Fierce Reads

by Ann Aguirre

  Shutting the window, she crept toward her bedroom door, careful not to trip on the bag of secondhand clothes Pearl had begrudgingly given to her the day before, after her father had lectured her about charity.

  She heard Adri’s voice before she reached the kitchen and paused, one hand balancing her on the wall as her body threatened to tip toward its heavier left side.

  As she strained to hear, Adri’s voice grew steadily louder, and Cinder realized with a jolt that Adri wasn’t speaking louder, but rather something in her own head was adjusting the volume on her hearing. She rubbed her palm against her ear, feeling like there was a bug in it.

  “Four months, Garan,” Adri said. “We’re behind by four months and Suki-jiĕ has already threatened to start auctioning off our things if we don’t pay her soon.”

  “She’s not going to auction off our things,” said Garan, his voice a strange combination of soothing and strained. Garan’s voice had already become unfamiliar to Cinder’s ear. He spent his days out in a one-room shed behind the house, “tinkering,” Peony said, though she didn’t seem to know what exactly he was tinkering with. He came in to join his family for meals, but hardly ever talked and Cinder wondered how much he heard, either. His expression always suggested his mind was very far away.

  “Why shouldn’t she sell off our things? I’m sure I would in her place!” Adri said. “Whenever I have to leave the house, I come home wondering if this will be the day our things are gone and our locks are changed. We can’t keep living on her hospitality.”

  “It’s going to be all right, love. Our luck is changing.”

  “Our luck!” Adri’s voice spiked in Cinder’s ear and she flinched at the shrillness, quickly urging the volume to descend again. It obeyed her command, through sheer willpower. She held her breath, wondering what other secrets her brain was keeping from her.

  “How is our luck changing? Because you won a silver ribbon at that fair in Sydney last month? Your stupid awards aren’t going to keep food on this table, and now you’ve brought home one more mouth—and a cyborg at that!”

  “We talked about this…”

  “No, you talked about this. I want to support you, Garan, but these schemes of yours are going to cost us everything. We have our own girls to think about. I can’t even afford new shoes for Pearl and now there’s this creature in the house who’s going to need … what? A new foot every six months?”

  Shriveling against the wall, Cinder glanced down at her metal foot, the toes looking awkward and huge beside the fleshy ones—the ones with bone and skin and toenails.

  “Of course not. She’ll be fine for a year or two,” said Garan.

  Adri stifled a hysterical laugh.

  “And her leg and fingers can be adjusted as she grows,” Garan continued. “We shouldn’t need replacements for those until she reaches adulthood.”

  Cinder lifted her hand into the faint light coming down the hallway, inspecting the joints. She hadn’t noticed how the knuckles were fitted together before, the digits nestled inside each other. So this hand could grow, just like her human hand did.

  Because she would be stuck with these limbs forever. She would be a cyborg forever.

  “Well, how comforting,” said Adri. “I’m glad to see you’ve given this so much thought.”

  “Have faith, love.”

  Cinder heard a chair being pushed back and backed up into the hallway, but all that followed was the sound of running water from the faucet. She pressed her fingers over her mouth, trying to feel the water through psychokinesis, but even her brain couldn’t quench her thirst on sound alone.

  “I have something special to reveal at the Tokyo Fair in March,” Garan said. “It’s going to change everything. In the meantime, you must be patient with the child. She only wants to belong here. Perhaps she can help you with the housework, until we can get that android replaced?”

  Adri scoffed. “Help me? What can she do, dragging that monstrosity around?”

  Cinder cringed. She heard a cup being set down, then a kiss. “Give her a chance. Maybe she’ll surprise you.”

  She ducked away at the first hint of a footstep, creeping back into her room and shutting the door. She felt that she could have wept from thirst, but her eyes stayed as dry as her tongue.

  * * *

  “Here, you put on the green one,” said Peony, tossing a bundle of green and gold silk into Cinder’s arms. She barely caught it, the thin material slipping like water over her hands. “We don’t have any real ball gowns, but these are just as pretty. This is my favorite.” Peony held up another garment, a swath of purple-and-red fabric decorated with soaring cranes. She strung her bony arms through the enormous sleeves and pulled the material tight around her waist, holding it in place while she dug through the pile of clothes for a long silver sash and belted it around her middle. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Cinder nodded uncertainly—although the silk kimonos were perhaps the finest things she’d ever felt, Peony looked ridiculous in hers. The hem of the gown dragged a foot on the floor, the sleeves dangled almost to her knees, and street clothes still peeked through at her neck and wrists, ruining the illusion. It almost looked like the gown was trying to eat her.

  “Put yours on!” said Peony. “Here, this is the sash I usually put with that one.” She pulled out a black-and-violet band.

  Cinder tentatively stuck her hands into the sleeves, taking extra care that no screws or joints caught the fine material. “Won’t Adri be mad?”

  “Pearl and I play dress-up all the time,” said Peony, looping the sash around Cinder’s waist. “And how are we supposed to go to the ball if we don’t have any beautiful dresses to wear?”

  Cinder raised her arms, shaking the sleeves back. “I don’t think my hand goes with this one.”

  Peony laughed, though Cinder hadn’t meant it to be funny. Peony seemed to find amusement with almost everything she said.

  “Just pretend you’re wearing gloves,” said Peony. “Then no one will know.” Grabbing Cinder by the hand, she pulled her across the hall and into the bathroom so they could see themselves in the mirror. Cinder looked no less absurd than Peony, with her fine, mousy hair hanging limp past her shoulders and awkward metal fingers poking out of the left sleeve.

  “Perfect,” said Peony, beaming. “Now we’re at the ball. Iko used to always be the prince, but I guess we’ll have to pretend.”

  “What ball?”

  Peony stared back at her in the mirror as if Cinder had sprouted a metal tail. “The ball for the peace festival! It’s this huge event we have every year—the festival is down in the city center and then in the evening they have the ball up at the palace. I’ve never gone for real, but Pearl will be thirteen next year so she’ll get to go for the first time.” She sighed and spun out into the hallway. Cinder followed, her walking made even more cumbersome than usual with the kimono trailing on the ground.

  “When I go for the first time, I want a purple dress with a skirt so big I can hardly fit through the door.”

  “That sounds uncomfortable.”

  Peony wrinkled her nose. “Well, it has to be spectacular, or else Prince Kai won’t notice me, and then what’s the point?”

  Cinder was almost hesitant to ask as she followed flouncing Peony back into her bedroom—“Who’s Prince Kai?”

  Peony spun toward her so fast, she tripped on the skirts of Adri’s kimono and fell, screaming, onto her bed. “‘Who’s Prince Kai?’” she yelled, struggling to sit back up. “Only my future husband! Honestly, don’t girls in Europe know about him?”

  Cinder teetered between her two feet, unable to answer the question. After twelve whole days living with Peony and her family, she already had more memories of the Eastern Commonwealth than she had of Europe. She hadn’t the faintest idea what—or who—the girls in Europe obsessed over.

  “Here,” said Peony, scrambling across her messy blankets and grabbing a portscreen off the nightstand. “He’s my greeter.”<
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  She turned on the screen and a boy’s voice said, “Hello, Peony.” Cinder shuffled forward and took the small device from her. The screen showed a boy of twelve or thirteen years old wearing a tailored suit that seemed ironic with his shaggy black hair. He was waving at someone—Cinder guessed the photo was from some sort of press event.

  “Isn’t he gorgeous?” said Peony. “Every night I tie a red string around my finger and say his name five times because this girl in my class told me that will tie our destinies together. I know he’s my soul mate.”

  Cinder listed her head, still staring at the boy. Her optobionics were scanning him, finding the picture in some database in her head, and this time she expected the stream of text that began to filter through her brain. His ID number, his birth date, his full name and title. Prince Kaito, Crown Prince of the Eastern Commonwealth.

  “His arms are too long for his body,” she said after a while, finally picking up on what didn’t feel right about the picture. “They’re not proportionate.”

  “What are you talking about?” Peony snatched the port away and stared at it for a minute before tossing it onto her pillow. “Honestly, who cares about his arms?”

  Cinder shrugged, unable to smother a slight grin. “I was only saying.”

  Harrumphing, Peony swung her legs around and hopped off the bed. “Fine, whatever. Our hover is here. We’d better get going or we’ll be late for the ball, where I am going to dance with His Imperial Highness, and you can dance with whoever you would like to. Maybe another prince. We should make one up for you. Do you want Prince Kai to have a brother?”

  “What are you two doing?”

  Cinder spun around. Adri was looming in the doorway—again her footsteps had gone unnoticed and Cinder was beginning to wonder if Adri was really a ghost that floated through the hallways rather than walked.

  “We’re going to the ball!” Peony said.

  Adri’s face flushed as her gaze dropped to the silk kimono hanging off Cinder’s shoulders. “Take that off this instant!”

  Shrinking back, Cinder instantly began undoing the knot that Peony had tied around her waist.

  “Peony, what are you thinking? These garments are expensive and if she got snagged—if the lining—” Stepping forward, she grabbed the collar of the dress, peeling it off Cinder as soon as the sash was free.

  “But you used to let Pearl and me—”

  “Things are different now, and you are to leave my things alone. Both of you!”

  Scowling, Peony started unwrapping her own dress. Cinder bit the inside of her cheek, feeling oddly vulnerable without the heavy silk draped around her and sick to her stomach with guilt, though she wasn’t sure what she had to be guilty about.

  “Cinder.”

  She dared to meet Adri’s gaze.

  “I came to tell you that if you are to be a part of this household, I will expect you to take on some responsibilities. You’re old enough to help Pearl with her chores.”

  She nodded, almost eager to have something to do with her time when Peony wasn’t around. “Of course. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  Adri’s mouth pursed into a thin line. “I won’t ask you to do any dusting until I can trust you to move with a bit of grace. Is that hand water resistant?”

  Cinder held out her bionic hand, splaying out the fingers. “I … I think so. But it might rust … after a while…”

  “Fine, no dishes or scrubbing, then. Can you at least cook?”

  Cinder racked her brain, wondering whether it could feed her recipes as easily as it fed her useless definitions. “I never have before, that I can remember. But I’m sure…”

  Peony threw her arms into the air. “Why don’t we just get Iko fixed and then she can do all the housework like she’s supposed to?”

  Adri’s eyes smoldered as she looked between her daughter and Cinder. “Well,” she said, finally, snatching up the two kimonos and draping them over her arm. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find some use for you. In the meantime, why don’t you leave my daughter alone so she can get some of her schoolwork accomplished?”

  “What?” said Peony. “But we haven’t even gotten to the ball yet.”

  Cinder didn’t wait to hear the argument she expected to follow. “Yes, Stepmother,” she murmured, ducking her head. She slipped past Adri and made her way to her own room.

  Her insides were writhing but she couldn’t pinpoint the overruling emotion. Hot anger, because it wasn’t her fault that her new leg was awkward and heavy, and how was she to know Adri wouldn’t want them playing in her things?

  But also mortification because maybe she really was useless. She was eleven years old, but she didn’t know anything, other than the bits of data that seemed to serve no purpose other than to keep her from looking like a complete idiot. If she’d had any skills before, she had no idea what they had been. She’d lost them now.

  Sighing, she shut her bedroom door and slumped against it.

  The room hadn’t changed much in the almost two weeks since she’d come to call it home, other than the cast-off clothes that had been put into the dresser drawers, a pair of boots tossed into a corner, the blankets bundled up in a ball at the foot of her bed.

  Her eyes landed on the box of android parts that hadn’t been moved from their spot behind the door. The dead sensor, the spindly arms.

  There was a bar code printed on the back of the torso that she hadn’t noticed before. She barely noticed it then, except that her distracted brain was searching for the random numbers, downloading the android’s make and model information. Parts list. Estimated value. Maintenance and repair manual.

  Something familiar stirred inside her, like she already knew this android. How its parts fit together, how its mechanics and programming all functioned as a whole. Or, no, this wasn’t familiarity, but … a connectedness. Like she knew the android intimately. Like it was an extension of her.

  She pushed herself off the door, her skin tingling.

  Perhaps she had one useful skill after all.

  * * *

  It took three days, during which she emerged from her room only to sit for meals with her new family and, once, to play in the snow with Peony while Adri and Pearl were at the market. Her metal limbs had frosted over with cold by the time they were done, but coming inside to a pot of green tea and the flush of shared laughter had quickly warmed her back up.

  Adri had not asked Cinder to take on any household chores again, and Cinder imagined it seemed a lost cause to her stepmother. She stayed hopeful, though, as the jumble of android pieces gradually formed into something recognizable. A hollow plastic body atop wide treads, two skinny arms, a squat head with nothing but a cyclops sensor for a face. The sensor had given her the most trouble and she had to redo the wiring twice, triple-checking the diagram that had downloaded across her eyesight, before she felt confident she’d gotten it right.

  If only it worked. If only she could show Adri, and even Garan, that she wasn’t a useless addition to their family after all. That she was grateful they’d taken her in when no one else would. That she wanted to belong to them.

  She was sitting cross-legged on her bed with the window open behind her, allowing in a chilled but pleasant breeze, when she inserted the final touch. The small personality chip clicked into place and Cinder held her breath, half expecting the android to perk up and swivel around and start talking to her, until she remembered that she would need to be charged before she could function.

  Feeling her excitement wane from the anticlimactic finale, Cinder released a slow breath and fell back onto her mattress, mentally exhausted.

  A knock thunked against the door.

  “Come in,” she called, not bothering to move as the door creaked open.

  “I was just wondering if you wanted to come watch—” Peony fell silent and Cinder managed to lift her head to see the girl gaping wide-eyed at the android. “Is that … Iko?”

  Grinning, Cinder braced herself on
her elbows. “She still needs to be charged, but I think she’ll work.”

  Jaw still hanging open, Peony crept into the room. Though only nine years old, she was already well over a foot taller than the squat robot. “How … how? How did you fix it?”

  “I had to borrow some tools from your dad.” Cinder gestured to a pile of wrenches and screwdrivers in the corner. She didn’t bother to mention that he hadn’t been in his workshop behind the house when she’d gone to find them. It almost felt like theft and that thought terrified her, but it wasn’t theft. She wasn’t going to keep the tools, and she was sure Garan would be delighted when he saw she’d fixed the android.

  “That’s not…” Peony shook her head and finally looked at Cinder. “You fixed her by yourself?”

  Cinder shrugged, not sure if she should be proud or uncomfortable by the look of awe Peony was giving her. “It wasn’t that hard,” she said. “I had … I can download … information. Instructions. Into my head. And I figured out how to get the android’s blueprint to go across my vision so I could…” She trailed off, realizing that what she’d been sure was a most useful skill was also one more strange eccentricity her body could claim. One more side effect of being cyborg.

  But Peony’s eyes were twinkling by the minute. “You’re kidding,” she said, picking up one of Iko’s hands and waggling it around. Cinder had been sure to thoroughly grease it so the joints wouldn’t seize up. “What else can you do?”

  “Um.” Cinder hunched her shoulders, considering. “I can … make stuff louder. I mean, not really, but I can adjust my hearing so it seems louder. Or quieter. I could probably mute my hearing if I wanted to.”

  Peony laughed. “That’s brilliant! You’d never have to hear Mom when she’s yelling! Aw, I’m so jealous.” Beaming, she started to drag Iko toward the door. “Come on, there’s a charging station in the hallway.”

  Cinder hopped off the bed and followed her to a docking station at the end of the hall. Peony plugged Iko in and, instantly, a faint blue light started to glow around the plug.

  Peony raised hopeful eyes to Cinder when the front door opened and Garan stumbled into the hallway, his hair dripping. He wasn’t wearing his coat.