The Tinkerer's Daughter (4 page)

It wasn’t until we were well out of town, speeding across the frozen ground with scarves wrapped around our faces to protect us from the icy snowflakes that I found the courage to speak. I did so reluctantly, uncertain of whether Tinker was still angry with me. I pulled my scarf down under my chin so I could speak.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

“I know,” he gave me an understanding look. “All of this, this trouble, it’s not your fault. It’s not about you, not really.”

“But those people… Analyn, she hated me.” I said. “It’s because of my ears, right? Because I look different?”

He gave me a sad look and paused before he replied, as if he were trying to find the right answer. When he finally spoke, it was a very unexpected question. “Do you know where your father is?” I shook my head. It had been a month since he left, and the memory was still painful. Until then, Tinker and I had never spoken of him.

“He went to war. Do you know what war is?” I nodded. I had heard the word, and was familiar with its meaning in a naïve sort of way. “Astatia, the kingdom of men,” he continued, “has been at war with the Isle of Tal’mar for centuries.”

“So my father went to fight the Tal’mar?” I asked. “Why?”

Tinker chuckled a little. “That’s a very intelligent question,” he said. “Too bad more people aren’t smart enough to wonder the same thing. There are different reasons I suppose. Territorial disputes, vengeance killings, anger over past wrongs. It seems men can always find a reason to kill one another. But in truth, I doubt anybody remembers how it got started. Humans and Tal’mar are so different, maybe there’s no greater reason than that. Maybe two peoples so different can never get along.”

“But we get along,” I argued, and he smiled.

“That we do. But we’re both very, very smart.” We both laughed at that.

We were quiet for a few minutes while I thought it over. Then I had an epiphany. “Analyn shouldn’t hate me for being Tal’mar,” I postulated, “because I’m human, too!” It seemed perfectly sensible to me that I should have friends on both sides of the conflict. After all, I was both sides. Human, Tal’mar… if anyone should have been able to get along with both races, it should’ve been me.

Tinker took a deep breath. “Analyn and the others don’t hate you, Breeze. Not exactly, anyway. When a human looks at you, they see your ears. They don’t care about who you are inside, because on the outside you look like Tal’mar. To them you are Tal’mar. That makes you the enemy, and possibly even a spy. So they fear you, and mistrust you.

“Unfortunately, the Tal’mar will do the same if you ever meet them. You may have their ears, but you’ve got the build and coloring of a human, so they won’t trust you either.”

It was a lot for a child my age to absorb. I considered what he’d said, and a thought occurred to me. It was a desperate thought, the sort of idea that only an innocent child could conceive. “What if the war was over, Tinker? Maybe then they wouldn’t hate me.” Tinker sadly shook his head.

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Breeze. There’s been talk of treaties and such over the years, but nothing ever came from it. The distrust runs too deep, and has been ingrained into peoples’ minds for too long. The humans and Tal’mar hate each other. They always have, and they always will.”

I shivered, not from the icy windborne snowflakes that cut into my face, but from the coldness that was growing inside of me. How could I have been born into a world so cruel? I’d started out knowing nothing about the world, and had found that the more I knew, the more I hated it.

I didn’t like feeling that way. I didn’t like the hopelessness that was gripping me, the promise of a future full of loneliness and rejection. Then something happened. It was like a switch got flipped in my mind.

I’m going to change things
, I decided.
I’m going to find a way to make them like me. I’m not going to live my whole life like a hermit in the mountains, even if Tinker says I will. Someday I’ll be able to go to town, maybe even live there…

And I was off, dreaming about changing the world in ways that no one with any sense would have ever bothered dreaming. Little did I know that in setting such high hopes, I was making my inevitable defeat even more painful. But I had the mind of a child, and the ability to hope and dream bigger than anyone. And why not? No one else stood to gain or lose as much as me, the half-breed.

I didn’t bother telling Tinker of these thoughts because I knew he wouldn’t agree. I just kept them hidden inside of me, sowing them like carefully tended seeds. I became convinced that someday, when I was smart enough, I could change things. Someday I wouldn’t be Breeze the half-breed, I’d be just another person… just like everyone else.

I was wrong, of course. I could never, ever be just like everyone else.

Back at the cottage, I went inside to make dinner while Tinker unloaded our winter supplies. When he came through the front door, I already had bread warming on the stove and the soup was boiling. “Breeze, that smells wonderful!” he said. He tossed his old coat and scarf on the hook by the door and came into the kitchen rubbing his hands. I smiled, but I was lost in thought.

I had been learning to cook because it gave Tinker more time to work and at the same time gave me something to do, especially since the weather was cold and my long walks outside were getting shorter by the day. There really wasn’t much to do, other than reading from Tinker’s collection of old books and journals. Unfortunately, these were almost all nonfiction sciency type stuff. The books were filled with words I didn’t know, about things I didn’t understand. Needless to say, none of it was very interesting.

It didn’t take long to figure out that Tinker’s home was just not designed for children, and especially not for a girl. I longed for things that I couldn’t even begin to voice, and I knew Tinker wouldn’t understand. Still, he did a lot for me, and I was grateful for everything I had. Without Tinker, I couldn’t imagine what my world would have been like.

I was quiet as we sat down to eat. Thoughts of what happened that afternoon were still churning through my mind. “Breeze, I’m sorry to have told you all that I did,” he said. “You’re too young. I should not have been so blunt.”

I disagreed, but I didn’t bother to argue. I had other things on my mind. “Tinker, what is school?”

He stopped chewing with a piece of bread crust hanging out of his mouth. He looked me up and down, and then swallowed awkwardly. “Well, I don’t really think you’d be interested in that. It’s very hard, and very boring…”

“Does it make you smart?”

“Well…” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I suppose it helps. Nature makes you smart, but knowledge is something you can use. But I really don’t think you’d like it.”

“Because I’m a half-breed?” I said. He froze, eyes darting around the room in search of an answer. There wasn’t one, of course. It was an unfair question, designed to shut him up. It succeeded.

“Let me go to school,” I said. “I’ll cover my ears, I promise. No one will ever know. You have to let me go to school, Tinker. You have to let me learn!”

He leaned back, his eyes searching the ceiling. When he looked back at me, I saw anger on his face. “Don’t ask me about this again,” he said flatly. He rose from the table and stomped out the door, slamming it behind him. I stared hard at his half-eaten bowl of soup.

It didn’t take much thinking to figure Tinker out. He was trying to protect me. He’d never spoken to me in real anger, not even when I almost blew up the barn. The fact that he’d become angry with me now just told me one thing: he really loved me, and he was terrified of what might happen if I went back into a public place.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have it in me to live out my life as an uneducated hermit. I was going to learn, no matter what it took. I was going to get smart, and I was going to change the world. I was audacious enough to believe it, too. Fortunately it takes that kind of audacity to accomplish anything significant. Naturally, I started planning.

Over the next few days I showed a renewed interest in Tinker’s work. It was a genuine interest, because I was truly fascinated by the mechanics of his trade. I was especially curious about two of the inventions I had already encountered. He refused to teach me about the exploding rocks, but he was more than happy to teach me about the steam engine.

He cleared a section in the barn and set up a large table where we could assemble a smaller version. This required a great deal of fabrication, and in the process I learned a lot about soldering and welding. By the time our project was finished, I was practically his apprentice.

Winter had blown in with a vengeance, leaving us more or less stranded in Tinker’s little homestead. There was a well-trampled path between the cottage and the barn, but if I stepped off to the side I quickly sank up to my hips in the snow. My long walks in the woods were out of the question now, and not just because of the weather. Tinker told me of beasts that lived in the mountains to the north, about the winter wargs that came with the north wind, traveling in packs that would murder an entire herd of livestock in the night, leaving nothing but bloodstained snow to be found at dawn. And then there were the bears, great grizzled creatures that could swallow a man whole; and the trolls, the green-skinned wild men who raided villages and farms all along the borderlands every winter.

All of this talk was more than adequate to keep me within the confines of our homestead. In fact, it was enough to give me more than a few sleepless nights as well.

Fortunately, our steam engine project occupied so much of my time that I hardly even had a moment to worry about wargs and trolls. I had to keep the forge and foundry warm, I had to prep the molds and file the castings. In those days, everything was made at home, right down to the steel. The engine block, the pistons, even the piping was machined right there in Tinker’s barn. And I helped, every step of the way.

All along, I continued to question Tinker about school. I did it subtly, with simple questions here and there when he was distracted by his work. I asked where the school was, and got the angry response that it was down by the river, but that I didn’t need to know and not to ask about it again. I waited a few days before asking who the teacher was. To my surprise I learned that it was Analyn Trader, the woman who had discovered my secret. Suddenly I understood why she’d been so adamant that I should be in school. I wondered if she still felt that way, now that she knew I was a half-breed.

I went on like this for weeks, dropping my questions here and there, trying to wring information out of Tinker. I squeezed at least a little out of him every few days, but not much.

Gradually I got a feel for what school was and how it worked, but in the end I was no closer to getting there than I had been at the beginning. Then one day, news that would change my life forever came right to our doorstep. It came in a very surprising form.

We had completed the engine and we had it running on the table. It was our first test-run, and Tinker and I were observing it for any problems. It chugged away, occasionally hissing and puffing out little clouds of steam, but working exactly as it was supposed to. Tinker adjusted a gauge and then asked me to check a release valve. I reached for a screwdriver but froze as I heard an urgent whisper in the back of my mind. It confused me at first. It had been weeks since I’d spoken with the trees, and for a moment I doubted whether I’d really heard anything. Since the snow had started falling, the trees had all seemed to be sleeping.

The message came again, one word: “Warning!” It was an urgent whisper that seemed to tease at the edges of my perception. I stopped what I was doing, and let my mind reach out. The word came to me again, this time louder than before. “WARNING!” I raced over to peer out through the crack between the doors.

“Someone is coming,” I whispered. I saw a slow moving, horse-drawn carriage coming up the trail. The two horses pulling the thing had worked up a froth getting to the top of the hill in the deep snow, and I felt sorry for them.

Tinker pushed past me and whispered, “Stay here!” He stomped out across the snow with a heavy wrench in his hand. It looked like he was prepared to use the thing as a weapon.

Then, as the carriage got closer, I was disturbed to recognize Analyn and her husband. I immediately began to panic. Had Analyn betrayed me? Had she brought others, perhaps a sheriff or even an angry mob? My mind went to the trees, asking them if they’d seen more people coming. The response was a lethargic drone that I couldn’t understand. I persisted, trying to rouse the trees from their slumber and eventually got a “no,” though I couldn’t be sure if it was an answer to my questions or just an attempt to shut me up.

Analyn and Daran spoke to Tinker in hushed voices for several minutes. The tone of their conversation changed as they spoke, but I could scarcely hear a word of it. Their voices were somber at first, then after a few moments, they started to rise in anger. Then they got themselves under control, and managed a civil “farewell,” before leaving. Then the carriage went rolling back down the hillside, and silence blanketed our homestead once again. Tinker came plodding back to the barn with his eyes downcast.

“What did they want?” I asked as he entered.

Tinker went over to the table, and slumped down on a stool. He sat there for some time, fiddling with our motor. He tightened up a few bolts with his wrench and polished the brass and copper pipes with an old rag. I asked him again, and still he ignored me. I was starting to get angry. “Why won’t you tell me what they wanted?” I shouted. “Did they come to tell me to leave? Are they going to kill me?”

“No one’s going to kill you,” he said. He tossed the wrench down on the bench. He still wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Breeze, your father is dead. He was killed in an ambush six weeks ago.”

I felt a chill moving across my skin as I heard those words. It had been close to three months since I’d seen my father. In the life of a Tal’mar child, that might as well have been three years. I had grown in that time, enough that Tinker had started stitching together pieces of his old clothes to make dresses for me.