The Music of Razors by Cameron Rogers Page A

like me around as much anymore. He says when I speak it makes words from what I say. He hears words all the time, and I just make it worse by talking too much.”
    “Then I suppose we shall be spending more time in each other’s company.” Again, Tub nods. Nimble shifts over, her legs hissing and clicking lightly and precisely, and with an elegant unfolding of wrist-hand-fingers tap-taps the seat beside her.
    Tub doesn’t know where to look, and clutches the instrument to his chest with both hands. He makes his way over, uncertainly, and puts the instrument onto the slab before hoisting himself up. His thick arms make easy work of it. He shifts himself around, plops down, and clutches the instrument to himself once more. It sings high and faint. He is such a curious thing.
    “Tell me, Tub,” she says. “Why were you made?”
    Tub’s fingers drum slowly over each other, as if this were some critical test he might fail. “Um…,” he says. “Well…”
    “You see,” Nimble says, “I was wondering why I was made, and I think I might have it. I was wondering if you knew why you were made, because that might help me decide if I have worked it out.”
    “Um…,” Tub says again. “I think I just get things for Dorian. And make him laugh. Though I don’t do that so much anymore.” Tub braves looking up at her. “I know what you do. You look after his little girl.”
    Nimble nodded, her heart-box spinning a little faster. “That I do.”
    “What is she like?”
    “Has Mr. Athelstane never spoken of her?”
    Tub shakes his head. “Not really.”
    “Ah,” says Nimble. “Then I was right.”
    Tub just drums his fingers upon his soft chest and blushes. “Well,” he says, eventually. “I…suppose I should take this to Dorian.”
    “Where is Mr. Athelstane at the moment?”
    “Sam Framcisco,” Tub says, sliding heavily off the slab, keeping his eyes on the ground. Such a strange little thing. “I…like your dress,” he says, and then he is gone.
    She smiles to herself. She is not wearing a dress. It is a tutu, a corrugated disk slotted through her.
             
    Nowadays Nimble only sees Millicent at night. Her mother was taken back on at the milliner’s, finally, and Millicent spends her days either at school or making roses. Of late Millicent has seemed very far away.
    Nimble walks through one cave after another. Many are empty but a few are not. One is decorated as a most comfortable style of drawing room, though the hearth is always cold in Mr. Athelstane’s absence and the books are getting dusty. Still another is quite a lavish kitchen, though this, too, is dark and cloth-covered. And another is still of a more impressive size, and here are kept the instruments. This cave has a floor that is hollowed and sunken, making the chamber like the interior of some kind of sphere or ball, though the ceiling is hung with stalactites, and the rim of the room is studded with upward-thrusting stalagmites. Rude stairs have been carved from the entrance, leading down into the bowl, upon the floor of which a wide circular area has been curtained off with a shimmering drop of thick, blood-colored velvet. There are torches fitted around the periphery, but these are as cold as the hearths and stoves of the other rooms. However, this room in particular is not dim, for from behind the velvet curtain an ambience like strong moonlight emanates upward, illuminating the roof and revealing the entire chamber in a soft pearlescence. There is music here, something that might sound like a very distant choir, or it might not. It may instead be a library of notes rung from crystal and sustained, perfectly, forever. Or perhaps it is no sound at all. Perhaps it is a language once known to all, and now forgotten. These are the things Nimble thinks as she stands at the top of those rude stairs, and listens.
    The curtain moves and someone steps out, drawing it closed behind himself.
    “Tub,” says Nimble, just loud enough