1st 5 Pages June Workshop - Bartlett Rev 1

Name: Claire Bartlett
Title: Night Witches
Genre: YA Fantasy
Revision 1

Valka heard the hum of warcraft too late. The organized cacophany of industry filled the factory to the brim, leaving her oblivious to the oncoming storm from the south until her supervisor rushed over, flushed and gasping.

Her stomach twisted. God, she thought, even though good Union girls weren’t supposed to think about God anymore. I’m fired. They’d only taken her on out of a sense of charity, and she’d been waiting three years for Mrs. Rodoya to realize her mistake. How could a girl with no legs work in a factory that made them?

Slim, multi-jointed metal legs drifted past on the conveyor belt, twitching and trembling with traces of magic. Valka picked one up and checked the joints, tested the gears, working her fingers along its oily bones. She tried to calm the leg as she worked, but her hands shook with fear as she waited for Mrs. Rodoya’s judgment call.

“We need to evacuate,” Mrs. Rodoya said. Her tidy hair had fallen from its bun and lay half unfurled on her square shoulders. The leg fell back on the conveyor belt with a sharp clang. “Get your things.”

Valka gripped the sides of the conveyor as fear flashed through her. “What’s happening?” she said. But Mrs. Rodoya was already spinning away, running around the conveyor belt to the girls on the opposite side.

No drill had been scheduled for today. Valka looked over at the line of posters glued to the wall, sticky with old oil and dust. REMEMBER GOREVA. The Elda figure had been reduced to a shadow, gripping the neck of a woman even as she shielded her baby with her body. If Mrs. Rodoya said evacuate, it meant the Elda were coming. And everyone knew that when the Elda finally attacked Tammin Reaching, they’d aim for the factories. The Union army relied on the high quality production of the factories in Tammin, which meant the army relied on Valka. Which meant that when she abandoned her post, she’d abandon the Union.

The hissing, ratcheting, clanging of the factory faded until every machine on the floor had stilled. Silence descended like a blanket of snow. Whispers swept around the room in soft, hissing syllables as the machines wound down for the first time in years. Even when Valka finished her shifts, another girl came to oversee the machines as they ground through the night, churning out parts for the army. The silence felt like a promise broken.

For a moment it seemed as though that whole world had turned off like a radio. Then she heard it - a low hum, like some enraged cloud of insects. Elda aircraft. Elda witchcraft. The fear returned doubly strong.

“Girls!” Mrs Rodoya’s trembling voice rang out over the factory hall. Valka turned her wheelchair away from the conveyor belt and pushed towards the sound of Mrs. Rodoya’s voice, oily hands slipping on the wheels.

Mrs. Rodoya stood in the middle of the hall, ramrod straight, her hands clasped just over her belly. “We’ve practiced this before, girls. Let’s make an orderly exit, please.” Mrs. Rodoya loved order. Sometimes Valka thought she’d rather let a bomb fall on the whole factory than allow her girls to disturb the precious order.

Valka pushed her chair towards the door, fighting the oil on her hands and the metal filings and barbs that the chair had picked up from the factory floor. Slivers of living steel bit into her palm. She grit her teeth. She’d been able to walk for years now, but Mrs. Rodoya had only hired her on the condition that she stay in her chair. “We can’t have you overworking yourself,” she’d said.

The girls lined up - neatly, of course. Their shelter was a ten-minute trip, and right now Valka wanted nothing more than to stay where it was warm and safe. They want to bomb the factories, she thought, trying to convince herself to go out where she could see the Elda dragons and their bombs as they came to kill her. The other girls formed a line of pairs, hands clasped. At least they had a friend to hold on to. Valka got to go to the end of the line, and Mrs. Rodoya was her partner. Everyone assumed she’d be too slow to keep up.

Mrs. Rodoya opened the factory door and counted each girl with a bob of her head as they went through. Then she grabbed the back of Valka’s chair and began to push without asking. A lot of people did that. Even when Valka had asked to push herself during practice raids, and even when she’d asked to walk like everyone else. “Now, now, we want speed over pride, don’t we?” Mrs. Rodoya had said.

Valka wanted to leap out of her chair and run for the shelter. Never mind being calm, never mind letting Mrs. Rodoya literally push her around. But even if she could disentangle her feet without catching them in the chair, even if she could escape Mrs. Rodoya and the factory girls, she’d cause chaos, and chaos was the enemy of the Union.

The factory girls took measured steps, moving in a dance that declared regulation against panic. Valka and Mrs. Rodoya followed behind, half lurching as one of Valka’s wheels caught on a loose stone at the edge of the road. They moved away from the high concrete building, down a street lined with the standard issue factory blocks that churned out legs, carapaces, rifles, helmets and other army equipment. Twilight deepened the cloudless sky above. The moon hung like a fruit, a fat crescent surrounded by stars. On an ordinary night Valka might watch it thread its way to the horizon. But there were other things in the sky tonight, things that hummed and growled, things that promised fire and hid behind the horizon of factory blocks. A shudder ran through her, and she wasn’t the only one. The line of girls undulated as the dance began to unravel. “Calm, girls,” Mrs. Rodoya said. Did she even know the meaning of the word? Calm was easy during a practice raid. Just hold your head high and follow the War Ministry’s approved path to the shelter. When the hum of aircraft resonated against the buildings to either side of them, holding her head high was a whole lot harder to do. Valka folded her hands in front of her, clenching them until she couldn’t feel them shake anymore. Don’t be such a coward, she told herself. But she hadn’t been brave in a long time. Sometimes she felt like when they cut off her legs, they amputated her bravery as well.

They’d make it to the shelter. They had to. Mrs. Rodoya would see her through. Maybe the Elda would just pass overhead, on the way to do reconnaissance or bomb another target. She knew she shouldn’t sit here hoping that someone else could die so that she might live. But the farther they got down the street, the more relief filled her.

They made it to the end of the street before the first explosion hit the edge of town. Two girls screamed. Valka managed not to. Then again, screaming had never been her way to show fear. She preferred to run.