Lumiere: A Steampunk Fantasy: Book 1, The Illumination Paradox Series

Lumiere: Chapter One (Continuation...)

PART ONE 

One

Eyelet—age seventeen

Living in eternal twilight might sound romantic, but it's not. It's simply depressing. No one in the city of Brethren has seen the sun since the Night of the Great Illumination. I close my eyes and try hard to remember what life was like before the flash. But I can't.

It's been nine long years since golden rays have warmed my skin. Nine long years of grey skies and continuous rolling cloud cover, living under a hood of darkness and gloom. Some say the flash knocked out the sun forever. But I refuse to believe it.

Personally, I believe it's up there still, stuck behind all that cumulonimbus. I raise a hand, squinting through the layers of cloud. Perhaps it's gone to shine over Limpidious—the utopian world beyond the clouds my father always dreamed existed. Or perhaps the flash just shorted it out and it'll be coming back on soon.

Whatever the case, I'm tired of waiting. So until it reappears, I've created my own personal dash of sunshine. I pop open my latest invention: the skeleton of a bumbershoot stripped clean of its canvas, its remaining ribs and divers wound tight with wires and tiny hissing aether bulbs of hope. My own engineered solution to the gloom.

Slowly the bumbershoot blooms, wreathing my head in a mushroom cap of light, its warmth seeping through me, dissolving the chill from my bones. I flit around beneath it like a child, enjoying the presence of my uncustomary shadow stretching dark and lanky through the grey mist out over the cobblestones, recreating a longer, thinner me.

A puff of smoke spoils the moment, followed by a vulgar zap. The bumbershoot fizzles out.

"OOOooooo! You ornery thing!" I shake the apparatus in disgust.

If my father were here you'd be glowing.

If my father were here a lot of things would still be glowing.

I stare dreamily into the clouds.

Even I'd be fixed by now.

But he's not.

I snap the bumbershoot shut.

Enough jiggering about with this silly thing; I've far more important things to accomplish today, like returning this useless paper journal to the archives unnoticed. Preferably before the start of class.

I look at the thin notebook in my hands, at the word Lumière etched across the front. And I was so sure this was the one.

I flip it open one last time, running a finger over the endless columns of data, collections of random samples and their subsequent findings, not at all what I'd expected to find.

What does all this mean? And why did he record it?

"—particulate matter, subject 521, 10 parts per million—excessively abundant."

I flip the notebook shut and hug it to my chest. Whatever it is, it's of no use to me. What I need are directions on how to run the machine. And a map to where it is would be useful, too.

One of these days, I will find the right book. And when I do, it'll lead me to my father's machine. And then I'll fire up the Great Illuminator and use it to cure myself of these hideous seizures once and for all, making good on the promise my father broke. Then at last I'll be safe. No more fear of public persecution. No more threat of being found out and deemed insane. I'll no longer have to fear falling into an episode and being locked away in an asylum for the rest of my life, over an illness that the world just doesn't understand.

I look down at my chrono-cuff, realizing the time. Half past—I'd better get moving. Parting a mare's tail of trolling fog, I push on toward the Academy, taking the shortcut through Piglingham Square, though I know I shouldn't. I gasp at the sight of bodies still dangling from the gallows at the center, throwing a hand to my eyes. Cantationers, no doubt, sentenced to death for the practice of Wickedry. Their bodies dipped in vats of scalding wax and left to hang as examples to the rest of us.