The Emperor of all Things

by Paul Witcover

  I swept the snow away with my hat and then groped among the contorted shapes, which I saw now were metal castings, looking for evidence of a door, perhaps a hidden mechanism that, once triggered, would cause the façade to swing open and admit me. But there was nothing – at least, nothing that my fingers, clumsy within gloves that provided scant protection against the cold, could detect. I wondered if I could climb the façade, use the castings as hand- and footholds to reach the shelter of the proscenium, and gain entrance to the interior from there. But I did not like my chances in such a climb. The façade was slick with snow and ice, and the gusting winds would make any attempt even more hazardous.

  I considered turning back, looking for an alternative route to the Hearth and Home, or seeking shelter from one of the townsfolk, but I wasn’t ready to give up on the tower yet; this close, my curiosity was rekindled: it was no longer just the need for shelter that drove me. When, I asked myself, would I find a better opportunity to examine the tower unobserved? Hunching my shoulders against the wind and snow, and jamming my hat back onto my head, I set off down the leftward-branching passage.

  I hadn’t gone far when the bells of the tower began to peal in earnest, striking some arbitrary hour. I ducked my head and pressed myself against the base of the tower as clumps of snow and ice, dislodged from above, fell around me. The metal figures of the façade poked into my back, and through them I felt a deep, slow, rhythmic thrumming: the inner workings of the great clock. I hadn’t felt the slightest vibration earlier when I’d groped among the castings; now, with the tolling of the bells, an internal mechanism had been set in motion, and I knew at once what it must be.

  I ran back to the front of the tower and peered up through the falling snow. The icy flakes stung like chips of stone, and indeed the sky, or what I could see of it, was as grey as clouded marble, like the roof of a vast domed chamber, so that, for a moment, as I gazed into the hollow arch of the proscenium, it seemed to me that I was not looking into an enclosed space but rather out of one, and though I could not see even a glimpse of what lay beyond the snowy curtain, I sensed a presence wider than the world I knew. The vivid force of this perception staggered me, and I felt again, as I had the day before, an impulse to step away from the tower, to retreat out of range of its uncanny influence. But my curiosity outweighed my fear, and I held my ground.

  Though the bells were still tolling, they had lost all semblance of musicality. Now they came crashing down like thunder. I flinched with every peal, each louder than the one before, until the very ground seemed to tremble beneath my feet. Once again I recalled my dream, how the girl had fled from footsteps that shook the ground in just this way.

  I would have turned then and fled myself, curiosity be damned, if the first automaton hadn’t appeared from out of the snow-blurred depths of the proscenium. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Something angular, tall and dark, like the prow of a ship, came gliding into view. The prow of a second ship seemed to pass it on the outside, as if some ghost armada were sailing out of the clock tower. But then my mind made an insane adjustment of scale, of perspective, and I realized that I was seeing a pair of legs scissoring through the snow. The legs alone were far larger than could be contained within the tower; they seemed to rise up for ever. But of course they did not: no more than mountains rise for ever. Yet it might have been a mountain that I was seeing – a mountain in the shape of a man.

  My legs folded, depositing me on my knees. Then, as the earth resounded like the skin of a drum to each impossible footfall, I toppled onto my side, gazing up at the colossal figure. Another strode behind it. And another behind that. They moved slowly, effortlessly, it seemed, through the blizzard. The tower was still present, its dimensions unchanged. Though the figures overtopped it by hundreds of feet, they continued to emerge from its depths, nor did their weight crush the stage across which they filed, nor, for all the vastness of their strides, had the first of them yet reached the opposite side. It was as though the laws of nature were in abeyance, and categories of perception that could or should not coexist in a sane mind were suddenly thrust together. I felt the gears of my reason grinding against each other. I suppose I must have screamed.

  At that, the figures halted. The bells fell silent. There was only the howling of the wind. I tried to get to my feet and run, but it was useless. I was like a dazed rabbit scratching for shelter in the snow. Then came a sight that stilled even those feeble movements. A hand was reaching for me, dropping through the blizzard like a dark cloud, like the fall of night. There was no escaping it – not even if I’d been able to run. I had no doubt but that I was about to die. In that moment, a dreamlike clarity possessed me. I felt intensely present yet at the same time detached from what was happening; I watched the fingers of that immense hand open to grasp me, and in those seconds, which seemed to stretch into hours, it struck me with the force of revelation that these were not automatons I was seeing – no mechanical constructs could possibly be so large – but rather living creatures, giants such as the Bible speaks of, and the pagan myths, too. It occurred to me then that Wachter’s Folly was not a clock tower but instead a kind of portal, a gateway , so to speak, between our world and another, and that these giants had crossed some unimaginable distance to come here. Had Wachter summoned them with his wizardry, compelled them to parade in single file across the stage of his extraordinary clock? And if so, for what purpose? I did not think I would learn the answer to these questions, or any others, as the gigantic fingers closed around me, blotting out the snow, the light, the world.

  When next I opened my eyes, I was in bed in my room at the Hearth and Home. The light of a candle illuminated the startled face of a girl seated in a chair between the bed and the hissing stove. She gave a cry and sprang to her feet, rushing from the room before I could say a word. I heard her calling for Frau Hubner from the hallway. I winced and raised a hand to my throbbing head … only to encounter a bandage. Pain flared, and I jerked my hand away with a groan.

  I sat up, and the covers slipped to my waist. I was shirtless; in fact, I was naked. I had no memory of what had happened to my clothes … or, for that matter, to me. The room was toasty warm; the curtains were drawn over the window, so I had no idea what time it was or whether it was still snowing. The girl, meanwhile, had left off calling for Inge, though she had not returned to the room, and now I heard – and felt as well – the landlady’s heavy tread as she mounted the stairs. It was no more than a faint trembling compared with the earthshaking footsteps of the giants, yet the terror I’d felt as I lay helpless in the snow took hold of me again. Shivering like some palsied ancient, I groped for the covers and pulled them to my chin.

  Inge squeezed into the room, her round face flushed red. ‘So, you are awake at last, Herr Gray! But what are you doing? You’re in no condition to get out of that bed!’

  ‘Indeed, I am not,’ I agreed. ‘Where are my clothes?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same question,’ she replied as she bustled over. I flinched, thinking that she was going to push me down – weak as I was, a child could have done it. But instead she touched the back of her hand to my forehead, then reached past me to fluff the pillows into a backrest. Her yeasty scent enveloped me, and had its customary effect, which I endeavoured to hide by shifting beneath the covers.

  ‘There,’ she said at last, stepping back to survey her work with satisfaction, her thick arms crossed over the shelf of her bosom, ‘all nice and comfy.’ I had the impression that she was rather enjoying my helplessness. ‘You gave us quite a scare, Herr Gray! Ach, what possessed you to pay a visit to the clock tower in such weather? And what happened to your clothes?’

  ‘Do you mean to say I was naked when you found me?’

  ‘It was not I but Adolpheus who found you,’ Inge said. ‘Lying in the snow at the base of the clock tower as naked as the day you were born!’

  ‘I lost my way in the storm,’ I told her, ‘and found myself at the clock
tower. The bells began to chime, and I saw the most incredible display …’ I trailed off, afraid that she would think me mad if I said any more. ‘That is all I remember.’

  ‘Lucky for you I happened by,’ Adolpheus remarked, entering the room with his lopsided gait. Hesta trotted in behind him, tail wagging. The dog went straight to the stove, where she circled once before curling up on the bare floorboards.

  ‘I found you at the foot of the tower,’ Adolpheus continued. ‘It seems you were struck on the head by a piece of falling ice.’

  I raised my hand to the bandage again, but stopped short of touching it, remembering the pain that had ensued the last time I did so.

  ‘Big as a cannonball it was,’ my rescuer stated, demonstrating the size of the ice chunk with his hands. ‘Blood everywhere! I thought you were dead at first – if not from the blow to the head, then from the cold, for you weren’t wearing so much as a stitch of clothing. I covered you with my cloak, lifted you in my arms, and carried you here. I may be small, but I am strong as a bull.’

  ‘But my weapon … my watch!’

  ‘As for your dirk, I saw no sign of it. Perhaps it is buried under the snow. Your watch, however, was clutched in your hand; indeed, I had some difficulty prising your fingers apart to remove it! It’s there, beside the bed.’

  And so it was, on the nightstand. The sight of it was immensely reassuring for some reason; even more so, once I had picked it up and judged that it was still running, was the familiar heft of it in my hand. But I didn’t know what to think. Had it all been a dream? Everything had seemed so real! Yet I remembered how, when the bells began to toll, chunks of ice had fallen from the tower. Perhaps one had indeed struck me – knocked me, dazed and bleeding, to the ground. And from there, before I blacked out, I had gazed up and seen the automatons emerging from the tower; from that perspective, they might have loomed large as giants. Yet that did not explain what had happened to my clothes and my dirk.

  Inge, meanwhile, had poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table beside the stove, and this she brought to me now. ‘Here, Herr Gray. You must be parched.’

  I accepted the glass and took a deep swallow … then began to cough – racking coughs that made my ribcage ring like iron and left me aching in every muscle and bone. Only when the fit was over, and I lay back weakly against the pillows, gasping like a fish out of water, a cold sweat clinging to my skin, did I notice that Inge had taken the glass from me before I could spill it over the bedclothes.

  ‘You must take things slowly at first, Herr Gray,’ she admonished, shaking her head sternly, chins jiggling like vanilla puddings.

  With a sense of things clicking belatedly, dreadfully, into place, I asked her how long I had been in bed.

  ‘Adolpheus found you six days ago,’ came the reply.

  Six days! I didn’t remember a moment of even a single one of them. Yet I had no trouble recalling my last moments at the clock tower. They might have taken place just hours ago, they were so fresh in my mind. ‘And was I unconscious all that time?’ I demanded.

  ‘As good as,’ said Inge. ‘You were feverish. Burning up. You raved, ranted. We took turns sitting with you. Tending you like a newborn baby. Adolpheus, the girl and I. Even Herr Doppler.’

  ‘I’m grateful,’ I told her. ‘And sorry for any trouble I caused.’

  ‘Ach, what trouble?’ Inge replied. ‘The important thing is that the fever has broken at last. You’re on the mend now.’

  ‘You’ll be up and about in no time,’ Adolpheus seconded, grinning through his beard.

  ‘But you need to build up your strength,’ said Inge. ‘Do you think you could eat something?’

  ‘I feel as if I could eat a horse,’ I told her.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not on the menu at the Hearth and Home,’ she replied with a smile.

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ interjected Adolpheus.

  She ignored the gibe. ‘I doubt solid food would agree with you just now. Better to start with some nutritious broth. I’ll send up a bowl.’

  ‘Thank you, Inge. You, too, Adolpheus. I’d be dead if you hadn’t come looking for me.’

  ‘As to that, I may have found you, Herr Gray, but it wasn’t from looking. No, I was about my duties, keeping the pathways clear and the lamps lit, when I spotted you. Didn’t know whether to dig you out or finish burying you!’ He chortled. ‘But what happened to your clothes, Herr Gray?’ He tapped the side of his nose with one finger. ‘An afternoon tryst, perhaps, interrupted by a husband unexpectedly returned home?’

  Before I could deny it, Inge broke in.

  ‘Leave off your teasing, Adolpheus. Can’t you see how tired he is? It’s time we took our leave. You, too, Hesta.’

  And in fact, my eyes had drifted shut while Adolpheus spoke. I wasn’t sure if it was a lack of strength or inclination that kept me from opening them again as my visitors left the room. I was tired – I could not remember ever having felt so drained … yet my mind would not stop racing, presenting me with nightmarish images of what I had seen, or hallucinated, and wondering, too, at the mystery of my missing clothes. It seemed that someone must have found me before Adolpheus, and removed them … perhaps wanting me to freeze to death. But who would feel threatened enough by my presence to commit murder? Could it have been Doppler after all?

  My musings were interrupted by the sound of my name. I opened my eyes to see once more the girl who had been watching over me when I first awoke. Perhaps I had dozed off, for I hadn’t heard her come in. She was sitting in a chair drawn up close to the bedside and leaning towards me with an anxious expression, as though eager to wake me yet fearful of it, too. A fine gold chain encircled her neck, and dangling from the end of it was a glittering gold ring, like a wedding band. The girl was young – no more than sixteen or seventeen, I thought; surely the ring could not be her own, or she would be wearing it … unless it had belonged to a husband now deceased. Beneath a pale blue kerchief, two wings of blonde hair fanned to either side of a snowy white forehead whose worry lines added an appealing touch of vulnerability to features that were otherwise flawless. Those lines deepened as she blinked hazel eyes and drew back slightly.

  ‘I-I brought you this,’ she stammered, and raised a steaming wooden bowl from her lap in a flustered motion that sent a portion of the contents spilling over her skirt … at which, to my astonishment, she burst into tears, twisting away from me in the chair.

  ‘Here now,’ I said, sitting up with alacrity, ‘what’s wrong? Are you burned?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  She faced me, her cheeks rosy in the candlelight. She was like a figure in a painting, present yet remote, beautiful and sad, and I ached to know the cause of her distress, and to assuage it if I could. She wiped her face with the back of one sleeve, first one cheek and then the other, reminding me of a cat grooming itself, and gave me an embarrassed smile. ‘Because you will hate me,’ she said.

  ‘Hate you?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘I don’t even know you.’

  Her gaze faltered at that, dropping to her lap, then rose again, resolute now. ‘I took your things,’ she said.

  ‘You mean my clothes …?’ But then, as her blush deepened, comprehension dawned. ‘My tool kit! You’re Herr Doppler’s daughter.’

  She nodded, fresh tears welling in her eyes. ‘You do hate me!’

  I assured her I did not. ‘I’m just glad to have my tools back,’ I said. ‘You did bring them back, didn’t you?’

  She nodded again, sniffling. ‘They’re in your rucksack, where I found them.’

  I heaved a sigh of relief, sinking back against the mound of pillows. ‘Thank God. And thank you, Fraülein.’

  ‘Then … you’re not angry?’

  ‘Your father told me that you took my tool kit to keep me from destroying the tower clock or any of Herr Wachter’s other timepieces. Now that I’ve seen them for myself, or a number of them, anyway, I can appreciate
your concern – not that I approve of what you did. Nor was there ever any danger of my doing what you feared.’

  ‘My father doesn’t understand anything,’ she confided with more than a hint of bitterness, her eyes shifting towards the closed door as if she expected him to come barging in at any moment.

  ‘Then I’m afraid I don’t, either,’ I said.

  ‘Clockmen never stay in Märchen for long,’ she said. ‘They arrive one day and leave the next. I thought that if I stole your tools, you’d be forced to stay.’

  ‘I would have been forced to stay in any case, thanks to the blizzard.’

  ‘But I didn’t know that. When I came to your room, the snow had only just begun to fall. I saw you lying there in bed, sound asleep, and I thought you looked so young, not much older than me, and kind, so that you wouldn’t mind if I sneaked a peek at your tools. Once I had the kit in my hands, I couldn’t stop myself from taking it. I know it was wrong, Herr Gray, but I was afraid you’d leave the next morning if I didn’t do something.’

  ‘But why should it matter to you whether I go or stay?’

  ‘Because’ – and her gaze went to the door again, or perhaps to my rucksack, which was no longer on the floor but hanging from a wooden peg on the back of the door – ‘because I want to be like you. A clockman.’

  So unexpected was this answer that I burst out laughing. ‘A clockman? You?’

  The look she gave me was not tearful but angry; my laughter shrivelled in the fierceness of her gaze. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘Do you think me too dull to understand your arts?’

  ‘No,’ I answered, drawing out the word as I considered how best to proceed. I recalled how Herr Doppler had spoken of his daughter’s mercurial nature, and the way she was clutching the bowl in her lap made me suspect that my next words would determine whether or not I received a faceful of hot broth. ‘It’s just that neither my guild nor any other of which I am aware accepts apprentices of your sex.’