Thursday, November 11, 2010
Well...
I've got to keep going, no matter what's happened. I'm not sure whether I'll manage to win Nanowrimo, but I'm going to try.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Spell of Vesperia, Chapter II
The sun rose over the dark sea and as she did every sunrise, she stood just where the tide met the earth and allowed its swells to wash over her feet. The cold of it shot through her like lightning and she wrapped herself in her overlarge sweater – made overlarge under the old maxim, ‘she’ll grow into it’ – and stared with eyes so open that it almost hurt.
The day would be followed by work, work, work, followed by what little time with the books she could eke out before the light faded again. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would consist of bread and fish. Everyone would be tired throughout. But always, if she just woke a little earlier than everyone else, she could have this bit of time that was all hers, where she could see the world turn from dead to living.
Then, once the sun was well and thoroughly up, she set immediately from home. They’d be getting up and work, work, work would start anew.
When she came back this time, however, they were not awake.
~
No one from the provinces came to Belsworth Factory because they wanted to. Built in the northernmost reaches of the Vesperia Territory, clinging to the cliffs alongside the Termina Sea, it struck the ‘provincials’ as these: cold, dark, remote, and desolate. They did not come for fortune, for there was none to be had. They did not come for glory or adventure – those types were weeded out before they could venture any further west than Rochilda.
They came because they had nowhere else to go, neither friends nor kin to object to their leaving, a professional attitude, and a special talent for killing things. All of this described Trillium Annsdottir. And yet, when the fall of her boots brought her close enough to Belsworth Factory’s stoutly built gate that she could touch it, she could feel her bones go cold.
A poet once said that “the northern lights have seen queer sights” and Trillium could well believe that they saw them while keeping watch over Belsworth Factory.
The marshal, Shipwright, gently shoved her to the side and back before craning her neck and shouting, “Hello, up there!”
Not that the two guards needed to have their attention drawn to seven souls below, having had their bayonets trained on them since the moment they could first hear them blundering out from the forest’s path. “Who’s this, then? State your name and business.”
Shipwright tutted under her breath and, much more loudly, said, “Marshal Elodie Shipwright, bringing in a gaggle of recruits from various and sundry points southeast. We request entrance and an immediate audience with Factor Dale Elshern, or whoever has replaced him in the position if he has departed from it.”
One of the guards – a lad of about a quarter of a century with a face that was a mess of freckles and scars – leaned over and squinted at Shipwright through the shadow cast by his cap. He hmmed. “Well, it’s you all right. I guess we ought to let you in, then. Come on, Tolly, let’s get to it...” After some sounds of scrambling and the grind of metal, the gate was pulled open. The insides weren’t any more promising than the outsides, although admittedly par with what Trillium had grown up with. Chances were she’d be fed better anyway.
They marched two abreast through the gate, as per Shipwright’s prior instructions – as for her, she took the lead, taking them directly to the small central building. Some men and women watched their procession with a sort of bored interest before returning to their tasks at hand, such as tending to the garden or washing or preparing something organic and foul over an open pit.
She exchanged glances with Clay, on her right, who seemed just as enthusiastic as she was. He was about to open his mouth to speak before he remembered himself and shut it again.
Shipwright knocked on the door before letting herself in. Five minutes passed before she returned to motion them all to follow.
~
They lay as if sleeping, though with eyes open with some unseen horror. They did not breathe, nor did their hearts beat. This was true of her mother and father, and of her four sibs.
She thought to herself, why did they not cry out? She would have heard them if they had. She would have come running, feet bleeding with the scratching of rocks, lungs bursting with their effort. It did not occur to her that perhaps that was the reason why they did not do so.
~
Trillium hadn’t known what the factor would be like – Shipwright had responded to every question about him with an infuriating shrug – but she was certain she never thought he’d be like Dale Elshern turned out to be.
He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, sad and regal. The closest he came to Trillium’s assorted imaginings was his manner of dress and grooming, which was practical and immaculate. A frontier post suggested someone who kept order with the manner of a martinet or a boisterous sort who didn’t much bother with discipline at all. Elshern was neither, reminding Trillium of nothing so much as her kindly, departed grandfather. Provided her grandfather was of a much higher social class and much better spoken, that is.
Elshern bowed his head towards the newcomers, pushing his spectacles back upon his nose as his head came back up. “I am gladdened that you have all arrived safely,” he said in a classical Spiran accent. “My name is Dale Elshern and I am the factor here. During the length of your stay, which will hopefully be the entire length of your contract, you will be expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the Ultima Thule Company and the special ones specific to Belsworth Factory. Copies of the latter will be made available to you, as will the former provided you have lost your previous copy during the course of your journey.”
Then he did something which astonished Trillium: he shook every one of the recruits by hand, firmly. “I cannot begin to describe my gratitude that you have chosen to carry out this treacherous undertaking. You have done a great service to Norland by this act and I wish the best of luck to you all. Nevertheless, I am honour bound to say this: if you have any hesitation or reluctance to carry out your duties here or desire to break with the previously agreed upon contract, please state so now so that I might release you from it.”
To a soul, the recruits refused to. They had come too far and they were too much like Trillium.
~
Not long later – they had arrived late, the sun was setting down, and the grand tour had to wait for the morrow – the six of them sat in the mess hall, devouring their soup and bread with an unseemly haste. But who could blame them? It was the first time in two months, with some notable exceptions, where their meal did not consist of pemmican with an extra helping of pemmican. Fresh and cooked meat and vegetables! Cooked competently, no less, and not a slapdash job at the end of hours and hours of canoeing or hiking! They made themselves as pigs at the trough.
Conversation was created, when it was recalled the necessity of breathing. “We’re here,” said Jordan with a sort of tone that almost put everyone off their soup.
“Why’d you go and remind us of that, eh?” said Thins, scowling. Jordan shrugged and the others, as one, privately thought to themselves that Shipwright had been too much of an influence on the man.
Genton licked the soup off her lips. “It needs to be said, though. And it’s going to be sooner than later before we see... one of them.” But still, they kept eating, for all of them came from the sort of lives that dictated you ate a meal when you got it.
“Yeah, you’re right enough. I hope it’s a later sort of sooner, though.”
“Hear, hear,” said Clay. He was he only one in their little band that had ever seen them in person before. No one knew the circumstances of it, not even Trillium. Maybe Shipwright did. Sometimes, when he woke with nightmares, she would whisper some unknown something in his ear and he would settle down, enough to regain his wits.
“I heard they eat the ones they grab a hold of. While they’re still alive.” Thins shivered. Clay didn’t contradict him.
Greenmountain said nothing, but then, she never did.
~
They sent her to live with her grandfather afterwards, after the bodies had been cast into the sea and there was no more to be said to them. Like them, grandfather worked, worked, worked and expected her to do so as well, but he smiled at her and played the fiddle for her and told her how strong she was becoming.
But storms happen and they especially happen to fishers and that is when her grandfather was lamed. Oh, she worked all the harder for him then, but still he tried to do so himself and he tried enough to kill himself and so it goes.
There was nowhere else to go then, with no orphanage opening its doors to her or elderly spinsters or bachelors eager to adopt her in exchange for an extra set of hands. Westwards she went, with the one skill she had learned in a life of odd jobs that was wanted anywhere: she could hunt and she could do it well. Even when the fear came.
~
There was a howling from somewhere which was certainly not from any wolf or coyote and a scratching noise. Trillium was up and out of her bunk with a start, as was everyone else.
This included Shipwright, already fully dressed provided she was ever undressed at all. “Yes, that is what you think it is,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “Get yourselves decent; you’re not getting any slack just because it’s your first night here.”
Within the space of a minute, they were all ready – Trillium, Genton, Clay, Thins, Jordan and Greenmountain. They followed Shipwright out again, like so much lambs or chicks.
~
Trillium was told that those things were once human and she couldn’t disagree with them. That’s what made her stomach turn so fiercely. Nevertheless, as she stared down from the palisade at it, she found that she could not turn away, not even to vomit.
It was man-shaped, certainly, travelling on two legs, with two arms clawing, clawing at the gate. Its hair hung in lank, colourless clumps from its scalp; its eyes appeared like nothing more than two pinpoints of light in the dark. Tracks of its papery, corpse pale skin had been torn off – clawed off? – exposing the bone and jerky-like muscle beneath. She’d been told that things increased in size with every feeding, so that they would never again feel their stomach sated – this one was twice the size of a grown man of average height, with genitals shrunk and shrivelled between its legs.
It howled and moaned at them all, thrashing and wailing at the gate with such ferocity and speed. If one listened closely, they could pick out something resembling words from the moans and if they spoke the right language, they could understand what it was saying.
“It’s saying, ‘feed me, feed me, oh, just give me something to eat, please,’” said a native woman standing beside Trillium. She had not noticed her before, and she regarded the scene before her with an almost blasé expression. On the side of her head turned to Trillium, there was a hole where her ear had been, as if it had been chewed off. “’Mercy, please.’”
The choice came to all the recruits then to let their hearts break or harden.
Trillium remembered the bodies of the sunrise and all the hardships of the road – how Clay would wake in cold sweats and the way Shipwright would breathe the beer and wine whenever they passed through a settlement – and her heart decided what to do. She took aim at the wendigo’s head with her bayonet and fired.
The day would be followed by work, work, work, followed by what little time with the books she could eke out before the light faded again. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would consist of bread and fish. Everyone would be tired throughout. But always, if she just woke a little earlier than everyone else, she could have this bit of time that was all hers, where she could see the world turn from dead to living.
Then, once the sun was well and thoroughly up, she set immediately from home. They’d be getting up and work, work, work would start anew.
When she came back this time, however, they were not awake.
~
No one from the provinces came to Belsworth Factory because they wanted to. Built in the northernmost reaches of the Vesperia Territory, clinging to the cliffs alongside the Termina Sea, it struck the ‘provincials’ as these: cold, dark, remote, and desolate. They did not come for fortune, for there was none to be had. They did not come for glory or adventure – those types were weeded out before they could venture any further west than Rochilda.
They came because they had nowhere else to go, neither friends nor kin to object to their leaving, a professional attitude, and a special talent for killing things. All of this described Trillium Annsdottir. And yet, when the fall of her boots brought her close enough to Belsworth Factory’s stoutly built gate that she could touch it, she could feel her bones go cold.
A poet once said that “the northern lights have seen queer sights” and Trillium could well believe that they saw them while keeping watch over Belsworth Factory.
The marshal, Shipwright, gently shoved her to the side and back before craning her neck and shouting, “Hello, up there!”
Not that the two guards needed to have their attention drawn to seven souls below, having had their bayonets trained on them since the moment they could first hear them blundering out from the forest’s path. “Who’s this, then? State your name and business.”
Shipwright tutted under her breath and, much more loudly, said, “Marshal Elodie Shipwright, bringing in a gaggle of recruits from various and sundry points southeast. We request entrance and an immediate audience with Factor Dale Elshern, or whoever has replaced him in the position if he has departed from it.”
One of the guards – a lad of about a quarter of a century with a face that was a mess of freckles and scars – leaned over and squinted at Shipwright through the shadow cast by his cap. He hmmed. “Well, it’s you all right. I guess we ought to let you in, then. Come on, Tolly, let’s get to it...” After some sounds of scrambling and the grind of metal, the gate was pulled open. The insides weren’t any more promising than the outsides, although admittedly par with what Trillium had grown up with. Chances were she’d be fed better anyway.
They marched two abreast through the gate, as per Shipwright’s prior instructions – as for her, she took the lead, taking them directly to the small central building. Some men and women watched their procession with a sort of bored interest before returning to their tasks at hand, such as tending to the garden or washing or preparing something organic and foul over an open pit.
She exchanged glances with Clay, on her right, who seemed just as enthusiastic as she was. He was about to open his mouth to speak before he remembered himself and shut it again.
Shipwright knocked on the door before letting herself in. Five minutes passed before she returned to motion them all to follow.
~
They lay as if sleeping, though with eyes open with some unseen horror. They did not breathe, nor did their hearts beat. This was true of her mother and father, and of her four sibs.
She thought to herself, why did they not cry out? She would have heard them if they had. She would have come running, feet bleeding with the scratching of rocks, lungs bursting with their effort. It did not occur to her that perhaps that was the reason why they did not do so.
~
Trillium hadn’t known what the factor would be like – Shipwright had responded to every question about him with an infuriating shrug – but she was certain she never thought he’d be like Dale Elshern turned out to be.
He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, sad and regal. The closest he came to Trillium’s assorted imaginings was his manner of dress and grooming, which was practical and immaculate. A frontier post suggested someone who kept order with the manner of a martinet or a boisterous sort who didn’t much bother with discipline at all. Elshern was neither, reminding Trillium of nothing so much as her kindly, departed grandfather. Provided her grandfather was of a much higher social class and much better spoken, that is.
Elshern bowed his head towards the newcomers, pushing his spectacles back upon his nose as his head came back up. “I am gladdened that you have all arrived safely,” he said in a classical Spiran accent. “My name is Dale Elshern and I am the factor here. During the length of your stay, which will hopefully be the entire length of your contract, you will be expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the Ultima Thule Company and the special ones specific to Belsworth Factory. Copies of the latter will be made available to you, as will the former provided you have lost your previous copy during the course of your journey.”
Then he did something which astonished Trillium: he shook every one of the recruits by hand, firmly. “I cannot begin to describe my gratitude that you have chosen to carry out this treacherous undertaking. You have done a great service to Norland by this act and I wish the best of luck to you all. Nevertheless, I am honour bound to say this: if you have any hesitation or reluctance to carry out your duties here or desire to break with the previously agreed upon contract, please state so now so that I might release you from it.”
To a soul, the recruits refused to. They had come too far and they were too much like Trillium.
~
Not long later – they had arrived late, the sun was setting down, and the grand tour had to wait for the morrow – the six of them sat in the mess hall, devouring their soup and bread with an unseemly haste. But who could blame them? It was the first time in two months, with some notable exceptions, where their meal did not consist of pemmican with an extra helping of pemmican. Fresh and cooked meat and vegetables! Cooked competently, no less, and not a slapdash job at the end of hours and hours of canoeing or hiking! They made themselves as pigs at the trough.
Conversation was created, when it was recalled the necessity of breathing. “We’re here,” said Jordan with a sort of tone that almost put everyone off their soup.
“Why’d you go and remind us of that, eh?” said Thins, scowling. Jordan shrugged and the others, as one, privately thought to themselves that Shipwright had been too much of an influence on the man.
Genton licked the soup off her lips. “It needs to be said, though. And it’s going to be sooner than later before we see... one of them.” But still, they kept eating, for all of them came from the sort of lives that dictated you ate a meal when you got it.
“Yeah, you’re right enough. I hope it’s a later sort of sooner, though.”
“Hear, hear,” said Clay. He was he only one in their little band that had ever seen them in person before. No one knew the circumstances of it, not even Trillium. Maybe Shipwright did. Sometimes, when he woke with nightmares, she would whisper some unknown something in his ear and he would settle down, enough to regain his wits.
“I heard they eat the ones they grab a hold of. While they’re still alive.” Thins shivered. Clay didn’t contradict him.
Greenmountain said nothing, but then, she never did.
~
They sent her to live with her grandfather afterwards, after the bodies had been cast into the sea and there was no more to be said to them. Like them, grandfather worked, worked, worked and expected her to do so as well, but he smiled at her and played the fiddle for her and told her how strong she was becoming.
But storms happen and they especially happen to fishers and that is when her grandfather was lamed. Oh, she worked all the harder for him then, but still he tried to do so himself and he tried enough to kill himself and so it goes.
There was nowhere else to go then, with no orphanage opening its doors to her or elderly spinsters or bachelors eager to adopt her in exchange for an extra set of hands. Westwards she went, with the one skill she had learned in a life of odd jobs that was wanted anywhere: she could hunt and she could do it well. Even when the fear came.
~
There was a howling from somewhere which was certainly not from any wolf or coyote and a scratching noise. Trillium was up and out of her bunk with a start, as was everyone else.
This included Shipwright, already fully dressed provided she was ever undressed at all. “Yes, that is what you think it is,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “Get yourselves decent; you’re not getting any slack just because it’s your first night here.”
Within the space of a minute, they were all ready – Trillium, Genton, Clay, Thins, Jordan and Greenmountain. They followed Shipwright out again, like so much lambs or chicks.
~
Trillium was told that those things were once human and she couldn’t disagree with them. That’s what made her stomach turn so fiercely. Nevertheless, as she stared down from the palisade at it, she found that she could not turn away, not even to vomit.
It was man-shaped, certainly, travelling on two legs, with two arms clawing, clawing at the gate. Its hair hung in lank, colourless clumps from its scalp; its eyes appeared like nothing more than two pinpoints of light in the dark. Tracks of its papery, corpse pale skin had been torn off – clawed off? – exposing the bone and jerky-like muscle beneath. She’d been told that things increased in size with every feeding, so that they would never again feel their stomach sated – this one was twice the size of a grown man of average height, with genitals shrunk and shrivelled between its legs.
It howled and moaned at them all, thrashing and wailing at the gate with such ferocity and speed. If one listened closely, they could pick out something resembling words from the moans and if they spoke the right language, they could understand what it was saying.
“It’s saying, ‘feed me, feed me, oh, just give me something to eat, please,’” said a native woman standing beside Trillium. She had not noticed her before, and she regarded the scene before her with an almost blasé expression. On the side of her head turned to Trillium, there was a hole where her ear had been, as if it had been chewed off. “’Mercy, please.’”
The choice came to all the recruits then to let their hearts break or harden.
Trillium remembered the bodies of the sunrise and all the hardships of the road – how Clay would wake in cold sweats and the way Shipwright would breathe the beer and wine whenever they passed through a settlement – and her heart decided what to do. She took aim at the wendigo’s head with her bayonet and fired.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The Spell of Vesperia: Chapter I
Thus begins Nanowrimo. 2000 words a chapter, a chapter a day, until it's finished. If you're enjoying it, please consider donating via Paypal to advance the noble cause of groceries.
~
He had travelled so far, could see an ocean to the west through the trees, little faltering, little flagging, but the body was not everlasting and now it had to stop. It did.
~
Dot Harlock didn’t know what the thing was. In such situations, one might take it as an affront or as a challenge and Dot would choose the latter every time.
Here is what it looked like: mostly like a young man, a couple of years older than her own eighteen-year old self. Soft features, skin a uniform brown. Now, if that were the end of it, there wouldn’t be any mystery to it, would there?
But his hair, had he ever any at all, was shorn right off, even the eyebrows, even across the entire expanse of his remaining skin. That skin did not cover the whole of his frame, but left gaping holes on his cheek, on his bicep, on his stomach, through which could be seen mechanisms of such sophistication that was nearly beyond Dot’s grasp. Shining from his otherwise empty eye sockets could be seen two pinpoints of white light that danced and darted with all the fear that the rest of his husk did not show. If he was feeling anything at all, that is.
He neither breathed nor moved, save for those two pinpoints, but there was a sort of thrumming noise from deep within his chest and a certain tension to the exposed gears that seemed to Dot as though they desperately wanted to move.
“And you just found him wandering down the mountain road?” she asked the two respectably burly individuals that sat bolt upright in the remaining chairs in the workshop.
Arla coughed in the manner of one clearing her throat. “Not wandering, per se. Wandering would’ve been less odd. No, y’see, Daffyd and I had gone up it to go meet Judge Holt coming in and the road was clear as you’d expect, but on the way back...”
“We found this creature sprawled across it,” finished Daffyd with a dramatic shiver. “His honour’s horse nearly stepped on it.”
“How much time passed between coming and going? Where’s Judge Holt now?” asked Dot, prodding the thing with a screwdriver. A small shock rushed through her and the screwdriver was withdrawn.
“Maybe about ten minutes, give or take. In the mayor’s house. What do you make of it, Dot?”
What did she make of it? Well, that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it?
~
She soon hurried Arla and Daffyd off, promising them all the while to tell them the moment some new revelation occurred to her. It took her ten minutes for her to remember why this was a terrible move.
Arms of Gold, New Spira was more of a village than a town and as such, news and gossip travelled across it with a speed that could put shame to the fastest locomotive. Already at that morning hour, anyone who had ventured out of doors or had even opened a door for someone else had heard and put to memory all the reports from the crew and passengers of the daily ferry and, of course, from Judge Holt himself. With Judge Holt’s account of the incident on the road, they already knew of the creature’s existence and hazarded a guess as to where the creature was relocated. With Arla and Daffyd entering the fray, their guesses were confirmed.
And then came the endless knocking on Dot’s workshop door. She locked it tight, jammed a vacated chair underneath its knob, and tried to ignore it. She only wished she could cut the lantern light and pretend she wasn’t there, but no one in Arms of Gold was that stupid. The knocking continued, then stopped, then to be replaced with conversation, shouts for her attention, and what increasingly sounded like a beer hall discussion.
The creature became ever more agitated at the constant interruptions – or at least, the lights in his eye sockets brightened and dimmed and spun about with far more speed than they had been doing. Dot sat down again in the chair in front of him, meeting what passed for his gaze.
“What could you possibly be?” she said, nearly a whisper. She did have a notion now, but it was ridiculous.
Nevertheless, Dot opened her mouth again and began to speak – not at him, but to him.
~
Once the land was cold and covered in ice and he did not know it then but he did know it in a time when it was warm and it was filled with people and every day had a thousand and one marvels for him to take in but that time was so short, wasn’t it, even though for him it was all he had and it filled up his entire world, and it had been replaced with a long, black darkness that only had one marvel for him and it was this, “Why is this?”
The darkness ended, though, as he knew it had to, just like the time in the warm had to, and it was replaced with a woman with black curls and brown eyes and that was the most confusing thing of all, for it was happening again with the same woman and like the first time, his entire self was pain and numbness.
~
“So that’s who I am. Dot Schultz Harlock – okay, Dorothy, but no one call me Dorothy except my dad when he’s cross. She who mucks about with machines and such, even though she doesn’t know a damned thing about chemistry or other matters magical that could probably help with things. And I bet there’s a bit of ether running you, eh? Can’t just be the standard electrical current.”
The lights had stilled and remained bright. Dot could swear that he was making eye contact with her.
“I read stories about things like you when I was knee-high. Creatures that looked like humans and could think sort of like humans, but had circuitry and gears and ether under their skin. Golems or machina. Automata. But those were fairy stories. I think.”
Minutes passed. Not in complete silence – “Yoohoo, Dot! Open up, already!” and the robust sounds of carousing put a stop to that – but not a sound came from inside the house.
Dot sighed. “This is stupid.” She got up, fetched the Widow Olny’s clock down from the shelf and set to fixing it, just as she had pledged to do before the morning’s interruption. The creature’s eyes darted about once again. The door remained locked.
~
The woman with the black curls and brown eyes went away again although he could tell that she did not go far, oh no, he could hear her move and sigh and swear and could hear others, many others, not far at all from here talking about a creature and he wondered if the woman with black curls knew that there was a creature about and whether she was safe and were the others there to protect them from the creature, and he wanted to move and speak so badly and he couldn’t, his body was so useless and pained, and he didn’t know what else he could do but sit and see and smell and oh, how familiar and unfamiliar it was!
He strained to move his jaw but it would not shift. Nothing would shift. He had been told by many people to keep trying, though, so he tried.
~
“You are Kit,” the creature said.
Dot nearly dropped the clock on the floor in the process of putting it back onto the shelf. She turned about on her heels and practically dived across the table in her haste and placed her fingers gingerly on his throat and jaw. “What did you say?”
“You are Kit. Kit Harlock. You found me again. This is marvellous!”
Dot trembled in her excitement, just as the creature’s throat did with every syllable he spoke. “I’m Dot. Not Kit.” Was it just her imagination, or had his voice been tinnier than it ought to be? Like it was coming through a pipe? Of course, everyone’s voice came through a pipe when it came down to it.
“But you look the same as Kit and you are the same age as her, so therefore, you must be her.” He hesitated. “Isn’t that so?” How was the sound being made? She could see enough of him to know that he didn’t have lungs in the proper sense, so how was it being done?
“I have a sister named Kit. She’s or was three years older than me. We haven’t seen her in three years. How do you know her?” His jaw worked like a human’s should, though, and his lips and what she could see of his tongue. Even if there was something mechanical about the motion.
“She woke me up and took me out of the black. You’re not her? You’re her... sister?” He hesitated again and Dot thought she could hear a whirring noise from somewhere within him. Within his skull? “I’ve heard of such things. Girl children with the same makers. No, ‘parents’ is the right word, ‘not makers.’ No wonder I was confused. You look the same as her. You sound the same as her. You smell a bit different, though.”
Dot felt her heartbeats increase in frequency and mind boil over with what he told her. “Where did you meet Kit?”
“East. I’ve walked very far from there. I’ve walked ever since I met her.”
“For three years.”
“Yes, for three years.” He added, with the apparent hope that it would explain, “There was no money for riding on trains and it’s wrong to steal horses.”
“So you walked.”
“I’m good at walking.”
A mechanical man who walked across a country that spanned a continent who knew his sister. Who knew where she’d been. This was... well, marvellous, to use his word. He could speak. Could she get him to move his arms? His legs?
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well? What is it then?”
“Erasmus March.”
~
The door opened. The crowd quieted – that is, they allowed the volume of their conversations to descend to over-loud stage whispers. Dot stepped out into the warm afternoon air. The sun shone directly into her face and she squinted to avoid it.
“Now, then,” she announced, as loudly as she could in order to make herself heard over the noise. “The creature’s a ‘he’, he’s got a name, he can speak, and I don’t really know what he is yet. I’m going to fix him up and we’re to do some travelling to find out. Any questions?”
The noise exploded. “That’s too bad,” said Dot. “Because I don’t know anything else. If you’re not my mom or dad or Bill, you can scamper off now. Cheers, bye, etc.” She went back inside her workshop and shut the door hard behind her. Not slammed, mind – that would be rude.
Half a minute later, she opened it again. “Oh, and if anyone has a spare wig about their place that’s just taking up room or at least a decent hat, I could put it to use. Thanks!” And again, the door shut.
~
Dot hadn’t the faintest fathoming what his skin was made of yet and therefore couldn’t make anymore for him, but there was one thing she could do about it. It involved needles and thread, of which she had plenty. She found a spindle with brown thread not far off from the shade of Erasmus’ skin, cut a length, boiled it and a needle in boiling water atop the stove – she didn’t know whether the skin was human enough to get infected and didn’t wish to find out – and threaded the needle’s eye.
“I have to warn you,” Dot said. “This is going to hurt.”
Erasmus nodded. “That’s what Kit said.” The needle pierced the skin of his cheek and he whimpered. “Kit is very honest.”
~
He had travelled so far, could see an ocean to the west through the trees, little faltering, little flagging, but the body was not everlasting and now it had to stop. It did.
~
Dot Harlock didn’t know what the thing was. In such situations, one might take it as an affront or as a challenge and Dot would choose the latter every time.
Here is what it looked like: mostly like a young man, a couple of years older than her own eighteen-year old self. Soft features, skin a uniform brown. Now, if that were the end of it, there wouldn’t be any mystery to it, would there?
But his hair, had he ever any at all, was shorn right off, even the eyebrows, even across the entire expanse of his remaining skin. That skin did not cover the whole of his frame, but left gaping holes on his cheek, on his bicep, on his stomach, through which could be seen mechanisms of such sophistication that was nearly beyond Dot’s grasp. Shining from his otherwise empty eye sockets could be seen two pinpoints of white light that danced and darted with all the fear that the rest of his husk did not show. If he was feeling anything at all, that is.
He neither breathed nor moved, save for those two pinpoints, but there was a sort of thrumming noise from deep within his chest and a certain tension to the exposed gears that seemed to Dot as though they desperately wanted to move.
“And you just found him wandering down the mountain road?” she asked the two respectably burly individuals that sat bolt upright in the remaining chairs in the workshop.
Arla coughed in the manner of one clearing her throat. “Not wandering, per se. Wandering would’ve been less odd. No, y’see, Daffyd and I had gone up it to go meet Judge Holt coming in and the road was clear as you’d expect, but on the way back...”
“We found this creature sprawled across it,” finished Daffyd with a dramatic shiver. “His honour’s horse nearly stepped on it.”
“How much time passed between coming and going? Where’s Judge Holt now?” asked Dot, prodding the thing with a screwdriver. A small shock rushed through her and the screwdriver was withdrawn.
“Maybe about ten minutes, give or take. In the mayor’s house. What do you make of it, Dot?”
What did she make of it? Well, that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it?
~
She soon hurried Arla and Daffyd off, promising them all the while to tell them the moment some new revelation occurred to her. It took her ten minutes for her to remember why this was a terrible move.
Arms of Gold, New Spira was more of a village than a town and as such, news and gossip travelled across it with a speed that could put shame to the fastest locomotive. Already at that morning hour, anyone who had ventured out of doors or had even opened a door for someone else had heard and put to memory all the reports from the crew and passengers of the daily ferry and, of course, from Judge Holt himself. With Judge Holt’s account of the incident on the road, they already knew of the creature’s existence and hazarded a guess as to where the creature was relocated. With Arla and Daffyd entering the fray, their guesses were confirmed.
And then came the endless knocking on Dot’s workshop door. She locked it tight, jammed a vacated chair underneath its knob, and tried to ignore it. She only wished she could cut the lantern light and pretend she wasn’t there, but no one in Arms of Gold was that stupid. The knocking continued, then stopped, then to be replaced with conversation, shouts for her attention, and what increasingly sounded like a beer hall discussion.
The creature became ever more agitated at the constant interruptions – or at least, the lights in his eye sockets brightened and dimmed and spun about with far more speed than they had been doing. Dot sat down again in the chair in front of him, meeting what passed for his gaze.
“What could you possibly be?” she said, nearly a whisper. She did have a notion now, but it was ridiculous.
Nevertheless, Dot opened her mouth again and began to speak – not at him, but to him.
~
Once the land was cold and covered in ice and he did not know it then but he did know it in a time when it was warm and it was filled with people and every day had a thousand and one marvels for him to take in but that time was so short, wasn’t it, even though for him it was all he had and it filled up his entire world, and it had been replaced with a long, black darkness that only had one marvel for him and it was this, “Why is this?”
The darkness ended, though, as he knew it had to, just like the time in the warm had to, and it was replaced with a woman with black curls and brown eyes and that was the most confusing thing of all, for it was happening again with the same woman and like the first time, his entire self was pain and numbness.
~
“So that’s who I am. Dot Schultz Harlock – okay, Dorothy, but no one call me Dorothy except my dad when he’s cross. She who mucks about with machines and such, even though she doesn’t know a damned thing about chemistry or other matters magical that could probably help with things. And I bet there’s a bit of ether running you, eh? Can’t just be the standard electrical current.”
The lights had stilled and remained bright. Dot could swear that he was making eye contact with her.
“I read stories about things like you when I was knee-high. Creatures that looked like humans and could think sort of like humans, but had circuitry and gears and ether under their skin. Golems or machina. Automata. But those were fairy stories. I think.”
Minutes passed. Not in complete silence – “Yoohoo, Dot! Open up, already!” and the robust sounds of carousing put a stop to that – but not a sound came from inside the house.
Dot sighed. “This is stupid.” She got up, fetched the Widow Olny’s clock down from the shelf and set to fixing it, just as she had pledged to do before the morning’s interruption. The creature’s eyes darted about once again. The door remained locked.
~
The woman with the black curls and brown eyes went away again although he could tell that she did not go far, oh no, he could hear her move and sigh and swear and could hear others, many others, not far at all from here talking about a creature and he wondered if the woman with black curls knew that there was a creature about and whether she was safe and were the others there to protect them from the creature, and he wanted to move and speak so badly and he couldn’t, his body was so useless and pained, and he didn’t know what else he could do but sit and see and smell and oh, how familiar and unfamiliar it was!
He strained to move his jaw but it would not shift. Nothing would shift. He had been told by many people to keep trying, though, so he tried.
~
“You are Kit,” the creature said.
Dot nearly dropped the clock on the floor in the process of putting it back onto the shelf. She turned about on her heels and practically dived across the table in her haste and placed her fingers gingerly on his throat and jaw. “What did you say?”
“You are Kit. Kit Harlock. You found me again. This is marvellous!”
Dot trembled in her excitement, just as the creature’s throat did with every syllable he spoke. “I’m Dot. Not Kit.” Was it just her imagination, or had his voice been tinnier than it ought to be? Like it was coming through a pipe? Of course, everyone’s voice came through a pipe when it came down to it.
“But you look the same as Kit and you are the same age as her, so therefore, you must be her.” He hesitated. “Isn’t that so?” How was the sound being made? She could see enough of him to know that he didn’t have lungs in the proper sense, so how was it being done?
“I have a sister named Kit. She’s or was three years older than me. We haven’t seen her in three years. How do you know her?” His jaw worked like a human’s should, though, and his lips and what she could see of his tongue. Even if there was something mechanical about the motion.
“She woke me up and took me out of the black. You’re not her? You’re her... sister?” He hesitated again and Dot thought she could hear a whirring noise from somewhere within him. Within his skull? “I’ve heard of such things. Girl children with the same makers. No, ‘parents’ is the right word, ‘not makers.’ No wonder I was confused. You look the same as her. You sound the same as her. You smell a bit different, though.”
Dot felt her heartbeats increase in frequency and mind boil over with what he told her. “Where did you meet Kit?”
“East. I’ve walked very far from there. I’ve walked ever since I met her.”
“For three years.”
“Yes, for three years.” He added, with the apparent hope that it would explain, “There was no money for riding on trains and it’s wrong to steal horses.”
“So you walked.”
“I’m good at walking.”
A mechanical man who walked across a country that spanned a continent who knew his sister. Who knew where she’d been. This was... well, marvellous, to use his word. He could speak. Could she get him to move his arms? His legs?
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well? What is it then?”
“Erasmus March.”
~
The door opened. The crowd quieted – that is, they allowed the volume of their conversations to descend to over-loud stage whispers. Dot stepped out into the warm afternoon air. The sun shone directly into her face and she squinted to avoid it.
“Now, then,” she announced, as loudly as she could in order to make herself heard over the noise. “The creature’s a ‘he’, he’s got a name, he can speak, and I don’t really know what he is yet. I’m going to fix him up and we’re to do some travelling to find out. Any questions?”
The noise exploded. “That’s too bad,” said Dot. “Because I don’t know anything else. If you’re not my mom or dad or Bill, you can scamper off now. Cheers, bye, etc.” She went back inside her workshop and shut the door hard behind her. Not slammed, mind – that would be rude.
Half a minute later, she opened it again. “Oh, and if anyone has a spare wig about their place that’s just taking up room or at least a decent hat, I could put it to use. Thanks!” And again, the door shut.
~
Dot hadn’t the faintest fathoming what his skin was made of yet and therefore couldn’t make anymore for him, but there was one thing she could do about it. It involved needles and thread, of which she had plenty. She found a spindle with brown thread not far off from the shade of Erasmus’ skin, cut a length, boiled it and a needle in boiling water atop the stove – she didn’t know whether the skin was human enough to get infected and didn’t wish to find out – and threaded the needle’s eye.
“I have to warn you,” Dot said. “This is going to hurt.”
Erasmus nodded. “That’s what Kit said.” The needle pierced the skin of his cheek and he whimpered. “Kit is very honest.”
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