Scotty Green's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Scotty wound the key in the little white dog's back. The dog's legs twitched, took three steps across the bench, then locked up. Its ears drooped. The gears under its collar clicked, slowed, and stopped. He had cleaned the mud. He had oiled every joint. Still it stalled. Something inside had broken during the rescue, and he couldn't see what. He pried off the brass plate on its side. Wires and tiny gears crowded the gap. He touched one spring. It felt tight. He touched another. He had no way to tell which part had failed. Swap the wrong one and he might fry the whole dog for good. Scotty set down his screwdriver. His hands were shaking. Amanda climbed through the hatch. She carried the steampunk panda, the one he had fixed the day before. She set it on the bench beside the dog. "You fixed this one quick," she said. "Why's the little one giving you trouble?" "Because I knew what broke on the panda," Scotty said. "A leg. I could see it. This one, I can't see inside well enough. If I guess wrong, I kill it." Amanda wound the panda's key. It blinked its glass goggles and took a slow step. She watched its brass legs move, each gear turning the next in a smooth chain. "The panda works," she said. "So you know what a good one sounds like." Scotty stared at her. Then he leaned close to the panda and listened. Its gears ticked steady and even. He held the stalling dog to his other ear and wound it. The dog's gears ticked the same, then hit one hard clack and froze. The clack came from behind the collar. He didn't have to guess anymore. He had a working dog to compare against. Scotty opened the collar plate and found a bent cog, its teeth mashed flat on one side. He pulled it out. He fit a spare cog from his crate, matched tooth for tooth to the panda's. His hands stopped shaking. He closed the plate and wound the key. The little dog stood. It took three steps, then three more. It wagged its tail. It turned its head toward the crate and let out a thin metal bark. Scotty laughed and scooped it up. "It's working," he said. "It can find parts now. Every part this town needs." Amanda smiled, but she looked past him through the hatch. "Then send it out," she said. "Because that line got longer." Scotty looked down the ladder. The crowd below had doubled. More broken things, more lost faces. He had his helper back. Now he had to feed it a hundred missing parts, and he had no idea where in Forgotten Hollow those parts still existed.