Tanglefoot (The Clockwork Century 1.20)

“Your mother will be proud, and I will be proud. You’re learning so much, so fast. One day, I think, you should go to school. A bright boy like you shouldn’t hide in basements with old men like me. A head like yours is a commodity, son. It’s not a thing to be lightly wasted. ”

To emphasize his point, he ruffled Edwin’s hair as he walked away.

Edwin sat on the edge of his cot, which brought him to eye-level with his creation. He said, “Ted?”

Ted’s jaw opened and closed with a metallic clack, but the mechanical child had no lungs, nor lips, and it did not speak.

The flesh-and-blood boy picked up Ted and carried him carefully under his arm, up the stairs and into the main body of the Waverly Hills Sanitarium. The first floor offices and corridors were mostly safe, and mostly empty–or populated by the bustling, concentrating men with clipboards and glasses, and very bland smiles that recognized Edwin without caring that he was present.

The sanitarium was very new. Some of its halls were freshly built and still stinking of mortar and the dust of construction. Its top floor rooms reeked faintly of paint and lead, as well as the medicines and bandages of the ill and the mad.

Edwin avoided the top floors where the other children lived, and he avoided the wards of the men who were kept in jackets and chains. He also avoided the sick wards, where the mad men and women were tended to.

Mrs. Criddle and Mrs. Williams worked in the kitchen and laundry, respectively; and they looked like sisters though they were not, in fact,

related. Both were women of a stout and purposeful build, with great tangles of graying hair tied up in buns and covered in sanitary hair caps; and both women were the mothering sort who were stern with patients, but kind to the hapless orphans who milled from floor to floor when they weren’t organized and contained on the roof.

Edwin found Mrs. Criddle first, working a paddle through a metal vat of mashed potatoes that was large enough to hold the boy, Ted, and a third friend of comparable size. Her wide bottom rocked from side to side in time with the sweep of her elbows as she stirred the vat, humming to herself.

“Mrs. Criddle?”

She ceased her stirring. “Mm. Yes dear?”

“It’s Edwin, ma’am. ”

“Of course it is!” She leaned the paddle against the side of the vat and flipped a lever to lower the fire. “Hello there, boy. It’s not time for supper, but what have you got there?”

He held Ted forward so she could inspect his new invention. “His name is Ted. I made him. ”

“Ted, ah yes. Ted. That’s a good name for…for…a new friend. ”

“That’s right!” Edwin brightened. “He’s my new friend. Watch, he can walk. Look at what he can do. ”

He pressed the switch and the clockwork boy marched in place, and then staggered forward, catching itself with every step and clattering with every bend of its knees. Ted moved forward until it knocked its forehead on the leg of a counter, then stopped, and turned to the left to continue soldiering onward.

“Would you look at that?” Mrs. Criddle said with the awe of a woman who had no notion of how her own stove worked, much less anything else. “That’s amazing, is what it is. He just turned around like that, just like he knew!”

“He’s automatic,” Edwin said, as if this explained everything.

“Automatic indeed. Very nice, love. But Mr. Bird and Miss Emmie will be here in a few minutes, and the kitchen will be a busy place for a boy and his new friend. You’d best take him back downstairs. ”

“First I want to go show Mrs. Williams. ”

Mrs. Criddle shook her head. “Oh no, dear. I think you’d better not. She’s upstairs, with the other boys and girls, and well, I suppose you know. I think you’re better off down with Dr. Smeeks. ”

Edwin sighed. “If I take him upstairs, they’ll only break him, won’t they?”

“I think they’re likely to try. ”

“All right,” he agreed, and gathered Ted up under his arm.

“Come back in another hour, will you? You can get your own supper and carry the doctor’s while you’re at it. ”

“Yes ma’am. I will. ”

He retreated back down the pristine corridors and dodged between two empty gurneys, back down the stairs that would return him to the safety of the doctor, the laboratory, and his own cot. He made his descent quietly, so as not to disturb the doctor in case he was still working.

When Edwin peeked around the bottom corner, he saw the old scientist sitting on his stool once more, a wadded piece of linen paper crushed in his fist. A spilled test tube leaked runny gray liquid across the counter’s top, and made a dark stain across the doctor’s pants.