Alicia and the Broken Doll
Nestled on a cliffside, a small town zig-zagged up the rock face and ended with a church on the plateau. In the noonday sun, the church steeple had been the first thing Alicia had seen glimmering in the horizon as she had flown over the Senbu Desert two days ago. As her plane soared over it, the desert ended and a lush valley of farmland opened up before her. She zoomed over the patchwork of farms and eventually landed at the foot of the mountainside village.
She was the first traveler in months for these people. A mother and her gaggle of children had approached her first — the youngest, a yellow haired girl with crooked teeth, gave her a charm, a small four-leaf clover she picked from a tuft of grass. An elderly couple had offered Alicia food and lodgings for her stay in return for news of the world beyond their vertical village. On the first night, Alicia was the guest of honor at the church festival. They sang hymns, danced to flute music, and feasted on the plumpest pigs and chickens Alicia had ever seen.
The next day, she explored the town on her own. Alicia weaved her way up and down the inclined streets admiring the engineering that went into the town’s architecture. Buildings looked as if they were chiseled out of the rock. These people lived with nature instead of destroying it. In her journal, Alicia opened her journal and drew the view of the farms from the cliff.
A strange whirling noise passed across Alicia’s back. She jerked her head to the side and caught the sight of a boy with a basket. He marched like a toy soldier going down the street. She studied each rigid step and scrutinized the back of his head. Did his skin look somewhat paler than everyone else’s? The boy stopped at a cart, produced a list for the shopkeeper, and stood by silently to receive his wares. After he paid, the boy raised his arm and waved it side to side before marching away.
As the boy approached the next cart, several rowdy children ran by and bumped into it. A support beam holding a rack of pumpkins snapped and the shelf collapsed.
“Watch out!” Alicia called. She tucked her journal back into her jacket and weaved her way through the throng of people shopping in the market district. She broke through the crowd, but by then most of them were gawking at the sight of the boy laying on his back with his legs making a walking motion in the air. The pumpkin that hit the boy’s head was smashed open and bleeding seeds. “Are you hurt?” she asked him. “Is there a doctor here?” She called to the crowd.
“Oy, who’s gonna pay for that pump-” The cart owner stooped down besides Alicia and the boy. “What’s with is head?”
Alicia turned from the cart owner to the child. Her eyes widened. Inside the boy’s head gears rotated and a metallic belt of bumps moved cams up and down. The whirling noise she heard earlier was louder now that it wasn’t fully encased by the boy’s skull. Around the wound laid brass gears and copper cogs.
“What’s wrong with his legs?” Alicia recognized the yellow-haired girl’s voice. When she glanced at them, the mother pushed her daughter behind her cloak. Murmurs and whispers grew amongst the bystanders.
“It’s a machine like a music box or pocket watch, but he’s broken now,” Alicia said. She bent back over the boy and removed a cloth pouch from her belt and unrolled it on the street revealing a set of slender wrenches, tiny tuners, chisels, awls, and mallets. Taking a wrench, she probed the boy’s head and with great care she slid the tool against the cams to keep them from rolling over the bumps. The boy’s legs froze in mid-air. Cries of “Heretic!” rose from the stunned audience.
A small stone hit Alicia in the small of her back. She yelped. Another stone hit her on her arm. “Stop!” She cried. She drew her luger and raised it against the crowd. Several more townsfolk had rocks in their hands ready to launch them.
“Stay your distance! Lower your weapons!” An elderly man forced his way through the crowd with his cane. Alicia recognized him as the husband of the couple that she was staying at. He approached the boy and tapped his cane against his chest. “My child,” he said turning to Alicia. “I know you mean well, but allow us to take care of this.”
“What will you do to him?” She said lowering her gun.
“It. We will destroy it. All the works of the Devil must be destroyed.”
“Where I come from scientists and philosophers believe the human body is nothing more than an intricate machine full of minute gears and wheels that allow us to live. If I’m no longer welcome here, let me take him with me!” The yellow-hair girl began to cry and latched onto her mother’s side.
“Very well,” the elderly man said after a long pause. A ruckus of cries and yells bellowed from the surrounding people. “Silence! You will obey your elders just as it says in the scriptures! Allow her to pass. I shall walk with her.” Alicia picked up the boy and all the mechanical parts laying around him she could find. She bought a tarp from a nearby cart and wrapped the boy’s body and slung it over her shoulder. Before Alicia left the market, she crouched down by the yellow-haired girl and plucked the clover from her pocket and held it out for her. The girl swiped it from her hand and crushed it in her fist. Alicia smiled anyway. “Goodbye,” she said.
The elderly man guided her back to her plane. His wife had brought her suitcase to the plane already. She frowned and bid Alicia adieu. Alicia laid the boy in the plane’s trunk and buckled him down.
When the elderly man was alone with her he said to her: “There was once a great inventor that lived in this town. He was a watchmaker. A master of the craft. He build more and more complex watches and toy dolls that drew pictures and danced to ditties. Now, he is beyond the farmlands hidden away in the forest never allowed to return here.”
“Thank you.” Alicia climbed into her cockpit and closed the canopy. She saluted the man, turned the plane around, and took off into the clear blue sky.
