“Are you laughing at me?” I asked.
“Not at all. I just find this whole situation incredible.”
“Why?”
He slapped his hands down on the table and threw his head back, his face a mask of wonder. “Don’t you see what’s been going on around you? The men have been talking about you all day: It’s a good thing that girl showed up when she did. Have you heard, she’s a healer too! Does anyone know where I can find Breeze? I have a splinter!”
I burst into laughter as I listened to him mock the soldiers. “What’s wrong with that?” I said.
He slumped back in his chair, shaking his head. “Nothing. Nothing wrong, it’s just difficult to believe. It seems like Tal’mar and humans have been fighting since the dawn of time. Then you come along and, within a week, the entire world is changed.”
“It’s not just me,” I said. “This is what they all wanted. No one wanted to fight anymore. I just happened to come along at the right time. And it didn’t hurt that I had Tinker’s plane.”
“Yes, there is that,” he said with a distant look. “The world’s never going to be the same, is it?”
“No.” I could almost hear his thoughts. “I’m sure there will always be a need for good soldiers.”
“I suppose you’re right. To be honest though, it won’t hurt my feelings if we spend most of our time building roads and landing strips. That wouldn’t be a bad future.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes. The general’s mood was contagious, and I found myself wondering what the future might bring. He was right. Everything was going to be different. With peace comes prosperity, or so they say. If it’s true, then the future looked awfully inviting.
I glanced at Corsan, and suddenly found that I had the nerve to ask him a question I’d always wanted to. “General, how did you lose your eye?” I took a sip of water after asking this, and waited expectantly for his answer.
He smiled wickedly. “I had a terrible fishing accident.” I laughed so hard that water came out of my nose.
In truth, he’d lost his eye in battle. His shield had broken, and a Tal’mar arrow had nearly found its way into his skull. It was one of those things that he could have been bitter about; something that could have driven a wedge between the general and his new allies. But he was a better man than that.
The general was always first in line to greet Tal’mar dignitaries and offer them a handshake, and from that day forward I hardly ever saw him without a smile on his face. “War,” he used to say, “is at times an unfortunate necessity. But peace is a blessing that all people should have the luxury of taking for granted.”
Chapter 52
I finally made it back to Tal’mar, two days later. By that time, word of our success had already spread across the kingdom. The streets were filled with celebration and festivities. As I arrived, a throng of admirers surrounded me. I stepped onto the wing of my plane and they lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me through the streets.
Revelers danced alongside us as the crowd moved through the city. It became a parade as onlookers shouted and waved at me, and I waved back at them. It was both incredible and hugely embarrassing at once. I never was the type to enjoy being the center of attention. On that day however, I managed to live with it.
We made a full circuit around the palace walls twice before I asked my bearers to take me to Tinker. They happily complied, and within a few minutes, I was back at the park near the city gates. Tinker rushed up to greet me, along with my pilots who’d not yet had a chance to fly. Naturally, they were all eager to learn, and I promised that their lessons would begin the next morning.
Some of the Tal’mar woodworkers were there as well. To my surprise, they had decided that Tinker and his devices of steel and iron weren’t so bad after all. They had been advising him on the process of modifying the planes for power. The large plane that was designed for hauling cargo was especially going to present challenges. We were discussing this when the royal coach rolled up onto the lawn.
The guards leapt to the door and Princess Bresha appeared. She looked incredible, dressed in a lavender gown and wearing a jeweled tiara. One of the guards supported her hand as she stepped down to the lawn. She rushed over and threw her arms around me. That earned her a few raised eyebrows from the elder Tal’mar, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Breeze, you must come with me to the palace at once!” she said. She smiled broadly and put her arm around me, guiding me to the coach.
During the brief ride that followed, Bresha questioned me about every aspect of everything that had happened. I could barely answer each question before she asked the next. Then the coach came to a shuddering halt. I followed Bresha up the palace stairs and across the main hall.
“Where are we going?” I asked as the princess led me down a long hall.
“We’re going to meet the queen,” she said. I licked my lips nervously. In the time I’d spent with the princess, she’d never even once offered to introduce me to the queen. That left me with a sense of inferiority, a feeling that the Tal’mar queen considered herself too superior to allow me in her presence. I was, after all, a half-breed.
“Are you sure we should?” I said breathlessly.
“Of course we should, don’t be silly.”
We passed through a guarded doorway and into the throne room. The queen was there, alone except for the guards at the entrance. We crossed the room and stopped a short distance in front of the throne. Bresha bowed slightly, and I followed her lead.
“Is this her?” the queen said. I glanced at her apprehensively. She looked a lot like Bresha, except that her hair was lighter, almost red. She looked very young to be Bresha’s mother. But then I remembered that Tal’mar didn’t age the same as humans. She may very well have been hundreds of years old.
“This is her, mother,” Bresha said.
The queen rose from the throne and cautiously made her way down the stairs to stand in front of us. “This is the girl who built the flying machine? The girl who brought us a treaty and then exposed the conspiracy of Prince Sheldon?”
“This is the girl, mother.”
“Then this is my granddaughter?”
“Yes, mother.” Bresha smiled slightly -a careful and guarded look.
My jaw went slack. Their words became a buzz as I looked back and forth between them. “I… I don’t understand.” My voice was breathless, my heart drumming in my chest.
“I’m sorry Breeze,” Bresha turned to me and said. “I wanted to tell you sooner.”
I felt my legs giving out beneath me, and the princess guided me over to a sofa. I felt dizzy as I settled onto that delicate fabric. She continued.
“We had to be sure it was really you, and not some sort of deceit. And of course, I was afraid. Not for myself, I mean, but for you. The Tal’mar may have let a child like you live, but not as a member of the royal family. Not the daughter of their princess. But you see, all that has changed now-”
“You’re my mother?”
She nodded, her face apprehensive. “Breeze, please don’t be angry.”
I tried to push myself up, but found I didn’t have the strength. “I should go,” I muttered. “I’m putting you in danger.”
“Nonsense,” said the queen. “One thousand years of nonsense, and it ends today. The war is over, and so is the nonsense.”
Bresha stroked my hair back from my face, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I didn’t know I had been crying. I looked up into her face and saw that she was as well. “I’m proud of you Breeze. You have proven yourself a hundred times over. You are more than human and more than Tal’mar. You will be remembered as this land’s greatest hero. And you are my daughter.”
“My granddaughter,” the Queen added in a proud voice. “And soon the world will know it!”
Robie and the other pilots arrived that afternoon. The queen called for a feast, and she declared the entire week to be a holiday. She said that the land of Tal’mar
would celebrate the holiday every year, for all eternity, in gratitude of what I had done. And then she announced to the entire world that I was her granddaughter. She brought me out in front of the whole city, standing hand in hand with her and my mother, and made the declaration to thousands of shocked Tal’mar citizens. And then, as one, they began to cheer.
I felt something that I can’t quite explain. My heart pounded inside my chest, and my emotions ran from fear and exhilaration to pure undiluted joy. I looked out over the city and saw a collage of brilliant smiling faces. Tal’mar faces. Human faces. They stood next to each other, shouting and cheering as one, united by a dream and a belief in something greater for their combined futures. This was something that had never happened before. Tears of joy slid down my cheeks, and I wasn’t the only one.
After the excitement died down, my mother insisted that Tinker and I accompany her back to the palace for the feast. The rest of the pilots joined us, of course.
The Tal’mar were quite excited to spend time talking with Tinker about his inventions. Now that they had a good idea of how the airplanes worked, they wanted to know what else Tinker could build. Naturally, they were working to find ways of building all of these devices without metal. That was one area where humans and Tal’mar would always differ.
Chapter 53
Over the months that followed, I trained my pilots, and in their own ways, they trained me. We got to know each with an intimacy that I had never imagined. In essence, we became brothers and sisters, and in time, we could almost read each other’s minds.
Years later I would often look back on those days and wonder what might have happened if I had done things differently. There were a dozen times that I could have turned aside from my quest, moments that I could have taken the prudent course instead of the dangerous one. And I can say with the utmost certainty that if I had done this even once, the world would not have been the same. I’m not bragging or being arrogant, I’m simply stating it the way that I believe it happened.
I faced my fears and I refused to accept my fate. I chased my dream despite obstacles that seemed to be insurmountable. Eventually, I succeeded, and in the process, I changed the world. I’m proud of that fact.
The End
Epilogue
1,000 years of war had ended. As the rebuilding process began, the world around us began to take shape in wonderful and exciting new ways. General Corsan spent the next two years planning and building a bridge to connect the Isle of Tal’mar with the mainland. Meanwhile, I managed my fleet and pilots to both military and civilian ends. At times we were spies, at other times destroyers, but most often we were simply delivering mail.
For my part, I often met and accompanied members of royalty and dignitaries from city to city and country to country. I helped these people form alliances, treaties, and business partnerships. As these agreements came to fruition, the world around us blossomed. I watched as small towns like Riverfork grew into prosperous cities, and technologies like Tinker’s steamwagons and airplanes brought us all closer together.
Analyn never gave up teaching, though with my encouragement, she and Daran healed their relationship with King Ryshan. A few years later when the king died and Analyn’s older brother succeeded him, she thanked me for helping to bring them back together.
Tinker returned to his little valley, the only place he could ever call home, but I visited him there frequently. He also made annual trips with me to Tal’mar to visit with my mother during the solstice. We always exchanged gifts, as was their tradition, and Tinker’s gifts were always well received.
My mother and the Tal’mar nobles –especially their children-spent all year looking forward to the night that Tinker would arrive in his old airplane and deliver dozens of wrapped gifts containing the most incredible mechanical toys and devices.
In time, Tinker too became a legend.
*
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A note from the author:
Thanks for reading “The Tinkerer’s Daughter.” I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my work with you, and for your support, which allows me to have the best job in the world. If you wouldn’t mind taking a few extra minutes to post a review at Goodreads, Amazon, or your favorite e-book website, it would be extremely helpful and very much appreciated. Thanks again, and remember to look for the next book in this series, available now!- as well as my other titles listed below.
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Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to Tanja, Jeramiah, Mel, Jack, Lisa, Ian, Melissa, and all the others who’ve helped bring my stories to life.
The Tinkerer’s Daughter Copyright 2008 by Jamie Sedgwick
Artwork Copyright 2011 by Timber Hill Press
Published by Timber Hill Press
ISBN-10: 1460982290
ISBN-13: 978-1460982297
All Rights Reserved
All characters and situations in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real characters or situations is purely coincidental.
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Tinker’s War
By
Jamie Sedgwick
Published by Timber Hill Press
Prologue
I was a fool in the company of fools, and I was the greatest fool of all. I was naive to believe the world could change so quickly. I wanted to believe - I needed to believe- because it meant so much to me. I was so desperate to have those narrow-minded fools who meant so much to me accept me into their fold. I was foolish enough to believe that they could, and that if they did, I would be happy there. But it was only one small way in which I misunderstood the world, and there were so many more. Yes, we were all foolish, and for that, we would pay a terrible price.
After a thousand years of bloodshed, men and elves had found peace. We were building roads and bridges, sharing our wildly different technologies with no expectations other than a better life for all. Our understanding of the world and the sciences grew exponentially. For a time, it truly was a golden age. But the Kanters, the cannibalistic giants from the Badlands to the south, were reluctant to abandon their old superstitious ways. The small tribe of Kanters that integrated into our society came alone. Meanwhile, their brethren fell into a civil war that King Ryshan fueled as he gifted weapons and machines to help the sympathizers overthrow their tribal leaders. Soon the Kanters knew how to use bombs, cannons, and blunderbusses, and they did so with great efficiency.
The newfound peace we had achieved in the north lulled us into a sense of complacency. As the Kanters poisoned the ground with the blood of their kinsmen, many of the tribes began to foster a deep resentment towards both the humans and the Tal’mar. Trouble was brewing. In the end, it was not the Kanters that would bring us to ruin. It was something entirely different.
We had long since become aware of the special properties of the steel made from ore mined in the Blackrock Mountains. It possessed a unique quality, the ability to store energy at an incredible rate of efficiency. In fact, the simple act of heating and forging steel made from Blackrock ore appeared to imbue it with even greater capacity, so that when done correctly, the steel almost seemed to possess an energy all its own. Some metallurgists speculated that the energy contained in Blackrock Steel was the same energy that gave the Tal’mar our magical abilities, though ou
r science was far too primitive to prove this theory.
Regardless, it wasn’t long before word of our special steel spread beyond our borders and eventually, even beyond the seas. It was the lure of this powerful ore and the machines and weapons it could create that enticed the Vangars from their icebound continent in the west, across the Frigid Sea.
Nothing could have prepared us for the onslaught. We had fallen back into our petty ways, bickering over territories, coinage, and power. We were unprepared. We were fools, and for that, we would pay in blood.
Tinker used to have a saying: “A revolution may take centuries to happen, but when it does, it happens overnight.”
I always thought I knew what he was talking about. After all, I had lived through many of the same experiences he had. I had seen the centuries of bitter warfare and intolerance give way to a new, peaceful society. That change had happened seemingly overnight, and I thought Tinker’s words had referred to this. What I didn’t understand was that Tinker’s proverb wasn’t a recollection of history, but rather a vision of the future.
Little did I imagine how prophetic Tinker’s words would prove to be, or how quickly we would fall under the wave of black dragon ships that stormed our shores that fateful summer.
Chapter 1
The Tinkerer's Daughter Page 21