Read Online Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon by Lisa Goldstein - Free Book Online Page A

Eleanor Cross they went, past a small crowd watching expectantly as a man was tied to a cart and then flogged through the street. Anthony turned left off Cheapside, then right, then left again, and soon George was lost in a maze of dark alleys and passageways. The streets here were muddy from the morning’s rainfall, and garbage overran the ditches; he smelled excrement and rotting food. Houses closed together over him, blocking out the sky.
    Something moved in the shadows. George turned, afraid, but he could see nothing there. Anthony stopped, though, and made a complex gesture with his left hand. “Come,” he said.
    â€œWhat—What was—”
    â€œIt will not trouble us further.”
    He began walking again, and George followed. The houses to either side of them grew shabbier, meaner. This was a part of London George had never seen. He was about to ask how much farther they had to go when the shape he had seen earlier came forward out of the shadows, making no sound. This time when he looked directly at the thing it did not retreat. He saw a creature the color of sea moss, with a long snout, sharp ears and webbed fingers and toes. It opened its mouth in a snarl, showing uneven pointed teeth.
    It turned and moved with a certainty of purpose toward Anthony. For a moment George could not speak, fascinated by the thing’s horrible grace. He must have made some kind of noise, because Anthony stopped to look at him. The creature dropped back and crouched on its haunches like a cat, preparing to lunge. Muscles slid over bones as smoothly as water gliding over rocks. For what seemed like a long time Anthony stood and did nothing. Then he drew complex sigils in the air and spoke a few words George did not recognize. The creature hissed and fell back toward the shelter of one of the houses.
    â€œWhat—” George said.
    Anthony made no reply. George realized with amazement that the other man looked shaken, almost haunted. Growing bolder, he said, “I told you before I will not traffic with spirits.”
    â€œNot—spirits,” Anthony said. His breath came in little gasps. George noticed, shocked, that the symbols Anthony had traced in the air still glowed, silver fading to tarnished green.
    â€œNot spirits! Why, man—”
    â€œThe thing you saw is not a spirit, but as natural as you or I. We have performed certain experiments—”
    â€œWe?”
    â€œYou will meet the others when you’re ready. We question the nature of things. What is true and what false.” The man’s rhetoric seemed to steady him.
    â€œThat’s too deep for me,” George said. As far as he was concerned what he saw with his own eyes was true, and everything else didn’t matter. And he knew, with more certainty than he had ever known anything in his life, that the thing he had seen had no part in his everyday world. “But that creature had an unnatural air about it. You’ll not tell me—”
    â€œDon’t speak of what you don’t understand. When the time is right we’ll tell you more.”
    George scowled. He wanted to be out of the filthy maze of streets and back at home before nightfall, and he wondered uneasily if the thing still watched them from the shadows. But he knew he could not find the way back on his own, knew too that he needed Anthony to get what he had been promised. He vowed that when Alice was his he would have no more to do with the other man.
    Anthony turned in at the most rundown of the houses. “Here it is,” he said, unlocking and opening the door.
    Dozens of burning candles lit the room beyond. George got a brief glimpse of what looked like a monstrous mechanical being, with a hundred iron arms snaking out from a central core. Then he heard a high shrill scream, and the green creature fell on Anthony from the rafters. It grabbed hold of his arm and pushed itself up toward his face in a strange fluid motion. George