Free All Those Vanished Engines by Paul Park Page A

of her hands. The sun had broken above the peaks, and she felt the pressure of the light as she began her controlled, sliding descent. Stones and sand cascaded through her fingers and rolled past her down the slope. She grasped at roots and patches of grass, and when, scratched and sweating, she found a place to stop two hundred feet down, she was able to look up and see the boy following her, kicking down stones that did not hit her; he had chosen another route.
    From down here, perched on a boulder, she could see the valley at a different angle, and the light was better too, now with the sun above the rim. She could see the railway track, cut into the slope, spiraling down the long grade. She could see the train itself, small now, puffing steam. And she could see where it was headed, not only the town at the valley floor, but the station perhaps a thousand feet below her, a clutch of steep-roofed houses built into the slope. Peering down over the abyss, she saw the preparations, the banners and flags, the night-black imperial standard, the crowd of people there to greet her. At moments she could hear “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the anthem of the Yankee army, somber and slow, drifting in the morning air.
    Above her, the dogs had reached the cliff’s edge and leapt down the slope. Hairless and huge, bred for battle, injected with vitamins in the Yankee laboratories, they did not hesitate or whine or bark. The empress’s veterinarians had removed their vocal cords, Paulina knew. Terrified, she jumped down from her boulder. There was nothing selfless about her motive now, nothing left of the desire to warn or save the mother she had never seen, the innocent people who might be caught in the explosion. There was nothing left of any baser motive, to thwart the schemes of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or to revenge herself on Mrs. McKenney and the colonel, who had manipulated and betrayed her. What remained was an animal substratum of fear as the monsters slid down after her in a deluge of rock and sand.
    Nor did she, initially, spare the boy any thought as he stumbled down the opposite slope of the ravine. Perhaps resentful of the ways he failed to resemble the hero of The Bracelet, for a moment she had succeeded in forgetting him. But now she saw he had altered his angle of descent to intercept not her but the dogs that followed her. Already he had lost his balance a few times, fallen to his hands and knees, ripped his flannel shirtsleeves. One of the dogs turned to face him, and Paulina could see he had a weapon of some kind, some flashing piece of metal that she hadn’t noticed on the cliff-top or on the train. Perhaps he had drawn it out of the earth, found it somewhere among the stones. But now the dog was upon him and he hacked into it, pressing the blade into its open mouth and then wagging it back and forth like a red tongue, an action almost super-human in its power and adroitness; the beast curled around itself, fighting to get the blade out of its mouth.
    Of course, she thought bitterly, why couldn’t he discover or accomplish anything he wanted in this world, remake it in any way he pleased, conjure swords out of the air if he desired? There was no reason to admire anything he did, short of self-annihilation.
    Above her, in the middle of a shower of sand, she heard a wheezing, rasping sound more horrible than any snarl. She couldn’t look back. She lurched out of the stream of sliding stones. The second dog rolled past her, the boy on its hairless back, his forearm locked between its jaws. She had found a seam of loose debris at the angle of repose, but below them the chute steepened as it gave out onto the bare red rock. Struggling together, they fell into the chasm’s stony throat and disappeared.

4. T HE T HIRD H INGE
    Gasping, I woke. I turned my face onto the ceramic surface, cold under my cheek.
    I found myself in a species of laboratory: cold white surfaces