CHAPTER 6
Spinning lights and faces
Demon music and gypsy queens
After dark, Owen had nowhere to go, nowhere to stay, nowhere to sleep. The Watchmaker might have a plan, but Owen didn’t have much of one.
When he saw a sign for an inn, Owen inquired about lodgings and a meal, and the innkeeper was happy to take his money—most of it. The meal consisted of part of an unfortunately scrawny chicken and some overboiled turnips. His bed was hard, the sheets stiff and starched, but the room had its own alarm clock, and Owen was able to set the bell for just after sunrise. He was eager to see more of Crown City and didn’t want to waste time sleeping.
Next morning, he left the inn with no regrets. On the street, he found a pie vendor, whose wares smelled delicious. Every golden pastry had been drizzled with honey. He paid with one of his small coins and reached for an apple tart out of habit, but stopped himself. Since he had already done so many unexpected things, he decided to try a raspberry tart. Why not take the risk? The flavor exploded in his mouth, sweet and rich, intensely juicy, full of tiny seeds. What a marvelous discovery! He wanted even more flavors for comparison, but he would work on that—one thing at a time. Everything had its place, and every place had its thing. And Crown City was filled with wondrous things.
As he munched the sweet pastry, he came upon a commotion on the street, where ten members of the Red Watch had gathered near a tall stone building. The guards set up barricades to prevent people from seeing the defaced wall, but their very presence served only to incite curiosity.
Owen was shocked when he read the scrawled letters. Who made the Watchmaker? And, Do you know what time it really is? Again, he saw the painted letter “A” circumscribed with a rough circle.
A wagon rolled up carrying a steel barrel connected to a coldfire-powered compressor. City workers tugged out a hose, activated the compressor, and sprayed a smothering blanket of gray paint on top of the offending words.
“But what does it mean?” Owen asked a balding man, mainly because he was standing nearby, not because the man was likely to possess any intimate knowledge.
“Damned Anarchist,” the man grumbled. “Wants to mess up everything.”
“Scribbling graffiti is better than blowing up bridges, you can say that much,” commented another bystander. “At least this’ll be fixed with a fresh coat of paint.”
Unsettled, Owen made his way back toward Chronos Square, hoping for better luck today. He inquired of several people how he might obtain a ticket, hoping that the restrictions applied primarily on Tuesdays, as the Red Watch captain had explained. People kept telling him that he should have been issued a ticket, and when he persisted in his questions, they responded with skeptical looks. He decided not to point out that he didn’t belong here.
By now, Barrel Arbor must be abuzz with news of his disappearance. He wondered what Lavinia thought about it; did she even remember that she had promised to meet him on the orchard hill at midnight? Would his neighbors fear something had happened to him? Owen missed his father, too, but remembered the older man’s admonishment that he would have to give up his “foolishness” when he became an adult—so Owen decided that he had best make the most of his foolishness while possible. Though he was not yet ready to go home, he had already experienced enough amazing things to keep his mind busy for a lifetime. Anything could happen.
And then he saw the carnival.
The traveling show had set up in an open city park; an arched sign blazed in swirling phosphorescent letters, César Magnusson’s Carnival Extravaganza. A Ferris wheel lifted passengers to a dizzying height, from which they could look out upon the city. The spokes of the Ferris wheel were adorned with a façade of painted metal sheets to make it look like a gigantic gear. On other rides, passengers shrieked as boxy cars whirled and spun on the ends of pneumatic arms, or steam engines chugged to lift padded seats high up a scaffolding and then let the riders rattle at high speed down an abrupt incline.
As if in a trance, Owen was drawn toward the carnival like an iron filing pulled to a magnet. People were passing through the ticket gate, handing over coins, and Owen did not try to resist as he was swept along. He didn’t count his coins, didn’t care how long they might last; he couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than this (except maybe the Clockwork Angels).
The plump, middle-aged woman selling carnival tickets had strawberry blond hair, a lavender dress, and a full beard that covered her cheeks and chin. Her facial locks were so long that she used lavender ribbons to tie ponytails along her jawline.
Owen couldn’t help staring. He had never seen a bearded lady before, but she took no offense, merely chuckled. “I am the least of what you’ll see inside there, young man! Gypsy queens, acrobats, fire-eaters, sword play, games of chance. The Magnusson Carnival Extravaganza has it all.”
He looked down at the ticket in his hand, which advertised “Marvels to Thrill and Delight.” He had no doubt the carnival would be true to its promise. “Do you … do you know where I’d get a ticket to see the Angels?” he asked. “You seem to have some knowledge of tickets.”
“Not those tickets,” she said. “Isn’t our show enough?”
Afraid he had offended her, Owen hurried into the carnival grounds.
Inside, the noise and energy was like a symphony. He walked past game booths crowded with eager players. A wizened carny with a liver-spotted scalp hunched over three inverted bowls, under one of which he had placed a small ball. Though the old man looked doddering and feeble, he switched the bowls around, reshifting their positions while chattering and wheezing to distract the observers. “Big money,” he said with a cackle. “Big money!” He always managed to trick the observers into guessing the wrong bowl, and he pocketed their bets.
In another game booth, a thin woman spun an upright clockwork wheel with colored segments; players tossed darts and tried to hit winning patches. At yet another game, young men threw balls and tried to knock down a surprisingly persistent pyramid of beakers.
He heard loud music and saw three clowns in colorful garb and painted with extravagant tattoos playing an off-key rendition of “The Anarchist’s March.” The clowns clashed cymbals with a foot pedal, banged the sides of a drum, and tooted on a horn in raucous demon music, which was appropriate for the villain who tried to disrupt the Stability of their lives. The crowd reacted with disturbed laughter.
A bronze-skinned strongman wearing only a loincloth flexed his biceps, each of which was larger than Owen’s head. The strongman squatted down and amazed the crowd by lifting a barbell laden with weights the size of a steamliner’s steel wheel. The strongman raised the weight over his head and stood, straining with the effort until it looked as if his muscles would burst free from his arms like severed fan belts. Exhausted, he dropped the weight with such a crash that it left divots in the ground. The strongman reeled, disoriented, and Owen was convinced his effort was not an act.
A handsome young man with dark hair and dark eyes pranced along with a dancer’s gait; he removed a packet from his pantaloons, dumped a sparkling blue powder into his mouth, then pressed his lips together. His cheeks bulged, making him look like a misbehaving child holding his breath; his eyes widened and watered, and at last he coughed out a gout of blue-green flame. Afterward, he burped with just a little flash of fire, wiped his mouth, and stepped back with a grin for the astonished audience.
Owen had never heard so much laughter and hubbub in his life. Young couples walked arm in arm. Parents brought their children. He saw burnished copper, colored glass, painted metal; he heard the hiss of steam, saw a billow of smoke, all part of the sensory show.
As he walked along, buffeted by sights and sensations, a tinny voice caught his attention, “What does the future hold for you, young man?”
He turned to see a windowed booth painted the color of the ripest red apple; inside sat the clockwork figure of an old woman. The sign said, Gypsy Fortune Teller. She wore a patchwork dress, and her mechanical hands were covered with gloves, so as to seem more human; her head looked like a shriveled old crone’s, a dried-apple doll with gray-blue hair tied back in a bun. In precisely the same voice—no doubt words recorded on an engraved metal sound spool—the clockwork contraption repeated, “What does the future hold for you, young man?”
He looked around but saw no one else nearby. She had to be talking to him. A small slot invited him to insert a coin; how could he not do so?
He gave her one of his coins, and the fortune-teller automaton did not complain, nor did she make change. He turned the metal key on the side of the booth, clicking and clicking until the spring was tight. As the key whirred and the gears turned, the fortune teller’s hydraulic hands jerkily gathered cards from a thick tarot deck spread out there. She lifted the deck, shuffled the cards, fumbled them into place for her reading.
“Justice against the Hanged Man,” she said, then placed two more cards opposite. “Knight of Wands against the Hour.”
“What does it mean?” he asked.
Two more cards. “The Hermit against the Lovers.”
Owen was so intent on watching the intricate movements of her clockwork hands that he was surprised when he glanced at her face. Her bird-bright eyes were blue and alert, and she blinked at him. “The Devil against the Fool.” Her mouth puckered and drew back in a smile.
She was alive—or some part of her was!
Unsettled, he pulled away, not sure he wanted to learn his fortune. Still clicking, the turning key wound down and stopped. The fortune teller gathered the cards, then sat upright again and returned to rest. Owen mumbled his thanks and left, feeling both happy and confused.
In the center of the carnival ground, poles had been strung with ropes for a high-wire acrobatic act. The ringmaster—a man with such an imposing presence that Owen assumed it must be César Magnusson himself—stood wearing a top hat and sleek black tails, with a huge handlebar mustache that seemed a feat in itself. He shouted out above the noise of the crowd in a voice suited to command thunder. “On the wires, our most beautiful angel—Francesca! Watch her death-defying feats of poise and balance. Never before has danger looked so graceful.”
A lissome young woman sprang forward and cartwheeled with the perfection of a smoothly turning gear. She wore a pearlescent white leotard and a decorative white skirt that did not impede her movement. Her flowing black hair looked like a swirling river of ink, tresses that captured the purity of the darkest moonless night. Francesca turned to smile at the audience, revealing that she held a long rose in her teeth. Owen had never seen anyone so beautiful in his entire life.
Like a cat climbing a tree, she ascended the pole on small pegs that were arranged like a ladder’s rungs. Owen saw, and promptly forgot about, a flat pack strapped to her back, cleverly hidden by her hair.
She climbed to the first platform and looked across an imposing narrow rope that extended to the far pole. Higher up, Francesca unfastened a dangling trapeze. With casual, breathtaking skill, she wrapped one arm around the bar and swung herself out, gliding forward, then back, like the pendulum in a grandfather clock. She raised herself on strong, slender arms, twirled, and launched herself into the air where she caught the upper rope and used her momentum to swing her body around. She dropped back down and caught the trapeze bar in its arc as if it had been waiting there for her.
Francesca swung again, never once letting the rose fall from her mouth. Then, twenty feet above the hard ground, toes pointed straight forward, one foot in front of the other, she walked along the tightrope with as much ease as Owen walked down a street. She seemed to have wings on her heels.
During the performance, he worked his way to the front of the crowd and stood there, his entire world centered on her. He gaped at the sight with his eyes wide and his mouth open like a moonstruck cow. He could think of nothing else, could see nothing else, and when Francesca glanced down at the audience he was certain that she looked right into his eyes. His new porkpie hat fell off, and he scrambled to pick it up.
Raising her hands as if to stretch on a lazy morning, she grabbed the trapeze and swung high. As she came back down, she pushed her legs hard against the elastic tension of the tightrope and catapulted herself into the air. At the apex of her flight, she yanked a tiny string on the front of her costume, and the half-hidden pack on her shoulders burst open to reveal spring-loaded angel wings. They were fashioned from thin slats of aluminum and tin layered one upon the other like giant feathers, and they looked glorious in the light.
On angel wings, Francesca spread her arms and soared downward in ecstatic flight. The wings braked her descent enough that she alighted on the ground with barely a hair out of place. She landed in front of Owen, who could do nothing more than gasp while the rest of the crowd applauded.
With a flourish and a secretive smile, Francesca removed the rose from her mouth and extended it to him. He didn’t know what to say. His hands trembled as he took it, and she rewarded him with a bright burst of laughter, then bounded off, leaving his whole world out of balance.
Owen was so stunned that he didn’t notice the hush that rippled through the crowd. A troop of Regulators, twelve men with perfect tricorn hats and crisp blue uniforms, marched past the game booths, issuing orders to shut down the carnival.
The Blue Watch marched to where César Magnusson stood with his top hat and tails, straight-backed, not looking at all intimidated. “How may I help you gentlemen?” He stroked his long mustache.
“Irregularities were found in your permit,” said the lead Regulator. “Your allotted performance date has expired. By decree of the Watchmaker, you must shut down these operations and remove all items by sundown. You may reapply for a proper performance permit in twenty-four hours.” The Regulator reached into his buttoned jacket and withdrew a citation slip, which he presented to the ringmaster.
Magnusson accepted the paper without protest, took off his top hat, and bowed. “We shall do as the Watchmaker wishes. All is for the best.”
***