Clockwork Twist : Waking (11 page)

The sun began to slip behind the mountains before the airship slowed.  Twist stood at the bow, his chilled fingers clutching the wooden rail tightly as the ship nosed its way between the higher peaks in the thickening fog.  His eyes focused hard through the mist and the blue lenses of his goggles, searching for an image he had never believed he would see.  His imagination had built a palace on the top of these mountains, surrounded in snow and sunlight, bright and full of joy.  Here, in the real, shifting, shadowed fog of Nepal, he could only sense foreboding.

After what felt like an eternity, the mist finally thinned before him.  A cluster of buildings and small open gardens bound by winding stairs, clung precariously to the side of a peak of gray stone, nestled into a ledge-like crevice like a frightened child in her mother's arms.  Small buildings and large halls of plastered white, topped with curving wing-like roofs of once vibrant red, fit themselves into the small nooks of the rock while the crumbling stone stairs and pathways wound along them like winding vines.

As they drew closer, Twist could see that many of the tall glass windows were broken and that the gardens had overgrown into a truly wild state.  Not a single white wall was clean or without a crack.  Time and solitude had painted every inch of the once great, shining palace in shades of age and decay as it nudged closer and closer to the edge of the abyss.

“Not what you expected?” Aazzi's voice asked from close behind Twist.

He jerked at the sound of her voice, turning to find a light smile on her face.  His eyes blinked to clear themselves and, for a moment, and he was glad that his goggles obscured them.

“The old stories make it sound so nice,” Aazzi said when Twist made no response. “I'm sure it was, once.  Nothing kills a nice dream like reality, wouldn't you say?”

“I just thought...” Twist's voice drifted away when he looked back, and he shook his head to clear it. “I knew she was alone, but I couldn't image her in this desolate place.”

“Well, she's got you now,” Aazzi said. “She won't be alone anymore.”

Twist nodded, taking a heavy breath.  It wasn't long before the
Vimana
came to a stop, floating at the edge of a hanging stone walkway that curved along the outside of one of the buildings.  Arabel swung across on the rigging ropes and tied the ship securely to the broken railing before she and Capt. Davis ran out a wooden plank to bridge the small gap between the walkway and the airship's deck.  Arabel was the first to step across, followed closely by Twist.  He already had his clock mending tools, his candles, and the piece of clockwork that Arabel had given him, in the bag on his shoulder.  He wasn't, however, prepared to look down over the side of the deck, into the impossible depths of jagged rock and mist below.  Twist jerked, running back three steps before he could stop himself.

“You're kidding,” Jonas asked, a wide smile on his face as he and the others gathered to disembark, “You're that afraid of heights?”

“We're at the very top of the world!” Twist snapped at him, still breathing hard. “Anyone who isn't nervous up here is insane.”

“What are you doing on an airship at all?” Jonas asked, smirking at Twist from behind his black goggles. “No wonder you're jumpy all the time.”

“Come along,” Arabel said, crossing back onto the ship and taking hold of Twist's coat sleeve. “Just don't look down.  You'll be fine,” she said, dragging him back to the edge.

Twist's jaw clenched and his breath caught, but Arabel didn't slow her pace.  She stepped easily over the little bridge while Twist scurried to keep up with her confident stride.  Before he knew it, he was standing on the somewhat solid stone of the walkway, clutching the balustrade behind him and staring determinedly away from the drop.

“See?” Arabel said brightly. “That was easy.”  She then walked away to the open doorway, just off to the right.  Aazzi and Capt. Davis followed after her, leaving Twist to catch his breath.

“Lovely sister you have,” Twist muttered when Jonas approached as well.

“If you want her, you can have her,” Jonas said flatly.

“Are we moving on, or not?” Dr. Rodés asked with a tight tone when he came to meet them.  Twist fell into step behind Jonas and followed the others in, through the open doorway.

A rotted, wooden door hung on one rusted hinge, on the inside of the dark room.  The scent of musty fabrics and dust filled the air, while the failing light of day spilled in through broken windows to illuminate various forgotten items around the room.  Twist's imagination gave him a glimpse of what this small sitting room used to look like, once upon a time: richly patterned rugs under the soft cushions on the floor, hanging drapes of red, purple, and gold at the windows, and tea served daily in bright glass teacups and silver, to the sound of the princess's favorite musicians.  For an instant, he almost thought he could smell the long dissipated scent of incense on the stale air.

Arabel led the procession out another door, into an open garden that might have been lovely once.  Twist could just barely see the stone pots and low borders around pools of grass and flowers under the clawing roots of enormous trees.  A single bird cage, torn and twisted by time and exposure, lay in the thick grasses, the only memory of the princess's once large collection of exotic birds that used to fill this garden with their songs.  Looking forward, he saw the face of the largest building.  A huge doorway stood at the top of stone steps below a large circle of glass that was surrounded with thin windows that reached out from it like rays of the sun.  The center glass was cracked nearly in half, and ivy grew over the white building like a thick blanket.

The moment Arabel stepped across the threshold, into the darkness within, Twist's heartbeat sped up and a cold wave of dread poured over him.  A wafting, disconnected, sense of anger and fear danced at the edges of his mind without any cause or identity.  Aazzi stopped before entering and gave a shudder.

“There it is again,” she said softly.

“Is this place unbelievably creepy, or is it just me?” Jonas asked.

“It's the ghost,” Aazzi said to him. “She doesn't like us being here.”

“So, there really is a ghost?” Jonas asked her.

“Oh yes,” Aazzi said, nodding as she stared at the doorway.

The others walked inside the palace, until Aazzi, Jonas, and Twist were left alone outside.  Twist took out his watch and wrapped its chain around his hand, the back of the watch held firmly to his palm.  The slow, emotionless ticking calmed him slightly and masked the feelings of anger and fear that threatened from the shadows.  Aazzi looked back to him with a smile.

“Do you need a hand, dear?” she asked. “I can pull you inside if you want.”

“No,” Twist said, shifting the bag to sit more comfortably on his shoulder.  He seized his faint courage and stepped forward again.  Jonas followed beside him, and Twist felt the familiar buzz block out just a little more of the haunting emotions.  They stepped through together into the dim, dusty, cold space inside the once great hall.

A wide, open floor stretched out before them, rimmed with high stone walls.  Tall, thin windows now lay broken on the floor.  A balcony floated above the doorway, giving the front of the room a second level.  Two curving staircases spilled onto the main floor from the sides, and a row of benches flanked a single throne against the farthest wall.  This hall must have been a spectacle at one time, but now a fine blanket of dust and broken glass covered everything in it.  Twist saw a few trails of footprints on the floor, with no other disturbances in the dust.

Arabel and the others were standing at the foot of one of the staircases, all silent as they looked down.  Coming closer, Twist saw what had drawn their attention.  Still lying where she must have fallen so many years ago, a body of tarnished metal lay twisted, broken, and shattered in the dust at the foot of the stair.  The young female face was the least damaged, showing a look of horror and shock in the grayed copper and blackened silver of her metal features in a pool of long, tangled wire that fell from her metal scalp.  One clear blue jewel encased in silver sat in the place of one eye, while another lay farther away.  Her broken limbs curled around her with the faded, thin, once-pink silk that still wrapped her body and swirled at her sides in long flowing wafts.

Looking down at the grotesque image before him, for a moment Twist didn't understand.  The beautiful little princess of clockwork that he had imagined was so far from what he saw.  He came within a step of her fallen hand—freed gears and cogs lay all around the ruined metal casing of the torn open palm—and stooped down.  He held out the piece that Arabel had given him in London, and found that it obviously would fit perfectly inside the broken hand on the floor.  Tears burned to his eyes and his strength left him as he fell to his knees in the dust.

No one spoke for a long moment as Twist stared at her silently through his freely running tears and disbelief.  Arabel was the first to move.  She knelt close beside him and placed a gentle hand on his back.  Twist shuddered at her touch, his senses overwhelmed by images of Arabel in many faraway places—laughing, running, flying through the air in the rigging of the ship, yelling in rage at her brother—but she pulled her hand away after only the merest instant, breaking the vision into glimmering dust motes in Twist's eyes.

“Sorry!” she said with a wince. “But honey, are you all right?”

Twist blinked his vision clear, wiping at his eyes, and looked to her silently as if he didn't see her.  His breath felt raw and ragged in his throat.  Arabel's mouth opened and then closed against silently.

“You can fix her,” Jonas said gently, standing near beside him.

“She's so...”  Twist's small voice quivered slightly as he spoke. “She's real,” he said, looking back to the clockwork princess. “And it's horrible.  I never thought the damage could be this bad.  She could never have been harmed if she were only a myth.”

The air in the hall chilled significantly, and far in the distance of the still air, Twist thought he heard the echo of a sorrowful voice.  The others turned quickly, looking around into the shadows.

“Someone else heard that, right?” Jonas asked.

“It's the ghost,” Aazzi said darkly. “She doesn't like us being here.”

“The ghost...” Twist breathed, feeling the chill soak into him, carrying unbidden sorrows with it.  He shook his head and got shakily to his feet. “This whole place is haunted!” he said, clutching tightly to the watch in his hands. “I can feel it.”

“You mean, you can
feel
it?” Jonas asked, moving closer to Twist, his goggles shielding his eyes as he seemed to look at him. “The ghost is affecting your Sight?”

“Of course, you idiot!” Twist snapped savagely at him.  Jonas's eyebrows shot upward over his goggles as he stepped away slightly. “Oh, I'm sorry,” Twist muttered, shaking his head again as a wave of his own fear washed over him. “That wasn't me.”

“Outside,” Jonas said, pointing to the door. “Now.”

“No,” Twist said, shaking his head.

“Twist, you can't—“ Jonas began.

“I can't leave her!” Twist said as defiantly as he was able, without letting the sorrow that wasn't his take control again.  He opened his bag quickly and pulled out one of the white candles that he had brought with him.

“Clever lad,” Aazzi said with a smile, coming to him.

Aazzi held the candle for Twist to light, and muttered something under her breath as the flame came to light.  The moment the golden glow of the candlelight fell on Twist, he felt a release of tension and the disembodied emotions faded from his heart.  The others moved closer as well, into the light.

“I don't get it,” Zayle said, staring at the flickering flame.

“The candlelight is pushing the ghost away from us,” Jonas said, looking into the light with uncovered eyes as he held his goggles off his face, just an inch. “How does that work?”

“It's an ancient trick,” Aazzi said. “But it still works.  The light of a white candle cleanses the air of spirits.  That's why people burn them at funerals and wakes.”

“If I could only explain somehow,” Twist said softly, looking out into the shadows. “I'm here to help her.  If I could just tell her, I wouldn't need to push her away.”

“Explain it to her once you get that puppet to wake up again,” Jonas said, looking at him through his black lenses. “It'll be much easier.”