She sat with the old man’s head in her lap, stroking his hair. While he stared without blinking, she ran her fingers across his forehead and back through the thin strands of white at his temples. Some part of her knew he would not get up again, would not speak, move, live, but he had not made her to do anything other than love him, so she bent low over his still form, humming softly to herself, hands moving gently over cooling skin.
She had been the first. He was young, strong, full of pride and quick ambition when he made her. With deft, firm hands he made her, molded the intricate interlocking of her gears, the spiraled symphony of her springs, the multitude of tiny parts that turned and twisted and sparked something new and vast and terrible. Her mind had opened, that first day, to a visage streaked with sweat and oil, to eyes wide and bright, feverish with the glow of creation, to lips curled in triumph and a mad, laughing caper round the workshop.
They came to him after that, the rich, the powerful, the bereft, and those looking for the newest thrill. They flocked to him, the man who created love from steel and bronze and steam, and he received them. She sat near as he spoke and stared at him with shining eyes; they would speak to her, and she would answer them, but they were nothing to her: he was all. Often they left bags of gold and silver, which he would empty onto the workbench and count gleefully. Then he would begin to work again, laboring long into the night, crafting, shaping, sculpting, perfecting.
She would watch him as he worked, taking in the swift, sure movement of his fingers, his crisp, precise manipulations of the tiniest cogs and clasps. When he wiped the sweat from his eyes with stained shirtsleeves, she would go to him and hold a cloth to his forehead with a cool palm. When he rolled his shoulders, she would press her fingertips against tense muscles with gentle, insistent pressure. And at night, when the light from the oil lamps was turned low, casting flickering shadows into the corners of the bedroom, he came to her with kisses and soft caresses, and she received him.
But now he lay motionless, once-nimble fingers curled and gnarled, hair whitened, skin spotted and sallow with age. He had not come to her in the night for a long time, the clutching, clenching heat forgotten and fallow. She could not remember the last time she felt the weight of him, wrapped her legs around him, pulled him close with lithe, incorruptible limbs. Yet she loved him—the myriad, mechanical workings of her heart allowed no less.
It would soon be time for her winding. Only he knew the soft and hidden catch that opened her. Only he knew the secrets of her being, the place to turn and set just so, the key to her perpetual motion. The knowledge had died with him.
Already she could feel the slowing. The quick spinning of her thoughts was growing less, the tuneless song in her throat catching on halting breaths. But while there was yet time, she sat with the old man’s head in her lap, stroking his hair. He stared at her without blinking. She smiled down into his sightless eyes as she ran her fingers through the thin strands of white at his temples. She smiled down and waited—slowly, gently waited for her hands and heart to still.
