(part III of souffleur d’âmes)
Spring light bathed the backroom in surreal colours, sunrays randomly singled out worktools on a pedestal of illumination. The soulmaster sat in the shade, tunelessly humming what sounded like the grating of rusty iron on chalkboard. The aide méchanique swivelled back and forth, tirelessly constructing its master’s thoughts. He had refined his helper even more, the fingertips now went beyond the visible, they could manipulate where even he could not anymore, giants in a world so small it escapes notice.
The souffleur’s mind turned away from practical matters and once again to his beloved; swiftly the ghostly arm engraved her idealised features onto the intricate instrument it was working on.
How he longed for her, alas the love he felt he feared to be only a figment of his dreams. He would need to tread on his delusion, crush them out of existence under his foot.
That was the purpose of the new mechanical wonder he was working on, it would help him squash his hope once and for all.
When Her Ladyship next called to look upon his progress, he gave her a small iron pearl, a perfect sphere of delicate beauty that she held up expectingly.
And nothing happened.
The duchess looked upon him in askance.
“This is la vérité nue,” he said, “it sings out for hope, and keeps still for despair. I wrote words of truth on its inner panels so that they might speak for you. It does not work, which I feared; but do not be put down my Lady. I know what is misshapen. I did not write the words in the right place.”
When the first angry customer stormed in, complaining that his clock had stopped working overnight, he found that shaking the mechanic roughly by the shoulder would not wake him from his slumber. Noone shed a tear, and noone noticed the three pin-sized holes in the departed’s chest.
For now and into eternity
