Mechanica (19 page)

Caro laughed. “And what of the birds? And the insects? Your mother made those, too, surely. Oh, Nick, they are wonderful.”

I nodded. “Those are what she was best at,” I said. “Father traded them at really exorbitant prices. But they’re magic, at least a bit, and I think Mother couldn’t make them anymore after King Corsin started the embargoes. I still don’t know how she made them. But there are”—I hesitated for a moment, but I already knew I would tell Caro everything—“there are these drawers in the other room, full of ash, with pictures of animals on the labels. I’m sure the ash has something to do with making the animals come to life, but I don’t know what it is yet. Sometimes I think maybe she found it dangerous, after the quarantine, but—” I stopped.

Caro nodded, listening intently. “But there is magic here, isn’t there? In the insects themselves. I might not even recognize it if I weren’t used to the secret magic in the servants’ quarters. The machines themselves are so clever that most people would believe they are only automata. If she really wanted to get rid of all the magic in her workshop, she would have had to get rid of those, too.”

“Right.” I sighed. “And there are other things. I found the workshop on my birthday—that has to be magic. I got a letter from her that day, and a hidden key. She must have chosen that spell before she died, so the letter would come to me on my birthday, and only to me. Stepmother . . . well, I changed rooms after Mother died, several times, actually. When I found the letter, I thought at first Stepmother must have left it for me, but now I know better; she wouldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t have given me anything my mother wanted me to have.” I looked around at the workshop, the one part of Lampton Manor I really felt I owned.

Caro nodded. “Nothing wrong with magic, not really,” she said. “It’s blessed useful at times. Not even the whole royal family hates it the way Corsin does.”

I brightened. “Really? Do you hear them talk about it? I heard a caller tell Stepmother the other day that Heir Christopher is campaigning for a Fey ambassador, even.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Caro nodded. “The Heir has lots of notions his father doesn’t approve of. You ask me, I’d say that’s one of the reasons King Corsin doesn’t let him meet the people. I mean, he’s scared of another assassination, of course, but I think it frightens him even more that the Heir
isn’t
scared. You know?”

“I do.” I knew about the fears of parents all too well, both from Stepmother’s fawning over Piety and Chastity and from the evidence of my own mother’s continued protection. Now that I had found Mother’s workshop, I wondered if there weren’t other cloaking spells on the place—or on me. I wondered how much Mother was still helping me.

The cuckoo clock started acting up again. I glanced at the time: it was nearly one.

“I ought to go, I suppose,” Caro sighed.

“Will you be safe walking back through the woods this late?”

She laughed. “Oh, of course. My whole family knows those woods almost better than we know ourselves. The Forest Queen was my so-many-times-great-grandmother, you know.”

“Really?” I wanted to hear more about this, but I knew it was time for Caro to go.

She grinned at me. “A story for next time, maybe. Now, can you sneak me out the door again? I don’t think my hips will ever make friends with that window.”

I laughed and walked back with her, all the way to the edge of the woods.

My blossoming friendships with Caro and Fin made me happier than I’d ever been. I didn’t see Fin in the forest again, but I met Caro there several times. She was more verbose than he; minutes at a stretch went by with her talking, and I hardly had to say a thing. And sometimes we just read together, mostly in silence, occasionally sharing a special line with each other.

Caro even gave me one of her Market creations, as Fin had done: a little music box. I sang its sweet, dreamy tune to myself often during the day. I didn’t know the proper words, so I made up nonsense or, when the Steps were gone, sang about melting glass and turning gears.

Caro’s music box was wonderful, but I treasured the letters she left for me even more; I kept them in a desk drawer that would soon prove too small for the stacks of pages filled with Caro’s friendly chatter. Before long, I thought I knew her friends and cousins as well as she did.

She mentioned Fin sometimes too, but not as often or in as much detail as I thought she should. But perhaps, I had to admit, nothing she wrote would seem like enough. I would want to learn more about him no matter how much I already knew.

Fin’s horse, though, remained the most precious gift of all. I had to keep reminding myself not to stroke it too much, lest the paint wore off.

I planned my own gifts in return. For Caro, I made a hinged round vessel of swirling red and clear glass, to cover one of her music boxes. I wrote my own letters back to her too, though they could never be as warm or as interesting, since she had so many loved ones, and I none. It was still a relief, though, to be able to share the small troubles and joys of each day with someone I knew would listen.

I left Fin a note, early on, promising that he would get his present soon enough. But day after day, night after night, I couldn’t think of anything to offer him that would express what I felt.

October 7

 

Mr. Candery has stopped buying new Ashes for me—I spilled a packet in front of him, fool that I am, and he started going on about spirits, about how he didn’t know. All ridiculous, of course. At least I have plenty left. It takes so little for each of them: only the smallest pinch, and the wish.

Wishing is a frustrating business. There are far too many variables, infuriating for the scientific mind.

Mother went on about the lack of science in wishing for a full two pages. I read her rant fondly, remembering similar diatribes she’d spouted about magic while we repaired insects or wound clocks. But even when it frustrated her, she loved it; I had always known that. I liked to believe that her ability to love things she didn’t understand was what made her such a great inventor.

I loved without understanding, too. I had loved Jules, and I still loved the workshop and its other occupants. And somewhere, pulling at the edges of my heart, was the beginning of something else I didn’t understand—something I felt whenever I thought of Fin.

But I tried not to think of him too much.

The most intriguing part of Mother’s designs for Jules was her notes on the Ashes. Several times, it seemed she was beginning to describe where they came from, but always she stopped herself and scribbled out her notes. I knew at least that I would have no chance at completing my Exhibition piece without the Ashes, so even without understanding them, I tried to love them, too. And if I didn’t
know
they were magic—if there was no
proof
that they weren’t just some astonishing chemical compound, that I wasn’t controlling Jules with some secret panel or lever—then no one could charge me with Illicit Magical Activities. Surely not.

I knew I had to start designing my Exposition outfit, too. At first it seemed wasteful to take time away from what I thought of as my
real work,
but as I sketched out designs, I began to grow more and more excited about how I would look. Father had been the one to sell Mother’s inventions, not only because he was a man, but also because he was a trader, a salesman by profession and, it often seemed, by vocation. He was slick and persuasive and charming, and nearly everyone who met him liked him. Few people could say they liked my prickly mother, or even knew her. I needed to emulate both of my parents in order to obtain the kind of patronage I wanted. My clothing had to be a part of the idea I was selling, the idea of not only my inventions as good investments, but also myself.

And besides all that, it made me happy to feel that I would, for perhaps the first time since my childhood, look
nice.
I’d scarcely looked in a mirror since Mother died. When I left to seek my fortune, though, I wanted to look like a daughter who would make her parents proud.

What time I had that wasn’t devoted to my chores or spent in the workshop, I passed reading Caro’s letters, the novels she’d brought me, or, despite the vague feeling that I shouldn’t, telling myself my own tales about Fin. Sometimes he still worked in the palace in my stories, and I lived with the Steps, but more often I was a successful inventor or a noble lady, and he an artist or a knight errant or a lord, recognized by his father after all.

But it was easiest for me to picture him at the palace, going through his daily chores and spending what time he could riding the palace horses or reading or working on the sculptures he and Caro sold at Market.

I knew he must spend a lot of time with Caro, but she didn’t mention him much at all in her letters anymore, and I preferred to picture him alone . . . or at least, alone with me.

I held whole conversations with him in my mind, telling him about the Steps’ inanity, or their coldness, or the transparent fawning of whatever beaux they had entertained that day. I told him about my work as I made it, explaining the movements and turnings of the knitting machines, the temperatures and mixtures I needed for my glass beads, the delicate clockwork that went into replicating Mother’s mechanical insects. I still didn’t know
why
the Ashes made them come to life, though the
how
—the wishing—at least seemed simple enough. I spoke more with my imagined Fin than I did with the real Caro in our letters.

Every once in a while, I would remember that I could count my actual interactions with him on one of my hands, but the thought would skitter away as soon as it came. I certainly didn’t welcome it. Besides, I didn’t think it mattered much. I knew we could talk to each other, knew we liked each other—and it seemed I
would
talk with Fin in my mind, whether I wanted to or not.

Besides, it made my days easier, having someone to talk to . . . even someone in my head. I found that Fin’s voice, asking me questions, laughing, shut out the more critical voices that used to fill my mind: the Steps, great inventors who’d come before me, even Mother. I could tell my imagined Fin about my inventions, and he’d be impressed, proud, whereas once I’d only heard my mother’s voice telling me how much more I had yet to learn.

I knew it was only another story, but I could not help telling it, any more than I could help pulling a novel from under my mattress at night and rereading before I went to sleep, even so tired as I was. They were each, in their own way, things I needed. I was not sure why, but I couldn’t resist them.

The stories I read in Caro’s book were my favorites, and I found they took my mind away from worrying about whether I would finish my Exposition piece in time, whether the Steps would find the workshop, whether Fin was really as wonderful as the boy I talked to in my head every day. I read stories of Fey and humans, of the different kinds of magic they could give each other—clockwork and coal power were as foreign to the Fey as their magic was to us. Mr. Candery had always said we would be stronger if we helped each other, and Caro’s Faerie tales seemed to agree. But mostly the stories in her book were adventures, romances, and tales of family. The Fey were not men and women, as humans are, but all alike. They loved as humans did, though, and it seemed the tales of how they came to love each other were just as fraught and frightening and immersive as they were for humans. I often found myself imagining one of the characters as someone like me, and the other as just a little like Fin.

Three weeks before the Exposition, I started moving the pieces of my project out to the forest. Once assembled, it would be so large, I could never get it out of my workshop, so I had to design it in such a way that I could finish it outside. I put an oversize wheelbarrow to use, carrying the parts one by one from the back of Lampton Manor, across the lawn and into the woods. I used the ground-level shed among the Forest Queen’s ruins to keep my work out of the snow.

I wouldn’t let myself think too much about the finished product; whenever I considered how much work I had to do in the few remaining weeks, it all seemed impossible. Instead, I made myself focus entirely on each individual step as I took it. When I pounded steel and copper in the furnace (my arms growing even stronger than my chores had made them), I thought only about each shape, how to match it to my calculations and blueprints. I didn’t think,
This is his hoof . . . This is his ear . . . This piston goes where his heart would be.
If I thought of those things, my hands would inevitably start to shake with love and hope, and with fear. I wanted so much to see Jules again, and I wanted even more for this huge, impossible experiment to be a success. What if no one noticed it? What if it wasn’t good enough to be noticed? Lord, what if it didn’t work at all?

I couldn’t think those things. I made one part, and the next, with the cold distance I thought a surgeon must feel cutting into a body. I knew it was the only way I could manage.