The Boneshaker by Kate Milford

Author:Kate Milford [Milford, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

THIRTEEN

Confidence

BY THE END OF THE FIRST DAY of the nostrum fair, something had happened to Arcane. It had become a town of believers. Everyone who'd given it a try, it seemed, had undergone an intuitive diagnosis and had miraculous, almost instantaneous results. Natalie quickly tired of hearing her neighbors talking about the miracles of the nostrum fair as she walked through town toward the general store, pulling the red enameled Chesterlane Eidolon alongside her. The only reaction Natalie had to Dr. Limberleg and his fair was a fierce wish to get her own bicycle working, if only to show Dr. Limberleg that he didn't know everything.

At the Central Exchange at the back of the general store, her father was hard at work on the telegraph machine. As she passed the left-hand counter, Natalie glanced at the shelf of medicine bottles on the wall, and the new sign that read WE SELL PATENT MEDICINES BUT DO NOT ENDORSE THEM.

"Hi, Nattie. Have a good time at the fair today?"

"No," Natalie said sourly. "Charlie bought medicine, even though he doesn't need any." She leaned on Mrs. Tilden's desk and stood watching Mr. Minks fiddle with the telegraph. "Dad, can you look at something for me?"

He wiped his hands clean and straightened. "Sure. Got a scrape?"

"No." From the pocket of her overalls, Natalie produced the little bicyclist.

"Well, that's something! Looks a little like someone I know." He chuckled. "It sort of looks like your Chesterlane, too, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess." She wasn't about to say out loud that she almost thought, despite the fact that it had been Charlie's free prize, that Limberleg had intended it for her. As if somehow he knew she hadn't figured out how to ride her own bicycle, and wanted to rub it in. "It seems like it's mechanical, right? Supposed to do something, I mean."

"Hmm." He turned it over in his hands just as Natalie had. "Sure does. So where's she wind up?"

"Can't figure it out. Dr. Limberleg has another automaton that he says doesn't need to be wound at all. A... perpetual motion machine."

"Not possible. It might not wind with a key, but something has to start it up, and get it going again when it slows down. Some kind of a force has to act on it."

"Then winding a key is like using a force."

"Exactly. People have been trying to find a way to create perpetual motion for as long as they've been building machines, but no one ever succeeds because the idea goes against the laws of physics. You need to apply force, whether it's with a key or an engine or what have you, to keep a machine going."

"That's what I told him," she said in exasperation, "and he said I was wrong."

"Of course you're not wrong! My Natalie, wrong about machines?"

"Well," she said, trying not to burst with pride, "I didn't believe him, anyway."

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