Immobilized

I stood in that room for an hour or more, afraid to move, to disturb the beauty of that moment; if I moved, perhaps the air would change, the the ray of sunshine leave me. I looked around at the tools lined up so carefully, the worn wood of the workbench, the boxes of machine-parts laid so carefully on the shelves, laid there by his hands. I saw them all with new eyes, with clean eyes. In every place there, I saw his hands, his fingers, working. Cutting the gears with the same care, that surety, which I myself had just felt as he took my arms.

The moment hung there, fresh and shining, the fulfilment of so much longing, so much watching. My skin still marked with his touch, I stood, afraid to move, not wanting life to begin again and sweep it away, push the minutes forward again. Push me away from this.

It seemed to me that I would never be able to breathe again, to sleep, to eat; instead I would be all on end, waiting. Standing on the edge, holding myself still for this moment to come again.

And yet, the moment was an accident, a strange fluke. My skin might be marked by his hands, but he remained unmarked, he was the same Ennis he had always been, the laughing young man, the angry man, the unseen, unwanted journeyman Gear Tournier; he didn’t know me the way I now knew him. How was I to see him out there, being his untouched self, knowing he did not see it or feel it, that one true, shining moment? I could have wept, if I were not filled with such impossible joy.

It was as if I had suddenly seen something in myself that had always been there, unknown and unseen by me; as if I had discovered my own true nature. I could not go back; I could not go forward; I could only stand and look at all the places his hand had touched. Everything in that room had been placed by those hands, with care and precision. Those hands, those long fingers and strong wrists: the same hands which had left the traces of truth on my skin.

I didn’t want to go, be woken from my dream. I went to the wall and touched the shelves, the drawers, the places he had touched, and it seemed to me the wood breathed to me of his reverence, his care. I stood still again, on the verge of weeping or laughing, my hand out, feeling I would die happily right then.

And gradually, as I moved again and went around the room, the feeling faded: the things became merely things again, arranged carefully. Looking at them made me happy, because he had made them that way; but that was all. It was gone, and I was left only with the sense of truth, the certainty: there would be no one for me, ever, but Ennis. It was there in my body, in the way he laid down his tools, in the last traces of sunlight from that moment. I was doomed, and joyful in it.

I walked back through the passages of the Labyrinth, absently trailing my hand along the smooth stone of the wall, climbing stairs as if I were floating, opening the door into the courtyard, stepping out into the late light as if emerging from a wonderous dream. The facade of the Museum seemed so ordinary, so full of details that I had never looked at before. I saw every stone underfoot with new eyes, and when I went into the kitchen my mother seemed to me different, beautiful, strange. I knew, looking at her, that she had been here, in this strange afterglow, and survived it.

And this revived me.

Goodbye

While my father was at the Palace, I was back at our compound behind the Museum, pretending that life was going on as it always did. My mother was uncharacteristically edgy, peering vacantly out her window instead of working, coming downstairs to fidget with the kettle.

I think my father going to visit the King over one of his own transgressions made her nervous: we lived a life of small transgressions, my father flexing the power he had as Curator in ways that would benefit the art; but we were always careful not to point this out to anyone at the Palace. This was a new thing, this discussion with the King. It might be the end of a comfortable existence.

After a time, I got tired of making the motions of work and crept away to the Labyrinth, going through the small door and down the many stairs, choosing my turnings without thought, with only the determination to get away from the world above.

The high sunlight trickled into those passages as a soft glow, only now touching the sills of the occasional small light-wells which came down from ground level. The walls of the many interlocking passages swept along, the sandy stone cool to my touch, as I counted out the turns to the workspaces. Along the sides, small chambers opened out which stored old Devices; old tools leaned against dusty corners, the remains of ancient Gear Tourniers and their methods.

As I came into the room with the Steam Beast, the light followed me, the sun poking into the gloom, touching the mirrors that ran along the far wall and illuminating it. I stopped, curious: it had already begun its change. Several parts and small mechanisms lay around its feet, and one of the tiny Devices that seemed to live in its room came up to explore my foot, which made me smile. I had no fear of the Steam Beast any longer - nothing which made such delicate pets need frighten me.

As I stood in my workroom looking around, I heard a step along the corridor, and a bright head of hair moved past the doorway to the next room. My chest collapsed on itself, my heart seeming to labor under a press, and I stepped over the little Device to follow.

I heard a sound in Ennis’ workroom and tiptoed toward it, almost unable to breathe. Who had found their way down the confusing flights of stairs to this part of the Labyrinth? I was terrified, and confused, and curious, and a little outraged, so I rounded the corner quickly to confront whoever it was.

And came face to face with Ennis, putting tools in a bag.

I must have looked stunned, for he laughed, glancing over as he reached for another of his precious tools. He looked more relaxed than I have seen him in a long time.

I am forced to admit, I could think of nothing to say. He went on laying tools gently in their places in his bag, and then tied it up and turned toward me, smiling. I had not seen him smile like that since he was burned, all those many months - nay, more than a year - ago. It brought him back to me, all in a rush. I saw him as he had been, as he was, as he would be: the boy who made me laugh, the angry youth who would not speak to me, the person who helped me.

“I have been saved,” he said to me, nearly serious. “Your father was my salvation. He took himself to the King and brokered for my freedom. I am to be allowed to pursue this Gear Tournier life, but I must do it properly, and am being sent to a college in Wurzen to learn my trade. By the time I get back, the Duke will have forgotten about me, and I will have a legitimate degree to allow me to work.”

I tried to smile at him, but I could feel the edges of it wavering. “In Wurzen? For five years? But - but there are colleges here in the Capital! Must you be gone so long?”

I was so intent on my distress that I did not see him looking at me kindly, nor notice that he walked over and put his bag down; but the next thing I knew, his hands were clasped warmly on my arms.

“It won’t be so long,” he said gently, “I have already learned so much, la? Maybe a year, or a little longer.” He looked down at me, and I could see the small traces of his scarring along one cheek and down the edge of his mouth. “I will miss you, and your wild ways.”

I stood confused, while a long finger of sunlight found its way into the little room, touching the boxes on the shelves behind him, catching the top of his head in a flicker of gold. Wild ways? Me? But when I looked up, he was leaning down to kiss my cheek, like a sweet older brother. His hands were there on my arms, and then not. He picked up his bag and smiled again. “I will come and see you, when my time is up,” he said, and touched my hand. “You watch over your Da for me.”

And with that he was gone, and I was left there with the little shaft of sunlight, struck by my own ignorance, and his.

Meanwhile

While Eleanor was sick I had plenty of time to think of the many things which had happened to me. I feel a thousand years older than the girl who worked so hard to make the Beetles for the Midsummer Festival.

My father was gone for the better part of the day at the constabulary, trying to convince them to let Ennis go. At the end of the day, he came home to find us sitting around the kitchen table drinking cups of late cha with Ennis' mother and father, who sat stiffly at the table and stood up quickly as my father walked in.

He shook his head tiredly. "They will not hear reason," he said. "There is someone of consequence who has insisted on this, and they cannot go against it, though they are very polite."

"Did you see Ennis?" asked his mother Elsa, a short, lined, impatient woman with a mad sort of humor who had had Ennis later than most.

My father sat down, while my mother brought him a cup of cha.

"I did," he said. "He was doing well enough. They are very kind to him there, treating him with great respect. They told me they had never seen a Festival Device like his."

Ennis' father Mokul, a tall man from the far Eastern mountains, looked as if he did not know whether to look proud or stern. "Yes, well," he said, his face going redder, "I don't know where he got the makings for that. It were, indeed, a wonderous effort. But I'd just as soon that he stayed in the stables, if he's gon' to go and get himself in gaol."

My father cleared his throat. "Well, hmm, I'd meant to talk to you about that. I gave him the tools and the makings for that Device. I saw in him the makings of a great Gear Tournier, and I suppose I became carried away. I apologize for that," he said.

Ennis' father and mother both stared at him with their mouths open, and I saw my father blush, for the first time in my life.

"He did so seem to need it..." he faltered. "In any case, I felt it was my duty to try to get this cleared up."

Mokul stood up, looming over my father, a slow flush spreading across his face, and I was somewhat amused to see a fleeting look of anxiety cross my father's face. But the big man simply seized his hand and pumped it up and down. "Always looking out for him, you was," he said, smiling, his sharp nose wrinkling with glee. "I do have much to thank you for."

My father, looking bewildered now, smiled back. "Well, let us see if I can winkle him out of jail first, shall we?" he said kindly, returning the man's clasp.

"I have no fear for that, sir, no I don't," said the stableman, and with a bow he took his wife and left.

We were all left looking at one another doubtfully.

The next day, my father went to the Palace. Once again, he was gone for most of the day, and we waited fretfully, for it is rare for my father to ask for an audience with the King, though we live so near and my father works so closely with him on the Festivals. This time (I had from him later) he waited a long while, an unusual circumstance. He spent most of it sitting in a small lounge outside the King's personal study while the King met with someone inside.

My father said he heard raised voices inside the room, speaking back and forth for awhile; and then the door opened, the guards stood smartly to attention, and out came his old enemy the Duke of Aneth. He looked at my father with dislike and swept out, leaving a strong smell of fennel behind him.

Eleanor's Illness

So many months since Eleanor has been able to write! All this time I have visited her, and she has not been near her Machine, and cannot tell more about me. In my visits I have seen - oh, horrible things. A huge machine with a gaping mouth through which incurious people fed her, despite her fear and trembling. Terrible places, full of boxy machines that controlled her heartbeat or put their transparent, pointed snouts into her bloodstream, doing I know not what. For much of it she was in pain, and sometime early on I came to her just as she was lying on a hard cot, staring at a harsh light overhead with the silhouettes of people looking down all around. Just after that, she spiralled down into the dark and I lost her.

I have been frightened for her, watching this.

When she finally came home she was so sick that she vomited and lost her hair. Once I came when she sat, trembling, by the window, and watched your strange machines crawling by below - so like my Beetles! - too tired to do anything else. I saw her phantom in the glass of the window, pale and shadowed and too thin.

Then, for awhile when I came, she would be outside in the darkness, walking through the autumn evening: walking and walking, a warm hat pulled over her naked head. Her hair began to grow back, and she grew stronger, but still she did not go near her writing Machine.

Tonight, for the first time, I find her here, staring at the Machine. Outside, there are colored lights everywhere - some kind of Midwinter Festival? - and it is snowing. The hard streets of this place drizzle with light and movement, and there is a feeling in the air

Waiting

All that day, I wandered the house and yards, until my mother leaned out her window and told me irritably that she could not write with me mooning about so. I moved on to the Museum, trailing my hands over the cases and peering in at the familiar old Machines, but found no comfort there.

At noontime, I was not hungry, and pushed my food around until my mother said, "Tsk" and sent me outside again. Then she leaned out her window again and told me to go put away my Beetles in the Labyrinth.

Glad of the orders - for staying busy was better than the endless hanging minutes - I went downstairs with the first Beetle in my hand. The evening of the Midsummer Festival, when all the feasting had done, my father had taken me aside and pressed the key to the many sections of the Labyrinth into my hand, saying that with the Beetles I had become a true Curator-to-be. He was proud of me, he told me smilingly, and looked forward to teaching me all the arts of Curatorship. I held the large key in my hand, warm from his pocket, and thanked him with all my heart, for I could not imagine a better thing than to be like my father at that moment.

Now, however, the key was cold, hanging in its place on my belt. My innards felt much the same way, as if they had been hanging somewhere cold all day; and the dark stairwell of the Labyrinth did not warm me. Cautiously, I walked to the bottom and opened the first door. All was silent; dim corridors stretched away in three angling directions as if waiting for my presence.

I have always wandered the Labyrinth, at first with my father and then later alone, and yet have still not reached all its parts. The near parts are familiar to me, never before causing fear or hesitation, only curiosity; yet today, with the coldness in my belly, the corridors seemed too aware of me. I moved into the first one with a sense of dread.

My father, when he presented me with the key, had brought me down here ceremonially, both of us yawning from the feasting and the lateness of the hour. He had twinkled his eyes at me, gesturing for me to open the first door myself, with my own key. I thought that was the whole of the thing, but in silent glee he had taken me further in.

"I remember when I made my first festival Creations," he said. "My father brought me here afterwards. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I am pleased to do the same with you." He linked his arm with mine, patting my hand as we walked along between the clean, dry stones. The Labyrinth, being under the Museum and the Palace itself, is never cold or damp, only cool and quiet. The perfect place to work and to keep Machines safe. It is much more than that, of course; but the near parts we use daily, with no thought of those other uses.

We walked toward my father's work-room, a place I had always loved: large and spacious, with many shelves around the walls full of odd and interesting things. That night, however, we walked on from there, past Ennis's small work-room, which was designed to look like an annex of my father's, in case we were found out. On the far side of this space was another large space, unused and unkempt for many years. Tonight, however, it was transformed. The wide floor was swept and polished and the walls whitewashed. The single tiny window, looking up through a thickness of stone to the ground, above, was clean and bright. Tools hung along one wall above a workbench, and shelves hung on two other walls in the same manner as my father's space. The ceiling was high and clean. It waited for me to come and Create.

"Oh, Da!" I cried, and hugged him awkwardly. I was nearly as tall as my mother now, and did not know how to fit my grown body to his so well.

He kissed me and chuckled. "I hope you come down here often," he said. "I am very proud of you."

I swore to him with tears in my eyes that I knew of no better place than this one he had made for me.

But this day - only one day later, though my joy seemed years away now - it seemed to me that something waited there, in the corridors. I did not want to be there, and brought my Beetles down hurriedly, dumping them on a high shelf in my silent and empty work-room. I had left the last one on the bench and was coming swiftly past Ennis' work-room, when I stopped. I wanted to see where he had worked.

Ah, I feel the sun comi

Backstep

All the things which have been happening since the Festival are now crowding in my head to be told.

To start with, Ennis was sent to gaol.

It is impossible to express the outrage that I felt when he was sent for, very nicely indeed, by the constables. My mother came in looking unusually flustered and told my father that Ennis was being marched away. I ran outside before she had spoken four words, and just saw them turning the corner farther down the street, the constable gesturing politely for Ennis to go first. I must have looked quite stupid, standing with my mouth open as I did, my breath coming in disbelieving little gasps.

Whirling around to get my father, I nearly collided with him. He was standing behind me with an identical expression on his face. We looked at each other in horror: had we not given him the space to work, he would not have been sent off like this.

Seeing my emotion, he composed himself and spoke gently to me. "I cannot believe that our King is so cruel as to imprison a young man for Creating such a wonderous a thing. It may be that he merely wishes to speak with him. Have faith, my little Ned; have faith," he said to me, holding me by the arms and giving me a gentle shake. Then he held me in his arms and stroked my hair, a thing he did less nowadays than before. "Nevertheless, I will go and see what I can discover."

When I clamored to come with him, he shook his head, smiling sadly. "You will be more hinderance than help with me in the Palace," he declared. "Better to stay here and wait."

So, with beating heart and tears in my eyes, I stood by as my father came out in his best clothes and his most ceremonial Curator's girdle, his Curator's staff in hand, and kissed me goodbye before walking briskly off the same way the constables had done.

When I went

The Annual Miracle

Now that my telling of the Midsummers' Festival is done, I can write of what has been happening since.

Oh! But before that, I must tell you about the Steam Beast's appearance at the Festival. I had not been in the Labyrinth for many weeks before then, and so had not seen its last changes. Father had told me that I would be surprised, and so I was: for the Steam Beast did not make its appearance until the sun had set that evening. The entry of the Steam Beast into the Festival is not done by men, but by the Beast itself, which has a telling of the hours and seasons within it; and so its arrival is heralded each year as a miracle. My father's job is only to unlock the door of the Labyrinth and leave it open, so that the Steam Beast can come out when it is ready.

We were all feasting, and the musicians (and music-machines) tuning up for the dancing, when a great and melodious sound was heard from the direction of the Museum, and everyone went quiet and turned to look. The sound came again, a long questioning cry, like a song or a fanfare. There was muttering in the crowd, but quiet descended as we waited, for all of us expect miracles on Midsummers' Eve. It is the time for miracles.

As we watched, a lick of flame showed between the buildings. There was the sound of some large Thing treading toward us, and around the corner came a thing so large and yet so delicate, so brilliant and frightening, that there were gasps from the crowd. It was the Steam Beast.

It approached us, a thing of silver and fire. Puffs of smoke and steam wreathed the many long, dancing pipes that stood from its body. Each pipe had what looked like a brazier at the end, from which billowed occasional tongues of flame. It looked like a Dragon with many necks, each one spouting flame and singing as its necks wove intricate patterns which made the flames leave images on our eyeballs from their trailing fire. The song changed from deep, vibrating into our bones, to trilling, depending upon the different tongue of flame that pushed the sound from its throat. It was magnificent, and people stood back as it passed around the square, nodding a blessing on people as it passed. The song went on, with stirring, lilting notes; we stood unmoving, listening and watching, until it had gone on, moving down the North Street and disappearing. Its song went on, skirling in the distance with flashes of brightness, then was silent.

We all sighed for awhile, before the dancing commenced again. The arrival of the Steam Beast every year is like a visitation from the Gods, and we all take it as a yearly miracle when it comes. For who knows what makes it wake every year, and re-make itself? The mechanics of the ancient Brilliants will always be a mystery; only the Gods know when the Steam Beast will cease to make the journey.

Ennis was praised mightily, clapped on the back and given drinks all round. My father, beaming all over his face, embraced me for my Beetles, as he called them, and shook Ennis' hand with nearly enough joy. I was afire with pleasure that he had finally Created.

Especially because my father and I had worked so long on our secret together, before I was swept off in the Creation of my Beetles. Our secret, which we set like bait in the trap: a workshop, set partway inside the Labyrinth, which we led Ennis to by a series of breadcrumbs. He took the bait, and built what is considered one of the finest Machines for a hundred years - all in the place my father and I made for him! To say I was proud, of him and my father and myself, is only part of the joy of that day.

Since then, however, there has been uproar among those of the Blood, for a simple stable-boy should not be able to Create such a thing. It is so stupid!!! I cannot ee m as - o dear -