Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

But he had not been allowed to remain frivolous for long.

When had it been? His twelfth year they stayed in Philadelphia. He flipped through the journal, pausing twice to stroke his fingers along a sketch of a bird and a boyish doodle of a turtle. His journals were once alive with such things and he’d spent many a day flat on his stomach observing the mysterious realms of ants and salamanders and spiders. Worlds within worlds fascinated him.

Then.

Before he became a Maker.

He found an entry from the fourteenth of August.

There are many children in Philadelphia now, some live here year round and some only come in for the spring and summer festivals. Today I was introduced to the Hill families Burchette, Hollindale, and Astraea.

He paused and reread the names. Aha! That at least made sense as to why the name struck a chord with him.

We had a merry afternoon playing hide and seek and Ring Around the Rosie although I, being much their elder, was required to watch them more than participate with them. All was well until two of the little girls got into an argument. There was screaming, yelling, crying, and hair pulling, and then the strangest thing happened—a thing I dare not tell my father due to the tender age of the children and my father’s less than tender nature. In the midst of the fighting an unscheduled wind blew up and whipped ’bout us until we tumbled to the ground, I sheltering the children with my own mortal coil. The wind died down and the screaming and fighting abated. I was mystified. They might have been terrified if only they knew enough to wonder about what I now wonder about.

Had that been it, then? He had met Jordan Astraea when they were both children and been a witness to her odd affinity even then? Or was there something else?

The library’s shutters rattled. Meggie’s head snapped up and she clutched Somebunny to her.

Bran stood, patted Meggie’s soft curls, and returned that book as well to his shelf.

Returning to his desk, he spun sharply around, seeing someone reflected in his lantern’s glass. No one was there. A chill raced over him and for a moment he was as chilled as he’d been trying to put Sybil’s skull to rest. He shook himself.

He was a man of science. Such things were easily explained away if one only sought the truth.

Again at his desk, he opened a shallow drawer and moved a few things out of it. With a quick look to Meg to be certain she was occupied, he slid open the drawer’s false bottom and pulled another journal free. Turning to a blank page, he wrote the day’s date and began his daily entry with, “All things do come full circle and there is, in fact, no escape from the past.”

On the Road from Philadelphia

Rowen was stiff and dusty from the road when the cottage Jonathan promised came into view. With renewed energy he gave a little push with his heels into Ransom’s sides and the horse picked up the pace, Silver’s head bobbing along at his hip.

Jonathan pulled Silver ahead of Rowen once more and only pulled the horse to a stop when they were as close to the cottage as they could get.

Herbs and flowers rioted across a modest fenced yard around which a few sheep wandered, grazing. They looked up at the horses with mild interest and then returned to clipping down any greenery on the wild side of the fence. Rowen and Jonathan looped their horses’ reins round one of the fence’s posts and Jonathan lifted the small bolt that kept a wooden gate shut and slipped into the yard to knock on the door.

“Do we know how near the closest water is?” Rowen asked, his back to the fence and his eyes on the woods and the meadow both.

“Far enough it’d be a struggle for them to get this far inland,” Jonathan said. He knocked on the door but the answering shout came from around back.

A broad man sporting an equally broad hat came around the cottage and gave them both a long, appraising look before he laughed and shouted, “Jonathan! Well, I had no idea you would so soon take me up on my offer to revisit my home. What has it been? Merely two years?”

“Three, Frederick, three,” Jonathan replied, smiling.

“Too long either way. What a pleasant surprise.” He reached over and surprised Jonathan with a bear hug before signaling Rowen to join them inside the yard.

“The horses?” Rowen asked, his eyes roaming.

“They will be quite fine as long as they do not run away. I will fetch them each a bucket of water in a moment. First, though, come inside, both of you.”

The door shut behind them and introductions were accomplished with the efficiency of men on the run.

“One of the Burchettes?”

Rowen nodded. “The youngest of Gregor’s sons.”

“Hmph!” Frederick said. “That’s quite a coup for someone like me to host someone like you.”

“Well,” Jonathan said slowly, “it might cause a coup if you tell anyone, as we are on the run from the law.”

“Oh.”

Some people might have reached for a chair, given such news, and Jonathan was quite certain that some of high social standing would have swooned at the mention. But not Frederick. He said, “Well do tell,” and stoked the fire in his small stove to start the water for a proper cup of tea.

Over tea in the small but generously decorated cottage that stood between the woods and the meadow, Rowen Burchette, Sixth of the Nine, and Jonathan Smithson, his manservant and faithful friend, related their tale to Jonathan’s second cousin, who nodded and asked, “Might I use your adventure as inspiration for a story I am writing? Ah, yes,” Frederick said with a wink as he tipped the teapot to refill his own cup. “I fear you have found yourself in the company of the lowest of the low: an author!” He laughed then, and Rowen glanced to Jonathan for some clue as to how to react.

Jonathan was smiling. “Will you publish our adventures yourself then?” he suggested, playing along.

“Do what Poe did recently? Self-publish?” He shook his head and grinned. “No, cousin, I want to be remembered!”

“So you’re still writing for the penny dreadfuls?”

Frederick let out an exasperated groan. “I wish they’d stop calling them that, but it does garner the public’s attention. So much about writing is marketing nowadays. But I must say that dreadful is not the most accurate description of them if you are writing for them. The publishing world is like anything else: not nearly so awful if it pays you.” He took a long sip of his tea and said from the side of his cup, “So may I fictionalize and immortalize you two in prose as bold young adventuring heroes, one golden-haired and one dark?”

The pair exchanged a glance and, shrugging, agreed.

“Excellent!” Frederick raised his tea cup, saying, “A toast to tea—the great social lubricant!”

“What of wine?” Rowan asked, raising his cup.

“We’ll have no whining here,” Frederick said, laughing.

“Then include in our toast ale for what ails you…?” Rowen returned with a grin.

Jonathan shook his head and, raising his cup, tapped it to the others. “A toast to adventures that end happily and authors who write their characters with kindness!”

“Hear, hear!” they agreed, and for a brief while it seemed they were men starting a grand adventure, not men on the run from the law. In that way it was far easier to settle in for the night—imagining what lay ahead rather than all that had been left behind.

Holgate

The whirring of gears woke him as much as the feel of something tightening around his neck like a noose. Breath burning in his throat, Bran clawed at his attacker, fingers slipping past its grasp. He got a grip on it, prying at fingers so strong they felt like this midnight marauder had a skeleton of steel. His tongue managed a curse when his hand started to bleed, cut. Fabric ripped and he heard a creak and snap of metal. Finally freed, he threw his attacker—much lighter than he imagined!—threw him so far he heard the body slam against the far wall and slip down to land limp on the floor, the humming of parts louder, a gear grinding against another. He flipped the switch on the nearest stormlight and held it before him partly for the sake of illumination and partly because it had enough weight to serve as a defensive weapon.

From the other room a small voice sounded, still thick with sleep.

“Go back to sleep, Meggie,” Bran urged.

“Papá?” she whispered. “Somebunny?” The ropes supporting her mattress creaked and Bran recognized the sound of small feet approaching.

He swung the lantern, letting the light cascade across her form briefly before, as she rubbed her eyes clear of sleep, he raised the light to illuminate the thing that had attacked him as he slept.

The thing that was always with his daughter and a gift from his ex-lover.

“Somebunny?” Meggie whispered.

They stared at the broken doll, its movements jerky and faltering as its voice growled out the most haunting rendition of the country’s motto that Bran had ever heard.

“A place for all, a place for all, a plaaaa—”

“What did you do to her?” Meggie cried, reaching for the doll.

But Bran snatched it up first, turned his back to his sobbing daughter, and ripped the mechanical spine from its soft fabric body, knocking free the glowing soul stone wedged in its grinding, cog-encircled heart. Dropping the doll to the floor, Bran ignored the gasp of his daughter and stomped his way to the horn that hung on the wall by the crank, crystal, and flywheel.