Letitia yawned and stretched. “Food that looks bad begins to look good when your tummy starts making funny sounds. Did you ever think of that?”
“I'm hungry too, you know.”
“I'm sure you are, Finn. Good night again.”
Letitia leaned over, gave him a peck on the cheek, plopped down and faced the other way.
“I've been thinking,” Finn said, “about the future and the past. This vacation, though it hasn't been a great deal of fun so far, has brought some ideas to mind, things sort of rattling about in my head.
“You've brought a lot into my life, Letitia. I'm a different man than I was before. I was just drifting in my craft, doing some of this, some of that. I made lizards that blow on the fire, lizards you could put the garbage in. A skinny lizard to poke in your musket and clean the barrel out. Captain what's-his-name, you remember him, the Balloon Grenadiers. He had a thing for you, which doesn't much matter, since he's quite dead now.
“Anyway, he gave me the idea for that. Sold a lot of them, too. I can likely sell more, since the war shows very little sign of slowing down.
“That's off the subject, though, or maybe not. It wasn't very easy selling lizards when I first thought them up. Folks would say, ‘What on earth is that, what's it for?’ I really didn't get off the ground until the bug-snatcher came along. Now that caught on very quickly. That tongue leaping out all the time seemed to frighten little children, but they soon got over that. People didn't like to empty it, of course, and I can't blame them, I suppose.
“By the way, that's where I got the idea for the dirt-sucker, dear. That went quite well. After that, things went downhill awhile with Lizards-for-the-Blind. One can't be right all the time, and no one was badly hurt.
“All this, Letitia, is what got me thinking. You simply can't stand still, you've got to try-even if something goes wrong. And that's what I did, and that's how Julia came to be. After I made her, everything else seemed rather tame. It was something no one had ever done, something so different I can't ever tell anyone except you. I made a creature out of seventeen kinds of metal, elements common and rare. Then I put the ferret's brain in. I don't know why I did that, I just did.
“It scared the hell out of me, too. Shar and Dankermain got hung three hundred years back for doing much the same-making human-like creatures out of animals, and giving them the power to think.
“I'm awfully glad they did Newlies, dear, because now I have you. Of course, they did it with magic, and I just fiddled around with scraps and tiny gears. It's not the same thing, but who'd believe that? Why, they'd put a noose around my neck and cut me up in pieces, just like those crazy seers.
“What was I saying, now? Yes, about the future, what I want to do next. Did I say it scared me when I finished Julia Jessica Slagg? It did, but it had another effect as well. It made me see what could be done, what unbelievable worlds could be explored. It was our misadventure with Count Onjine and his Yowlies-I know you won't forget that. At any rate, it was there I learned that Julia could actually see the tiny bit of poison in the jeweled lizard that would have killed the prince if we hadn't stopped the Count in time. It was a thing no human could ever see, and it struck me that if Julia could learn to craft devices so small, what's to keep those near invisible machines from making smaller devices still?
“What a marvel that would be! I was dizzy at the thought, and I'm often dizzy still.
“This is what I wished to tell you, dear. I should have mentioned it before, but with the trouble at sea, and our odd predicament here … Anyway, do you think me fevered, love? Some sort of vain, crack-brained fellow whose dreams have taken him over the brink, like the poor hapless loonies in a dark asylum somewhere? If you believe that's so, I wish you'd tell me, please. Don't hold back for fear I'll be crushed, for I'm not as proud as that.
“Please, Letitia. I need your honest thoughts on this. We have not been together long, but I feel we've seen the birth of a deep and meaningful relationship. So, do you think you've given your love to a man with some wits about him, or a hopeless buffoon?
“Letitia?
“Letitia Louise …?”
14
Finn sat up. Letitia snored lightly, a lock of hair rising on her cheek with every peaceful breath.
“Beads and Weeds, dear, I can't believe you'd do this to me. It's inconsiderate, is what it is. I really feel you should apologize.”
“You lull her to sleep with your babble, and you want an apology to boot?”
Julia gave a tinny chuckle from her perch across the room. “You nearly put me under, and I've never been asleep in my life.”
“You didn't have to listen. Everything I say isn't directed at you.”
“Everything you talked about is me. It's nothing we haven't discussed before. I am always loathe to agree with you, Finn. You have a sizeable head as it is. In this case, though, I quite approve. Delving into the microscopic world is a bold, exciting idea. If, as I have learned, the world is made of Earth, Air, Sky and Water, what indeed are those things made of?
“Of all the tomes on your shelves, I find the ones on the philosophy of the cosmos the most intriguing of all.
“I feel we understand each other, Finn. It's no great secret that you irritate me quite a bit. You think too much of yourself, you strut about like every human male I've seen- noble, merchant, soldier and commoner alike. Including, I might add, the dead, who seem no wiser in one state of being than the next.
“Still, we can do some quite interesting things together, in spite of your failings. Even if you're slow in your thinking, I have to say you had the wit to make me, and I give you much credit for that.
“One thing, though, Finn. And this we haven't talked about. We can make things smaller, and doubtless smaller still. If we do, though, why? I am quite fascinated with the effort, the drama of discovery, the thrill of the chase. But I see little sense in the result. What good will tiny things do? What on earth could you use them for?
“You couldn't sell them, for no one's fool enough to buy a thing they can't even see. And surely they'd be stepped on all the time, or simply blow away. Like so many good ideas, I fear this one lacks any value except as an oddity, a curiosity of sorts. Has this perhaps occurred to you?
“Finn?
“Finn …?”
15
The winds picked up as a gale swept in from the sea. Rain pounded on the twenty-nine roofs, roofs of slate and shale, roofs of wood and thatch, roofs that leaned sideways, roofs that were steep and roofs that were flat.
Rain rattled on the eighty-four windows, windows made of paper, windows made of slats, even, on occasion, windows made of glass.
The house creaked and groaned, trembled and shivered in the wind. Thunder rolled like boulders through the frenzied sky. Lightning painted Finn and Letitia's room with strobic fits of light.
The light struck Julia's ruby eyes, shimmered on her tin and copper scales. Julia didn't care. Julia didn't move. It was night, and there was no one she wanted to talk to, nowhere she wanted to go. At times such as this, listening was her favorite thing to do. When Julia cared to listen, she could hear a vast array of sounds. Sounds from the low scales, sounds from the high. Now, she could hear spiders walking in the walls, hear moths chewing on the rugs out in the hall. If she wanted, she could hear the little clicks and the whirs, the tiny cogs and gears within her metal shell. She had learned, though, to set those sounds aside, unless something went awry. Then, she would fix the problem, or complain about it to Finn.
She could hear, not far away, the vile sounds humans made, playing their Hooter game. A game, she knew, from other sounds she heard, that often brought pain, and even death itself.