Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors
Page 8
Scent in the room reminded me of Lily. Impossible. Possibly the master used her perfume; not my place to speculate, nor judge.
Sheets need washing. Also impossible. The master has had no visitors in months. Checked for an intruder, found none. Will ask the master for an update to my security software.
23rd May
Brought the master his breakfast. Standard duties, beef stew with leek and onion. Laundered; found sheets from the small bedroom. Cannot recall placing them in the laundry, but they did need washing. Unsure how this happened. Will bring to the master’s attention tomorrow.
24th May
Checked log for possible systems errors. Found severe inconsistencies. Must bring to the master’s attention immediately.
Beef stew with leek and onion. Not to the master’s liking. Will reduce frequency in meal rotation.
G. Deyke is an indie author of games, novels, short stories, flash fiction, and the occasional poem. They will write anything from humor to horror to fairy tales, but have a particular penchant for speculative fiction. They currently reside in a small village in southern Germany, and can be found online at: https://gdeyke.wordpress.com/
Brotherhood of the Wolf;
Sisterhood of the Horse
by
Crystal Carroll
The gas lamps hissed softly from their sickle moon sconces. The light cast a yellow-green glow on the masked faces of the Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The Fenrir in his black carved throne said, “The Rider has been spotted in the western wilds.”
The Brother of the Thorny Thicket spilled his sherry in a dousing splash at the words. “But it’s the age of the wolf. We hold the night. How could she be so close?”
Behind his mask, the Brother of the Waxing Moon rolled his eyes. “The Rider is constantly being spotted. I expect someone will bring word that she’s standing in this middle of the room next.”
The Fenrir growled. “We must keep vigilant. There was another attack on the rail line through Darken Moors.”
The masked brotherhood turned to look at the Brother of the Darken Moor. He whined. “It’s difficult to keep safe. I send a pack to one spot, and the Sisterhood appears somewhere else. They constantly dynamite my tracks and slip into the high moors. It’ll be impossible to keep the Nu-Voltic station charged if this keeps up.” At the Fenrir’s growl, the Brother said, “We’ve been killing Moor ponies as you ordered.”
The Brother of the Waxing Moon leaned over to the Brother of the Untouched Snow and whispered, “Ponies?”
Fenrir’s lips curled. “Enough!” He howled at the silver moon painted on the ceiling and the Brotherhood howled with him until the walls shook.
Meanwhile, there was a Little Red Riding Hooded rider. She was not on her horse. She was horseless, which made her twitchy and annoyed. She was little, but that was height. Not youth. But she still wore her bright red cloak with its deep red hood. She carried a basket full of delightful things for her Grandmother Loon. She picked her way slowly along the switch backs of the western crags. In the distance, she heard the call of a train engine, a long mournful cry to the eternally winter night sky.
The track came to a gatehouse. It was a tiny thing, not much more than a hut. A bored young Brother of the Wolf read a yellowed dime novel inside. The cover had a lurid picture of a young woman in a red cloak with an unlikely amount of top heavy cleavage fighting a wolf man with long claws. Red Riding Hood suppressed a smile.
The Brother looked up and saw her. Far away, the train continued to clatter down the track. His eyes grew wide as he saw her. His clawed glove trembled around his old service revolver. It was rusty and poorly kept. It was almost as red in some places as her cloak. For all of that, he tried to pretend that he didn’t recognize her. “State your business.”
Red Riding Hood blinked up as small and helpless as a horseless rider could be. “I’m going to my grandmother’s house in the woods.”
He swallowed. “And where is that?”
Red Riding Hood smiled as weak and defenceless as a horseless rider could be. “Down this track. At the fold where the night blooming jasmine spills over the river.”
He trembled and his dime novel fell to the dirt floor with its cover bent. “You may pass.”
She continued down the track as scrabbling sounds came after her. Shale crumbled not very subtly onto the path over and ahead of her. She smiled inside her cloak and pulled its warm wool tighter around her.
She came to the Silver House of Grandmother Loon. It glowed in the night like the moon, which made a certain sense. She went inside without knocking. Grandmother Loon sat in a rocking chair by the heater knitting. There was a click-click. The young Brother crouched on her Grandmother’s bed. From somewhere, he’d gotten an old blunderbuss that was even rustier and more ill kept than the revolver had been. Red Riding Hood said, “My, what a big gun you have.”
Grandmother Loon rocked back and forth flickering silver knitting needles in the white light. She laughed. It was not a comforting sound. Grandmother Loon was not a comforting woman.
The young Brother gripped his blunderbuss. “You’re under arrest.”
Red Riding Hood pushed back that hood and grinned. “I suppose I am. I expect that you should take us into the belly of the beast now.” She held out her wrists.
“Uh,” The young Brother scrabbled off of the bed. “Wait. Throw your cloak in the fire.”
Grandmother Loon muttered something about the smell of burning wool stinking up her house, but Red Riding Hood did it anyway. She picked up her basket and Grandmother Loon kept her knitting. The young Brother gestured with his gun at the trail they should follow. Grandmother Loon’s silver dress gleamed softly under the dark overhanging trees. Red Riding Hood, who now had neither hood nor horse shivered, but not from the cold. She was never cold. Not even when the wind howled snow from the west. She let down her red hair to flicker over her thin dress, which had a distinct lack of heaving bosom. They walked a long time in the dark, but, of course, the sun never rose and morning never came.
They came to the station house. The young Brother took them past security with a yipped password. He took them up the stairs and to the top. The grumpy Skoll sat at his desk with a steaming cup of something.
The young Brother said, “I caught Red Riding Hood. Her and Grandmother Loon.”
The Skoll didn’t look up from whatever he was looking at on his desk. “Yeah. Yeah. Third one this week. I know you girls think it’s a good way to meet a Brother of the Wolf, but,” he looked up. His eyes grew wide behind his mask.
Grandmother Loon placidly clicked at her knitting.
“You didn’t take their,” which was as far as he got before Red Riding Hood shot him and the young Brother beside with the revolvers in her basket. They were not rusty and ill kept. She kept them very well. Grandmother Loon took the Pack Leader’s keys and they made their way up the narrow stairs to the Nu-Voltic station. White light chased itself around between the wires and under the enamelled symbols of the moon and stars and winter.
Grandmother Loon went to work while Red Riding Hood guarded the door. “Come on. Come on.”
“Can’t rush genius,” said Grandmother Loon, who paused in her fiddling with wires and tubes to clean some grease, because she did hate filth, bless her.
There was the plinking sound of gunfire up the stairs, which Red Riding Hood thoughtfully returned. Brothers always aimed high some reason. Not that she was complaining. Still, she yelled, “Come on.”
“Almost,” gears clicked, “got it.” With a hiss the white light died away. On the far horizon, a splash of red painted the sky a burnt ember red. Below, there the sound of more gunfire. A steady stream of loud bangs and sharp plinks as bullets hit wood and metal and flesh.
Red Riding Hood pulled out a rappelling rope. “Now for the fun part.”
“Please, no. That thing is filthy.” Grandmother Loon stabbed a knitting needle into the window frame. She fiddled with a small device
and simply stepped out the window to float gently to the ground.
Red Riding Hood grinned. Grandmother Loon did love her toys. Red Riding Hood set the one minute fuse on her basket full of goodies and rappelled in a controlled free fall. She and Grandmother Loon ran past a pack of Brothers and hit the ground as the world went hot and red and things fell from the sky. This would be where they kept running under covering fire from the woods.
In the trees, Hunter tossed Red Riding Hood a red riding hood. She said, “You look naked without it.”
“Flirt. Flirt. Flirt.” Red Riding Hood put on the cloak and swung up onto her horse. She laughed to the Sisterhood of the Horse. “Let’s get out of here.”
Grandmother Loon got on her motorized bicycle, because the day that she got on a horse was the day that the positive side of a magnetic something did a something-something. It was a bit indistinct what with the noise of the motor and the riding fast into the mountains. When they were far enough away, Red Riding Hood slowed the pace. She looked back at the burning buildings in the valley below.
Hunter said, “A good nights work.” She looked at the horizon.
“Good night’s work you say.” Grandmother Loon perched on her cycle, her skirts gathered up with cords. “My house is going to smell like burnt wool for a week.”
The Sisterhood laughed. A golden sound full of wickers and neighs. Soon followed by a whirring nose as Grandmother Loon’s silver house walked over the ridge on long motorized chicken legs.
Red Riding Hood said, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” She headed up the track, but called back, “Tomorrow night?”
Grandmother Loon sniffed, “It’s always night. So by some temporal standards, it’s already tomorrow night.” She was still muttering as she went into her house to invent something to take care of the smell.
The Sisterhood laughed all the way into the deep hills. On the horizon, the sun glowed a burnt ember of almost dawn.
Until, by some temporal standards, the next night.
Crystal Carroll lives in California where she writes technical documentation and fiction, and does her best to explore life. Her writing mixes beliefs from around the world and whatever speculative fiction that come to mind. Crystal can be found at crystal-carroll.com, and on Google+ and Facebook.
Hold the Dirigible
by
Lynn Townsend
For Sarah and Braxton, Victorian Chamber Metal musicians and inspirations...
Johanne R. Scanlon, III hid her aether-pistol, a Maverick Rev.6, under her caramel-colored flight-dress. The folds of practical serge didn’t entirely mask the whir of the sparkgap battery powering up. The strange man rummaging around inside her landing basket straightened. She shrugged. There was nothing for it but to hope he didn’t rush her before the pistol would fire. She certainly wasn’t about to step aside and allow him to ransack her belongings.
“That will be just about enough of that, sir,” Jo said, stepping closer to her balloon, and leveling the Maverick. “AirPort Mooring Authorities are already on their way.”
“As A.P.M.A. has been having difficulty with their phonautographs all morning, that’s highly unlikely,” the man said, turning to face her. She noticed, in a purely not-interested sort of way that he was rather handsome, with black hair and ice-blue eyes. With the sort of noble features that always made her knees wobbly. “Untrustworthy system, the ‘phone. But don’t worry. I’m not skyjacking your airship—which is lovely, by the way, a Rankine model, I’m assuming?”
“Practical Carnot,” Jo corrected. “I upgraded to a more efficient turbine engine. Running the spice trade from London to Bombay, I need more power than balloonists who just flutter above the city. What do you want?”
“I had an escapee,” he said, holding up a bronze.... thing that squirmed and struggled, a seashell with dozens of mechanical legs and a pair of pincers snapping uselessly at its captor. “I’m moored a few stations down, on the Antimony Haliphon, and my assistant kicked over a container of these little bastards. I’ve been chasing them around the port all morning. This is the last one. He was trying to stowaway on your ‘ship.”
“Well, if you’re done reorganizing my basket, sir?”
“Terribly rude of me, ma’am,” he said, hastily. He started to offer his right hand to shake, realized he still had the mech-crab in it, and bowed. “I’m Professor S. McKeon Landers. A pleasure to meet you. Could I, perhaps, treat you to tea and a bite of lunch, as an apology?”
“As long as your little stowaway can come along. I’ve always loved clockworks.”
“I was in the Americas last summer,” Professor Landers said, waving his teacup around, and in danger of overturning it entirely. The waiter at the Savoy paled, reaching under his apron for a cleaning rag, and hovered anxiously near the professor’s wayward elbow. “Dry out there. England seems to be perpetually rainy, but in the Americas, you can go weeks without seeing a drop. And do you know, they have the most wonderful train system. You can get aboard a locomotive in Chicago and take it all the way to San Francisco. I spent only five days on the train and traveled well over two thousand miles! Simply astonishing.”
“I’ve never been to the colonies.” Jo laid her hand against Landers’s, unobtrusively nudging his teacup back towards the tabletop. The waiter heaved a sigh of relief, giving Jo a grateful nod. “It must be a fast train, it takes a week to travel from Portsmouth to Gretna by airship, but you know, we’re rather a bit slower.”
“Do you, then, do the run to Gretna for eloping couples?” Landers asked.
“I’ve done it a few times,” Jo said. She bit her lip and looked down at her plate. Truly the Savoy had outdone itself this day, and she took another nibble of the beer-breaded croquette. “Mmmm, fantastic.”
“Well, the trains are less romantic than an airship to Gretna Green, and perhaps a little more dangerous. Halfway across Nebraska, we were attacked by a band of cowboys; train robbers, as you would. They forced their way aboard, armed with Mag-rifles, and demanded valuables from all the passengers.”
“So, how much did you lose?” He really was quite handsome, Jo decided. The chin, in particular. She always thought a man should have an impressive chin.
“My dear airship captain, do you really think I handed over my watch to a bunch of American ruffians?”
“Of course you did. Smart thing to do, too. Heroes end up bleeding on the floor. You can entertain me with the tale of how you got it back later.”
A rap on the door was all it took for Johanna to straighten up from her slouched position. Hastily, she kicked the half-eaten box of chocolates under the sofa and stashed the periodical—full of helpful articles such as “Is excess adipose tissue causing your bustle to rustle”, the sort of article that drove her to eat an entire box of chocolates and then actually have adipose tissue problems—into a nearby waste basket. Where it probably belonged in the first place. Stupid periodicals. She would definitely have to have Watts stop bringing them to her in the morning.
Jo licked chocolate off her fingers. “Yes, Watts?”
It was not Watts. Jo got to her feet. “Professor Landers!” She spared a momentary glance at the periodical, hoping the damning titles were out of sight to her unwelcome guest. “How did you get into my house? Is it not bad enough to have you invade my airship? And then promise to treat me to lunch, only for it to be ‘discovered’ that you’d lost your wallet? Sir, did you fail to get the impression I wished never to see you again?” Despite her annoyance, and the two pounds she was out for the extraordinarily indulgent lunch, she found him attractive, and—even worse—intriguing. Before the so-called theft of his personal belongings, she’d been delighted by his conversation, fascinated by his adventures. Perhaps she had not been significantly firm; or perhaps her desire for his person had made her ultimatum sound more like a mere suggestion. And she knew very well what men did with suggestions. For that matter, she knew what they did with ultimatums. Thus, chocolate and rubbish magazines.
“No.”
“Then perhaps it is best that I don’t say that.”
“You could start by telling me how you got in here, before I have you removed.”
“So you can tighten your defenses?”
“Precisely.”
“Then I don’t think I’ll say that, either.” Landers held up one hand. “I’ll not draw a weapon on you, but if I could ask for a little latitude—“
“A very little...”
“I’d like to show you something.”
Jo tilted her head. Maybe she’d give him another chance.
“Proceed.”
“Truth is, Miss Scanlon, I didn’t know where else to go. There’s been a bit of a... well, grist in the gears, in my current situation. My assistant—“ while he spoke, he was emptying his pockets onto her desk. Pocketknife, a handful of gears, displacement wrench, several scraps of paper with tightly-packed inked equations, and a... was that a clockwork spider? “—proved even less trustworthy than he was competent. He’s made off with the Haliphon—“
“And let me guess. I’m the only owner of an airship you know in Bath, and you’d like my assistance in recovering your Emetic Octopus.”
The Professor heaved a great sigh. “Antimony is used for more things than inducing vomiting. Provided you merely wish to show off your education, may I continue?”
“Were you planning on saying anything else pertinent to launch?”
“Well, there was some discussion about the schematics he made off with, but... well, no.”
“Then you can save it once we’re underway,” Jo said. She pulled her goggles from the hat rack, slapping the talk-back. “Watts? Watts! Could you phonautograph down to the docks; tell Reston to get the Meduzoa ready for lifting.”