Augustus Timeworth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Augustus Timeworth held his mechanical bird up to the circus lights and watched it die a little. He wanted this bird to be the most fantastic creature his pavilion had ever shown. Its wings moved. Its head turned. But its brass feathers stayed flat and dull, like old coins. Under the colored lamps of the Grand Clockwork Circus Pavilion, real feathers would shimmer green and gold. His bird only sat there, gray and lifeless. He had built a circus that once made crowds weep. Twelve acts. Forty performers. Clocks that chimed three bell tones and broke hearts on the hour. Now most of that was gone. He needed one wonder to bring the crowds back. This bird was meant to be it. But he had searched every shop in the city, and no one sold plumage that caught light the way living feathers did. He set the bird on the sawdust floor and leaned on his cane. The cane had cracked open three vaults in its time. It had stopped a runaway gear train. It could not solve this. "You're strangling it," a voice said behind him. He turned. Aiko Kimura stood in the tent flap, a real clockwork bird perched on the back of her hand. She built birds too, birds that carried coded messages through storms. They were old friends, and something more he had never quite named. She walked past him and knelt by his dull creature. "You used solid brass," she said gently. Her bird hopped down to inspect his. "Solid brass holds no color. It only holds weight." She tilted her head, then drifted off, watching the lamps swim above them. For a moment she forgot him entirely. "Aiko." She blinked back. "Beetle wings," she said. "When I began, I lined my tail counterweights with beetle-wing casings. Thin as paper. They shimmer under any light, and they weigh almost nothing." She reached into a small pouch at her belt and poured a handful into his palm. They flashed blue and green and copper as they moved. Timeworth stared at them. He closed his hand slowly. "Where do you find them?" "A collector by the eastern docks. He has crates of them." She smiled. "He owes me a favor. He'll owe you nothing, so bring money." He pressed the casings to the bird's flat wing. Even in his palm they came alive. This was the shimmer he had chased for weeks. He almost laughed. "You've saved my whole season," he said. Aiko lifted her own bird back onto her hand. "Beetle wings are delicate," she warned. "They crack. They lift in wind. Glue them wrong and the first hot lamp will curl them off the frame." She looked at his rows of empty seats. "You'll need a way to fix them that won't fail on opening night." Timeworth looked at the bright casings in his hand. He had found his shimmer. Now he had to make it hold.