The Mark of the Dragonfly

“Many of the scrappers were nomads by nature, and superstitious. If they didn’t have any luck scavenging in their first few months in a scrap town, they moved on to the next one. […] Piper figured they all eventually ended up back where they started, with no better luck than when they’d begun.”

Most scrappers believe that changing their location will change their luck. Piper is more pragmatic, or perhaps more fatalistic, in believing that bad luck will follow wherever one goes. Ironically, she doesn’t recognize that she’s about to follow the same pattern. By leaving the scrap town, she assumes that she will find good fortune in Noveen.

“See what we can scavenge off of you. You make us animals, clawing at each other, killing ourselves for food down here in the scrap heaps, so let’s see what we can take from you.”

Piper is raiding the caravan wagons for any salvageable supplies. Her comment indicates the rage and bitterness she harbors toward those who are better off. The rich merchants care little for the suffering of the poor. This attitude ripples down from the top of government, where the rulers of both kingdoms are only concerned with gaining more wealth and power for themselves. 

“Rumor had it that he didn’t condone scavenging from the scrap fields. He even encouraged people to come from the Merrow Kingdom as her father had done, to work in his factories, shaping iron for his fleet. He wants us poor, Piper thought—poor and working for him.”

Piper is thinking about King Aron’s motives for inviting the poor into his realm. She is bitter toward Aron because his toxic factory fumes killed her father. Poverty creates such desperation that a man is willing to work himself to death to feed his family. It makes perfect sense that a monarch would seek to attract the poor. They have no other options but to labor on his terms.

“‘The bed is too big for one person. Your boots are too big, and your coat is absolutely hopeless.’ She spoke very fast. ‘It’s all out of proportion. Nothing fits. Nothing makes sense.’ She looked at Piper with a pleading expression. ‘It has to make sense.’”

Anna has rearranged Piper’s shack in a way that only makes sense to her. At this point in the story, the reader assumes that she is still traumatized from her injuries and is talking nonsense. In retrospect, however, the comment indicates how her mechanical brain works. It proceeds by logic and proportion and not by sentimental association. 

“The way he looked at Anna—the possessiveness in his expression—sent a chill up Piper’s back. He gazed at Anna rapturously, as if she were some sort of precious object. It felt wrong, very wrong.”

Doloman has just gotten his first glimpse of the awakened Anna. At this point, the reader might assume he is a pedophile with an unnatural attachment to this 1-year-old girl. However, the author’s analogy to a precious object is far more telling. Anna is most valuable because she is an animate object instead of a mere girl.

“The whole thing felt like a dream. An image of the man from the caravan flashed through Piper’s mind, and fear took hold of her. […] All right, so maybe things weren’t perfect. Maybe she’d just had a world of trouble dumped in her lap along with her dreams, but she was too exhausted to sort it all out right now.”

Piper has just succeeded in getting herself and Anna aboard the 401. The train had featured in Piper’s fantasies long before Anna arrived. Thus, the train ride is a dream come true. It will also end up being her worst nightmare. She has an inkling that trouble lies ahead, but her assessment of the situation falls far short of the terrible events about to unfold.

“Anna trusted her, but would she feel differently if she knew Piper was acting as much for herself as for Anna? She felt the stab of guilt but forced those feelings aside. It didn’t matter why she was doing this—she was here, wasn’t she?”

Piper is driven by the need to acquire cash and sees Anna as the best means to achieve her goal. However, Anna’s vulnerability and innocence create a conflict for Piper. It would be far easier to abandon someone who could fend for herself. Anna’s implicit trust in Piper carries a weight of responsibility that the scrappy machinist can’t set aside.

“‘You’re going to protect us?’ Anger burned in her chest, the same uncontrollable, consuming emotion she’d tasted when she saw Anna touching her father’s drawings. ‘Do you know what the “protection” of the government—Merrow or Dragonfly—is worth to us scrappers?’”

Gee is trying to get Piper to confess the real reason for her journey. He assumes that he can alleviate her fears by promising protection. Piper’s reply signals her underdog status. She has no money and no influence. These represent protection to her, and Gee can offer neither. Ironically, in promising protection, Gee is unaware of the forces aligned against him. Doloman’s power and influence would sweep aside all attempts to defend the girls from harm. In this respect, Piper’s comment is prescient.

“All they had to do to get what they wanted was flash some coin, and everyone jumped to serve them. One had to treat them that way, didn’t they, in order to get one’s own bit of coin? False civility and money changing hands—a show, that was all it was—but Piper had never been on the other side before.”

Piper has just approached a merchant on the train to buy new clothing. Her scruffy appearance prompts a cold response until she displays the coins from Anna’s money belt. Immediately, the merchant’s attitude changes. Piper’s cynical observation seems entirely justified. In the world of Solace, money talks loudest.

“I’ve always had a knack for knowing what’s wrong with a machine. I can tell sometimes before I touch it. Then, the more I touch it, the more I know how to fix it, and the machines always seem to respond to me.”

Piper explains her gift to Anna as the two enter the seer’s apartment. Neither is aware of the real irony of this statement. Piper is literally talking to a machine that she recently brought back to life. Anna is also unaware of her mechanical heritage. Piper’s statement that machines respond to her seems to imply sentience in objects. She relates to them as if they were simply a different life form.

“She almost felt like she was coming home, back when her father was there. Those days she’d always felt safe when she slept. Tears stung her eyes at the thought, and Piper wiped them away impatiently. She was crying entirely too often these days. She was sure it was Anna’s fault, somehow.”

Piper and Anna have just been returned to the train after their harrowing encounter with the slavers. Piper is beginning to make emotional connections of which she still isn’t consciously aware. She compares returning to the 401 to the feeling of coming home to be reunited with her father. Similarly, she exhibits more emotion now and blames Anna for this. However, feelings are a sign of an emotional bond. Indeed, she can blame Anna for that. The mechanical girl now feels like a sister to her.

“Trimble raised an eyebrow. ‘You think they’d sell the parts to buy food? More likely they’d use them to build a dozen more gliders and hit us even harder next run. There’s no room for compromise in this game, friend.’”

Anna is commenting on how she has endangered the entire crew, yet everyone has rushed to protect her. Her brain is processing these acts of kindness as folly. It doesn’t make logical sense for anyone to help a random stranger. However, Anna fails to recognize the emotional component that motivates others to protect her. She also fails to see Piper’s desperate need for a family connection of some kind in the machinist’s determination to care for her.

“You keep getting in trouble because of me, and last night Gee got hurt because of me. I don’t understand why you’re all doing this. You left your home, Piper, put yourself in danger just to help me. So much has happened, but this makes the least sense of all. You don’t know me, but you act like a mother bird.”

Anna is commenting on how she has endangered the entire crew, yet everyone has rushed to protect her. Her brain is processing these acts of kindness as folly. It doesn’t make logical sense for anyone to help a random stranger. However, Anna fails to recognize the emotional component that motivates others to protect her. She also fails to see Piper’s desperate need for a family connection of some kind in the machinist’s determination to care for her.

“Maybe you’re poor, you’re a scrapper, you’ll work any job at a factory even if it kills you because you’re desperate, desperate like a girl who’s alone and running from someone with enough money to buy her like so many pounds of meat—and they take advantage. They take everything from you!”

Gee and Trimble have just revealed Piper’s synergist gift to her, and she reacts badly to the knowledge. While the other two see her ability positively, Piper can only think of how she might be exploited because of it. She already feels alienated for being an orphan from the scrap towns. Her greatest desire is to fit in and be respected. Even though synergist abilities offer magical power, she is far less concerned about how to use those powers than about how those powers can be used against her by others.

“‘Every time we’re in a room together, there’s shouting. Lots of shouting.’ ‘Uh-huh, I noticed.’ Trimble’s grin made Piper want to set his hair on fire—not that it would do any good. ‘But you two are a lot alike,’ he said. ‘You’re protective of the people you care about.’”

Trimble has just pointed out that Gee likes Piper, which she quickly denies. The fireman also notes the reason for the attraction. Both are fiercely devoted to the welfare of those they love. Piper might also be in denial on this point because she wants to disown her growing emotional attachment to Anna. She explains her protectiveness as pragmatism. She’s merely ensuring her future financial interests. Of course, the only person she is fooling by taking this stance is herself.

“And how many others might there be in the world with similar gifts? Were they keeping them a secret, like Trimble, or were they ignorant—as Piper had been until now—that they even possessed anything special? If Gee hadn’t told her, Piper might have lived the rest of her life without discovering it. And now that she knew the truth, Piper knew she would never look at herself or the world in quite the same way again.”

Piper is getting over the shock of being a synergist. She is also beginning to recognize the upside of her magic. For much of the story, Piper sees herself as a victim of the system with no power to defend herself. She proves herself wrong by forcing machinery to malfunction in the hands of her attackers. Perhaps, a supernatural knack for machinery can be a good thing.

“She had something to contribute—her magic. She didn’t know how her power worked, but she made machines run better, and when she needed to, she could make them stop running. That was worth something, even if it set her apart or made her strange.”

As in the preceding quote, Piper seems to be talking herself around to a level of self-acceptance for her uniqueness. Ironically, she never views Gee or Trimble as freaks for the powers they possess. Nor does she reject Anna when she realizes the girl is part machine. She is only hard on herself. The final sentence in the above quote indicates that she still wants to fit in but doesn’t realize that she has already found a place where she fits. It just isn’t the place she originally anticipated.

“On a burst of wing beats, Gee flew away from the cars and took up his position high above the cliffs. He just had to do what he’d always done: protect the train, its passengers, and its crew. Protect his family.”

Gee demonstrates the qualities that Trimble pointed out earlier to Piper. He is the head of security for the 401 and takes his job seriously. However, he also sees the train as his home and the crew as his family. His vigilance has less to do with fulfilling his duties than preserving what is most precious to him.

“Piper thought back to that night in her house when Micah said she was a healer with machines. It seemed so long ago now, back when she was just a local scrapper with a big mouth, proud of her work tinkering with machines. She hadn’t known anything back then. She hadn’t known they walked around in human skin.”

Piper has just learned that Anna is part machine and that she may be the girl’s only hope of survival. Piper’s journey aboard the 401 has done far more than transport her from one geographic location to another. She made a journey of personal growth that would have seemed inconceivable before she came aboard. Her world and her possibilities both look very different from inside a train car.

“She’d helped heal Anna, and Piper knew in her heart that her magic, on its own, wouldn’t have been able to do that. She’d needed all the skill and experience with machines that she’d gained during her years in the scrap town. The magic was a part of her, but it wasn’t everything—her own talents were just as important.”

Piper makes an important distinction in this quote between gifts and training. She might have some innate magic to communicate with machines, but her ability to physically repair them is only made possible by experience and hours spent doing repair work. A person cannot take credit for innate gifts, such as Piper’s synergist abilities. However, she can rightly be proud of her repair skills. These were acquired by hard work and dedication and not destiny. 

“Why did they all leave? The thought drifted up out of the storm raging inside her. Her father had gone off to the factory, Micah had run off into the scrap fields, and now Anna had abandoned her too. Why did they all leave to do monumentally stupid things? Didn’t they know that they weren’t helping her by leaving her behind?”

Throughout most of the novel, Piper presents herself as a tough survivor. However, this quote reveals her as an abandoned orphan. She has repeatedly tried to construct a family for herself: first with her father, then with Micah, and finally with Anna. When given the opportunity the abandon Micah or Anna, Piper didn’t make that choice. However, this quote reveals how cheated she feels when those she saved don’t repay the favor.

“Neither one of them deserves to have all the power, Piper realized. Both Aron and the Merrow Kingdom had wronged their people, and no matter how rosy a picture Doloman painted of Merrow’s intention, Piper didn’t trust them.”

Doloman has just given a fine speech about how much better life would be for the lower classes under Merrow’s rule. As an underling, Piper has spent her life observing the behavior of the rich. Altruism never wins out over greed. She doesn’t believe that giving the balance of power to either faction will improve the lives of the poor.

“Would this obsession with weapons and factories and machines never end, except in war? And how ironic, Piper couldn’t help but think, that the most valuable machine in all of Solace was about to walk out King Aron’s front door.”

After the girls’ interview with King Aron, they are sent back to the 401. Even more than the Merrow rulers, Aron is obsessed with technology. He would immediately grasp the implications of possessing a rarity like Anna to shift the balance of power in his favor. Undoubtedly, future books in the series will explore this interesting topic further. For now, Aron has just made a superficial assessment of two harmless servants and let them walk away to his own detriment.