Page 61 of Still the Sun

Once I replace the lever and fulcrum nestled in the heart of Machine Five, it’s able to drop down to connect with Machine Four. I make aslow walk through the tower, inspecting each machine, all the way down to Machine One, where Moseus greets me.

“They should all function now.” I press a hand to Machine One, to the part I earlier rigged up for a turning rod. “We just need to figure out how to fuel it. There’s nothing I can find.” I’ve gathered a lot of emilies, but it’s not nearly enough. And I don’t know how to connect a separate power source to this tower.

“Can you alter it?” Moseus asks, hands clenched beneath his long sleeves, voice eager. I try not to look at him. When I do, I see only that gaping hole. “Like you did when you wound it?”

I click my teeth together a few times. “I mean ... maybe. To use manpower on each machine would have to involve Emgarden. A lot of Emgarden. But these machines weren’t designed to function that way. I can’t wrap my head around how the Ancients did it.” I circle Machine One with my small lantern, as though the mechanism will finally reveal its last secret to me. It doesn’t. “I think emilies could also be a power source, but ... it would take alotof emilies, and there’s nowhere for them to go.”

I haven’t yet tested how long the energy of an emily can last. I think Nophe knew, but she hasn’t deigned to tell me. The tower shivers as the earth moves below, but neither tower nor Tampere want to tell me, either, so I ignore them.

“Hmm.” Moseus approaches Machine One until his nose nearly touches its outer coils. “I have meditated on this a great deal, trying to expand my mind. But”—he sighs—“I do not know, either.”

I guess even gods aren’t omniscient.

“I’ll do the same,” I offer. “Give my mind a rest and see if something comes to me.” I’ve been in and out of all these machines. I know every millimeter of them, andnothinghas given me a clue as to how to power them. I’ve speculated about everything, from the liquid mirror draining down into the tower and turning the mechanisms itself, to all this being a ruse by the Ancients to play with mortal minds. I genuinely don’t know where else to turn.

“If Emgarden must,” Moseus grinds out the words and punctuates them with a wearying breath, “then we will accept their help. But only if it must.”

I turn around. “Where is Heartwood?”

“I am not his overseer. He is capable of tending to himself.” Moseus rubs his forehead. “To be so close, and yet so far.”

I hug myself, catch myself, and fold my arms instead. “We’ll figure it out.”

“See that you do.”

I guess he missed thewein that sentiment, but I don’t point it out. Moseus retires to his meditation. I stand there, waiting for something I cannot name, another vision or revelation, or for the tower to speak to me, but it answers with dark silence, punctuated only by the sound of my breathing.

I fixed the machines, didn’t I?

So why do I feel as empty as when I first arrived?

I don’t know what to do with myself.

When I get home, I eat and try to rest, but I can’t. My mind spins. So I bring out a slate and attempt to work out the tower machines, but I don’t know where to start, so there’s nothing to write. I decide to work on something else, but the wells are fine and no one has died. I consider helping out on the farm, but by the time I get there, everyone has wrapped up. It’s late sun, and the mists are near, and while it’s not impossible to tend the crops in the mist, it’s not the easiest, either. So I find my rover to see if it needs any maintenance—it doesn’t—and wander home again.

I could visit the alehouse. But I feel like a wet rag wrung dry, and I don’t have it in me to socialize. To pretend like everything is fine when it’s not. There’s no solution to this listlessness, plain and simple. I just have to endure until I ... get better.

I rub a spot between my breasts nearly to bruising.Something is missing,it sings.I know,I counter, but what am I supposed to do? I can’t power the machines on wishes and prayers. I can’t pack in this gap with dirt or effort or anything in between.

I pace the length of my house, then the width, back and forth, crossing and recrossing my path. I’ve never thought of this humble abode as claustrophobic, but with the mist seeping through its open windows, it feels stifling. I want to cry and scream and sleep, but I settle for nearly ripping my hair out at the scalp, then throwing the door open and climbing the short ladder to the roof. Sprawling out on the shingles, I let the fog roll over me, claiming me as its own, merging me with the rest of Emgarden and our little corner of Tampere. I breathe it in, slow and deep, and let it out the same. Close my eyes and find no rest.

Several minutes pass before I sit up, a sigh on my lips, and plant my elbows on my knees. The solution for the tower will come to me eventually. It has to. If not me, then Moseus or Heartwood. Someone will sort it out. We’re so close. We’re allso close, and yet the task looms monumentally over us, murky and confusing and utterly unachievable.

I’m no engineer. I’m atinkerer. A woman with too much time on her hands, who likes to wander the dry expanses around her town looking for artifacts of a people long past. I am nothing more, and I never will be.

Gritting my teeth, I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes. Blink away pink points of light and let the mist fill my vision once more. And—

My mind voids thought. Breath catches.

And ... there’s something familiar about this.

I can’t pinpoint what. I’ve been up on my roof countless times. But something about it itches the back of my mind. Where I’m sitting? The fall of the mist? What? I want to ask the tendrils of fog, but I fear that speaking will somehow destroy this partially formed spell.

Leaning forward, I listen, search. Move up on the shingles, over, down—

Here.This is where I sat, before. With my toes against the eaves. And then ...

Standing, I walk across the roof. Pause. Climb down the ladder. Yes, I did this. I’ve done it so many times, but I did this ... then. I start back for my door, but no—that’s wrong. I went this way.

---