The Tinkerer's Daughter (6 page)

His voice trailed away, and he started getting that distant look in his eyes again. “I don’t understand,” I said. “If I have magic, is that bad?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes and no. First of all, it’s absolutely wonderful that you have magic. You have a gift that is unique to the Tal’mar, and it has extraordinary use and purpose in this world. But I must temper that with this: never, ever let anyone see you use this magic. You’ve already seen how humans react when they see your ears. There’s no telling what they might think if they witnessed something like this.”

“I understand.” I started to move, and became conscious of the iron bar in my hand. I raised it up between us. “What was this for?”

“Among your mother’s kind, iron and steel are feared. There is something about the metal that destroys their power. It sucks the magic right out of them. I wanted to know if it affected you in the same manner.”

“But it didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t notice anything at all.”

“Correct. As I said, it has always been believed that one such as you would possess all the weaknesses and none of the strengths of her parents. You, I believe, are quite the opposite. You have the strengths of both and, perhaps, none of the weaknesses.”

I didn’t get to practice my newly discovered powers much. I had a few opportunities while we worked on the sleigh but Tinker warned me not to become accustomed to using magic. “If humans see you doing something they can’t explain, they’ll place you as a Tal’mar and possibly even kill you,” he warned. “It’s best that you learn to do things just as I do.”

And so I did. I worked the bellows in the forge, I cut wood with a handsaw and chisels, I turned the bolts with a thread-cutter and a vice. I used hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches every day, so often that I could tell what size they were from across the room. I couldn’t have been more human, except for my telltale ears.

In my heart I continued to hope that some day things would be different. I yearned to live in a world where I could live among humans like Tinker and my father and yet use magic any time I wanted. I wanted to live in a world where I could be complete, where I could be accepted for all the things I was, rather than trying to hide them. I even found myself wondering if -among the Tal’mar-things might be different. Perhaps they were more open, more accepting than humans. Maybe if I went to them, the Tal’mar would accept me.

I kept these thoughts to myself, but at one point I did ask Tinker about my mother. It was a turning point for me, because I’d never known my mother and had never really wondered about her. It was a sign of me growing up.

“I never knew your mother,” he said. “I never even knew your father had married. That’s not surprising, considering. If people knew he’d married a Tal’mar, heaven knows what they might have done.”

“So you have no idea where she lives? You don’t even know if she’s alive?”

Tinker pursed his lips. Reluctantly, he spoke: “Do you have no memories of your mother?” he asked. I shook my head.

“I never saw her.”

“She didn’t live with you? She didn’t visit? You never went to see her?”

“Not that I can remember,” I said.

“And don’t you think that’s strange?” It was. I realized then that in truth, my mother was probably dead. That realization brought me pain. It wasn’t the kind of pain that I’d had when my father left. This was different, a slow ache in my heart and a feeling of deep regret. I would never know her. I would never know what my mother had been like, or how she had come to be with my father.

Then one cloudy day, the steamsleigh was finished. Despite the fact that we’d been working on it for weeks, it seemed like it happened so suddenly. Tinker filled the water tank and fired up the small furnace. It was time to test the machine. I was terrified.

The steamsleigh sat just outside the barn doors, resting on several inches of packed snow and ice. It was a decent size, nearly as big as Tinker’s wagon. The bench seat rested just in front of the steam engine. The space in front of that could be used for carrying goods. Tinker’s giant fan rose up behind the engine at the back of the sleigh, a propeller with three long wooden arms, each about as tall as me.

The water tank had been warming all morning, and the steam engine told us, hissing at steady intervals, that it was ready to go. Tinker revved the throttle a bit, and the fan whipped up the snow in a flurry behind the sleigh. He waved me over.

“Get on!” he shouted. “Let’s try it out!”

Reluctantly, I joined him on the driver’s bench. I was a bit frightened of this noisy machine we had created, especially when I saw the speed at which the fan rotated. I twisted sideways, keeping a nervous eye on the thing as Tinker throttled it up.

The speed built slowly at first, as with all steam operated machines, but then the fan blades became a blur. Tinker’s face was a mask of grim determination. I could see that he believed with every fiber of his being that this idea would work. As the throttle speed increased, I grew more skeptical, and increasingly nervous.

By this time, there was a good gust of wind blowing around us. The fan was truly pulling the air, and pushing it away behind us, but this simply was not a strong enough force to move our weight. I could easily imagine the fan blowing a small item, such as a scarf or a hat, but I could see that Tinker’s dream was impossible. It simply could not be done. A fan could not move a whole sleigh.

Tinker set his jaw, clearly frustrated. He throttled the thing as far as it would go, and I had to wonder at that point if he was just trying to break it. Then, to our surprise, the sleigh moved a nudge forward. There was a slight jerking feeling as it pulled free of the ice. Then, incredibly, we started to move.

I let out a shriek as the sleigh jumped forward and Tinker yanked at the steering controls. We barely missed a pile of rusty wagon parts, sliding between that and an old wine barrel full of hinges. Tinker shot me a triumphant look as he guided our machine down the hillside.

In the summertime the hill is not a steep one, but on that sleigh, riding on the ice-covered snow, it may as well have been straight down. We took off like a rocket, plummeting down the valley so fast that the slightest over-steer could have thrown us into a tree and killed us both. The sleigh bounced along the uneven road, occasionally even taking flight as we hit the larger bumps.

Tinker and I held on to the bench for dear life. There was nothing else we could do, short of jumping off. When we landed, the sleigh bounced a bit, but the leaf springs saved us from jarring our spines.

Then, suddenly, we were clear of the valley. We shot out into the wide-open plains and Tinker gunned the throttle, letting out a triumphant shout as he did it. Snow billowed up in a great cloud behind us as we tore out across the fields.

We headed east, following the foothills of the mountains, until Tinker decided that we should have a look at the river. I didn’t care where we went. I was in heaven with the wind blowing in my face and the land speeding by. My fear was gone, now replaced with unabashed exhilaration. I was thrilled. My faith in Tinker had been restored, and then some. I was in awe of the man’s creative genius.

We turned south, cutting across that ocean of snow until we reached the tree line that marked the river. Here, Tinker stopped. We walked around for a few minutes, stretching our legs. Tinker showed me how thick the ice on the river was, by walking along the edge of the bank. “Tomorrow, we must come down here and do some ice fishing,” he said.

Naturally, I didn’t know what that was. When I asked, I received a well-detailed but rather boring explanation. I suppose some people find fishing thrilling, but I’m afraid I’m not one of them. I couldn’t wait to get back on the sleigh and get the wind in my face. Finally, Tinker was ready to head back home.

“Your turn,” he said. He climbed onto the bench and motioned for me to sit at the controls.

I shook my head. “You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I am. You built this thing as much as I did. It’s half yours, so you best learn how to drive it!”

I could see from the look on his face that he was not going to let me say no. “All right,” I said. “But it’s your fault if we crash and die.”

He laughed at that. “Here, hold this stick. You swing it to the right or left to steer, like so… and this is your throttle control. If you twist it…” I twisted the grip as he said this, and the machine jumped forward. I let out a scream and he laughed. “Good, very good. Now steer, a little to the right. Good!”

I followed his instructions for the first few minutes, until I had the confidence that I knew what I was doing. Then I throttled up, and felt the machine respond. Emotions flooded though me. I was thrilled with this new sense of power and freedom, and I never wanted it to end. At the same time, I had thoughts of my father lingering in the back of my mind. It was sad that he couldn’t have been there, that he couldn’t have enjoyed this exciting new adventure with me.

I glanced sideways at Tinker and laughed at the crazy grin that split his face. I was grateful that my father had left me with this man. It was his last and perhaps greatest show of love, that he had taken the care to leave me in such capable hands. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that my father had known what he was doing. The Tinkerer’s home wasn’t just a safe place to hide me, it was a perfect place. It was
exactly
where I needed to be.

I had a sense then that perhaps my father was still watching out for me. That somewhere, in the spirit world -or whatever magical journey awaits us on the other side of death-he was watching over me and caring for me just as he always had.

I drove our sleigh across that smooth, sparkling plain and I felt warm and free, and alive! I felt like my cares were gone, as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered except this single moment.

As my mind went to this other, carefree place, my subconscious reached out into my environment. I felt the sleigh beneath me, sensed the stresses and changes in its shape as we plowed across the drifts. In my mind’s eye, I saw the slight imperfections in our work, the areas upon which we could improve, and the flaws that might become dangerous if they were not tended.

I made mental notes of everything. I was anxious to tell Tinker what must be done to perfect this machine as soon as we got home. At some point, he tapped me on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of home, and I changed our course. By the time we arrived, the land was awash in pale blue evening twilight. We had spent the entire afternoon playing with our sleigh, and we had nearly run out of fuel. Tinker must have been watching the gauges, because I had been oblivious until he pointed it out.

We shared the chore of preparing dinner, laughing and giggling the entire time. All along, I had a fear in the back of my mind that something terrible was about to happen, that something would inevitably ruin this wonderful day for me.

It was only later, as I lay in bed that night, that I sorted out this feeling and examined it. I realized that since my father had left, I had not enjoyed a single carefree day. This had been the first time since his departure that I actually felt like a child.

It may sound like a sad thought, but in truth it was wonderful. It meant that I was moving forward, that I had found something new to embrace, something that could make me forget my anxiety about the outside world and my fear that I would never find my place. Suddenly I realized that I had found my place.

This thought process might have been part of the greater changes going on within me as well. Strange as it may sound, I was in fact becoming a woman during this time. As I’ve mentioned before, my mother’s people age extremely fast. It had been about six months since my father left me with Tinker, and in that time, I had doubled in size. I had changed from a child of six or seven in appearance to a young woman, in human terms. I was, in all practicality, a teenager now.

This rapid growth brought with it certain internal changes, a metamorphosis of my internal organs and a surge of hormones. I didn’t understand this at the time. These physiological changes bring about certain occurrences with human females. This is the time that marks the beginning of a young woman’s cycle, the time that ushers her into womanhood.

Among the Tal’mar, these changes do not occur. Apparently, I was more Tal’mar than human in this aspect. I felt the changes within me, but did not experience the rest. I did not then and still do not fully understand the difference between our kinds, but this was one I was glad for. I would not have well adapted myself to this discipline of regularity. At least not at this age.

Tinker and I spent the next few weeks toying with and perfecting our sleigh. It was a pleasant distraction, and it was all too soon that we saw signs of warmer weather approaching. Patches of green appeared on the plains, and the snow that remained became too soft for our machine to be of practical use. Sadly, I helped Tinker push it back into the barn.

My mood lapsed briefly until I realized that at long last, the time had come for me to go to school. I asked Tinker about this at dinner one night. We had a fire burning in the fireplace, but the kitchen window was open and the air was sweet and cool in my lungs.

He looked me over, contemplating my question. “We have a few weeks still,” he said. “I will take you then, when the snow has melted and the school reopens. But before that, you will need new clothes. And we’ll have to get a bath. Young ladies are expected to be prim and proper.”

“Prim and proper? What does that mean?”

“It means that you must be correct, both in appearance and behavior. You must be washed and well dressed, rightly mannered and well-spoken. Do you think you can do all this?”

“If you will show me how,” I said.

Tinker smiled. “I know that you will. But what will we do about your ears?”

“I will wear a hat,” I said. “I’ll always wear it, every day.”