Hi. Another post within a week. Wonder what's got into me?
This is a snippet from a piece of short fiction I've written. I like the character, and want to write more stories about her.
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Her trunk loaded first. A longshoreman shouldered the modest trunk
and carried it into the steamboat.
Another tried to take the leather case her trug held. The trug, in its lumpish simplicity, held
on. Mary Penney, alarmed, waved off the
longshoreman and took the heavy leather case into her arms.
“Watch out for that. It’s precious cargo,” Mary told the
stevedore.
The stevedore nodded, and himself accepted the
leather case.
“Cabin, miss?” he inquired.
“Please,” Mary said.
She turned to her trug and pressed a molasses chew
in its hand. “Go back to the shop now,
Arnie. Do you understand? Back to the shop.”
Mary repeated her instructions emphatically and
firmly until the trug turned and shuffled away in the right direction, pulling
the wheeled flat cart she had harnessed to it to convey her trunk to the
wharf. The cart bounced and clattered on
the cobblestones. She watched for a
moment, concerned that Arnie would follow her order, then turned back to the
gangplank. A woman standing nearby had
the beginnings of a sneer on her face when she caught Mary’s glacial expression
and found somewhere else to look.
If I want to
name my trug, what business is that of anyone else?
Irritated, Mary turned her attention to the
steamboat Celeste tied at the Memphis
wharf. The forty foot sternwheeler
nudged the pilings, causing a gentle shudder through the wood under her
feet. Clutching her precious carpetbag,
she navigated the short distance from wharf to steamboat, steadied by a helpful
hand. Mary turned to thank the owner of
the helpful hand, a man not much older or taller than herself, dressed in
trousers and a chambray shirt, and bearing the black and silver of a wizard’s
mark on his right collarbone.
He grimaced when he saw her gaze linger on the
mark.
“Follows me around wherever I go,” he quipped.
A smile tugged at her mouth. “Rather, it proceeds you, I should say.”
“Clever,” he said, and extended his hand. “Bartholomew Courtney. My friends, few though they be, call me
Court. When they are feeling
particularly light-hearted, they call me Conjuring Court.”
She shifted the carpetbag to her left and shook
his hand. He had a firm grip, which she
liked. “Mary Penney. I, too, know the eponymous danger surrounding
one’s profession. I’m known as
Mechanical Mary on the streets of Memphis.”
She shifted the light scarf around her neck, exposing the engineer’s
mark, vividly blue against her pale skin.
His gaze had sharpened on her face. “To which you’re not native, I’ll be bound.”
“No. I’m
from Missouri,” she admitted.
“Since the Celeste
is heading for St. Louis, might I conclude that you are going back to
Missouri to visit family?”
“No,” she said shortly. He looked a little taken aback at her tone,
and she forced a smile. “Strictly business,
I’m afraid.”
Something in her face seemed to warn him, for he
said in a light voice, “As a crewmember of this mighty steamboat, please do me
the honor of allowing me to show you to your cabin.”
He extended his left arm, crooked at the elbow,
and, after a moment’s hesitation, she placed her hand inside. No use
blaming him for not knowing that I will never willingly see my family again.
