Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables Read Free Page B

might have taken her there and wrapped his arms about her as they lay on the brown-spotted straw heaped in one narrow corner. He might have kept her safe there as they both waited for the cold year to turn, the snows to melt under spring’s desperately longed-for advance. They had both whispered plans to each other, that he might break from the doctor’s drudging employ, that they both might flee from the city and live on wild apples and snared woodcocks turned on rudely fashioned spits, the two of them crouched around a small fire’s blackened stones….
    Even if it had been just for one spring and summer, before the first chill winds inched through the hills—they would at least have had that much. Which would have been enough, or at least enough to tell each other so. But now they wouldn’t. He turned his head, looking over at the doctor’s slumped form. They never would.
    Heavy with resolve, Anton stood upright, pushing the wooden box aside with the heel of his foot. For a moment, he looked around himself at the churning machinery, the levers and pistons pumping away at the linkages to the ballroom above. If he tilted his head back, he could see small bright glimpses of the light from the glittering chandeliers, interrupted by the quick, relentless motion of the dancers, swirling in their courses from one end of the grand space to the other.
    He watched and listened, then turned toward the valves and gauges spanning the basement’s walls. He reached out and grasped one of the small iron wheels, hesitated a moment—then twisted it as far as he could, until it could open no farther. Each of the valves hissed at him as he did the same to them. When he was done with the last, he stepped back, listening to the machinery shake faster and faster. Clouds of scalding vapor filled the chamber as he turned and made his way to the stone steps leading even farther below.
    The stokers turned their silent gaze toward him. The flamesbeyond the iron doors glinted on the sweat and soot of their naked chests.
    “More,” said Anton. He brought his own gaze from each man to the next, one after another. “Higher.” He raised his hand and pointed to the furnaces behind them. “All you can give.”
    They looked about at each other, then back to him. First the closest one slowly nodded; then they all did. A time had come that the stokers in their chains had thought would never come to them. They turned away, thrusting the blades of their shovels into the heaps of coal, hurling one load after another into the mounting flames.
    Even before Anton retreated onto the steps, he felt the dizzying heat wash over him as though it were the tide of a fiery ocean. He brought a forearm across his eyes, to shield himself from the vision of suns bursting to life inside the furnaces.

    H e found Gisel at the back of the crowds outside the Apollosaal. The townspeople pressed their faces close to the high-arched windows, gaping through the blood-spattered glass at the whirling scene within.
    “Don’t you want to see them?” Gisel pulled her rough woolen shawl tighter about herself. This far away from the columned building, the snowflakes remained unmelted, clinging to her golden hair. “You told me you never liked them, either.”
    “I don’t need to,” said Anton. That was true—when he had come up from the basement, he had walked through the grand ballroom. He had stayed close to the wall to avoid the caged figures of the nobility, whirling about in the interminable courses through the glittering space. Impelled by the unleashed machinery protruding from the floor’s gaps, the corseted men and women moved with such velocity that the slightest impact might have sent him sprawling unconscious.
    At the sudden noise of the windows shattering, he wrapped Gisel in his arms, turning his back toward the Apollosaal and shielding her from the shards of glass. There were at least a fewpeople in the crowd whose faces were nicked by the bright flying