Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme
This children's book is a mechanical curiosity of gnomish design, with a cover made of wood and copper. The front cover bears a faded, hand-painted rendering of a round millstone. The book is square, eighteen inches along each edge of the cover. A silver music box set into the book's spine is heavily dented at one end.
The book has no pages in the typical sense, but it opens to reveal a pop-up cutaway illustration of a quaint watermill made of painted panels of wood, tin, canvas, and leather. It's a clockwork device designed to animate four separate scenes while a music box built into the book's spine plays a metallic tune that implants a rhyme in the minds of those who hear it. The mechanised scenes feature cutout figurines of members of a family dying in a series of grisly ways as a shadowy figure looks on. The images are as follows: A mother chops off the feet and ear of her husband with a scythe. The family dog bites off the mother's hand. The son drowns in a river while washing clothes. The final scene—which doesn't play out until the music box is repaired—shows the daughter defeating the shadow by crushing it under a millstone.
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Book / Document
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