Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (21 page)

She hesitated for a moment, and then she smiled, a huge smile, so that she looked suddenly like a young woman. She reached down and slipped a hand under Pluto’s collar. “I want to be with Lily and Tony again,” she said quickly, and she held up her other hand and dropped the coin into the well. But it didn’t fall. It hung in the air, spinning— spinning so fast that it looked like a tiny brass sphere, a miniature planet, a shining new world. And as it spun, it shone more and more brightly, until it was just a brilliant flicker.

Leonora waited, the light stroking her face. The air all around her and Pluto seemed to ripple. And then, as swiftly as if a curtain had been drawn across them, they disappeared.

The brilliant light blinked off. The workshop was suddenly darker.

Stuart and April and Clifford stood like a row of waxworks, scarcely breathing.

For a long minute there was utter silence and then from behind them someone spoke. “What. Was.
That?
”

Stuart turned stiffly and saw Jeannie halfway down the ladder.

“What was THAT?” She shouted the last word, her face white with disbelief, and she started to climb down again, but clumsily, as if she couldn’t remember where her feet were.

Stuart felt his arm being pulled. “Let’s go,” said April. “I don’t like this. It’s scaring me.”

He couldn’t seem to move.

She pulled at him again. “Let’s get out of here. Stuart! Come
on
.”

He nodded stiffly and at last managed to unglue his feet from the floor. But Jeannie had already reached them and she grabbed Stuart by the neck of his T-shirt and pushed him against the parapet of the well.

“
Tell me what I have just seen
,” she demanded.

“Get OFF him!” shouted April.

Jeannie swatted her away like a moth. “Where did Leonora go?” she asked, with each word giving Stuart a shake, and with the other hand fending off a yelling April. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” said Stuart between gasps.

“TELL ME!”

“The same place that Great-Uncle Tony went.”

“And where was that?” she demanded, her face pushed close to Stuart’s. His head was over the parapet of the well, one arm bent behind him, the other pinned at the wrist by Jeannie’s elbow. “I want to know.”

“That’s enough!” said Clifford, and his voice was so bullish that for a moment Jeannie actually did stop, midshake.

“What did you say?” she asked incredulously, her hand still gripping Stuart’s T-shirt.

“I said … er …
That’s enough
,” repeated Clifford, sounding less like a bull and more like a sheep.

“If,” said Jeannie coldly, “you wish to pass Grade Two Basic Magic Skills, then one of the first requirements is cooperation with your tutor.”

Clifford’s whole face seemed to wobble with indecision, and then all at once it set, quite firmly. “I don’t care,” he said.

Jeannie’s grip on Stuart’s collar became even tighter. “What?” she asked.

“I don’t care,” repeated Clifford. “Let him go.”

“Yes, let him go!” shouted April, dragging on Jeannie’s arm, and receiving a shove that made her stagger backward and fall over her own feet.

“If you think—” began Jeannie, then she ducked as something white skimmed her head. It was the dove, wheeling around and then settling, with a flurry of wing-beats, on Clifford’s shoulder. And in that second, Jeannie’s grip on Stuart loosened, and he started to struggle away. She caught him again by the shoulders, squeezing hard. “Where did Tony Horten disappear to?” she shouted.

“I wish I knew,” said Stuart hoarsely.

He tried to twist out of her grasp and his wrist hit the parapet of the well. His hand jerked open. The threepence, the last threepence, seemed to trickle into the air. It hung there; a little crooked moon.

And April, sprawled on the floor, saw Stuart and Jeannie dissolve in a blaze of pale light.

Stuart found himself in flickering darkness, in the middle of a whirlwind, pulled and buffeted, twisted and punched, the only noise a distorted roar. Then distantly, through the roar, he heard a voice—the voice of a young woman, brisk and light.

“
I’m sick of this dreary old war
,” she said. “
I wish I could go back to a time before bombs and sirens
.”

The flickering slowed and settled, the buffeting ceased, the world turned from shadow to substance. Another voice detached itself from the roar.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Hortini and his lovely wife will now demonstrate the Cabinet of Curious Change, a wondrous and extraordinary mechanism, indeed!”

And suddenly Stuart could see again, but everything looked strange and distant, as if he were peering through thickened glass.

He was in a vast theater, sitting on a red plush seat, looking up at a stage that was lit by a row of dancing flames. On the stage, a short, vigorous gray-haired man with a very large mustache and a scarlet waistcoat was standing, with one hand outstretched.

A red-haired woman all dressed in gold and scarlet stepped to his side, smiling.

“The Cabinet of Curious Change!” she announced, and whipped away a length of silk that was covering a large object. It was revealed to be an elaborate cabinet, decorated with silver filigree and bright enamel. She opened the door to show the empty interior, closed it again, and then revolved the whole cabinet. It turned smoothly, the sides and back glittering with gold leaf.

“And now,” she said, “the Great Hortini requires a volunteer from the audience!”

Stuart looked around, and the world swum in and out of focus. It was like being in the depths of a dream and yet he could feel the seat beneath him, could smell the gaslight, could hear the murmur of the audience, and see the flutter of the ladies’ fans. No one was raising a hand.

“A volunteer is required!” repeated the Great Hortini. He stepped to the front of the stage. “And are there none?” he asked. “Are you all, perhaps, just a little afraid of change?”

He smiled, and a chuckle swept across the audience. “Then I shall have to choose someone.” His eyes swept across the rows. “You there,” he said, pointing directly at Stuart. “The lad in the blue trousers. Come onto the stage, if you will.”

There was a scatter of applause, and Stuart found himself on his feet and moving like a sleepwalker along the aisle and up the steps that led up to the stage. The Great Hortini nodded at him and then addressed the audience once again.

“The Cabinet of Curious Change, ladies and gentlemen, is a wonder of our age, a simple container that can utterly transform its contents. We have here an ordinary boy—” He placed a hand on Stuart’s shoulder and glanced down at him.

“Your name, my lad,” he asked.

“Stuart Horten,” said Stuart. And the Great Hortini’s expression changed to one of incredulity.

And in that instant the world seemed to snap into focus, clear and sharp, bright and real, and Stuart knew that he was actually
there
, not dreaming, not hallucinating, but standing on the stage of a theater a hundred years or more before he was born.

A hush fell.

The Great Hortini knelt on one knee so that he was on Stuart’s level. “Not an ordinary boy at all,” he said very quietly. “An exceptional boy.
The right sort of boy
. You’re the one who found my note, aren’t you?”

“Your note?”

“That I left in the tin:
My workshop and all it contains is yours it you can find it
…”

“I found the note,” said Stuart. “And I found the workshop.”

“Then you’re the right sort of boy to have it.” He nodded gravely. “Well done, Stuart.”

“So you mean
you’re
my great-uncle? You’re Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten?”

“I was once. And then I followed my Lily into the world that she’d wished for, a world before sirens and bombs. And in this older world I needed a new name. I became the Great Hortini, the wonder of the Victorian stage, but the Great Hortini is, and always was, and always shall be, Tony Horten.”

He paused, and in the moment of silence Stuart realized that there was not a whisper from the audience, not a hiss from the gas-burners, not a creak from the stage. More than that, there was no movement—the audience sat like wooden dummies, the flames looked like a row of folded orange napkins.

“What’s happening?” asked Stuart. He moved his shoulders uneasily; he could feel a pressure on them as if they were being gripped.

The Great Hortini stood and looked around, his expression sharp and quizzical. “You used a threepence to get here?” he asked.

“The very last one. It was damaged, though, bent right across the middle. And I made a sort of accidental wish.”

“What was it?”

“That I’d know where you’d disappeared to.”

The pressure on his shoulders was increasing. It was as if he could still feel Jeannie’s hands.

“What’s happening?” he asked again, staring at the frozen faces in the audience,

“I think I know,” said the Great Hortini. “Imagine if you threw a stone into the air—it would travel upward, hang for a split second, and then fall. The imperfect coin, the last threepence, slung you into the past and this is the briefest of pauses before you begin your return journey. You could say that for a single moment, we are outside time.” He smiled and held out his hand. “It has been an honor to meet you, young man. A great and unexpected honor. You brought Leonora back to us, and we shall always, always be grateful. She describes you as a fellow of great pluck and resourcefulness, and I can see that she is right. Enjoy the workshop. It has many surprises.”

Stuart shook his hand, and as he did so the air seemed to stir, as if ruffled by a breeze.

Someone in the audience coughed, someone else rustled a program, the flames leaped and trembled, and the theater was suddenly alive again.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” announced the Great Hortini, moving seamlessly back into his role as performer, “my lovely wife, Lily, will escort this young fellow into the Cabinet of Curious Change.”

Stuart felt his hand being taken and he looked up to see Lily smiling down at him. He tried to smile back but the invisible hold on his shoulders was growing painful now, and the world was becoming dreamlike again. He stepped into the cabinet, turned around, and saw the door close on him.

In the darkness Great-Uncle Tony’s voice was still quite audible: “… we shall now revolve the Cabinet of Curious Change three times in a clockwise direction …”

The floor began to twist under Stuart’s feet and he placed his hands on the walls to steady himself. He could feel the hurricane beginning again, the same one that had dragged him into the past.

“… and now we shall revolve the cabinet in the reverse direction three times. You see, ladies and gentlemen that there are no hidden compartments, no wires, no trap doors …”

As the magical wind tore and tugged at Stuart, the grip on his shoulders loosened and then broke, and he felt himself being whirled into the storm. He was no longer in the darkness of the cabinet but flying above the heads of the audience, staring down at the stage. The scene seemed to shudder before his eyes like a faulty film.

“The curious change is complete!” announced the Great Hortini. “Let us see how our young volunteer has fared.”

Lily stepped forward and opened the door, and before the flickering darkness once again engulfed Stuart, he saw that the cabinet wasn’t empty. Someone was standing inside it, someone that he recognized.

It was Jeannie. And she looked absolutely
furious
.

In the room beneath the bandstand, April scrambled to her feet and stared open-mouthed at the empty space beside the Well of Wishes, where, just a second earlier, Stuart and Jeannie had been standing.

“But—” she said.

Clifford, the dove still cooing on his shoulder, took a step forward. “Where—?” he asked.

“
OW!
” yelled Stuart, crashing to the floor out of nowhere. “That hurt!” he remarked, rubbing his hip, and then looked up to see two dazed faces looking down at him.

“Where have you come from?” asked April.

“Where did you go to?” asked Clifford.

Stuart shook his head, still full of the thunder of the journey.