At a loss as to what to do with himself, Alex stormed through the hallways toward the mechanics lab. It was the only place he could think to go, to try to blow off some of the steam gathering fiercely inside him. He recalled Lintz’s words: “There’s nothing like clockwork to calm the mind.” That was exactly what he needed—something to calm his racing mind. There was so much he wanted to say, and nobody to say it to.
He burst into the lab, unsurprised to see the place empty. Since the curfews and extra sessions had been in place, the other students had been unwilling to spend their free evening hours doing even more work. Alex had been the same, until that moment.
Moving over to one of the workbenches in the far corner, out of sight of the door, he scooped the five mechanical mice from their dusty shelf and placed them on the wooden tabletop. Checking his pocket, he realized, much to his dismay, that he had left the damaged sixth one back in his dorm room. Still, he figured five clockwork mice would be enough for him to practice on.
His hands were shaking as they held the miniature screwdriver he needed to get into the clockwork of the small golden creatures. Adrenaline still pulsed through his system, making his heart thunder as he struggled to calm himself down. With some difficulty, he managed to remove the mechanisms from the first mouse and began to plot how he would reinsert them so each piece was an inversion of its previous form. On a scrap of paper, he wrote instructions and sketched the design. Just the focus of that minor task steadied the tremor in Alex’s hands as he lifted the first few pieces of sleek metal clockwork with a pair of tweezers and reinserted them into the mouse’s body. The methodical nature of it permitted a blanket of calm to settle slowly over Alex as he fixed the mechanisms to his anti-magical requirements, piece by tiny piece.
When the mouse was suitably whole again, Alex held his palm over the delicate arch of its golden back and let the icy anti-magic flow from his fingers into the clockwork. He watched it ripple fluidly, like oil, and moved his fingers gently to try to manipulate the energy within. The mouse’s back legs twitched, giving Alex a glimmer of hope before the discouraging sight of smoke dashed it entirely.
Undeterred, he moved on to the next mouse. This time, he managed to get three limbs twitching and the turn of one ear before the plume of acrid blue-tinged smoke rose from the inner clockwork. He was getting better.
The third mouse was the closest to success. The hind legs moved forward and backward, pushing the mouse across the splintering tabletop, though the front legs refused to budge. It lasted a good while, zipping along the surface, until the cogs jammed and disheartening spirals of thin smoke wisped in the air.
Realizing he had the rear legs figured out, Alex played around with the clockwork mechanisms of the front section, rearranging them before he was satisfied enough to run his anti-magic through the metal cogs. The mouse sprang to life, racing around the bench with its black eyes glittering. Alex grinned, watching the tail whip from side to side and the ears twitch as the delicate nose snuffled. He tried to manipulate the mouse again, drawing his fingers into a fist to get the creature to stop. To his delight, it did. As he released his fingers, the mouse set off again, scurrying lightly across the wood, easily navigating the dips and cracks in the bench with its graceful feet.
It had the same strange realism that the mouse in his dorm room had displayed, brimming with the magic of whoever had sent it, only it was his handiwork that had given the mouse renewed life. He instructed the creature to walk up into his hand and held it closer to his eye line, observing the intricate inner workings and the swirl of black anti-magic that spiraled within the small eyes. It was a beautiful sight to behold, and, as he removed his anti-magic from within the clockwork, he realized he no longer felt the course of anger and frustration rushing through his body, nor the foggy chatter of a thousand questions in his head. Lintz had been right; clockwork did calm the mind.
Alex was intrigued by the possibilities as he glanced around the room more closely. Lintz’s trunk lay in the corner, and Alex wondered how easy it would be to break the lock. Never mind magic, a hammer would probably do it, he thought. After a moment of half-serious contemplation, he pushed the idea away, knowing the chest was probably full of Lintz’s private creations. It certainly wasn’t for Alex’s eyes.
Seeing the mouse work had inspired him. He still had the list Ellabell had made him, of suitable books for learning more about clockwork and magical mechanics. The Battle book had spoken of bombs and traps, made from clockwork, being thrown across a battlefield or buried beneath the earth for wizards to fall into, setting Alex’s mind alight with all the possibilities that lay in the practical application of his hands and some metal. It wasn’t necessarily the defensive or offensive potential of the clockwork that drew him in, but those aspects certainly weren’t off-putting. In a place like the manor, Alex knew he needed all the help he could get, especially if it was something small enough to fly under the radar. Like a mouse, for example.
Frowning in thought, Alex picked up the fourth mouse he had experimented on and refueled it with his anti-magic, watching in childish delight as the creature burst into life once more. As it skittered across the workbench, Alex gathered the fingers of his right hand into a fist and made the mouse freeze. Concentrating, he turned his other hand in a circular motion, watching as the anti-magic within the clockwork spun, faster and faster. Finally, he extended the fingers of his left hand in a quick gesture and watched with a mix of awe and regret as the mouse exploded violently in a shower of glowing metal particles.
Where the mouse had previously been, there was a deep scorch mark burnt into the desktop, and the smell of singed wood and spent fireworks permeated the room. The glittering ashes of the clockwork creature settled on the workbench. Alex hastily swept them up in case someone should walk in. He felt bad for blowing up the one mechanism he had managed to get working, but he had the successful instructions written out on the sheet beside him, should he desire to try again. Slipping the piece of paper into his pocket, he put the remaining mice back in their place on the dirty lower shelf and smiled to himself as he lined them up in a neat row, two spaces now empty.
Indeed, the possibilities were endless.
Chapter 17
As morning dawned, Alex awoke slowly, rubbing his eyes against the sunlight glancing in through the curtains. He was mid-yawn when he noticed the bed opposite was empty. Alex frowned; Jari hadn’t been there when Alex had gone to bed, either, though he had been disturbed at some point in the night by the sound of soft footfalls on the dorm room floor. It hadn’t been enough to fully awaken him, but Alex remembered the sound and the sleepy guess that it was his friend, returning from wherever he had been all evening. Alex had no idea what time that might have been.
He checked the ticking clock on the bedside table. It was early still, and he had an hour before breakfast. Yawning again, he moved over to the edge of his bed and hung down over the side, reaching underneath the bedframe for the notebook he had hidden away. Pulling it back up, he propped himself against the headboard and opened the thin pages.
Since he’d been to see Ellabell, Alex hadn’t had much of a chance to read through the notebook. But as he held it in his hands, he felt a wave of sadness flood through him, knowing the fate of the man who had once owned the book. To have come so close to winning a fight, only to be ambushed and strung up… It didn’t bear thinking about.
He flipped to the first page and noted the familiar jumble of sketched shapes and symbols. It made little sense to him, though he knew they couldn’t be random. Elias wouldn’t have given him a book of nonsense; it wasn’t the shadow-man’s way.
As if hearing himself being thought about, Elias appeared in the darkest corner of the room with a silent quiver of frosty air. He poured himself from the rafters in one slick movement, shaping into an almost-human form.
“Good morning,” greeted Elias, keeping to the shade of the walls, unable to get too close to Alex as the sunlight dappled the graying flag
stones.
“Elias.” Alex nodded in the shadow-man’s direction, surprised to see him at such early hours of the day. He wasn’t sure if it was the light playing tricks on him, but Alex was certain he could see discomfort in Elias’s movements and the contortion of his peculiar human face. “What brings you here?” Alex asked, curious.
“Can’t a shadow visit his friend?” Elias’s mouth twisted into something resembling a grin, and his inky teeth glittered.
“It depends what the shadow is after,” said Alex.
Elias frowned. “Perhaps the friend should remember that I am only ever here to help,” replied the shadow sourly.
“Sorry, it’s early,” Alex said, raising his hands in apology.
The gesture seemed to appease Elias as he leaned fluidly against the wall, most of his body sinking into the shadows there, until only his face stood out against the darkness.
“I came to see how you were progressing with my gifts.” Elias nodded toward the notebook in Alex’s hands.
“Not too well. I can’t make any sense of it.” Alex shrugged, tossing the notebook onto the bedcovers in front of him. “I think it’s a dud,” he joked.
Annoyance flashed in the endless black of Elias’s eyes. “It is no dud, Alex. You are simply not trying hard enough.” He peeled his form away from the protective shade of the cold stone walls.
“It doesn’t make sense,” insisted Alex.
“It might,” growled Elias, “if you bothered to try.”
“I’ve tried. I’ve looked at it and looked at it. It’s just scrappy little patterns that don’t mean anything,” exclaimed Alex, exasperated.
“And so you give up?” Elias glared in Alex’s direction, irritation evident in the shadow’s voice.
“I haven’t given up. I’m just… figuring it out,” Alex explained, picking the notebook up again. He felt bad for throwing it.
“You should be further on with it by now,” hissed Elias, wringing the wispy tendrils that served as his hands. “You went to visit that curly-haired do-gooder yesterday, yes?” His impossible eyes flashed at Alex with borderline menace.
“What if I did?” said Alex defensively.
“She told you about that last battle?” Elias pressed.
“Yes,” Alex admitted.
“And off you ran to your little mice, when you should have come straight here. Perhaps I have misplaced my trust. Perhaps you are not as capable as I thought,” said Elias bitterly, running his wispy hand through the flowing locks of pure, liquid shadow that framed his face.
“This doesn’t make any sense, Elias,” snapped Alex, waving the little notebook at the shadowy figure in the corner.
“If only you had the same sense of urgency and dedication as your friends,” spat Elias, his eyes burning brightly as they made Alex squirm. “Day by day, they grow stronger, while you stay the same. The French girl is delving into deeper, more dangerous magical arts and cares not for the consequences, so long as she may have the knowledge. The other one—the Greek one—is forever in the library reading up on powerful magic and how to do useful things, like break locks and cloak himself. What do you do? You wait to be handed things on a silver platter.”
The disappointment in Elias’s voice stung. Alex was startled by the truth rolling from the shadow-man’s contorted lips. He had suspected Natalie was wandering into dangerous territory, but to hear it confirmed stunned him. Jari, too, going above and beyond. What on earth did he need to break locks and cloak himself for? Alex couldn’t help thinking that perhaps he was getting left behind.
“That’s not fair,” murmured Alex.
“Nothing is,” sighed Elias, the sharp edge to his words softening slightly.
The silence stretched between Alex and Elias. A low, musical whistle trilled from the cavernous depths of the shadowy figure’s form as he moved forward a step or two, held back only by the gathering sunlight. Listening to the tune pierce the air, Alex got the not-so subtle hint that Elias was waiting for him to speak.
“Did you bring me something else?” Alex asked, still confused by Elias’s early visit. Was he just there to chastise him?
Elias scowled, the expression terrifying on his fluid face. “No, I did not bring you anything else. Do you see what I mean? Always expecting the answers on a silver platter—hand delivered in a box with a ribbon on top, no doubt,” he grumbled. “You have done little enough with the books I have already given you. Perhaps I will not be so generous in future.”
“I’ve read the Battles book,” said Alex tersely.
“And done nothing with the other!” cried Elias, the sound vibrating through the walls and up the very bones of Alex’s body.
“What am I supposed to do with it? I can’t read it!”
“Figure it out, without having to be spoon-fed,” Elias said coldly.
This wasn’t the Elias Alex was used to, and he couldn’t help feeling a tremor of fear as the room grew cold around him, Elias’s voice pressing in from all around. There was menace in Elias’s face, and Alex could not ignore it.
“It belonged to Leander Wyvern, right?” said Alex quietly, running his thumb once more across the faded lettering of the name he had feebly hoped belonged to his own heritage.
“It belonged to a great warrior,” replied Elias, giving his usual brand of slippery answer.
“Wyvern was a Spellbreaker?”
“That depends—what do the books say?” Elias remarked tartly.
“That he was,” said Alex, resisting the urge to snap.
Elias clapped the viscous extensions of his hands together, the motion making a thudding sound that quaked through the ground, as his starry eyes rolled in dramatic exasperation.
“Now what?” Elias taunted.
“I have to figure out a way of reading it?” Alex shrugged, feeling victimized. It was like a flashback to middle school—the teacher asking him an exceptionally difficult question he didn’t know the answer to and watching him squirm regardless.
Elias gave another sarcastic clap of his wispy hands, and Alex glowered at him. The shadow-man only seemed amused by Alex’s annoyance as he swooped as close as he dared to the edge of the sunlight’s boundaries.
“How might you unravel such a puzzling mystery?” Elias whispered.
“It’s a code,” said Alex suddenly, the markings making sense. He still couldn’t read them, but he had an idea what they were. It was obvious, thought Alex. If a Spellbreaker wanted to write notes or secret entries, it was only natural they’d want to use a cipher of some sort. A code only another Spellbreaker could crack…
Elias grinned. “Now you’re getting it,” purred the rippling figure, his expression twisting into one of glee.
“A code,” mused Alex.
“I’m certain you’ll figure it out,” whispered Elias as he reached for the edges of his cloak. “And perhaps there will be a reward. There are so many other books, Alex. Books you could not even dream of,” he said euphorically. “Oh, such rare tomes, filled with spells nobody should see… spells that helped me, long ago,” he breathed, the last part barely audible as the air bristled with mystery, Elias seeming to withdraw into himself as he spoke the words.
“Wait! You’re not going yet, are you?” said Alex, not finished with the shadow-man. There were questions he wanted answers to, that nobody else seemed able to answer. The time was now.
“Why should I stay?” Elias shrugged the cloaked slopes where shoulders should have been.
“I have questions for you.”
Elias’s face crumpled into a frown. “I’m not sure I can help,” he said simply, “but go on.”
A thousand thoughts raced through Alex’s mind as he tried to figure out what to ask first. This was his opportunity, and he did not want to blow it. Elias was rarely so openly amenable, but Alex found he could not quite focus once the spotlight was on him. It was hard to find the question he wanted answered the most when he wanted them all answered.
“Who are you?” a
sked Alex, finally settling on a line of inquiry. There was a niggle in the back of Alex’s mind that had been there almost since the first moment they met—a curiosity to know more about the peculiar, impossible being that made up Elias. He had always wondered what Elias might have been before he was the shadowy homunculus. There was undeniable humanity in the way he spoke, and in the fluid mannerisms of his apparent limbs, until he turned into a cat and Alex’s whole understanding of him went out the window.
“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” came the rehearsed sentence from between Elias’s lips; Alex had heard it before, in the early days at the manor.
“But who was Elias before this?” Alex pressed, gesturing at the shadowy form. “Did somebody do this to you?”
“In a way,” replied Elias cryptically, his voice colored with something Alex couldn’t put his finger on. A tightening of what would have been Elias’s throat, lacing the words with emotion.
“Did somebody hurt you? How long ago was this done to you? Where do you keep finding all these books?” Alex fired questions at Elias, watching as the shadow-guide’s face turned even darker than it already was, discomfort looming over his shifting form. Alex didn’t want to push Elias too far, but the opportunity to ask everything was overwhelmingly tempting.
“You misunderstand,” was all Elias was willing to say. “And these books, I find them where they are left,” he replied.
“How did you end up like this?” Alex ventured, waggling his arms to try to emphasize what he meant.
“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” hissed the shadowy figure, the tone in his voice a warning to Alex. Elias smirked, flashing inky teeth. “Though you should not be so fixated on my state, considering your own position. You have read the book on the great battles; you have been told almost all there is to know about the Fields of Sorrow. Surely, you are beginning to understand?” he breathed, the whisper of it pricking the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck.
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