Elementary

by Mercedes Lackey

  Daisy squealed with delight.

  “Hush, child,” Mr. Cash said, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket once again to dab his forehead. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Oh, I promise, Mr. Cash. I promise not to tell a soul.”

  And there, in open daylight, Mr. Cash taught Daisy how to clear her mind, and how to think about a leaf, and then how to ask a tiny favor from an Air Elemental.

  The touch of magic felt light to her. It was like cool fire—she could feel it, but not touch it. After the power built a bit, Mr. Cash had her focus on a leaf on the ground, and then had her hum just bit to get a rhythm going.

  And then she did it.

  Can you imagine?

  She, Daisy Mae Fuller, made that leaf move with her little gust of wind.

  • • •

  And that’s how she managed to be in the corner of the Wright brothers’ shop, serenading a feather and making it do the dusting dance. This was fun, but one feather did not a dusting machine make. She needed more. She looked at the duster, realizing she had several more feathers at her disposal.

  So she plucked another and she added to her song, asking the Elemental to take that feather from her hand and dust with it, too. Which it did.

  She sang and sang, and was having such a grand time that it was several minutes before she noticed all the other feathers in the duster had loosened and were dancing and dusting, too. What a miraculous sight it was! The windows were sparkling, and Mr. Taylor’s workbench was soon going to be free of ash from his pipe and from those big cigars he smoked. He would be so pleased!

  She danced and pranced and clapped with such joy as she might never have felt before. She did a two-step, and she waved her arms about like she was a conductor in a grand hall, leading a parade of feathers as they dusted their way around the shop. She raised her hands and wiggled her fingers in celebration, and the feathers joined her, shaking themselves out and becoming ready to do it all over again.

  She kept her voice up, of course, humming and singing a symphony so that the dusting would continue as she wandered around the shop. She picked up a rubber mallet and felt its weight as she pounded a beat on the bench. She spun a gear wheel, listening to its chain rattle and rasp. Everything she touched made its own sound and moved to its own rhythm, and everything she did added to the music. The feathers kept on dusting while she rolled bearings and twirled sprockets and fiddled with that odd sort of thing Charlie had called a self-oiler.

  She wasn’t sure what it was that finally caught her attention, but when she looked up, Daisy saw a plumey cloud of dust had gathered in the center of the room and was starting to swirl like a tiny tornado. The air smelled like a touch of lightning, and Daisy heard a rumbling chuckle that might have been the Elemental itself. The cloud looked almost exactly like she imagined a sandstorm from the Arabian Nights might look, except it was black and brown rather than orange and yellow.

  “Stop!” she yelled.

  But the cloud still billowed, the air still swirled, and she could still hear gears and chains grinding.

  “I’m not singing anymore!” she yelled again, feeling ice-cold fingers of panic across her back.

  The feathers were still dusting, but now they moved out of the bicycle shop and into the Wrights’ flying lab. Sheets of butcher paper filled with penciled drawings rose up like laundry on the line. One of the kites tumbled to the floor. Every tool or piece of machinery in the shop was lifting up now, or screeching and rattling.

  “Stop it!” she screamed again as she ran through the shop and grabbed papers out of midair to clutch them to her chest. “I said stop it!”

  Windows. Maybe opening a window would help. But it was as if too much air was inside the shop pressing on them, and she couldn’t get one to budge.

  The cloud grew more forceful.

  Small nails flew in its grasp now, nails and grommets and bits of other things that came from workbenches. She saw Mr. Taylor’s pipe and Orville’s favorite pen. That’s it, she thought. They were going to kill her.

  Her eyes lit on the wind tunnel.

  If she could get the engine going, maybe it would suck up all the air, and then she could gather up all the papers.

  Daisy ran to crank the engine.

  It didn’t start, so she cranked it again.

  Nothing.

  She looked around. What could she do? Nothing. Nothing. She was doomed. She had been silly to think she could do this. She was only ten. And worse, she was a girl, a girl mucking around in an adult world where she clearly didn’t belong.

  And look what she had done!

  Tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t want to cry. Yet despite her resolve, a tear ran down her cheek. She gritted her teeth and grabbed the starter one more time. She hit the choke and pulled as hard she could pull.

  The engine coughed once, then caught. The belt loop turned, and the big wooden blades of the fan slowly twirled up to speed. She had never been so happy to hear a machine run at any time in her entire life.

  With a huge whoop, she pushed the box to get the fan pointed at the cloud, which was now heavy and black and whirling with such force that she could see loops of wire and old saw blades flying around the room. All that wood and metal all bolted together was heavy as a rock, but if she strained and pushed and hit the wind tunnel hard with her shoulder, she could nudge it here and there. The front end slowly came around to suck air away from the cyclone. Daisy put her back into the effort, pushing so hard, she thought her eyes might pop. Then she got to the back of the box and pushed some more, shoving the entrance deeper into the cloud.

  And it seemed to work.

  An advertisement wrapped itself around the fan blade for a moment, then disappeared into the tunnel.

  Stuff flew into the box, bigger things clunking against its walls. She looked at the far end of the tunnel and saw a paper flutter out onto the floor for her to pick up.

  Yes! It was working!

  Then the wind tunnel sucked in a kite wing that got tangled with the fan blade, and wedged it against the box. The engine choked and died, and the whole thing came to a shuddering halt.

  “No!”

  Daisy clawed at the kite to get it unstuck. She cracked a fingernail, but couldn’t dislodge the fan blade. Air pressure grew once again as she scraped and pulled.

  But the wind tunnel was broken.

  Daisy was done.

  She heard the Elemental chuckle again as the whistling rose around the room. Force grew so great around her that she worried the roof might blow off.

  Then the door burst open.

  It was Mr. Cash, wearing his suit pants and a jacket, but not his customary bowler. His cheeks were red as cherries against his white face, and his hair stuck out at wild angles. He stepped into the room and sang his own song.

  The cloud stopped swirling. Debris clattered to the floor, and the shop instruments stopped grinding.

  “What in the blazes are you doing?” Mr. Cash yelled, striding across the shop with angry little steps. His hand clamped over Daisy’s shoulder with strength enough that it hurt. His dark eyes glanced around the shop with a nervous twitch. He spoke from deep in his throat. “I told you to be careful.”

  The door opened from the other side of the shop.

  This time it was Wilbur—with Orville trailing right behind.

  Wilbur stepped to Daisy’s side and forced Mr. Cash to release his hold. Blood flowed through her shoulder.

  “That’s a very good question, Artemis,” Wilbur said. “What is happening here? Do we need to call the sheriff?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Cash said, brushing dust off his jacket and straightening his vest. “I ran over to help this young lady.”

  Wilbur took in the disaster around the room. Tools were scattered everywhere, and half the shop was covered in lo
ose-leaf paper.

  “I see,” he said. “And just how did you know she was in such dire need of your help?”

  Mr. Cash looked like a dog that had been caught digging in Mama’s tomato garden.

  “We told you to stay out of here,” Wilbur said.

  “I can’t let you fly,” Mr. Cash said between gritted teeth.

  “You can’t stop us, Artemis. We’ve been through this before. Not you, and not these suppliers who seem hell-bent on ruining half our plans. No one. Only God himself can keep us away from solving this little flying problem. And if it’s not us, it’ll be somebody else. You need to relax, stop using little ones like Daisy here to do your dirty business, and realize there’s enough sky for all of us.”

  Mr. Cash pressed his lips together.

  Wilbur shook his head.

  “I think it would be best that you leave, Artemis. Or else I believe we will need to call the sheriff.”

  Mr. Cash drew a breath through his nose, then walked tersely out the door.

  “And you, young lady.” Wilbur looked down at Daisy. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wright,” Daisy said. And then she spewed a long string of words that rushed out like water through a hose, and that told the entire story of her snooping and spying and how she learned enough magic to call the Air, but how the feathers got to dancing and the papers flying and the tools and . . . by the time she got to the end, she was crying a river of remorse.

  “I feel so awful, Mr. Wright. Just awful. I wouldn’t blame you at all if you fired me and told me to never come back!”

  “Will?” Orville said. He was leaning over the window that looked into the wind tunnel. “You want to take a look at this?”

  Wilbur joined his brother at the window. Then they both peered into the entry of the wind tunnel, where spoke wire, paper, and a hacksaw blade had gotten all wrapped up together and stuck.

  “Did I break it?” Daisy said. “I’ll pay for it if I did. I’ve got a lot of nickels, and I can work harder.”

  Wilbur bent down in front of her. “No, Daisy Mae. You didn’t break it. In fact, that saw blade got stuck in just such a way that it made the air smooth out as it went through the tunnel. Come on and see.”

  He walked her to the window. “See how all the dirt you sucked up left patterns on the wall?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “See how they’re straight lines here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those are air-flow paths,” Orville said from the other side of the tunnel. He had a dopey smile on his face. It was the first time she had ever seen that kind of expression on Orville.

  “The lines,” Daisy said, looking up at Wilbur with wide eyes. “They aren’t messy. You said before that the air was too messy. But these lines are straight.”

  “That’s right,” Wilbur said. “We were having a problem with turbulent air.”

  Turbulent. The air was turbulent. Daisy liked that word. It sounded right for what it was, and it made her mouth move just like it did when she said Kitty Hawk.

  “That blade,” Orville said, “seems to have straightened some of the air flow right out.”

  “If this is right,” Wilbur said as Orville finished, “we’ll be able to test all the models we’ve been wanting to test. So you see, Daisy, your work tonight might have helped us solve this little flying problem once and for all.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Oh, we’re mad all right,” Orville said with an edge to his voice. “Look at this mess.” He reached down and picked up his pen.

  Wilbur nodded. “Daisy Mae, you’re going to have to do two things if you want to keep your job.” He stopped and looked at her. “Well, make that three.”

  “Yes?”

  “First, you’re going to have to work as long as it takes tonight to get this place picked up. Charlie will be mad as a hornet if he comes in to a messy shop tomorrow morning.”

  “I already planned to do that, Mr. Wright.”

  He smiled. “Second, from here out you have to promise not to tell Artemis Cash about our work.”

  “I already planned that, too.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What’s the third thing?”

  “The third thing is the most important.”

  Daisy swallowed hard.

  “The third thing is that you have to promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll never stop making mistakes.”

  “What?”

  “You made a big mistake tonight, Daisy Mae. No doubt about it. But you’ve got the dreaming disease. I see it in you every day. You’re young, and you need some learning. But the world needs folks like you, people with interesting questions and ideas who are willing to make mistakes, so long as they’re also willing to clean up after them.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wright.”

  Wilbur rose up and ran his hand over the wind tunnel, then looked at Daisy with a sideways glance.

  “But you’re so much trouble, I’m thinking we’d best keep our eyes on you throughout the day. So whenever you’re not in school, I’m thinking we’ll need you to come and help us out while we test these models. Don’t you think that’s wise, Orville?”

  Orville raised his eyes to the heavens, as if asking powers that be for forbearance.

  “You mean it, Mr. Wright?” Daisy asked, stunned. “You mean I can come help you with the flying contraption?”

  Wilbur laughed. “On one more condition.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, crestfallen.

  “You have to remember to call me Wilbur.”

  “Deal!” she said, squealing with delight.

  * * *

  Over the next two months, Daisy learned there is as much magic to staying true to a dream as there is in spells or staffs or pixie dust. She heard people snickering about the Wrights, and about her work. But she didn’t care.

  Every day she got up early and went to the shop. When school started, she left, then came back and stayed late to clean. By October, Orville had the tunnel working, and they took to testing. There were wings that got twisted, and wings with droopy backsides. There were blocky models, and models with two wings and with three. There were models made of wood, and of canvas stretched over frames, and models made of metal that Mr. Taylor would pound into various shapes. Daisy helped set up the tunnel, and she cranked the engine. And sometimes she wrote down information in the logs.

  By the time the leaves turned red, the Wrights were ready to test their glider once again.

  “Wilbur?” Daisy asked one day.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think I could go to Kitty Hawk with you and Orville?”

  He smiled. “I think you’ve earned that, Daisy Mae. But I’ll have to ask your daddy and your mama first.”

  She knew then she was going to Kitty Hawk.

  The rest of the day she found herself imagining the contraption flying over flat sand. That night she dreamed of smooth, looping pictures of air streams, and in that dream, if she squinted just right, she could see those streams flowing across wings as she piloted the contraption on a flight over mountains of gold and forests of pure green.

  A Peony Amongst Roses

  Gail Sanders and

  Michael Z. Williamson

  Mei-Hua Walsingham sighed wistfully. She enjoyed her position at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, working with the rainbow of flowers and riot of decorative shrubs. But sometimes she missed the Harton School. Sometimes she missed it more than she missed her parents, which was distressing.

  She took that uncomfortable discovery to her parents’ shrine in the corner of her boarding room. Lighting some incense, she sat in front of the little Chinese table that she had so carefully arranged. It held a white peony and the official portraits Mrs. Harton had located for her onc
e her memory had returned.

  “Mother, Father, it’s not that I don’t miss you, but I know that you’re still here watching over me. It’s just that you’re not a part of my life, and the school became my home after you both were murdered. I miss my friends, and I miss Memsa’b and Sahib Harton. I found a place there, but I’m still not sure that I’ll find one here.”

  It had all come out in a rush, because she had to say it, and had no one else to say it to.

  A little breeze caressed her check, but it could have been just from the open window. That it smelled of her father’s pipe tobacco and her mother’s white peony perfume rather than the London air was also surely a coincidence. Feeling strangely comforted, she rose to her feet and prepared for her day.

  She had challenges ahead.

  * * *

  Last May, the King had died.

  There was nothing to be done about it. He smoked heavily and had been ill for months. It was not related to the previous Elemental attack on His person, but Mei felt hurt just the same. He had been gracious to her, had offered the financial support and the position she now enjoyed, unheard of for a woman, much less one of mixed blood.

  He died clutching one of the peonies she’d had delivered to the Palace to protect him. They were the legacy of her parents and could ward against evil. They couldn’t ward against simple ill health and old age.

  Now in the present, her peonies were being moved to a new location by the Pagoda. It had been built by an Englishman a century and a half before, and while it appeared to be a pagoda at a distance, up close it was obviously English and not Chinese. It was half native, half foreign, and out of place. Mei realized that description could apply to her, too.

  She had to coordinate the move with Mr. Burkill of the Herbarium. He wasn’t trained in magic and hadn’t been given all the details of the peonies’ power, but he knew they were special and essential to the Royals, and he accepted them as his charges. The peonies weren’t famous, but they were noted in several high circles. That was enough for the staff.

  “Good day, Miss Walsingham,” he greeted her. “Are we ready to start the move?”