I spent the day in the Labyrinth with Father, learning to strip the Steam Beast today. We do this every year, strip it down to its skeleton, so that it can grow into its new guise for the next year. No one knows how this is accomplished, though many people suspect the Curator of creating each guise; but my father swears it happens by itself. He says he will show me this year how the Steam Beast begins to grow, adding gears and wheels and clockwork springs in no known order. By the night of the Festival, it is ready, but it is not clear what the true nature of the Beast will be until it is wound up and sent off into the streets.
To tell the truth, the thing frightens me, particularly in its skeletal state, although working with my father this day dismantling all those delicate workings did help me with my fear. It lurks there in the Labyrinth as if it were alive, which I suppose it must be if it grows there throughout the year.
We set the Beast’s parts on the shelves in its room, ready to hand should the Beast want them. Father says every year there are a few more of them, and he has no idea where they come from. I wondered to myself, if one were to keep an eye on the Steam Beast, what one might see, but Father seemed to know what I was thinking, and chided me for not allowing myself to enjoy the magic of the thing. He says that sometimes it is better not to know.
I have tried, with the Hands’ help, to draw the thing as it stood when we were done with it, though I fear I have made a poor job of it. It is one thing to keep a flow of words moving to the Hands, whose skill with the machine in front of them is high; but to make them draw, when they are clearly unused to it, is another matter.
Ennis has moved in with his sister, who is better able to take care of him. I have not seen him for some days, for whenever I go to her house, she tells me he is sleeping or bathing and to come back some other time, and I do not know if this is a polite way of telling me to leave him be, or if I simply have poor luck in my choice of visits.
Still, if he does not tell me himself that he wants me to leave him alone, then I shall keep tryng. I cannot forget that glimpse of him working, in that dim workshop with all the lovely things. Someday I hope to help him get back his workshop. I cannot bear for him to feel that all is lost, and he must go on being a stablehand forever, and never make machines again.
Tomorrow, my sister Hemila will go back to her husband, as she has not had the growing-sickness for some time now. Her belly grows larger by the minute, and we have all been madly sewing so that she will not go unclothed when her dress grows too tight. Father has made her a new trunk to take all her new clothes home in, and she sings while she packs it. She has a sweet voice, like her nature. I will miss her, though I can see she is rejoicing to return to her own house and husband.
Hieram has been out these last few days on a hunting trip, and the place has been blessedly quiet. I asked my father today how much longer Hieram must stay, and he told me at least another month. Another MONTH!!!!! When I asked him why, he quieted me and told me not to be ungenerous. It seems Hieram’s father is in trouble with another lord to the South, and Hieram has been sent here for safekeeping until the trouble can be resolved. I believe, from the way my father said it, that Hieram may be the source of the trouble. What a silly person he is!
Before he left on his hunting, he found me out in the laundry-house, cleaning out the
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