Read Online Magic and Loss: A Novel of Golgotham by Nancy A. Collins - Free Book Online

Kymeran trickery. The Treaty of 1111 was in danger of being destroyed, and the Sufferance rekindled. Lord Bexe had no choice but to side with the human race against his own brother.” The Curator shook her head, as if clearing it of visions only she could see. “Well, that’s enough waltzing through history,” she said with a wan smile. “It’s time we put the finishing touches on our friend here and make her presentable so she can meet her public.”
    She briskly clapped her hands, like a school teacher summoning silence from her class, and a wooden trunk appeared before her. Reaching into the voluminous folds of her sleeves she retrieved a large ring of keys of various sizes and shapes, quickly flicking through them until she came to the one she sought. She opened the trunk, revealing what looked like folded cloth-of-gold. She gestured with her right hand, like an orchestra conductor calling four-four time, and the empty skin rose upward like a gilded ghost.
    The fingers of the Curator’s right hand moved like those of a puppeteer manipulating a marionette, guiding the shed so that it once more assumed the shape of the proud beast that had once worn it. The empty skin hovered above the clockwork dragon for a moment, then gently lowered itself so that it draped the automaton from the nape of its neck to an inch short of the barbed tail. Once the shed was in place, the Curator began tapping her fingertips together, as if she was playing a pair of invisible castanets, while at the same time miming a seamstress fitting a garment on a dressmaker’s dummy, until the gleaming skin was securely bonded to the clockwork dragon.
    “Look at you,” Canterbury smiled, addressing his handiwork as if it were a beloved pet. “Aren’t you gorgeous?” He then turned and nodded to me. “Okay, kid—time to do your stuff!”
    Before I became Canterbury’s apprentice, my talent for animating the sculptures I created was entirely unconscious, and invariably a response to “fight-or-flight” scenarios. But under his tutelage, I had since learned how to make deliberate contact with the spark that resides in my creations and activate it through the force of my will. All artists put a little of themselves into their work—but in my case it’s literally true.
    I took a deep breath and focused my attention on the clockwork dragon, rerunning how I had put it together, piece by piece, in my mind. As I slowed my heart rate and steadied my breathing, I felt the edges of my consciousness travel outward, like the ripples on a pond. Suddenly the clockwork dragon reared back onto its hind legs, its forelegs clawing at the air, and spread gold foil wings that shimmered like the sun. It opened its mighty jaws and a deep, reverberating growl, like that of a bull alligator, rumbled forth from its chest. For the briefest of moments it felt as if the thing was genuinely alive, and I was its master, holding it on the end of an invisible leash.
    “Turn the head toward me a tad,” Canterbury instructed. “Now lift the wings a little higher—spread them out farther—no! Too much! Pull it back a bit! Yes, that’s it!
Perfect!
You can let go now, Tate.”
    I sighed and retracted my concentration, leaving the automaton posed to my master’s specifications. As my will slipped free of the clockwork dragon, I felt the spark I had awakened within it retreat, as if the golden reptile had fallen into hibernation.
    “
Most
impressive,” the Curator said, regarding me like a potential exhibit. “I have never seen the inanimate made animate without the ritual of the Unspoken Word. Are you
certain
you’re fully human?”
    “Believe me, there is
nothing
magical about my parents,” I assured her. “So how are we supposed to suspend this thing from the ceiling? I don’t see any hooks or mounts up there. . . .”
    Before I could finish my sentence, the golden dragon floated upward like a Macy’s parade balloon, positioning itself opposite its ebon