Rust of Tears
Episodes
3 episodes
Episode 112 min 05 secFreeA Drop of OilTinsmith Ella wakes Nick Chopper, a tin man frozen in a nettle field for a year, with seven drops of oil. Thirty days until first frost, and he means to pay in timber and leave.
Episode 210 min 21 secFreeThree StepsAt dawn the tin man leaves his axe on the workshop doorstone and insists the seven drops of oil go into the ledger first. On the first day of felling, he never once turns his back on Ella.
Episode 311 min 54 secNEWFreeA Day Beside the Seized KneeA tin man takes a falling axe on his own knee. Ella refuses to hurry, and sits beside that knee until sundown, coaxing the metal straight.
Cast
9 people
NickLove interestA tin man who stood frozen in the nettles for a whole year, axe still in hand, until one rain-washed morning. Oil his joints and he greets you politely, but there isn't a spark of warmth in the words.
EllaProtagonistLast spring your grandfather died, and you inherited the Ku-Klip workshop, a debt that will take all winter to pay off, and one sentence on the last line of his ledger: One heart. No charge. Not made. The pen had pressed hard into the page, and you understood. He hadn't failed to make the heart. He had chosen not to. Then, before first frost, you took a job clearing the edge of the forest, and in a patch of nettles you found a tin man who had stood frozen for a year. You oiled his joints, and for the first time in a year his jaw opened. His first words weren't thank you. They were, "You're Ku-Klip's granddaughter." Your grandfather promised him a heart and never made it. That debt is yours now.
The Old HeadA man's head, around fifty, still talking from inside a cupboard in the Ku-Klip workshop. In this whole forest it is the only one that will tell Ella the plain truth, and that makes it the most dangerous.
NimmieA tidy, composed woman who lives in a farmhouse across the forest. The first time she meets Ella, she doesn't apologize. She opens the door and offers her a seat.
ChopfytNimmie's husband. Around strangers he's always apologizing before anything else, yet his smile and his hands look strangely familiar.
The ScarecrowA friend with nothing but straw in his head who somehow says the truest things in the whole forest. He always opens with something ridiculous and always ends by pressing right on the sore spot.
The Cowardly LionBuilt like a mountain and scared of everything, he still steps forward, crying the whole way. He sticks close to the friend who can't cry at all.
OzIn Emerald City, he sells things that don't exist. He says payment can wait, and the one question he keeps slipping past is whether the goods are real.
Ku-KlipElla's grandfather, the teacher who trained every tinsmith in Oz. He died last spring and now speaks only through his ledger and letters.