Beau and the Clockwork Girl

by Kami Bryant

  “Mother?” sobbed Em. “Can you hear me?”

  Mormorant walked up behind the princess and lightly placed his hand on Em’s shoulders. Em stood and turned to Mormorant and the Vizier wrapped his short arms around her in a comforting embrace. “Is she going to get better?” she asked, tears and snot dripping on Mormorant’s vest.

  “I don’t think so, my dear princess. I am so sorry, but this Scaleinine poison is extremely effective. I don’t think the dear queen has much longer. We should discuss your coronation.”

  “No, I will not give up hope.” Emberlyn pulled away from Mormorant and asked, “Where is Beau?” tears falling down her cheeks and puddling in her cleavage.

  “Well, My Queen. I think he has gone into hiding. It seems like he was the one who put the Scaleinine poison in your dear mother’s cup.”

  “I am not queen while my mother still breathes, and Beau wouldn’t do that.”

  “The bottle of poison was discovered in his room.”

  “He didn’t do it. I KNOW it. Please, I need to see him!”

  “I am sorry, my queen, but he has abandoned you. If he was innocent, why would he run? Don’t you worry, I will see to your coronation,” and with that Mormorant walked out of the room, disgustedly dabbing at his vest with a silk handkerchief.

  Emberlyn fell to the floor with a hysterical anguished scream and howled, “I AM NOT YOUR QUEEN!” Emberlyn wrapped her arms around her knees in a tight fetal position and she sang in a painful, broken voice.

  A tiny turned up nose.

  Two cheeks just like a rose.

  So sweet from head to toe

  That little girl of mine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Beau lay on a stone slab, spread eagle, his wrists and ankles manacled and chained. Mormorant gazed down at him. Beau wasn’t sure if it was the flickering lights of the smoky torches in the torture chamber or if he was hallucinating, but Mormorant’s teeth looked abnormally sharp and his ears extremely pointy. The Vizier positively glowed with excitement as he played with a metal poker in a fiery brazier until the tip burned white hot. Beau’s shirt had been removed and he only wore short linen trousers. Beau’s eyes followed the hot poker as the Vizier played in the fire with it.

  “I am going to need you to confess to killing the queen and raping the princess,” said Mormorant conversationally.

  “I did neither, so I can’t confess to something that I didn’t do,” said Beau defiantly. Mormorant placed the white-hot tip of the iron poker to Beau’s chest. Beau screamed as he heard the sizzling of his flesh and smelled the burning.

  “Would you prefer that I stick this hot poker up your ass? That would be fun, don’t you think?”

  “No,” strangled Beau. “I do not.”

  “Would you like to continue then? Confess to the murder of the queen and raping the princess,” repeated Mormorant calmly.

  “I didn’t do either of those things. I love Emberlyn. I would never do anything to hurt her or violate her in any way!” Mormorant placed the tip of the poker to Beau’s stomach and the boy screamed himself hoarse.

  “I don’t expect you to confess, not really,” purred Mormorant. “I am really just doing this for fun.”

  “I, Vizier Braxen Obadiah Mormorant, as proxy to her majesty Queen Emberlyn Miriam Julia Chittenden, hereby sentence you for the murder of our dear Queen Reiyna Rebekah Miriam Chittenden. Along with your crime of regicide, I sentence you for the vile criminal act of raping the beautiful Queen Emberlyn!”

  “No!” screamed Beau as the guards pulled his dirty, bruised and bloody body across the dirt by the thick chains binding his arms and legs. “I would never hurt Queen Reiyna and I love Emberlyn! We are in love. She loves me! I need talk to her! She knows I would never hurt her mother. Please ask her, she’ll tell you.”

  The guard yanked the heavy chains and Beau fell forward. With no way to catch himself, since the chains bound his arms behind his back, he fell to the ground on his face. He felt the bones in his nose break and felt the spurt of blood flow freely into the dirt.

  “Maggot,” chuckled the guard. He had grey hair with a curled mustache and a tiny curled beard. He wore a red bowler hat and a jacket with five buckled straps and he sported a brass arm.

  The other guard laughed. “Look at him squirm. He looks like a piece of horseshit!” This guard was mocha skinned and just as wide and burly as his lighter skinned counterpart. The darker skinned man wore brown pants, a khaki shirt, black bowler hat and black suspenders. Curiously both men wore a tiny piece of obsidian on a chain around their thickly veined necks.

  “And he smells like one too,” screeched the lighter-skinned guard.

  “Queen Emberlyn is recovering from your disgusting violation and she is mourning the murder of her mother,” continued Mormorant. “The heinous murder that you so cruelly committed!”

  “No!” With a grunt Beau struggled to his knees. “Please. I need to talk to Emberlyn!” The blood from his crushed nose flowed down his face and streaked his bare, dirty abused chest.

  “As proxy to the queen. I speak for her and condemn you to banishment to the evil dimension Traetan where you will meet certain death. I hope the monsters you encounter there will severely torture ‘you to the point where you scream and beg for the sweet release of death. I have heard stories of people being slowly eaten alive by the creatures living there. Stories of people being forced to peel off tiny strips of their own skin to eat, as that is the only sustenance to be found. I hope that you are given a paralyzing agent and forced to lie there, while you are feasted upon by rats. Frozen and unable to move or scream as you feel the rats tear into your flesh, imagine that. Rats always start eating the soft spots first, you know? The eyes and the…. well, I shudder to even imagine it.”

  “You bastard!” screamed Beau as he pulled hard against the heavy chains that bound him. “It was probably you!”

  “Quiet you,” said the guard as he cruelly kicked Beau in the back with his heavy boot. Beau howled as he fell again on his face. The large guard laughed as he kicked Beau again and again in the ribs.

  “Enough!” shouted Mormorant. “I will indulge him. What was me, boy?”

  “You killed her,” hissed Beau. “Who else but you would benefit from the queen’s murder?”

  “Me?” he growled. “If it was me, then why was the bottle of Scaleinine poison found in your room?”

  “Because you put it there,” hissed Beau.

  Laughing, Mormorant carefully stepped down from the wood raised dais, he had been standing on, with an elegant flourish. The much smaller man stood before the imprisoned youth squirming on the ground, his face covered in filth and blood. “Lift him up,” commanded Mormorant. “I want to look this repulsive murderer and rapist in the face.”

  The two brawny soldiers yanked up Beau by the heavy chains that bound his wrists and ankles. Beau screamed as his arms were yanked behind him, hyper extending his shoulders behind his back. Since Mormorant was a foot shorter than Beau, there was a lot of shifting and pulling until finally the burly guards held up Beau by his armpits, his legs slightly bent so that Mormorant could look directly into the boy’s eyes. Mormorant’s chocolate eyes peered into Beau’s blood filled blue ones. “It was me.” Mormorant whispered in the boy’s filthy ear. “When I saw that you were there, I just couldn’t resist moving forward with the plan. In fact, not only did I kill the dear queen, I am going to rip our dear princess into shreds and rule this land,” he said with a cruel laugh.

  “No,” sobbed Beau and then with a last burst of strength, charged forward, launching the top of his head into Mormorant’s chest. The small Vizier hastily retreated from the screaming youth’s head butt, as the two burly guards struggled with the chained prisoner. Beau noticed that Mormorant had a tiny piece of obsidian on a chain around his neck, exactly like the one that the two guards wore. The small man hastily hid the black mineral behind his cravat.

  Mormorant reached his hand under his suit coat and pulled a gl
eaming dagger from the sheath he wore at the small of his back. Mormorant thrust the point of the weapon into Beau’s face. “Try that again and I will cut out your eye and feed it to you,” growled the Vizier.

  “I will return, and I will kill you,” said Beau as he spat a huge gob of his blood at the elegant Vizier. “I SWEAR IT!”

  Laughing, Mormorant slowly drew the blade of the dagger across Beau’s jaw and cheekbone to stop directly beneath the handsome boy’s left eye. “Somehow, I doubt that,” chuckled Mormorant. “Throw him in!”

  The bastards hadn’t even bothered to unchain Beau as they tossed him into the portal. Beau landed in a puddle of slick green goo. I am probably in a puddle of monster snot, thought Beau as he tried to sit up in the puddle of slick green nastiness. Damn, thought Beau as he struggled with the chains binding his wrists together at the small of his back. Sloshing around in the green gooey puddle, Beau tried to slide his ass back and his arms under his legs. The more he struggled, the more he fell into the goo until he was completely covered in the slick substance. Finally, Beau slid through his arms to position his chained wrists in front of him.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” said Beau as he struggled with the chains, trying to pull his wrists through the manacles. Already covered in bruises, it wasn’t too hard to ignore the screams of his body from the strain.

  “You do know that you are sitting in the excretions of a Bonelich?” asked a voice.

  “Of course, I am,” replied Beau as he struggled harder to pull his wrists out of the manacles.

  “Do you know from what part of a Bonelich’s body the excretions come from?” giggled the voice.

  “Stop talking,” said Beau. “Unless you intend to help me or kill me, just please stop talking,” and with that Beau looked up to see what matter of creature the voice belonged to. A petite female stood before him. She wore a black hood pulled up and he could only see her peculiar eyes; a black circle in fields of white. It looked as if her irises were black or that her pupils were very large and that she didn’t have irises. She wore a tightly fitting black body suit that covered her entire body from ankle to wrist and black leather under bust corset. She wore a large hatchet at her waist on a brown leather belt and from her back sprung a double set of very large dragonfly wings. “Are you going to kill me?” asked Beau again.

  “I wasn’t planning on it, but I am sure someone will be around soon to do so.”

  “Right. Okay then, can you help me with these chains please so that I can attempt to defend myself against whomever shows up to kill me?”

  “Why should I help you?” asked the dragonfly-winged girl.

  “Well,” said Beau. “Maybe we could be friends?”

  “Friends?” asked the girl, quizzically cocking her head to the side. “With you?”

  “Why not? I can be a great friend. I am really a fantastic person to have at your side. I can help defend you against those Bonelichs you were telling me about.”

  And with that the winged girl tossed her head back and giggled her tinkling laugh. “You? Defend me from a Bonelich?”

  “Can you please just stop laughing and please, please help me?” begged Beau.

  “Why?”

  “Because then I will owe you,” replied Beau. “Anything you need; I could help you with.”

  “Really? You don’t look like much.”

  “Thanks. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Beauregard Bartholomew Kitchingham and I would very much like to get out of this place and return to the place from whence I came. My friends call me Beau.”

  “Beau?” asked the winged girl.

  “That’s right,” replied Beau with a wink. “What is your name?”

  “I am Juniper.”

  “Fantastic. Now we are friends. Could you please help me with this?” asked Beau gesturing to her with his manacled wrists.

  “You look and smell really gross.”

  “Please?”

  Juniper turned away from Beau and said, “Someone is coming,” her wings trembling with what might be fear.

  “Please, Juniper!!” begged Beau again. Juniper turned back to the snot covered man and tossed a thin blade at Beau’s foot. Beau picked up the blade with his slicked hands and worked the point into the keyhole of the manacles popping them open with a satisfying click. “Thank you,” he said as he quickly did the same to the ankle chains.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Juniper and she took off running. Beau had no choice but to follow her.

  Beau and Juniper hid behind a giant stone which distinctly looked like a fossilized skull of an extremely large monster.

  “The Bonelich secretions will mask your scent,” whispered Juniper. “Hopefully,” she added under her breath.

  “Oh good,” whispered Beau back to her. Beau stared at the large female form that walked a foot in front of them. The female wore her long blonde hair in a braid that fell almost to the back of her knees. She was wearing round glasses and carrying a very formidable looking protorifle. She looked perfectly normal, except for the long red devil’s tail protruding from her backside, the pointed ears at the side of her head and the twisted ram’s horns sprouting out of the sides of her head. “What kind of creature is that?” whispered Beau to Juniper.

  “She is a Chaosghoul, but her name is Phazedia, the Cruel,” whispered Juniper in reply.

  “This day just keeps getting better and better,” said Beau under his breath. “I just love your home. I think I would like to put up a summer home here. Beau’s Magnificent Traetan Summer Home!” he hissed.

  “Have you lost your mind?” asked Juniper curiously.

  “Probably. If you hadn’t noticed, I am having a really bad day. All of this has been really stressful.”

  Phazedia the Cruel continued walking away from the pair and Juniper put her black gloved hand on Beau’s wrist. “This way,” she urged. “There will be others looking for you.”

  “How did I get to be so lucky?”

  “Myrinth and Aminth pay very well for human. They consider your kind delicacies.”

  “To eat?” asked Beau.

  “Of course,” replied Juniper.

  “Do you eat human?”

  “No. My kind eats fruit and small insects.”

  “Fantastic,” grunted Beau.

  “Come! Come!” urged Juniper. “This way.” And Beau obediently followed her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Beau sat soaking in a deep metal trough full of warm water soothing his aching bones and bruised skin. The burns on his chest from Mormorant’s torture screamed in agony from the steamy water, but Beau found himself relaxing for the first time, since he had been sitting in the hay thinking about Em. Which, was… only two day ago? Hard to believe what he had endured since then.

  Juniper, the funny little dragonfly girl, had thrown a tin full of strange smelling bright blue herbs into the bath, but Beau didn’t even care to question her as to what they were. The thought that they were seasoning, and he was in a stewpot and not a bath, crossed his mind. Beau’s eyes closed as he relaxed, and then he felt a gentle touch on his cut face. Beau startled in his bath, splashing water all over the floor. His eyes flew open and he saw Juniper standing there gently placing a thick cloth on his cheek, soaking wet from whatever strange herbal remedy she was using. “Hey!” he screamed covering his crotch with his hands. “What are you doing in here?”

  “That cut is very deep, it is going to scar,” answered Juniper in her bright, tinkling voice.

  “I am naked here!”

  “Of course, you are,” said Juniper. “You are soaking in a bath of squaw laurel and pedunculate laceflower.”

  “Of course, I am soaking in those things, but my point is that I don’t want to be naked in front of you. Will you please leave?”

  “This is my home; why would I leave?” asked Juniper curiously.

  “No, I mean this room, please leave?”

  “But your face needs tending,” said Juniper again dabbing at Beau’s face.


  “Look, I really appreciate all that you’ve done, and I will do anything you want for saving my life, but please will you go into the other room and let me at least put some pants on?”

  “We need to discuss our plans to kill Zorow Shade and save my parents.”

  “Yes, we will get right on that as soon as I am wearing pants. And I would very much like to find a way to return to Mirovia. I would like to discuss that as well.”

  “Only the mage can open the portal to your world.”

  “Mormorant opened the portal to this world and he threw me in.”

  “The mage is a demon. He has many names, but we call him Braxen Xarraz and he is the only being with enough power to open the portal. He gets his power by draining other beings of their life energy.”

  “Are you saying that Mormorant is a demon? A demon that drains people of their life? Like a demon, energy vampire?” Beau then realized that he was still naked, he jumped up, climbed out of the tub, and said, “We will discuss this further once I put on my pants, okay?”

  Juniper walked out of the room and Beau quickly slipped on his pants. “So, tell me about this Zorow Shade?” asked Beau to the retreating fairy girl’s dragonfly-winged back. “And more about Mormorant being a demon vampire?” Or is he more like a vampire demon? he mumbled to himself.

  After Beau was bandaged up enough for Juniper’s liking and wearing a linen tunic and loose pants, he sat resting on the red velvet couch while Juniper sat in the matching chair. There was a long wood table with wooden chairs for four arranged around it, the stone kiln that sat in the middle of the room, completed the interior design of the little room.

  Juniper continued telling her tale about Zorow Shade, and the brothers Myrinth and Aminth. “Zorow Shade is a monster. His skin is black as ink and his tail is like that of a scorpion that drips acid. On top of his head, is a single horn that curves back. He has the mandibles of a spider and his claws are as sharp as razors. He is an Arachnite. The last of its kind. He can unhinge his jaws and swallow an entire person whole and when he does, he absorbs all of their memories.”