He could heat the furnace bell enough to fire and hammer his own metal. Doc used snips to cut the shapes he needed for the clockwork. Using the tools, he would refine the shapes to add to their precision. What he could not do was mine his own metal or grow it from trees. He had to venture into the village for those supplies, and every time he did, he risked being discovered by the debt collectors or the tinkerers again. For that reason, he did his best to patch and rework the gears and cogs from failed projects.
Something moved along the base of the wall at the edge of his vision and vanished under the shadow of his cot. Doc glanced over the end of the table still holding the tool and the flawed gear.
He heard the scratching begin in a steady rhythm under the cot. Doc set the gear and tool down to slide out to the edge of the bench. He watched the shadows and listened to the grinding competing with the ticking of the clocks. The scratching skipped a beat and resumed. Doc closed his eyes and shuddered.
He stood and walked toward the end of the cot. Doc slid the cot out slowly and revealing blackened circles where the legs had sat.
The mouse skittered along the floor toward the door of the cottage. Doc turned and stomped. His foot caught the creature’s tail and the mouse pulled his claws through the dust in the floor without escaping the clockmaker’s shoe.
He had eaten mice before, but Doc considered whether he felt inclined to skin the creature and fire the furnace for so small a lunch.
“You came to chew dust, wood, and clocks, did you?”
Doc reached down with his left hand and lifted the mouse in his fist. The creature quivered in his grasp. He held the rodent at face level and stared into the tiny black dots of its eyes. The mouse sunk its teeth into Doc’s finger and he screamed. He shook his hand from side to side, but the mouse clung where his teeth pierced the skin down to the bone on both sides of the digit. Doc quivered as he wrapped his other fingers around the mouse’s body. Pain laced up his arm and drained his strength. He clinched his jaws and squeezed his hand shut.
The mouse squeaked and bit down harder. Doc felt the teeth grind against the bone. Tears leaked from the outside corners of his eyes and sweat erupted on his forehead. He squeezed harder. The black dots glossed over in red. Blood speckled the ends of the fur along the mouse’s nose. Doc wasn’t sure if the blood was his or from the body of the mouse.
The creature went slack and Doc shook his hand. The mouse’s body flew aside and he clapped his right hand over his bloody finger. He looked around the floor, but could not find the mouse. Doc looked into the pots, but did not spot it. Then, he saw it sprawled on his velvet. Doc swept away his tools and the gear he had been cleaning.
He pulled the tail to get it away from his workspace, but then he stopped and stared into its reddened eyes. Doc sat down and wiped the blood off the mouse’s nose with his thumb.
“I was going to eat you anyway.”
Doc thought about the bodies he had failed to keep alive as a doctor in the village of his birth. He thought about fleeing the tinkerers when he couldn’t meet their terms for their help with his shoes and the orders from his creditors.
He spread the mouse’s body on the velvet and lifted the pin blade. Doc drew point down the middle of the creature’s chest and pulled open the sides of the cut with his fingers. He set down the blade and inserted the snips. Doc clicked three times and lifted out the tiny heart. He stared at it a moment and dropped it into one of the pieces of crockery.
Doc began gathering his smallest gears and cogs. He found a spoke in one of the cracks on the table and tried to feed it through the centers of the cogs, but it was too thick. He looked for something smaller.
He placed the magnifying monocle over his eye and adjusted the lens.
Doc used his probes to begin his construction. He took bits of discarded wire to mount his tiny clockwork between muscles, bone, and sinew. He stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he worked. His mouth twisted up from his teeth as he used some cross-breed of the skills from his days before the grieving families ran him out of his physicianry and the lonely years of refining clocks in the deep woods.
Doc used the magnifier to help him thread a needle which he used to sew up the mouse’s chest. He knotted and snipped off the thread before he tapped the creature’s chest with the blunt end of a probe.
He heard the gears whirl inside and he waited. The tiny rodent twitched and pitched over onto his belly. It lifted itself on its legs and twisted its head from side to side. The mouse looked up at Doc with its red dots of eyes. It blinked and Doc heard its new heart ticking. He held out its bleeding hand and the mouse hopped on his palm. The mouse sniffed at the blood seeping out of the gashes on his finger. Doc waited to see how the mouse’s new heart might affect his desire to bite. The mouse extended its neck and licked at the wound. Doc gritted his teeth and waited for the creature to bite again.
The mouse fell to its side and closed its red eyes. Doc shook him in his palm, but the mouse did not rouse. He held his bleeding hand to his ear and listened. Over the ticking and tocking of the larger clocks in the room, he heard the tiny heart still clicking away inside.
The timing was off slightly.
He stared at the mouse and frowned. “Will your grieving family run me out of my village of one, Mouse?”
Doc set the body back onto the black velvet and rubbed at his rough chin with his unbitten hand.
“Was it the moisture of the blood perhaps? I have such trouble with water in my clocks. I gave you a heart that gives out when you try to drink.”
Doc clipped the stitches to open the chest again. He put on his monocle and used brushes and pins to adjust the heart’s clockwork. The mouse’s muscles twitched in time with the heart, but the creature remained on its back.
Doc Hickory gathered the spare parts around the table and began replacing other organs and connections within the body. He eventually ran short on properly sized parts.
He stood from the table and stoked the belly of the furnace until the flames licked too high for cooking food.
Doc returned to the table and used a long blade to shave the fur off the mouse. He sliced the tail away and connected a section of segmented brass cord in its place. He pitched the hard, fleshy tail onto a greasy plate at the end of the table. Doc used twisters to pull at a wheel inside the open body. The new tail swished from side to side on the velvet like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
He stood and attended the fire again. Doc gathered the larger parts from the table and fed the metal into the furnace. The clocks around him chimed the hours as he melted the metal, poured, hammered, recast, cooled, and cut tiny parts and shapes.
As he replaced the outside flesh of the mouse’s body, he carved and colored designs on the brass and copper panels.
After a while, he stood and lit an oil lamp on a peg. He returned to his construction.
When he had triple-checked his connections, Doc used a screwdriver to bolt the chest plates shut. He held the mouse up and listened to the ticking in its chest.
“Still not perfect.”
Doc tapped the metal chest with the blunt end of the probe and waited. The mouse’s legs whirled on their axils. The overlapping plates twisted and slid over one another catching the light from the lantern in their detailed designs of tiny carved flowers, leaves, and stars. The beautiful mouse righted itself and blinked its glowing red eyes at its creator with the tiniest of clicks from the lids in time with its clockwork heart.
Doc Hickory smiled and turned to look out into the pitch night of the woods. He shivered and a tiny sound escaped his own throat in a squeak. The mouse twisted its metal face to look up at Doc’s mouth as if the creature had been called.
“I waited too late. I did not set the lanterns or wires. We are exposed.”
Doc used his free hand to yank the poles out of the windows letting the boards slam closed. He tied them off and dropped the board to bar the door. He stood in the center of the room by the table under the
lantern light holding the automated mouse in one hand.
He listened to the ticking and waited for other sounds that might be approaching in the distance. The clocks chimed around the walls once each. Doc startled and held the table to keep his feet. The mouse clutched Doc’s fingers with its copper claws to keep from falling.
“How did I let it get so late?”
The chimes fell away, but something was missing. Doc turned and looked at one coo-coo hanging out of his door without going back inside. The bell cords were locked under the frame of the clock and the carved bird sat on his plank suspended in the air. The clock hummed without releasing the note.
Doc glanced down and saw the mouse staring at the offending bird. “A gear is stuck. I would be up the rest of the night trying to fix it. I might smash it and use the guts to build you a companion. What do you say, Mouse?”
The creature climbed out to the edge of his fingers and leaned out into the air. It waved one claw at the humming clock across the room.
“Do you wish to take a turn to silence the coo-coo?”
The mouse continued to wave, so Doc approached the clock. He lifted his hand and the metal rodent jumped through the door past the bird. Doc stared and listened to the hum.
“Curious.”
The humming stopped and the bird retreated into the clock slamming the miniature door. Doc tilted his head. The clock sounded a single chime and the cords resumed their stuttered pace under the frame. Doc reached up and tapped the minute hand forward a few degrees on the clock’s face.
Doc pulled his finger away and hissed. He looked down and saw the gashes had clotted, but pink lines of poison snaked down into the hand marking infection. The skin around the bites swelled hot and red.
He shook his head. “I survived angry mobs, the threats of human creditors, and unpaid debt to the tinkerers. Now I’ll die from a rodent’s nip.”
Doc turned and looked around the cottage. He smiled.
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
He heard a scratching. Doc turned and faced the door with eyes wide. He tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
He heard a squeak of metal on metal. Doc turned and saw the mouse had crawled out of the bottom of the clock. The creature tilted its head up at Doc, blinking its red eyes as it hung from the cords. The mouse squeaked again.
Doc held out his good hand. The mouse climbed over his fingers and ran up his arm to his shoulder.
“Where did you learn to squeak like that, Mouse? I don’t think I built that into you.”
The ticking of the heart was the only response in Doc’s ear. He walked to the cot and lay down slowly. The mouse skittered up onto Doc’s chest as the former shoemaker came to rest on his back.
Doc’s eyes slid closed. “Warn me if anyone comes looking to collect on old debts, Mouse, will you?”
The mouse curled up between the buttons on the former doctor’s shirt.
Doc normally slept through the night chimings of his clocks, but he found himself stirring every fifteen minutes with even the soft tones between hours. He felt the mouse’s body ticking against his chest and he drifted back to sleep. In time, the pain in his finger subsided during the night and he slept through the early morning hours.
#
Doc awoke with light bleeding through the edges of the window boards. He slept later than usual and had failed to close the doors properly the night before. He felt the mouse stir.
Doc sat up slowly and the mouse climbed up onto his right shoulder.
He cleared his throat and rubbed his injured finger against his other fingers and thumb on that hand. He felt no pain.
Doc heard the clink and scratch of metal on metal. He froze. Doc listened, but heard only the ticking from the mouse and the clocks.
He spotted the table and his breath caught in his chest. The crockery and plates were washed and stacked neatly on one end.
“Please, tell me you did that, Mouse.”
He stood and looked down at his finger. After a moment, he dropped back to sitting on the cot and shook. Doc used his right hand to feel his metal fingers, wrist, arm, and shoulder. At his shoulder, he felt the leather straps that attached his new arm to his body. Doc unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off his left arm. The designs were far more detailed than he had ever created. Doc bent each of the joints on the metal arm. He felt the gears and cogs turning with his commands.
“No, no, no.”
Doc stood and lifted the board off the door. He pushed it open and walked out into the yard.
“I did not ask you for this. I did not know what I was asking when you came to make the shoes. I just want to be left alone.”
The mouse’s heart ticked next to his ears, but only the birds answered from the trees.
Doc unhooked the straps and pulled the metal arm away from the joint connection. He threw it out to the edge of the clearing where it landed in a puddle.
“I will not accept anything else from you, tinkerers.”
Doc went into the open workshop and lifted out wood with his one arm. He spent the day hammering boards over the windows.
As darkness approached, he lit lanterns around the edge of the clearing. He did not have time to connect the wires or to spread the powder. He spotted the arm again. Doc lifted it by the elbow and took it into his cottage.
He heated the furnace as he barred the door. Doc dumped the arm inside to melt. The mouse squeaked on his shoulder.
Doc noticed discolored spots on the wall over his cot where three clocks were missing. He looked around the room and tried to remember if they had been missing all day.
“Do you remember what happened, Mouse?”
As his clocks struck the hour, Doc collapsed on his cot and covered his eyes with his one hand.
#
Doc awoke to the sound of six chimes all around him. The only light came from the dying coals in the belly of the furnace. He sat up and held the cot with both hands. He heard the mouse’s claws clicking up his metal chest and he knew he was in trouble.
Doc felt along the wall toward the door. He moved around the clocks, but he found more of them missing from their spots. He moved the bar and opened the door. In the light of the rising sun, he saw both arms had been replaced by mechanical copies. Large bolts connected them over his chest so he could not simply unstrap them.
He stepped out of the cottage and saw all the lanterns were gone. A large, stone smelting furnace had been constructed in the middle of the clearing. Smoke still drifted up from its chimney. Doc looked down at his metal arms and recognized the materials from the lanterns.
He turned and saw the boards pulled away from the windows and the nails missing.
“Why are they doing this?”
The mouse ticked next to his ear.
“Is this my overdue payment for your work with the shoes, tinkerers, or a new debt? Am I being punished finally for the lives I failed to save?”
Doc worked through the day building walls and fences around the clearing with the wood from the workshop. Once he ran through his supply, he began disassembling the projects from the loft. After that, he took apart the barn to build his walls.
“Let them eat dust and wood before they get to my clockwork again.”
By nightfall, he finished. His new clockwork arms proved very efficient and tireless. Doc set the wires around the property and scattered the wood dust. He barred the door and tied down the boards over the window. His mouse clicked up onto his metal chest between bolts and curled into a ball.
“I should have built a guard dog.”
Doc listened to the quarter-hour chimes and the strikes of the hours from his diminishing supply of clocks. He stared at the ceiling in the darkness.
“I could not be sorrier for everything I’ve taken and everything I have done. I would eat dust, wood, and clockwork if it would grant me forgiveness and relief.”
He did not realize he finally fell asleep until he awoke the next morning.
#
Doc opened his eyes to full light and silence. He sat up and looked out the front window and door built of fine glass. His barriers were deconstructed and stacked neatly next to the tinkerers’ smelting furnace. The table and furniture except for his cot and one grandfather clock were gone from inside the cottage. In their place, the floor lined from wall to wall with tiny beds small enough for a mouse or maybe a creature slightly bigger.
The mouse squeaked twice next to Doc’s ear.
He stood and looked down at his metal body like a suit of armor. He felt the wheels and wires moving inside him as he inspected his clockwork arms and legs. He walked out of the cottage being careful not to crush any of the empty beds with his metal feet that appeared to be the same color as the belly of his missing furnace.
Doc looked down in the dust in the clearing and saw countless footprints left by perfect, miniature shoes. Doc tried to swallow in his dry throat and felt the gears in his neck twirl with the effort. He reached up and felt his head realizing it was the only flesh-and-blood part of his body remaining.
“One more payment due tonight, I suppose.”
As he spoke, the metal mouse jumped up onto Doc’s hand. Doc Hickory leaned over with the clicking of the clockwork inside him and set the mouse on the sill next to his new glass window.
“Stay here, Mouse. The tinkerers will take care of you. Tell them I decided to try to run from my debts one last time.”
Doc turned away and walked through the clearing. He stepped between the trees and up the slope. Doc walked down the other side to the shore of the lake. He stepped into the water and kept going.
Water poured into his joints and fouled his gears as he sunk below the surface. His clockwork body seized and silenced before he drowned.
Doc blacked out below the water of the lake.
#
Doc opened his eyes and looked out across the neatly made beds inside the cottage made entirely of glass in metal frames. He looked about and noted how tight the seals were to keep moisture out as sunshine poured in through the glass roof.
OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology Page 27
