With that short batch of Cliffside Short-stories finished, I am now forced to look at what comes next for my Saturday postings. Of all the writing I’ve done, what fits best in a sidelong once-a-week format? I have more short stories, but not enough to outlast the weeks of books I have to upload. Do I write more short stories? Use Saturday to upload drafts and show my process? Only post personal bloggings about how I feel or what’s going on in the news today?
Edmund’s remaining silent, however, did not mean that he understood. Tunansia’s behavior confused him greatly and occupied much of his mind as they walked back to Grimm’s from the train station. They parted without a word at the entry, Edmund continuing towards Altmore house, Tunansia towards her own room at the other end of the school.
When her footsteps finally faded, taking her melancholy airs with her, Edmund was able to focus on one fact that now swam about his head.
Edmund had won!
It was almost disappointing. As far as Edmund had been concerned, he had expected the salvation of the family to take him into his late teens, perhaps early twenties at the outside. If nothing else, he had thought he would have needed to put some effort into it. Instead, he had merely accepted an invitation, and in return they had accepted him into the highest ranks of society.
On the day in question, Edmund was sitting quietly in the Library, working through a curious contradiction in two separate editions of a book on Aqueous Vitaes in the brain, when a voice made of meringue and steel wool broke through the silence.
“Edrum!”
“Edmund,” he reminded Victrola as she bounded through the stacks towards him. “Edmund Moulde.”
“That’s what I said,” Victrola smiled with saccharine glee as she tossed her curly hair behind her ear. “I have wonderful news! I got a ten on my paper on Advanced Acrimony,” pride shone off her pale face. “She said it was inspired!”
“If you say so,” Edmund said. He had thought it a fairly obvious observation.
When Edmund awoke, he knew exactly where he was. This was in direct contradiction to expected behavior of any child thrown into a new world over the course of a single night, but he didn’t have the time for such formalities.
Instead he engaged in his usual morning routine: first, he looked at his notebook.
Sure enough, during the night his sleeping brain had tried to wake him with any number of sudden thoughts, concerns, ideas, and the like; but his hand had caught them all, trapping them in ink before his rest was disturbed.
You have to be careful in the Steamworks.
It is a belly filled with brass and steam. Towering pipes twist and turn like yarn through brick walls and floors. Concrete walls and iron doors, bars like a prison. The heat, sweltering and pure, scouring your skin free. It is enough to drive you insane.
I thought I was insane, once.
That first day, when I had taken the King’s Shilling and become a City Engineer, I crawled through the hole in the ground down the slim ladder with rungs as thick as bottles. I thought I could feel the heartbeat of the City through the bricks as I descended, deeper and deeper into the pit. I kept my eyes shut, squeezing tightly lest I look down and fall.
Yellow. Burning yellow. With a sharp sliver of black dividing the topaz jewel, the cat’s eyes slowly blinked in the flickering firelight.
“Patience,” Rufus muttered, half to himself, half to the cat. “Almost there. Almost.”
It had become a mantra, a holy psalm that spurred Rufus’s actions ever onward. It kept him going, moving in the dim candlelight when his strength had all but left him. Almost there. Just a few more tests…
