D:L&L - Part 4 | Narrator: Lifetimes of the Clockwork Army

The metallic simulacrum shambled into the chamber, his tinny footsteps echoing across the grandiose emptiness of the darkened throne room.

“Turnbuckle, you test my patience.”  Glinda looked up from her massive marble perch, the candlelight dancing in her eyes, sparks of fury.  She glared at the little clockwork and huffed.

“It is nowhere to be found, Milady.  Highness,” he added quickly when her glare grew darker still.  “Also, the regiment has not reported in, although at this time of year, it is slow-going to Kiamo Ko, what with all the snow and ice.”

“It is slowly going, you rusty bucket, if you need food and shelter, not if you are a metallic mechanism in need of neither.  You march and march, and you march all day and night until the deed is done.”  She could feel the seething anger again.  These creatures were all fools – obedient yes, but nothing more and nothing less.  Why did Oz have to be filled with fools?!  Couldn’t these simple little creatures carry out a simple task?  Simple plus simple equals certain success!  It was simple, after all!

Turnbuckle waited.  He knew what was coming.  He’d seen it only days before.  There was no denying it and rather than plead his case or turn and run, he would face the penalty of his failure.  He was not a bleeder, and after all, they had achieved their goal through sacrifice.  What was another?

Years ago, Madame Morrible had set them on the path with her last words to Grommetik, had she not?  And had not the door opened as she said it would?  Had not the Wizard departed unceremoniously?  Had not the Witch of the West been washed away, too?  And the witch of the North?  She had been waiting to take her ultimate station.  It was all just as the Madame had said it would be – somehow she had known and prepared them for the moment.  Grommetik, the hero of the Clockwork Revolution, had led them against the silly Scarecrow and his cronies, Glinda at his side with her powerful sorcery and her glittering slippers!

The Scarecrow was weak, as the Madame said the new leader would be – he wasn’t flesh and blood, but he acted the sort.  The others, the “bleeders”, they were weak, as well.  The flesh was weak; the blood easily spilled.  They feared for their lives and their loved ones.  They cried and they pleaded.  They were quick to anger and quick to murder.  They betrayed each other.  They lied and stole.  They were not worthy.

And yet, here was yet another bleeder, quick to anger, quick even to murder.  Was it not murder to destroy a thinking being?  Was it not a crime?  He had seen such a crime only the other day, saw the twisted metal on the floor, carried away the junk and tossed it into the furnace to be smelted and reused as ordered.  But this bleeder – he would have shivered if his metal skeleton could do it – this bleeder was something else, something they could not undo.  Grommetik had never fully trusted her, and he had paid for that mistake – he would forever look over the Piazza de Revolucion before the palace, a gleaming hero and its first “martyr”.

Glinda snarled.  “I have had enough of your incompetence, Turnbuckle,” she said, and reaching out, she slowly closed her gnarled fingers into a clenched fist, feeling the magic pour forth in an invisible arc that crushed the little clockwork man with a crackle and clang of gears and metal clattering to the floor.

“Turnbuckle!”  She screamed, and a moment later a second little clockwork appeared.  He stood silently by the door with the same tinny sheen in the candlelight.  “Take that mess away to the furnace, then find out what is going on with our expedition to Kiamo Ko!  I want that Grimmerie, and I want it yesterday, or by the Unnamed God, I will crush all you little bastards one by one and sell you as jewelry in the piazza!”