Read Online Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, Kiri Moth - Free Book Online Page B

says.
    She flushes as if he’s courting her, takes his hand. (She loves Alec. They all do. Any one of them would take Alec’s hand any time he offered it. He was true magic, everybody knew.)
    It’s winter. As she walks down the steps beside him, Alec pulls her close with one arm and wraps his wings around them both. The metal warms from the heat of their bodies into a comfortable cocoon, and with every step the wings shake, a little rain of notes.
    He doesn’t try to convince her of anything; he just walks with her around the yard like they’re working off a cramp. They pass Jonah, who’s washing the red truck. His head is bent to his work, but his face is stormy.
    “Poor Jonah,” Alec says, laughing quietly. “He’s had a fight with Ayar.”
    She doesn’t say anything. (“He won’t listen,” Ayar had told her, “he’s going to hurt himself if he strains his lungs like that, and what if one of these days Boss’s magic doesn’t work?”
    “Tell him you’ll replace him,” said Ying, because she knew that was the cruelest thing you could do to anyone, replace them.
    Ayar looked at her and said, “I forget you’re still a child,” and that was how Ying got the first idea that something would happen soon that would make her no longer young.)
    They pass the tent, where through the open flaps Ying can see Elena and Nayah and Mina practicing. (Ying looks at them hard, like she can see their copper bones if she tries.) They pass Ayar, who is dragging the trailers into a smaller half-circle where the trucks nearly touch. It will snow soon; they’ll want the protection from the wind.
    After they have walked nearly around the yard, Alec says, “You don’t have to do anything. You can stay with us just as you are.”
    “On the trapeze?”
    There is a little pause before Alec says, “No. That’s not safe for you.”
    What he means is: Elena insists they all have the bones, so they’re all mangled alike. Ying understands; sometimes you have to be one of the troupe, and not yourself. (She wanted a home. She found one.)
    “And Little George always needs help,” Alec is saying, and Ying thinks about Little George strapping on the brass legs that are too big for him, thinks about running errands and barking at the gates, staggering from city to city and pasting the Tresaulti posters on any walls that haven’t been blown in.
    “I’m frightened of the bones,” she says. Her voice shakes, but it can’t be the cold, because his wings are so warm.
    He stops and kneels in front of her; his wrapped-around wings lock them in together, the bottom feathers sinking into the soft ground.
    (Ying will never forgive him for doing this now; not after she sees his wings trying to burrow into the ground after he falls, not after being reminded of the cocoon he made for her, once.)
    His feathers are so close to her that if she turns her face she can look into their warm, bright mirror. His eyes are a deep clear blue, like chips of glass, and she sees herself in them—eyes wide, face drawn, looking frail and breakable against the metal cage.
    Tenderly, as only monsters are tender, he asks, “Are you afraid to be like us, Ying?”
    “No,” Ying says. (How can she be afraid of anything, when he is so beautiful?)
    She turns her head. Her breath fogs over the copper petals, until nothing is left of her but a dim reflection in his wings.

26.
    This is what they understand:
    After the audition, Boss takes them to the workshop, sets out her bone saw. She says, “I’ll have to operate. You might die.”
    Some have turned her down at that. The idea of this woman performing surgery is no comfort, and though a lot of people are dying these days, it’s one thing to go down in a firefight and another to throw yourself away.
    The rest stay.
    (These are circus folk; these are the ones who have nothing to lose.)
    She sets out the pipes and the wrenches. Then she says, “You’ll die.”
    This is their first measure. Everyone feels