The Fire Opal Mechanism

by Fran Wilde

  Jorit pulled Ania upright again and then clasped her companion’s arm. The clock’s ticking grew loud and insistent until the minutes blended together. The world swung around their heads.

  Once more, they were pulled through the sound. Jorit and Ania hung on to each other, no longer strangers, or enemies.

  Testimony of Thief Jorit LeeBefore the Commission on Knowledge and LoyaltyInterim Report

  In the continuing excerpt, the commission notes that Jorit Lee has no affiliations, none to recommend her, aside from the librarian. She is marked as a thief. We are not convinced of her loyalties, and in the aftermath of this turbulent time, such things are most important.

  Commissioner Novil (leaning toward the thief): While no one makes paper this way any longer, there is no aging or damage. Your sample is nearly blank with only a few faded ink marks on it. All illegible. This seems the greatest of conveniences. It is obviously a fake.

  Commissioner Andol: Do you expect this committee to accept this as evidence of your travels? Or did you steal it from a library during more recent events?

  The question hangs in the air above the subject before Commissioner Novil continues.

  Commissioner Novil: We’ve all seen the mark on your hand, madam.

  The thief does not answer.

  Commissioner Andol: Your silence will be taken as guilt.

  Jorit Lee shares with the commission a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Finally, she speaks.

  Jorit Lee: That flyer was freely given.

  Commissioner Novil (sputtering): Your concision feels like a challenge. Where, then, is your time traveling machine? What did you change in the past?

  Jorit Lee: We cannot change what’s already happened, only what will. To attempt otherwise is a trap.

  The thief runs her marked hand through her uneven hair. She crosses her arms.

  Commissioner Novil: What proof do you have, then, that you did what you claim?

  This time, her smile reaches her eyes.

  Jorit Lee: My proof is you and I having this conversation.

  Commissioner’s note: Jorit Lee and her brother were caught stealing books from the East Quadril Mining School in order to pay for their classes. That the brother did not survive the conflicts while Jorit Lee did puts added suspicion on her.

  6.

  Jorit

  When the clock’s ticking quieted, Jorit and Ania found themselves standing near a different kind of crowd. Spices and cooking smells filled the air. Jorit heard cries of “Fruit!” and “Finest cloth!”

  A news crier’s hazel eyes were fixed wide upon them, or upon the space that had been empty until now. The young boy blinked and shook his head before returning to beating the small wood and hide drum he carried and reciting the news he’d been paid to share. “Quadril officially absorbs the valley as a protectorate! The Six Kingdoms are Five!”

  The boy still stared at them as he shouted. They stepped away from the transfixed crier, farther into the market, keeping their eyes out for anyone following them.

  The valley, its own kingdom, imagine. Jorit focused on staying with Ania through the crowds.

  A banner flapping overhead, fringe flying in the wind, wished shoppers a happy new year, but the date made no sense. “This is long before my grandmother was born,” Ania whispered. “We’re going backward.”

  Jorit had no answer. She kept her grip on her companion, and on the clock. The feeling of waking up in a strange time, alone, was slowly receding.

  Or they were growing used to people disappearing. Jorit blinked once, clearing her eyes.

  “Look!” Ania pointed to her right. “More timepieces!”

  The crowd flowed around them, revealing a long stall glittering with brass and glass. On the near table, pocket watches and familiar looking clocks in wooden cases gleamed, new and shining. The timepiece in their hands looked similar, although far more tarnished and banged up.

  Jorit lifted their clock to the light to look closer. Sun caught the glass and dazzled light across her hand, and across the thief’s mark. She pulled her hand back to her side, but it was too late.

  A sudden commotion behind the stall. Ania turned away, trying to see whether the news crier had pointed them out.

  “Thieves!” came a cry close behind her. “My precious timepieces! Thieves!” A strong, scarred hand grabbed her arm.

  The shopkeeper bustled Jorit around the stall’s front, pointing finger extended right at her head.

  Out of the fire, into the cook pan, Jorit thought.

  The crowd began to turn, and Jorit’s shoulders tensed. But Ania kept her wits. She raised her voice so that nearby shoppers could hear. “Not at all, sir! We came to see if you could repair this antique. It’s seen some hard times since our grandmother purchased it!”

  The shopkeeper narrowed his eyes. He took in the sight of the aged timepiece with increasing surprise. Some people in the crowd did as well. The shopkeeper stammered, “But this is very similar to one of my original designs! How old did you say it was?”

  “It’s hard to tell.” Jorit recovered herself enough to answer. “Our grandmother herself did not know.”

  “You claim this truth, and yet you have been marked for stealing.” The shopkeeper continued pointing, his thick brows furrowing. Some in the crowd murmured. Pressed closer to see what was happening. “The symbol is clear.”

  But the crime hadn’t been. Jorit frowned. It didn’t matter now. The symbol declared her a thief, so she had become one.

  But Ania put her hand over Jorit’s. “I am no thief. I am a teacher, and I vouch for my cousin. Do you doubt me also?” She lifted her chin and waited for the shopkeeper’s verdict.

  Jorit tried not to stare at Ania as something like hope fluttered in her throat. She coughed to clear it. Then worried. Were academics respected in this era?

  The man frowned at them for a moment, then shook his head and spoke loud enough for the crowd to hear. “My apologies. I can see that you are an honorable person trying to redeem someone. By your words, a scholar as well.”

  But he pulled Jorit close, his grip tightening around her elbow. “I doubt you know much about that timepiece. I will find you and this clock when the market closes for lunch. Be nearby. Make yourselves unobtrusive until then.”

  He bowed to Ania and released Jorit’s arm. Gently nudged both of them into the flow of the crowd.

  Jorit, still shaken, wondered, Did they want to be found?

  “He knows the clocks. And the clock knows him. He might tell us how to make it work,” Ania murmured, as if answering her thoughts. “It’s worth the risk.”

  They let themselves be moved away, but Jorit bristled. “How do you know?”

  Ania didn’t answer.

  “We have no money, no clothes that aren’t vastly out of—or, not yet in—style.” She knew how to be unobtrusive. And yet she and Ania, here? “We have no chance of not standing out.”

  The clock ticked loudly on the street’s quieter side. Ania seemed to nod at it. “Shhh,” she said.

  Jorit’s stomach growled. That, too, made her cross. “What do you hear when you do that?”

  Ania blushed. “Just a memory of an old friend. Nothing more.”

  Jorit’s frown deepened. “Seeing familiar faces in the past, talking to memories?” She didn’t like traveling with companions who heard voices. But there were no guards chasing them. And Ania had stood up for her in the square. That was at least something.

  Jorit caught sight of exactly what they needed at the market’s edge: an inn with a tea shop attached. A shaded table outside, with chairs and a hand-lettered sign offering samples of different teas. The proprietor allowed them to sit once they said they were meeting the shopkeeper, but they had no money for drinks. The smell of spiced tea and honey was distracting. “If we could sell something,” Jorit groaned, “we could . . .” But at Ania’s sharp look she felt ashamed. “I said if. I’m hungry.”

  “I am too,” Ania said, squeezing Jorit�
��s hand. “We’ll find a way. Perhaps we can wash dishes in exchange for supper here, once we know more. We know when we are, thanks to the banner and the news crier. Judging by the wares for sale and spices available, we know roughly where—Eastern Shores. Now we just need to know about the clock.”

  Jorit’s breath hitched. Marton had been lost in Eastern Shores.

  Her brother. His desire to keep out of the Pressmen’s way. His need to make something of himself. Of them. Lost forever. But not yet. Far in the future.

  She let her breath out slowly through her nose. Think of the present. Her stomach rumbled.

  She eyed a half-eaten biscuit abandoned at the next table. Slipped it into her sleeve when the innkeeper turned away. Offered some to Ania, but her friend shook her head, so Jorit put the bread in her mouth. The grit matched her mood. How to return to the Far Reaches from here? Or what to do if they for some reason jumped backward again? She had no one to tie her to any particular time or place, but she wanted to be able to choose.

  This clock seemed to be making choices for them. The marketplace was a dead end, she thought. The valley as well. “We need to find a way to get back to our own time. So far, the clock seems to work only when we are afraid.”

  Ania responded grumpily. “How many times a day would you like to make yourself afraid enough that you jump to another century?”

  How does a machine know fear? Jorit wondered, still chewing.

  “Technically, it’s not even times a day. It’s every hundred years or so,” Ania mused. The corners of her mouth creased, and Jorit’s spirits lifted a little.

  “The speed of a heartbeat,” Jorit guessed, after swallowing. “I’ve heard the clock speed up, it’s matching our heartbeats as we panic. Maybe that winds it up into action? Should we fool ourselves into believing it’s not safe here and see where the timepiece takes us?”

  “But it is safe here. We’d know we were lying. It might not work.” Ania put her palm on the clock casing. “We could stay in this time. The books are different, but we could work on saving these. Make copies, maybe.”

  “It’s true, Ania, we have nothing to go back for. The university is lost. Your friend.” She paused. “My brother. The Pressmen have rewritten everything. Here, at least, some things still work. There are no Pressmen here, yet.”

  “But we know that eventually the Pressmen will come to the Eastern Shores. Times will get difficult—at least for some. We know this.” Ania stared into her teacup. “And I cannot ignore the fact that I have been blind to something important. Those protests? Certain times are always difficult for someone, aren’t they?”

  Jorit thought about that. Perhaps there was a future without an economy that did not rely upon scarcity to make things valuable. Perhaps if they went far enough back, or forward . . . She stopped her thought before she saw Marton being carried away again.

  “What if we don’t get back to the right time? Or we get stuck somewhere?” Jorit paused. “Can we ask to go forward?” She bit her lip. Who would they ask?

  “We can try asking the shopkeeper.” There was that hesitation again. Ania was keeping something to herself. Her answers were either too quick or just a hitch too slow.

  What are you concealing? Jorit began to ask, but pressed her lips together when the shopkeeper approached. He narrowed his eyes at the timepiece. “Hello, there.”

  “You know the clock.” Ania had been right. Jorit was surprised.

  He nodded. “I may know it. I made one just like it. Sold it about a month ago. May I look inside for my mark?”

  Ania’s fingers tightened around the timepiece.

  “I won’t break it. You can open it yourself if you want. If this is one of mine, there’s a latch”—he pointed—“right about there.”

  Ania sprung the latch. Inside, a strange jewel glittered, red and pink and orange, with three turquoise sparkles. A cabochon.

  “An opal?” Jorit remembered her lessons from mining school. A gemstone forged under extreme pressures.

  “A fire opal. I was asked to place one like it in my clock. Ah. There’s my mark. But this kind of damage? Just how does this happen? Just look at it.” He swung his arms wide, dismayed.

  Ania looked about to tell the man Just How.

  “Why would you put a fire opal inside a timepiece?” Jorit spoke quickly. She tried not to calculate how much this gem was worth, here or at any other time.

  “Small gems help the bearings work more smoothly. Smooth operations, better balance. Both mean a timepiece stays more on time than with metal. Most watches have some gem bearings. But few are like this. I had to make adjustments.” He showed the two women how the fire opal was hollowed in places to allow the gears to move without friction. How a slice of it had been cut away in the back to seat it in the mechanism.

  Ania stared at the gem. “I had no idea.” The red-speckled fire opal seemed to glow with its own light. Once again, the clock’s ticking seemed to grow louder. Her eyes reflected the glow. “Hello,” she whispered.

  She tilted her head as if she heard an answer.

  “Once, long ago, there were many gems from the Jeweled Valley,” the shopkeeper said, looking uncomfortably at Ania, before focusing on Jorit. “Now only a few are left.”

  “Were being the most important word,” Jorit countered. Or will be. “The days of gems waned when our grandparents were still young.” It was a safe statement, no matter the time period, she thought, thinking of the valley palace in flames. She’d prefer all talk of the valley and its gems to cease immediately. Bad luck.

  “A machine is a set of rules and constraints,” the shopkeeper said. “Just as much of a binding as a bezel. And it’s true, many valley gems were cracked or lost, or went bad.” The shopkeeper paused, thinking. “And the records of them were lost or hidden away. But if you know where to ask, you can still find one or two. Several were stored in objects—mechanisms—to protect them. The mechanisms—a clock, a printing press, a loom—became their bindings. Each was smuggled out of the Jeweled Valley originally; they remain hidden now in the mechanisms.”

  Jorit’s mouth hung open at the audacity. Even then, gem knowledge was dangerous.

  Ania paused in her conversation with the clock. Looked at the shopkeeper. “You bound a gem—something you think is one of the last valley gems—in a machine?”

  Jorit drew a breath. “Are you mad?” She’d heard so many stories from her grandparents of badly bound gems. Ania had told her The Book of Gems contained many cautions about bad settings.

  A book the universities had kept from the public. So not everyone knew the dangers.

  The shopkeeper stared at Ania intently. “Are you a lapidary?”

  “Me?” Ania laughed. “I am a librarian. A rumpled one at that.” She pressed the side of her satchel, where The Book of Gems was tucked within the leather. Jorit understood why. Any family from Quadril or the nearby valley, even from way back, would fight over rumors about someone gone gem-mad. It was an easy way to talk about uncomfortable things, as long as it wasn’t your family being talked about.

  “You said lapidary in the old way.” Jorit’s skin tingled. She’d heard rumors, passed down for generations, especially from her jeweler grandfather, but no one had actually uttered the word. The closest they’d gotten was “gem-whisperer” and a warding gesture. “Are you one?”

  “Oh, no,” the shopkeeper said. “I merely dabble. Experiment. This clock was my most successful project, and I had instructions. I was lucky.” He blinked quickly, as if grit was stuck in his eye.

  “You dabble,” Jorit finally countered. “Lapidaries had a trust to wield the old gems because they are dangerous. Dabbling sounds reckless.” She frowned. “And the gems. Are the ones you speak of even real? I don’t recall any fire opals.”

  The shopkeeper shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “Lapidary is an old word, old habit. There are still some gems in Quadril—little ones, broken pieces. I see them smuggled through the markets now and then. I . . . experiment
ed. Many are, as you might expect, fakes. Some very good ones.” He paused at Jorit’s sharp intake of breath. “Usually lead glass, dyed colors—well, my father found one, once, that mimicked every aspect of a valley gem. It whispered. But it could not hold its color. And it drove everyone who touched it into senility or worse. Like they knew nothing and never had.” The shopkeeper stared into space. “He had only begun teaching me. I wish we’d had more time.”

  “Strange,” Ania whispered. “How could a fake gem whisper?”

  Jorit had heard this lecture at the mining school in Quadril. “The light- and air-bending properties of some gems, some think. Chemicals added in the heating process create channels for an effect like whispering—driving heat and adjusting airflow within the crystal structure to make sounds that only a sensitive few could hear, fewer still interpret as whispers, and a minority could tolerate without losing their minds. Synthetics grow faster too. Are more profitable than gem hunting.” The information had quickened her interest in the valley, and triggered her research. She rubbed at her hand.

  Ania pursed her lips. “You sound like a professor, not a thief.”

  Jorit eyed her companion carefully. The librarian had initially seemed so distant, haughty even. And the shopkeeper’s disdain still stung. But then words began to tumble from her lips without any sense of self-preservation.

  “I’d wanted to be a scholar. But there were no gems left to speak of—or to—anymore. And then the Pressmen came. My studies came to nothing.” Except that the Pressmen branded me and my brother thieves for refusing to help with their projects. Jorit rubbed her hand.

  The shopkeeper stared at her now. “Crystal structure? Chemicals?”

  Of course. They were way too early to speak of such things. Jorit stifled a rueful laugh. She’d nearly given them away. “Is the fire opal real?” She asked.

  The shopkeeper nodded. “I have no reason to believe it isn’t. Though I’ve never heard it whisper. Have you heard it?” He bent to the clock and began pointing out some of the timepiece’s finer details. His ear was close to the gem. He didn’t see Ania startle, then take a deep breath and smooth her sleeves with shaking hands.