The Library Machine (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  They all shook their heads, other than the rajah.

  “Yes,” he said. “I might.”

  “Will you…give it to me?” Charlie asked.

  “No.” Rajah Amir Singh laughed. “But I will come with you to meet the yakshas, and I will offer it to them.”

  The rajah whispered something to his captain, who smiled broadly and left. Then Charlie and the rajah crossed to the other side of the stone circle, where an arm of lush green forest enveloped three of the stones.

  Charlie rapped his knuckles on a stone, and thought back to when he’d seen Syzigon the dwarf do this same thing. “I wish to speak with the people of the woods!” he cried in English. For good measure, he called the same thing a second time, in the rajah’s tongue.

  As he finished his final word, two alfar strode from the woods and approached.

  The rajah stared, eyes wide.

  Like Pithsong and Tenderroot, the alfar Charlie had seen in England, these creatures were clearly trees, while at the same time they were obviously people. The first had dark, mahogany-colored skin and a riot of green hair like tiny leaves paired on long stems, falling down about a slyly grinning face. The second exploded in elongated red flowers, resembling bright bottle-cleaning brushes.

  “Yakshas,” the rajah murmured.

  The tree people smiled. “Greetings, Prince. How prospers the plowed land?” asked the bottle-brush tree-person.

  The rajah shook his head slowly. “Not as well as I would like, O yaksha. But every year a little better.”

  “And you,” the mahogany tree-person said to Charlie. “You are an unusual person, and we do not know what words to say to you.”

  “I’m Charlie.”

  “I am Broadshade,” said the dark tree.

  “Blossomjoy,” said the one with red flowers.

  “And I am Amir,” the rajah said.

  “We have heard only once of a person such as you,” Blossomjoy said to Charlie. “And that was far from here.”

  “I have met the people of the woods once,” Charlie said. “Two of them. Their names were Pithsong and Tenderroot.”

  The two alfar made a creaking sound that resembled laughter, and leaned sideways, though into wind rather than away from it. “Then we have heard of you.”

  “We have…that is to say, Amir has…brought you a gift.” Charlie shot the rajah a sidelong glance, and the prince nodded his affirmation.

  The rajah straightened his back and bowed his head, which had the strange effect of making him look both majestic and humble at the same time. “I have brought a gift, O yakshas, that is as low and simple as you can imagine. And yet it is a gift such as only a prince can give.”

  “Is your gift a riddle, then?” Broadshade asked.

  “No. Behold!” The rajah flung his arm to one side, pointing at the far end of the stone circle. The captain of his bodyguard approached, at the head of a line of thirteen elephants.

  Elephants? Charlie had a sudden vision of two offended alfar tearing him limb from limb. What would they possibly want with elephants?

  But the alfar leaned and laughed again, and their sound was joyous. “This is a princely gift indeed, O Rajah Amir!” Blossomjoy bellowed.

  Charlie felt a little silly, so he said nothing and just listened.

  “For how long may we keep them?” Broadshade asked.

  “They and their children are yours forever,” the rajah said. “I believe they will live happily among you.”

  More alfar laughter. Charlie scratched his head.

  “Their dung will warm our knees!” Broadshade cried.

  “We will plant our saplings in it, and they will grow to be mighty trees, even as the trees of old that once covered all the lands!” Blossomjoy added.

  Dung. Elephant dung.

  Charlie found he had to shut his mouth to avoid looking as silly as he felt.

  The alfar shivered with delight, and then Blossomjoy leaned in close to Charlie and the rajah. “And what gift may we give you, friend Amir and friend Charlie?”

  “We would travel the Path of Root and Twig,” Charlie said. “To a city far from here, called Moscow, and to a palace in the city called the Kremlin.”

  “We do not know this place,” Broadshade said.

  “We shall inquire,” the two alfar said together.

  Then they fell silent. Charlie looked to the rajah, but the rajah bowed his head and folded his hands together. It made him look like a supplicant, and that struck Charlie as a good posture. He bowed his own head and folded his hands.

  The rain crashed hard upon them, and the warm wind blew so fiercely, Charlie was afraid it might knock over the stones themselves.

  “The gift you ask is great,” Blossomjoy said, “and we grant it with all our hearts. We do not fully understand your quest, Charlie, but some of the farthest-seeing members of the great world-forest, the redwoods and the baobabs and the oaks, speak up on your behalf.”

  “Thank you,” Charlie and the rajah said together.

  “The Path begins there.” Broadshade pointed at the thickest tangle of dark green leaves at the edge of the circle, and then the alfar both stepped back and fell still. If he hadn’t seen them moving and talking only moments earlier, Charlie might have taken them both for trees.

  “Safe journey, Charlie.” The rajah extended his hand in farewell. “May the winds always blow softly upon you.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Charlie shook the offered hand. “May the waters of your kingdom always be drinkable and gentle.”

  The bodyguard captain brought Charlie the cart, bowed, and then led the thirteen elephants into the forest. Charlie thought he saw the trees parting to let the herd enter.

  The long pole extending in front of the cart had a crossbar at its end for yoking two draft animals. Charlie picked up one side of the crossbar, and Thomas picked up the other. Thomas looked nervous.

  “You’re going to love this,” Charlie assured his brother. “When the forest catches you…just let it.”

  Thomas smiled weakly and nodded.

  Gnat, Ollie, and Jan Wijmoor climbed aboard and hunkered down, getting as low as they could within the rickety wooden sides of the cart. “Wave goodbye, everyone!” Charlie shouted. “Here we go!”

  He and Thomas ran onto the Path of Root and Twig, dragging the cart behind them.

  Broad, dark leaves parted to make a way for them. Charlie was only a dozen steps into the forest when tendrils rose from the ground and from the undergrowth at either side to wrap themselves around his feet, ankles, and calves. They did the same to Thomas, and, looking back, Charlie saw that tendrils had also gripped the cart.

  “By the Wheel!” Jan Wijmoor gasped, and then he collapsed below the edge of the cart and disappeared.

  Ollie and Gnat remained looking at the path, faces peeping over the wood.

  A final blast of hot, wet monsoon air slammed Charlie and his friends, and then a green curtain fell shut behind them and the wind was blocked, as if by a door. The temperature dropped noticeably, to a comfortable coolness. A green glow from no discernible source bathed the cart and its occupants.

  The tendrils passed Charlie and Thomas forward. The wagon followed, also borne on the plants. Its wheels no longer rolled, because it wasn’t touching the ground. In fact, looking down, Charlie wasn’t certain there was ground beneath him.

  “I don’t know about this, Charlie.” Thomas’s eyes were shut, and he was frozen as if in fear.

  “Just keep your eyes closed until you’re ready,” Charlie said. “Imagine that you’re on a merry-go-round, or taking a ride in a steam-carriage.”

  Thomas said nothing.

  Charlie leaned forward. His chimney-sweep friends had once joked about Charlie being the figurehead, the image carved into the front of a sailing ship. Now he im
agined he was one, and that as he stretched outward, he could feel not only the cool ocean air but also the stinging salt slap of waves on his face.

  He almost smelled the ocean.

  And he almost forgot that he was racing to get to a pit underneath a palace in Moscow to cast a spell that would end his own life, as well as the life of his brother. That the spell would take away the kobolds’ gift, and would also destroy the machines Rajah Singh used to improve the lives of his people.

  Was this really a good plan?

  But was there any alternative?

  “Charlie, you’re right!” Thomas cried.

  Charlie opened his eyes and looked. Thomas lay forward almost horizontally. Tendrils wrapped around his belly and even his arms pushed him along, and he grinned at the Path ahead.

  “That looks painful,” Ollie grumbled.

  It would have been, for a flesh-and-blood boy. Anything more tender than one of Syzigon’s donkeys would arrive at the end of the Path of Root and Twig scratched, bruised, and maybe worse.

  But Thomas was laughing merrily, and for a moment, that took all Charlie’s cares away.

  And then suddenly he found earth beneath his feet, and so did Thomas. They leaned forward into the crossbar, and the cart rolled easily behind them. A thick wall of branches parted before them, and the two boys pulled their friends out into a thickly forested park, beside a red brick wall. On the other side of the wall rose several towers topped with onion-shaped bulbs.

  “That’s it!” Jan Wijmoor pointed at the towers, his finger and his voice both shaking. “We’ve arrived.”

  “Just tell me what I’m looking for, mate.” Ollie pulled his bowler tight over his head.

  “Are you sure about this?” Jan Wijmoor asked. “We could all go together.”

  Night had fallen. Ollie had volunteered to scout out the demon’s pit and was now preparing to leave.

  “All of us wandering around together like a circus looking for a tent is just asking to get caught,” Ollie said. “I’m a professional; leave it to me. I only wish my mate Bob were here. He—I mean, she—was…I mean, is a dab hand with a lock.”

  “You’re looking for the chapel,” Jan Wijmoor said.

  “Yeah, of course the demon pit is under the chapel,” Ollie agreed. “I always figured every vicar I ever knew was up to no good; just goes to show you.”

  “The Romanovs built the chapel over the pit on purpose,” Jan Wijmoor said. “A long time ago, they used to offer human sacrifices to the demon. The chapel was put there as a sort of a plug, or maybe a bandage. To heal the bad things that had once happened there, and to keep the demon in.”

  “A bit like the Foundation Stone,” Charlie murmured.

  The kobold looked at him blankly.

  “How will I know I’ve found the chapel?” Ollie asked.

  “Many, but very, very many, pictures of saints. The Russians are famous for this: they love their pictures of saints.” Wijmoor snapped his finger and pointed at the sky. “An altar. Lots of gold paint everywhere. A little thing like a tower with a handrail looking down over it all, or a stage that will only fit one person.”

  “What’s that for, then?” Thomas asked.

  They all looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Right,” Ollie said. “Stay hidden; I’ll be straight back.”

  With a puff of sulfurous smoke, Ollie was gone.

  “What do you think your dad’s plan was, once he got here?” Charlie asked Thomas.

  Thomas shook his head. “He never told me, but just to guess by all the rockets and guns he had built into the mountain and into his airships…I expect he planned to shoot his way in. Or maybe only threaten to shoot, to get access. Or maybe he had a device that would dig a burrow? He had a lot of machines.”

  Charlie looked at the towers. “Maybe we could just knock, and ask whoever lives here.”

  “That would be the tsar,” Jan Wijmoor said. “Alexander the Third. He’s a very big man, and not very nice. They say he walks through doors without bothering to open them.”

  “I’m not sure about nice,” Thomas said, “but that doesn’t sound very smart.”

  “Maybe,” the kobold agreed. “But imagine someone who can walk through a shut door.”

  “Grim Grumblesson,” Charlie said.

  “Aye,” Gnat agreed. “I was thinking the same, and wondering how the old bull was doing.”

  “That’s right,” the kobold said. “Think of a hulder without horns. And because his father was assassinated, Alexander believes his people have had too much freedom, and has spent his time on the throne taking that freedom back.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a person who would welcome us,” Charlie agreed.

  They fell silent and listened to the whistling of night birds and the droning of insects.

  Ollie returned without warning, standing up in a cloud of smoke. “I’ve found it. All we need’s a bit of rope, easy-peasy.”

  “Aye, and if I know you,” Gnat said, “you’ve already got a rope.”

  Ollie chuckled. Bamf! In quick succession he was a snake and then a boy again, only this time he had a length of rope coiled over his shoulder.

  They climbed the wall and dropped into a courtyard. Ollie pointed out the pacing guards, and then led them across cobblestones under a nearly full moon, hiding them in the dark shadow at the base of one of the towers. “That old moon’ll help us,” he assured the others. “It’ll make the darkness darker, if you know what I mean. Now stay here just three minutes.”

  In snake form, Ollie slithered off.

  Charlie and the others kept their silence, and then suddenly the end of Ollie’s rope fell among them. The top of it disappeared into a tall, narrow window, several stories over their heads.

  Ollie slid down the rope in snake form. “Now I’ll go distract those guards. You all get up the rope quick as you can.”

  Gnat went up first, and then Jan Wijmoor, practically pushed by Thomas coming after him.

  Ollie used the moonlight. He hid behind a steam-carriage out of sight of the nearest guard, but slowly danced, casting a long and moving shadow. When the guard approached—back turned to Charlie and his friends—Ollie changed into snake form and slithered away under the carriage.

  He did a similar thing beside a lamppost, and then again atop the brick wall, and then it was Charlie’s turn. He climbed the rope, and when he looked back, two guards in tall bearskin hats stood in the corner of the courtyard talking to each other and shrugging.

  Ollie’s shadow antics kept the guards looking the wrong way.

  Then he came up the rope quickest of all and pulled it after him.

  They descended the tower and walked through a couple of large rooms and a hall. Charlie immediately lost track of what turns he was taking, because the palace, even with its gaslights turned down low in their sconces, was an eye-dazzling assault of opulence. White columns, gold window frames, shining tiles that looked like the ocean itself, paintings and sculpture everywhere—this was what real wealth looked like, colossal wealth, and not the wealth accumulated by a merchant like the Iron Cog speculator William Bowen. This was the wealth of kings.

  Charlie was impressed, but he also asked himself what these kings, these tsars, had done for their people.

  Had they done as much as the Rajah Amir Singh wanted to do?

  And if Charlie and Thomas bottled up the demon, would the rajah become just another king who lived in wealth on the backs of his people?

  The chapel was as Jan Wijmoor had described it. The walls were absolutely covered with pictures of saints. Charlie knew they were supposed to be more than human because they all had golden halos painted around their heads. The paintings were sunk into recesses and separated by gold frames cast in the shapes of leaf-bearing vines.

  And there was the str
ange little platform, but what interested Wijmoor was the altar. “Can you push this aside?” he asked Thomas and Charlie.

  It was a heavy piece of stone, but together they could move it.

  Under the altar, steps led down into darkness.

  “Gnat will be able to see,” Charlie said. “But what about the rest of us?”

  “Don’t you worry, mate,” Ollie said. “I’ve got you covered. You ever heard of a snake called the moonbeam snake?”

  “No,” Charlie admitted.

  “This is what we wizards do in our spare time.” Ollie tapped one finger to his temple. “Reading. Only we call it research.”

  Bamf! Ollie transformed into a snake, paler than his usual coloring, a whitish green. Other than the distinctive shade, Charlie saw nothing out of the ordinary, until Ollie the snake slithered down the steps into the darkness—

  and began to glow.

  The snake hissed and descended. Charlie and his friends followed.

  The demon’s pit was shaped like the inside of a jug: the steps spiraled down a narrow well, uneven and rough, and then the well opened up into a larger cavern, and the steps tumbled eventually to a flat stone floor.

  Ollie slithered out into the center and coiled up, acting like a light.

  Grooves crossed the floor in a pattern Charlie couldn’t decipher, but all of them ended in a deeper pit, a ragged hole in the center of the floor. Charlie looked into the grooves and saw thick brown grime, something now coagulated that had once flowed across the stone to fall into the chasm.

  Three dimples in the stone surrounded the pit at equal angles, like the points of an equilateral triangle. Thomas walked promptly to the one farthest from him, pulled the unicorn horn from his coat, and knelt to push it into the hole.

  “Is that all there is to this? To the spell?” Charlie wanted to resist. Or at least to wait, to think about it a little longer.

  The world had turned out to be so much more confusing than Charlie had ever expected when he’d passed his nights reading books in the attic above Pondicherry’s Clockwork Invention & Repair. Many of the books he’d trusted to teach him about the world had turned out to be wrong, or partly right, or accurate but so offensive that well-meaning people destroyed them. And people he admired and respected had terrible ideas, while other people who seemed like villains to him claimed to be acting from benevolent motives, or said things that seemed to be true.