Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Read Free

so—you can return to the time when your rabbit was still alive."
    Rose was delighted. She took the device from him and turned the dials, as he had shown her, to return her to that morning. Then she snapped the device shut. For a terrifying moment it was like falling down a well, everything hurtling upward and away from her. Then she was in her room again, the white rabbit in its cage, and she was no longer holding the time device.
    Delighted, she ran to the cage and opened it, lifting her rabbit out and cradling it closely against her, squeezing tighter until it went still in her arms. She loosened her grip in disbelief, but the creature was as limp as a rag. She began to sob again, but this time when her father came to see what was wrong, she didn't tell him. He didn't remember having shown her the time device and she was too ashamed to ask for it again.
     
    Jonah is shocked to learn that Rose is alone in the house, aside from the servant robots. He asks her endless questions: who is her father (he's never seen him, but he thinks he's heard his name before), how long ago did he leave her, when was the town destroyed, how does she eat, live, survive? She brings him soup on trays and sits with him, answering his questions, sometimes bewildered at his surprise. It is, after all, the only life she's known.
    In exchange, he tells her about himself. He's only eighteen, the youngest second lieutenant in the army. He lives in the Capital, which she has always imagined as a place with beautiful soaring towers, like a castle on a hill. He tells her its much more like everyone rushing everywhere very fast. He tells her about the library, where the shelves of books rise high into the sky, and you can reach them on floating steam-powered platforms. He tells her about the magnetized train that runs around the top level of the city, from which the clouds can be seen. He tells her about the dressmaking automatons that can sew a silk dress for a lady in less than a day and deliver it by pneumatic post. Rose tugs at the too-tight bodice of her own plain cotton childish dress, then blushes.
    "I would love to go there," she says, looking at him with enormous eyes. "To the Capital."
    "It's amazing what you've managed to do here, with the little you have," he says. "How lucky I was to fall from the airship so close to your doors."
    "I am the lucky one," she says, but so softly that maybe he doesn't hear.
    "I wish you could meet my sisters," he says. "They would be much moved by your heroism."
    Rose can barely contain herself. He wants her to meet his family! His love for her must be serious indeed. She looks up so he cannot see the delight in her eyes, and she catches a glimpse of glittering eyes watching from a panel in the corner of the room. Cordelia, she thinks, or Ellen. She will have to reprimand them about their spying ways.
     
    "You mustn't spy on Jonah," she says to Ellen. They are having soup in tiny bone teacups. "You must respect his privacy the way you respected Father's."
    "But where will he live when your father comes back?" asks Cordelia. "He will have to be put in a different room."
    "When we are married, we will live in the same room," Rose says grandly. "That is what married people do."
    "So he will move into your room?" Ellen's face is all squashed with disbelief: she is probably thinking of Rose's tiny bed, barely big enough for one.
    "Not at all," says Rose. "We won't be staying here once we're married. We shall go to the Capital and live there."
    There is an appalled silence. Finally, Cordelia says, "I do not think we will like the Capital very much, Rose."
    "Then you can stay here," says Rose. "Grown-up ladies don't play with dolls, anyway. And someone must watch the house until Father returns."
    She means the last to cushion the blow, but the dolls don't seem comforted. Cordelia sets up a wail that pierces Rose's ears. She hears running steps in the hallway, and the door flies open: it is Jonah, dressed in her father's