by Tim O'Rourke
Zach followed his gaze, his crossbows trained on the figure that lay face-down in the sand.
“How do you know it’s a man?” Neanna breathed, her long, black hair billowing back in the wind.
“It’s too big to be a woman,” Bom snapped.
“You’re small – but you’re a man, ain’t ya?” William grinned, his pointed teeth on show.
Bom grunted a reply which none of them could understand. Holstering his crossbows, Zach hunkered down in the sand to take a closer look at the body. It was dressed in what looked like some kind of flight suit – something a jet pilot might wear, Zach thought. Its hair was jet-black and covered in sand. It appeared to Zach that the figure had been laying out in the desert for some time. With a hand that trembled, Zach reached out and took hold of the flight suit. In his mind, he pictured turning the body over to find a decayed and skeletal-looking face staring back at him.
With his friends peering over his shoulder, Zach took a deep breath and rolled the figure over. At first glance, it appeared to be a male – human - but as Zach took another look, he could see that it wasn’t. The texture of its skin looked pearly, like a waxwork model or one of those mannequins you see in shop windows. Zach had a fleeting memory of his parents taking him and his sister to Madame Tussauds in London as a child. And however much his mum and dad had tried to convince him that he really was having his picture taken next to David Beckham, he knew it wasn’t really him – because that David Beckham was lifeless – it was his eyes, they just looked dead. And so did the eyes of the man who now lay looking back at him from the desert floor.
“He looks dead,” Zach whispered.
“Good,” Bom sighed aloud, trying to hide his relief.
“He looks dead,” Zach said again. “But I don’t think he is.”
“What do you mean?” Neanna asked, stepping closer to get a better look.
“Look at his clothes and hair, they’re covered in dust and dirt,” Zach started to explain. “He looks like he has been lying out here for years.”
“So?” William asked.
“But his skin – his flesh – would have decomposed, wouldn’t it?” Zach said, almost as if he were thinking aloud. “But it hasn’t.”
“Let me have a look,” William said, taking Zach’s hand from the corner of the man’s flight suit.
As Zach let go, the body rolled face-first back into the sand again.
“Hey, look at this, will ya?” William suddenly howled.
“Look at what?” Bom asked nervously.
“This switch,” William breathed.
“Say what?” Neanna said, taking her sling of inferno berries from her shoulder and kneeling next to Zach in the sand.
William tilted the man’s head forward and lifted the hair at the nape of his neck to reveal a small, black switch. It protruded from the back of the man’s neck like a light switch. With his long, dirty fingernails poised over the switch, William glanced up at the others and said, “Shall I?”
“No!” Bom grunted and stepped away.
Zach and Neanna looked at William, neither of them wanting to make a decision either way, both scared, but curious, to find out what would happen if William flipped the switch.
William looked back down at the lifeless form, and then drawing a deep breath, he took hold of the little black switch and flipped it to the right.
Nothing.
Taking hold of the switch again, he repeatedly snapped it on and off. Then, suddenly, a series of sparks leapt from the switch and the figure twitched violently in the sand. The four of them took a step back, as the figure became taut, then relaxed again.
“What the...” Zach gasped, his crossbows in his hands again.
“I think we should just go,” Bom insisted. “The sun will be up soon and...”
“No, wait,” William barked.
The man – if that’s what it was – rolled over, his dead, black eyes staring up into the night. Then suddenly he lurched into life, sitting bolt upright in the sand and dust. He looked blankly at Zach, his eyes two black balls, there were no whites to them. Then the man started to babble, his voice sounding synthetic, mechanical, and unnatural, like a kid talking through a voice-changing toy.
“…distress signal sent…beacon hailing on all frequencies…” He then stopped mid-sentence, looked at Zach and his friends and said, “Who are you?”
Without warning, Neanna blinked and reappeared behind the man who now sat staring back at us. With a quick swipe of her hand, she flipped the switch at the base of the man’s neck and he slumped forward, his chin resting against his chest.
“What did you do that for?” Zach gasped.
“He’s like, really creepy – don’t you think?” Neanna said.
“I’m glad she turned that thing off,” Bom blustered.
“Don’t you have any backbone?” William shot at him.
“It isn’t natural,” Bom whispered back.
“What isn’t?” William said, brandishing his broken teeth and claws.
“Turn him back on,” Zach said to Neanna.
“He gave me the heebie-jeebies,” Neanna shivered, pulling her cloak about her shoulders. “Besides, the sun is going to be up soon and I need shelter.”
“Then we take him with us,” Zach said, glancing at William as if seeking his approval.
Without saying anything, William bent down, scooped up the man and hoisted him over his shoulder, and set off towards a jagged mountain of rock that jutted from the ground in the distance. Neanna blinked towards it, desperate to be hidden in its shade.
“Are you sure you want to take that thing with us?” Bom grumbled at Zach. “He could be dangerous.”
Zach glanced over his shoulder at William as he strode away, the man hanging over his shoulder. It was then that Zach noticed the skin covering the man’s face had flopped back to reveal a skull made of cogs, pistons, and levers. “If he does prove to be a danger to us, then I guess we can always switch him off,” Zach said thoughtfully and started off after William.
Chapter Two
Throat sat at the end of the long, narrow bed and looked at the Queen. She was small and fragile looking, but she was getting stronger. Throat could sense it – he feared it. At the highest point of the Splinter he had held her prisoner, hoping that the day would soon come when the box with the Heart of Endra in it would finally disintegrate above the Rusty Volcano where he had placed it.
The spiderpedes scuttled about his long, flowing gown, making it appear as if it was alive. They smelt bad, like an infected wound, and the constant shifting was ear-piercing. With each small movement he made, part of his hooded robes disintegrated, falling away in powdery chunks. But the spiderpedes were quick to repair the damage as they wove their silken weave about him. But they couldn’t repair the damage which had been done to his plans by the boy, Zachary Black, and his buffoon of an uncle, Fandel. Maybe he had put too much faith in Fandel and paid too little interest in the boy, he wondered, as he looked at the Queen’s silver hair which lay across her pillow like a fan. But where was Fandel now? Did it really matter?
Throat stood, his skeletal frame clicking as exposed bone rubbed against bone beneath his robes. He crossed to the windows, pushing them open and stepping onto the balcony where he could look out across Endra – his soon-to-be kingdom. Behind him he left a trail of dust, where his robes had fallen away. A thick bank of cloud covered the moon like a dark smudge. He preferred the darkness – it helped him to think. In its blackness he could see things – he could make plans. And he had done so. With or without the assistance of Fandel, he had put someone in place to ensnare the boy, Zachary. Throat had an ally and they were in place. He had made sure of that. And should that plan fail – then he had another. Something that he himself knew would be a last, desperate measure. Too desperate perhaps – but should his ally fail to bring the boy, Zachary to him with the key – then he would do it. He would and damn the consequences. With a thick line of black bile dribbli
ng from the corner of his mouth and over his chin, he looked down and watched the solitary figure race out of the desert and towards the Splinter.
With his dead eyes glaring from beneath his continually shifting hood, Throat watched the figure approach. Whoever it was neared the gates to the Splinter and became surrounded by the Radan who patrolled the perimeter. On their giant skeletal apes, the Radan circled the visitor. The apes rose up on their giant back legs and beat their ribcages with their bony fists. They made a deep, booming noise in the backs of their throats, as their riders tried to tame them. Even from the highest point of the Splinter, their cries of anger sounded like thunder.
Throat could see that the stranger rode its own creature, which barked and woofed like a giant dog. As the creature’s roars and grunts grew louder, Throat stepped back from the edge of the balcony as the darkness below lit up in a series of brilliant flashes. The night shone blue, purple, and red as electrical bursts of light threw the Radan clear of their apes, flinging them backwards into the night. There was only one person he knew of who held such power. The Delf.
Smiling to himself, Throat went back into the chamber, and rubbing his painfully thin hands together, he whispered, “Sister.”
Anna Black opened her eyes. Her arms were bound behind her, making her shoulders throb in pain. She felt as if she had been savagely beaten. Anna’s neck ached where her head had dropped forward as she slept sitting upright. Her throat was sore with thirst, and her lips were cracked and tasted of salt. The guy who had tried to rescue her from the Poisonous Squid lay slumped beside her. His shirt was dried black with blood from the axe wound in his shoulders. His white hair lay matted to his brow, his face lined with sweat as he burned with a fever. For the last three days she had sat and listened to him as he mumbled and shouted out in his sleep. He used a lot of swear words and called out desperately to someone named Meadda. Sometimes he would open his eyes wide and look across the filthy bow of the boat and talk as if he were speaking to someone that only he could see. Anna knew that he was hallucinating, and although he had tried to rescue her from Van Demon and the other Dammed Bandits, she was scared of him. She was scared of the wild look that he had in his eyes as he called out to this imaginary Meadda. Sometimes the man’s words were just a frantic garble, like a child learning to speak – but she made sense of enough to know that he had been in love with the woman he screamed out to in the dark.
If she had been able to free her own hands, Anna would have covered her ears with them to block out his terrifying shrieks of anguish. But more than that, she wanted to block out the sound of the mocking laughter, which came from her Uncle Fandel.
Like Anna, he too had been taken captive by the Dammed Bandits, and lay just feet from her in the bow of the boat. For days she had tried to ignore him, but he teased her with his mocking tone and taunts. Sometimes though, as the boat crashed over mountainous black waves, and the neighing of the giant seahorse which pulled the boat and kept her awake, Anna was sure that she could hear more than just mere mocking in her uncle’s voice. Sometimes she sensed that he was scared, and he would do everything in his power to hold it together. He often babbled on about the thumping pains in his head. Just like the man who the Bandits had called Tanner cried out for his love, her uncle would often roll his beady eyes back into their sockets and scream for the pain to stop. He mumbled on about that vile woman called the Delf.
“Why have you left me?” he would groan. “Did I really mean nothing to you?” Then he would speak of another, but his voice would be full of sorrow. “I’m so sorry, Throat. Please rescue me and I will put everything right.” But these periods of remorse and pain were short-lived, and he would once again be leering over at his niece and jeering as Tanner cried out, tormented by his fever. Then, when he thought that Anna was asleep, he would talk about a doorway and beg for it to appear. He would curse aloud, as it failed to materialise before him.
Then one night, pretending that she was asleep, Anna lay and listened to her uncle.
“Where is my doorway?” he almost seemed to sob. “Why won’t it appear for me?”
Listening to him draw a deep breath, Anna opened her eyes just a fraction and watched her uncle as his lips moved quickly open and closed, like he was saying a silent prayer. His long, pale face looked tired, the nets of wrinkles around his eyes making him look older than he really was. Then she saw it, it was faint at first, like an oblong outline of light in the centre of the bow. Her uncle’s lips moved faster, as if he too was now suffering with a fever. He saw the light also and crawled towards it, his chin dragging across the rough, wooden planks of the bow. The oblong shape took on a more solid form as he stared at it. He mumbled faster and faster. Then they both saw it, a black metal doorway standing in the middle of the bottom of the boat.
“Do you see it, my sweet Anna?” he gasped, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth.
Anna looked at the intricate wrought metal ironwork that made up the door. Around its edges seeped pure white light and it beamed in her uncle’s black eyes. Was this the doorway he had been praying for, Anna wondered, not knowing or understanding how it had suddenly appeared, or what lay on the other side of it.
With spit mixed with blood running from his grazed chin, Fandel tried to pull himself to his feet. The boat seesawed violently as it raced over the Onyx Sea. Anna watched her uncle stumble from side to side, then go crashing to the floor. With his hands tied behind his back, Fandel had no way of bracing his fall, and smashed face-first into the bow of the boat. He screeched in pain, a stream of black blood jetting from his nostrils.
“Jee-sus!” he roared in agony, and Anna did everything she could to stop herself from smiling.
Fandel forced himself into a kneeling position and crawled back towards the door, which now appeared to shimmy in and out of focus. One moment the image of the doorway looked so faint – it was like it wasn’t there at all.
“Don’t go,” Fandel sobbed, blood running from his nose and into his mouth. He spat a dark globule of blood away and pleaded with the metal door. “Don’t you dare disappear on me. Please don’t go!”
Anna watched him shuffle forwards on his knees. Turning on the spot, Fandel tried to reach up for the door handle. But it was too high and out of reach. Cursing, he looked back over his shoulder at Anna.
Desperate for his niece’s help, he looked at her and said, “Please, sweet little Anna, come and help your uncle open the door.”
Anna stared back at him.
“Please,” he said, trying to mask his desperation.
“Why should I help you?” Anna spat. “You tried to poison me.”
“Okay, so we haven’t always seen eye to eye...” he smiled.
“Eye to eye!” Anna hissed. “You tried to sell me to those bandits, you tried to kill my brother, and nearly fed me to that giant dog.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Fandel said. “I never tried to feed you to no dog.”
“Whatever that thing was, I’m not going to help you,” Anna snapped back at him.
“Listen to me, Anna,” Fandel said, keeping his voice calm as he tried to reason with her. “We’re all dead if we don’t get off this boat. Even if I do lead Van Demon and his merry men to the box above the volcano – what do you think happens next, huh? What, you just think they are going to wave us goodbye as we skip merrily away into the sunset?”
“I don’t care,” Anna told him. “Besides, anything has got to be better than being with you.”
“Okay, so if you don’t want me around, help me open the doorway,” Fandel tried to bribe her. “Once the doorway is open, I’ll be off this boat and out of your life. What do you say to that?”
“I say rot in Hell,” Anna half-smiled at him. “I’d rather you stayed so I can watch those bandits kill you.”
Knowing that he was never going to convince her to help him, and with his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, Fandel screamed at her. “Help me open this door or...”
; “Or what?” Anna screamed over him. “You can’t do anything to me that you haven’t already tried!”
From above came the sound of running footsteps, as the bandits became aware of the commotion below. A panel set into the wooden planks above them was yanked away, and a rotted-looking face appeared in the hole.
“Shut the squawking or I will come down and slit thee throats open,” the bandit threatened. Even in the dim light, Anna could see the gaping wound in the side of his head, and his brains glistened wetly. She recognised him to the one Van Demon had called Julio. He was the one whose intestines slopped from his guts every time he moved.
Anna looked at where the door had been, and watched as it faded away. Fandel saw this too, and collapsed on his side in despair. Looking back up at the bandit, Anna said, “When are you gonna let us out of here?”
“We will be docking in a day or two, senorita,” Julio smiled. “But if you are...how do you say...getting cramped down below, there is plenty of room in my cabin. What do you say, no?”
“No thanks,” Anna muttered and looked away.
Laughing out loud, the zombie-bandit slid the panel back into place.
“We could have been away from here,” Fandel hissed at her, lying on his side amongst the empty lobster pots and entangled fishing nets.
“I’d rather share a room with the zombie than help you,” Anna groaned, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to look at her uncle anymore.
Above, the giant seahorses raced across the Onyx Sea, pulling the giant floating stagecoach behind them. Their long, black manes flowed in the wind like masses of knotted lengths of seaweed. The stagecoach wheels churned through the water like the giant paddlewheels attached to either side of a mighty steamboat. Van Demon sat alone in his vast cabin, the light from the oil lamps doing little to hide the gaping wound in the side of his face. With maps and compasses stretched out on the table before him, he plotted the ship’s route. There was only one way to the Rusty Volcano and the box. He wanted it. In the box held the power to lift the curse that Throat had lay upon him and his men. But there was only one way to reach it, and that was across the outer-rim and through the Clockwork City, where it was rumoured the deadly mechanical men lived.