The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke - Sample Chapters

foldout table, three or four small ones, with strips of striped fabric rippling over the table’s edge, blowing back and forth in the breeze from the air conditioner.

Cat followed the fabric to the center of the loom, where it split out into several rows of yarn.

“What’d you find here?” Her father walked up to her, crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Ah, looms. One of humanity’s first complex machines, did you know that?”

Cat twisted around to look at him. “How do they work?”

He shrugged. The shop girl walked up to them, her hands tucked away in the pockets of her skirt. “I can show you.” Her hair was the color of maraschino cherries and curled around her shoulders. Her eyes were lined in black kohl. Cat wondered if she would look like that, when she was older. She hoped so.

“That’d be great.” Cat’s father squeezed Cat’s shoulder. “She’s our little artist.”

The shop girl smiled. “I’m an artist, too,” she said.

“This is my day job.” She dragged one of the looms around in front of her and sat down in a metal chair next to the table. She picked up a spool of yarn and threaded it through the yarn already pulled taut on the loom, then lifted up the wooden middle section and pushed it down to the place where the fabric began.

“It’s easy,” the shop girl said. “Here, you try.”

And Cat did, weaving the yarn through carefully, then combing it down.

“There, leave it hanging,” said the shop girl. “Now