by Steven Bohls
“It’s incredible,” Jed said.
“Just be careful out there,” Zix said. “We’re not like them. If they see a single gear, you’ll be blasted full of holes.”
Lyle nodded. “Vile creatures, humans,” he scowled.
The Endeavor circled Lunkway, looking for a port big enough for the massive train to land.
“There,” Zix said, pointing to an open spot on the north side of the city.
“Is Lunkway a copper or an iron city?” Jed asked.
“Neither,” Zix said. “It’s a free-metal marketplace. All metals there.”
“All metals except for gold,” Lyle said.
• • •
It felt good to be on land. Jed took a few tentative steps forward. Tall, pointy buildings loomed over them, and people bustled through the streets, hurrying to and fro. There were more people crammed into just one street than Jed would have thought possible, and he wished he could talk to all of them. Find out their stories. Learn who they were.
You’re not one of them, he thought. They’ll kill you if they know who you are.
He stared at the happy faces, pleasantly chatting with one another as they walked, and he wondered if it were really true—if these strangers would hate him if they saw inside him.
As Lyle and Jed left the port and approached the city buildings, Jed noticed identical metal sheets posted by the doors on each structure. Etchings…he remembered. They were announcements of some sort.
Lyle noticed them, too, and he approached the one closest to them. “Hmm,” he muttered, reading the words pressed into the metal. “They’ve banded together.”
“Who?” Jed asked.
“The irons and the coppers,” he said. “Those metals can’t even agree on what color the sky is, and now they’re brothers in arms.”
Jed leaned in closer and read the words himself.
JOIN THE I.C.C.A.D.
BE PART OF THE
IRON-COPPER COALITION AGAINST DREAD
Dread forces are engaged in civil war. Commanders of both iron and copper legions have signed a shatterpact for an unconditional ceasefire and a temporary alliance to launch a unified offensive against the dread.
This announcement will be etched across every township from Borenbunk to Farburrow. Everyone over the age of fourteen, clever or clunk-brained, is—as of this morning—officially invited into wartime service.
Report to Drockraven Outpost. Falcon transports run twenty-four-hour passage from every township.
“Isn’t this a good thing?” Jed asked. “To have them all fighting the dread?”
Lyle shrugged. “Like Zix said, they won’t see you, me, or any of the dragonflies as any different.” He moved away, and Jed followed, glancing back at the signs one more time as they left.
Lyle took them from shop to shop, buying small, expensive parts for the Endeavor. He’d brought a cart full of batteries, which were slowly being swapped for engine parts. As they bartered with shopkeepers and edged around finagling junk wranglers, Jed began to wish they had more time to spend in the township. He liked being around the bustle of humans.
“Aren’t you going to spend those batteries somewhere?” Lyle asked offhandedly, crossing another item off their list.
Jed had forgotten about the batteries in his pocket. “I don’t know what to buy,” he said.
Lyle nodded toward a shop called Trisky’s Trinkets. “Why don’t you try there?” He pointed to another gear shop across the street. “I’ll be in here.”
Jed walked to Trisky’s Trinkets and opened the little glass door. Copper chimes clinked above his head as he entered.
“Welcome,” a portly woman said. “Can I help you find anything?”
“Just looking around,” Jed said.
“Well, let me know if you need any help.”
Trinkets—piano keys and spoon wind chimes, light bulb wall hangings, mismatched boots decorated with marbles and chess pieces—were everywhere. Each new trinket he found made Jed smile all over again.
Jed turned the corner in the shop and spotted a glass jar with a copper dragonfly inside. The little dragonfly had intricately designed wings made from tiny bits of wire and metal. The wings were attached to a body made from a long, copper battery.
“Battery bugs,” the shop owner said behind him.
“What?” Jed asked.
She shook the jar, but the lifeless dragonfly only bounced around inside. “Hmm…” she said. “Looks like this one’s got a dead battery. A charged bug will glow and flutter around. I’ll give this to you for half price if you want.”
Jed thought of Alice. He wanted to get her something for saving his life. At half price, he had just enough batteries. Maybe he could charge the bug and get it working again. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
She put the battery bug in a paper bag for Jed and thanked him for his business. He wanted to linger. He wanted to ask her about herself, to find out which trinket was her favorite…what she liked best about living in Lunkway…if she had a battery bug of her own.
You’re not one of them, the voices said again. They’ll hate you if they know what you are. Go back to where it’s safe. Go back to the Endeavor.
He opened his mouth anyway to ask Trisky if she’d always lived in Lunkway. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Yes, dear?” she asked.
Jed shook his head. “Nothing. Sorry.”
He walked out into the street and watched as people passed, suddenly feeling alone despite the crowds. He didn’t belong here, but the Endeavor didn’t feel like home either. Where did he belong? Jed stepped into a quiet alley off the main street to gather himself together. In the stillness, he dropped his backpack and leaned against a wall. He hung his head, thinking. A shuffle of motion inside his bag caught his eye. A strange noise followed.
Zzzort.
Jed froze. Was that a voice?
“Hello?” Jed said.
Zzzort!
Jed unzipped his bag and pulled out Sprocket. She stared at him with her rust-stained face and her bolts for eyes. “You’re talking, aren’t you? Because of me? Did I make you come alive?”
He suddenly felt incredibly foolish, standing in an alleyway talking to a can. He was probably going crazy.
“Crazzzy,” Sprocket said.
Jed
Once Lyle had traded his cartful of batteries for two cartfuls of supplies, they headed back to the Endeavor, each pushing a heavy cart. As they walked the long dock to the ship, Jed stared longingly at the township. Part of him wanted to stay there and forget that a hundred thousand dread were running loose in the junkyard. Even if Lyle helped him fully develop his powers, Jed doubted he could stop them.
“When we’re back in the air,” Lyle said, “I want you to meet me in the training box.”
“So you can throw more junk at me? Sounds super fun.”
Lyle sighed. “We’re running out of time. My dragonflies report that the dread fleet is still hunting us. They’re going to catch us if we just keep flying around in circles. Help unload the carts, then go to the training box. Immediately.”
“Aye, aye, All-Powerful Admiral, sir.” He gave Lyle a mock salute.
Lyle ignored him and stomped ahead.
Jed sighed. What if he just left the Endeavor? Looked for Shay and Ryan and Bog. They didn’t seem like the monsters Lyle had made them out to be. But what if Lyle was right? What if they were after him? Maybe for his powers? Maybe for something else.
Jed met the crew inside the Endeavor and unloaded the carts. While the crew worked to get the train in the air, Jed replaced the dead battery in the battery bug he’d bought for Alice then found her in her cabin tinkering with one of the gears in her wings.
“Hey,” he said.
She looked up and set down the screwdriver she’d been using.
“How was your little shopping trip?” she asked.
Jed shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” He pulled the battery bug out of his pocket. Its gree
n glow filled the cabin. “I got this for you. For, well, saving my life, I guess.”
Alice’s face softened from its usual hard-edged snark, and she gave him a genuine smile. “Thank you,” she said, taking the battery bug from him, and studying the bright glow.
“I gotta meet Lyle for training, but…thanks again,” he said.
By the time he made his way to the training box, Lyle was already there.
The man set a wooden box on the floor.
“There’s a bolt inside this box,” he said to Jed. “I want you to rally it to yourself.”
“I thought we already played the rally-the-bolt game,” Jed said. “And, I sort of remember winning.”
Lyle sneered. “Just because you got lucky once, doesn’t mean a thing. If you can’t perfectly control your sparks on command when shatterfire isn’t being launched around you, how can you expect to do so in the middle of a war? Besides, this exercise is different. Your sparks are more powerful than you can imagine. They connect you to the junk—no matter how close, or how far away. Even if you can’t see it.”
“What does that mean?” Jed asked.
Lyle nudged the wooden box with his toe. Something rattled inside. “There’s a metal bolt in this box. You can’t see it, but it’s there. I want you to close your eyes and use your sparks to connect with it. Let your sparks see it when your eyes can’t. Once you link to it, rally it toward you.”
Jed wanted to argue, but he remembered the strange sensation while in the iron forest. It was as if thousands of eyes all around were watching him. “I’ve felt that before,” he said.
Lyle nodded and pointed to the box.
Jed stared at the box, trying to see through the surface.
“Close your eyes,” Lyle said again. “Your sparks will be able to see it much, much better.”
Jed tried, but he couldn’t see anything.
“With my key,” Lyle continued, “you will be connected to everything around you. Say you want a fresh egg, but there’s none around. You’ll be able to reach out with your sparks and find one—no matter how far away.”
Jed thought back to when Lyle had taught him how to poach an egg. For the first time, Lyle’s key felt just the tiniest bit tempting.
He shook his head. “I can do this on my own. I don’t need that key.”
“You can’t,” Lyle said, more bitter whisper than actual response.
Come on…Jed thought to himself. Don’t let Lyle be right….
He tried again, gently letting the heat warm through his sparks. Eyes closed, he could only see blackness. But after a few moments, he could sense something. Not the bolt, but a million different somethings around him. The connections deepened, and Jed began to feel lines linking him to everything.
“What’s the problem?” Lyle asked, breaking Jed’s concentration.
Jed opened his eyes. “I was…I was starting to see something.”
Lyle shook his head. “Don’t make things up just to impress me,” he said. “The bolt hasn’t moved. It’s not working. If you can’t move the bolt right now, I’m using the key.”
“No!”
Lyle’s teeth clamped together. “We don’t have time for this. You either can, or you can’t. And it looks like you can’t. So we’re done trying.”
“We’re not done trying,” Jed said. He reached out his hand and felt for the bolt still inside the box. It was there. He knew it. Heat rushed through his sparks and something began to rattle inside the box. “I’m doing it!” Jed said, excitedly. “Look!”
Lyle looked nervously at the box. “Congratulations,” he said dismissively. “You wiggled a bolt around inside a box. That’s exactly what we need to win the war.”
Angry heat welled inside of Jed. “I did what you said. I don’t get it. It’s like nothing I do is good enough. It’s like you want me to fail.”
“How about we see just how strong you think you are.” Lyle studied Jed, then walked away. He left the box and shut the door behind him.
A light in the center of the ceiling flickered on above Jed. It was an odd yellow, almost amber color. It began to rotate. A siren began to blare.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Jed called.
A clang echoed below him. The floor shuddered underneath his feet. Jed stared down as a sliver of white light appeared, running the length of the floor from one end of the box to the other—straight down its middle.
“Lyle?” Jed called again. “What’s going on? Something’s happening to the floor.” No answer came from behind the closed door. “Lyle!” he shouted. His eyes flickered back and forth between the sliver of light and the door. Somewhere in the belly of the Endeavor, its guts began to grind, and the sliver of light widened.
Jed’s heart raced.
The two halves of the floor were folding open away from each other underneath him, as if the box were a garbage chute emptying its cargo into the open sky.
The two halves of the floor continued to split, and the sliver of light grew wider. The angle steepened. Jed stumbled toward the center where the floor parted. Wisps of clouds rushed beneath him, blurring the junk below into a heap of brown and orange.
“Lyle!” he shouted. “Lyle, I’m going to fall!” His legs were split across the gap. A couple inches more and the floor would be too far apart for his feet to reach both sides.
The boxcar door opened. Lyle stood in the doorway, arms folded. “Do you still feel just as arrogant as you did a second ago?”
“Get me out of here!” Jed yelled.
“Get yourself out of there,” Lyle said. “Rally your body to the training box’s ceiling and you’ll be just fine. Better yet, rally your body over here and join me for some cordon bleu. It’s dinnertime.”
“This isn’t funny. I’m slipping.” Jed’s shoes could barely grip the unfolding panels anymore, they were so far apart.
“I’m not laughing,” Lyle said. “Rallying a bolt isn’t going to save the world. You’re acting like a baby by not letting me unlock your true potential.”
“Is that what this is about?” Jed said. “That key again?”
“If you want to win, you’ll have to make sacrifices.”
“That’s not your choice. It’s mine.”
“But I’m the one standing next to the lever that holds your fate,” Lyle said, a sinister tone to his voice.
“You can do whatever you want to me,” Jed said, “but I’m not letting you touch me with that key.”
Fury burned in Lyle’s eyes. He gripped a lever by the doorway and pulled down hard. Jed’s stomach clenched into a knot as the floor disappeared from underneath his feet. He didn’t even have time to scream. He sucked in a half breath and waited to plummet from the Endeavor.
But he didn’t fall. He stayed there, hovering.
Terror, relief, and confusion swelled inside him.
Clouds rushed past them over mountains of junk. And yet, Jed remained in place. “How?”
Lyle stared at him. He blinked. He stared again.
I’m doing it, Jed realized. I’m rallying myself to the ceiling.
And in that moment, Jed could feel it. The bond between him and the metal roof. That link was the only thing keeping him from falling into the sky. Jed reached for the link—that connection—and tugged.
His body shot up and slammed into the ceiling. He stuck to the panel of metal as if every inch of his skin was glued to it.
“Shut the doors,” Jed yelled.
“No,” Lyle said. He should have looked pleased at Jed’s success, but he looked frustrated instead.
“Close them!”
Lyle cocked his head. “Why?”
“I passed your test.”
“My test? This wasn’t a test.”
“Well, whatever it was—I passed. Now shut the doors so I can get down!”
“If you’re as strong as you think,” Lyle said, “then you can stay up there for much longer. Let’s see how long.”
“I don’t want to. Shut the doors.�
��
As Jed held his body to the ceiling, the heat he’d felt in the iron forest crept once again up his spine. It diffused through his body like molten metal. “I’m burning up,” he said.
Lyle shook his head slightly, as though breaking whatever train of thought had kept him quiet.
Heat coursed through Jed. It was boiling him from the inside out. Jed closed his eyes. He slowed his breathing as much as he could while stuck dangling to the ceiling of an open train car.
He pulled in a deep breath and let it out just as slowly.
In…out.
In…out.
A recognition washed over him. He took more breaths, in and out, in and out. He saw something. A faucet…a valve…something. It connected his brain and his chest. Sparks inside him radiated with energy, leaking bits of power, heating his bones and gluing him to the top of the box. He reached for the valve and twisted. The valve shut off. The flow of energy stopped.
Jed’s body peeled away from the ceiling and he began to fall out of the bottom of the train car.
He reached for the valve again and cranked it open. His body slapped back up against the top of the box with a deafening thud. Pain and heat rippled through him. “That wasn’t smart,” he mumbled to himself.
His body throbbed, but to his surprise, Jed didn’t want Lyle to shut the doors. He wanted the doors to stay open forever—to stay there in that moment forever. This feeling of power was unlike anything he had ever known.
It was exhilarating. He could control the flux valve.
Lyle reached for the lever to shut the doors.
“No!” Jed shouted. “Keep them open.” The thrill, the rush overwhelmed Jed. He lowered himself slowly away from the ceiling and straightened his body until he was standing upright. He hovered in the middle of the boxcar and smiled at Lyle, thrilled by his breakthrough and expecting to see pride in Lyle’s face.
Lyle stared back at him. Instead of pride, Jed saw something he hadn’t seen before: jealousy. And in that look, Jed realized something critically important: Lyle wasn’t on his side.
Jed’s mind snapped to Shay and Ryan. Had they been on his side all this time?
He felt his vision begin to slip away and bond with Shay’s until he could see through her eyes again.
