Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (45 page)

Automatons were becoming popular in the City of Swans, but they were still restricted to simple tasks: pouring tea, answering doorbells, and perhaps walking the dog. As her fingers traced over the inner workings, she began to perceive that whoever the maker of this was, they had managed to miniaturize so many of the parts that these figures when finished could take on far more varied activities.

“Interesting way of saying hello you have—rummaging around in my work!” The voice that came out of the shadows was so sharp and unexpected that Eleanor dropped with a clatter the flywheel she’d been examining. The figure that emerged from the rear of the workspace was as incredible as the works in progress on the benches.

Eleanor quite forgot her manners and stared. The woman was small and old, her gray hair tangled and matted as if she had little care for it. It was, however, only on one half of her head. The other portion was a construction of naked gears and cogs that approximated the remaining part of her skull. Her right eye was a bleary cataract-covered blue mortal eye, while the other was a
gleaming gem that must have been the largest diamond Eleanor had ever seen. The strangeness was not, however, limited to her head, for whatever traumatic event had stolen this woman’s face had also taken much of her body, too. The whole right side of her was a collection of gleaming brass. An articulated hand was wrapped around a wrench, and when the woman moved forward it was with a pronounced limp. Beneath the leather metalworker’s apron, Eleanor knew there would be more wonders to behold. This, then, was the witch Madame had spoken of.

The princess swallowed hard and waved her arm to take in the work laid out. “I couldn’t help myself, this is so fascinating. I do a little tinkering myself, but this…”

The woman’s snort was an odd concoction of human and mechanical sounds, the wheezing of lungs along with the sound of air striking metal.

Eleanor cleared her throat and dared to venture, “Stella?”

Eyes, both flesh and jeweled, focused on her. “Indeed. I am guessing She sent you.”

Eleanor had no way of knowing how deep were the clouds she was stepping out into, so the princess kept her tone moderate. “Yes, the new queen. She told me you were a friend of hers….”

Stella lurched forward, throwing her weight unexpectedly toward the princess. Eleanor managed not to yell in shock, or to move—but it wouldn’t have made any difference. A long chain, gleaming in the faint light, pulled the woman up short. It was attached to the good human leg she still had.

“Made it myself,” she said with a bleak grin. “She challenged me to make a device even I could not break. And I—in my arrogance did.” She rattled it once more. “Forged the steel with my own blood. Hard magic to break, that. I suppose I could saw my damn leg off, but…” She paused and shook her head. “I haven’t quite reached that point. Haven’t got much humanity left as it is.”

The princess nodded, not quite knowing how to reply to that. In the end, she said nothing. It must have been the right thing to do, as Stella, once the greatest tinker to be found in any city, took Eleanor Princess of the Swans into her apprenticeship.

Unlike the older woman, she was not chained, but the door was locked securely, and only the faceless guard came to deliver food twice a day. They were a pair of prisoners.

However, soon enough Eleanor forgot all about that. In her father’s palace she had toyed with mechanics and engineering, but under Stella’s tutelage she was given total focus. Her new teacher would tolerate no idle moments, not even thinking of anything else. Nor was she shy about punishment. She would leave tools’ hot or sharp edges bared so that the princess would burn or cut herself.

Soon enough, Eleanor learned to observe where everything lay in the workshop. She also learned the fine art of cogs, wheels, pistons, boilers, and the little magics used to bring them to the peak of their abilities. Stella, she soon discovered, was a mistress of weaving not just metals together, but also the magic of blood and flesh. It was this that made her prosthetics possible and would in time bring the automatons to life.

Eleanor would have thought the rough, sometimes verging on cruel treatment she received from Stella would have driven her mad, but the truth of it was she was learning, in addition to the witch’s art, something of the witch herself.

Once, when Stella was fitting a flywheel into the housing of the most complete automaton, she caught a proud smile on her fellow captive’s face. Eleanor, however, knew she was losing herself in the endless progress of days. She had lost count, and been so immersed in the interesting work that she’d not thought to keep a tally.

One morning—though she could not have identified which one—they sat on each side of the door eating their cold breakfast in silence, and the princess realized it was a different silence. Instead of being awkward and painful, the quiet was companionable. Somewhere in the uncounted days, they had reached an accord.

The question remained whether she could spin it out into something more than that.

The next night, cautiously, Eleanor began to speak. She drew her
finger through the dust on the floor. “I confess I wonder what is happening in the outside world.” She did not mention her brothers or the City of Swans, but she had to lower her head lest Stella see her thoughts in her expression.

Instead of speaking, the witch climbed to her feet and tugged her chain after her to the window. It was small, shuttered, and usually never opened, but Stella unhooked the latch and pushed the coverings aside. Moonlight flooded in, and Eleanor recognized with a start that it was night beyond the walls of their prison. She didn’t want to see the outside world—especially the stained, bleak world of the rock—but Stella gestured her over.

Together then, they peered out into the night. The sulfurous clouds were still there, but a breeze was wafting them back and forward in front of the full moon. Eleanor felt a knot choke her throat, and would have turned away to the harsh reality of their work when Stella grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Look!” she rasped.

The princess stepped back and turned her gaze to where the witch was pointing. She saw shadows against the moon. They were more solid than clouds and shaped like great birds. Eleanor shook her head, and with a frown tried harder to discern what they were. They could not be owls, for the City of Owls had been breached and sunk over a hundred years ago—and besides, these shapes were far too big.

They had long slender necks and huge wings. They were swans!

“What swans would fly at night?” she wondered out loud.

“Watch,” Stella whispered, her rancid breath hot against Eleanor’s cheek.

The group of swans turned in the moonlight, and the princess gasped. These were no creatures of feather and flesh. The light caught them and sparkled on brass and iron, etching each metallic feather in a gleam of white. The long articulated necks flexed beautifully with each downward beat. Eleanor was entranced at this display of the maker’s art. The artistry of the work burned into her memory.

“They are amazing,” she stammered, pressing her fingertips against the glass as though she could somehow reach through and touch them.

“Yes, they are,” the witch replied, “but you are only seeing skin-deep. Do you not see how many there are?”

Eleanor didn’t understand, but she did as she was bidden. Her gaze flickered over the slowly moving group. “Ten…eleven….” She stopped immediately that the words were out of her mouth.

“Eleven birds. Eleven brothers,” Stella breathed into the ear of the princess.

“No!” Eleanor flicked her head and stared at the witch. “She can’t have—”

“As clever as we are in this day and age, there are some things that even the greatest tinker cannot do better than a living being.” Stella looked out the window again, following the circling flight of the mechanical birds. “Sometimes a sacrifice is required.”

“My brothers…,” Eleanor whispered, thinking of them all; some more beloved than others but all dear to her. They were her blood.

“Now they are her creatures,” Stella returned. “They will be absorbed into the machine and eventually become part of it.”

Eleanor’s mind was spinning, but she watched her brothers for a moment until it came it to her. “Eventually?” She grabbed hold of Stella. “You mean they are not already?”

The witch shook her head, her brass jaw working, but sagged in the other woman’s grasp. Finally she ground out, “No, not yet. It will take a month for the transformation to be complete, and the machine to take all of their humanity beyond the ability to get them out alive.”

“Then there is a chance?”

Even Stella’s jeweled eye could not meet Eleanor’s, but she finally did manage to grunt out “Yes.”

So there it was. Eleanor sat back and thought for a moment. She thought about how she’d always had to be the sensible one, and how her brothers had always come to her for advice, because princes were supposed to know everything. She thought about
how—trapped as they were now in their mechanical swan bodies—they would most definitely want her advice, and yet for once she had to ask someone else for it.

Carefully, she cleared her throat and probed Stella further. “So, how would I go about getting my brothers back?”

The witch stepped away from the window and dragged her chain clanking behind her back to the workbench. She jerked a magnifying glass down on a boom arm, adjusted the gaslight brighter, and began to screw a tiny flywheel into the chest of the automaton—all the time as though nothing had happened.

Eleanor could hardly believe it; after all, it was Stella who had shown her the scene out the window in the first place. She walked over to the witch and stood behind her shoulder, silent and waiting. She was completely at a loss to know what words to use that would get Stella to help her. Perhaps the witch had only wanted to drag her fellow captive down into the mire of despair she had been in for so long.

However, it appeared that silence weighed on Stella, because after a moment, she sighed heavily and put down the screwdriver. “To break the magic and undo the machines, you would need to make skins for them.”

“Skins?”

“Her magic and tinkering are strongest when creating creatures for the air, and you would need to counter that by building metallic vises to interfere with her workings. It is the only way to allow the men to come out of the machines.”

“How do you know about my brothers?”

“I’ve always known who you are.” Stella tilted her head. “She talked about you a great deal. Well, you, your brothers, and your father. I don’t know why….” The witch’s voice trailed off as though she was thinking on something unpalatable.

Eleanor shuddered; however, she was not going to travel old paths with her fellow prisoner. She had to think of the future.

“So I can make the cloaks here, and we can save them?”

Stella flinched, presumably at the liberal use of the word
we
. “Even if I wanted to help you, I don’t have the necessities here.
Spun silver must be used to make the cloaks—it is the only material that can bear the magical component.”

“Silver?” Stella bit her lip. “The City of Eagles is the only place to get quantities of that.”

Stella croaked out a laugh. “Even Madame dares not attack that city—at least not yet. However, there is more and worse to hear.” She rubbed her finger on the rough edge of the nearby hacksaw.

The pregnant pause drove Eleanor crazy, but she managed not to snap.

“It is the silence, you see.” Stella smirked, and for a second the princess worried that she could read her thoughts. “You have to bind a bit of your soul into each cloak, and every ounce of your being must be bent to the task. Every sinew and effort must be put into this undertaking. Should you speak you would destroy not only the materials but the magic, too.” The witch shot her a gaze out of the corner of one eye.

“Silent the whole time?” Eleanor couldn’t help an edge of dismay creeping into her voice. She could never remember having been silent for a day, let alone a month!

The other woman snorted. “You shouldn’t have had so many brothers, should you!”

Eleanor frowned. “It wasn’t as though I had a choice!”

Stella wanted to end the conversation there, but the princess would not be turned aside.

Eleanor spent the next few days trying to convince her fellow prisoner that they had to do this. The witch kept to her task of creating the automatons, but the princess could detect a change in her speed—as though other thoughts were tangling her concentration.

So Eleanor kept lightly on, discussing how much of a challenge making the mechanical cloaks would be, and how the person who would do it would have to be a master of the craft. She even sketched out from memory the workings she had observed on the surface of the mechanical swans.

Stella grumbled, “Don’t even try to tempt me, girl!” Yet she could not hide the light of interest in her eyes.

Eventually, on the third day after she had pointed out the swans to the princess, Stella set down the gruel she had been eating and grabbed Eleanor’s hand once more.

“If it is to be done, we must make our escape quickly. We will need every day that remains. If it can be done tonight, then it should be.”

Eleanor blinked. “What about you? This chain is not going to stretch all the way to the City of Eagles!”

Stella stared down blankly at the finely constructed chain. “She imprisoned me here with my own work, but it is held together by her magic. She said I did not know the meaning of loyalty and friendship, but I would know the strength of my failings. It is unbreakable.”

“Unbreakable? There is no such thing,” Eleanor said with the firmness of one who had studied every book on metallurgy she could find from an early age. She dropped to the floor and picked up the chain. It was heavy, and she observed spots on Stella’s good leg where it had rubbed for years. As she studied the chain, she realized that it was in fact made up of several strands of metal bound together tight, and that each was engraved with words. After fetching oculars and pliers from the workbench, she was able to read the words.
Proud. Arrogant. Friendless.