‘Help, a giant dragon, I’m done for this time!’ exclaimed Wilbur diving for cover as the dragon fell like a stone causing dolls’ furniture to fly everywhere. One chair almost knocked Wilbur’s head clean off his shoulders!
‘Yes, yes of course, Mother, anything you say,’ Scarlet replied, not hearing exactly what her mother had said.
‘Oh and if Spring-Heeled Jack pops in for a cuppa make sure you don’t use the best china,’ her mother continued pulling Scarlet’s leg.
‘Yes, Mother, keep Jack the Ripper away from the mynah bird and make sure he takes his dirty boots off before he steps into the drawing room,’ Scarlet replied in parrot fashion!
‘I don’t know what’s got into you two lately, you’re as thick as thieves. Normally you can’t stand the sight of one another,’ Mrs Potts said looking suspicious.
‘That’s all in the past. Alfie and I have reached an agreement to get along and not be any trouble to our parents who feed, water and clothe us and make sure we get a good education, isn’t that right, Alfie?’ Scarlet said shifting uneasily on her feet as she nudged her brother in the ribs.
‘Yes, yes, absolutely, what Scarlet said, we’re both in total agreement. Time to put the past behind us. I’m sorry for all the bother I’ve caused. Scarlet’s a jewel, a diamond, I couldn’t wish for a better big sister,’ Alfie sniffed as a crocodile tear appeared in his eye.
‘Don’t overdo it, you’re not on stage now,’ hissed Scarlet through gritted teeth.
‘Now I know something is up but whatever scam you two have got going on I don’t want to know. When the police come a-calling I’ll say you’re adopted and if you cause any more trouble you’re going back to the children’s home quick smart.’ And with that their mother disappeared stage left, or if you want the truth, into the hat shop downstairs.
‘Right, come on, Alfie, let’s go, oh almost forgot Wilbur. Wilbur, are you alright, Wilbur?!’ Scarlet exclaimed trying to exclaim as quietly as she was able, not wishing for her mother to put in another impromptu appearance. Luckily Wilbur appeared from behind the dragonfly and waved as he climbed onto the dragon as if it were a rocking horse and shouted, ‘I’ve always wanted to be a dragon rider!’
On the way to the Tower of London Scarlet turned a corner and bumped into a man. ‘Sorry mister, I didn’t see you!’ Scarlet said apologetically. The man looked puzzled, as if he had seen her face somewhere before but couldn’t remember where. Scarlet froze for she had seen this man’s face before. It was the face of the thief, old scarface himself, although not Al Capone, the gangster. Scarlet moved to get out of his way but the thief moved the same way and so she moved to the other side as did he. Scarlet felt like she was involved in a game of street chess. The game’s up, thought Scarlet. Now they really were in trouble, deep trouble. If this did not qualify as an untimely meeting then Scarlet did not know what did! Alfie was nowhere to be seen. He’d walked on ahead, oblivious to Scarlet’s predicament.
‘Sorry miss, I’ll go to the left and you go to the right and then we can both go our separate ways,’ the thief said raising his hat and stepping to one side as Scarlet walked forward. Scarlet did not look back. Lady Luck was on her side, as it appeared the thief had not recognised her. Wherever he had been on his travels in whatever time, he was back. Whether this was a good or a bad thing Scarlet wasn’t sure.
‘Alfie, Alfie!’ cried Scarlet as Alfie happily walked ahead in a daydream. ‘I, I bumped into the thief!’
‘I didn’t see him, are you sure you’re not seeing things? People often see people they know in the street. Doppelgangers they call them,’ Alfie replied as casual as you like.
‘Doppelgangers with a jagged scar scratched down their left cheek and no wonder you didn’t see him, you were walking about in a dream as usual!’ growled Scarlet pulling Alfie towards her by his coat tails before looking back nervously to see if the thief was still close by. Could it be he had recognised her and he was simply acting as if he hadn’t then later he would track her down and she would be toast?! There was nothing she could do about it now, otherwise she would be late for her meeting with Billy outside the Tower of London.
An hour later, Billy, Scarlet and Alfie were standing outside the Tower of London as thick as thieves. They were glad they weren’t all locked up inside the Bloody Tower doing time, but would have been quite happy to see the thief suffer this fate worse than death! Scarlet had told Billy she had bumped into the thief and wasn’t sure if he recognised her face the night she had followed him home. Billy was Billy and as such he comforted and reassured her, telling her this was an unlikely story. The more likely story was he was back to his thieving ways, and perhaps she should check her pockets, as he may have taken the snuffbox with Wilbur inside it.
Scarlet hurriedly rummaged around in her pocket for the snuffbox fearing the worst, the very worst, that her pocket wizard had been stolen right from under her nose, a dirty trick indeed! ‘I, I can’t find it, it’s gone, he’s taken Wilbur and the snuffbox!’ cried Scarlet looking aghast.
‘No he hasn’t!’ Alfie said pulling the snuffbox out of the other pocket as if he were a street magician.
‘Thank God!’ sighed Scarlet opening up the snuffbox to see Wilbur’s smiling face waving up at her cheerfully.
‘Sorry, my nerves are getting the better of me,’ muttered Scarlet pulling herself up by her bootstraps and keeping her chin up, as the old saying goes.
‘Nerves are getting the better of all of us,’ Billy grimaced as Wilbur shook his head in agreement. It had been so long since Wilbur had a proper conversation he felt as if he were losing the power of speech.
‘Speak for yourselves, look, steady as a rock,’ sneered Alfie holding out his hands in front of him.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Alfie, you look like a zombie, one of the walking dead,’ scoffed Scarlet, glad to lighten the mood with a joke, even if it was a bad one.
‘You know, I don’t normally like saying nice things about you because, well, because you’re my big sister. It’s part of the Brotherhood of Brothers, a code that all brothers swear an oath to – not to say nice things about their big sisters under any circumstances. However, I’m going to break that code just once, for anyone can see you’ve got nerves of steel. You must hate living with a brother like me,’ Alfie said looking at his sister with pride, a look Scarlet had rarely seen before.
‘Thanks, Alfie, I’m proud of you too, you’re really growing up. Mind you, Mother has been stretching you on the rack so you fit into Father’s old school uniform,’ laughed Scarlet seeing Alfie was embarrassed by this show of affection, so turned the whole thing into a joke of sorts. ‘I’ve been looking at the time and tides for the Thames and there will be a full moon in ten days’ time. I’d bet my hat on the fact our thief will be at Greenwich Prime Meridian on the stroke of midnight, which is where we must be,’ Scarlet said gabbling as she tried to catch her breath, which was a mite easier than catching a thief, especially a time thief!
To speed the story up, I ask you, the reader, to imagine you are a dragonfly, a time warper that can manipulate time. So here’s the rub: time quickly moves on. Billy, Alfie and Wilbur reconvene the meeting of the Time Warpers’ Magic Circle in the street where the thief is staying. The thief comes out of the house and they follow him to Greenwich and the Prime Meridian timeline. The thief stands upon the line waiting for the moon to appear from behind the clouds. And this is where we pick up the action…
‘I’ve always wondered what that ball stuck on the top of the Royal Greenwich Observatory is, the one that moves up and down,’ Alfie said pointing to the top of the Greenwich Observatory.
‘Ah yes, the old “Time Ball”. It operates a system of clocks inside the observatory – three to be precise – which are connected to the large Gate Clock you can see on the outside of the observatory. This clock is connected to the Time Ball, which runs an electric curren
t to all parts of the country enabling all clocks to run like clockwork. The Victorian clockmaker, Shepherd, designed it originally to make sure the railways ran on time. All the clocks in the country run by this system. They are what are called slave clocks,’ Billy said sounding like an automaton. It was clear to see why his chosen profession was a watchmaker.
‘Slave clocks? Don’t let Wilbur hear that. By all accounts working in the mechanism in the clock house sounds like Victorian slave labour,’ Scarlet replied.
‘There he is, the Time Thief, right on time as I imagined a man in his profession would be!’ Billy said as the thief appeared upon the spot as if by magic. Then the thief took the fob watch out of his pocket and laid it upon the palm of his hand. A few seconds later the rays of the moon struck the moonstone face of the watch as a luminescent light surrounded the thief. Suddenly a dragonfly appeared. The thief reached out and grabbed it in his hand, clenched his fist and then dropped the dragonfly, which fell to the ground, two of its wings snapping off in the process. Then the thief disappeared.
‘And there he goes, right on cue, exactly by magic!’ Scarlet exclaimed as the thief performed his magical disappearing act.
‘Dark magic!’ Billy grunted as he rushed forward to pick up the injured dragonfly, but before he could get there the crumpled dragonfly uncrumpled itself as if it were made of aluminium foil. Then two new wings sprouted from the body of the miniature dragon which streaked across the sky leaving an illuminated trail of quicksilver as it disappeared into thin air… tick tock, tick tock, tick…
37
Rewind… It’s the Return of the Time Warper!
‘What, what just happened?!’ Billy exclaimed looking as pale as a ghostly moon.
‘A, a trick of the moonlight,’ Alfie stuttered as he tried to figure out the trick.
‘Never mind about what happened, we need to find out what’s about to happen in the future!’ Scarlet shouted as she quickly looked around to make sure there wasn’t anybody about. But there was no one in sight. The thief made sure not to appear while the line was crowded with people. In truth the only time the timeline was crowded was at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Then everybody wanted their picture taken. There was even a conga line one year and a Chinese carnival dragon for the Chinese Year of the Dragon.
‘Look, the dragonfly’s back,’ cried Scarlet as the dragonfly landed on her hand. Here Scarlet is imagining somebody had rewound the Clock of Time, probably Father Time himself.
‘Make sure you’re holding onto the right dragonfly,’ Billy said in jest.
‘If the moonlight shrinks me I might get to ride upon the back of a dragon, albeit a miniature one,’ Scarlet giggled with her tongue in her cheek.
‘Wilbur, come and take a look at this, a real dragonfly!’
‘Wilbur’s eyes lit up like Big Ben at night. He thought he recognised the dragonfly, which of course sounds ridiculous, all dragonflies looked the same. Well, perhaps not all the same but very similar, apart from their colour. The dragonfly’s lamp- like eyes appeared to blink at him, as if they were trying to tell him something, a kind of code. Morse code perhaps?
Wilbur counted the times the dragonfly blinked and noticed there were different time delays between the blinks. It was a pattern, a code, he was sure of it. He had always been good with codes and numbers. Words were more Tippy’s thing and she was hopeless with numbers so they both helped each other out at Clock Apprentice School. It was just a happy coincidence they had both been chosen as apprentices at the same time, or at least Wilbur thought so now he was beginning to believe it was fate, meant to be, preordained, in other words it had already been written.
‘Why is Wilbur waving his hands around wildly? It looks like he’s trying to fly. Sorry Wilbur, you’re not a fairy and you should know that better than anybody, as you’re always telling us so!’ Alfie laughed breaking the tension.
‘No, he’s trying to tell us something,’ Scarlet said imagining Wilbur with two flags in his hands attempting to do semaphore and doing it badly by the looks of it.
Scarlet carefully picked Wilbur up and put him into her ear so she could hear what he was saying.
‘Hold on a tick, I’ve got something for Wilbur, thought it might help,’ Alfie said reaching into his pocket and taking out a piece of gum.
‘Chewing gum, what’s that for? So he won’t fall out of my ear?!’ Scarlet exclaimed looking puzzled.
‘Sorry, wrong thing,’ Alfie said finally producing the object as Scarlet was imagining his coat to be like that of a magician. What would he produce next, a dove or a silk scarf?
‘What on earth is it?’ Scarlet enquired peering at the curious object which was smaller than Wilbur although not by much.
‘It’s an old-fashioned loud hailer, the sort P.T. Barnum uses in his shows. I took it off him, didn’t think he’d mind,’ Alfie replied as he handed the loud hailer to Wilbur between his thumb and his second finger, although not General Tom Thumb, the freak show turn, you understand!
Scarlet was even more puzzled. Had P.T. Barnum joined his own freak show as an act, had a spell put upon him by a witch doctor or a pocket wizard, and now he was no bigger than a beetle?
‘P.T. Barnum, the toy figure, found it in an emporium in Cricklewood slightly worse for wear minus an arm but mostly still intact,’ Alfie said explaining the seemingly unexplainable with effortless ease.
‘Naturally that’s exactly what I had imagined!’ Scarlet said trying to look unfazed. Now it was her turn to lie through her pretty little teeth.
‘I know this sounds crazy but I think the dragonfly spoke to me, well, communicated by blinking its eyes. I further think this was the dragonfly that helped save our home, the watch, when a magpie dropped it in the river. You know the story, I told it to you a few weeks ago,’ shouted Wilbur through the loud hailer as the words echoed in Scarlet’s head. Right now it felt like she was standing in the Whispering Gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral or in a Gothic church as the words repeated then faded.
‘What did the dragonfly tell you?’ Alfie asked excitedly.
‘It gave me a time and a date, the date on the face of the watch the thief had in his hand when he disappeared into time,’ bellowed Wilbur shouting himself hoarse although not a horsefly you understand.
‘What was the time and date?’ Scarlet asked and then waited with bated breath for the answer.
‘1st December 1761, 1st December 1761, 1st December, December… 1761!’ replied Wilbur as once again his words echoed through the labyrinth in Scarlet’s eardrum.
‘That’s Merlin’s time!’ Scarlet exclaimed.
‘Merlin, King Arthur, wow!’ cried Alfie getting the wrong end of the stick, magic wand or timeline, take your pick!
‘No, no, not Merlin the Magician, John Joseph Merlin. I read it in the brochure in his museum!’ exclaimed Billy.
‘Then that’s where we must go,’ Scarlet said assuredly.
‘Back to Avalon, the court of King Arthur, sounds right up my street, Imagination Street!’ Alfie blurted out once again playing the court jester.
Scarlet picked Wilbur out of her pocket and gently placed him back in the snuffbox and closed it.
‘No, not again, I feel like a jack-in-the-box!’ moaned Wilbur as once more he found he was being kept in the dark in more ways than one.
‘No time to explain, follow the dragonfly!’ Scarlet cried pulling Billy and Alfie towards the Greenwich Prime Meridian timeline as if on invisible threads.
‘Shouldn’t it be “Follow that hansom cab”?!’ grunted Alfie.
‘Hold onto your hats, gentlemen, and anything else you hold dear, I imagine we’re about to experience the extraordinary!’ beamed Scarlet, her eyes ablaze as she took the dragonfly brooch out of her pocket, put it on the palm of her hand and held it out as if offering it up to the Moon Goddess. Once again the moon went behind a cloud. It appeared
the Man in the Moon liked a little drama and theatre to brighten up his day or night in this curious case.
Then, all of a sudden, a shaft of sheering luminescent moonlight burst through the clouds, striking the moonstone face of the dragonfly timepiece. It did so with such ferocity Scarlet feared the moonstone might splinter into a thousand tiny shards. Scarlet did not flinch. She held out her trembling hand, keeping it outstretched as if she were a starving street beggar, until it nearly dropped off.
‘Sorry sis, looks like the whole thing’s nothing more than a bad story. The thief is probably in the sewer. I bet there’s a trapdoor around here somewhere or a manhole cover. We’ve been tricked!’ Alfie sighed blowing out his cheeks in frustration as he tried to figure out how the trick was done.
Eventually Scarlet’s outstretched hand dropped down by her side, the dragonfly now clenched in her hand, disappointed her imagination had led her astray. Scarlet suddenly felt a buzzing, vibrating, pulsating glow in her hand like a queen bee in the hive working its magic, so she automatically unclenched her hand to see the dragonfly was alight like a firefly. ‘Something is happening, it’s, it’s moving!’
The dragonfly brooch appeared to hover in the palm of Scarlet’s hand, as if it really were a real living and breathing dragonfly, one of Mother Nature’s miniature works of art. Then the real dragonfly appeared, which appeared to be guiding the miniature mechanical dragon, blinking its eyes at the dragonfly brooch as if it were talking to it. The real dragonfly darted here, there and everywhere in somewhat of an agitated state, so fast it was hard for the human eye to see where it was going. Then it turned around and landed upon Scarlet’s hand directly behind the dragonfly timepiece, as if Scarlet’s hand was a tiny landing strip at an airport in a model village.
Time appeared to have stood still while all this was happening. Big Ben was obviously waiting for something special to happen before it let its chimes signal that it was midnight. Then the extraordinary happened: a small hole opened up in the air just ahead of them as the moon appeared to brighten like a supernova in the final act of decay so it was as bright as the sun during the summer. In no more than the blinking of an eye, a dragonfly’s eye, they were all sucked into the glowing hole and disappeared. The hole closed and Big Ben struck midnight and time moved on… tick…
The Clock People Page 23
