Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (35 page)

Luz rolled her eyes and walked over to the pile of debris that had been Rudolf. She pointed to it and said, "This, you mean? It doesn't look to me like he has a car anymore."

She expected Fizz to agree, but he was still staring at the wreckage. For once, he had nothing to say.

But I'm his advocate,
she remembered.

"You should let him go," she said. "We should let him go."

Before her father could respond, the chairwoman called him closer. They exchanged a few murmured words. Then she said, "The young man is no longer a danger to our community, or to the earth. He's free to go. This meeting is at an end."

Luz's father added, "He must go."

The council members rose, and the people in the crowd stood and milled around, everyone talking about what had just happened. Luz spotted her father approaching, and then she saw her abuela shake her head to stop him from coming nearer.

Luz thought about what she had learned from her father about making and repairing things. She thought about what she had learned from her mother about scavenging. She thought of the stories told to her by her grandmother of gliding across an ocean's wave.

Luz went to Fizz. She put her hand on his shoulder, whoever he was. "I know where we can get some parts," she said.