The Brass Giant by Brooke Johnson

Author:Brooke Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

PETRA AWOKE TO darkness.

The room was cold, empty. Though surrounded by her family, all her siblings sleeping nearby, she had never felt so alone.

She stared at the ceiling as the memory of the fire burned across her thoughts. Whatever Matron Etta had been told, Petra was not the niece of Lady Chroniker, the most brilliant woman that engineering had ever known.

She was her daughter.

She sat up, running her hands through her rumpled hair, her exhaustion forgotten. How could she have forgotten that? How could she forget the last moments of her own mother’s life? The scene was as vivid as if it had only just happened, wrestled out of some dark part of her memory, long forgotten until now. She had been inside the University that day, carried from the flames and her mother by a man named Friedrich, the one who must have given her to Etta Wade and changed the course of her life.

She kneaded her forehead, replaying the memory over and over in her head. Why didn’t he try to save her mother too? And afterward, why didn’t he stay with her and keep his promise to look after her? How different would her life be if her mother had survived, if Friedrich had disobeyed her request and dragged her out of the fire, if the ceiling hadn’t collapsed and buried them both in the rubble? A moment more, and he could have saved them both.

Petra stood up from her bed, stretching her arms overhead with a yawn. The gray light through the kitchen window told her the sun had not yet risen. She had no desire to sleep, her mind buzzing with the realization of who she was and what it might mean. She strode across the living room and tapped on the bedroom door, careful not to wake one of the younger boys who slept nearby.

She cracked the door open. “You awake?”

“Petra?”

She sidled into the room, carefully shutting the door so the latch wouldn’t click. She fumbled for the matches on the table at the foot of the bed, struck one, and lit the lantern. The lamp cast an orange glow across the room, revealing Emmerich sitting up on the bed.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

She sat down on the mattress, folding her knees against her chest. She hadn’t thought of what to say to him, only that she needed to talk. While she sat, she realized how utterly improper it was to be sitting on a bed with a boy, wearing nothing more than her nightshift. She had forgotten how it felt to be so near him, the memory of their embrace in the subcity suddenly coming to mind. How she wished for him to hold her like that again. After being away from him for so long, she wanted to feel his arms around her, to assure herself that he really was here, that they really were together again.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, gingerly leaning against the wall behind the bed.

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