Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables

by Stephen L. Antczak

  The squadron guided her toward a small dock, and the workers there helped her tie up her ship. She was lucky in that none of her clothing bore the emblem of her home and neither did the ferry.

  The princess threw the two sacks over her shoulder with a grunt and then stepped out into foreign territory. The dockmaster came bustling over to her, wearing a brown coat bearing the eagle crest. “Two ducats a day,” he snapped, not meeting her eyes, but instead scribbling down notes on the ferry.

  “Actually,” Eleanor interrupted, “I am looking to sell it and take up lodgings in the city.”

  The dockmaster’s sharp blue eyes darted up to meet hers. “Lot of that these days. You should find Master Pettingren on the lower docks. He’s been buying up airships of all sizes. People appear to think war is coming. We’ve had to lash in three dozen new ships this month at least.”

  Eleanor shuddered. The cities grew a little, but that many new arrivals seeking the perceived safety of the Eagle meant that the free travelers of the skies were also getting nervous.

  She had to hurry. She sold the stolen ferry to the thin but remarkably cheery Master Pettingren very easily, and earned a healthy sack of ducats; even in a time of approaching war, a ship was still an expensive object. Then she found herself a small workshop in the lower hull of an airship hulk.

  It was full of desperate people, packed into tiny rooms in the lumbering ship. The place ran with gossip and contagion in equal amounts. Again, Eleanor forced herself to ignore all that. Instead she set herself to the calculations of what she would need. Then the princess went into the city and bought the strands of silver that Stella had said were required for the cloaks. She bought all she could find, but by her calculations she knew that it would only be enough for six cloaks. She would have to venture out later and find more.

  Still, it was surprisingly cheap. That she had not expected.

  Once she said thank you to the shop owner and gathered up her materials, she knew that had to be the last time she spoke. It was too important a task that she couldn’t leave anything to chance. Stella had told her the magic and the crafting would require everything she had. She would have to give it that.

  As she returned to her little cell, she weighed the remaining coins in her pocket. She hoped they would be enough to buy not only the remaining silver she would need but also the things a human body needed. Silver might be cheap in the City of Eagles, but food was not.

  She would just have to do the best she could. In her cell she laid out all the tools from the two canvas bags. There were various sizes of little saws, some with diamond blades, and a set of gleaming screwdrivers that tingled on her fingertips. And then there were the starlight opals.

  Eleanor sat back on her heels. She had been thinking about what might be required to interfere with the workings of the swan machines, and though she had many ideas it was the use of the opals that she was really guessing at. Their function was something Stella had not had time to explain. That was the sticking point, and the one thing Eleanor was least confident about.

  However, doubts had to be left behind. First, Eleanor laid out and measured the silver tape and hoped her calculations were correct. She had only the glimpses of the swan machines she’d managed to catch from the prison window, and so she was forced to rely on her own sense of proportion.

  The clockwork underneath the cloaks was the easiest part for her to do. She designed spikes that would drive into the workings of the mechanical swans, locking the skins on them tight—this was just in case Madame Escrew had set some defenses on her devices. The skins that would hold these mechanics were by far the harder to construct. The silver tape was flexible, but reluctant to give itself up to her. She knew that she had to weave the skin in just the right way. It had to be strong and yet conform to a shape.

  The solution she settled on was one that drew inspiration from ancient armor—the kind that she had seen on display in paintings in her father’s palace. It was called fish armor, though no one in any city had seen a fish for ten generations.

  First she fixed the silver tape into a tiny loop of no greater circumference than she could make with her index finger and thumb. The next loop she threaded through the first and welded it shut. It was long, tiresome work that made her head, her eyes, and her fingers ache. It would have been nice to spare a curse word now and then, but she was careful never to do that. Always in her mind was the witch’s reminder that she needed to put everything into it.

  She ate little with her stinging fingers, but still ventured out to buy what silver she could find. A princess had no experience at thievery, and she dared not risk being caught—that would mean an end to her project. So instead she bought what little cheap food could be found. Though in times of war there was little enough of that.

  So, as the days and weeks went past, Eleanor’s figure began to dwindle, and her mind grew foggy with hunger. Now the cloak making was proceeding by sheer habit.

  The role of the starlight opals was something that still eluded her, until one day when she was passing—or rather, staggering—through the market and saw an aristocratic lady with a cloak wrapped around her against the chill. Eleanor’s head jerked up, and her gaze followed the woman. The garment was festooned with glimmering beads. Despite her weariness and hunger, Eleanor knew this would be the best way to add the opals to her own project.

  She wobbled her way back to her dim rooms and set to work immediately.

  However, a strange young woman who communicated with gestures alone had made an impression in a city on the verge of all-out war. Gossip was not something that Eleanor had calculated in her plans.

  She was working at the inner cage of the fourth cloak when the flimsy door was kicked in. She hadn’t eaten in three days, but somehow she managed to hold back a scream or any other sound.

  “There she is—the witch!” The voice seemed to fill the tiny room, and Eleanor staggered a little as she rose to her feet. Her tools scattered on the floor, and she wondered how in the sky she was going to find them again.

  Guardsmen struggled to enter such a small space, but all of them were pointing and shouting. None of them used the word swan, for which she was very grateful. Still, witch was not that much better. In a world constructed on floating airships bound together, the punishment was to see if the witch could fly. If she plummeted to her death, then she was obviously innocent; if she did not, then she would be weighed with stones until she did.

  Eleanor stood tall and for a second almost spoke. Her mouth dropped open, but then she shut it with a snap. Her brothers’ fate and that of all the cities that flew the skies depended on her strength of will. It would be weak of her to falter now.

  “It is as they say,” one burly guardsman rumbled. “She does not speak…even in her own defense.”

  The word witch was passed from man to angry man, and Eleanor knew there was no way out of this situation. They were blocking her way from the room, and where could she go without her works anyway?

  The four dragonflies buzzed and snapped on her windowsill, but the princess gestured them back. They would only create a worse situation. Brave little insects that they were, she didn’t want them destroyed.

  Then a voice from the back snapped, “Make way, make way!”

  Suddenly the guardsmen were shifting, jostling, and some of them slipping out of the tiny room. They all hurriedly got out the way to make space for the man who demanded entry.

  Eleanor was sure she was hallucinating. Though she did not know the tall young man with the military uniform who loomed in the doorway, she did recognize the silver badge on the scarlet sash over his shoulder. It was an eagle, with its wings spread. Only one person could wear such a thing. She had seen its like only on her father.

  This was the king of the City of Eagles. Eleanor wobbled on her feet as her stomach growled and her brain struggled to catch up. This was the last person she wanted to seem weak in front of, but going so long on so little food had finally caught up with her.r />
  Eleanor’s vision blurred as her legs buckled. She tried desperately to prop herself up against the wall, but it was treacherous and she ended up sliding to the floor. Throughout it all she kept her jaw locked shut, refusing to let out even a pained sigh.

  Through her graying vision she saw the king bend down toward her. He had startling eyes; they gleamed gold like a hawk’s. He turned and commented over his shoulder, “She doesn’t much look like a witch to me. And most certainly not a very good one.”

  “But, sire, you know the temple will…” From her place on the floor, she couldn’t tell who spoke.

  Darkness was washing over her, but the last thing Eleanor heard was the king saying, “We must keep an eye on her, that is for certain.”

  When Eleanor struggled back to consciousness, it was to find herself in a bed as soft as the one she had left back in the Swan City. For a moment, a blissful moment, she believed she had imagined the whole horrible Madame Escrew event, but then as she sat up she realized that she was not in the City of Swans, but the one of Eagles. It was the decorations that told her that immediately.

  Great birds of prey were shown everywhere: in tapestries, paintings, and most disturbingly of all in sculpture, where a spread-winged eagle had a tormented swan in its claws.

  That bought her back to reality with a start. So she slid out of bed and gently to her feet. Immediately the smell of food on a nearby table drew her over. Eleanor had devoured all of the soup and bread before she even worked out that it was onion broth and good millet bread.

  Feeling her brain starting to work, like a furnace finally fed coal, she began to explore. The room was decorated in outrageously rich fashion—even more so than she was used to in her home. It was a two-room suite of some kind. Eleanor entered cautiously to find the second room was some kind of observatory. Her father had one very similar in his own palace. This was, however, even larger, filled with many long benches, and on these were all her tools, the cloaks in progress. Even the starlight opals were there and the four little mechanical dragonflies.

  She rushed over and ran her hands over them to make sure she was not imagining it.

  “I think you will find everything there.” The king, standing in the window, overlooking the swirling clouds, had gone unnoticed by her.

  A hundred questions bubbled in her mind, but she managed to hold them back.

  “I imagine you are wondering,” the king said, stepping toward her, those emerald eyes locked on her, “why I would give you this chance to complete your work, when you might be some kind of witch.”

  Eleanor looked away, totally unsure how to deal with a man without her tongue.

  “Well,” he said, picking up the jar of starlight opals, “you are a most unusual one, and I think perhaps you are silent by choice.” The look he shot her was direct and probing.

  The princess had never felt such a wash of warmness over her body for a man’s sake. Certainly there had been suitors in her time, but with her the sole sister in a line of eleven brothers, not many had lingered long. Now she wished most fervently for the freedom to use her voice, to show him her wit and intelligence. Instead, all she could do was smile. Even writing was something she dared not attempt.

  The king shook his head, as if emerging from a deep pool of water. “But where are my manners? I have not properly introduced myself! I am King Nikolai Swoop, of the City of Eagles.” His fingers tweaked his cravat almost nervously.

  A little confused herself, Eleanor picked up an end of the silver metallic tape and gestured for his permission to begin. The ticking of the clock in her head reminded her she had little time for embarrassment—or any other emotion, come to think of it.

  Nikolai tilted his head. “They say I should see if you fly, but I am preparing a city for war from the King of the Swans and I cannot turn down this chance to see what you are building. None of my tinkers can fathom what this is all about. Maybe it can help my city survive.”

  He seated himself on a stool near the window, out of her way but near enough that he could observe what Eleanor was doing. And thus they proceeded.

  He came and watched her every day while the dragonflies circled the observatory. Sometimes he sat silent and watched, departing without a word after no particular length of time. She imagined he had many things to deal with since they were—as he said—on the very edge of war. Part of her—the smallest portion that she allowed freedom in those brief moments she stopped to eat—was flattered at the king’s attention.

  For there were times he talked. At first they were words of a ruler: light matters of court, moments of his family history, and the minutiae of ruling that grated on him. However, as the days passed he delved deeper and, perhaps emboldened by her silence, told her things about himself. He revealed his fears, his hopes and dreams.

  For herself, Eleanor yearned to tell him the same, but the work and the magic held her tongue.

  The mechanical delivery system was ready—or as ready as it was ever going to be—but it was the cloaks that would wrap tight around the forms of the swan machines that were the most time-consuming.

  As she sat on the floor, her fingers worn almost to nubs by the work, Eleanor’s mind contemplated the thousand ways that this could have been made easier. If she had the voice, she could have asked Nikolai to get some of his subjects to help—but Stella had asserted that it must be done by the princess alone. Once when her fingers started bleeding, Nikolai tried to take the link work away from her and do it himself. Her frantic dismay had been enough apparently to keep from trying that again. He did, however, remind her to eat.

  As she marked off the twenty-first day on the wall of her prison—something that made the king’s brow furrow with confusion—Eleanor sighed.

  Nikolai looked up from where he sat, in the sun, his gold hair gleaming. He looked so normal and wonderful that Eleanor risked another sigh. She slid down to the floor once more and picked up the cloak.

  Despite her protestations, the cloaks were nearly done. In fact, she was working on the final one, confident that she was going to finish it well before the end of the month and the deadline that Stella had set. She only had to stay the course and finish the final loop work, as dull and painful as that was.

  All would have been well had the bells not begun to ring. It was not in a happy way, but in a discordant chorus that spoke of imminent threat. Nikolai leaped to his feet even as Eleanor ran to the windows.

  Together they looked out into a clear blue sky, and the princess felt her chest tighten and her throat close. The machines were so much more incredible and frightening when seen in the daylight.

  Great wings of brass and bronze beat the air as the eleven swans descended on the City of Eagles. Eleanor and Nikolai watched as the city’s ornithopters flitted out to meet them. Compared to the stout realism of the machines, the ’thopters looked like a child’s set of paper planes. They lasted just about as long.

  The elegant swan necks were bent toward the attackers. Above the desperate ringing of the bells could be heard a dreadful, constant stream of explosions. “Holy steam,” the king swore, thumping the back of the chair.

  The delicate wings of the ornithopters caught fire and crisped. Their descent was silent and dreadful.

  “Wait here!” The king grabbed her shoulders and planted a kiss on Eleanor’s silent mouth. It was sudden, unexpected, and made her blood rush to her head, but before she could react further, he darted out the door to see to his city.

  The princess was left standing in the conservatory, the final cloak trailing from her fingers, and watching her brothers destroy a city she had come to see was no enemy. Eagle and Swan had been at odds for generations, but it had never broken out into real war.

  Some of the smaller airships were punctured already, their envelopes sagging and collapsing in on them. People on the deck below ran backward and forward like disturbed insects, cutting the ties between the stricken ships and those still untouched, trying to save them. It seemed like a
pointless attempt to Eleanor because soon enough the whole city would be in flames.

  The princess knew, despite one of the cloaks not being completely done, that this was the only chance she would have. She cast about, grasped hold of a chair, and flung it through the nearest window of the observatory. It shattered, spraying glass out into the void, and the sound joined the screaming of the citizens and the rattle of the swan machines.

  “There she is!” The guardsmen had entered the workroom, and at their head was a priest of the Sky God in his bright blue vestments. He looked as though he was about to have apoplexy right there and then.

  “Witch!” he howled, his pointing managing to encompass both Eleanor and the devastation beyond the window. “She has bought these demons of the air down on us.”

  Eleanor knew she only had mere moments and that all of her work of the last weeks hung on this few heartbeats. The four dragonflies, quiet for so many weeks, flew once more to her defense. Eleanor flung another chair at the advancing guards and spun away.

  Then as they scrambled toward her, she turned to the window and screamed, “Brothers! Brothers!”

  Something in her blood, something in the bond they shared, must have reached them, because the machines turned. For a long second they flapped in position, outlined against the bright blue sky, with the flame light of the airships below them reflected on their brass wings. Then they dived.

  The priest and the guards screamed behind her, leaping back almost as quickly as they had surged forward. Eleanor stood there, one cloak held in each hand, and waited.

  The swan machines, each about twice the size of a man, crashed through the glass of the observatory. Eleanor could see that her memory had not failed her. The details of the gears and workings of the swans were as she had seen them in the moonlight.

  The swans all bent their heads to her, and she could see the weapons that Madame Escrew had fitted them with: devices to spurt flame, and repeating guns the like of which she had never seen. All of which could be turned on her in a moment.