Steel and Bone

An excerpt from “The Mysterious Island of Chester Morrison”, by Kin Law.

This is when Tabitha encounters Morrison in person for the first time. Her keen feminine senses latch on to his scent in the midst of the World Fair suspended over London.

That was when I saw him.

He stood out amongst the fair-goers, a calm stone in a babbling brook. The place was full of those dressed as peacocks, in Venetian masks, one-man bands and high, sprung stilts. His hair was nearly aflame in its wildness, a chestnut profusion lent the shadows of his cheekbones a deeper resonance. A half-mask covered everything from his nose up, gold-trimmed red covered in a patchwork of seven eyes. His suit was of a severe cut, lengthened over tight trousers, as if his entire body was a paisley kitchen knife. I felt a kind of vigor off him, an energy, difficult to explain. Yet, like the lodestones of the Nipponese train, that power drew me inexplicably towards him.

“Who is that man?” I asked Pugsy, when young Tennyson had gone to fetch us sweet teas for the road. His man had disappeared, gone perhaps to give us some room for courtship.

“Miss?” Pugsy said, turning from her bacon. It was hopeless. Pugsy had been far too involved to notice. Yet, she caught the look in my eyes, and the spider of suspicion crawled over her lids.

“Never mind, Pugs,” I said, quite cross. Pugsy was a dear, but what use was she to me if she couldn’t spot the socialites I showed actual interest in meeting?

I could not enjoy the fair fully after the incident, though I certainly provided a heroic endeavor. Each platform was uniquely interesting and devoted to some aspect of improving humanity. There was the Energy Platform, a recreation of the Kinkakuji Temple in Kyoto that housed the latest arc and steam innovations, everything designed to lessen our reliance on peat and coal. An engine that ran on diesel huffed and puffed in one corner, belching black smoke, but ran a rather vigorous display of a miniature carnival, complete with tiny fairgoers.

In the Hall of Information, tiny calculating engines were the cause of the day, each one bejeweled like an intricate watch. Some were small enough to fit on one’s wrist, or fit over spectacles. Some ran on a person’s own pulse, others claimed they could wring vitality out of the sun or the air.

It was all very fascinating, but at each display, I caught myself uttering sighs of futility. Each of these marvels was calculated to be as flashy as possible, to compete for the idle gentry’s attentions and tug at their purse strings. Each item here was woefully bereft, missing a vital common factor: funds. Each one would change the world, if they could scrape together enough loose change. It made them petty.

I was more interested in peeking round the rumbling devices, peering into the crowd for any trace of my Paisley Man. The stays of my corsetry creaked, complaining, but I stressed my ladylike comportment to its limits. Why did that man capture my attention so? I estimated he was approximately in his late twenties, hale, if a bit thin, and of a sportsmanlike bent, judging by his wide, powerful stride. There was nothing particularly special about him, except perhaps the youth of his pointed chin juxtaposed with the worn cane in his hands, held across his chest almost like a baton.

A Brief Interview with Kin Law

Please share how you came up with the concept for your book / story? I came across the contest prompt through Twitter, and I thought, hey. “Island” could mean a lot more than just a physical island. And the idea grew from there.

Please name some of your other published works? Captain Albion Clemens and The Future that Never Was. Buy it at mybook.to/future.

What’s up next for you? I’m finishing the sequel to Future that Never Was (mybook.to/future) called Spectre of War. It’s a little darker, but explores more of my styles and hits me in the feels. Look forward to it!

Please provide some insight, a secret or two about your book / story.  This short is actually set in the steampunk universe of Future, and explains one of the more unusual artifacts in that book. It’s also a manifesto of sorts, that showcases exactly the ethos of the air pirate. If you read both, you’ll get it.

What inspires you to write? This is corny, but I feel like writing is an outlet for problems that have no solution. Not only my personal psychological problems, but things in the world like abject inequality or racism. By putting it into a story, the fix infiltrates the collective unconscious and eventually changes peoples’ minds. It’s how the Bible became so commanding, since it was the first printed book.