The Puppetmaster's Apprentice

by Lisa DeSelm

  How sorry I am that Emmitt has been laboring away in the clock tower for months, left to his own devices with these hideous pawns for company. My father claims the glockenspiel and its inhabitants are a treasure, precious artifacts of another age—or at least, he used to. But I find them ghastly.

  “Emmitt!” I call out, wishing to give him a hint of my presence. “You still here? It’s Piro!”

  The clatter of a dropped tool echoes on the flimsy wooden scaffolding. A scruffy black head, capped in a halo of burnished light, appears from the second tier above.

  “Piro!” Emmitt says wonderingly. “What are you doing out at this hour?”

  A single look at my face, and I know he understands. “Oh yes, do come up! It’s quite safe. Can you find the ladder?”

  I locate the ladder that appears closest to Emmitt’s position and begin climbing. Let’s hope a builder of my father’s caliber made this thing, I think. Though I have my doubts. It feels as if it might shatter beneath my weight at any second.

  Up on the next platform, the doors that allow the glockenspiel’s carousel and carillon to display their show are open to the night. Chilled in the wind, I huddle next to the clockmaker’s case of tools and lantern, which cast their own show of shadows against the inner walls of the tower.

  “Can’t sleep?” Emmitt asks.

  I shake my head. “I just feel so … so lost without him, and it’s barely been a day. I don’t see how anything will ever be the same again.”

  Emmitt solemnly greases a large flywheel with a rag, knowing I won’t be offended if he works while he listens.

  “Indeed it won’t; it can’t be. No one can take the puppetmaster’s place, nor should they.” He raises his eyes, brushing back the shock of hair falling across them. “He was a matchless talent, both as a puppetmaster and a man. I’ve never known his equal.”

  My mouth drops.

  “That’s what the Margrave said,” I say, shocked. “Those are the very words he said about you, the day he and my father died.” I rub my hands up and down my arms to restore some feeling to them. Everything in me feels strangely numb.

  Emmitt dismisses my comment.

  “But it’s true, that is what he said! I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but he said he had never known my father’s equal as a craftsman, not until you were born. And he took pride in that. And though I know you don’t like to think on it, he did say to me he hoped the people would approve of his succession plan. ‘Thanks to my two fine sons, the legacy of Tavia’s strong margraviate will continue to thrive, long after I’m gone.’ That’s what he said; I swear it! What else can that mean but that he intended to name you to lead in some way? Have you been contacted by the duke? Perhaps he will make the proclamation himself now that the Margrave is gone. Soon he will have to announce the contents of his father’s will and name who shall rule in the old Margrave’s stead.”

  “Ach, if anything, Erling von Eidle probably meant to let me lead as a village councillor or something of that nature. Some people are meant to lead from high seats and grand positions, but not me, Piro. I am meant to wear grease and oil on my fingers; I’m a hidden cog, not the clock face.”

  “But the face of a clock cannot tell the time without the cogs or the gears. They are essential!”

  “Yes, every piece and spring is essential to a clock’s function. But some of those do their best work from within, without ever needing to be seen. As I do,” he says, grunting as he screws another section on the flywheel. “So, say no more about it. My half-brother will trade the mantle of duke for that of the Margrave easily, and as far I’m concerned, the lad can have it.”

  “But Emmitt, think of all the good you could do, why you—”

  A single, pained look from him silences me.

  “Sorry.” I didn’t come here to hurt him; we are both hurting more than enough.

  “Don’t be,” he says with a sly grin. “I am sorely in need of an apprentice, and since Bran is nowhere to be seen at this hour, would you like to be useful and help me reset the carillon mechanism? I am finally close to being finished! Just another key piece to fit tomorrow and I think I’ll have it,” he says, standing up on the scaffolding and stepping back to inspect the circular racks of bells that comprise the carillon.

  “Will this set the bells off now?” I ask, unprepared to be so close to the hulking chimes when they erupt. It’s late, and would wake the whole city. And I’ve had enough of the bells at Wolfspire Hall ringing endlessly in mourning of the Margrave.

  “No,” Emmitt replies, rubbing his bleary eyes, “but it will mean that once I get the final piece in place, they shall be ready to ring at noon. The glockenspiel will be fully restored, finally. Just a little too late for the Margrave to see it.”

  “Well,” I say, rising to stand with him and survey the inner workings of the tower, “it’s an impressive piece. Don’t worry about it being too late; your clocks are only ever on time. Tell me what to do.”

  I slink home late after helping Emmitt and don’t feel the least scrap of guilt about it. The hour I go to bed now matters to no one but myself; I bolt the doors and bury myself under my covers, falling into a restless dreaming that barely resembles sleep.

  I jolt awake to the screaming and scraping of the tree at my window. “Wake! See to the tower—a shadow is on the move!”

  I sit up stiffly, unsure if I’ve slept at all or if this is just part of the ongoing dream I’ve felt trapped in since Papa died. Died. The finality of that word hasn’t released me from its grip.

  “See to the tower!” the tree cries again. “Hurry! Before it’s too late!”

  From the window I spot the distant sputtering halo of Emmitt’s lantern in the glockenspiel tower. The sun isn’t risen yet; the sky still clutches at the cover of night. But the tree’s screams do not let up.

  I fell into bed clad in yesterday’s dress, so I hastily toss a cloak over my shoulders and shove my feet back into my clogs. After a moment’s debate of whether or not to wake Bran, I drop to my knees and scramble to the cupboard. I pry my side open. I shove his door ajar and call through.

  “Bran! Bran!”

  Within seconds, Bran’s weary face appears above bare shoulders in the cupboard. “Hurry! It’s Emmitt! The clock tower!”

  He doesn’t question me.

  “I’m coming!” He slams the cupboard door shut.

  Meeting in the narrow alley behind our row, we run through the village to the tower.

  “He said he was nearly done,” I pant. “Only one more piece was required. I helped him reset the carillon just a few hours ago.”

  Bran runs even faster and I match him step for step. We sprint to the tower’s entry door, which is still closed, just as I left it.

  “Emmitt!” Bran yells at the top of his lungs, unconcerned about waking anyone in earshot. “Emmitt, you still up here?”

  No answer.

  “Would never leave his lantern burning …” Bran mumbles, thundering up the constricting stairs. The tower seems to be narrowing the higher we climb. “He’s always cautious of fire up here! One spark could take down the whole apparatus!”

  I was just here. He was just fine.

  Did the cog thief return to steal something else? Did he fall? Emmitt was sure-footed, but he was up here alone, working in the darkness. One slip of a shoe on that tottery old scaffolding … I instantly fear the worst.

  The trees at the edges of the square continue their bellowing, and I can still hear them faintly. “Hurry! The shadow is loose!”

  Shadow?

  We burst onto the lower-tier platform of the glockenspiel, both of us screaming Emmitt’s name like banshees.

  “He was up there!” I cry, pointing to the ladder that will deliver us to the second tier.

  We ascend, Bran’s heels nearly jamming into my head in his haste as he takes the rungs two at a time. A grating sound pours forth above and the scaffolding around the glockenspiel begins to shake. The whole tower feels as if
it might take flight. Metal grinds against metal as the large flywheel and gears operating the second tier of the glockenspiel awaken and churn in rotation.

  On the second level, still no Emmitt. I look to the eaves, where the doves scatter and beat their wings at the clamor of the glockenspiel coming to life. Higher still, bats swoop and dive from the high cupola. Bran shoves me back against the wall before we are nearly sheared off by the wooden figurines returning to their ancient orbit.

  Emmitt did it! He fixed the old glockenspiel.

  Up close, the hissing groans of the whole beastly thing are deafening. The wolves and men return to their endless hunt, circling round and round, trying to catch one another’s tails.

  Creak. Ratchet. Tock, tock. Creak—hiss! Rachet. Tock, tock.

  The apparatus picks up pace, making a sad, metallic music of its own. The bells are silent; only the glockenspiel carousel is set in motion. And still there is no trace of the clockmaker.

  “Emmitt!” I call again, peering over Bran’s shoulder into the dark corners for any sign of him. I only see the same discarded figurines I saw several hours ago. Perhaps he was called away in a hurry. But no, his tools are still scattered at our feet. I know he wouldn’t leave them like this willingly, especially not after losing several to recent pilfering.

  Bran utters a horrified gasp and pushes me back against the wall once more, covering me until I can hardly see.

  “What is it?” I whisper, clutching his arm, straining around him to look.

  “No!” he chokes.

  “Oh,” I cry.

  In one shattering moment, death pierces my heart anew. For there, emerging from the dark orbit of the glockenspiel, heralded like a limp banner, speared through the chest on a soldier’s pike, is Emmitt’s lifeless body.

  “No!” Bran yells, shimmying around the platform, hurtling quick as he can toward the control levers to stop the horrific parade. All too slowly, the carousel grinds to a jarring halt.

  “Who did this?” I whisper, unable to breathe.

  I rush to help Bran tear Emmitt’s body from the carousel. It’s unthinkable for us both to leave him there another second. No one else should see him like this.

  “Who would do such a thing?” I look around, fearful.

  There is no place to hide up here except the cluttered corners of the tower tiers, and no way down unless the murderer leapt to their own death from the open glockenspiel doors.

  We barely manage to lift Emmitt off the jagged spear and drape him on the small platform while wolves and dead-faced soldiers look on. I can scarcely see through my tears. The birds are nervous above, unable to settle, bleating bereft coos. I pry at Emmitt’s torn clothes and attempt to staunch the wounds leaking onto the floor with my cloak, helpless to do anything to save him. Blood bubbles from the corners of his lips, painting his beard red. The three of us are soaked in his blood now, red as the Margrave’s peculiar carmine.

  I was too late. Whatever shadow visited the clockmaker came just before we arrived.

  “Piro.” Bran shudders, sounding mortally wounded himself. “Look.”

  He gently tilts Emmitt’s head from where it rests on his lap, pointing to a brass clock gear the size of a walnut embedded firmly between the clockmaker’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 14

  BRANCHES SNAP ACROSS MY FACE, TWIGS BITE AT MY CHEEKS and tear at my hair, but I barely feel their claws. I run as fast as I can into the woods, hurtling through the narrow spaces between trunks and the jutting roots that sink knobby knuckles into the forest floor. I register the aching tread of my boots against the ground, the harsh strokes of my pulse carving channels inside my skin.

  To avoid the inevitable visits from the makers checking on me, I rose very early, packed a small bag of supplies and left without Burl while there was only a thin, watery spoonful of moon in the sky. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I brought a few woodcutting tools so that if I’m stopped I can get away with the guise that I am scouting for new trees or taking a few samples.

  Or, I realize with a jolt, I could say I’m visiting my father’s grave. Haven’t done that yet.

  I press ever farther into the trees, like a child running into her mother’s skirts. They welcome me with open arms. Pain prompts me to reach for my nose. The wound from weeks ago is nearly healed, but my heart is still raw. I’m used to the pain of my splinters, but yesterday’s terror—that’s something I’ll never get used to. Seeing Emmitt trussed up in the glockenspiel is an injury that will stay with me long after my physical scars fade.

  The isolation of the forest is a salve to my wounds. For two days, I am unable to do anything but lie coiled in the hollowed base of an old beech, not far from the grove where my father now rests. Ingesting the chatter of birds. Watching life skulk along the forest floor. I stare at the light straining through the canopy above, the way it changes from white to gold as the day moves until it is finally swallowed whole by the shadows of night. I make a fire when I grow cold and I eat when I feel hungry. But mostly I just huddle inside the cradle of the beech and cry, letting myself sink into its deeply rooted life, listening to its sonorous voice reassure me over and over, “All will be well.”

  It surely does not seem like it.

  Having to leave Emmitt’s body and run to tell Anke and rouse the rest of the makers—that is a journey that will haunt me as long as I live. Bran was shattered, wouldn’t leave the clockmaker’s side until he’d been carried from the tower in Fonso’s arms. Anke wept, rocking herself back and forth, a pendulum of disbelief. Bran’s tears finally fell as we left her alone with her son’s body, to grieve.

  Before I ran for the others, we removed the clock gear from Emmitt’s forehead—no easy task—so that his mother wouldn’t have to see it. I sense the weight of it now, still in my pocket where I stashed it to keep it from sight. Still crusted with Emmitt’s blood.

  I can’t bring myself to touch it. Is there some meaning to the killer striking that first blow against Emmitt using a piece of the glockenspiel? Or did the murderer just pick up something convenient and close? The clockmaker had many such pieces in his tool trunk.

  All I know is that my father and Emmitt are dead.

  “Yet, the old magic still lives,” the beech tree hums, her voice in my chest evidence of that very fact. “Men may make laws and proclamations, but what are those to powers that spring from the earth unbidden?”

  Death has come to us in threes, just like I feared. What else will come marching that I am ill prepared for?

  Three tiny ants, bustling with purpose, march across my bare arms, undeterred by the sudden presence of a girl-creature in their path. Beetles scuffle in the rich, dark soil at the foot of the great tree, oblivious to my staring. A pair of chipmunks avoid me until they decide I pose no threat, then begin darting past me to enter their underground tunnels at the mouth of the beech’s hollow. Birds sing their endless pronouncements: Day is here. Night is coming. Where are you? Here I am. Here I am.

  On my third night, the cold draws me out of the tree and I sit facing a small fire, trying to forget the events of the past days and absorb warmth into my stiff limbs. I provoke the fire with a sharp stick, feeling justified when a high spray of sparks shoots up into the blackness and rains down on my arms. I don’t move to brush any off. I let the tiny embers pulse and die on my skin.

  At least I am alive. I am still here. Why me and not my father? Why Emmitt?

  The trees try to answer my questions, but even they don’t know everything. They resume their singing, ancient songs about the coming of winter and the folly of men who have passed under their boughs. I scratch in the dirt at my feet, scraping the pointed end of my fire poker back and forth as if I can etch my sadness out. This branch, this piece that used to be part of something larger, is now cut off. Alone. Like me.

  A blur of shadow from a large tree across the fire catches my eye, and I grip the stick tighter. A gasp tries to climb its way out of my throat.

  Like a specter
who walks through walls, an old woman steps out from the massive column of trees across from my fire.

  It’s her.

  Hair the color of dead leaves hangs long and loose around her shoulders. Her robe is rough, giving her the appearance of being wrapped in sheets of bark. Her skin is nut-brown and deeply creased, and the wrinkles at her eyes and mouth fold in on themselves when she smiles. Which she does, promptly proceeding to sit down, cross-legged and easy as a child, with the fire between us. Just like in my father’s blue moon tale.

  Her hands and feet are bare and knotted, the swollen joints and thin bones reminding me of twigs shooting off new buds in spring. Her eyes read me with the same masterful air my father possessed when appraising a tree. Something about their black, bright knowingness makes me think she is both very old and not done growing yet.

  “Welcome, elder,” the trees around me croon. I sense their excitement at the arrival of this guest at my fire. “The elder one is here!”

  I shift awkwardly to my knees, not knowing what to do or say.

  “I am hungry,” she says plainly.

  Startled by her simple need, I flounder around in my bag and find the end of a loaf of rye and one of my apples. Her knotted fingers close tightly around the food as I sit back on my heels to watch. She eats everything with gusto, including the core and stem of the apple, savoring the seeds and licking her fingers at the end. It feels impolite to gawk, yet I’m not capable of doing anything else while an ancient tree sprite eats so close to me. I’ve decided that’s what she must be. Some kind of wood elf; a living dryad untethered to her fortress.

  When she’s eaten, her fingers collapse again in her lap, forming an empty hollow like a bird’s nest. It’s all I can do to stare at her dumbly. I have questions for her, questions I know I should ask, but I forget them all. I don’t feel afraid of her, not for one second, but I don’t feel at ease, either. Her hair and skin crackle with an energy reminiscent of shivering aspen leaves, a palpable static keeping her in motion though she’s sitting still.