This time, there wasn't a bell to announce the arrival of her next client. There weren't even two hinges on the door to do the job, either.
The girl who entered her parlour looked to be more machine than girl. She had metal on either side of her head, leaving her hair looking like she had a double side shave haircut with the rest of her hair in a long braid, and her left ear was a piece of machinery as well. She had one human eye, her right eye, and one that looked to be made out of copper, along with a piece of metal on her jaw.
Her clothing looked like it had seen better days. It consisted of a long, tattered jacket with enough patches on it to make a pillowcase, an off-black tank top that looked like it had gotten the bottom three inches ripped off, a pair of green army-style cargo pants with pockets more full than the parlour woman's cupboards, and a pair of hiking boots with flowers embroidered on the tongues.
The parlour woman smiles at the girl in front of her. "How can I help you, love?"
The girl meets the parlour woman's gaze with one of solid ice. "Do you happen to have any spare magnets?"
The parlour woman scrunches one side of her face in thought. "I think so. Why?"
The girl takes a step toward the parlour woman and the front counter. "I lost the magnets that keep my arm in place." To the parlour woman's surprise, the girl takes hold of her left arm and pulls it fully out of the sleeve of her jacket, holding it out in front of her. "One of the Wastedogs down by the station ripped it off, and the magnets got ripped out. I couldn't find them."
The parlour woman nods and gestures for the girl to follow her. "I think I have some that might work for you. If not, I'll make some."
The parlour woman heard a soft whir coming from the girl following in her stead. "Are you a magnetron?"
The parlour woman chuckles and glances over her shoulder at the girl's mismatched eyes. "I'm a witch, dear. Now." The parlour woman stops in front of a set of a few dozen cabinets with her hands on her hips. "Where could those magnets be?"
The woman hears a click and a whir to her right and looks over to see that the "pupil" area of the girl's copper eye had opened slightly. The girl seemed to be scanning the cabinets; her eyes would flick from one cabinet to the next in rapid succession.
"There," the girl says, pointing to a cabinet off to her left with her detached arm. "The magnets are in that one."
The parlour woman nods, impressed. "That works."
Crouching down to open the cabinet, the woman holds out her hand. "I will need to see your arm if I am to know if the magnets will fit."
The girl cautiously hands the piece of machinery in her hand to the parlour woman. "Can't you just cut them if they don't fit?"
The woman smirks. "My magnets don't work like that." She then pulls out a wicker basket with magnets of all different shapes and sizes.
The only odd thing about the magnets in that basket was that none of them were stuck to each other.
The parlour woman sifts through the magnets before pulling out one that looked to be the perfect size, and yet she frowns at it.
"This one is dead," the woman says, putting the basket back in the cabinet. "I'll have to recharge it."
The girl cocks her head at the woman before her. "How can a magnet be dead?"
"Well, they only last around a century or so. Maybe less. But I charged this one so long ago that it has most likely been dead for three hundred years."
YOU ARE READING
The Queen's Curls
General Fiction(note: this does not take place in Italy) A cute story about a woman whose love for helping strangers leads to her meeting almost every kind of person.
