Read Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables Online
Authors: Stephen L. Antczak,James C. Bassett
Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables
Clockwork
Fairy Tales
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, June 2013
Copyright © Stephen L. Antczak and James C. Bassett, 2013
See
page 326
for author copyrights. All rights reserved.
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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Clockwork fairy tales: a collection of steampunk fables/
edited by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61408-2
1. Steampunk fiction, American. 2. Fairy tales. I. Antczak, Stephen L., 1966–
II. Bassett, James C.
PS648.S86C58 2013
813’.0876608—dc23 2012029669
Designed by Sabrina Bowers
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
La Valse
BY K. W. JETER
Fair Vasyl
BY STEVEN HARPER
The Hollow Hounds
BY KAT RICHARDSON
The Kings of Mount Golden
BY PAUL DI FILIPPO
You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens
BY JAY LAKE
Mose and the Automatic Fireman
BY NANCY A. COLLINS
The Clockwork Suit
BY G. K. HAYES
The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the
Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas
BY GREGORY NICOLL
The Mechanical Wings
BY PIP BALLANTINE
by K. W. Jeter
BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN)
“T
he problem,” said Herr Doktor Pavel, “is that we gained our empire when we were young. And now we are old.” With a great iron spanner in his hands, he turned to his assistant and smiled. “What could be worse than that?”
“I don’t know.” Anton felt himself to be a child, when hearing of such things. “I’m not as old as you. At all.”
Around them, in the Apollosaal’s basements, the machinery wept. Even though they had both spent the better part of a week down there, in preparation for this evening’s grand events, still the miasmatic hiss and soft, plodding leaks prevailed over their efforts. The tun-shaped boilers, vast enough to engulf carriages and peasants’ huts, shuddered with the scalding forces pent inside them. Their rivets seeped rust. In the far-off corners where the theatrical scenery was kept and more often forgotten, pasteboard castles sagged beneath the threadbare fronds of a humid jungle of ersatz palm trees.
“Age, like wealth, is but a mental abstraction, my boy.” The doctor peered at a creaking armature above his head, adjusting
some aspect of it with a miniature screwdriver, skill as precise and surgical as though his title were that of a physician rather than an engineer. “And nothing more. People fancy that God loves them—and consider themselves and their kind exceptional as a result.” He wiped his pale, egglike brow with the grease-smeared lace of his shirt cuff. “If such fancies were gears and dreams cogs, I would wind this world’s mainspring tight enough to hum.”
Anton didn’t know what that meant. The doctor was of an obscure and poetic persuasion. He took the screwdriver from the hand held toward him, replacing the tool in its exact slot with the greater and smaller ones on either side.
“Will? everything be ready By tonight?” Anton thought that was more important to know. If the ballroom’s mechanisms were not completely functional and satisfactory when the guests arrived, then the doctor and he would not be paid, resulting in a cold and hungry New Year’s Eve for them.
“Not to worry.” The doctor picked up his tool bag and moved on. He tapped a lean forefinger on a set of calliope-like pipes, each in turn, flakes of rust drifting onto his vest as he bent his ear toward them. Just as a physician counterpart might thump the chest of a tubercular patient, to assess how long he had to live. “No one’s merriment will be impaired by the likes of us.”
In winters such as these—were there any other kind anymore?—Anton limited his hopes to that much. If one managed to get to the first muddy, thawing days before actual spring, then there was a chance at least. Of something other than this. Something other than the dank, hissing basements under the ballrooms and palaces of that finer, fragile world above. Far from the sharp-toothed gears and interlocking wheels, the pistons gleaming in their oily sheaths, the ticking escapements wide as cartwheels, the mainsprings uncoiling like nests of razor-thin serpents. He could take Gisel out beyond the apple orchards, their branches still black and leafless, no matter that it would cost him a day’s wages and her a scolding from the head housekeeper. What would it matter if both of them would go supperless that
night, bellies empty as their aching arms? Lying on straw-filled pallets far from each other, gazing out cobwebbed attic windows at an envious moon. Remembering how the ice at the roots of the sodden grass creaked beneath the back of her chambermaid’s blouse, his face buried in the gathered folds of her apron. Smelling of honey and lye, her hand stroking his close-cropped head as she turned her face away and wept at how happy she was. If only for a moment.