The Tinkerer's Daughter (5 page)

My father had been absent from my life for so long that I could hardly remember what he looked like. And yet, there wasn’t a day that passed in which I didn’t think of him, where I didn’t dream of his return. I felt my chest tightening as Tinker spoke, and my breath caught in my throat. Tears came to my eyes and I tried to choke them back.

What did it mean, my father being gone? That I’d never go home? That possibility wasn’t frightening, not anymore. I had learned to love Tinker’s quiet little homestead. What it really meant was that Father would never be there. He’d never tuck me into bed and read me a story; he’d never hold me so tight that his beard made red marks on my face. Never, ever again.

No, it wasn’t just that
he
was gone forever.
We
were gone. That magical spark between two people who love and understand one another explicitly was gone forever from my life, and it left me less than whole. My father, the only person I had in the world, was gone.

I realized suddenly that I was bawling. My body was shaking, my breath coming in short gasps as tears streamed down my face. I felt a painful twisting in my chest, like a knife inside of me, and I got the powerful feeling that I just wanted to die.

Tinker lifted me up and held me, and I pressed my face into his shoulder. He whispered to me quiet comforting words, but all I heard was the low drone of his voice. It helped, somewhat. It helped to know that he was there.

I cried for a long time, even after my voice fell to a whimper and my heaving sobs gave way to a slow, steady breathing. The tears came until it didn’t seem there could possibly be more, and then they came again. I don’t know how long that process went on, but eventually I fell asleep in Tinker’s arms.

When I woke, I was lying on my bed. Tinker had thrown a light blanket over me and tucked my doll under my arm. I felt the warmth of the fireplace radiating through the doorway, washing over me. It felt good. I lay there for a while, staring at the thick layer of snow on top of my ceiling window, feeling not unlike I had on that very first morning after my father left. Not as alone, and not as afraid as I’d been then, but just as empty.

No, that wasn’t true. As bad as I felt, it couldn’t compare to those first days, when my father had been the only person in my world. I was older now and a little bit wiser, and not entirely alone. I had Tinker. I had our homestead, with my own little room, and a snow-covered window in my ceiling.

Tinker had eventually figured out how to make that window. He’d gotten it done just before the snow started. How many other things had he done for me? I couldn’t even count them.

Strangest of all was the fact that Tinker was in no way obligated to me. The only reason my father had chosen him was that he was an outsider. He was a hermit that lived miles from town with no friends or family. It was the safest reasonable place to leave a young girl like me. Tinker had no duty to accept that responsibility. He could have sent us on our way and forgotten all about us. Why didn’t he do that?

I knew the answer, of course. The Tinker was a good man. He wasn’t wealthy or powerful, and at first glance he certainly didn’t seem to be anyone special, but inside he truly was. He saw past our external differences. He saw me as a person, a child that needed love and guidance. At the time I had been wrapped up in all of my own emotions. How many other people would have accepted a half-breed into their homes, the way that Tinker had?

I gradually became aware of the smell of food and the gnawing of my stomach got the best of me. Tinker was not in the cottage, but he’d left a warm roast on the stove. I took advantage of the quiet time to think. When I was done eating and thinking, I ventured out into the darkness. I found Tinker in the barn. He was working at the bench against the far wall, the one where he produced the explosive stone balls. I approached him, but not close enough that I might disturb him.

“Feeling better?” he asked. He shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye, and then quickly went back to work. He was mixing powders in a large bowl.

“I want to go to school,” I said.

He set the bowl aside and twisted on his stool to face me. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore.”

“I want to go to school.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say. I didn’t want to argue about it. I didn’t want to dance around the subject, the way we had been doing for weeks. I had reached a point of no return. I was going to get what I wanted, or I was going to leave. I’d been thinking about it for a long time, and the news of my father’s death had made me realize something. If I didn’t start working towards my dreams now, then I never would.

I think my determination was clear in my voice, and on my face. He didn’t get angry the way he usually did.

“This spring,” he said, a tone of resignation in his voice.

My eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“This spring. I spoke to Analyn and she agreed that you can start school this spring.”

I was flabbergasted. I rushed over and threw my arms around him, almost knocking him off the stool. “Truly? You’re going to let me go?”

“It doesn’t seem the choice is mine,” he said. “Analyn all but insisted when she came here this morning. She apologized for the way she treated you. She wants you to know that she is sorry. She says that a little girl is just that, no matter what ears she might have, and every little girl deserves an education.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. My heart filled with joy at those words, and I found my old hopes resurging. People really could change. It was possible, in time, that I might even be accepted. I glanced at the engine sitting on our workbench.

“Teach me more,” I said.

He looked down at me. “More what?”

“Tinkering. What else can we do?”

A broad smile crept over his face. “There is another project I’ve been thinking about…”

We spent the next few weeks working on Tinker’s newly invented
steamsleigh
. From the very beginning the idea seemed improbable to me. His design called for a custom built fan, which he called a “propeller.” Supposedly this device would be able to push the sleigh and its occupants across the snow. I laughed when I saw his schematic.

“Just you wait,” Tinker said determinedly. “It will work.” I just smiled.

Despite my misgivings, I started helping him. I didn’t have much else to do until the snow melted. Much of the parts we needed had to be found amidst Tinker’s junk piles. Some of them had to be made. And then there were the others, stored in boxes high in the barn’s rafters. Naturally, being young and small and nearly fearless, that adventure was mine.

On my fourth trip into the barn rafters, I stumbled over an old box and almost went crashing down to my death. I barely caught myself by throwing an arm out across a parallel beam. I grunted as my full weight hit the beam, and I found myself dangling there in midair, a good twenty feet above the floor.

“Hang on!” Tinker screamed as he went lurching for a ladder. By the time he had one, I had already pulled myself back up. He met me at the far wall, his eyes wild with panic. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” I said. I ignored the painful bruise forming around my shoulder. I turned over the box that had almost killed me, displaying its contents. It was a collection of old swords. I held one up for him to see. “Where did you get these?”

“Oh, I’ve collected them over the years. Sometimes people give me their old steel as payment for work. Usually its junk that I melt down or save, but I’m not one to waste good blacksmithing. Those are some fine weapons.”

I lifted a short cutlass out of the pile, and pulled it from the scabbard. The brass hilt gleamed, and intricate patterns crawled up and down the blade. The weight and balance felt good in my hand. I felt like a heroine out of some old fairy tale, like I could slay dragons with that sword. “Can I have this one?” I said.

“I don’t know much about swordplay,” Tinker said. “A person’s likely to get themselves killed, walking around with a weapon they don’t know how to use.”

Tinker clearly wasn’t eager to let me have a dangerous weapon, but he also hadn’t said “no.” Not exactly, anyway. “I’ll just bring it down,” I said. “I’ll leave it in the barn and we can practice when we’re bored.”

Tinker grunted but made no protest as I sheathed the weapon and brought it down with me. I hung it on a nail over the workbench. “What now,?” I said.

Tinker’s foundry had been warming so that we could make some brackets and bolts, and he instructed me to work the bellows to warm his forge. While the molds warmed, Tinker scrounged up some iron and placed it in a clay pot. He covered the opening with straw and ash, and then set the whole thing deep into the embers of the forge.

“Pump now,” he ordered. I started working the bellows. I lifted the handle and the contraption sucked in fresh air. Then I brought the handle back down, forcing the air into the forge, and fanning the coals to an incredible heat. Soon, the iron began to melt.

Tinker pulled it out twice to stir up the contents. Once he was satisfied that the mixture was ready, he told me to go stand by the door. “If there’s even a slight bit of moisture left in these molds they will explode,” he said, “and we’ll have molten iron burning holes right through us.”

I quickly moved over to the doorway. Actually, I stepped outside, and leaned in just far enough that I could see what was going on. I cringed as Tinker lifted the jar out of the fire with his tongs, and tipped it over the mold. I could hardly believe that the glowing orange liquid was actually metal.

Tinker patiently filled the molds, and then set the remainder aside. He shot me a smile. “Perfect,” he said. “We’ll just let that cool overnight. Now for the skis…”

That was when things got interesting.

Tinker and I cut two long strips of wood. He set one aside and clamped the other down on the table top, leaving about six inches hanging over the edge. He proceeded to explain that we could use steam to bend the wood, stretching the fibers. Then he wandered off to the house to retrieve some hot water, and I found myself alone.

I walked over to the end of the table, and touched the wood. It was very light and flexible, and it bent quite easily under the weight of my hand. I released it, and it sprang right back into shape. Something happened as I did this. I felt the movement of the wood react to something inside me. It was an instinctive thing, like a sixth sense that allowed me to feel what was going on inside the wood. I noted the shape and the grain of the wood, and I had the sense in my mind that I could actually see it from the inside out.

I closed my eyes and followed that vision. The internal structure became clear to me. I saw the overlapping strands of fiber, and the smaller cellular structures that made up the organic composition of the material. I could see it all. I moved my hands, bending the board down on the end. I felt the grain stretching on the outside, and compressing beneath. I sensed the change in these structures. As I did this, a thought occurred to me. Why was heat necessary to make this change? Why did the change have to be forced?

I reached into the wood with my mind, and began to systematically refine its structure. I can’t explain how I did this, except to say that I could
touch
the wood with my mind. My consciousness flowed through my arms, and into the wood itself, as if I were actually somehow inside the wood.

I eased the pressure on the top, where the fibers were stretched from bending. I made them relax, I urged them to stretch and grow ever so slightly. Then I reached even deeper, down to where the compression was occurring. Mentally, I moved the fibers ever so delicately; just enough to ease that pressure and allow the wood to remain naturally in that position.

Tinker returned just as I finished. He stepped through the doors in a cloud of steam, and I could hardly see him until he set the pot aside. He glanced over at me. “We just need to hang some weights from that string,” he said.

He came over to my side, and I pulled my hands away from the wood. Tinker furrowed his eyebrows as he stared at the shape. “What in the world?”

“Did I ruin it?” I said anxiously. “I’m sorry if I did it wrong. I can fix it, I think.”

He tugged at the wood, but it remained frozen, bent in a graceful downward curve. “You did this?”

I nodded fearfully.

“How?”

“I don’t know… I just touched it. I could see it in my mind, so I told the wood to stretch. I’m sorry, Tinker. Please don’t be mad!”

He laughed. “I’m not angry, girl. I’m shocked. Do you think you can do it again?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Excellent. Come over here, to the other end. Take it in your hands. Hold it just like you did before. Okay, are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“No… Wait.” He walked over to the wall and grabbed an iron bar. “Hold this,” he said. I did as he instructed, holding the bar in one hand, and the wood in the other.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What should I do with it?”

“Just hold it,” he said. “Now. Bend the wood.”

I closed my eyes, and reached out for that sensation. It was a bit more difficult, doing the process with one hand, but I managed. As before, I rearranged the structure of the wood, guiding the tiny fibers into the correct order to create the shape I wanted. When I was done, I stood back and examined my work. It was almost exactly the same as the first. Tinker tugged at the wood, and it didn’t budge.

“Unbelievable,” he said. He took a couple awkward steps back and leaned up against a bench, all the while his eyes fixed on me.

I was uncomfortable, to say the least. It was clear to me now that this was something Tinker and his kind could not do. It was a skill of my mother’s people. I didn’t understand however, why he was so shocked that I had this ability.

“Did I do wrong?” I asked again.

The sound of my voice shook him out of his thoughts. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you. It’s just… how can I explain? I was always taught that when two different races combine, the offspring combines the worst traits of both. If you graft one plant with another, you get a plant that’s susceptible to twice as many diseases. Or, in a case like this, a bi-racial child would have none of the magic possessed by the wood folk, and none of the strength and logic of humankind. I should have known better when you called the wood out of the trees last fall. I assumed that the forest was simply offering you respect. I didn’t realize that you had actually commanded it…”