The Heart of Happiness

The scrape woke her.

The sound of metals brushing, no matter how soft or how slow, always produced a clang and that clang jolted Em from her dreamless sleep each and every time. Her neck creaked as her head turned to survey the damage of her touch.

He slept beside her, propped against the apple tree, his eyes opened to the horizon. His chest unmoving, as still as a scarecrow in a windless field.

She stayed like this for an hour. Watching him. Thinking of nothing of the future or the past. Only concentrating on the point where their bodies touched in the now.

“If I only felt you,” she whispered at the end of her meditation, and then, as if a spell had been lifted, he awoke, too.

“How long was I out?” he asked. His mouth could barely form the words. He needed fluids. To think of it, she could use some as well.

“Not too long,” Em said. “Anyway, you needed to store up some energy for our day ahead.”

His eyes rolled down to the corner as his head stayed straight.

“You can’t stand up, can you? I’m an oaf. You’re on the ground, laying there and I go on about rest. It’s a wonder you didn’t start to rust. Here. Let me help you.”

And with a backward whirl of his shoulder and an extension of his arm, Hickory maneuvered his way to her upper back and pushed her tin frame to a sitting position.

“I can handle it now,” Em said, seeing the man more as a machine in the moment. “Thanks for the start, though.”

“Thank you for the company,” he said. “Not too many of us around anymore after The Reddening. It’s good for us to stick together.”

“Just like magnets,” she said. But he didn’t laugh.

Her can sat on a thick tree branch, its leaves charred as dark as a moonless sky from the latest barrage of the flaming orbs. She picked the apparatus up and gave it a squirt.

“Care for a bit? It’s a premium blend,” she said as she pointed the spout toward him. She mustn’t waste this, she thought. Witches only know when she’ll find more oil of this quality.

“Just a bit around the old jibber jabberer,” he said. Em spurted a drop in each corner as she twirled about like a tornado. He took the can and reciprocated, oiling her elbows and knees to boot.

The two nodded to one another and steadied themselves for another adventure.

But as the sun broke through the gathering poisonous clouds, a glint that shone like a star caught Em’s attention.

“Wait. In the grass. You’ve left something. Why, it looks just like a peculiar shaped apple.”

She clunked over, her legs strangely straight, and fished a heavy chain with a charm out from the dirt.

“Why, it’s a heart! With a watch!”

The man seemed as sad as a man made of metal could be.

“One of the hands stopped working after the Big Blast. Minutes only pass now,” he said. He reached out to grab it but stopped midway.

“See that latch of the side. If you want to know the real me, open the locket.”

Em struggled to flick the tiny golden handle but, after a few tries, the heart sprung open. Inside, a small blue hairbow rested.

“That was hers,” the man said. “The child who fell from the sky. She only left one physical thing to remind me of her time here. My heart broke when she went away. That’s how I knew the wizard truly gave me a ticker that worked.”

He kicked at a scorched remnant of a critter and gathered his thoughts as if he were a beast summoning courage.

“But she brought this to us. The ruin. The retaliation. Her heart’s desire delivered her home. In her abandonment, our land reeks of death and despair. Maybe brains do bring happiness.”

Em stood stunned. She hadn’t realized he knew the sorceress whose selfishness had begun this final war. In their week together, travelling just to endure the next hardship, Hickory spoke only of the green city’s destruction and the little people’s defeat and the loss of his two old friends.

She explained the horror of being frozen in a poppy field as all the world burned until he came along and freed her.

Yet, even with all his pain, the metal man continued to hope. And that gave Em a reason to hope and, perhaps, love, too.

For nine ticks of the lone watch hand, the pair stood silent. And then, with all her gentle bulk, she attached the heart shaped ornament to Hickory’s left breast and patted his cheek with a clank.

“You don’t need a heart or a home to find joy,” Em said. “You just need someone who can share in that happiness.”

Their eyes met. And while the two could not feel each other’s touch, a warmth spread through their insides that outshined the brightest crystal ball.

“Well, we’re off to see the… hmmm, anyone who survived, I suppose,” Hickory said. He and Em linked elbows and, once again, returned to the broken bricked road.