The Heart-Spring of Brassbridge

The first whistle from the Great Clock Dome rose like a kettle beginning to sing, thin and silver, then fuller until the brasswork roofs of Brassbridge shook with a friendly shiver. Steam curled out of copper vents along the canal, and a scatter of gulls—real and clockwork—wheeled together over the water. The market awoke in clinks and clicks. As shutters lifted, the smell of boiled sugar and warm oil braided in the cool air.

Iris Quill knelt at her grandmother’s stall between a tray of springs and a jar of screws. She squinted at a toy hound with a stiff tail. A drop of oil, just one, and a pinch of patience—it would stop jamming. Grease had stained one of her sleeves. A smudge marked her cheek, but Iris forgot such things when a machine was stubborn. She tilted her head, listening. Click-tick. There. The tail’s ratchet had a burr.

“Hold still,” she told the toy, as if it could fidget. A brass finch perched beside the vice, cocked its head, and chirped a note. Finch had come out of a box of broken trinkets last winter, and Iris had coaxed it back to life. It sometimes repeated market cries in a tinny voice, sometimes noises nobody had spoken.

“There,” Iris said. She ran a tiny file over the ratchet tooth, wiped it clean, wound the key, and set the hound on the counter. Its tail wagged at once, then it trotted in a slow circle, tongue out. A small boy laughed and clapped.

“Mind it doesn’t jump into the canal,” Granny Mags called, her needles clicking as she stitched a pocket for a vest. She wore a thimble on her thumb with a dent from long years. Her gray hair was rolled up beneath a net dotted with beads like raindrops. “Iris, love, no freebies. Two buttons and a smile won’t pay rent.”

The boy’s mother handed over three bright buttons regardless, and a warm roll wrapped in paper. Iris handed back the toy and tucked the roll under the bench for later.

“Wind and Whistles Fair by week’s end,” Granny said, nodding toward the banners fluttering from the bridge. “You’ll hear them tune the city from the Dome. A finer thing than any circus.”

“I’ll be there,” Iris said. She had imagined the fair since spring: tall brass horns that sang, kites shaped like whales and fish tugging at moorings, lanterns that switched on like stars when you clapped. She would stand at the rail and feel the city’s beat in her palms.

A tug glided down the canal, pistons puffing. On its deck, a woman balanced a tray of candied nuts. The air popped with steam and laughter. Finch clipped off a copy of the tug’s horn, then warbled something Iris didn’t recognize, a dissonant little hiccup of sound. She was about to ask what it meant when the Great Clock’s whistle slid, just a hair, off its note.