Lita Burke

Archy is the newest denizen of Castle Lita in the Northern Realms. He is a bird-shaped sentient clockwork flying toaster with a corkscrew-type ornithopter propeller. Lita leaned over the desk in her workshop, sorting an untidy pile of unpublished Clockpunk Wizard arcana. Archy perched on a metal swivel-arm tray table attached to the side of Lita’s desk.

“These papers are out of sorts today,” Lita said.

She leaned further over her desk, opened her arms wide, and swept the unruly pile of parchments into a mound. Lita plopped down into her desk chair. The unoiled chair castors squeaked.

“They just won’t stay put like well-behaved papers. Some ~twisty~ magic is playing with them.”

Lita tapped her quill against her cheek. She was so caught up in her thoughts that Lita did not notice she had drawn some new freckles on her face with the ink-filled nib.

She waited.

The scent of fresh-cut balsa wood filled the air. The pile of papers twitched.

“I’m watching.” Her tone was velvety with the promise of consequences. “Don’t you dare…”

Lita’s unfinished warning was for naught. A parchment fragment depicting a dense, enchanted forest skittered sideways across the desk like a hermit crab on an urgent errand. Its inked trees rustled in an invisible breeze. Lita smacked her hand on the desktop to catch the escaping map–but missed. The forest made its escape down the nearest desk leg.

Three other loose sheets of parchment, drawn with the jagged coastlines of the Sea of Storms, slid off the untidy pile. Instead of falling, they caught the air currents, their edges fluttering like paper wings as they soared toward the open window, seeking the very oceans they represented. Unfortunately, Lita sat directly in their flight path.

Lita pushed off her desk and scooted her chair across the room. The chair castors squealed like a family of hungry monkeys at mealtime. Her hasty retreat made the flapping papers pause, then turn toward Lita. Because the ocean coastline maps were so fond of their creator, they flew to Lita and circled her head like a fretting paper whirlwind. The Fabulist threw up her hands to protect her face.

“Archy! They’re looking for their coordinates. Please help them!”

The toaster’s propeller gave an eager, high-pitched buzz, his brass chassis tilting forward on the swivel tray. “An unauthorized migration of geography! This violates all laws of mathematical aeronautics!”

He launched into the air, whirled into the middle of the paper maelstrom above Lita’s head, and began humming a waltz. Distracted with this new nonsensical magic, the map parchments followed Archy’s lead and began dancing in the air. The toaster popped out his large crumb-catching tray and swept the twirling maps into the chamber. When the last unruly map had settled inside with its brethren, Archy retracted the crumb tray with a snap.

“Archy?” Lita brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She pointed to the hermit crab forest parchment that had just skittled out into the hallway. “Please see to the escaping forest?”

Archy hummed a jaunty sea shanty, sped across the workshop, and grabbed the escaping forest with his foot. “Halt, tiny woodland! You have not been officially cataloged!”

The toaster flew back to his tray table by Lita’s desk. He settled onto his metal perch and curled his toes around the wiggling forest to keep it from escaping.

Lita scooted her chair back to the desk. The castors squealed. Lita winced. “Do you have any oil to fix these complaining castors?”

Archy replied with this bit of dreadful poetry. He sang the song in the key of G, using his whir-click-click clockworks for the accompaniment. [Lita’s Note: See the sidebar for the lyrics to ‘The Squeaky Chair‘.]

Lita grinned. “Sounds fine. Toast first, fix the squeak later.”

The toaster, well, made her a slice of toast. Archy’s sourdough confection was buttery to the edges and slathered with seedless blackberry jam.

After the brief repast, the Fabulist took stock of the remaining well-behaved papers on her desk. She put her quill back into its holder and absently rubbed her hand across her cheek to wipe away a trickle of perspiration. Instead of a crop of new freckles, her cheek now had a smear of black lines that made her face look like a harlequin zebra.

“My heroic toaster, would you like a job as the keeper of the Map Room here at Castle Lita?”

Archy shivered all over, his excitement sounding like a dozen toasters popping freshly browned treats from their baking slots. The aroma of cinnamon bread surrounded Lita.

“The Keeper of the Charts! I shall guard the gates to the Northern Realms and beyond, Madam Lita! Together, our readers shall never lose their way in the Wizardly skies.”

“Very well.” Lita stood and walked to an empty wall of her workshop. “I think I’ll put a short passage here and put the Map Room at the far end.”

A Fabulist’s magic needs no chanted spell words, burnt candles in a pentagram, or unhappy sacrificial goat. Say it, mean it, then so it shall be. Lita turned and beckoned the flying automaton to follow her.

“Your domain is this way, Archy. Come take a look.”

Next time: The Map Room