Treasure Chest

by Adam Bennett

  “What are you going to do with it?” asked Serina as she moved her fingers across the glass. The leaves followed them, and Kello swayed as she watched. “People have spent decades trying to extrapolate magic from this plant.”

  “And those who have succeeded have created some of the greatest spells, conjured some of the grandest of creatures, and lived for centuries.” Master Pennifold sipped his drink.

  “You want to live forever?” Serina snorted and shook her head.

  Master Pennifold’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I want something so ridiculous? Immortality in a man is as pointless as sentience in a machine.”

  Serina turned, and Kello saw her eyes glimmer just a little. “So, what then? Panacea?”

  “Cure people?” Master Pennifold’s nose wrinkled, and he drunk the rest of his glass. “What does it say above my door, child? Copper Point Metalsmith or Copper Point Medicine?”

  “Then what?”

  “Tell me, Serina, after being burgled, do you chase the thief down and hand them the rest of your jewellery?” Master Pennifold smirked and swirled his glass. It filled again.

  Serina frowned. “You’re telling me you have the last Magnacea Narcissi, and you’re going to make something of it in a week? There’s a reason it is extinct, Emery. Canavan destroyed thousands of acres of this plant in thirty years trying to make just one spell.”

  “One spell?” Master Pennifold leapt to his feet.

  Tick tock.

  “He made the greatest spell! The greatest work of magic ever conjured by a mortal!” Master Pennifold’s face turned purple, and Kello backed away so fast she tripped into her crate. “Alchemy has never been the same since.”

  “Exactly,” said Serina. “No one has been able to replicate his results. No one. Is that what this is about? I thought you weren’t interested in immortality.”

  Master Pennifold scoffed. “I’m a metalsmith, child. I know my place. What I need is the perfect engine. One that needs no fuel—” Master Pennifold stopped himself, and his eyes narrowed. “Get out.”

  Tick tock.

  “What?”

  “You heard me!” Master Pennifold turned away and gripped the edge of the windowsill. “Every time you are here, I tell you more than you deserve to know. Leave.”

  Serina stood staring at his back. Kello, tapping the crate edge, watched her face contort a little, as though shaping words and swallowing them. She saw her eyes harden, soften and glisten, but resign back to their natural steeliness. After a tick and a tock, Serina almost spoke, but flattened her lips and admitted defeat.

  With Master Pennifold’s back to her, she bowed.

  “Of course,” she whispered, and turned to leave. She stopped and, as though hooked on a line, traced her steps to the fireplace—and the ruined painting hanging on it. She twirled around and glided to the crate. She placed her hands on Kello’s, stilling her twiddling fingers, and smiled. “You know,” she whispered. “You do not owe him anything.” She pressed a small card into the palm of Kello’s copper hand, one with an inky drawing of a lily on it. Her eyes were intense and glistening ever so slightly. “Stay safe. I’ll be back for you.”

  Serina rose and marched away, her coat billowing behind her. She stopped at the fireplace again, took another look at the painting, winked at Kello and left.

  Master Pennifold stayed at the window, and Kello climbed from her crate to retrieve the teapot and biscuit, sliding the card into her arm plate as she did. She watched Master Pennifold, who stared as though following something along the street below.

  As she was about to leave, she caught sight of the painting hung on the chimney breast. The black soot was gone, and the face of the painting shone out, radiant and beautiful. Its scars and burns, and its stains and smudges were gone, woven away in the blink of an eye.

  Kello liked this picture now; an unmoving, forever smiling Serina who seemed brighter than any fire that flickered below.

  ***

  Tick…

  Kello’s hands shook. Her joints groaned as she made her way towards the top drawer. Her spine rattled. There was nothing but shadows and hard surfaces in front of her. The room tilted as her spirit level rolled inside.

  … tock.

  She fell and clung to the corner of the desk. Her feet creaked as she willed them back under her, but her knees ground and trembled when she tried to stand again. Her fingers raced for the drawer, hooking and pulling it open, but her fingers could not grasp the key inside.

  Tick…

  “What are you doing?” asked Master Pennifold, his words slurring as they rolled off his wine-laden tongue. “You can’t use this.” He snatched the key from its cushion and pressed it against Kello’s porcelain face. “Think you can do this better than me?”

  She could not move now.

  “Think you’re better than me?” His eyes were glazed, but narrow. “You’re a machine!”

  Kello lifted.

  … tock.

  And struck the fireplace wall.

  Tick…

  Her arm tore from the shoulder.

  … tock.

  Half her face shattered and fell to the floor in beautiful pearlescent shards, and she laid there watching the firelight flickering across the torn edges.

  She saw Master Pennifold on the far end of the room, by his desk. His arm was outstretched and, as she focused on him, his eyes were wild but empty, with a vastness she imagined seeing in the snowstorms he had talked about, or the untapped intensity of the deserts from the paintings in his books.

  A rage for someone else, and a nothingness for her.

  Tick…

  Master Pennifold walked over, muttering something that she could not hear above the noise in her ears. It made her head rattle, and her legs groan as they tried to move. It made her want her crate.

  It made her wish for Serina.

  “I don’t have time to make you again,” said Master Pennifold as he leant over. He spun her, breaking more pieces from her face, and placed the key in her back. “Now change your mask. This one is old anyway.”

  Tick tock.

  Master Pennifold left, swaying and singing quietly to himself. He ascended the iron stairs and vanished.

  Kello sat in the light of the fireplace. In her palm she cradled the pieces of her face, delicately placing them back together, but they kept tumbling between her shaking fingers.

  She did not want a new face. She wanted this one.

  She looked to the smiling portrait on the fireplace wall and wondered what Serina would say. Yet, this was a different face of Serina’s, it seemed. There was no scar on the bridge of her nose. There was not a single blemish across her skin, none that she had worn so proudly earlier.

  Tick tock.

  Kello picked up the pieces again, this time laying them out across the fireplace tiles. She found her arm in the shadows of chains and rafters, and carefully mended it before bolting it back into place. The cauldron that hung in the kitchen was heavy, but Kello dragged it and placed it above the fire.

  From Master Pennifold’s stocks she found nuggets and ingots of dull gold and placed them inside the cauldron. For a while she watched it smooth, and glimmer, and smelt into a thick pool. Then, Kello searched through the many drawers that made up the stockroom for lacquer resin she had seen Master Pennifold use once before.

  In the calm of the night, Kello sat down and gently brushed the resin to the edges of her broken face. She scrubbed away the harsh broken sides, and repeated, well into the dawn. Finally, as the birds started to sing, Kello mixed the gold to the lacquer, and added it to the cracks of her new face. The perfect white of the porcelain was gone now, smudged with residue and fractured with gold.

  She looked back to the smiling face of Serina, and knew she would smile too, if she could. Yet, now more than ever she wished to speak. She wanted to find Serina and take her warm hands again and tell her a new truth she had learnt. It was the best lesson, and an addendum to Serina’s own.

 
Some identities are found, were the words that Kello conjured.

  Tick tock.

  She traced the gold lines with her copper fingers, and some are made.

  ***

  Master Pennifold was quiet, but busy. He hummed and swatted Kello away like she was a rodent at his feet. She cleaned up his mistakes, and his outrages that he threw across the room. In the quiet moments she stopped to watch him as he flicked through five books at once, wrote symbols on the boards and walls, and cursed so loudly he startled pigeons outside.

  He had not looked at her, not for days, no more than he looked at the broom in the corner or the biscuits on his plate. Instead, today, he was tearing apart the plant.

  Tick tock.

  It hung in the air, like Kello had hung from the invisible strings. Juices dripped into flasks, and its long green veins twisted and coiled in the air, then dangled like strands of twine. It made green light as it passed through sunbeams, and Master Pennifold tore at them too. He stole the yellow, leaving a sad, lost blue, and violated it with his frenzied fingers. When he returned it to the air, the green was dull.

  Tick tock.

  He burnt the leaves, casting the ashes across his many metals. Then, in the silence, he watched them as though they might combust into life. Instead they simply got dirtier.

  Kello watched him thumb the weeping juices and write spells into the joints of spinning wheels and engines. They were stained but did not move. Master Pennifold growled and returned to his books, flicking the pages with such force they tore.

  Tick tock.

  The plant was broken. It was eviscerated under the passionate gaze of Master Pennifold. The roots had been diced, or boiled, or burnt, or all three. Its flower, which Kello hadn’t seen until Master Pennifold pried it open, was crushed and smeared across spell paper, and then spat at when the threads of magic frayed apart.

  Kello felt herself creak, but she couldn’t remove herself from the room, or turn away as the plant slowly vanished into green dust. The remnants floated and wove into a final spell, and Master Pennifold clung to it. He laced his final engine with it, and waited, as Kello waited, in perfect stillness.

  At first there was nothing, then Master Pennifold flicked a switch and it hummed into life. The room seemed to sigh with relief.

  Kello’s body groaned as she stepped closer to the green-stained work table.

  “You know what this is?” asked Master Pennifold as he turned to her. Between his thumb and finger he held a small round seed. Kello had seen drawings of it in many of his sketchbooks. The last of the plant.

  The last of her friend.

  Master Pennifold finally saw her and raised a brow. Then he scoffed. “Why would you do that to yourself?” he asked as he touched the gold of her face. “What a waste.” He tried to turn her neck to get a better look, but it creaked. “I’ll say this simply, so you understand. Go get the key, and once you are wound, get a new face.”

  Kello stepped back. Her body shuddered as she traced her steps back towards the desk, and as she looked around she saw him still standing there. His eyes were fixed on the seed, and wide with anticipation.

  “As I was saying,” he continued, “a perpetual motion engine would turn this city into a leading power. This machine here.” He slapped the humming engine. “Serina didn’t think I was capable of this. But she thought me capable enough to steal from, didn’t she?”

  Kello reached the desk.

  Tick tock.

  “To gorge herself on my experience and knowledge until she saw fit.”

  She took the key.

  Tick tock.

  “Well, next week she can choke on the knowledge that no, she isn’t better than me. Not as a metalsmith, or as a botanist. She never will be.”

  She returned to Master Pennifold’s side and he pried open her brittle chest plate. She saw her cogs and springs, her spirit-level and pumps. She saw wires and pulleys she had never thought were there, nor had never thought she would need, all caught within a copper cage. Invisible strings held her still, and she watched as he reached in and pulled out her clockwork heart.

  Tick tock.

  “When you’ve finished getting the mask, bring me your crate.” Master Pennifold smiled at the tiny seed. “I need the engine ready for demonstration. Do you understand? It may not be a complete article, or even a fully-functioning spell, but it will get me funding.” He opened up the ticking device and placed the seed inside. “Give this to no one but me, understand? I might as well make use of your strange infatuation with it.”

  Tick tock.

  Just beyond Master Pennifold she could still see the green stains on the worktop, the smoking leaves still hanging above a cauldron, and remnants of chopped stem staining a pestle and mortar. She knew she would smell something, if she had a nose, but she didn’t want to know what.

  Master Pennifold returned her heart and clicked her chest back into place. Kello took in the calm, but she did not move. Instead she listened as the rain tapped on the roof tiles above them. Master Pennifold turned her and pressed the key into the small of her back.

  Standing beneath the skylight, Kello watched the clouds lit by the setting sun, and the mottled moving shadows it made across the workshop. A raindrop landed on her once-broken cheek and trickled down to her jaw, and again, and again.

  A knock at the door.

  Tick tock.

  Master Pennifold stopped, stood and made a gesture with his hand. The door flung open and in walked a strange, limping man. Master Pennifold shooed Kello away, and she dipped into the shadows by the kitchen door.

  “You think me a fool, Pennimold?” asked the man.

  “Pennifold.”

  “That plant is mine,” said the man. “You lied about what it is. You cheated me!”

  Tick.

  “It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to know your own wares,” snapped Master Pennifold. He flattened his lips, and Kello ducked into the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter, it is gone.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Check yourself, Mister Wiggins, it is go—”

  Kello closed the kitchen door.

  Tock.

  She pressed herself against the wooden door and listened.

  Tick.

  She heard raised muffled voices, and things breaking.

  Tock.

  Her wrist creaked as she reached out and opened the back door. Light flooded through the kitchen, bright and red like a sunset, and she descended the coiling iron stairs into the street below.

  It grew darker with each passing step, and then brightened again. New things greeted her, with features and textures and colours she had never seen before. Steam rose from the alleyways beneath her, holding up a canopy of brightly coloured umbrellas. As the sun shone through them, a rainbow lit the street.

  Tick.

  Pedestrians wove between one another, talking idly amongst themselves or selling fruits that Kello longed to touch and taste. As the light dimmed overhead, beacons lit up along the houses, and paper lanterns outside busy restaurants.

  People greeted her with smiles, asking her for money she did not have for food she could not eat. But she passed them, nodding politely.

  Tock.

  She waded through the dense streets, listening to the chatter of those who drifted by. Her body shook and groaned, but she walked on.

  Tick.

  She stepped through a running stream of rain water and heard the gentle tapping on the umbrellas overhead.

  Tock.

  “Oi!” someone called across the denizens of the street. Pedestrians stopped and turned, and Kello saw the stranger from Master Pennifold’s office. “Stop that puppet!”

  Kello turned and looked around, searching for the puppet, but saw nothing but confused fleshy faces. There was not a single string tied to anyone.

  The stranger stormed down the street, his eyes locked on her.

  Tick tock.

  She turned away, her body groaning.

  “Don’t
move!” she heard the stranger call.

  Tick.

  She stood shaking, watching as he barged through the crowded street towards her. Her hands moved towards her chest, and she tried to step away.

  Tock.

  Her feet creaked, and her legs trembled as she stepped—and the stranger dragged her back into his gaze.

  Tick…

  The stranger tried grabbing at her plates, but another pulled him away. People gasped, and a woman approached Kello with a look that reminded her of Serina.

  “Are you okay?” asked the lady, but Kello turned away.

  Against the screeches and the groans of her failing body, Kello pulled Serina’s card from her arm plate and placed it in the lady’s palm. She ignored the calls of the stranger, and the shouts of everyone else.

  …tock.

  The lady looked confused, and then sad, but lit up as she took a closer look at the card in her hand. She pointed and told Kello to walk up some stone stairs, cross an iron bridge, and then turn into the street with overhanging willows and grapevines.

  As she walked, Kello wondered what Serina’s office looked like, and why Master Pennifold loathed it so much. It was, after all, only light and water that a plant needed.

  Tick…

  She found the stone staircase, and her knees almost stopped twice on the climb. She wobbled across the cobbled streets and braced under the streetlamps before willing herself towards the city’s river. Out from under the umbrellas, the rain pinged from her body and, with the streetlamps, the cobblestones glistened. The bridge was wreathed in lantern light and swarming with merchants.

  Tick…

  The river glided beneath her, and she clung to the iron railings as she crossed the bridge.

  …tock.

  The sky was finally dark. The city across the waterways bloomed with light. A clocktower rung its bells and a large airship drifted overhead. It seemed bigger here than when she had seen it from Master Pennifold’s window.

  Tick...

  Even in the dark, Kello saw the hanging leaves of the willow trees. The grapes on the vines that intertwined them were lit up like fireflies. She used their glow to find her way along the cramped street and match the drawing on the card to the paintings that hung over the shop doors.