Chapter 11 Episode 2 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
“Listen now, Alleine,” he said in the same exasperated tone his sister often drew from him, “a thousand years is a very long time, longer, I think, than you can imagine. You have been asleep. To you, it seems as if only a few days have passed. Am I right?”
“But you say that’s not so,” she said.
“It is not so.”
He could almost see her inside the iron box, chewing on the end of a non-existent braid. “Cherholtz is gone?”
“Cherholtz floats in the sky, like a big island in the ocean. The people here have forgotten it was ever called Cherholtz. They call it Risenton. This may be hard to understand,” he added, in hopes she would tell him more.
“Why would it be hard to understand? It was all I could think of. What would you do different?” she said in a plaintive wail.
Heart aching for her, Adewole reached to comfort the child, drawing back as he realized there was no way to do so. “I am sure you did the best you could. Can you tell me what you did?”
“I thought you knew. I got the city away from the Black Spring.”
“What is that?”
“For someone who’s sposed to be so smart you don’t know much,” said Alleine. “That’s where ichor comes from.”
So that’s what Diederich Enterprises uncovered, thought Adewole. “What did you do?”
“Well...it was bad,” she said, drawing out the words. “I took the city into the air, and I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t think.”
“Did Vatterbroch tell you to do it?”
“He wanted to tell me to do a lot of stuff, but he couldn’t do the spells. He got the first ones right, so I couldn’t hurt him or not eat—if ichor was around I had to go eat it or it hurt like anything, oh, worse than being here in the heart. But he sang the last spell wrong, the one that was sposed to make me do anything he wanted. I think he killed that Chorister before she taught him how to do it right.” The words poured out, the offhand, excited rush of a child who needed to tell someone something so important it was hard to tell.
Adewole leaned forward on his perch of rubble, hands clasped and dangling between his knees, his disbelief in magic banished forever. “How did he do this? With the Bone Lyre?”
Alleine’s voice shuddered. “That’s the worst ever. That’s what hurts the most. It always hurts inside the Machine God, but when he uses the Lyre it’s like he’s...” She paused, her voice overcome. “It’s like he’s taking my bones out all over again.”
Adewole forced down a shudder of his own. “But he failed.”
“I figured if I got away from the Black Spring before he got it right, it’d be all right. At least I wouldn’t have to eat any more ichor because there wouldn’t be any ichor, and then maybe I’d die. Because being in the dark like this is awful, Ollie, but being inside the Machine God is worse. Oh, it’s so much worse, please tell me no one can put me back in it!” she sobbed.
