The Wonderful Traveling Medicine Show

By Leigh Kimmel

Surrounded by a family who were happy with life in their West Virginia mining town, Janeen struggled against the pressure to keep her head down and conform. A dreamer, everyone said, Just like her father. And look what that got him, dead in the Turkish war. But Janeen knew she was meant for a wider world, and one day it came to her in the form of a broken-down steamer and its mysterious owner.

 

A SHORT STORY of steampunk and the paranormal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starship Cat Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215892046

Book preview

This book is a work of fiction. All names of persons, places and organizations are fictitious or used fictitiously.

Cover credits:

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Cover text: akaPosse Semi-Bold

Published by Starship Cat Press, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.

http://www.starshipcatpress.com/

Overhead the Baltimore to Chicago airship made its stately way among the cotton-candy clouds just above the ridgeline. I always enjoyed pretending it was a warship off to storm a Turkish stronghold, like the ones where Dad fought as a Sky Marine, swooping down on his clockwork falcon...

A sharp metallic clang cut short my thoughts. I tensed, afraid I'd been caught daydreaming again. A quick look over my shoulder revealed nobody—not Mom or Aunt Nancy or my cousins. Uncle Wilbur would still be down in the coal mine at this hour, working hard to support two families.

And you'd do well to be grateful for that, he'd told me the last time I got caught daydreaming and managed to take out half a row of beets. Still, it was better than having him reckon I did it because I hated beets...

There was that clang again, louder this time and clearly the other way from the house. Down on the road to Mannington.

There in the middle of the road was a huge steam traction engine like you see with the custom threshing companies. Except instead of a threshing machine, it was towing three brightly-colored wagons marked Adam Leng's Wonderful Traveling Medicine Show.

Or rather, had been towing, because it wasn't going anywhere. Even the big spoked flywheel was slowing to a stop. Smoke still rose from the stack, but that just said there was fire under the boiler.

The men at the controls were talking. No, arguing, I was sure. Not just by their gestures, stiff and tight the way people get when they're trying hard to control a mad, but the way my grandma always knew when there was trouble. People still say Old