D: L&L - Part 31 | Tin Man: The Kettle Boils

You may think it impossible for a man made of tin—a machine of parts to be oiled and maintained, a mouth without lips cannot be kissed, hands cold steel unflinching—such a creature cannot feel shame, cannot wince. Cannot be embarrassed, cannot flush hot and near and hear blood rushing through his head, the heartbeat pulse in his ears an ocean of hot pain at her name at her name

You would be wrong.

During our first go at Kiamo Ko I took the uniforms pressed into my cold hands by the Scarecrow, that smart son of a bitch, but I didn’t want to. I was mortified to don the hat and wear the skirt of the nasty beings who died so we could take their place. For he didn’t just knock them out, that wily Scarecrow with no brains oh no – he certainly killed them, and I helped.

The story has been told many times, and many times over I’m sure it will be told but know this: we all killed, and we killed many along the way. Because I could not stop I chop, and I chop with the mechanical precision and grace of a machine. A machine with the beating heart of the man I was, the love I had coursing through my veins, the streaking light of my blood on her mouth, her hands, her tears soaking into the cloth she wove to make a lover to replace me as I rusted deep in a forest so black it was long forgotten until a girl, and a dog, and a witch threw fire and found me.

I push open the door to Kiamo Ko, a barricade thick as three trees, heavy as a fallen city, as simple to open for me as the cavity of a woman’s chest. Just a simple push, a thick click, and you’re in.

The skeletons are tiny and scattered, glowing faint feathers in the moonlit gloom. If I had oil I would help myself blink, but my Jumbly, my little flowered fingered one is dead and gone and I am alone among the flung bones. My joints creak as I kick past white ribcages the breadth of my palm, skulls I could snap in my hinged mouth without noticing. My neck moans as I turn to squint up the stone staircase moldy and wet, slimy and stinking with dried and fresh entrails, gore and blood. This massacre left little to rot, and in the corners there are shadows with teeth.

There are shadows with teeth.

She could not be left alone with him. She told me that, my Nimma. My Nimma rose my flower my tiny boned one, my love. But him he loved her, worshipped her and hated me with the passion of a jungle cat, black eyes and nails and dripping teeth as he grinned over my sleeping form, curled and damp with dew just before the sun rose, steps away from Nimma’s slumbering form, her curling hair, curved smile dreaming.

“You,” the thing hissed, flecking my face with his stink. I blinked. “You think, you think, you’ll take her away from me?”

He had my head in her hands before I could speak. Because I could not think he speaks, he hisses, he sifts her words into my head, he works his magic as he did on her, he uncoils his snake his poison his will his words into me until I break away and stand on my own, I back away my neck my spine she’s mine she’s mine clamped in his claws, his raw lips against my ear I hear him say the words You will not take my bride, tin thing.

The ax does its work. The agony falls in splashes of hot blood. Nimma must hear my screams, she stumbles from sleep still half dreaming. She runs stuttering, coming up short beneath the trees as he dissolves into a black bleak nightmare. Blood seeping into the earth. He is nothing. No more.

“Nick,” Nimma whispered. Because I cannot stop chopping I hear her whispers above my own screams, my own crashing to the earth and screaming. “Nick, why?”

Crunching of skeletons beneath my feet. How many times have I held bleached bone in my slick fingers? My cold hand clutching the last beat of a heart.

I swear I’d recognize your breath. Memories like fingertips are slowly raising.

“Don’t got back there, Nick. Ever.”

The voice scrapes from above, from beyond the slimy stone steps, rusted and rotting and real. From below. From behind. From inside. I hear her knocking against my chest plate.

“Hello,” I call back. My jaw creaks with the effort. I realize I have not spoken in days, maybe weeks. The travel, the journey, the snow of the climb to Kiamo Ko has nearly rusted me silent.

I don’t know why I’m here. But I know. I know. I heard the call.

“It’s you.” The voice is sandpaper against broken glass, gritty and unused. “I knew you’d come back. To atone.”

I take a few creaky steps, aching deep in a way my heart remembers if my bones of steel do not. The stone ceiling is invisible, cloaking the voice in shadow. In the corners of the circular room the shadows have dripping shining teeth I watch as I call out. “I heard it call me in the deep darkness where I dwell.”

A flurry of steps and the scurried shifting of dry bones on stone. Something drips drops onto my arm. I look down – it’s blood. “I knew you’d come back. I’ve waited for you. We waited. We waited so long for the heart. It beats.” Her voice swells my empty chest, and I feel it beat

I step toward the stairs, where far above there is a desperate scurrying, a quiet shuffle and sniffle of breath. “It’s dead. I killed it.” It cannot be beat beat

At the top of the steps, high above, the shadows step forward. Mists swirls whirls hurls itself into a shape changing shifting misting to a new form changing arranging eyes gleaming out of the darkness. The thing hisses, taking on a cadence a tone a place that was home in my blood, her mouth on mine her tears on my face as she ran to place my pieces back together until she gave up, until she stitched me into another man of flesh and bone and blood she could love and rest her temple against. 

But it cannot be. She’s dead. I killed her. I killed her. My axe. Chopping chopping chopping. Dead. 

“Dead,” but it’s only a whisper now, a hushed creak of my aching rusting joints. The mist shudders and swirls as I climb the first few slick steps, settles onto the shining tin of my arms, clings to my metal legs. I look up into the darkness, and I see her shining yellow hair, her curls, the unfurling of her mouth, her smile.

It’s her. It’s my Nimma. “It’s you,” I say, then louder. “It’s you.”

She descends, legs long and gleaming beneath the hem of her shift, curls golden as sunrise spilling down her back. Her mouth parts into a smile I have seen in sleep a thousand times, eyes heavy with the weight of a memory I never dared hope would return.

“It’s me,” she breathes, and her voice is soft silk over my rusting frame. “You came back for me, my love.”

it beats it beats it beats it beats it beats it beats

I move to meet her and something creaks—not my joints this time. No, something inside. A throb. A flex. I stagger, my footfall too light. I look down and see beat beat beat

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she says, arms open.

Flesh. Pale and veined. The gleam is gone, replaced by the long-lost curve of my muscle, the bend of a knee I have not seen in an age. And still I do not stop. I do not flinch.

“How could you ever think I would love him as I did you, Nick?” Nimma asks, finally only one step away, one step from the days the years the agony I’ve spent dreaming drifting longing in a sleep only a machine can take. Rust and ruin and blood and bone – all of it for naught, the adventures for nothing except to bring me back to this place, to her, to my love, to the only beating heart I’ve ever needed.

“I never did,” I gasp and fall to my metal knees, they buckle and burn as I kneel before her on the stone steps, bury my face in her lap. Her hands smooth my hair, trace the rough jawline to my mouth. If I could cry I would die.

“I’ve waited so long,” she says, standing over me. I press my face into her and feel heat. Hunger. “Now,” she whispers, her hair falling like slashed wheat all around me and the castle disappears. The shadows with their dripping teeth dance and swirl in the moonlight, ecstatic. “Now now, my love, my life, my man of tin, of time.”

I clutch at her legs, my tin fingers digging into her thighs, around the soft mounds of her knees, into the cleft she opens and allows my mouth to explore.

“Now,” she murmurs, her fingers fluttering against my mouth like moth wings made of bone. “We have only each other now, just for a little while.” Her body moves and I refuse to think of him, the body I left in pieces under the floor. I only know I need more, must give her more, must make up for time lost and shifted beneath rusted rotted kingdoms and ruby slippers and reckoning of an emerald city gone wrong. 

My mouth is wet. My tongue is soft. Her finger runs along it and I taste her—not oil, not rust—but salt and earth and something bitter, something old.

I kiss her.

She moans.

“I’ve waited so long,” she says, laying beneath me. Her hips rise to meet me, her legs encircling mine. I feel heat. I feel hunger. My hands, my hands—fingers once forged in fire—dig into the flesh of her thighs and come away damp, sticky, red.

But still I do not stop. Because this is what I wanted. Because I cannot stop.

After a while she leans back, pushing me away with one trembling perfect hand, and rests against the stone step. She smiles down at me, and I am not entirely sure her teeth are not dripping with blood in the milky moonlight. “Now, my love,” she touches one finger to my mouth. “Now, you’ll do something else for me. It’s been so long, and so much has changed.”

“Yes,” I whisper around her finger before slipping it into my mouth to suck.

“So much has changed, and it’s time. A renewal. An atonement. A sacrifice. A duty.”

I remove her finger from my mouth and reach for her. My hand is smothered in purple dust.

She holds my hand away from her, linking her fingers with mine. “There are things we must do now, plans we must make.” She tilts her head and that mouth, those lips I’ve kissed and wished and missed for oh so many rusted years pucker and pout, her gold hair tumbles across her knees. “I’ve waited so long, and been so very unhappy. I hope you’ll help me.”

“Anything. Anything, just tell me what is to be done, my love, and it is my command.”

She looks over her shoulder, up into the deep dark of the cavernous castle above. “I’ve been so hungry, for so long, you can’t imagine what I’ve been through, what I’ve done.” Those huge violet eyes return to mine, and she wipes a streak of purple dust from my lips, slips her finger into her mouth and licks it. “I won’t tell you, but someday you may know. Someone may tell you. So you must promise me now,” her finger dips into the dark cleft of her breast, “that you’ll forgive me. Of anything.”

I can’t look away from her hand against the shimmering white of her breast. The faintest shimmer of purple taints my vision, and her other hand cups the side of my face, her thumb swipes at my eyes. “Anything,” I say.

“And everything,” she adds, slipping one finger back into my mouth and closing her eyes.

“Everything,” I say, although by now her bodice is open, her breasts are free and the castle is falling away from us. She’s here. She’s my Nimma. She’s dead dead dead. But my heart beats beats beats

“Now,” she whispers as my metal knees press against the steps, rusted metal against stone, her hands clawing at the slick stone walls of the stairway, her voice raspy and guttural, “this is what must be done….”