by Vashti Hardy
To my mum, Erica
– a belated birthday pressie!
CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Chapter 1: The Stranger
Chapter 2: Mechanicart
Chapter 3: Gigantrak
Chapter 4: Medlock
Chapter 5: Deakins Entire
Chapter 6: The Guild
Chapter 7: The Imperial Personifate Guild of Medlock
Chapter 8: The New Apprentice
Chapter 9: Design Lab
Chapter 10: Place and Time
Chapter 11: The Hall of Lost Personifates
Chapter 12: The Most Important Place
Chapter 13: Luella
Chapter 14: Awen
Chapter 15: Traps, Hats, Wings and Woes
Chapter 16: Harnessing
Chapter 17: The Inventors Parade
Chapter 18: Spirit Lights
Chapter 19: Trapped
Chapter 20: Warning
Chapter 21: Back to the Farm
Chapter 22: Godar
Chapter 23: Confessions
Chapter 24: Stag-Man
Chapter 25: Cora
Chapter 26: Sahwen
Chapter 27: Primrose’s Plan
Chapter 28: Prue’s Plan
Chapter 29: Blood Moon
Chapter 30: Stag-Men Army
Chapter 31: Charles Primrose
Chapter 32: Flight of a Lion
Chapter 33: New Beginnings
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Back Ad
Copyright
THE STRANGER
On the bright side of the valley, ten furrows from Lane End and some twenty furlongs from the village of North Owlcot, in a place where the great metal city of Medlock was just a dream, there was a small farm. The farmhouse was a time-worn cottage nestled in barley-swathed fields divided by drystone walls. Wayward geese busied themselves near the pond and sheep grazed around single-standing oak trees. Automaton farmers sowed seeds, while scarebots kept the crows at bay.
Prue watched from the upper field, her elbows perched on the back of a broken mechanimal plough horse, oily hands clasped together, as a speck of a figure wound his way up the lane. Even from this distance, Prue could see there was a smart uprightness to the stranger’s walk unlike anyone she knew from the surrounding farms. As he neared, he paused and looked into the lower field where the automated potato digger ambled through the furrows, and Bess, one of the mechanimal dogs, patrolled, waiting to be called for evening herding. After a few moments, the stranger continued onwards and took the path towards the farm. When he turned, he looked up in Prue’s direction. She ducked behind the mechanimal horse, which in retrospect was pointless because she was certain he’d already seen her.
A sudden ping, followed by the squeak of metal, drew Prue’s attention to the ground in front of her.
“Darn it!” she said as the hoppity wrench sprang merrily down the hill. Barley whipped her calves as she chased after it, its little steel jaws bobbing up above the golden tops before disappearing again. “Come back here, you little metallic monster!” She dived and wrestled with it for a moment, as it battled to jump away. This particular hoppity wrench not only seemed to have a loose restrainer, but a faulty homing device; it should’ve been able to make its own way back to the tool shed, but she had often found it hopping its way down the lane towards North Owlcot. Francis had tried to fix it last year, but he said some things just didn’t want to be fixed.
She breathed out heavily and clipped the loose restrainer back in. “There.” It bobbed its legs for a few moments, then gave up trying. When she peered above the barley, the stranger was nearly at the farm doorstep. Prue hurried downhill, through the tracks towards the house, keeping out of sight by stooping low, the hoppity wrench clamped firmly under her arm. She slowed her pace as she approached, then, after another quick peek to make sure the stranger wasn’t looking, she hurried behind the water butt which was beside the farmhouse, close to the door. There was a sharp knock. After a few moments the door creaked open.
“Hello,” said Mrs Haywood, an edge of suspicion in her voice.
“Hello. My name is Charles Primrose, Craftsman Primrose,” he said brightly.
“And how can I help you, sir? Are you looking for produce?” Mrs Haywood asked doubtfully.
“I hope you don’t mind me arriving out of the blue, but I was in Staplefield and someone mentioned that you have an extremely proficient young mechanic.” He looked down at a note in his hand. “By the name of Francis Haywood?”
Prue’s stomach lurched at the sound of her brother’s name. Mrs Haywood didn’t answer.
“Do beg my pardon. I’m from the Imperial Personifate Guild of Medlock – I expect you’ve heard of the innovations in bringing ghosts back into the world of the living.”
Prue’s heart gave a little jump.
“Yes, we do have newspapers in the country.”
“Of course.”
There was another awkward pause.
Prue peered from behind the water butt. Craftsman Primrose had a friendly, youthful face, with hair that was floppy on top and neatly trimmed at the sides. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles and was dressed in practical, but well-cut, expensive cloth – a fitted jacket in earthy brown tweed and matching trousers. A watch chain looped from his waistcoat button to pocket. He looked exactly how Prue would imagine one of the city inventors to look. Craftsman Primrose’s eyes flicked in Prue’s direction and found hers. He gave a quick smile. The sun lit a flash of silver writing as he took a midnight-blue card from his pocket and held it towards Mrs Haywood.
“We’re looking for apprentices at the Guild. Developments are happening all the time and we need the very best young minds to learn our craft and carry on the great work. We’re searching far and wide; in fact, I’m looking for my own apprentice to take on.”
“If things are moving fast that’s a sure sign to slow down, don’t you think?” said Mrs Haywood. “Just because you can do something, it doesn’t always mean you should.”
Prue huffed to herself.
Craftsman Primrose lowered the card. “Not keen on the personifate technology, Mrs…?”
“Haywood.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Perhaps you’d like to keep this and think it through. It really is a wonderful opportunity for a young person: the chance of an apprenticeship with a craftsman at the very forefront of technology. There would be an initial trial period, of course; nothing is guaranteed.”
Prue admired his polite persistence, but Mum was like an immoveable boulder when she wanted to be. It was where Dad said Prue got her determination from.
The man gestured out towards the farm. “The machines in the fields are quite fascinating, and very unusual for a remote farm like this, if you don’t mind my saying – and I’m certain the engineer who made those,” he glanced down at the note again, “Francis, would be very keen to find out more about my offer.”
Hearing his name again sent Prue’s mind into overdrive, the thoughts of what had happened closing in, the lights turning out in her head. She forced it away.
“I’m afraid there is no one here who would be interested.”
Prue desperately wanted to jump out and say that she’d made the machines too, but it was as though she suddenly had her own restraining lock on.
“Oh, that is a shame,” said Craftsman Primrose.
Mrs Haywood didn’t answer him. Dad would maybe have invited him in at least.
“It’s getting rather late. I’m looking for bed and board. Do you happen to have…?”
“I’m afraid we don’t take in strangers.”
“Perhaps you know of a local establishment?”
“There
’s an inn back in Staplefield.”
“There’s nowhere closer?”
“It’s the nearest there is.”
Apart from the bed and breakfast lodge in North Owlcot, Prue thought.
Craftsman Primrose put the card back in his pocket. “You really do have some impressive machinery on the farm. It would be a pity for young inventing talent to—”
“Good day to you, sir. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help.”
Craftsman Primrose dipped his head respectfully, turned, and began walking back down the path. Mrs Haywood watched him until he was out of sight, then she exhaled a long breath. Prue pushed herself deeper into the shadows as her mum took a few steps outside of the doorway and turned in her direction, towards the west field.
“Proo-ue!” she called, in a sing-song voice. “Tea’s on the table!” Then she sighed and said under her breath, “It’s for the best.”
There was the soft click of the latch closing and the waft of warm sourdough loaf. Prue counted to twenty, making sure her mum was well out of hearing range, then she ran down the path. Craftsman Primrose had already disappeared around the bend in the lane. Prue began jogging after him, but a flicker of silver caught her eye in the wall. She slowed to a stop, then pulled out the card and a rolled-up piece of paper that was beside it.
The card was a beautiful shade of midnight, embossed with a silver symbol: three interlaced arcs enclosed in a circle. She flipped it over – in silver print it stated:
Charles Primrose
Craftsman of the
Imperial Personifate Guild of Medlock
By appointment of the Sovereign Chancellery
Prue unrolled the note. In neat handwriting it simply said: I leave for Medlock tomorrow morning.
Her heart thumped in her chest. It was understandable that her mum hadn’t told the man; it had only been a year since Francis’s illness. She sighed. Convincing her parents would be impossible – what was she thinking? And anyway, he’d been looking for Francis, not her. She threw the card and note into the weeds and stomped back towards the farm.
But after a furrow, she found herself running back, picking them up and stuffing them into the front of her patched dungarees.
MECHANICART
At teatime, the card weighed heavily in Prue’s pocket. “Did I see someone in the lane earlier?”
“Just a traveller,” said Mrs Haywood, placing a jug on the table. She didn’t make eye contact.
“They looked like they were dressed in city clothes.”
Prue caught her dad throwing a quizzical glance at her mum before he sat down.
“Just someone from out of town passing through,” she said.
Prue poured a glass of milk.
“How’s that old mechanimal horse doing?” Mr Haywood asked.
Prue had forgotten all about it and had left it half-finished in the top field. If it rained that night, it would seize. “The moto-heart’s broken. I’ve taken one from the scarebot that rusted up last year and just need to finish connecting it. I’ll go up before it gets dark.”
“Good thinking.” Mr Haywood grinned. “That sort of creative recycling will keep the farm on track. Didn’t I always tell you she would be smart! Now invent me a machine that makes the sun shine brighter than all the worldly jewels and grow me some sweet island plums, and I really will be in heaven.”
Mum always said he had a smile and a twinkle in his big browns that could light up the darkest room, but Prue couldn’t help but see the shadow of sadness in the edges that hadn’t left this past year.
“One day,” Prue said, but her mind wasn’t on the farm, it was imagining what the Imperial Personifate Guild of Medlock was like; perhaps a great building similar to the mills of Batterthwaite, but grander, with important-looking inventors, modern whirring machinery, churning smoke, and mysterious sparks lighting up the sky at night.
Mrs Haywood took a pin and secured one of Prue’s wayward springs of hair, then sat down opposite. “I said tuck in, Dolly Daydream – you look like you were a thousand furrows away then.” Mum’s honey hair was always pinned so neatly, her blouses without a crease, even after a day working the field.
After tea, Prue took a chaos lamp and went up to the field, where she got to work connecting the new moto-heart in the mechanimal horse. The farm had been in Mrs Haywood’s family for years. Mr Haywood had been travelling and researching new technology for his home island’s farms when he’d met Mrs Haywood. He never went back. He said he’d found home.
But nothing felt like home any more. Not to Prue. Not without Francis.
Prue sat in the barley, took the card from her pocket and turned it over. Since the visit that afternoon, something had changed and her mind wouldn’t be still.
What she’d read about had seemed like such a remote dream; that in Medlock they’d found a way to bring ghosts back, held inside animal-like machines. Yet there had been a craftsman on their very doorstep. She looked at the metal horse in front of her. “Imagine if you could talk?” she said. She knew from reports that the ghosts in Medlock had no memory, that there was no way to know who was who when they came into this world … but she couldn’t help but think: what if she could find a way? What would it mean to her parents, to bring Francis back? A band tightened around her heart. She missed him more than she’d ever thought possible. Surely Craftsman Primrose’s visit was a sign.
The light was fading, and Prue quickly finished the last of the connectors, inserted an ion battery plate and shut the side panel. With a whirr and clunk, the mechanimal horse’s metal legs shuddered. She pressed the homing button. It lifted a foreleg, took a step, then was off, heading back towards the storage shed for the night.
“Come on, Prue! I give up,” he pleaded. “Where are you?”
She stubbornly ignored Francis’s calls to surrender.
“It’s so late now! Mum’s going to be mad if we’re much later for tea!”
He eventually stumbled across her in the storage shed, inside the belly of a half-made mechanimal horse.
“Prue, I can’t believe you didn’t submit. It’s been two hours!” He helped her out. “Honestly, you can be an annoying lubberwort sometimes!” He was so agitated in his urgency to leave the shed, that he slipped and landed on broken glass – a chaos lamp Prue had dropped earlier; she’d honestly meant to clear it up. It cut deep into his cheek. It was entirely her fault, yet as Dad patched him up, Francis had told Mum that he was to blame, that it was his idea to play out late. Even when Prue tried to contradict him, he insisted.
But that was Francis; he always had her back.
Prue stood on the hilltop watching the silhouette of the mechanimal horse until it was safely inside the shed.
Then she looked back to the lane. And sighed.
*
That night Prue couldn’t sleep. She went to the window and watched the stillness of the farm under the grey-blue spell of evening. The silver symbol on the front of the card glistened in her hand. She imagined the city of Medlock in the south and the mechanical ghosts roaming the streets there. It was natural for Mum to keep her daughter from going off to the city; she’d already lost one child. But if there was some way to bring Francis back, for all of them, shouldn’t Prue grab it with both hands? Shouldn’t she at least try to lift the cloud of gloom that had seeped into every inch of the farm? Craftsman Primrose was leaving in the morning – it wasn’t as though she had time for a debate with her parents, which would undoubtedly end in a no anyway.
She picked up the frame bedside her bed which contained a photograph of Francis. Her brother’s dense, coiled mane of hair, like her own, framed his infectious grin, just like Dad’s, his hazel eyes like Mum’s, dimples in his cheeks like Prue’s. He was leaning against a mechanimal plough horse – they’d just finished adding a turbo to it that morning, then they’d raced it around the farm together for the afternoon and been told off by their parents for not getting the bales made like they were meant to. She put a finger to the
scar on his cheek, too faint to see in the picture, but she knew it was there. He had been only one year older than her – the photograph had been taken just a few moon cycles before he became ill. That meant the age he was in the picture wasn’t far off what she was now. The void inside of her tugged terribly.
Again, she looked out the window at the farm and imagined she was sitting with Francis under Haywood’s Oak, the tree Granny Haywood had planted as a girl. In the quiet of night, everything seemed possible. It was like stepping out of time.
Somewhere, not far away, an owl hooed; she knew it was stupid, but it felt as though it was calling to her.
In less than a minute, Prue had put on her best shirt (the one with daisies on, which Francis had mended the pocket of), a woollen jumper and long dungarees, bundled her hair into a messy bun on the top of her head, and gathered a few other items on to her bed: comb, toothbrush, Dad’s home-made rosin soap, underclothes, and her best mini-hand-tool set. She grabbed her bag and stuffed it all in, then remembered the sixpence under her pillow, which she put in her front pocket along with the photograph from the frame and the card. Then she crept downstairs and took the notepad from the dresser.
I’m going to the Imperial Personifate Guild. I need to do this. Sorry. Please don’t be angry or worry. I’ll write.
She scribbled instructions for fitting the restrainer on the hoppity wrench, put the note on the breakfast table beside the butter dish, crammed some oat cakes, a chunk of bread and some apples into her bag and quietly stepped outside.
Moonlight caught the edges of the stone walls and mist clung to the fields. Trees cast dramatic silhouettes against the ashen sky, and the lane to Staplefield trailed between the valleys like a silver ribbon. Prue took a breath, pushed all the doubt down into the pit of her stomach, and started walking. The night air held the last breath of summer warmth – the seasons were shifting. Mum always said time flowed like a river and there’s not a thing you can change about it, but Prue couldn’t help but think: what if you swam against it? She walked swiftly down Lane End. Perhaps she should’ve taken a mechanimal horse, but she’d have had to leave it at North Owlcot and trust that from there it would make its way back to the farm, and it would’ve been far too noisy. Besides, she’d walked this lane many times and would easily be in Staplefield just after sunrise. She crossed the split in the road that led to North Owlcot, and hurried onwards.
