The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom Read Free Page A

was great,
theirs was, too. She’d lost a husband, but they’d lost their king.
    Gray tombstones dotted the hill behind the queen. They fanned
out on either side, crowding out any flowers that might have bloomed or
brightened the graveyard. They’d lost so many fairies in this strange new land.
    Adele watched the funeral procession wind its way from the
temple and through the village toward her. Like all things magical, her underground
kingdom had three focal points: the golden temple in the East for birth, the
graveyard in the West for death, and the dark brick palace, to the North, for
order and life. Far above them, the dugout ceiling emulated the night sky and
twinkled with half the light that normally shone there, another sign of what
they’d lost.
    The two other important locations in the kingdom stood empty
that day: the fields beyond the temple and the factory behind the graveyard.
Tradition insisted that no one in the kingdom work for at least three days.
Adele had given the order easily, though she’d hoped that the servant caste
would do some work with the time off. From where she stood, she could see
thatched roofs that needed repair, broken carts and rubbish blocking smaller
streets, as well as abandoned areas of the village falling into decay. She’d
heard the complaints: The servants were too busy working in the factory for
simple maintenance. Too busy drinking and
complaining , was what she thought.
    Six warriors carried Thaddeus’ body, including Bascom, their
chief. Although Thaddeus had been born into the royal caste, Adele came from
the warrior caste, so the warriors claimed him as their own. Each warrior had
one or more of Thaddeus’ clockwork pieces imbedded into his or her flesh, such
as a jeweled eye, a mechanical hand, or a piston-like leg. The warriors had
shocked the court by arriving at the funeral wearing only loincloths, cloaks,
and their fiercest paint. The younger royals had tittered nervously at such a frightening
display. Adele had immediately quelled all dissent. The warriors honored
Thaddeus as one of their own by their appearance. Too many in the court had
forgotten how fierce a people they’d once been. The royal caste no longer bred
tall and true.
    The only nod to current convention Adele had given was to
instruct the warriors to do their bloodletting in the privacy of the tomb,
after the others had left. Not all approved of, or wanted to honor, their
cannibalistic past.
    Following the warriors came the contingent of royals from a
fairy kingdom to the south, a place they called the Silicon Kingdom, after some
human reference. They towered over the warriors, thin and ghostlike. They had
arrived unannounced, three days before Thaddeus’ death, seeking an alliance.
Adele didn’t trust them. Fairies met only in battle, or afterwards, paying tribute.
She assumed they’d come to find the weaknesses of her kingdom. They wore
traditional garb: white glittering scarves flowing from their wings, silver
skirts, and pale blue jackets.
    Thaddeus’ apprentices and journeymen, led by Cornelius—Adele’s
best friend and closest confidant—trailed after them. Adele found their
somber, black silk coats, heavy brocade waistcoats, and white shirts
comforting. Goggles, perched one on top of another, sat on the crowns of their
hats. A number of gears and delicate tools hung from their pocket-watch chains.
Many pouches bulged on their belts.
    Adele’s own clockwork wings stirred, the familiar ache of
metal-on-bone flavoring her anger with fear. She’d refused all help, even her
regular oiling and polishing, since Thaddeus’ death. None of Thaddeus’
underlings was worthy of her patronage. Not that Thaddeus hadn’t trained them
well. All of them could copy a piece, once he’d explained to them, as well as
fix almost anything out of improvised and scavenged parts. None of them had
that spark to create, though, to design new machinery. Many had never passed
the final apprentice test: creating