If I could assemble a machine from bits of metal and screws, would I be able to make something that would capture their light as I could not do?
I laid down my brush and looked out into the distance. I could feel the thrumming in my chest. It made a steady sound, a reminder of the promise I had given to Aunt Bertha on her deathbed. Maybe I wasn’t made to be a painter. Maybe I was really made to be something else.
It was the steady drone that roused me.
I walked to the window and looked out.
There was this huge thing floating above us. It was shaped like a whale and its bulk blocked out all sight of the sun. I had seen it in one of Aunt Bertha’s books, but I never thought I’d see one in Carrascal.
Fermi and Ana stood behind me, still dressed in their nightclothes, hands clutching each other.
“Lina,” Fermi said. “What’s out there?”
“I believe it’s a zeppelin,” I said.
Ana’s eyes opened wide.
“No,” she said. “It can’t be. It can’t be.”
“Ana,” Fermi said.
But Ana was running away from us, her feet slipping and sliding on the smooth floor. She rounded the corner that led to the bedrooms. We heard the bang of the door and the click of a lock.
Fermi’s face wore a shadow. Gone was the light of the past days.
“It couldn’t last forever,” Fermi said.
Her voice broke and I didn’t know what else to do, so I opened my arms and let her cry.
There was no more running down to the sea.
I wound up the automatons and we all went to work. No matter what went on outdoors, someone still had to tend to the plants in the hothouse. Worlds needed to be wound up, the organ pipes needed cleaning and then there was the matter of Aunt Bertha’s final project.
It stood in the workshop—a stranded skeleton that looked nothing like the bird Aunt Bertha compared it to. Its slender frame was formed from bowed copper rods, and its sides were hemmed with strips of balsa wood. We still had to stretch the canvas cover over it. Maybe then it would look like something meant for flight.
“Lina,” Fermi said. “What are you all doing down here?”
“Working,” I said.
She came downstairs.
“Amazing,” she said.
She walked around the frame, her hands reaching out but not quite touching.
“You made this?” She said.
“It’s Aunt Bertha’s project,” I replied. “We only put it together.”
“How wonderful,” she said. “How simply wonderful.”
After Fermi left, we finished the rest of what still needed to be done. We unfolded the canvas from its hiding place.
Good for flying, Auntie Bertha had said.
Slowly, we stretched the canvas over that bare frame. It was no longer a skeleton now.
My chest thrummed and I pressed the tips of my fingers to it.
“Well now,” I said. “I suppose we must try to get it to fly.”
There were voices upstairs and when I came into the living room, there was a man. A big man with a wild shock of hair. He had a beard the color of sand and a big nose and tears in his eyes.
“Fermi,” he said. “I came all this way. I even took the governor’s zeppelin.”
Ana stood with her back to him.
For the first time, I noticed the copper tone of Ana’s fingers. She did not tremble, but when she moved her head, I heard the creak of her gears and the stutter of her cogs.
“We won’t come with you,” Fermi said.
Her fingers were mottled red and white where they were tightly clasped around Ana's.
“Listen to me,” the big man said. “We can’t just pretend I didn’t see her. She has to go back. You shouldn’t have taken her with you, Fermi. You should have let things be.”
Fermi bared her teeth at the big man.
“What will you do, Jorge? Will you take us back as if we were your captives? I won’t let you, you know.”
Jorge sighed.
“Look,” he said. “She’s a machine and a faulty one at that. The governor wants her back.”
“I know what the governor wants her for,” Fermi said. “She won’t be taken apart, Jorge. Ana is Ana.”
Her voice reminded me of Auntie Bertha.
After a while, Jorge left. He dragged his left leg when he walked and left small scratches on the floor. I made a note of his path and later I sent Misa to polish away the marks of his passing.
I ignored the drone of the zeppelin’s engine. Jorge was not going away, and neither was his ship.
I watched Ana and in the shadow of that ship, it was impossible to miss all the tiny little things that passed me by when they were bathed in the light of their happiness.
Finally, it was time to test Aunt Bertha’s project. Sergio flung the doors of the workshop open. Behind the house there was an incline. The three of us set our hands to Aunt Bertha’s project and pushed.
The machine wasn’t that heavy and a breeze came up from behind and made it easier for us to push it upward.
“Wait.”
Fermi and Ana raced up from behind us.
“Where are you going?” Fermi said. “What are you doing?”
I stared at her and I stared at Ana.
I couldn’t miss it now.
The shadow of that ship stripped her of everything that made her seem slightly human.
“A machine,” I said. “Must do as it was created to do. This is Aunt Bertha’s project.”
“So you keep saying,” Fermi said.
Behind her, Ana made a sound.
“It’s a flying machine,” Fermi said again. “A flying machine. Do you understand what that is and what it can do?”
I stared into Fermi’s face—watched excitement bloom in her eyes.
In the diagrams she'd left behind, Aunt Bertha had explicitly stated how the project would reach its fruition.
I took off my gloves. I took off my boots. I prepared to take off my gown.
I stared at my paintbrush. I suppose I wasn’t really made to be a painter after all.
“Lina,” Fermi said. “What are you doing?”
“It’s the final stage of the project,” I said. “The machine won’t fly without an engine. It won’t rise without the mechanism Aunt Bertha put inside my chest.”
“But you don’t want to,” Fermi said. “You don’t want to leave, do you? You want to stay here in this place. You want to care for the house and for the others.”
I stopped.
Fermi’s voice rose in intensity and she pulled Ana in front of me.
“Listen to me,” Fermi went on. “You want to stay in this place, Lina. But Ana—Ana must fly.”
Ana gave a start and I watched as she turned to face Fermi.
“Look,” Fermi said. “I know you're frightened, Ana. But it’s the only way. We'll go. We'll go together you and I.”
Long after they left, I could still hear the sound of their passing.
Even in the shadow of the zeppelin, light floated all around them.
Naked and with the heart of her revealed, they were still suffused with light. Human and machine. Sun-browned flesh against copper bright metal.
Slowly, the rudder of the flying machine came to life. Ana’s sound, a high counterpoint against the background drone of the big zeppelin.
Sergio and Misa pushed, and for a moment, when they slid off the incline, it seemed like they wouldn’t make it. They wobbled slightly in the air, then a gust of wind pushed them upward, and gave them lift.
I kept on watching until the sound of her faded and they were nothing more than a speck on the horizon.
Aunt Bertha’s final project—it was finished.