The Tinkerer's Daughter (11 page)

He said he had a few ideas, but nothing concrete enough to discuss it. He promised that by the end of the week, we would have another test flight. I was disappointed. I wanted to get back in the air right away, even if it wasn’t practical. I couldn’t wait to experience that feeling again.

Over the days and weeks that followed, Cinder and I quickly became best friends. She slept on my chest from the very first night, and followed me everywhere during the day. I found I had a sense for when she was getting into trouble, even when I couldn’t see her. All I had to do was think of her and she would come running. It was a type of companionship that I hadn’t known before. Cinder didn’t care if I was human or Tal’mar; she didn’t even know the difference. Unfortunately, not all of my relationships were progressing so perfectly.

After my conversation with Terra, my attention at school was distracted, to say the least. She showed no outward sign that we had ever spoken, of course. I wasn’t surprised by this, but I was disappointed. It had almost seemed that she wanted to be friends. The truth was that she had had not sought me out with her warning. She only brought it to me at a time when it was safe and convenient. I had to wonder if she ever would have said anything if I hadn’t appeared at her family’s farm.

I stole glances at Jesha Miller and Shue Tanin, trying to discern if there was any truth behind what I had been told. To my dismay, I soon realized that it was all true. Several times I caught the older girls whispering and staring at me. I also began to notice the way that Robie smiled at me when I glanced at him, and the way he always seemed to be putting on a show. I began to wonder if his abrasive personality was really his way of trying to get attention.
To get my attention.

All of this made me understandably apprehensive, this palpable tension building between my classmates and me, but I kept the problem to myself. I feared that Tinker might yank me out of school at the first sign of trouble. I feared it so much, that I didn’t even talk to Mrs. Trader about the situation. Instead, I forced my fears to take a backseat to my studies, and told myself that eventually the problem would go away. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

As the weight of my social problems settled on my shoulders, my mood started slipping. There were two thoughts that kept me going during those moments, when I was sitting at my desk, wishing to be anywhere else. The first was the thought of my lovely pup, who would be waiting for me at the end of the day. The latter was a promise Tinker had made to me. On Saturday, I would fly again. I found myself waiting and wishing for that moment, as if my escaping into the skies would solve all of my earthly problems. I was jolted back down to earth on Thursday when Analyn told me she had received a response to her letter.

It was another of those embarrassing, uncomfortable moments. Analyn called me aside as we were filing out at the end of the day. Robie shot me a glance but refrained from teasing for once. Shue and Jesha gave me toothy grins as they shoved past. They must have been thrilled, thinking that I was in trouble. After we were alone, Analyn showed me the letter.

“I’m afraid it’s not much help,” she said. “My relatives didn’t know your father personally, but they knew of him. They were as saddened as everyone else to hear of his death. They don’t know of him having any close family in the Borderlands, but they promised to ask around.”

My heart sank. I was crushed by this news. I thanked Analyn and left in a dark mood. On the way home Tinker asked what the matter was and I hardly had the strength to tell him. I wasn’t crying or emotional, though. It was more like I was broken, like I had nothing left. I had to force every word to come out, and I had to force every breath into my lungs. For the moment, I could hardly think of a reason to go on.

When we got home, I went to bed without dinner. I trudged through the next day as if I were a mindless zombie. I was so disheartened that I didn’t even care about the fact that Jesha and Shue were now openly taunting and teasing me. Whatever they were doing or thinking seemed totally unimportant. As did everything else.

Then the weekend came and, to my dismay, I realized quite suddenly that I was glad to be
away
from school. How had that happened? My greatest dream was slowly turning into my worst nightmare, not because of anything that had happened, but because of my fears of what
might
happen.

Making friends was not something I’d have thought impossible. How wrong I was. Now I found myself watching my back constantly, with no way of knowing what those girls might be capable of. That distracted me from my studies, and my waning attention led to other difficulties with my performance. I realized for the first time that I didn’t even care about going back to school.

It was a quiet thought in the back of my head; something I didn’t fully realize until I was enjoying the rush of wind in my face and the unbroken aerial view that seemed to go on forever. I was zooming back and forth along the plains, straying ever further from the safety of my little valley. Cinder was tucked into my jacket, with her tiny nose poking out into the wind. I knew it was dangerous, bringing her with me, but she had refused to stay on the ground.

I tried to leave her with Tinker, but she kept wriggling out of his arms and jumping onto the plane with me. Ultimately, I decided to take a short ride with her, hoping it would frighten her. To the contrary, Cinder was perfectly happy riding along with me, even when the ride was painfully rough. So I took to the skies with my pup companion tucked safely into my jacket.

I circled the field at the mouth of Tinker’s valley a few times and then made a broad arc, reaching several miles to the east. I went so far so fast that I didn’t even realize how far I’d gone, until I looked for Tinker and found I could no longer see him. That set my heart to thumping, so I headed back in his direction.

Ten minutes later, I was back over familiar territory. I waved at Tinker as I passed overhead. My confidence grew as I flew. According to the meter Tinker had installed next to the controls, I had only used a fraction of the plane’s power.

Tinker had gone through an extensive redesign of the power system. The controls still worked much the same as the original version, but the plane was no longer powered by one large spring. It was powered by four. Tinker had realized that he had overbuilt the original spring, making it heavier than necessary. The new, lighter version was not only more efficient; it also consumed less space and required no extra reinforcement.

Ultimately, the plane had more power and was capable of traveling much greater distances. If necessary, Tinker said I could even shut the fan down and glide for miles at a time.

I tested my flying abilities a little as I became more confident. I went into steep dives and then forced the plane to climb almost straight into the air. I paid close attention to the gravitational forces as they pulled on the airframe, and I made careful note of the effect of the wind changes against the wings. Ultimately, I was quite thrilled with the results. The plane seemed capable of some very daring maneuvers. Things I wouldn’t dare try.

The higher I climbed, the more exhilarating the ride became. The air was cool up there, and I could see for hundreds of miles. I had long been tempted to fly over town, but I had resisted for fear that I might be recognized. Eventually, I realized this was not a danger. I was so high in the air that even if someone noticed me, they would not be able to tell me from a distant bird. As it was, Tinker’s valley and the river to the south were hardly specks in my vision.

So I began to explore new territory. I flew to the north and the west, following the river until it disappeared into the northern forests known as Riverwood. A city grew out of that forest, a place that I would later learn was called Anora. It was several times the size of Riverfork, though I couldn’t tell that from my vantage.

I headed east, and felt the gusting winds at the base of the Blackrock Mountains lifting me ever higher. Soon I was looking down across hundreds of miles of mountain tops. It was then, with Cinder tucked warmly into my jacket and the icy mountain winds blowing across my face, that my mind began to wander, and I realized I had made a mistake by going to school.

I had been so anxious, so eager to learn and so convinced that the knowledge I received there would help me change the world, that I didn’t see the foolishness of that dream. It wasn’t until I had my conversation with Terra that I started to realize the challenges that faced me. I couldn’t even make friends with girls that thought I was human. How would I ever convince them to love a half-breed?

More important was the realization that I didn’t even care. Looking down on the world as I was, I knew that I had complete and total freedom. There was no place I could not go; there was no one who could stop me. I had greater power and freedom than the mightiest king. In a few hours I could travel the span of an entire kingdom, a trip that could take days on horseback. I could see the entire world! What was school compared with that? What more could I ever learn from a book?

Unfortunately, this realization came too late.

It was late summer. I had been going to school for almost six months, and still hadn’t made friends in any significant way. I was still taking advantage of the opportunity to learn as best I could, but my studies were increasingly difficult as I faced growing animosity from the girls. I did my best to avoid Robie, but he persisted in trying to win my attention. This led the girls, Shue in particular, to become increasingly cruel towards me.

They began to make jokes at my expense, to talk loudly about me when they knew I could hear, and to play practical jokes on me. I sat down at my desk one day, only to find the chair had been unscrewed. I landed on the floor in a pile of books and notes. A few days later, I found a dead rat in my book bag.

This sort of thing went on for weeks before the situation finally came to a head. Ironically, the girls weren’t my undoing in the end. I was.

It was Monday morning. I had spent the weekend flying, of course. Tinker had made a few more improvements to the plane, the most notable of which was a self-winding mechanism. He had determined that it was not practical to require a steam engine to wind the springs on the aircraft, so Tinker devised a clever braking mechanism to perform this function. Whenever I landed the plane, I simply had to activate the braking gearbox. This series of gears would then manually rewind the springs. After some practice it was possible, if I landed with enough speed, to completely reset the springs.

After a pleasant weekend in the air, I was quite depressed to be back in school. I had finally accepted the fact that inevitably, I was going to have to leave school. The only thing that prevented me from doing this immediately was my fear of disappointing Tinker and Analyn. I ultimately decided to finish out the year, and simply not return in the spring. Fate it seemed, had other plans for me.

The children were all outside for our midmorning break when it happened. It was a pleasant day. The air was still cool with the morning breeze, and the schoolyard was filled with the sounds of children playing. Robie and the other boys were engaged in a ball game they called “Hunter.” The person with the ball was the Hunter, and it was his job to throw the ball and hit someone else. If he succeeded, that person was removed from the game. However, if the target caught the ball, then he became the Hunter and the previous Hunter was discharged from the game. Obviously, the last person with the ball was the winner.

The girls watched safely from the sidelines, cheering on their favorites and laughing at the boys who fell down and skinned their knees. In those days and in that culture, young ladies did not engage in that sort of activity. Judging from what I knew of them, it was probably for the best. Shue and Jesha would not have made good Hunters, nor would their fancy skirts have long withstood the rigors of such a game. I would have liked to try it myself, but I knew better than to push my luck.

At any rate, the boys were playing, and the girls were on the sidelines dishing out their moral support and mockery with equal aptitude. Naturally, Shue cheered loudest for Robie, while he kept stealing glances at me to be sure I was watching. I was not, of course. I was sitting alone on the school steps, reading.

Mrs. Trader came outside and blew her whistle, indicating that it was time to come inside. The children rushed over to the well for a quick drink of water before returning to their studies. Robie, being the largest and most obnoxious child in school, was naturally first in line. I didn’t pay any notice to any of this, until I heard Jesha’s scream. I put my book down and saw the children forming a circle next to the well. At their feet, I saw Robie’s body.

Mrs. Trader and I both broke into a run, and I arrived just ahead of her. I pushed through the crowd. Robie was lying on his back, foaming at the mouth. His skin had turned blue.

“Get back, everyone!” Mrs. Trader shouted. “Get back, give me room!” She knelt down, and felt Robie’s forehead. She looked at me. “He’s cool. There’s no fever.”

Robie’s body shook like he had hypothermia. I touched his neck, searching for a pulse. It was very weak. His skin was cool and clammy, and I could tell from the bluish color that he was starved for oxygen. I could feel something else, too. I could feel something inside of him.

I closed my eyes, and searched the images that went flashing through my mind. I saw Robie’s heart, straining against the poison in his veins. I saw his lungs filling with liquid, his internal organs seizing as the poison took hold. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. It was totally instinctive, just like when I had fixed Tinker’s leg.

I worked quickly. I had to get the poison out of Robie’s system before the damage became permanent. I ordered his pores to open, and I pulled at the toxin, commanding it out of his bloodstream. Green sweat poured out of him. I heard gasping all around me, but I wasn’t done yet. His stomach was full of the stuff, and it had to get out fast.