Rust & Magic- The Complete Series Read online

  RUST AND MAGIC

  RUST AND MAGIC

  M. Telsch-Williams

  Moondigar Press

  THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Margaret Telsch-Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [email protected].

  First printing December 2019

  Cover design by Moondigar Press

  www.mtelschwilliams.weebly.com

  Contents

  PART ONE: THE COTTON AND THE CLAY

  PART TWO: PEN TO PAPER

  PART THREE: OUR RED CITY

  PART FOUR: MARBLE AND THORN

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For my daughter Zoe,

  who reminds me what’s worth fighting for.

  PART ONE:

  THE COTTON AND THE CLAY

  THE WARPED WINDOW PANES always trembled right before a transit shuttle thundered by her shop. Cringing at the sound, Taniff glanced up from the small porcelain figure in her hands and stared into the wet darkness outside. There it was. That wheeled beast of rusted, patch-worked metal sheeting and piss poor welding, belching diesel exhaust as it passed. A wide public service banner displayed along the bus’s length: If you see something, say something—the phrase, once a gift of reassurance and safety from Homeland Security centuries earlier, now morphed into a twisted threat. Official gold emblems aligned either side of the text: Magi-Corps, founded 2302.

  With a scowl, she returned her attention to the broken doll.

  The owner had dropped the fragile toy days earlier. Face chipped. Leg barely attached by a pink thread. The hardened glaze had spider-webbed first across the pale left cheek, then stretched over the bridge of the doll's nose until the violent fingers of breakage stopped below the right eye. Taniff could fix this. And the leg? Easy. A few stitches.

  She clicked her tongue as she cupped the back of the doll's head. “You'll be fine,” she said, reassuring the cotton and the clay. “Just sleep for a while.”

  Scooting her stool closer to the counter, Taniff began to hum. A soft alto tune suitable for working in the dim flame with a tired back and stiff fingers. The cold, unending drizzle outside added to her quiet song.

  A minute of melody in and the doll's limbs stiffened in her palm.

  There you are.

  The doll’s hazel eyes blinked up at Taniff as if shocked, knowing she was naked, and broken, and being handled. The humming continued, notes rising and falling, carrying long, energetic beats and short, delicate notes. Then slowly, like someone who'd been drugged, the porcelain doll's eyes drifted shut at last and her limbs hung loose again.

  Granted, Taniff’s magic never brought the dolls to life, not really, but while she held them—while she sang—they appeared as if they had hearts and brains, muscles and bones. When she stopped singing, the dolls stopped moving. A harmless magic, yet illegal in the eyes of Magi-Corps all the same.

  She decided to repair the face first. Sometimes, if she showed progress quickly, the customers would pay in advance. People only believed what they saw. A mended leg and a new dress wouldn't impress anywhere near as much as a flawless face.

  Twisting the oil lamp’s knob, she rolled the flaming wick higher. Better to see the fine details this late in the evening. The fuel would run out soon. Only half a bottle left. The colored oils smelled better—like dried grave roses—but she couldn't afford those. The old, sickly yellow liquid burned the same anyway. Once this doll was fixed and paid for, she'd buy more oil and a few loaves of rye at one of the makeshift market stalls under Willow Street. Illegal sales or not, bread was bread, oil was oil, and she needed both.

  The window glass rattled. Another shuttle. Taniff sighed into the notes of her song.

  Fingers caressing the doll's warming cheek, the small hairline cracks walked backward to their source. Taniff squinted and leaned closer. Her song grew louder and—.

  The bell above the door jingled.

  Taniff stopped. Checked the wind-up clock. Five minutes to closing.

  She set the porcelain girl aside. “Help you?”

  The stranger in the black coat stepped inside. Tall, lean build, no obvious weapons. “You fix things?” the young woman asked.

  She hiked a brow. “Some things.”

  “Children's toys?”

  “And others.” She set a tight fist on her ample hip. “Collectibles, antiques.”

  Most people walked right to the counter to do business. Instead, this woman with short, choppy hair and a red feather hanging from one ear wandered along the periphery of the shop studying every shelf of doll parts, every display of various textures and hair colors available.

  The woman carefully teased leather gloves from her hands one fingertip at a time. Magi-Corp would have left the gloves on. If you see something, say something. Also known as: fear what you can't control. She couldn’t blame the MC; she felt the same way.

  Anything not normal put Taniff on edge. She’d spent too much of her life keeping magic and Magi-Corps as far from her as possible. Anyone could turn her in if they found out her gift, and she didn’t trust anyone that didn’t come right to the counter. “Is there something you need fixed?”

  “Possibly. But it's not a toy.”

  “S'fine,” Taniff said, “I’ll take a look.” She opened a drawer and withdrew a handful of small, precise tools. Things normal people used to fix dolls. Tools clients would expect to see even if they were useless to her.

  The woman reached into the cloth bag slung across her chest just under her coat and withdrew a tattered, brown doll. Burlap maybe, or monks cloth, covered the most basic of rounded head shapes, oblong arms and legs—hands and feet not even distinguished—all connected by a lumpy wide trunk. The doll was filthy, head to toe. One button eye dangling, the other . . . gone. Hardly worth repairing.

  “It's not much,” the woman said as she offered the ugly, foot-tall thing to her, “but I'm terribly sentimental.”

  Turning the figure over, Taniff examined it. Fabric stretched and ripped in places. Fist-sized stains mostly along the body. She scraped her nail over one leg at something stuck in the fibers. Wax? She set the guy down on the counter in a seated position. The doll's head flopped to one side, reminding Taniff of a homeless Jack in the box.

  Taniff commenced the haggling. “One hundred?”

  “Sounds fair,” the woman said, no hitch in her voice.

  Damn, she should have asked for more. “Agreed.” Taniff recorded the woman's information and convinced her to pay half up front before seeing her out into the rain.

  Locking the door behind the client, she tugged the curtains closed to block out lookie-loos.

  Taniff picked up the human-shaped toy and gave it a second once over. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jack.”

  She sang absent-mindedly to herself as she twisted the head, waved the arms, kicked the legs. A sharp sting nailed the center of her palm.

  Reflexes yanked her hand away and she sucked in a breath. “Ow, ow, ow.” A small red pinprick spotted her skin.

  She flipped the doll to face her. “Don't have to be mean, Jack. We're friends, you and I. Quick friends; the best kind.”

  Then she spotted it. A hat pin sticking out from his belly. She slid the pin free. A slender needle capped by a black, skull-shaped pearl with white eyehole
s scratched into it and a straight line for a mouth. Not like a mouth had been carved into the skull so much as something sliced across the pearl. An accidental smile that didn't curve.

  TANIFF ROSE EARLY. With the sun, some would say. Except no one had seen the sun in months. Only the steady sprinkling of gray mist and the slicked streets which ponded with water, nearly dried, and ponded again. Those puddles always reflecting back the dim streetlights and gawdy neon signs of a rippling version of the soot-covered Bellows City. Sun or no, she liked mornings best. Energy in the air crackled more with the dawn than at any other time of day. Perhaps because no one had used it yet.

  Even though Magi-Corps had been under government protection for over fifty years, a handful of protesters still worked openly. Not small spells or slights of hand, but grandiose displays in secluded corners of the city. All an act: pretending to not have magic in order to play someone normal performing tricks. They begged to be challenged, arrested. Were martyrs for it, really. But in a way, those in Bellows who were willing to risk being caught by Magi-Corps created a smokescreen for those who silently practiced in other ways.

  Taniff stretched, trying her best not to wince too much as her old joints cried out. What she wouldn’t give for a song to fix her.

  Hobbling downstairs to the doll infirmary, her knees incapable of a quiet entrance, Taniff drew a curtain aside and peered out. Those lucky enough to still own functional vehicles puttered down the street, turning at the intersection where the stoplight had long since been cut off—hard to keep electricity flowing through a city with no resources—but the majority of people slogged along the cracked sidewalks where scummed-over potholes swelled with bacteria and blood worms.

  An hour before opening. She lit the fire in the stove and set a percolator of the clearest water she had onto the cast iron top. Some coffee would help knock the mind fog loose. She sighed. How much longer could she sustain herself as she aged? She shivered into a paisley scarf, wrapped it twice around her neck.

  Fingers fiddling with the worn potholder, she glanced around the sparse room. Signing up for subsidies meant blood tests, and blood tests meant testing for high levels of aurum, and high levels of aurum meant she wouldn't be approved for Social Care. The second aurum was found, Magi-Corps would collect her. End of story. And at her age, they'd probably “dismiss” her. Dismiss being shorthand for execution by incineration and disposed of. New school witch burning, although Bellows officials denied any connection. Regardless, as soon as she was suffering enough to want to die, she'd file for Social Care, get caught, and get gone.

  The glass dome bubbled with coffee as the water climbed to a boil. Taniff lifted the percolator from the stove and filled her cup. No cream, no sugar. Even cheap items cost too much.

  Moving to her workbench, she set the steaming, murky coffee to the side, and inspected Jack.

  Even in better light the poor guy looked as ragged as the night before. He lay like a corpse, one arm flung over his chest. Armpit torn and open, stained, cotton fluff sticking out. The opposite leg stretched in the other direction.

  The person who'd dropped off Miss Porcelain Doll wouldn’t return for another week. Technically she could wait. Now Jack, she could repair him in a day, maybe two, and earn the other fifty. Finally, she could fill the cabinets again. Lamp oil, bread, canned salmon, maybe a secondhand water purifier if she could find one.

  “Alright, Jack.” She sipped her brackish coffee. “No use making a gentleman wait.”

  Her knotted fingers tapped across the various silver tools strewn across the counter. A habitual show for inquisitive pedestrians to think she needed them. If you see something, say something.

  Stretching her back, she settled onto her stool and picked Jack up.

  Taniff traced his outline with her eyes, envisioning his intended form. How he must have looked when new. The last toy stores closed decades ago, so picturing a new doll, ugly or not, was an act of memory acrobatics for her. But, in seconds she drew the right song forward for the task and began humming. Something light and repetitive, but also a tune with hard hitting notes and defined edges. A song stitched together specifically for him.

  With a slight twitch, Jack came to life as the music reached him. His chest warmed. His shoulders shifted.

  There you are.

  First, she teased his dangling, black button eye back into place. The song doing the work to secure it. Now he appeared like a doll that would joke a lot—always winking. Jack the joker. She was sure she had another button similar to his in her button jar. Maybe not the exact same size, but she probably had something.

  With the first eye repaired, Taniff tested the stitching where his appendages connected to his body. Thumbed the frayed string ends at his hip.

  The song continued. She relaxed into the flow of the repair.

  But then Jack shoved her hand away. She startled. The song halted.

  Before she could react, he pried her thumb from his lumpy belly. Shocked, she squeezed his body. Tried to hold on. But Jack scrunched his legs then landed a hard kick to Taniff's chin.

  As she cupped her chin, Jack dropped to the counter and ran across the workbench, slid under a vise handle, and dodged behind a bundle of cloth by the wall.

  Taniff rushed down the length of the workbench and yanked the material away.

  Gone.

  She froze. Shit.

  None of this was normal. A crescendoed heartbeat thumped in her ears. Shit!

  What was happening?

  She wasn’t singing; he shouldn’t be moving.

  “Jack?” she called. She skirted around the workbench and into the shop front. “Jack?”

  Taniff scrambled to the floor, searching under the lower shelves. Immediately she picked up the track of rounded spots pressed into the dust and leading to the corner.

  “Come on out,” she whispered, trying not to panic. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  God, she was panicking, jaw pulsing with pain. What was this?

  On her knees, she eased toward the dark corner until her hand brushed something. A spider, but it didn’t move. The poor creature laid there splayed upside-down, legs folded inward, and pinned to the floor with a sewing needle through the chest.

  She gasped. Covered her mouth.

  A voodoo doll.

  That’s the only way she could explain this thing running around without her song. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Her hands shook.

  And she’d done this. She'd brought something to life that never should be.

  Sweat broke through her pores. There was no way to report the doll to the MC without ratting herself out in the process. Voodoos didn't exactly walk around on their own; the Corps would know someone enchanted it.

  There was no reversing what she’d done. She could put him to sleep for a time perhaps, but he’d always wake as a horror, an atrocity. No. She could kill him, and when his owner returned, she’d pretend she lost the doll. There. She swallowed. That’s what she had to do: kill him.

  Creeping forward she peered under the shelf and strained to make out Jack's rounded outline. With a scratching sound and a hiss, Jack turned toward her as the match in his hand exploded into flame. The fire glinted eerily off the curve of his single, black button eye.

  No. Her heart couldn’t take this. He’d burn the place down.

  “Jack,” she said firm, preparing herself to reprimand the doll. Hoping an authority figure strategy would work.

  A rapid knock rattled the door's glass.

  “Come on out, Jack. It’s okay.”

  Again, the knock at the door.

  “Please,” she begged.

  Scowling at her, not evil but angry, Jack hugged the burning match to his cloth body. The flame suffocated, leaving a bloom of black char on his chest and silver smoke swirling above him. He glared. Slunk back into shadow.

  Another knock. Now forceful.

  Taniff jerked upright. “We’re closed!” she yelled.

  This time the knock w
as slow, steady, and certain. Three hard beats. In a row, like a drum.

  A hardened voice came from outside. A woman. “I need a word with you. Open. The door.”

  Fear strumming behind her ribs, Taniff peeked under the shelf again. Jack was gone.

  TANIFF UNLOCKED THE LATCHES and cracked the door enough to see the woman’s silhouette. Deep blue coat, gloves, but no umbrella. Magi-Corps.

  Her head swirled. She might faint.

  “That’s better.” The woman pressed the door inward until she met with Taniff’s resistant foot. Rain scent billowed into the room. “Mind if we come in?”

  We? Taniff regarded the woman, then the man behind her flicking a spent cigar into the street. “This shop isn't open yet, for anyone. Corps or not. Come back in an hour.” She played it firm. Wanted the woman to take offense and not recognize her fear.

  A crash sounded behind her. For the love of God. Jack—the creature that should never have been. He was dangerous. To himself and others. Hell, he'd slaughtered a spider within seconds of coming into being. If Magi-Corps hadn’t knocked . . . she didn’t want to think about it.

  A pot lid hit the floor in the other room. Taniff hid her cringe.

  “Something you should attend to?” the officer asked.

  “Cat.”

  “Active cat.”

  Taniff smiled. “You’ve no idea.”

  The officer shoved her body weight against the door. Taniff's foot scooted a few inches. “We have questions to ask you. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Can it wait?” She shifted to put more force against the door. She’d always had a good bluff. “There’s a lot to do before I open. Including now fishing the naughty kitty out from under the cabinets.”

  “I wish it could wait, but—” The MC powered her way inside with an unnatural strength. “I need answers.”

  Staggering backward, Taniff caught her balance and marched behind the wooden counter. Any barrier to separate her and a member of the MC. The organization which had destroyed her life once already. Her childhood. Her family. “Fine. Ask away. First,” she slid her stool out and sat, “how about we keep the draft out?”