‘Alfie, the magnifying glass please,’ said Scarlet with a stern look upon her face sounding like a surgeon asking a nurse for a scalpel before he began the operation. Automaton surgeons, automaton doctors… it is, as storytellers of a quantum nature say, just a matter of time!
‘Certainly,’ Alfie said sounding very grown up all of a sudden as he pulled the glass out of his pocket and handed it to his sister.
‘Now, what I am about to show you is going to make Pandora’s box of tricks seem the merest trifle in comparison,’ said Scarlet sounding like Pandora’s evil twin.
‘It is!’ Merlin replied, eyes wide as an open camera shutter.
‘It is,’ Scarlet said beckoning Merlin towards her and passing him the magnifying glass. ‘You’ll be requiring this instrument.’
‘Thank you, I think!’ said Merlin hesitantly with just the merest hint of trepidation in his voice.
Scarlet slowly opened the lid of the silver snuffbox to reveal Wilbur, who clearly was ecstatic at seeing the light of day having been cooped up in the box for what seemed like a week. Time always passed more slowly when kept in the dark.
‘An insect! Is it a rare species?’ Merlin asked clearly not observing the object with his normally keen watchmaker’s eye.
‘A n-e-w s-p-e-c-i-e-s, you could say so,’ Scarlet replied stringing the words out.
‘You should show this to the Entomology Society,’ Merlin said peering closely at the object then rubbing his eyes in disbelief before exclaiming, ‘My word, a, a fairy!’
‘There you go with the fairy thing again!’ Wilbur cried in exasperation as he clasped his hands to his head in dismay.
‘It’s not a fairy, look a little closer,’ Scarlet urged.
‘It’s, it’s human, a little human. I can scarcely believe my own magnified eyes!’ Merlin coughed almost dropping the magnifying glass onto the floor in shock.
‘Yes, that’s what it is, a little human, a subspecies of the human race, one that had shrunk over time if you believe Darwin and why wouldn’t you? Eventually they will become so small they will disappear altogether like the dodo,’ Alfie said making stuff up as usual.
‘The dodo’s extinct and who on earth is Darwin?!’ Merlin exclaimed looking crestfallen.
‘Yes, as extinct as the elephant bird I’m afraid and Darwin is a place in Australia. An explorer called Darwin recently discovered it, after which he discovered the dodo was no more!’ Alfie said shaking his head in a sorrowful manner.
‘So it’s true then, I thought it was just a story Mr Humdinger the clockmaker told us to pass the time while we were working on some of his clocks!’ Merlin exclaimed shaking his head in disbelief.
‘What, the dodo being dead?!’ Scarlet jumped in.
‘No, about the little people who lived in a clock,’ Merlin replied trying desperately hard to sort out the facts from the far-fetched fiction.
‘So you’ve heard the story of the Clock People?!’ Billy exclaimed.
‘You mean that the Clock People lived on Clock Street, a street full of clocks until the giants arrived, humans I take it, and so they had to move on, moving into Humdinger’s cuckoo clock by the looks of it? All that time they were living inside the clocks and watches in the shop and I had no idea. I wonder if Sir Isaac Newton knew the story. I didn’t believe a word of it, naturally, just believed old Humdinger had invented the first self-repairing watch,’ Merlin said smiling to himself.
‘It’s all true. Wilbur, that’s the little person’s name by the way, well, he’s a Clock Apprentice Second Class. He told us the whole story. There was another little person, Apprentice Tippy Handle, also Second Class but First Class to my mind, who travelled with him to our world. But that’s another long story we haven’t got time for. We’ll tell you the full story later.’
‘There’s more?!’ Merlin gasped, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets.
‘Just a little,’ Scarlet smiled as she thought of Wilbur in her ear telling her a bedtime story to help her get off to sleep.
And so they all went off to find the giant cuckoo clock in clouds. Merlin said he had no idea if Mr Humdinger still lived there, for if he did he must be over three hundred years old. If this was the case then Sir Isaac Newton, the alchemist, must have discovered the alchemist holy grail, the elixir of life. Maybe Sir Isaac Newton hadn’t died after all but faked his own death?
Merlin ordered a hansom cab which took them to an overgrown part of the country just outside London. Here was where Merlin last recalled seeing the giant cuckoo clock surrounded by clouds, unless he had dreamt the whole thing!
An hour later, weary and downhearted, they decided to call the search off, then all of a sudden a large storm cloud came out of nowhere.
‘Look over there, a ladder coming down out of that cloud!’ Alfie cried pointing upwards.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Merlin exclaimed rubbing his head, or at least he thought so. Truth was he was rubbing his hat.
‘It looks like the escapements of the clock,’ Billy gasped as two giant cone-shaped objects upon long chains appeared out of the clouds along with the cuckoo clock house.
‘That’s some climb. I used to have a head for heights but that was some time ago!’ Merlin exclaimed blowing out his red cheeks as he looked up into the gathering clouds which appeared slightly odd, as if they had been made by man and not by Mother Nature. Perhaps old Humdinger had invented a cloud-making machine?
‘Hold on, get back, there’s someone coming,’ Billy hissed putting his hand across Merlin and Scarlet to act as a barrier to stop them dead in their tracks.
‘It’s the thief!’ Alfie cried.
‘Alfie, keep it down, we don’t want him to know we’re here,’ Scarlet hissed. For a moment with all this hissing going on Alfie was given to think he was being booed off stage for his poor performance as a dim-witted sidekick in his sister’s story. In Alfie’s story it was the other way around of course: he was the main character and his sister the dim-witted sidekick.
‘Perhaps he’s one step ahead of us, perhaps he’s been following us all along,’ muttered Billy as a deep crease appeared upon his forehead.
‘Look, the thief is climbing the ladder into the clouds.’
‘Into the clock is the more likely story,’ cried Scarlet pointing upwards.
‘I don’t believe it, he’s up the ladder faster than a rat up a drain pipe,’ Billy said pointing upwards as the thief disappeared into the clock.
‘He is a rat, a giant rat! Let’s hope Humdinger’s clock is a giant rat trap!’ Scarlet exclaimed as if she had read the book Metamorphosis about a man who turned into a giant cockroach.
‘Hold on, look, look!’ Billy cried as a giant cuckoo appeared out of the window of the clock. ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ the giant bird sang, which sounded like Big Ben or a thousand cuckoos all cuckooing at once.
‘Please tell me there isn’t a man riding on the back of that giant cuckoo!’ Billy exclaimed rubbing his sore eyes.
‘I will if you like but there is!’ retorted Scarlet.
Then the cuckoo shot out of the clock as if being chased by an elephant bird being ridden by a dodo, except the only dodo aboard the ancient flying machine was an old man perched precariously upon its back. However, unlike a normal cuckoo clock where the cuckoo went back inside the clock on a spring, this time the spring went back into the clock as the cuckoo flew free.
‘The cuckoo has flown the nest!’ cried Alfie.
‘It’s a flying machine, the cuckoo is a flying machine. I know a man named Jean-Marie le Bris, a Victorian who built a flying machine on the design of an albatross. That’s funny, when you think that sailors considered the bird to be unlucky. Pity le Bris didn’t because in trying to fly the bird-like contraption he broke his leg!’ Billy said telling a true story and staring disbelievingly up at the cuckoo as it flew silently over
his head.
‘Whooow, it’s the only way to fly. People think I’m cuckoo, you know, can’t think why. If this isn’t a humdinger of an idea I’ll eat my hat. Luckily it’s made of liquorice,’ the old man chortled tipping his hat to the amazed spectators below as if this was all part of a giant outdoor clockwork theatre.
‘Come back here!’ bellowed the thief shaking his fist violently at the old man.
‘Try cloud diving, but pick a nice soft low-lying cloud first would be my sound advice,’ the old man laughed as he waved to the thief, turned tail, literally, then headed for London.
Living up to one of his nicknames, in a flash the thief started to climb back down the ladder of the cuckoo clock as if somebody had rewound the film of his climb up to the clock. The cloud swallowed the clock, so from the ground it looked as if the thief was climbing down from a cloud. If that wasn’t cuckoo then nothing was! For a second the thief, in his haste, lost his footing and almost fell out of the clouds, but regained his composure just in the nick of time, continuing down the ladder until he reached terra firma.
‘It looks like our thief is one of Mother Nature’s cloud hangers. They hang up clouds or take them down depending how you want to look at it,’ mused John Joseph Merlin using his imaginer’s skills to great effect.
Nobody seemed to notice the cuckoo clock appeared to be suspended upon invisible threads of golden sunrays or that it sat upon a cloud. No, they seemed more interested in the giant cuckoo flying just above their heads like a giant prehistoric bird, but not the extinct elephant bird or the dodo, for that would be absurd! Presumably when the moon appeared those golden rays of light the cuckoo clock were suspended from would be replaced by magical rays of moonlight, or perhaps a combination of both. The moon of course was in the sky, it was just invisible to the naked eye, the Man in the Moon performing a clever conjuring trick of the moonlight… tick tock, tick tock, the shadow of the moon crept slowly across the face of the moondial almost unnoticed.
46
A Real Humdinger of a Tale!
‘Is it Humdinger?’ asked Scarlet turning to Merlin.
‘It’s hard to tell, he was old and grey when I was his apprentice and if it is him he’s still old and grey now and I know that sounds like a real humdinger of a tale!’ Merlin exclaimed before a smile replaced his puzzled expression.
‘Come on, let’s follow him, it’s the paper plane story all over again but hopefully not with the same end result,’ Alfie cried cheering the birdman on as if it were the Wright brothers and the cuckoo was their heavier-than-air machine the Flyer.
‘You know what this means!’ Merlin exclaimed.
‘The coot’s gone completely cuckoo?’ Alfie replied.
‘No, that he’s the first man to fly, well, apart from Icarus and that I’m almost certain was just a story!’ Merlin added.
‘No, no, that’s not correct, the Wright brothers were the first to fly,’ Alfie spluttered standing up for his heroes.
‘Who are the Wright brothers?’ Merlin asked as the puzzled look quickly returned to his face.
‘I think our Mr Humdinger, the aviator and inventor, is rewriting the history of aviation,’ laughed Billy.
‘I don’t want to bring anyone down, least of all our intrepid birdman, but there’s a lovesick magpie over there named Sorrow,’ Billy said, his laugh quickly fading into the ether.
‘I know you don’t like magpies, Billy, but I’m afraid we can’t wait around all day for its partner Joy to appear!’ Scarlet replied in jest.
Billy looked around anxiously hoping the magpie’s partner Joy turned up to change their luck, as most magpies travelled around in pairs.
‘Another four magpies and we’ll find silver, six and we’ll find gold, seven for a secret never to be told. Perhaps Mr Humdinger is leading us to a treasure chest full of gold and silver doubloons? A treasure hunt, now that’s what I call an adventure!’ cried Alfie, his eyes shining as brightly as a moon, one side silver, the other side gold.
‘Superstitious nonsense!’ Scarlet scoffed as Alfie scowled at his sister for trying to spoil his adventure. He seemed to forget that he wanted no part of this adventure when the little people first appeared and now it was his adventure.
Nobody seemed to notice a dragonfly hovering nearby which soon disappeared into thin air, or so it appeared.
‘Come on, he’s getting away, follow that giant flying cuckoo contraption and don’t spare the horses, although we may need Pegasus the winged horse if he climbs much higher. The Icarus story may yet be proved right,’ Merlin cried jumping into the waiting hansom cab as time quickly moved on.
‘How’s he staying up in the air? The currents aren’t that warm,’ muttered Billy scratching his head as the birdman and his magnificent flying bird continued to soar upon the winds like a giant glider.
‘It’s probably got a propeller hidden in the beak or he’s using a giant band of rubber to wind the thing up. Half glider, half flying machine uses the springs of the clock to propel the machine into the air,’ Alfie mused using both his engineering and imagineering skills to great effect.
‘Where’s he going?!’ Billy exclaimed looking up into the clouds as the hansom cab gathered pace bouncing up and down on the cobbled street, almost tipping over at one point. ‘Hold onto your horses!’ the cabman cried as if they were being chased by a highwayman or the spirit of a dead highwayman being pulled by four black nightmare steeds.
‘Look, there, a giant dragon!’ bellowed Alfie pointing upwards.
‘No, it’s not a dragon, it’s a snow cloud shaped like a giant snow dragon,’ Scarlet said reimagining the cloud differently, as clouds often metamorphosed from one thing into another in the blinking of a dragonfly’s magical 4D eye.
‘Look, Hampton Court!’ cried Scarlet pointing to Hampton Court in the foreground.
‘But why?’ Merlin asked once again looking puzzled.
‘Perhaps he’s simply looking for a place to land,’ Billy muttered.
‘Are you sure you’ve told us everything?’ Scarlet added pointedly looking at Merlin accusingly.
‘Well, there was one part of the clockwork story that I left out, simply because I thought that part would not fit,’ Merlin said innocently.
‘And that was?’ Scarlet said holding her breath.
‘That Humdinger served his apprenticeship—’ and there Merlin hesitated as the wheels of his mind whirred.
‘Yes, yes!’ exclaimed Scarlet almost fit to burst.
‘That Humdinger served his apprenticeship under Merlin.’
‘You mean he was your apprentice?’ Scarlet said not understanding.
‘No, you misunderstand, not me, John Joseph Merlin, but Merlin, the Merlin, Merlin the Magician. Old man Humdinger was Merlin the Magician’s apprentice!’ Merlin exclaimed making it as clear as a crystal ball which Merlin he was speaking of.
‘Then it makes perfect sense he’s heading for Hampton Court,’ Scarlet said talking perfect nonsense, the sort Lewis Carroll was well known for.
‘It does?!’ Alfie exclaimed, not sure it did.
‘Yes, Merlin the Magician was said to be Henry VIII’s court magician,’ Scarlet replied matter-of-factly, as if she were reading out of a book called Historical Myths.
Scarlet heard a little voice inside her head, and this one was not Wilbur shouting to be let out of his dungeon but her mother’s voice: ‘Scarlet, the game’s up, it’s time to come home and bring that rapscallion of a brother of yours back with you right this instant or else you’ll both be sorry!’
Scarlet had put her parents to the back of her mind in a cabinet as if they were little people, probably a cabinet of curiosity. She wouldn’t take them out of the cabinet just yet, as her curiosity had not reached its peak. She needed just a little more time to play with then she’d come home and play the part of the dutiful daughter. If time worked lik
e the writers of storybooks had written it then hardly any time would have passed since the adventure had begun in earnest. In fact her parents would probably not notice they had even gone, being so engrossed in the shop they owned and worked in.
‘Look, the perfect place to land in the middle of the maze, the goal,’ Horace H. Humdinger muttered to himself as Hampton Court Maze came into sight.
‘He’s going to land!’ Merlin cried holding his hands over his face in horror.
‘He’s going to try. I hope he doesn’t end up in the Thames!’ Billy said looking concerned.
‘The old bird’s cuckoo alright, he makes the Mad Hatter look perfectly sane,’ Alfie scoffed.
‘Come on, old girl, that’s it, that’s it, gently does it, oops!’ Humdinger exclaimed as the cuckoo clock flying machine clipped the top of one of the hedge mazes causing twigs and foliage to fly everywhere, then it flipped over and crash landed. For a few minutes there was nothing to be heard but silence. Even the birds appeared to have lost their tongues. Then a bird finally broke the silence, two birds in fact, both old. The flying machine creaked, then the bones of old Humdinger creaked some more.
Humdinger climbed gingerly out of the upturned flying machine, got out and surveyed the scene. ‘Perfect landing, I’d say, parked her right slap bang in the middle of the “goal” in Hampton Court Maze. First time lucky I guess, that’s when it comes to landing in a maze. Good girl, I knew you wouldn’t let me down, although I suppose if you hadn’t I’d still be up there with the birds!’ Humdinger laughed in a surprisingly cheerful manner considering he was dangling upside down from the flying machine. Then he released his harness and fell on his head onto the ground. ‘Ouch, oh well, no sense no feeling. It might even knock some sense into me, although I somehow doubt it!’ Horace H. Humdinger picked himself up, dusted himself down, then surveyed the scene. After being satisfied all was ticking over as well as could be expected in the circumstances, he strode back over to the upturned flying machine and patted it as if it were a real cuckoo. ‘Thanks old girl, for saving my scrawny neck. Now I suppose I’m going to have to find the entrance. Let me see, left or right? Perhaps I should use a little magic, part the hedges and walk straight through. Really, Horace, I think you’ve been reading too many fantastical storybooks for your own good!’ Humdinger laughed as he patted the giant cuckoo as if it had spoken these words and not he.
The Clock People Page 28
