Steampunk World

by Sarah Hans (ed)

  Veronica folded the letter in half, and moved it back into the safety of its envelope. Margarita, stunned at the notice and attention of someone outside her family, managed to murmur what she assumed was agreement. Veronica again smiled, leading her by the hand from the reception room. Lunch was indoors, bemoaned by her hostess as they listened to the ever-strengthening rain slapping against the outside world with ferocious speed. The wind was just as fierce, and Margarita felt her heart sink when one of the de Fonseca servants entered the dining room. The maid’s expression of concern raised an equal measure of uncertainty in Veronica’s face. “What is it? Is Isaac—“

  The maid shook her head. “No, Signora. It is the storm. We fear flooding, and must tell you not to go forth till the storm passes.” Veronica looked at Margarita, noting her expression of alarm.

  “You may stay here tonight, Margarita, if the storm has not passed in time to get you home. Your family has always been welcome in our home, and that has not changed.” Veronica’s grave expression lightened. “Now, you said you help Caterina with the art of the needle, and I am sure I can find you something in the house to pass your time.”

  The younger woman nodded numbly, returning to the meal as Veronica did, after dismissing the maid. Her appetite diminished, she spent her attention on answering Veronica’s questions about her own household skills, troubled by her sudden stranded status in the Ghetto Vecchio.

  * * *

  Fears of flooding rose as fast as the tide did. The storm steadily worsened as the day progressed, and Margarita bent her head over foreign fabric and thread, assisting Veronica in the assembly of garments for a Torah. Each tiny stitch took her further outside of herself and her concerns. When Veronica informed her she would have to stay the night, she barely acknowledged the distressing news, her senses anchored in her fingertips, and each small stitch. Her Uncle had once told her that her father had been the same, writing in his books without any hearing of the world outside his pen and paper. When Veronica spoke of dinner, she shook her head.

  “I feel quite poorly, Signora. I am so sorry.”

  Veronica leaned from her seat, and placed a hand against the young woman’s cheek. “You are cold. Would you like to go to bed for a time, and see if your appetite returns?”

  Margarita nodded, swallowing as a wave of nausea passed through her stomach. Veronica placed her in a room near the top of the house, alike in placement, but not quality, of her room at her aunt’s house. At home, she slept in a small room away from everyone; a blessing to the house in recent weeks, for the distance muffled her screams.

  Here, the chamber was equipped with a bed that all but swallowed her, that smelled of unfamiliar spices that offered a strange comfort. She was asleep within a few, deep breaths, moments after she had lain down. Once again, Margarita was watching the great, monstrous metal device advancing on the gendarmes and the mercenaries, smelling the blood already bathing the battlefield. She saw the copper and iron of the machine, even as she stood in the tip of its shadow beneath the smoke-streaked sky.

  She knew this thing. Not how or why, but she did know its sounds and sighs, and once again a porthole opened, and the cacophony of culverins began, explosive force that would come for her and rip her ap—

  Veronica was there at the bedside, gathering Margarita up in her arms as the younger woman choked, fighting for air under the weight of her own dread. She rocked her, murmuring against her ear, snatches of almost-familiar lullabies drawing her back into the waking world, heart slowing its painful pounding inside her chest. Margarita withdrew from her embrace, wiping tears from her eyes. “I apologize for the noise.” She sounded breathy, shaken, even to her own ears.

  The older woman shook her head. “Screams from a bad dream are preferable to screams over an intruder.” Veronica patted Margarita’s hand.

  “It must be quite fearsome, to cause such a strong girl to scream. Would you like to speak of it?”

  Margarita raised her head, eyes widening. “I…” she licked her lips, aware of the dryness of her lips and mouth, throat tender from screaming. “I’ve never spoken to anyone about it.” Veronica curled her hand around Margarita’s, squeezing it.

  “You can cure the dream.” Veronica was silent for a moment. “I’m sure your aunt would have taught you. Hatavat chalom. Tell me. Tell others. Let us tell you of the good in it, so it will not haunt you or come to pass as truth.”

  With great hesitation, Margarita began to speak. “It starts with a blue sky, full of smoke, and the sounds of a great battle…”

  * * *

  Margarita left the de Fonseca home, under-slept but heart lightened. The lightness sank as she took in the sight of the flooding that came in the night. Though the high waters had receded, damage and watermarks remained. She had been told once of a flood from when she was a child, too young to remember. She listened to people as she walked back, from the streets of Ghetto Vecchio to her own Ghetto Nuovo. The flooding, and the storm, had stopped just short of dawn.

  She bore a basket of pastries from Veronica for the Contanto residence, and told the story of her overnight stay in the de Fonseca home in distracted bursts. Her cousins wanted to know about Veronica’s dress, her manners, and the inside of her house. It took Caterina reprimanding them to let her attend to her sewing in peace, turning Veronica’s words over and over again in her mind.

  It is about the will of the Lord, Margarita. You do not see the victors or the cause of the battle because only the Eternal King can determine our fates.

  If she wished to complete the ritual to make her dream better, she would have to tell it two more times. She pricked her finger as her hands stumbled, struck with fear at the thought. Not even Caterina had asked about the nightmare’s content. If she could not tell her aunt, who else could she tell? It was another three nights before the answer came to her, in the smiling face of her newly returned uncle. She would tell Abram Contanto, and trust that he would have the wisdom to give her proper counsel.

  Perhaps counsel strong enough to end the dream. Margarita waited through the affectionate greetings of her cousins and aunt for Abram, and the hours of stories, two meals, and the return of her cousins to their beds before she would brave his study to talk to him. Margarita knocked softly on his study door, entering only after her bid her to do so.

  He removed his glasses, restoring the ordinary appearance of his eyes, as he leaned back in his chair. “How is my little Rita?”

  She dragged one of the small stools in the room to sit beside him at his desk, taking a deep breath. “I…I have been having a bad dream, since you left.”

  Abram raised his eyebrows. “A? Only one dream?”

  “Every night, Uncle. And it repeats. It is always the same.” He watched her unhappy visage, nodding in silent encouragement. “I dream of a battle. There are mercenaries, and foreign armies. They lay siege against a city, and everywhere trembles under the weight of the siege engines and the fighting. The air is full of smoke. The sky is blue.”

  “Have you been reading histories while I have been gone?” At her expression of surprise, he chuckled. “I know you come to the study sometimes when I am not here, to read. It is not love stories, so I let it be.”

  She shook her head. “No, Uncle. Not histories or love stories. There is…” she raised her hands, trying to summon the machine of her nightmares. “…a machine. A terrible machine, like none I have seen. With walls of copper and iron, and it moves on many wheels and hums with fire and gears.”

  Abram’s expression grew somber. He placed a hand on her own. “And this machine?”

  “It rolls over the men on the battlefield. It is tall, and casts a long shadow. It’s…the face of it opens, and many culverins fire from within it. And I wake screaming. Convinced I am in front of it, and about to die.”

  They sat in silence as Abram withdrew his hand, thinking. After a time, he nodded to himself. “Perhaps it is about the power of a people. A community.” He kept his gaze locked on her f
ace, looking into her eyes. “One people, united, can do great and fearsome things, Rita. They can protect things others would steal from them.” Abram gently placed his hand upon her shoulder. “Is that all you wished to speak of?”

  After a moment, she exhaled, looking down into her lap. “I know it. I do not know how, but I know the machine.”

  “You believe you have seen it before?”

  Margarita struggled to breath, to think, forcing herself to lift her head. “Uncle, I think I may have made it. But I know not how such a thing could be.”

  “You have studied the books of science and mathematics in my study, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ask me about the wonders I have seen in the world, and the news of new science?”

  “Yes, Uncle, but what does th—“

  Abram held up a finger. “Rita. You have not had the same life your father had, you have not been an artist distracted by science before. But you have his talent for drawing, for thinking. For wanting to know. Tomorrow, I will send a servant to fetch you art supplies. You will draw this machine. Perhaps that will cure your dream, and convince your soul that it is but a fancy, not a thing to be achieved in form.”

  * * *

  Abram was good to his word. Their servant came and went before the Sabbath, and the package sat in her room under the miniscule excuse for a desk beneath her small window. There was plenty of moonlight, and the house was asleep. She knew that even though they did not cleave to things as strongly as others might, that to take ink to paper on the Sabbath would cause even Caterina to frown.

  This is why she was as quiet as she could when she opened the package. She weighed a long piece of vellum down, and began to draw. Not the battle or the bloodshed. But the machine. Abram had not misspoken; she did know mathematics and science, far more than many women did. But she could not make sense of how such a machine could work. Yet still, she drew. It was massive, long, a fearsome expanse of metal. Details came to her that she had never fully recalled after the nightmare and those too she rendered on paper.

  She had little knowledge of metalwork, and only slightly more about the use of gears, and soon Margarita’s head swam with questions, questions she committed to another piece of paper. She crawled into bed hours after the house had fallen asleep, and by morning she clawed her way out of her bed linens, gasping, sweat soaked, and thankful to be alive. She had dreamt of the culverins again, somehow visible when they had not been before.

  To draw it was not the cure.

  * * *

  Abram had begun taking time every night to grill her about the device, and her slowly changing nightmare. Each night she would pray, before lying down in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. No more did she feel an unequal opponent to the nightmare. It still scared her, terrified her deeply, but with Abram’s support she went to bed each night to fight with it. Jacob had survived wrestling an Angel. She could survive battle with a brutal dream, challenge it to give her details. But two weeks after his return, a gilt-touched envelope arrived from the de Fonseca house. Isaac was home, and Veronica wished to invite them to dine at their home in honor of her brother’s safe return. Abram only laughed when Margarita muttered a complaint, head bent over a book they had begun to study, on the construction of ancient siege engines.

  “Why do you not wish to go, Rita?”

  She sighed forcefully, before gesturing to the book. “This is important. Why is dinner with the de Fonseca’s more important than this?”

  “Because they are our people, and we must celebrate our survival whenever and wherever we can.” He squeezed her shoulder, and shook his head as she went to question him. “No, Rita. We shall end early tonight. Go rest, for tomorrow is a different kind of labor.”

  * * *

  The dinner included not only the de Fonseca siblings, Margarita and her aunt and uncle, but a few men she did not know as well. She and Caterina were introduced to Justefino Rosso and Mordechai Bellini. Margarita spoke little over the dinner, concentrating on the strange currents in the air around them. Caterina knew neither man, but the blithe way her aunt spoke to them was an illusion, a distraction to keep them from noticing her shaking hands and the tight set of her shoulders, something Margarita expected no one outside their household to know. Abram kept looking at Isaac de Fonseca as if he could speak to the man only with his eyes, which held something close to anger or contempt. Veronica plied her wits against both her aunt and Justefino, and as the dinner dragged on, Margarita was increasingly certain he was not Venetian—perhaps not even Italian.

  Despite her discomfort in sensing she was missing something, she did her best to speak when spoken to, and say little else. When they each came to say goodnight to the de Fonsecas, Isaac looked as if he wanted to say something, but held it back. He gave Margarita a brief smile instead.

  “Thank you, for the company you gave my sister while I was absent. It means much to me, that she finds friends in Venice.” Margarita’s brow furrowed, she summoned a sincere, but bewildered thank you of her own, claimed within moments by her aunt and uncle for the return home. The shadows were not yet long, but they made haste regardless. The smallest glance back over her shoulder revealed the figure of Veronica at one of the front windows, but soon both house and womanly shadow were concealed by the turn of the street. She tried to put the strange evening out of her mind, but Abram sending her to bed once they returned home, and the odd dinner, preyed upon her mind.

  She paced her small room for some time after dressing for bed, trying to discern the meaning of the many things left unsaid at the dinner, and the few that had been given voice. Her nightmare was splintered and disorganized, without insight and left only with a ringing in her ears. She went straight to her needlework after dressing for the day, shrugging off Caterina’s concerns with a shake of her head.

  “Work will clear my head, Aunt. Please let me work.”

  She bent her head back down before Caterina could protest, listening with only half her attention to the household rising from its nightly rest. Mouthing the words with her head bowed over her sewing, she thanked the Eternal King for returning the souls of their household to them, and for allowing them to rise refreshed to greet another day. She prayed infrequently, following Caterina’s example in that regard, but the dream was still not cured, and perhaps prayer would help where other things had failed.

  With that thought, she paid no more heed to her surroundings, jarred from her productive haze by the sound of distant shouting. Her cousins were themselves loudly talking with their mother, and the vibration of the nearby argument was a brief tremor in the air between their breaths. She left her needle gently hooked on her project, and excused herself with little ceremony. Her shoes were soft on the floor, following the few simple turns and stairs toward the now considerably quieter study of her Uncle. She hesitated at the door, straining her ears to listen, unsure of the words, only Abram’s tone—both angry and pleading.

  Margarita raised her hand, knocking twice about the door with her knuckles. Instead of sending her away, her Uncle opened the door, yanking her in and shutting it behind her. Across her Uncle’s desk sat Isaac de Fonseca. He looked under-slept, skin swept with ashen pallor beneath his dark color. He looked upon her like he had never seen her before, as if she were not an orphan ward, but something strange and unknowable.

  Margarita drew her shoulders in, unconscious of her need to become smaller. “Uncle?”

  Abram pointed at Isaac, the gesture accusatory, his tone a venomous hiss. “He does not understand my concerns about the country, Rita. Tell him. Tell him of the dream.”

  She pressed a hand against her middle, opening her mouth to plead, but Abram’s look in her direction stopped her. Whatever was going on, his anger, rare to appear, would not vanish unless quenched. Unless she yet again repeated her dream. Margarita leaned against the door, forcing herself not to sag inward. She focused her eyes not on the fury of her Uncle’s form, but on Isaac’s face. His eyes were also full
of anger, but concern came with it.

  Concern for her?

  “I have a dream. I…it has come for weeks. Every night. Even in your home, when I was unable to leave the night of the flood.” Her breaths felt uneven beneath her clothes, as if her hammering heart would tear forth from her chest and stain corset and chemise alike beneath her burgundy gown.

  “There is a battle. Pitched and brutal, Italians against French.” She felt her eyes water with unshed tears, unsure of why it felt so difficult this time, the third time, in the telling. “There is a machine. It casts a shadow upon the battle. And it grinds, with wheels and gears. It is a towering thing of copper and iron, and I know not how it is propelled. But it moves forward, and crushes men beneath it.” Isaac rose from his chair at her words, his look to Abram both betrayal and confusion.

  “It does not stop. It keeps on going forward, and a—a hole opens up in its front. Inside there is steam, and warmth, and culverins. Perhaps a dozen. Firing as one.”

  Silence. Her heart felt as if it would stop, before Isaac finally spoke. “Perhaps it was a dream of conquest over a great challenge.” He looked at her, as if desperate for this interpretation to be agreed upon, and save them both from further words. Abram’s tone was harsh in answer.

  “You know what she dreams of, yet you still insist on looking away.” Margarita looked between both men, light headed from speaking, the unceasing pounding in her chest.