Of Steel and Steam: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  Maybe if my muscles weren’t on fire and my eyes didn’t ache with the pain of tavern-punches, I wouldn’t have taken both. But I at least scooted over on the plush seat to make enough space for Night.

  He looked as uncomfortable as I felt. Rigid, stiff, and his cuttingly pale face fixed ahead at the blackness taking the stage.

  A jester, sheathed in all black and his face covered by a cowl, stood tucked by the curtains at the edge of the stage. Small glowing globes hovered above him, draping him a wispy light that drew all eyes.

  Silence swept over the rigid audience. My own muscles tightened to iron with the chilly suspense blanketed us.

  The jester lifted his chin and stared blankly ahead.

  “The Old King was beloved by all of Hearts.”

  Through the cowl, it was impossible to see his lips move with the words he spoke, but his strong, solemn voice commanded even more attention on him.

  He gestured a lazy arm to the heavy curtains that shielded the stage, and as if on command, they began to part.

  Above, night was painted over the sky, the brightest stars I’d ever seen blotted over the black. Even painted, they seemed to wink down at us.

  “But the Old King was most loved when he returned to his kingdom with an heir to the throne,” said the jester. “An heir born of love and magic.”

  All the lights went out completely, drenching the court in darkness. Only a ghostly light danced over the mysterious jester, and candle-lanterns flickered faintly on the stage, where a castle backdrop slid up the rear, and a crowned man carried a bundle in his arms. The king returning with the child.

  “As a baby,” the jester continued, “the heir could brighten the stars and bring the moon so close to the land that it shone brighter than even the sun.”

  The glittering night sky above stayed much the same. Only, one of the white stars grew—and grew, and grew, until it had eaten up most of the black and shone like a moon attaching itself to the land.

  “As a toddler, the heir could bring a favourite season in a mere thought. Hearts saw many long winters.”

  The moon spread across the whole sky until everything above was a frosty white. Slowly, the frost crept over the court. In an instant, my skin had prickled and my toes curled. I hugged myself, eyes turning down to the misty breath that puffed out from my blueing lips.

  Sheets of ice glistened over the stone floor, and snow began to drift down from the false sky.

  “H-ow are the-ey doin’ th-that?” I shivered.

  Night leaned closer and whispered into my hair, a touch of humour to his hushed voice; “Magic.”

  I would have rolled my eyes if they weren’t frozen in place. All I managed was a violent shiver that rattled the seat.

  Magic was no secret in Hearts. But on this scale? It didn’t exist, unless—unless some of the jesters were true Tricksters. The powerful sort that we only learned about in stories—not the meagre tricksters who acted as the queen’s spies, assassins and—sometimes—private jesters.

  But that couldn’t be possible.

  Tricksters were myths.

  Just like the First Witch, and the ... Sisters.

  My lips pinched.

  I welcomed the icy air around me. It helped mask the shudder that took my body as dark stories piled into my thoughts.

  Eyes narrowed, I studied the performers on the stage. Clouds still blurred my sight, but the binoculars helped some. Through them, I could see the king looking down on a small child, cloaked in dark furs, a cowl covering its face.

  That was the most irritating part of the story—that the heir was shrouded in secrecy. There were so many versions of the heir’s tale that no one really knew who it was, whether the heir was male or female, tall or short, wide or thin. Like all stories in Hearts, details changed depending on who told them.

  On the stage, the wooden floorboards turned white with a dusting of snow and ice. It was so convincing that when the arctic breeze cut through the performers, all their cheeks turned into the reds of blossoming roses.

  “But as the heir grew older,” the jester said, and the cloaked child began to stretch, taller and taller, until it the shadowy figure was at least ten years old, “the people of Hearts faded in their love for the almighty, powerful heir.”

  The cold didn’t evaporate. Impossibly, the air plunged into the iciness of the bottom of the ocean, and I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered together.

  Some of the audience huddled together, in their misty breaths and cracked complaints. Night moved to put his arm around me, and I knew he meant only to warm me, but I shot him a look so scathing that he stopped himself.

  Even if my stomach flipped at the gesture, I didn’t want anything to do with boys who might have made me silly. Not when I’d been dropped into an upside-down game and my home was burning.

  “A cold child with a too powerful magic,” said the jester gravely.

  I turned my glare to the stage, where the cold withered crops that hadn’t been there seconds before. It all seemed so far away, as though I was really gazing over a distance to a village, with farms and cattle, and people.

  Only, there was nothing beautiful about the magical landscape. It was grisly.

  Ice crept over the crops like a plague, cattle froze to death on their sides, and even villagers lay motionless at the feet of the still-standing nobles. The nobles, though cold, were protected by their furs.

  Those years were before my time, but I knew they were no myth. The Winter Years, they called it. Most of Hearts had been lost to the snow storms and blizzards. Most of Hearts had starved.

  And the heir had been the one to kill them, so the story went. But how could a child be a killer? How could a child starve thousands of people across a country, and be feared by everyone around?

  The jester sliced through my spiralling thoughts; “All that the king could think to do was find the child a mother. A mother’s love to soothe the iciness within the heir, a mother’s embrace to protect from cruelty. And so, for a mother, the king searched.”

  The heir stretched again, like warm toffee stuck to the floor, pulled up and up. My brows raised with the cloaked figure, who grew taller than I’d expected.

  The heir stood in black cloaks, in a puddle of blood, and wore the height of a young teen.

  In the corner, the king cowered, his golden crown toppled to the streaks of crimson on the stage floor.

  Where the blood was leaking from took me a moment to realise—it came from the heir’s hands, stained with the blood of those who died in Hearts.

  Then, a plump woman entered the stage. Her velvet gown rustled over the icy floor. Her striking, stern face told of her nobility.

  The Queen of Hearts.

  She crouched by the heir and let a warm smile light up her face.

  I shivered at the sight—it was too unnatural. Like a mask, warped by heat. I half-expected wax to fall from her chin, or for the performer to tear a mask from her face.

  “The mother was chosen,” the jester said.

  In a blink, the stage changed again, this time to a warm room, lit by a fireplace that took up an entire wall. Beside the hot flames that began to thaw the icy chill in the court, sat the heir, still cloaked and shielded from our view.

  The new mother smiled down at him, a gold crown winking from her raven-black hair.

  The jester added solemnly, “And the mother became the Queen of Hearts.”

  Slowly, the smile began to fade from her waxy face, along with the rest of the scene.

  Performers drifted away like the ash from burning paper carried on the wind, and all that was left was the new queen standing in the centre of shadowy woods.

  But the floor of the woods ran black with tarry sap. From the pulsing, bloating trees, in wandered a pale woman with inky veins and stains on her cracked lips.

  I stiffened in my chair, muscles tight.

  Night tilted closer, and the flavour of peppermint chocolate invaded me.

  “You look a
s though you might fall off your chair,” he said, voice icier than the wintery chill that grew icicles from the banners above. “Haven’t you been to a play before?”

  I bit down, hard, on the side of my tongue, and wrapped my arms tighter around myself.

  “We don’t get the finer things in Crooked Grove,” I spat back at him and his gleaming privilege.

  Night let a ghost of a smile take his lips before he sank back into his chair, the smile gone with the winter.

  “The Queen of Hearts had plans of her own,” the jester announced. “Nearing the anniversary of her coronation, the queen searched for the The Black Woods, and the witch who dwelled there. The queen offered the witch a bargain.”

  A frown burrowed onto my face as I studied the First Witch. Her skin was so pale, like moonlight, that I wondered if the gleamy white was painted on.

  The harder I stared at her stunning, terrifying skin, the more I saw dead, blackened branches fallen to fresh snow.

  The queen spoke, but no words came from her mouth. The exchange between the witch and the queen was silent.

  As if reading my mind, the jester gave the answer. “The details of the bargain remains with the queen’s secrets.” He stepped closer to the edge of the stage, a menacing gleam to his lemony eyes. “But the bargain was enough to see the end of the First Witch, and the beginning of true magic reached across the lands.”

  The First Witch faced the queen, inky tears staining her face. The queen pressed a phial to the witch’s cheek, stealing her toxic tears.

  Then, the queen slipped away, into the shadows.

  For a moment, the witch just bowed her head.

  Sadness clenched my heart at the true sorrow twisting the witch’s face, and the need to know the details of their deal erupted within me.

  What was it that the queen told her? How could it have been enough to bring an eternal, powerful being to tears? Or even, to convince her to do what happened next—

  The First Witch swiped her sharp nails across her own throat, and black sprayed all over the stage.

  I slapped my hands over my mouth, gasps and shouts jumped up from the audience. The witch crumpled to the tarry floor of her woods, black blood oozing out from her torn throat.

  But her blood shimmered. Like stars in the night. Glittering, shimmering, but too dark to discover the secrets hidden there.

  “Her magic,” said the jester, “was soaked into the land, the sea, and the world around. The First Witch,” he added, and snapped his fingers, only for the stage to be wiped clean of everything, now a blank canvas, “was the mother to many.”

  A sly smirk settled on the jester’s face, and I swallowed. It was real magic in his blood. It was her magic running through his veins.

  And still, the burning question in his fierce yellow eyes matched the same question turning over in my mind—Why?

  Why did the First Witch become the Mother of Magic?

  Again, the jester snapped his fingers, and the stage switched to a bedroom like nothing I’d ever seen before. Silk draping from tall bedposts, fireplaces carved from marble, diamonds glinting from windowpanes. Even the floors were sheathed with so much fur, that it begged to be sprawled out on with a good book and cup of tea.

  In the bed, the king slept soundly. The queen slipped into the room, a phial of black tears in her fist.

  I held my breath, toes curling in my boots.

  The queen crept up to the king and quietly uncorked the phial. My mouth dried up as she brought the phial closer to his parted lips.

  A rustle of skirts and murmurs ran over the audience, then silence. The queen poured the tears into his mouth.

  I watched in horror as she bent over him, replacing the phial with her lips. My face twisted, and I suddenly felt sick.

  The king jerked in the bed, then shivered.

  The toxic tears speared through him, black lines crisscrossing across his face, marking him like the inky veins marked the witch.

  The queen brought her lips to his black ones.

  “Ugh!” I tried to look away, but Night’s hand shot up and gripped my chin so hard that my skin twisted together.

  I winced, and just as I made to punch his hand away, he hissed a single, icy word at me. “Watch.”

  At the sound of his voice, a mist lifted up from the seizing king’s lips. Wispy light, shadowy like what I would expect a soul to look like. It lifted, higher, then speed straight into the queen’s mouth.

  “The Queen of Hearts took more than what was owed to her,” the jester said. “That night, the queen stole an eternal youth that did not belong to her, and a life.”

  The king stopped seizing.

  Stillness fell over the stage, and it only shattered when the queen straightened herself and let a wicked smile twist her face.

  Before the stage could be wiped clean again, sharp white light cut to the corner, where curtains bundled together. From between the layers, a slight woman, with a poorly, narrow face and big button-like eyes, hid and watched.

  Only now that the light revealed her did I realise that she’d been there the whole time—witnessing the queen’s murder of the king, her thievery of his immortality.

  Silently, the handmaid slipped back into the layered curtains and disappeared, off-stage. Unseen by the queen.

  “Do you think that really happened?” I whispered to Night, uncertainty clinging to my cracked voice.

  His face was as indifferent as his tone. “Which part?”

  Lamely, I shrugged, and picked at my fingernails. The handmaid witness—all of it, maybe. I wasn’t sure. I only knew I didn’t want to believe any of it. Like I hadn’t wanted to believe in the Sisters.

  The curtains to the stage gave a heavy rustle before they swept shut.

  For a moment, I thought the play was over. But then, the handmaid rushed around the side of the court, the jester looking down on her with a solemn silence.

  Tucked under the handmaid’s arm was a heavily cloaked figure, and at the sight, a murmur ran over the audience.

  The heir.

  The heir was dressed much like a peasant from the farther reaches of Hearts. They didn’t hesitate as they rushed across the court.

  The handmaid’s worry showed in furrowed brows and creased lines at the corner of her mouth.

  A carriage rolled quietly around the other end of the stage, a palace guard perched beside the coachman.

  At the gesture of the guard’s waving hand, the heir was hurried over to the carriage and pushed inside. The handmaid jumped in after, the door clicked shut, and suddenly, all the lights went out in the court.

  Total darkness enveloped us.

  Not even those wispy globes shone light over the jester. But a ghostly voice called out from the black, and seized me in a grip of terror.

  Follow your flame, Shoshanna.

  My throat closed over. I couldn’t breathe.

  There was something about that voice—something alien, otherworldly. And I knew no one else could hear it. It was only for me. Its sharp edge clawing down me like talons.

  My nails dug into the sides of my chair, and I forced a shaky breath through my tight throat.

  Follow your flame down the road of blood and murder to reach the riches awaiting you.

  A hand gripped my arm.

  I yelped and hit out. Just as my fist collided, the lights blazed all around the court, and I saw myself hit Night’s hand.

  His eyes sharpened, and he drew back his hand slowly.

  “I heard you whimper,” he said icily. “I only meant to check that you were all right.”

  “Don’t touch me,” I muttered, cheeks beginning to roast. “And I didn’t whimper.”

  I was mortified. Now, he would think I was just a blacksmith afraid of the dark and sad tales. There was no doubt in my mind that he hadn’t heard the voice. It was the voice that spooked me, not the dark.

  But I didn’t have another moment to explain that to Night, because the court had been wiped clean of the stage and p
erformers—even the jester who’d narrated the play.

  All that was left was a single throne opposite the audience, so golden that it gleamed pain into my straining eyes, and reached taller than the banners draped from the balcony above.

  The Queen of Hearts sat on the throne, and stared at us from behind her waxy mask.

  “The king is dead.”

  Her voice was icier than the earlier freeze, her eyes sharper than scythes.

  “Killed by his own child,” she added. “The heir has been punished for this gruesome crime, and as your queen, I banish the putrid stain of magic from this land. Hearts will be free from the shackles of dark power, our soil will be fertile, our country grand once more. And no longer will fear clutch the hearts of those in my queendom.”

  “Queendoom,” said a girl a few chairs down. Some snickers rose up from the now-restless audience, and I found myself nodding slightly.

  As if the girl hadn’t interrupted, the queen sat proudly on her throne, a statue suddenly, and the jester strolled out from behind the throne.

  “And so,” he said, a touch of finality to his voice, “Hearts fell into the lap of their new mother. A mother fashioned from greed. Not all hope will be lost in the hearts of true believers,” he added. “For the heir is still out there, waiting for the day to rule.”

  The jester clapped his hands together once, and a thunderous boom rippled through the court.

  Everything melted away, from the heavy curtains on the wall, to the throne and queen who sat upon it.

  Standing alone, the jester grinned and twisted his arms around his middle. With a low bow, the show was over, and he kept the grin on his face as he spoke the words that jumped into my own mind.

  “The game has begun.”

  Chapter 7

  A sick feeling settled over my heart as the play ended. Goosebumps prickled my skin. I rubbed my arms to smooth them out.

  Already, players were slipping out of their seats and wandering the courtyard—some lost-looking, others wearing determination like proud pins.

  Rabbit said that I was one of few who asked how to play the Hatterthon—and all around me, I could see those who didn’t ask, and would be lost the whole time because of it.