  The urge welled up to thank Cross for the little mercy, but Cross had made it clear in the hospital that he didn’t care for such gestures. Ikey bit his lip and moved forward. His toe sought the curb.

  The hand disappeared. Keys jangled from a ring and iron tumblers clicked aside as Cross unlocked the door. The hinges squealed a tired complaint. As Cross stepped inside, his boots thudded on the wood floor, and the music boxes stirred. Their notes shuffled and stumbled through the air. A match hissed despite the sunlight beating down on Ikey’s shoulder and arm.

  Once the footsteps moved away from the door, Ikey entered the house and halted. For two seconds, he reeled in confusion as the command to his left arm to reach out and shut the door went unheeded. Instead, throbbing pain flared up where his left arm used to be.

  “It’s the same as when you left, of course,” Cross said.

  Cross’s words echoed across the parlor, empty except for two high-backed chairs flanking a cold, blackened fireplace across the room. Ikey turned his face toward the chairs. Perhaps he’d walk over and place his hand upon the dust-laden upholstery to see how well memory served him. His feet remained rooted, however.

  The music boxes sang a jangling chorus filled with tinkling glass chimes and metal slivers as Cross’s footfalls approached the kitchen door. Ikey’s heart thrilled with the mad cacophony of it. Their songs were a shifting, dark forest in which Rose drifted.

  His heart pattered down, skipped, and clutched at his throat as he thought of seeing Rose—of being with Rose, of speaking with her for the first time since the Kittiwake burned. The words he wanted to say, the question he wanted to ask; it all sat in his mouth, so much greater than what remained of him.

  Ikey followed the thuds of Cross’s long strides, surprised by how sure his own footsteps were. The hours spent stumbling about in the dark of Cross’s house paid off. Outside, the world constantly threatened to raise curbs out of the street; shoot poles up like trees; drop walls from the sky; sprout boxes and cans and bottles and stones like weeds through the cracks between the granite setts and flagstones. Even in the hospital, Ikey could trust that people would move chairs and tables from where they belonged, or they would leave carts in the halls. The world had become a dark field of hazards out to trip him up and crack his toes.

  But inside Cross’s house, everything sat where it belonged. And Ikey knew with absolute certainty that nothing would be relocated.

  Including Rose.

  “Welcome home, Ikey,” Rose said as he stepped through the kitchen doorway.

  Ikey’s breath caught in his throat. For weeks he had practiced what he would say to Rose. Once the moment arrived, his words became a mat, wet and heavy in his mouth.

  “Is everything all right?” Rose asked.

  Ikey swallowed. His pent-up breath passed through his lips. “You never came.”

  Floorboards creaked under Cross’s shifting weight.

  “You never visited me,” Ikey said. “Not once.”

  “I don’t leave the house,” Rose said.

  Ikey stood, marooned by her
response.

  Cross cleared his throat. “How long before dinner is ready?”

  Rose didn’t respond immediately. “An hour.”

  “Well then, Ikey, let’s go out to the workshop. I’ve got something to show you.”

  Heavy footsteps approached the stairs.

  “Why?” Ikey asked.

  Cross’s footsteps stopped. “It’s a gift.”

  “Why don’t you leave the house?”

  “I don’t,” Rose said.

  “But I…”

  The footsteps returned. Cross’s hand landed on Ikey’s shoulder. “Come along. I think you’re going to like this.”

  Ikey stood for a breath more. Frustration welled up, bubbled hot in his neck and tightened it. He pictured Rose standing before him in Cross’s lantern light, standing in her black dress; her long, elegant hands clasped behind her, a veil hiding her face from her husband and from Ikey, who couldn’t see for his own veil of bandages. The absurdity sizzled behind the anger. He clamped down on his teeth and chomped back an urge to laugh. It’d be ugly. A bark of a laugh that tore around the room and circled like a pack of hounds.

  How could it be that simple? She never left the house. She handed him that excuse like it explained everything, as if it repaid the faceless hours spent lying in bed, bandaged head-to-toe in throbbing pain, bereft of eyesight and an arm, each lost in the effort to save her husband’s life.

  Ikey bowed his head a few degrees, as if Rose could hear his thoughts and smell his unspoken lie.

  She never left the house.

  “Come along, man,” Cross said. “I’m bloody hungry. I don’t want you holding her up any longer than need be.”

  Ikey took a slow breath. He reached across his chest and patted the space where his left arm used to be. His fingers reported back the presence of a wool waistcoat two sizes too big, a thin shirt, and a handful of ribs. In his dreams, he had two arms. It distinguished dreams from reality when reality was a nightmare.

  He turned away from Rose and stepped toward the stairs. The music boxes chattered. His boots found the timbers beneath his feet in a way they never knew the hospital floors.

  The weight of Rose’s response hung from Ikey as he followed Cross up the stairs. He had expected all sorts of excuses. The hospital had given him time to imagine them. Claims of guilt. Accusations against Cross. Stories of how Cross had forbidden it as he kept her locked up in the house in a fit of jealousy. Or afraid of what it might do to Ikey to bring her by.

  As the hours and days shuffled around the hospital and bumped into each other, it became undeniable that Rose wouldn’t visit. The anticipation of her excuse had become the thing that engaged Ikey. It got him out of bed. It drove him to cooperate with nurses and doctors and do whatever he needed to do to earn a release from the hospital. The answers he wanted weren’t in the infirmary.

  Once Cross’s broken leg had healed, he had been discharged from the hospital. He stopped by daily and claimed to be granting Ikey a break from the nebbing of the nurses, as they wouldn’t approach while Cross stood nearby. But when Ikey asked of Rose, Cross grew quiet. He shifted in his seat, or the floor creaked as he shuffled his weight from foot to foot. Ikey clenched his teeth in Cross’s silence and told himself it’d all be worth it. Once he returned to Cross’s house, Rose would clear everything up, make absolute sense of her absence, and no longer would he feel cast aside and abandoned.

  After all of that, in the wake of his anticipation, he sputtered to hear that she simply doesn’t leave the house.

  At the top of the stairs, Cross’s hand settled on Ikey’s shoulder again and attempted to steer him toward the scullery door. Ikey surged forward. Cross’s fingers fell away. At the scullery door, Ikey reached out and found the knob underneath his fingers. A quick twist, pull, and a few steps later, he opened the back door. Sun-heated air wafted across him and brought the scent of grass threaded through with horse manure and smoke.

  Cross stepped up behind him and clamped a hand on Ikey’s shoulder that threatened to drive him into the ground.

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” Cross said.

  “She doesn’t leave the house?” Ikey whispered.

  “You didn’t know? You mean to tell me you never figured that out?”

  Ikey hung his head a moment, then lifted his chin as if Cross stood before him. “I asked her to go away with me. To leave you behind. She said no. I thought she… I thought she was staying for you.”

  Cross guffawed. “Oh hell, that’s a good one. No, I’m afraid the truth is she doesn’t need either one of us. We just happen to live where she hides from the world.”

  Ikey touched the brim of his bowler. He smirked. “I thought she cared.”

  “She cares,” Cross said as he nudged Ikey forward, then stepped around him.

  “It doesn’t feel like it,” Ikey said. “She doesn’t act like it.”

  “No, she acts like Rose is all. And if you knew anything about her, you’d know that.” Cross’s words came back muffled and blunt as he walked along the dirt path to the run-down shack of a workshop at the back of the yard.

  Ikey flinched at the sting of Cross’s comment. How dare he make such a statement? He hid from Rose in his workshop or in the pub until meal times. When he set foot in the house, he carried a lantern. He never walked in the dark, never bothered to learn what the world was like for Rose. How could he, of all people, accuse Ikey of not knowing her?

  Heat flushed over his face. The skin around his eyes crawled and itched. He rubbed his palm against his coarse fustian trousers. The touch of only a single hand on his thigh startled him.

  The sun’s warmth disappeared. Heat wicked away from Ikey’s skin. A breeze added the ocean’s scent to the mix. In the distance, seagulls cried and carried on.

  The world became a different place after Ikey fell from the Kittiwake’s flaming deck and woke in the infirmary. There was a distinct difference between playing blind in order to understand Rose’s world and being blind. The world of sight and the world of Rose sat superimposed upon one another, and from their blending arose a new world; a purgatory in which Ikey stumbled and struggled, lost to everything.

  “Come along,” Cross said. A latch clanked. The shack’s door squealed.

  Ikey followed, one boot ahead of the other as he imagined the path beneath his feet. He counted off the steps across the yard. He ought to be more understanding, more grateful to Cross. Despite their rough start, Cross had become his one friend and the only person he could trust. His candid honesty drove home how much the man could be trusted. If Rose couldn’t be bothered to take an active interest in his well-being, he’d have to avail himself of Cross’s company until he completed his recovery and could go back to his dad’s farm.

  Ikey’s caution grew as he entered the shed. He recalled that it was a mess; a chaotic stack of shelves lined with an assortment of parts. In the far corner, metallic junk lurked in a heap.

  “There’s a stool four feet before you,” Cross said. “Thirsty?”

  After he counted off four feet, Ikey swept the space before him with his toe. His boot butted-up against something. He reached out until his fingers brushed the stool’s seat.

  Metal shifted and clanged as Cross dug through the mess in the corner.

  “I’ll take a drink,” Ikey said. His response surprised him.

  The jangle of junk ceased, and Cross clanked something metallic onto the wooden table before Ikey. Liquid sloshed from a bottle. A whiff of alcohol wound its way around Ikey and hung from the brim of his hat.

  “You take the cup. Last thing I need is for you to drop the bottle.”

  Ikey swept his hand through a gentle arc across the table surface. The inside of his wrist bumped against a tin cup. He took a drink. It burned the length of his throat. Ikey hissed, then coughed. He rushed to put the cup down and raise his fist to his mouth. Once he caught his breath, he inhaled deeply. Warmth spread from his belly. He willed the warmth to expand across his chest, t
o dull the throbbing ache in his shoulder, the incessant itching and tingling of the arm no longer there. And may it further quiet the flickering itch in his eyes. He’d had enough of feeling while in the hospital.

  Liquid sloshed in a bottle. Cross let out a hiss of his own. “Got something for you. Let me find it.”

  The bottle thumped against the table. Cross moved a few crates and boxes aside. A few seconds later, he placed an object on the table. It wasn’t large, as the tone of Cross’s breath failed to change, but the clicks as it settled against the table top indicated that it had some length.

  Ikey reached out. His hand came across a collection of thin, iron rods with lengths of twine and rubber bands running along them. He didn’t need to explore the object further, but his fingers still traced the rods past the mechanism of the wrist and on into the iron rays that formed the hand. His touch brushed over fingers curled loosely into a cup.

  “It’s not Rose’s?”

  “Nah. That was nothing more than decoration. Just me farting around. This one I built for you. I even designed a set of straps and a gyroscope that’ll let you clasp and unclasp the hand by rolling your shoulder forwards and backwards. Rather ingenious, if I must say so myself.”

  Ikey’s hand fell away from the arm. He drummed his fingers once on the table top, then reached for the cup. “Thank you.”