Ticking Hearts – Part 1
Hi everyone!
I’ve run into a “I do this for free but I don’t want my content to suck” issue.
Part 10 isn’t finished yet for Sweetest Thing. I’m still writing it. I want it to be both large in scale and intimate in the picture it paints.
Not a small thing to ask for from a short story ending, so I’m going to take my time and do it correctly. It’s made more difficult because I am slightly punch drunk from an actual two-day weekend in which I got to debauch myself on video games and pizza. I’m a man of simple pleasures, apparently, because I wrote that last sentence with a huge smile on my face. I had a blast, no doubts about it.
So, as it is Monday and I have a schedule to keep, I’m going to give you the start of the next piece. Just a small taste of the next world that I’m going to elaborate on. Alas, however, for this next piece is not the space opera that I had hoped for.
Instead, we are going to Sweden for a fun steampunk adventure in the courts of Louis the 15th with our hero, the illegitimate child of legendary clock maker Julien Le Roy.
Ticking Hearts – Part 1
The candles were burning low in the tiny hovel which passed for a home along the waters of the Seine. The splash of river barges trying to jockey for position by lantern light and the occasional shout or moan of drunken merriment were the only company for one Jehanne Le Paris. She was no longer an orphan in the care of distracted madams, at risk of being adopted by men who wanted a whore more than they wanted a daughter.
No, she was her own woman now with a job and a home to call her own. Granted, it was a tiny room over the fishmongers shop which she worked at, but it was hers. She was also distinctly not the nameless daughter of Paris that her surname suggested. She was the bastard daughter of Julien Le Roy, in whose veins flowed the clockmaker’s gift. The grease stains on her forehead and cheeks from where she had casually wiped sweat away were testament to that fact. And the the tiny, intricate bird made of iron and brass which lay beneath her gaze and her hands would be the proof she offered to her father.
Julien Le Roy had astonished the world with his automated soldiers, unveiled last year as a gift to Louis the XV. Five soldiers which needed no food, no rest, and whose strength was beyond human. They were not alive in the fashion that a person was, but they could follow the orders of the King. They were merciless and precise in following their instructions, and they had become the worst nightmare of the criminal elements within Paris.
A small smile touched Hanne’s face as the memory of an automated soldier covered in dents and burn mark dragging six grown men behind it, three in each hand. It had routed the band as they attempted to move their cache of stolen goods in a warehouse along the Seine. They had set fire to the building in an attempt to evade capture, but the remaining soldiers had simply contained the fire to the single warehouse, and apprehended the criminals despite their ploy.
Yes, her father was very much Julien Le Roy despite his refusal to acknowledge her.
And she was going to prove it to the world, show how talented and exceptional she was. When the world shined down upon her, he could no longer hide her birth in the shadows.
The stacks of open books on her desk were surely pillars in some ancient rite. They surrounded circles made of ancient symbols and knotted plants, carved runes and carved bones creating a pattern only the gods could decode. All of them together would grant her creation more than simple mindless automation of her father’s work.
She winced as she bit her thumb, but was rewarded with a dark bead of blood rich as any ruby, which she pressed into the last cog she had just finished engraving and polishing.
The blood soaked into the embossed metal in a most peculiar fashion. It did not flow over the surface, coating it slowly as she held the cog at an angle. Instead the blood seeped through the ancient Gaelic symbols like they were the sands of some vast desert, ravenous for the waters of life she had offered. A sense of quiet awe stole over Hanne, and with reverence she slotted the tiny gear into the center of the small creature, closing and clasping the shaped brass which secured and protected the vital innards of the small bird.
Nothing happened.
The sense of worshipful awe faded as seconds turned to minutes, and then guilty shame spread over Hanne’s face in a flaming wave of crimson. She hadn’t actually winded the bird. Of course nothing had happened!
Her slim hand shook slightly as she grabbed the large, ornate key from the small circle of runes it had been resting in near a tower of books. Once more blood soaked into key as though it were cloth instead of metal, and as she placed the key into the hole on the back of the brass bird, she felt the hairs on her arms and neck rise with barely contained energy. Hanne’s heart beat in time with the winding of the gears, the sound growing louder with each turn.
Crank (thump thump), crank (thump THUMP), crank (THUMP THUMP).
A brilliant lance of crimson light flew from the keyhole as she pulled the key free. The light also suffused the small clockwork bird, and with surprising alacrity for a being of iron and brass, the bird stood and shook it’s wings. It turned, scarlet eyes bright as it surveyed the small room, the stacks of books, the knives and knotted plants and various bits of bone and runic circles. It focused on her, preening and settling itself as it faced her squarely.
Then, it spoke. And bowed.
“Hello Master, my name is Archimedes, how may I serve you?”
To be continued….
Clockfully,
Justin
