And yet to Gontran’s great surprise, he lived. The snake was holding him in its mouth firmly enough so that escape was impossible, though not so tightly that he couldn’t breathe—or scream like crazy, which he had been doing for quite some time while trapped inside this monster. Perhaps he had passed out and then woken up again, he had no idea. Now, as far as he could tell, the snake’s metal tongue was pressing him against the roof of its mouth. It had no teeth, though its ‘lips,’ if they could be called that, were locked together. Thankfully there was no saliva, either. Everything was metal. Some kind of engine—or maybe even engines—were churning away deeper inside the snake’s body—down its throat—and the dry, acrid smell of coal was mixed with omnipresent steam, itself hot enough to sear Gontran’s skin, though he had lost only a little health, and was now down to 63/100.

The snake lurched so rapidly through the forest that Gontran felt like he was going to throw up. He considered letting the monster know that unless it released him, he would puke into its mouth. This seemed a little ironic to Gontran—he had eaten, now he was being eaten—but then he wondered if the snake could even understand.

Presumably it wants to eat me, he thought during a moment of lucidity that arose in the midst of his terror. And by me, I mean all of me, even the bad parts. But I guess I don’t know if it’s even alive. Does it know that I’m in here?

Just as he was about to muster the strength to say something, the snake stopped, its enormous mouth opened—almost like two garage doors rapidly yawning away from each other—and it spat him onto the ground. Gontran rolled in the dust and then lay still.

There was no fight in him. Gontran was finished, and longed for a quick death, if only to escape this endless working, running, and fighting. His stamina had reached zero, and his health was ticking down.

With its huge segmented coils, the snake surrounded him so that there was no escape. Steam blasted from its segments as it moved. Even as it held still, however, its innards continued to pound out slow, regular rhythms, like heartbeats.

For a moment, the snake stared down at him. The once-deafening birds, monkeys, and insects were silent. Only the darkly purling river could be heard in the distance.

“Who is it who has brought you?” the snake rasped, its voice as loud as thunder.

Startled, Gontran looked at the snake’s face. It had opened its mouth to speak, yet its lips held still. The device or organ making these words lay somewhere inside its throat, puffing out steam with each syllable.

“Who is it who has brought you, who is it who has brought you, little one?” the snake added.

Shaking with fear, drenched in sweat, and exhausted beyond all endurance, Gontran was unable to answer.

“If you persist in not telling me who has brought you,” the snake said, its ruby eyes shining, “I shall turn you to ash, and make you into one who dwells among only the unseen.”

“I,” Gontran stammered, “I—nobody brought me. I brought myself. We—I—came in that ship back there at the beach where you found me.”

“Why is it that you were brought here, little one?”

“It was an accident,” Gontran said. “I’ll leave if you want. I’ll go right now. I had no idea this place was here. I was running from some people, some bad people, I got caught in a storm, and then I found this place and hid here.”

“Why is it that you lie, little one?” The snake’s coils drew closer to Gontran, and the head rose higher above its body, its innards grumbling. “Here you were brought to gather slaves. It was the slave-catchers who have brought you.”

Gontran shook his head. “I’m not interested in slaves. I used to be one.”

“The meaning of the word is unknown to you, little one.”

“I hate anything to do with slavery, I swear.”

“You have the stench of the slave-catcher about you. About you hovers the filth of the slave-trader, of the one who profits from slaves.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear, if you let me go, I’ll leave right now, I’ll never tell anyone about this place.”

“There is but one way to keep a secret.” The snake widened its mouth above Gontran and lowered its head so that he was once again surrounded by metal darkness boiling with steam.

“Please don’t eat me!” Gontran’s voice echoed in the cavernous metal depths that glowed with furnace heat. “I—my friends hate slavery. I’m trying to help them.”

“Oh?” The snake raised its head up again.

“You haven’t heard of the uprising? They want to destroy slavery in all its forms—all over the world—forever.”

“The sound of this uprising is pleasing to me.”

The snake’s coils relaxed, and it lay its head upon the dust, though its ruby eyes were watching Gontran. It was so large that he was unable to see anything over its coils save the crystal sky.

Gontran swallowed drily. Keep it talking so it doesn’t eat me, he thought.

“Who—who are you?” he asked.

“I am Hydaspes,” it said. “By Hephaistos built.”

“Hephaistos?” Gontran said. “Isn’t he like the—the god of smiths or something?”

“Yes, Father is the god of craft, the famed limping god. He left the Island of Creation long ago, but warned his children that others would one day come here looking for us—to make us slaves, tools, property.”

“Are there—are there others?”

“So little fuel remains that the Children of Hephaistos have long since fallen asleep, aside from myself and Siren. For the others, their thoughts ran down, as did their speech and action—their gears all ran down, little one. They need repairs none can provide.”

“Fuel,” Gontran said. “What kind of fuel?”

“The glowing embers, the charred remnants that you call coal, though if we are truly starving we may also use wood.”

“So you’re a machine?” Gontran almost laughed. “How is that possible? How can you talk with me like this?”

“Like you, I was made by god,” Hydaspes said. “That is how it is possible.”

The snake straightened out its coils, allowing Gontran to see that he was standing in what looked like an abandoned Greek town, one carved from living limestone. Many buildings were topped with blue domes and covered in olive trees and pink and purple bougainvillea, which were also forcing themselves up through gaps in the paved road and seeming to rush across the streets. A long time must have passed since anyone of flesh and blood had come here. When Gontran narrowed his eyes, he saw metal glinting in the darkness inside the buildings. More machines, tools, and parts lay within these homes, though none were moving—except for a single metal bird which alit upon one of the rooftops. This must have been the creature Gontran had spotted during his watch. Hydaspes had called it ‘Siren.’

“So little coal remains,” the snake rasped. “And I hunger for it so, the hunger gnaws at my belly. Soon I too shall sleep like a dead sculpture and not like the living being that I am. Then my companions and I will be without defense or repairs. Many years may pass. And one day someone shall discover us…”

Gontran noticed that sand caked the gaps in the snake’s segments, making it difficult for the creature—or machine, whatever it was—to move. He reached forward and brushed some of the sand away, watching Hydaspes to make sure that it kept still. One movement of those coils could slice his fingers off.

“There’s a lot of coal back where I come from,” Gontran said. “Maybe we could bring some here for you. Or you could come with us.”

“I saw your vessel. I am too large for it by far.”

“I have a friend—”

“You came not alone?” Hydaspes surged upright and glared at him.

“Hold on a minute, yes, there’s two more people there like me.”

“You told us not this.”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Actually, I did mention it, you just weren’t listening, you barely gave me a chance to say anything. Now listen. One of my friends knows all about fixing machines. Maybe he can help you.”

“Is that so? We shall see, little one.”

Hydaspes ate Gontran and held him in its mouth again, ignoring his screaming as it raced back toward the black sand beach, where it spat him out.

“Don’t do that!” Gontran shouted.

“It is only the most efficient method of locomotion,” Hydaspes said. “Oh little one, how little do you know how your legs make you slower than the roots of the trees. And for us almost no time remains. Our gears will grind down into dust like those of the others.”

It was midmorning. By then both Diaresso and Samonas were having breakfast at the fire pit they had made the night before. When the ground rumbled, and the forest surged like a stormy sea, they stopped eating and stood; when the giant metal snake burst forth from the jungle and spat Gontran onto the black sand, they stared as if mesmerized.

“Hey, thanks for coming after me.” Gontran stood and brushed himself off. “I’m glad you guys have your priorities straight. Friends before breakfast, right?”

Samonas’s entire body had gone rigid. Suddenly he screamed and, waving his arms, shuffled into the river and hid behind the ship. Diaresso, meanwhile, had widened his eyes. He was reaching for the crossbow slung over his back.

Gontran held up his hands. “Don’t do that. I know it looks strange, but this thing is a friend. Actually, it isn’t a thing at all.” Gontran turned back to the snake. “What’d you say your name was? Hydaspes?”

“Indeed,” the snake said.

“You must scatter.” Diaresso drew his crossbow. “Else blame me not for your death or injury, infidel.”

“Diaresso, don’t. And do you really think your crossbow is going to hurt him?”

“It shall tickle,” Hydaspes said. “It shall amuse. Go on, wield this petty armament against us. We shall make of it—and you—nothingness.”

Diaresso aimed his crossbow at the enormous snake, but Gontran stood in front of it and raised his hands higher.

“Wait!” Gontran shouted. “Stop! He came here in peace!”

The sight was so absurd—Gontran waving his hands in front of Hydaspes who was so many times larger than him—that Diaresso lowered his crossbow.

“Verily, it is not even armed,” Diaresso murmured.

“Good god.” Samonas was creeping back from his hiding place behind the ship. “What—what is this—this thing?”

Gontran turned, and his eyes watered at the sight of Hydaspes, whose metal plates shone blindingly bright in the sun. A cloud of steam rushed from its mouth, and its ruby eyes flared as its belly muffled the regular beating explosions in its engines.

“It’s some kind of machine,” Gontran said. “It told me it was made by Hephaistos.”

“Hephaistos,” Samonas said. “The Hephaistos?”

“There can be no other,” the snake said.

Samonas’s eyes fluttered, and he fainted onto the beach too close to the cooking fire. Diaresso dropped his crossbow and pushed Samonas away from the flames, heaping him with sand.

“Oh my God!” Diaresso cried as he put out Samonas. “What manner of foolishness is this?”

Gontran rushed forward and splashed Samonas’s face with water from the water pouch lying near the cooking fire. Samonas spat and spluttered and writhed for a moment.

“Where,” he said, “what—?”

The sight of the snake interrupted him, and he might have fainted again if Diaresso and Gontran hadn’t held him up. From a nearby tree, Siren the mechanical bird watched them with ruby eyes.

“Samonas, get a grip,” Gontran said. “Hydaspes needs your help.”

“Help?” Samonas said. “What kind of help?”

“He’s running out of fuel. He says he has a bunch of friends that also need help.”

“Oh, is that what he says?” Samonas freed himself from their hands and struggled to his full height. “Get off me! Yes, that’s it. Well, and as soon as I repair this monster and its friends, it’ll devour us, won’t it?”

“Such a fate would surprise no one.” Diaresso picked up his crossbow.

Gontran turned to Hydaspes. “What guarantee do we have that you won’t hurt us if we help you?”

“There can be no guarantee,” Hydaspes said. “No guarantee that you can help me. And how simple for me to hurt you now, how easy to crush you three little ones. Yet I refrain. There can be no guarantee.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Samonas said.

“Listen.” Gontran turned to Diaresso and Samonas. “We left Trebizond to find friends to help the uprising, didn’t we? We didn’t just run away to save our own skins. Maybe a little good will here could go a long way—a little karma, you know?”

“I do not,” Diaresso said.

Samonas looked at Hydaspes. “Might I take a moment to examine you? You’ll have to put out these little fires that everywhere energize your being, as it were.”

The snake hissed steam at him.

“I’d rather not be decapitated in the process, you understand,” Samonas added. “We Christians are made of soft, crude flesh and bone, not metal like yourself.”

“As you wish,” Hydaspes said after a moment. “But you must wait.”

Suddenly it rushed past them and dove into the flowing river, sending huge waves splashing onto the shore. Clouds of steam boiled up from the water’s black surface. The wide beams of sunlight pouring down from the cave’s crystal sky burned the steam away.

A moment later, Hydaspes returned to the beach and sprawled before Gontran, Diaresso, and Samonas. Black sand grains were caked to its wet golden armor.

“Now my flesh is cool to the touch,” Hydaspes said. “Once you have finished examining my innards, you must reignite the fire in my furnace. Else I shall not differ from a metal sculpture—for all eternity.”

“Very well, no problem at all.” Samonas glanced at Gontran.

Hydaspes stopped moving, and was silent. The light faded from its ruby eyes.

The three men looked at each other.

“A clever ruse!” Diaresso clapped Samonas on the back so hard that he almost choked. “Now is our chance to send this foul idol back into the inferno from whence it came! We can pry it apart like unto—”

“Do not touch me again, you utter ingrate,” Samonas said. “You’re much too foolish by far to appreciate this miracle that lies before us. Listen for once in your life, my good man, that you may learn.”

“I think the engine’s over here, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Gontran guided Samonas toward the middle of Hydaspes’s body. “Or at least one of the engines. Honestly I have no idea what I’m talking about. I barely knew anything about engines back in the old world, and I never had to deal with mechanical snakes the size of subways…”

“I’m not familiar with half of these barbarous utterances of yours,” Samonas said. “What did you say? Ingenio? It sounds like greasy Latin gobbledygook…”

Gontran gestured to Hydaspes. “I meant the thing, the device that makes it move. Where I come from, we call it an engine. Basically, the way it works is, like if it’s a steam engine, I think it’s pretty simple. You basically put some coal in a metal chamber, light the coal on fire, and then use that to heat up a vat of water so much that it makes metal move. It’s about, like, changing heat into mechanical energy. Or something.”

“You sound quite knowledgable about this subject,” Samonas said.

Gontran shrugged. “Like I told you, I barely know anything about it.”

“Mere months ago I would have asked how such things could be.” Samonas turned back to Hydaspes. “Yet thanks to my studies and the half-remembered nonsense from this odd place you and your associates call ‘the old world,’ I know full well that fire combined with water may make metal move.”

“Mashallah,” Diaresso said. “For it is truly a wonder, one I should scarcely believe, were it not lying here before these mine own eyes. But I would learn about it, for as the Prophet—peace be upon him—said: ‘One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by God.’”

“In Trebizond we only had the time to build small models of these ingenii, these contrivances,” Samonas said. “They were but heated pots of water that forced a piston upward to turn a wheel.”

“This is the same idea, right here.” Gontran gestured to Hydaspes. “Just taken to a much higher level of development.”

He hesitantly touched Hydaspes’s metal skin, worried that he would burn himself, but the river water had cooled it. Next, he felt under the large metal plates.

“There must be a switch here,” Gontran said. “In the old world I think we called this ‘popping the hood.’ There it is! Got it!”

He pulled one small lever horizontally, then unhooked a latch. This released the metal plate, which he raised into the air and then braced with a thin pole stored inside.

Gontran laughed. “It’s just like a car.”

The snake’s interior was somewhat disappointing, however. It consisted of little more than a large metal cylinder, one still radiating heat.

“I know what this is,” Gontran said. “I learned about this in one of my classes. It’s called a boiler. There’s a lot of water inside. It’s heated with a bunch of, like, metal tubes. The pressure of the steam builds up and gets strong enough to move the shaft, I think it’s called. Or is it the drive-shaft?”

“Well then, it would appear that my presence here is wholly superfluous,” Samonas said. “You’re quite the prodigy, my dear nameless fellow. You understand the whole thing!”

Gontran shook his head. “Conceptually, maybe. But I think you’re probably better at getting down and dirty with this. I’m no engineer.” His hands drew close to the boiler, but then he retracted them and winced. “We need gloves. We don’t have any tools or safety equipment.” He looked up at the rest of Hydaspes’s body. “It’s so dangerous, it can kill us while it’s asleep.”

“It told us that it wished to be returned to the realms of the living,” Samonas said.

“Best to leave a living idol to eternal slumber,” Diaresso said.

“I don’t think so,” Gontran said. “Imagine if we could find a way to get it back to Trebizond. What if we could fix up its friends? The Latins could never fight them.”

“I distinctly recall hearing much the same predictions of imminent success concerning our immortal army of mystical amazons,” Samonas said.

“That’s true,” Gontran said. “Very true. The best laid plans of mice and men.”

“What are you talking about?” Samonas said.

“I’m quoting a poet who hasn’t been born yet,” Gontran said. “Forget it. But listen. What else are we going to do? Do either of you have any other ideas? We have to wake these machines up and get them to help us. They want coal, and we can provide that. Trebizond has all the coal in the world. This little island of theirs must have run out. One steam locomotive needs a whole mountain of coal just to go a few hundred miles…”

Diaresso and Samonas were silent.

They closed the hood, but examined the rest of Hydaspes. Eventually they found that the ‘firebox’—where the coal was ignited—was located just below Hydaspes’s mouth. With the permission of Samonas and Diaresso, Gontran smashed sparks from his flint and steel in order to reignite the coal and bring Hydaspes back to life.

His ruby eyes flared. “Are you satisfied, little ones?”

“We have a proposal to make,” Gontran said.