The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom (2 page)

“Hey,” Nora said softly.

Dale grunted in reply, impatient at the interruption. He
turned the piece, missing his workbench again—what he wouldn’t give for a
proper vise. Or lights. Or tools.

“You figure it out yet?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“I only have a guess,” Dale said, exasperated. “I don’t
know.”

“Even Mom on a cleaning binge isn’t as anal as you.”

Dale looked up at that. “Well, not all of us are slobs,” he
added, gesturing at her sweater. “Why are you wearing that thing?” He called it
her Franken-sweater. Nora had knit it from a variety of different colored
yarns. One sleeve hung down over her hand while the other barely reached her
wrist. The neck opened to the side, not down the center. She continually tore
out pieces of it and re-knit it.

“I finished redoing the cuff. See?” Nora held it out to him.
“Peacock lace,” she said, trailing a finger over one of the “feathers.”

It was a cool pattern, though Dale wasn’t going tell his
sister that. “It doesn’t match.” Green bobbles dotted the sleeve above the
purple lace, and tightly knit, braided rows in orange joined the shoulder to
the body.

“That’s not the point,” Nora scoffed. “It’s my practice
sweater, where I try out new yarn and stitches.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to wear it,” Dale pointed out.

Nora shrugged. “I like it,” she said as she sat down on the
floor next to the plastic. “Can I help?”

“No,” Dale said automatically.

They sat in silence while Dale poked at the innards of the
piece, reattaching a wire, then rerouting the flow of power. Nora picked up one
of the tiny gold screws. Dale was grateful she didn’t ask about it. It wasn’t a
flat head, or a Phillips, either. It had three slots and took a special
screwdriver. Like most of the machine, it was handmade.

Still, questions built in the quiet room. Nora toyed with a
spring, not really looking at it. Dale braced himself. It wasn’t that they
could talk without words, like twins he’d read about. They were fraternal
twins, not identical. However, Dale still knew that Nora wanted more than to
just watch him work.

“What do you think Dad’s doing?” Nora finally asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“He’d never hurt Mom.”

Dale merely glared at her.

“She was the one who spanked us as kids. Not him.”

“He threatened to hurt her.” Dale remembered the stark
terror in his mother’s voice as she’d talked to her own mother, told her what
her husband had done, how he’d threatened to strangle her. Mom didn’t know Dale
had heard her; he’d never told her.

“Dad was just exaggerating. You know how he is.”

“Yes, I do.” Dale couldn’t tell Nora, couldn’t tell anyone
that his dad was a bully. Like most of his class, Dale had laughed and rolled
his eyes at his teacher’s solemn proclamations of what a bully was and how they
needed to report any such behavior. Inside, he’d been shaken.

Everything they’d said had fit his dad.

However, Nora didn’t see it. Dad also hadn’t picked on her
as much. Or when he had, she’d put him down in return. That was another thing
Dale wouldn’t tell his sister: how much he admired her. “And no, you can’t call
him,” he said, cutting her off.

“It’s his birthday at the end of the month!”

“Send a card to Grandma. Have her forward it.”

Nora nodded slowly. “I could do that.”

“Just don’t call. And don’t tell him where we are.”

“But maybe if Mom and Dad talked—”

“No.”

“She never gave him a chance to tell his side!”

“What part of ‘I’ll kill you if you try to divorce me’
should she listen to?” Dale asked, fuming.

“But—”

“No, Nora. Now just shut up for a second. Let me
concentrate.” Dale used tweezers to move a delicate wire from one gear to a different
one, then carefully coiled a spring. When he let it go, the flywheel spun on
its own.

The lights went out.

“Damn it!” Dale said. “I hate this place.” The electricity
went out on a regular basis. Even their cell phones only worked half the time.

“Nor—do you remember where my penlight was?” Dale
asked, patting the ground on either side.

“Why? Afraid of the dark?” Nora teased.

“No, I just like to see,” Dale complained. He wouldn’t tell
her that he was a little frightened. It was so dark out here and they had no
close neighbors. He turned and felt behind him, searching for the familiar
shape.

A light came on near Nora.

“Did you find…” Dale let his question die.

The little piece of machinery had kept turning and now
glowed with a cool blue light.

“Kids?”

“We’re in here, Mom,” Nora called out before Dale could stop
her.

“
Shhh
,” Dale hissed. He finally
grabbed his flashlight and tried to turn it on. When it didn’t light
immediately, he tried a second, then a third time. Finally it lit up.

The light from the machine softly faded.

“Come on,” Dale said, standing.

Mom appeared in the doorway. “Looks like candles and cards,”
she said. She held a small flashlight as well.

Nora turned to Dale. He knew what she was asking, and
nodded. Mom needed them. It wasn’t like he’d be able to get any more work done,
anyway.

Dale closed the door to his room as he walked out, then
grabbed Nora’s arm. “Don’t tell her about the machine,” he hissed.

“Duh,” Nora said, pulling away. “You still owe me,” she
reminded him.

Dale grinned. Sometimes his sister was all right.

***

Anger kept Queen Adele’s backbone ramrod straight through
her husband Thaddeus’ funeral. She shed no tears behind her black lace veil;
rage had burned them all away. Now, at the end of the ceremony, she stood on a
makeshift platform supported by wooden scaffolding, above the white marble
staircase leading into the depths of the hill and the catacombs.

By watching over the proceedings from a high vantage point,
Adele’s presence was meant to reassure her people of the continuation of her
rule. She wanted to comfort them any way she could: though her loss was great,
theirs was, too. She’d lost a husband, but they’d lost their king.

Gray tombstones dotted the hill behind the queen. They fanned
out on either side, crowding out any flowers that might have bloomed or
brightened the graveyard. They’d lost so many fairies in this strange new land.

Adele watched the funeral procession wind its way from the
temple and through the village toward her. Like all things magical, her underground
kingdom had three focal points: the golden temple in the East for birth, the
graveyard in the West for death, and the dark brick palace, to the North, for
order and life. Far above them, the dugout ceiling emulated the night sky and
twinkled with half the light that normally shone there, another sign of what
they’d lost.

The two other important locations in the kingdom stood empty
that day: the fields beyond the temple and the factory behind the graveyard.
Tradition insisted that no one in the kingdom work for at least three days.
Adele had given the order easily, though she’d hoped that the servant caste
would do some work with the time off. From where she stood, she could see
thatched roofs that needed repair, broken carts and rubbish blocking smaller
streets, as well as abandoned areas of the village falling into decay. She’d
heard the complaints: The servants were too busy working in the factory for
simple maintenance.
Too busy drinking and
complaining
, was what she thought.

Six warriors carried Thaddeus’ body, including Bascom, their
chief. Although Thaddeus had been born into the royal caste, Adele came from
the warrior caste, so the warriors claimed him as their own. Each warrior had
one or more of Thaddeus’ clockwork pieces imbedded into his or her flesh, such
as a jeweled eye, a mechanical hand, or a piston-like leg. The warriors had
shocked the court by arriving at the funeral wearing only loincloths, cloaks,
and their fiercest paint. The younger royals had tittered nervously at such a frightening
display. Adele had immediately quelled all dissent. The warriors honored
Thaddeus as one of their own by their appearance. Too many in the court had
forgotten how fierce a people they’d once been. The royal caste no longer bred
tall and true.

The only nod to current convention Adele had given was to
instruct the warriors to do their bloodletting in the privacy of the tomb,
after the others had left. Not all approved of, or wanted to honor, their
cannibalistic past.

Following the warriors came the contingent of royals from a
fairy kingdom to the south, a place they called the Silicon Kingdom, after some
human reference. They towered over the warriors, thin and ghostlike. They had
arrived unannounced, three days before Thaddeus’ death, seeking an alliance.
Adele didn’t trust them. Fairies met only in battle, or afterwards, paying tribute.
She assumed they’d come to find the weaknesses of her kingdom. They wore
traditional garb: white glittering scarves flowing from their wings, silver
skirts, and pale blue jackets.

Thaddeus’ apprentices and journeymen, led by Cornelius—Adele’s
best friend and closest confidant—trailed after them. Adele found their
somber, black silk coats, heavy brocade waistcoats, and white shirts
comforting. Goggles, perched one on top of another, sat on the crowns of their
hats. A number of gears and delicate tools hung from their pocket-watch chains.
Many pouches bulged on their belts.

Adele’s own clockwork wings stirred, the familiar ache of
metal-on-bone flavoring her anger with fear. She’d refused all help, even her
regular oiling and polishing, since Thaddeus’ death. None of Thaddeus’
underlings was worthy of her patronage. Not that Thaddeus hadn’t trained them
well. All of them could copy a piece, once he’d explained to them, as well as
fix almost anything out of improvised and scavenged parts. None of them had
that spark to create, though, to design new machinery. Many had never passed
the final apprentice test: creating their own gear-cutting tools.

As the first of the warriors disappeared under the ground
beneath Adele, she let out the traditional loud wailing cry of mourning.
Everyone in the court joined her, as well as the servants massed behind them,
their shrieks bouncing off the cliffs and rocks, rising to the dugout roof above
them, echoing through the vast underground kingdom.

Adele still refused to weep. The fierceness of her continued
howling served two purposes: to show her broken heart, as well as to serve as a
warning to that thrice-damned dwarf,
Kostya
. He would
pay.

***

After the entombment, Adele walked restlessly from one
waiting room to the next. Cornelius trailed behind her like a sad cloud. She
couldn’t blame him; he worried about her. They all were. The somberly dressed
court sat in clusters on backless couches, their wings drooping with mourning, their
eyes hooded and darting, not having the courage to speak with her and risk her anger.
Servants, also in black, walked between them, serving chilled moonbeam wine.
The southern contingent had been politely directed to different rooms.

The brightly painted, unmatched walls of the waiting rooms further
set Adele’s nerves on edge, and her rage continued to build. Everyone in the
fairy kingdom had forgotten how they’d once been. They should be tearing their
clothes or destroying everything around them in rage, not politely talking in
whispers. She ached to see how far they’d fallen.

Only the priests broke the solid collection of fine black
mourning-frocks. The priest of
Anabnus
, the sun god,
wore brilliant yellow robes; while the priestess of
Clotana
,
the moon goddess, wore only a white skirt, with glitter covering her torso and
breasts. Matching streamers decorated their wings and floated in the air behind
them. The priests eschewed all clockwork and followed even older ways, without
gears or mechanics, as the southern court appeared to. Adele didn’t want to go
all the way back to the bad old days. She’d grown up in the country, barefoot
and dirt poor. She appreciated running water, clean clothes, and soft sheets.
The priests didn’t present a threat, though; they came from the smaller servant
caste and would follow her lead as they always had.

Cornelius finally got Adele to stop for a moment in the far
room, where few had gathered. The green walls reminded Adele of slime-covered
water.

“You need to rest,” he told her sternly, bending his gray
head toward her. Most fairies never showed their age, and Cornelius wasn’t that
old. He’d just gone gray as a young man. Adele had teased him that he thought
too much. He wore a black-on-black striped vest with matching pants, and a
blinding white shirt under his dark coat. Rings with precious rubies, emeralds,
pearls, and other gems covered every finger. “You can talk with me, if you need
to. He was my best friend as well.” As the Master Jeweler to the kingdom, he’d
worked closely with Thaddeus, the Master Tinker.

“Not—not yet. I can’t,” Adele confessed. She winced as
her wings moved. A gear had slipped out of place on her left one, making the
mechanism that opened them grind.

“At least let me take care of those for you.”

Finally Adele nodded. “Later tonight.” She looked around.
The servants were now serving the cold mourning tea. “Help me escape,” she
whispered. Her own petticoats and underskirts chafed her. At least she’d been
able to remove her veil. Looking through it gave her the impression that
everything was dirty. She longed to be as free as the warrior she’d once been,
screaming and stomping her feet in anger, stripped bare of gown and corset. She
consoled herself that soon she’d lead the raid against
Kostya
.
He’d die more honorably than her husband, who had been killed with a booby trap
while exploring one of the deep tunnels. Only the dwarf would have set such a
trap.