Steampunk World

The Construct Also Dreams of Flight Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

“Martha is to wind up the worlds every day. Sergio must polish the big organ. Misa is to tend to the plants in the hothouse— and Lina, finish the last project.”

I listened and did as I was supposed to do.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, Aunt Bertha. It shall be as you wish.”

“Well,” Aunt Bertha said. “A woman must die when a woman must die.”

She pressed a hand to her bosom, coughed once, twice, and then she was gone.

The light here is unlike light anywhere else. The ancestral home is just a short distance from the sea and if you get tired of the sea, you can go further inland to where the land stretches out as far as the eye can see.

We don’t have to till the land ourselves. That’s not what she made us for. But the farmers bring in a seasonal tribute of rice and vegetables in lieu of rent and it’s our task to ensure they’re sent off to the estate manager who sells them at a profit for the family in Manila.

There’s no reason for them to take the crossing and come to where we are. No reason at all.

Dear Lina, the letter read. We'll be there on the fifteenth of the month.

One drawback of living here was that the mail arrived slower than elsewhere. Today was the fifteenth of the month.

It was my task to wind up the others daily and set them to work. The letter sent me into a flurry of activity. We couldn’t allow the family to sleep in rooms that smelled of dust and mold.

I looked out the window and watched for the dust cloud that would herald their arrival. Would they demand the selling off of the land now? Would they want me to vacate the ancestral home? And what about Aunt Bertha’s final project?

I pocketed my anxiety, folded the cloth over the painting I was working on and went to ensure that the work was done. Rooms needed to be aired, beds needed turning and sheets had to be changed.

There was no need for worry. Every nook and cranny of the old house was shiny and clean. There was not even the slightest hint of a cobweb.

Still, another passage of the cleaning cloth never hurt anyone.

Noise heralded their approach. They were travelling in a painted coach and even the layer of dust couldn’t dull the shine of the metal horses that pulled them. They quivered and stamped the ground with their shining hooves, steam rose up from their bodies and their mechanical eyes shivered open and shut.

“Ah, here she is,” Cousin Emma said.

I reached out my arms and caught her as she sprang from the carriage.

“Lina dear, won’t you come with us to the city? We'll take good care of you there, promise.”

I stared at her in surprise.

“Oh stop it,” Auntie Lily said. “Don’t overwhelm the poor thing. Don’t you see she’s quite devastated at the loss of Bertha.”

I blinked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t leave Carrascal.”

“Of course,” Cousin Emma said. “Of course, you'll stay here, Lina dear. It wasn’t our intention to kick you out. Besides, if you leave who would take care of the old house. If you wish to stay, you must stay.”

It’s not that I don’t want to move to the city, but this is the only home we've ever known. No matter how the family clicks and moans about Aunt Bertha’s eccentric ways, no matter that they moan about the odd placement of the rooms, the slanting walls and geometric windows, we helped make this house according to Aunt Bertha’s vision.

“Martha,” I said. “I hope you’ve wound up the worlds in the Universum.”

“The Universum?” Cousin Emma said.

“It’s one of Aunt Bertha’s projects,” I replied.

“I want to see,” Cousin Emma said. And a chorus of voices joined in with hers as the younger cousins clamored to see what they’d never cared to see when Aunt Bertha was still here.

“Martha,” I said. “You lead the way.”

I listened to the sound of their voices. Martha wouldn’t be able to answer their questions, but I could.

I rested my hand on the brass telescope that had come to us all the way from Europe. Would they even appreciate how Aunt Bertha had tried to capture worlds she could only see through its powerful lens?

I watched them peer at the bell jars. Their eyes alight with curiosity. If you looked closely, you could see gears grinding and turning. Tiny little spheres orbited shining poles of brass, brass disks twirled and turned on their axes; round and round they went until their mechanisms wound down and Martha had to wind them up again.

“What else is here?” They asked. “What else?”

At that moment, a crescendo sounded from the organ room. Giggling and laughing, they went in search of the sound. They would find Sergio of course, and the room with long pipes built into it. When Aunt Bertha was alive, she would bring that organ to life and make so much sound the entire house would quake.

They were so distracted by everything they saw, they never thought to explore the basement. It was a relief. After all, it was where we kept the final project.

Yours to finish, Aunt Bertha had said to me.

Two of the cousins stayed after the others left.

Every day, Fermi and Ana walked down to the sea together. I watched them as they ran about and played.

When they came home, they trailed sea water and sand all over the narra floor.

“You're so good to us, Lina,” Fermi said.

I made an attempt to capture the light around them. The blue and rose of their skirts, the pale cream of their panuelos, the midnight of their hair blending into each other—all in vain.

If I could assemble a machine from bits of metal and screws, would I be able to make something that would capture their light as I could not do?

I laid down my brush and looked out into the distance. I could feel the thrumming in my chest. It made a steady sound, a reminder of the promise I had given to Aunt Bertha on her deathbed. Maybe I wasn’t made to be a painter. Maybe I was really made to be something else.

It was the steady drone that roused me.

I walked to the window and looked out.

There was this huge thing floating above us. It was shaped like a whale and its bulk blocked out all sight of the sun. I had seen it in one of Aunt Bertha’s books, but I never thought I’d see one in Carrascal.

Fermi and Ana stood behind me, still dressed in their nightclothes, hands clutching each other.

“Lina,” Fermi said. “What’s out there?”

“I believe it’s a zeppelin,” I said.

Ana’s eyes opened wide.

“No,” she said. “It can’t be. It can’t be.”

“Ana,” Fermi said.

But Ana was running away from us, her feet slipping and sliding on the smooth floor. She rounded the corner that led to the bedrooms. We heard the bang of the door and the click of a lock.

Fermi’s face wore a shadow. Gone was the light of the past days.

“It couldn’t last forever,” Fermi said.

Her voice broke and I didn’t know what else to do, so I opened my arms and let her cry.

There was no more running down to the sea.

I wound up the automatons and we all went to work. No matter what went on outdoors, someone still had to tend to the plants in the hothouse. Worlds needed to be wound up, the organ pipes needed cleaning and then there was the matter of Aunt Bertha’s final project.

It stood in the workshop—a stranded skeleton that looked nothing like the bird Aunt Bertha compared it to. Its slender frame was formed from bowed copper rods, and its sides were hemmed with strips of balsa wood. We still had to stretch the canvas cover over it. Maybe then it would look like something meant for flight.

“Lina,” Fermi said. “What are you all doing down here?”

“Working,” I said.

She came downstairs.

“Amazing,” she said.

She walked around the frame, her hands reaching out but not quite touching.

“You made this?” She said.

“It’s Aunt Bertha’s project,” I replied. “We only put it together.”

“How wonderful,” she said. “How simply wonderful.”

After Fermi left, we finished the rest of what still needed to be done. We unfolded the canvas from its hiding place.

Good for flying, Auntie Bertha had said.

Slowly, we stretched the canvas over that bare frame. It was no longer a skeleton now.

My chest thrummed and I pressed the tips of my fingers to it.

“Well now,” I said. “I suppose we must try to get it to fly.”

There were voices upstairs and when I came into the living room, there was a man. A big man with a wild shock of hair. He had a beard the color of sand and a big nose and tears in his eyes.

“Fermi,” he said. “I came all this way. I even took the governor’s zeppelin.”

Ana stood with her back to him.

For the first time, I noticed the copper tone of Ana’s fingers. She did not tremble, but when she moved her head, I heard the creak of her gears and the stutter of her cogs.

“We won’t come with you,” Fermi said.

Her fingers were mottled red and white where they were tightly clasped around Ana's.

“Listen to me,” the big man said. “We can’t just pretend I didn’t see her. She has to go back. You shouldn’t have taken her with you, Fermi. You should have let things be.”

Fermi bared her teeth at the big man.

“What will you do, Jorge? Will you take us back as if we were your captives? I won’t let you, you know.”

Jorge sighed.

“Look,” he said. “She’s a machine and a faulty one at that. The governor wants her back.”

“I know what the governor wants her for,” Fermi said. “She won’t be taken apart, Jorge. Ana is Ana.”

Her voice reminded me of Auntie Bertha.

After a while, Jorge left. He dragged his left leg when he walked and left small scratches on the floor. I made a note of his path and later I sent Misa to polish away the marks of his passing.

I ignored the drone of the zeppelin’s engine. Jorge was not going away, and neither was his ship.

I watched Ana and in the shadow of that ship, it was impossible to miss all the tiny little things that passed me by when they were bathed in the light of their happiness.

Finally, it was time to test Aunt Bertha’s project. Sergio flung the doors of the workshop open. Behind the house there was an incline. The three of us set our hands to Aunt Bertha’s project and pushed.

The machine wasn’t that heavy and a breeze came up from behind and made it easier for us to push it upward.

“Wait.”

Fermi and Ana raced up from behind us.

“Where are you going?” Fermi said. “What are you doing?”

I stared at her and I stared at Ana.

I couldn’t miss it now.

The shadow of that ship stripped her of everything that made her seem slightly human.

“A machine,” I said. “Must do as it was created to do. This is Aunt Bertha’s project.”

“So you keep saying,” Fermi said.

Behind her, Ana made a sound.

“It’s a flying machine,” Fermi said again. “A flying machine. Do you understand what that is and what it can do?”

I stared into Fermi’s face—watched excitement bloom in her eyes.

In the diagrams she'd left behind, Aunt Bertha had explicitly stated how the project would reach its fruition.

I took off my gloves. I took off my boots. I prepared to take off my gown.

I stared at my paintbrush. I suppose I wasn’t really made to be a painter after all.

“Lina,” Fermi said. “What are you doing?”

“It’s the final stage of the project,” I said. “The machine won’t fly without an engine. It won’t rise without the mechanism Aunt Bertha put inside my chest.”

“But you don’t want to,” Fermi said. “You don’t want to leave, do you? You want to stay here in this place. You want to care for the house and for the others.”

I stopped.

Fermi’s voice rose in intensity and she pulled Ana in front of me.

“Listen to me,” Fermi went on. “You want to stay in this place, Lina. But Ana—Ana must fly.”

Ana gave a start and I watched as she turned to face Fermi.

“Look,” Fermi said. “I know you're frightened, Ana. But it’s the only way. We'll go. We'll go together you and I.”

Long after they left, I could still hear the sound of their passing.

Even in the shadow of the zeppelin, light floated all around them.

Naked and with the heart of her revealed, they were still suffused with light. Human and machine. Sun-browned flesh against copper bright metal.

Slowly, the rudder of the flying machine came to life. Ana’s sound, a high counterpoint against the background drone of the big zeppelin.

Sergio and Misa pushed, and for a moment, when they slid off the incline, it seemed like they wouldn’t make it. They wobbled slightly in the air, then a gust of wind pushed them upward, and gave them lift.

I kept on watching until the sound of her faded and they were nothing more than a speck on the horizon.

Aunt Bertha’s final project—it was finished.

I didn’t bother to open the windows or to air out the rooms. There was nothing left to do until we received instructions from the family.

I sat in the darkness of the living room and waited.

When Jorge came, he didn’t bother to knock. He simply came thumping up the stairs, dragging his leg on the floor and leaving scratches behind him.

“Where are they?” He said.

I looked at him and did not answer.

“Well,” he said. “Well. What will I say to them in the capital about this? Tell me that, you thing?”

I took his hand in mine and looked up at him.

Already, I could feel myself slowing down. The project was ended. I had done what I was supposed to do.

“I tried,” I said to him. “But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t capture that light.”

Of course, he didn’t understand.

He’s not like you and I.

But it’s all right. It’s all right. Someday, Fermi and Ana will return and when they do, perhaps it will be my turn to fly.