Beauties of the Beast (The Yellow Hoods, #4): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale

by Adam Dreece

  “Your parents?”

  Richy sat down on the ground under the rising moon and gestured to the space beside him. Amami looked at him and then at the house. With a gentle nod, she sat down and listened as he explained the life he’d lived. As the evening wore on, they built a fire and talked, never making it into the house.

  “The sun’s coming up already,” said Richy, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t believe we talked the whole night.”

  Amami reached for her saddlebag, thinking. She couldn’t believe the life he’d had. “I understand now what these other people mean to you. But I have to share with you that the last time I last saw mother she was trying to waste herself away. She has been burdened with shame and regret since you were taken.”

  Richy thought through the story Amami had shared. “There’s one piece that I don’t understand. She built the Hotaru, so why didn’t they give me back?”

  “That is a question for Mother,” replied Amami, standing. “Where do we go?”

  Amami’s hands shook as she took off her gauntlets and hung them on the back hooks of her King’s-Horse. She felt its heart-panel, and, satisfied, stared at the small family home. She was deeply conflicted between wanting to find mother dead, and finding her alive. She looked at Richy and felt her fears melt away as he stared in wonder at what had once been an oasis in the mountain desert.

  Small amounts of bamboo grew here and there. Richy walked up to one of the rusted tubes that stuck out of the ground. “This… this used to be a… a fountain, didn’t it?” He turned to Amami, who smiled and nodded. Richy glanced around and then focused on the door. Dusting off his hands, he got up and carefully made his way to it, with Amami right behind him.

  As he reached to push the door open, Amami took his hand and pulled him back. Ever the protective big sister, she stepped into the room first, closing the door behind her.

  To her surprise, there in the corner was her mother. She held a bowl of cold soup in her lap, and was staring at the mountains. “I’m glad you are back, Amami.”

  “Mom?” she replied, her lip quivering, her brow furrowed. “I thought you’d be dead.”

  Her fragile arm shaking, Tsuruko put the bowl on the floor, some of it spilling out. She smiled weakly. “I could not pass from this life with how things were between us. Your father’s spirit would have been angry at me for eternity, and I would wish that on no one.”

  Amami quickly took off her weapons and lay them in a perfect line. She then shuffled over to her mother’s side. “There is no need for us to fight,” she replied happily. “I found him.”

  Her mother stared in disbelief.

  “Riichi, come in,” said Amami in Frelish. She turned to her mother. “He only speaks Frelish right now. I will teach him everything.”

  As the door opened, Tsuruko’s heart raced. With his yellow hood cloak surrounding him brilliantly, Richy slowly looked up at the old woman. “Riichi?” She stared in disbelief at Amami. “How?”

  “Mom?” asked Richy, his eyes welling up.

  “Ye—” Tsuruko stopped suddenly, her eyes filled with fear. The moment she had been wishing for had arrived, but now she was willing to do anything to stop it. She grabbed Amami’s arm and held out her other hand as her body trembled and then started to shake violently. Richy rushed over and took her hand.

  “Mom?” yelled Amami, crying. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a… a stroke,” said Richy, remembering the first time he’d seen one years ago. “She’s dying.”

  The old woman struggled against her final moments. “I’m so—sorry, Am…” Her body shook ever even more violently. “Riichi… love you. So big…” And then everything stopped.

  Silently, they worked for hours laying their mother to rest beside their father. “They always loved staring at the Eastern Mountains,” said Amami, her voice high and tight with grief. She gently took her little brother’s hand.

  “They are beautiful,” he said, staring at them. “She waited for me, didn’t she?”

  Amami nodded. “But now we are alone.”

  Richy shook his head. “No, now you become a part of my family. We need to save them.”

  “I know some people who can help.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Rocket and the Pack

  “Wake up time, Elly. Come on, time to get up,” said Tee shaking the mound of blankets.

  “Go away, Mounira. You sound tired, go back to bed and let me sleep,” moaned a buried voice. An arm came out and attempted to swat the world. “Didn’t you promise you’d stop waking me up?”

  “Mounira might have, but I’d never agree to such a thing,” said Tee, a touch of light-heartedness in her voice.

  Elly poked her head out and stared at Tee with one eye. “Why are you waking me at this most unholy hour, as the Abbott would say?”

  Tee put her fingers into Elly’s half-empty water glass on the bedside table and sprinkled water in her face. “There, it’s holy. Rise and shine time. No more hiding here with books and pretending to be crippled. You’ve got fight training this morning. We’ve already been here two weeks, no more doing nothing.”

  Rubbing her eyes and yawning, Elly fired back, “And I suppose taking apart the shock-sticks and studying them was nothing?”

  Tee stared at her, missing her banter cue entirely.

  Elly sat up. While Tee had been letting her get away with less and less lately, she’d been trying to push Tee back to her old self, as well. “You know, I should kill you for scheduling training so early.”

  “That… that would violate our no dying rule. Not allowed,” replied Tee, a small smile showing up.

  “Well,” replied Elly, “what about a good old fashion bludgeoning? Or I could kill you, then make something to bring you back?”

  “That’d be abusing the rule,” said Tee, smiling.

  Elly smiled back at her. “How are you doing?” she asked, stretching.

  The smile grew. “I’ve learned about something.”

  “What kind of something?” asked Elly, intrigued.

  “One word. Rocket-pack.”

  “Isn’t that two words?” asked Elly, rubbing sleepy junk from her eyes.

  “Hmm? Maybe. Probably has a hyphen in it, all the great things do.”

  “Really?” replied Elly. “I suppose you got a letter from the department of imaginary words, did you? I’m sure rocket and pack don’t naturally go together.”

  Tee shrugged. “It’s pretty cool,” she said with an odd twist to her grin.

  Elly studied her carefully and then snapped her fingers. “There’s a boy in this somewhere.”

  “What?” said Tee, blushing. “No. Don’t be silly.”

  “Really? Why don’t I believe you?” asked Elly.

  Tee frowned. “Well, not exactly. Listen, they’d been working on a thing like the rocket-cart that Mounira and Christina had used to fly into the air, but it failed. They wanted it as a way to defend against airships that someone apparently has. Someone worse than the Piemans.”

  “Woo,” replied Elly. “That’s serious.”

  “There were people arguing that it was a waste of time and resources, then a couple of people died. Everyone was very hush hush about it, but I stumbled on a few things, and, well… I think we can do it.”

  “Wait, back up. What’s an airship?” asked Elly.

  “The way I heard it, it’s something like a boat attached to two giant air balloons. There are sails for catching the wind to maneuver, and they drop bombs from the sky,” answered Tee.

  Elly face tensed. “This is a real thing we need to be worried about now?”

  Tee walked over and opened the curtains. “Apparently. There were people working on it, but then the lab blew up just after we got here.”

  “Why didn’t we hear about it?” asked Elly.

  Tee shrugged. “People are weird around here. From what I’m gathering, this isn’t normal. Anyway, you know what they did with all of their research?”
>
  “What?” asked Elly, thinking through several possibilities.

  “Threw it out. All of it.”

  Elly was shocked. “But, don’t they need this thing? Did someone make them do that?”

  Shaking her head, Tee replied, “I don’t know. But something feels wrong. Alex helped me salvage a bunch of it, including some notebooks that weren’t destroyed and two partial prototypes, slightly worn.”

  “Alex?” said Elly, with a smirk. “Details!”

  Tee broke into a smile. “It’s not like that.”

  “Of course not, never, no. Details!” repeated Elly.

  “Fourteen, dark skinned, a lot darker than Mounira. Says he’s from Endera. He might be, I don’t know. His name’s Alexander Mozhaysky. Sounds Enderian to me.”

  “All I know is that those people dress well, have sharp accents and really dark skin.”

  “That’s him,” replied Tee. “He wears this neat long coat with a high collar shirt and a cute—” Tee stopped herself.

  “See, right there. Got you. He’s good looking too, I figure,” said Elly.

  Tee looked away. “Maybe. Anyway, we’ve got a plan. You, me, Mounira and Alex are going to get this thing working. From what I can gather, the mistakes they made in the design are obvious.”

  “To you,” pointed out Elly.

  “Alex, too,” replied Tee. “There’s a lot of chemistry to this, as well. The propellant they were working on… I can’t explain it. It feels wrong. What do you think? Want to see if we can make something fly?”

  Elly nodded. “If we aren’t chasing after people trying to kill us, the least we could do is try to blow ourselves up.”

  They looked at each other and smiled. It was feeling a bit more like old times. “Does it remind you of the tea on the roof?”

  “A little,” replied Elly. “I can’t believe our parents let us do that when we were little kids.”

  “Well, they didn’t… not really,” said Tee.

  “True.”

  Tee smiled. “By the way… I’d like you to be in charge of this. I just…”

  Elly was surprised, but nodded immediately. “You make that piece of your Grandpapa to carry around, and I’ll get this done.”

  “I’ll still run interference and everything,” said Tee. “If we need any.”

  “Of course,” replied Elly.

  Tee was relieved. “So, meet us downstairs in Christina’s lab after you’ve had the stuffing kicked out of you.”

  “Oh, right. Fighting class,” said Elly, burying her head in pillows.

  “Excuse me, my name is Mounira Benida de—” she said, stepping into the room.

  Without so much as a glance away from his workbench, the man replied, “I know who you are. Before you even try to say my name—I can’t imagine how badly a Southerner would butcher it—just call me Douglas. And not Doug, as so many of them do. You like to just appear out of nowhere, don’t you?”

  Douglas was one of the prominent scientists of Kar’m, often given nearly impossible problems and then left alone to solve them. He was known among the people for a few mostly harmless explosions, and he hated them all the more for it. Little people with little minds and big fears, he’d often say.

  He was precise, methodical and careful. He was dressed with a brown coat, green vest and a cream shirt buttoned up to the top. His spectacles were of his own invention, with multiple lenses on hinges and arms, allowing him whatever magnification he needed with the flick of a finger.

  Mounira glanced about nervously. His lab was the biggest she’d seen in Kar’m, except for Christina’s. The room was very much like the man; almost oppressively neat, every book in its place on bookshelves, every pile preciously stacked, every drawing or picture on the wall perfectly level and evenly spaced.

  She hadn’t run into someone as sharp and rude as Douglas yet in Kar’m, but she'd heard rumors. As he turned to look at her, she wondered. “Do you not like me because I’m from the Southern Kingdoms, or is it just... me?”

  “You left out the option to choose that monstrosity on your back, that abomination of an arm.” He stopped himself. “It reminds me of Stein and his way of thinking, that all parts of a man can be replaced with just the right ingenuity. That man disturbs me.”

  “Oh,” said Mounira. “Well, I can take it off,” she said, showing the leather straps under her vest that held it in place.

  “I don’t care,” he turned back to his detailed work. “I don’t care about it, you or anyone else. The fact that you are of dark skin and a Southerner rather than an Enderian or from Dery or anywhere else doesn’t make me hate you any more. I hate everyone, equally.”

  “Well, as long as you don’t play favorites,” replied Mounira, wondering what to say next.

  To her surprise, he laughed. He put down his instruments and gave Mounira a real look. “I heard that you ask a lot of questions, to the point of making some people want to run screaming, but they said nothing of your wit. I like wit.”

  Mounira smiled. “I heard they would not let you work on the rocket-pack project, is that true?” She tried to peek at what he’d been working at, only to be pushed away.

  “No, they did not,” he replied drily. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What is it you want, little Luis?”

  “Do I look like a drowned boy to you?” she asked sharply.

  “No, not particularly,” he replied with a grin.

  “Then I ask that you call me by my name, Mounira.”

  “How about I call you Jill, it’s easier,” he said, leaning against his workbench.

  “No,” insisted Mounira.

  His grin grew. He folded his arms and stared at her in wonder. Like many people in Kar’m, he had resented the presence of the Yellow Hoods, but his motivations were different. Without her strong sense of vision and drive, he’d seen Canny’s brother muscle his way in and start pushing people around. He’d quickly found himself isolated. “What do you want… Mounira?”

  She reached into a pocket of her yellow cloak and handed him a notebook. “Open it to the bookmark, please. We’d like you to tell us if we’re right about the fuel.”

  “‘We’ is the Yellow Hoods, I suppose?” he asked, taking it from her.

  She shrugged. “If I say nothing, you don’t have to lie.”

  He smiled. “Smart girl.”

  “We think we can make the rocket-pack work.”

  Douglas tapped the notebook against his hand. “This project was shut down, you know. You’re not supposed to be working on this. It blew up Canny’s lab, killed a few people. If he or anyone else heard that you were—”

  “We are being careful,” replied Mounira.

  “Hmm,” wondered Douglas. “Are you trying to show Canny up?”

  “No,” answered Mounira. “We just think maybe someone helped it fail. We want to see if, with the help of the right people, it can work.”

  “And I’m one of those right people?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Hmm. Who told you to come to me?” he asked, curious.

  Mounira shrugged.

  “Smart girl,” he replied, grinning again. “You know, the early prototypes they had were better than the one that blew up, it’s a shame they threw them out.” He studied her expression. “But you have those? Huh. I’m impressed.”

  “We’re building a new one.”

  Douglas pulled on his ear in thought. “You must have Henry Blair and his nephew involved if you’re doing that. There’s no one else with the mechanical and metal skills to make a body that’s light but strong enough. He’s involved? Hmm. He’s a clever kid. So, all of you are working together with those of us on the outside of the project. Impressive. Tee must be leading this.”

  “Elly, actually.”

  “Really? Hmm,” he noted her slip but decided not to make a point about it. “Why do you think you will be any more successful? Assuming it wasn’t sabotage.”

  Mounira smiled excitedly. “We’re thin
king of the new rocket-pack more like a firecracker. Something that throws you into the air for a short while, rather than—”

  “Yes! Rather than something that sustains flight. It’s like a… a mythical jump, like the stories of old heroes, where they were able to jump, almost run on the wind for a moment, before plunging back down to Eorth! The mechanics and propellant needs are completely different and much simpler to deal with this way.” He tapped the closed notebook against the workbench. “I’ll go through what you have here and will let you know my first thoughts. You have to keep this completely secret. Things are bad enough as it is. The last thing I need is Canny’s brother coming and screaming at me any more. I swear I’ll throttle the man. He’s poison.” Douglas flipped through several pages of the notebook. “Come back in a few hours, I should have some initial thoughts for you.”

  “Thank you, Anciano Douglas.”

  “Actually, it’s Douglasino. Armando Francisco Douglasino. These people,” he glared about, “they just can’t pronounce things. But I can hear it in your melodic speech. Give it a try.”

  “Thank you, Anciano Douglasino.”

  He stared at her, a hint of a smile revealing itself. “You have a fierceness to you. Don’t lose that.”

  Mounira barely noticed the nod from the guards as she hurried down the stairs to Christina’s lab, where Tee, Alex and Elly were expecting her. “Elly, these are the last of the notes and comments I gathered,” she said, pulling them from her cloak and tossing them to her.

  “Great,” said Elly with a wink and smile. It was hard to remember the little kid that she’d been jealous of. While Mounira still would sometimes lose control and ask a million questions or miss the humor of a moment, Elly would never forget the sight of Mounira streaking through the sky on the rocket-cart. “By the way, did you find out anything about the whirly-bird?”

  “Nothing. I never…” Mounira glanced around uncomfortable.