The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom (4 page)

Dale retrieved his project from his locker. He told everyone
it was a pirate chest. It looked like one: leather straps decorated the sides
and top, held down with brass rivets, and iron reinforced the corners. With the
clever use of pegs, Dale hung the smaller boxes he’d made on the inside. He’d
even put in a false bottom—barely an inch above the real bottom, but good
for hiding treasure maps.

In reality, it was a toolbox. Dale had made leather loops
along the back to hold screwdrivers of all sizes, as well as scissors and
wrenches.

More than anything, Dale wanted to fill his toolbox with
tools. He imagined it in his room, and knew it would look pathetic with the one
set of tools in it. He missed his old workshop again, missed the orderly jars
holding everything he could ever need for a project, missed the directed
lights, missed the vises and tools.

“Looking good,” Rich told Dale in his best sleazy pickup
voice.

Dale grinned. “You too, man.” He looked over at Rich’s project.
Rich only needed to finish tacking the material to the inside of the cover.
Tabri
nodded at Dale, then turned back to smoothing out the
hole for the digital readout for his moisture meter. Dale only had a few
finishing touches as well, polishing the rivets and iron. Ms. Anderson had
already given him an A on it.

The hour passed quickly. Dale kept thinking about tools, how
they’d look inside his box. Finally he gathered up a few from around the shop
class and tried them out, seeing how they’d fit. The box worked just as Dale
had imagined it would, and the tools filled the box perfectly.

Dale glanced around. Ms. Anderson stood at the far side with
her back to him, working with two other students. Rich and
Tabri
argued over the stupid call the ref had made at the last baseball game, whether
Barkman
had been in or out.

It was just wrong for a toolbox not to have any tools in it.
It was also wrong to steal.

Dale tried to justify it to himself. No one would miss the
tools until fall—the school shop was closed for the summer. And maybe by
then he’d have his own set and could replace the ones he’d taken. No one needed
to know.

As casually as he could, Dale took out most of the tools he’d
placed in the box. He left behind one package of tools in the bottom-most boxes—a
complete set of tiny screwdrivers and wrenches, the kind he needed to work on
the new machinery at home, the type that would be the most difficult buy at a
hardware store.

Dale closed the top of his box and put away all the tools he’d
taken out. No one seemed to have noticed. The back of his neck prickled with
anticipation. Those tools would be so useful. Maybe he could sneak back in some
of the wire-working pliers. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Ms. Anderson
said, directly over his shoulder, “Fine-looking toolbox you have there.”

Ms. Anderson wore her safety goggles, making her eyes look
huge and watery. She pushed them up to her forehead with one gloved hand. “Why
don’t you show me?”

Reluctantly, Dale lifted the lid. The tools glared at him from
the bottom of the box.

Ms. Anderson looked at the tools, then at Dale, and said, “Think
I’ll have to make a box like that for my tools, someday. Though I might start
with a tackle box. Let me show you what I mean.”

Dale trailed behind his teacher, his gut sinking and
churning, his cheeks flaming hot. Though she hadn’t said anything, he knew that
she knew. And he couldn’t go through with it. When he got back to his workbench,
he pulled out the set of screwdrivers and wrenches and put them away. He felt Ms.
Anderson’s eyes on him the whole time, even though she was working with
Tabri’s
plant holder. Now how was Dale going to fix the
machinery he had at home? The tools he had weren’t adequate. It wasn’t fair.

As Dale left, carrying his now completely empty box, Ms.
Anderson pressed a small set of jeweler’s screwdrivers into his hand. She
shrugged when he looked up at her. “Found an extra set. You know, you can
always find good used tools on eBay or something.”

Dale nodded, only barely remembering to say, “Thanks.” But
first he needed the money to buy them, money his mom wouldn’t give him. There
weren’t any jobs he could get, either. He placed the lone set of tools in his
toolbox. They looked as forlorn as he felt.

***

Adele looked in the mirror. She’d thrown off her mourning
frocks, much to the dismay of her maid, Clarissa, and had dressed that morning
as a warrior instead. The red cloak set off her pale skin. Adele painted her
lips the same red color, then growled into the mirror, pleased with how sharp
her pointed teeth looked. She used dark kohl around her golden eyes to make
them seem bigger, and then painted stripes and protective symbols on her
cheeks, across her bare chest.

Today,
Kostya
would die. Adele
would kill him with her own hands, in revenge for Thaddeus’ death. She growled
again in the mirror. The white oak dressing table and four-poster bed behind
her looked incongruous, too civilized. Adele stretched her wings, this time
more easily. Cornelius had done maintenance on them the night before. The faint
odor of oil still hung in the air. The wing membrane bore ragged ends that
showed her old injury. They’d never fully healed. Gears and bone made up the
top ridge, allowing Adele to open and close her wings. Most of the metacarpals
were still bone, but two were made from gold.

Before Adele finished applying her war paint, Cornelius and
two other members of the court, Gideon and Imogene, filed into the room. They
must have bribed Clarissa. She’d have to find out what they’d paid and double
it to ensure her privacy from now on.

“You’re not talking me out of going,” Adele warned them.

“Going? No. Leading?” Cornelius asked, and then shook his
gray head.

“
Kostya
must die,” Adele said,
keeping her voice low and mean.

“Yes, he must, and by your hand, too,” Cornelius replied.

“But?” Adele couldn’t keep herself from asking.

“The dwarf has no honor,” Gideon said, sniffing. “There will
be traps. Explosions.”

“Some of the warriors may die. You cannot,” Cornelius
continued.

“Who will lead us if you’re gone?” Imogene asked, sounding
whiny to Adele.

“Whoever rises to the top,” Adele retorted. She and Thaddeus
had never been able to have children, a common problem when fairies from
different castes mated. “The rule will pass to whichever royal is strong enough
to take it, same as it has always been,” she continued. “As the court and the
priests have decreed.”

Adele watched Imogene and Gideon exchange a look in the
mirror. She didn’t know what those two were plotting, but she was going to have
to be careful. One of them might decide it was no longer her time to rule.
Thaddeus had been her connection to royalty, and now he was dead. Some of the
court thought that Adele, being from the warrior caste, wasn’t capable of
leading them on her own. She would show them wrong. Not only would she make
them stronger, she’d help them regain their former glory.

“Let your warriors see you at your fiercest, to inspire
them,” Cornelius proposed. “However, you must direct the party from behind and
let them take the brunt of the dwarf’s machinations.”

Thaddeus had pointed out to Adele, more than once, that as
Queen she had different responsibilities than before, when she’d merely been
the leader of their ragtag army, marching across the untamed wilderness of the
new continent. Adele had to compromise as well as lead, listen to her advisors
and take their advice when it was sound.

“He still dies by my hand,” Adele said, nodding to the
inevitable. Her people had grown used to this softer life and a continuous
rule. She would make concessions.

Imogene made a face as if she smelled something bad. “Your
presence will just make them foolhardy, not courageous.”

“Some people easily confuse the two,” Adele told her, giving
her a polite smile but still showing her pointed teeth. Imogene and her husband
Gideon would have their Queen be a spectator only, mistakenly thinking that
ordering people to do things gave you more power, instead of doing everything
yourself.

Adele would prove them wrong.

***

When the first explosion rocked the tunnel where Adele waited,
Cornelius murmured to her, “See? Aren’t you glad you stayed back?”

“Yes, all right, you were right,” Adele said crossly. She
was glad that she’d defiantly stayed dressed as a warrior, ignoring the rest of
her court still in their mourning frocks. Dirt sifted down on them and she shook
her head. The dwarf’s tunnels were inferior to theirs, crudely carved and
shored up with mere lumber. Compacted dirt made up the floor, not matched
stones, and the rough walls weren’t straight enough for any god to follow.

A runner came back to the court, his wings singed and his
cape blackened. “Bascom set off the bomb without injury, Ma’am. We’re
approaching the second cavern now.” Then he flew back. Adele glared at
Cornelius, Imogene and the others. It would have been fine if she’d been there.

After a fourth explosion, the runner came back for Adele. “We’ve
reached the inner tunnels. The dwarf is gone.”

Adele gnashed her teeth and didn’t contain her growl. It
figured. Nothing had gone right since Thaddeus died.

“Bascom did find something interesting, my Lady,” he said,
looking down.

Grimly, Adele strode forward. What perversion had the
warriors found? They should have taken care of the dwarf long ago. She wrapped
the ends of her cloak over her arm as they entered to keep it from catching on
the rubbish that littered the floor. Even
humans
lived more cleanly than this dwarf. Imogene gagged behind her. Adele refused to
be quelled by the stench. Instead, she gritted her teeth and pushed into the
next room, past the rubble from the first explosions.

Two machines sat on the floor in the next room. Adele
recognized them as tests Thaddeus had created for his apprentices. The dwarf
had added an obscenity to one: on top of the smooth curved lines of the
original piece sat two black needles at the end of crude pistons.

“My goodness, what has he done?” Cornelius asked, stepping
forward.

Adele immediately understood their purpose—to strike
the hand of anyone who reached down for the machine. She sniffed the air,
scenting for what she thought she would find. There it was. Blood of a human.
No magic. But something.

Cornelius ran his finger along one of the needles, then
stuck it into his mouth. Wonder passed over his face. “Tinker,” he said softly.

“Bascom!” Adele yelled.

The warrior strode forward. A brilliant ruby shone from one
eye. Soot and sweat smeared his red war paint. He glowed with fairy power,
lighting up the room. Muscles rippled across his wide chest, almost making up
for his small wings.

“Find the human Tinker,” Adele told him. “Bring him to me.”

“It shouldn’t take long, my Queen,” Bascom said, bowing his
head. “We’ve already started tracking. This had been up top for a while.”

“Alive,” Adele added. “We need him alive.”

Bascom glanced up at her, his face grim. For a moment Adele
wondered if he would be the one to challenge her. Then he looked down again.

“Alive, Ma’am. Aye.”

After Bascom left, Adele sent the rest of the court back to
the kingdom. They all looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Royals didn’t leave the
kingdom often, not if they could help it. Warriors were the only ones who
traveled frequently.

Adele wandered through
Kostya’s
things alone. Did the warriors know what Thaddeus’ machine would do? Did they
understand what it would bring? They would return to the surface and the old
ways, with fame and glory for all. It was their only chance against the humans.

Adele would have to watch Bascom, Imogene, Gideon, all of
them.

A handful of grass caught Adele’s eye as she turned to
leave. More blood coated its razor-thin edges. Adele tested it, surprised that
it wasn’t the Tinker’s. No, it was a Maker’s. She resolved not to tell the
others of her discovery. A Maker could change everything. She’d need to find
the Maker herself. She could convince the Maker to join them. Just as she would
convince the Tinker. They would help her, her kingdom and her people. They just
had to.

If they wouldn’t, well...the Maker could die.

Denise waited in the hot sun for the school bus. The weather
had been unseasonably warm all week, or so the weatherman had assured her. Tall
grass on either side of the road captured any cooling breezes. Dust still hung
in the air from the car that had passed earlier. Cicada calls cycled up and
down around her.

The twins would be upset with Denise for waiting and would
accuse her of not trusting them. She could hear Dale’s whine: “We were just
late the one time! Jeez.”

Denise didn’t have a good excuse for waiting, or even a
bribe to deflect the twins’ anger. All she had was a mother’s worry that something
wasn’t right. It hadn’t just been the phone call from the day before, or the
electricity failing so completely. Someone watched them. Every time Denise
walked outside, her hackles raised from unseen eyes.

The crunching rock of an approaching vehicle turned Denise’s
attention. It came from the opposite direction from where the school bus would
travel.

A beat-up red pickup truck came around the corner. As it
slowed, Denise recognized the driver—Eli Patterson, her landlord. One
tanned and weathered arm rested on the open window. White stubble sprouted all
along his strong chin. He kept his head shaved; today he wore a faded green cap.

“Waiting for the kids?” Eli asked.

Denise sheepishly nodded. Eli reminded her of Uncle Leonard,
a gruff man who’d moved away from the family and had a hobby farm. He’d always
talked about making it, big dreams but no plans for achieving his goals.

“It won’t do for you to worry yourself sick about them,” Eli
warned.

“We’ll be fine,” Denise told him, bristling. She was
not
worrying too much about her children.
“We lost power again last night,” she countered.

“Did
ya
now. Must have been a
fairy haunting, ’cause our lights burned steady all night long. Did you try
your phone?”

Denise nodded, a bit worried. “Also dead.”

Eli beamed. “It was the fairies, then. They can’t abide
electronics. Folk tales tell of iron being a curse for them—to tell the
truth, magnets work much better.” He paused for a moment, drumming his thumb
against the steering wheel.

Denise tried to maintain a straight face and not show her
surprise. Fairies? It was no wonder the electricity kept failing if her
landlord blamed it on myths instead of actually fixing the problem.

“Tell you what,” Eli continued. “Been meaning to do some
landscaping ’round your place. Rowan and myrtle. That’ll do the trick. Keep the
fairies at bay.”

“Thank you,” Denise said, not knowing how else to respond.

It took three tries before Eli’s engine caught. “Dang it,”
he said. “Pardon my French. I just replaced the plugs in this old beast. One of
them must not have settled right. See you later!” With a wave, Eli rolled away.

Fairies? Really? Denise found herself shaking her head. Who
would have thought such a thing? No wonder the house they rented had sat empty
for so long, with a landlord like that. She wouldn’t have believed the gruff
old man had such fantasies. That helped her come to a decision: As soon as
school let out, they were leaving. The electricity going out half the nights
they stayed was a good enough reason to break the lease.

Suddenly, the world spun and grew darker around the edges.
Denise took big gulps of air. She wondered for a moment what had happened—if
she was sick—then reached up to her neck and took her pulse. It was weaker
than it should have been, as well as jumpy.

Damn it. She’d missed her last appointment with her
cardiologist, too busy running from Chris. She hadn’t gone looking for a new
doctor yet, either. She couldn’t put off finding one to look at her pacemaker.
When she’d been nineteen, she’d started fainting, and they’d discovered she had
a congenital heart defect. The first pacemaker they’d implanted had been a
temporary measure. However, complications arose when they’d tried to remove it,
so the doctors had switched her to a permanent one.

Denise took deep breaths, visualizing all of her tension
lifting off her and floating away, carried off in the warm summer air. By the
time the bus arrived, Denise’s pulse had returned to normal. However, instead
of a whine, Dale took one look at her and asked, “Are you all right, Mom?”

“Everything’s fine,” Denise assured them. “It just got warm,
waiting for you.”

Dale and Nora exchanged one of those looks—words
flowing in a single glance.

“I’ll make lemonade when we get home,” Nora said.

“And we would have come straight home today,” Dale assured
her.

“Yeah, he can’t push me carrying that box.”

“It’s beautiful, Dale,” Denise assured him. He’d brought it
home a couple of times to show off his progress. Her father would have loved
it. He’d been a true craftsman and could fix anything. He and Dale had been cut
from the same cloth. Most boys, when given their first toy car, would push it
around the floor. The first thing Dale did was set it upside down and try to
take the wheels off.

“How do you two like it here?” Denise asked as they started
walking down the lane, wanting to see how much of a battle she’d have when she
brought up moving again.

“It’s okay,” Dale said, shrugging, as noncommittal as only a
teenage boy could be.

“I like our house,” Nora chimed in. “I like the trees, and being
so near the ocean. I really like the storms here.”

Denise chuckled. That was her daughter—a wild woman
who only let go during allotted times. A huge storm had blown up the first week
they’d been there. Nora had gone for a walk along the ocean. When the rain hit,
she’d gone crazy, shrieking and racing the waves, laughing the entire time, her
hair plastered to her face and back, soaked to the skin. Once she came back
inside she was under control again, as if it had never happened.

“If the power keeps cutting out, we may have to move again,”
Denise warned them.

“Just houses, not schools, right?” Dale asked, worried. Nora’s
face held the same expression of concern.

“Why?”

Dale talked about Rich and
Tabri
,
as well as Ms. Anderson and the cool screwdriver set she’d given him.

“I’m sure you thanked her for them, right?” Denise asked.

Dale nodded, suddenly blushing. There was something more
about those screwdrivers. Then Nora distracted her, asking about supper, and
Denise forgot to tell them about their landlord’s strange beliefs.

***

Nora wandered into her own room. Dale had banished her from
his room that night after dinner, calling her bad luck. Her mom sat at the
computer, still working. Nora was on her own. She looked mournfully around her
room. Only a few stuffed animals sat on the shelf above her bed—a white
tiger, a fox, and the teddy bear Grandpa Lewis had made her. She’d left behind
most of her books, as well as her yarn. When Mom had told her to they had to
leave, Nora had grabbed needles instead.

If Nora had been home, with her friends, she might have gone
to the coffee shop on the corner with them for a juice or for ice cream. Or
they would have talked on the phone about the last day of school, the cute boy
who sat next to Nora in homeroom, anything and everything. Tonight, she
wandered through her room, not sure what to do with herself.

Nora picked up her beloved Franken-sweater off the floor. It
told a journey, to her. The chest, over the heart, was part of the first
sweater she’d ever knit, a reminder of where she’d started, complete with
uneven stitches and messed-up pattern. She wasn’t quite up to Grandmother Lily’s
level:
Entrelac
knitting intimidated her, as did
quite a few lace patterns. She called herself a solid intermediate knitter, but
someday she’d be advanced.

Because summer break was so close, none of Nora’s teachers
had assigned serious homework. She decided to work on one of her projects
instead. She pulled all five of her knitting bags out of the closet and threw
them onto the bed, arranging them in a semi-circle in front of her, like a
magic circle of crafting. The bedspread she sat on, also made by Grandma Lily,
had a Mariner’s star quilted into it. Nora deliberately sat in the center of
the star. She opened the first bag and sniffed deeply: fine wool still coated
in lanolin. Then she put it away and pulled out the shawl she was making for
her mother’s birthday, out of a beautiful variegated Japanese wool. The pattern
itself was a series of swirling hexagons. Once Nora had figured out the pattern—that
the rows were grouped in threes, not twos—it had become much easier.

Still, Nora now finished off only a single hexagon. She didn’t
want to risk her mom walking in and seeing it.

Feeling buoyed up by the rich colors of the shawl, Nora attacked
her next project. She was making a sweater in the round for her teddy bear. The
small size meant not many stitches, so the project went quickly. However, the
raglan sleeves weren’t setting straight.

Nora knit two more rounds, easing and adjusting, before she
finally decided it was never going to work. Grinning, she slid the circular
needles out and started to pull apart her work.

“You’re demented, you know,” Dale told her from the doorway.

In response, Nora began pulling out the yarn more
dramatically, her hand rising from her lap to over her head with each tug.

Dale rolled his eyes and went back to his room.

Nora laughed quietly. He didn’t get it. Neither did Mom.
None of her old friends from home had, either. She was still searching for
someone who did, who understood the greatest secret of all: The power to
destroy was almost as great as the ability to Make.

***

Dale didn’t understand Nora’s fascination with the beach. It
was just a strip of sand, really, with the ocean on one side and a rocky cliff
on the other. You couldn’t go swimming—the water was too cold and rough.
No one else ever visited while they were there. Even the gulls disdained their
beach; not enough prey, Dale guessed.

The wind pushed at Dale as he trudged down the rock trail,
blowing his carefully styled hair into his eyes. Nora just tied hers up in a
lopsided bun. Only one more day of school left, a half-day. They’d be out by
noon. Kind of weird that school ended on a Tuesday, but Dale wasn’t going to
complain.

Nora had talked Dale into helping her collect rocks and
shiny debris thrown onto the shore by the waves. She took his pieces and placed
them in the sand, creating a picture. First came the outlining circle, then
three anchor points. Swirling lines filled the background. Finally Dale saw the
outline of a woman. The top point formed an eye in the center of her forehead,
and the other two lay in the centers of her open palms.

As they finished, Dale pointed out, “You know, the tide’s
going to wash this away.”

“I know. Cool, huh? Like those sand paintings Buddhist monks
do.”

“Demented,” Dale told her, shoving her shoulder.

Nora pushed him back. “Spiritual,” she said in a high,
mincing voice, imitating Mrs.
Chakmus
, their social
studies teacher. Dale grinned. He looked at the piece. Primitive, but it was
kind of neat. “So—what now?”

“
Wanna
stay and watch it get
destroyed?” Nora asked as she walked to a nearby log and sat down.

“You really are insane,” Dale told her. He looked at her,
then back out at the ocean. Despite the sunshine that afternoon, it still felt
cold and gray. “
Naw
. I’m going back to the house.
Just don’t get yourself trapped by the tide or Mom’s going to kill you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Nora assured him.

Dale snorted. “Yeah. Finely insane.” He ducked as she threw
a handful of sand at him, then turned and plodded back to the trail. At the
top, just before it turned and lost sight of the ocean, Dale looked back. Nora
walked around her “painting,” drizzling sand over the outline. Was she
destroying it herself, or trying to bury it and protect it?

He looked beyond her to the ocean. If he was honest, the
water frightened him. It spread from shore to horizon, too big to be tamed, all
chaotic waves and unknowable creatures. With a final shiver he turned and
continued walking back to the house, relieved to be out of the constant wind.

The faded red pickup truck of Mr. Patterson, their landlord,
sat in front of their house. Dale didn’t see their landlord, though, until he
got close. Mr. Patterson stood on a ladder on the far side of the garage,
pounding nails into a black metal piece that now framed the corner of the roof.
He wore his usual gray shirt and too-big jeans. Dale had wondered if he’d been
sick; all his clothes hung on him, making him look extra scrawny.

“Hey there,” Mr. Patterson called to Dale as he came down
the ladder. “Just adding a bit more protection.
Uhm
.
From the rain.”

Dale knew Mr. Patterson was lying. Corners didn’t need any
special reinforcement. Still, Dale asked, “Like window flashing?” He’d helped Grandpa
Lewis repair his cousin’s home one summer when they’d been visiting.

“Sort of,” Mr. Patterson said, tilting his head to the side
like a bird.

Dale picked up one of the cast-iron brackets laying on the
driveway. The metal felt cold to the touch and was hinged at the center. It
took him a moment to pry the two pieces apart. “They’re magnetized.”

“Exactly!” Mr. Patterson said, picking up another one and
pulling it apart. “They’re like lightning rods, to draw away the electricity.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Dale said, shaking his head and
handing the metal piece back to Mr. Patterson.

“Ah, you’ll learn,” Mr. Patterson assured Dale.

“Okay,” Dale said, backing toward the house. “I, ah,
gotta
get going.”

“You have a fine evening. Let me know if the power stays on
all night tonight, okay?”