Brass Automaton

11 - Many of One

Snow tore her eyes from the limp form of her husband. Willow and Daisy covered the man with a tapestry wretched from the throne room's wall by falling debris. Snow tapped one end of a discarded clouded mirror shard against her cheek as she contemplated the battle for Oossah Keep. After a stern salute and hasty retreat, Snow was left only with her closest confidant.

"My Queen?" Sky stammered, as she turned back from Willow and Daisy's trotting departure.

"Yes, Sky?" Snow answered, facing her Sister with a forced smile. "You wonder at my mood?"

Sky's eyes narrowed, and she played absently with her dirty hair. "Yes," she replied.

"I smile because what was lost in battle may yet win us the war."

"I don't understand, your Majesty. We were late, and that brass man saved Ceridwen the death she's earned."

"Brass, yes. Not a man, though, but a woman."

"A woman? Are you sure?"

"Yes, a Man's body, to be sure, but a woman none the less. It is her heart, her very blood, that powers the clockwork shell." Snow stepped away from Sky with the clouded shard toward the far window. Rubble from the roof littered the room, as did the bodies of those that had fallen. She felt grief at men and Tenyks alike, for what was a Tenyks but a man whose free will Ceridwen stole? For her daughters, though, for them, the hurt was a wave of cold emptiness trying to drown her. She knew them all. Sisters more than in name, but in the eternal bond of love and honor.

She knew all of them by sight, even when the bodies were no longer whole. She walked around the room in its entirety, taking a circular, zig-zagging path to the window. For each of her Sisters, she thought of their name as their memory flooded her mind. Often smiling, sometimes merely profound; each image flashed was a defining moment between the Sister and their queen.

At the window, she summoned Sky over to help her take off her breastplate. As the two undid the leather straps binding front and back together, Snow felt the first, slow trickle of a tear down her cheek. "Please," she said, quietly imploring Sky, "Help me lift this over my head before I lose another." Sky raised the armor over Snow's head, setting it below the ledge.

Free of the armor, Snow retrieved an opaque bottle secured between her breasts by a simple silk cord around her neck. She looked outside at the bleak, desolation of the land, her land, surrounding the keep, and another knife of inconsolable grief stabbed through her gut. She sunk to her knees in the shattered remains of the throne room and let herself cry without restraint.

Through blurred eyes she undid the bottle's stopper and collected as many of her tears as she could, hating herself for having to harvest her own sorrow. Finally, mercifully, the tears and her shudders ebbed into quiet pain. She looked up at Sky's red eyes.

"This is the first I've known you to cry, Sky," she said, reaching out a hand to her dearest Sister.

"It's just the dust in the room from the roof collapse, I'm sure," Sky replied, letting go of Snow's hand. Though not without a quick squeeze first.

Snow stood again, taking her Sister by the shoulders and staring her in the eye. "I need you to take this bottle and this shard to the edge of Rennoc Woods. You will find King Odc there, and you are to give him both. Whatever he may then ask of you, however wrong it may feel, you need to do it." She paused and fought back another surge of emotion. "For me," she concluded.

"But, my Queen? I don't know-"

"Yes, dear Sky, you do. You are the only one I trust. I think I know what King Odc will need you to do, but I imagine it will feel like something beyond your ability. I ask you to trust that I know more of this than I can share. And, that King Odc knows even more than I."

"Remember, Sky, Dwarves were birthed by magick itself to keep balance in this world. There are things they can do, things they can see, things they can know; that we cannot."

"I understand Your Highness. But I have never left your side before. Not when there was still a fight to be had."

"And I think, Sky, that you will soon enough be at my side again," Snow answered with a small smile. "Will you promise me you will do this? I do not trust any other Sister as I do you, nor is there any other Sister as capable."

"I will your Majesty," Sky answered, taking a knee and solemnly bowing before Snow.

"I am no longer 'Your Majesty' to you, Sky, but simply 'Snow.'"

Sky left Snow's side trying to hide her sudden grin. She paused at the hole in the roof, a ragged sunbeam illuminating her as she stopped and looked up. She turned back to Snow, hesitating with a decision. "Your Majesty ... Snow," she interjected deliberately, as though tasting the word in her mouth as she spoke it, "how do you know that the," she spat the words, "brass automaton had the heart of a woman. I saw it not."

"Magick touches time differently," Snow answered. "It is not easily understood, but think of yourself. Now you cannot only call me by name freely, but I encourage you to do so. Before, mere minutes ago, to do such a thing would be unthinkable to you! Yet, both of these Skys are the same, even as they are different. The same woman separated only by time. To magick, they exist together, even as time demands their distinction."

"But-" Sky started as a confused scowl marred her lovely features.

Snow smiled and squeezed Sky's shoulder. "Her magick has, and shall, become so dark it mocks the prohibitions of time itself, Sky, letting the past, present, and future brass automatons exist simultaneously. Ceridwen's brass legs betrayed her as being the one, and only, brass automaton. It was Ceridwen's sad past that saved her present horror."