Clock City

by Rebekah Dodson

  “Sebastian,” she coughed, more blood spraying. She lifted her hand weakly and motioned him closer with one plump finger. “My son,” she whispered, “You have to know the truth.”

  I watched as Sebastian leaned in closer. Her voice was barely a whisper. I took to a knee as well to hear her better.

  “... so, they took you to the mines,” she was saying, “I’m so sorry, my son.”

  To my shock, Sebastian was openly weeping now, tears streaming down cheeks smothered with black soot from the fire. The goggles on his head were slipping, and he pushed them back, running a leather sleeve over his face at the same time. “Shh, mother, I know, and it’s okay. You don’t have to—”

  “Matthias helped me get you out, but I couldn’t let them know, so he took you in...” She trailed off, grasping her stomach, and coughing so violently I thought this would be the end.

  “You’re saying you are my real mother?” Sebastian whispered, his shoulders shaking as more tears spilled over his cheeks. “Was Matthias my father?”

  “No, someone else,” Bailia managed, and pulled him even closer. She whispered something in his ear not even I could hear. She coughed again and shook violently, finally stilling as her hand fell to the floor.

  I covered my mouth again as tears streamed down my face as well.

  Sebastian pulled away, and he reached up to close her now vacant eyes. He beckoned Dinga over, who handed him the sheet. Slowly he spread it over Bailia’s face and got to his feet.

  “Oh, Sebastian.”

  On one side of the destroyed bakery, the cobbler and his wife were huddled outside their wooden door, whimpering, and pointing in our direction. On the other side, the seamstress and her three girls were all grasping each other, still in nightgowns and night caps. I could hear the chatter of many voices, and knew a crowd was coming. I shook my head. After such an explosion of fire and death, how was not the entire town here already?

  I stepped around the body with my arms open. I was still trying to process the information. Bailia, his real mother? How could she have abandoned him to the mines? Who was his father? What had she said to him?

  To my surprise, he batted my arms away. His chest was heaving, his breathing coming in heavy gasps. He threw out his arms to each side, and a ball of light burst through to life. I had never seen him produce two at once before. The electricity swirled up his arms and spiraled around his head, until he was covered in sparks. I stepped back into the now smoldering dresser, Dinga hiding behind me.

  He looked like a downed power line I’d seen once after we had a nasty storm, back in my home town.

  “Sebastian? What’s happening? You’re scaring me!”

  “I’m going to kill him,” said Sebastian through clenched teeth, his voice nearly buried in the electricity spreading through his entire body.

  With an agility I hadn’t seen before, he leapt over the crumbled bed frame and cleared the destroyed building. I hurried to keep up, Dinga close behind me.

  The crowd of twenty or so citizens that had gathered in front of the bakery parted immediately to allow him through. Sebastian was a whirlwind of flashes. The lightning lit up the sky around him, arcing off the bronze plates that stood for business signs. He was a walking lightning bolt.

  And he was angry.

  “Sebastian, stop!” I called after him. “You’ll kill everyone around us, this is madness!”

  To my surprise he stopped suddenly, and I nearly fell trying to keep my distance. He turned his head, and I saw his dark brown eyes were so light they were almost golden. “No time, this ends now,” he continued his march to the center of town.

  Toward the piston.

  What of our carefully crafted plan just hours before? Was he going to free the children – but in his efforts, would he electrocute them all? Would he sacrifice the very thing he wanted to save? The Keeper was here somewhere, stalking our every move, and could attack from anywhere. Should we stay together?

  “Dinga, come on,” I hoisted him onto my shoulders. “He’s going to the caves. We have to cut him off.”

  Dinga hugged my neck with his little claws. “Mistress, there’s the way Edwin took us.”

  I nodded, even though I realized he probably couldn’t see me. “I remember.”

  Not wanting to tear my eyes away from Sebastian, but knowing I had to beat him there, I ducked into a side alley. Down one and another, this trip seemed easier in the daylight than it had at sundown. I fled past scurrying blue mice—Dinga’s favorite meal, my mind reminded me—and swatted crimson flies from my face. I ducked into a narrow space between two buildings, remembering clearly the piston center lay just on the other side.

  Before I could emerge from the tiny passage, an explosion rocked the buildings around me. A percussion blast of air hit me so hard I was knocked off my feet, and Dinga went tumbling behind me. A rain of black coal and glass hit me before I even had time to put my arms up as cover. A thousand stings ripped into my face as it hit me. Dinga cried out, a squeal that ended suddenly.

  “Dinga!” I shouted, finally getting my arms up. The last of the glass bounced off my leather cuffs like tiny rubber balls. “Dinga, where are you?”

  “Mistress,” a feeble voice said behind me. I turned and saw Dinga splayed on the ground.

  I rushed to his side. “Dinga, are you okay?” All around us was surrounded by shimmering blue dust, spotted with wooden and bronze rubble.

  “The starlita,” I breathed, recognizing the remains of the explosive, the less deadly cousin of the marlita I’d used to destroy the clock face. It was less deadly, in that it was a valuable jewel that exploded under immense heat, where the marlita exploded with any type of pressure. We had only been able to escape the piston caverns using Sebastian’s lighting power to create an explosion, and even then, the Keeper had still captured us.

  Sebastian.

  He was a danger to everyone in his state. Where was he? Had I been wrong, and he wasn’t headed here at all? What if he was going to the palace, to face the Keeper for one last showdown?

  I wrapped Dinga in my arms, checking to make sure the dagger was still at my waist. It was. We crept to the plaza entrance, and I peeked around the corner of the alley.

  The mirrored piston, designed to be nearly invisible to the town’s people, was one of the first things I had seen of this huge walled town when I first entered Elestra. The huge, ever moving, black rod had been a smear across the sky that led me towards civilization.

  After Edwin imprisoned us there, it had been a thing of nightmares we tried for weeks to escape from. I had learned the people were oblivious to it because of the Keeper’s magic, a spell that hadn’t affected me, the Outsider from another world. The only people who would see it besides me was Dinga, who wasn’t from the city, and Sebastian, who’d spent his childhood below the piston.

  But now the mirrors were all gone, and so was the piston.

  The square was decimated by scraps of metal, glass, and mirrors. It was like the piston had blown sky high, then fallen to the ground and scattered in all directions. Huge metal rods, ten feet tall each, impaled part of the square, buried in the cobblestone pavement. It looked like an alien spacecraft had landed in the square, exploded, and left its terrifying remains.

  The two dead guard’s bodies lay in a mangled heap to one side of the square, the bronze helmets smashed in.

  And scorched black, not with fire, for there was no evidence of the dragons, but from sometime electrical in nature.

  Sebastian.

  Where the piston once stood was a gaping hole, with a curious din erupting from the center. It sounded like cries, but not in hurt or agony. It was joyous cheering.

  “I hear it, Mistress, the children,” Dinga breathed quietly. He was cradling a badly bleeding arm. “Leave me, go see to them,” he whispered.

  I looked down at him. “I can’t! If Sebastian shows up, I have nothing to defend myself.”

  “Not true, Mistress. You have dagger, and your wit
s.”

  I smiled a little, and sat him down, leaning against the wall. “Don’t move. I’ll be back to get you.”

  I peeked out to the plaza once more. Again, it was silent, except for the cheering, which was getting louder. No one else was in sight. Just like the bakery, I wondered if the people were under such a heavy cloud of magic they couldn’t even see what was happening before their very eyes?

  With a deep breath I pulled the dagger free of the sheath and held it before me, slowly creeping out of my hiding space. The first two steps I took were agony. I swept the square, searching for any sign I was seen. No people, no children, no Sebastian. It was now or never.

  I broke into a run towards that hole, leaping over rubble and stumbling around piles of glass. Mirror shards were everywhere, reflecting my leather boots back at me. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead, focused on that pit in the cobblestone square.

  Three feet away, a huge grapple hook soared up and to the corner, hitching onto the steel remains of the evaluator’s frame.

  I skidded to a halt, wondering if it would bring friend or foe to the top.

  A crushed and faded top hat blew into the square first, tumbled a few feet from the hole, and spun out of sight around the square.

  I stood there, dagger at the ready.

  Then, a curly blond head emerged.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Escape and Endure

  I REALIZED I WAS HOLDING my breath.

  “Wyatt!” I screamed.

  Shoving the dagger in the leather sheath at my waist, I thrust my hand down to help him clear the escape ladder.

  He frowned at me, shaking his head. “Alayna? What is going on?” He peered at me more closely. “Are you okay?”

  I resisted the urge to wipe a hand across my face, knowing it would bury the glass even deeper. “I’ll be fine. What of the children?”

  “The children, they—”

  “Are they...?” I couldn’t cough out the word.

  Had the Keeper destroyed some of them when we had escaped?

  “They are still down there, trying to get the rest of the children up as fast as possible.” He paused, looking behind me. “Help us! This might be our only chance.”

  Another head poked up. the ruddy face of another teenage boy younger than Wyatt emerging. Wyatt hoisted him up. Then another, and another. A small girl carrying a ragged doll with its head missing crawled over the edge.

  When nearly two dozen children were on the surface, Wyatt turned to me. “Where’s Sebastian?”

  “That’s what I came here for,” I grabbed the arm of another small boy. “The Keeper, he killed Sebastian’s mother. Sebastian’s out of control. He’s gone missing.”

  “Mother?” Wyatt cocked his head sideways.

  “No time to explain,” I was breathing heavy now, helping an older girl. Behind me, adults were rushing into the square. They seemed dazed, shaking their heads as if they were waking from a long sleep. “Sebastian—he’s not himself. The light spinning, it’s somehow controlling him.”

  “And he’s headed here?” Wyatt grunted pulling a small girl, barely old enough to walk, free from the pit.

  “I’m afraid so,” I shook my head. “And I’m afraid the explosion has drawn a crowd to us.” I motioned behind me.

  Wyatt gave a low whistle. “Maybe the Keeper’s spell is fading from their memories.”

  “It should be,” I murmured, setting a little boy down behind me.

  “The automatons just stopped working,” Wyatt explained, “at first we thought they were broken, and we were too afraid to do anything. But when we realized they weren’t coming back to life, we worked fast to—”

  Wyatt gasped as he reached in to take another hand. The young woman with long, straight, brown hair emerged, her big blue eyes wide with fear. I reached in to help him.

  “Aila,” I breathed.

  She emerged with her hands around her belly. The child she was carrying had grown exponentially in the weeks since I’d seen her last. Her tattered dress barely covered her swollen stomach.

  “She’s been having the pains already,” Wyatt whispered, turning to help another child. “Please, get her somewhere safe.”

  Aila’s eyes flittered around the square. They were glossy and wide as if she was on the brink of tears. “Alayna, aye, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  I put on my bravest smile. “Come on; let’s get you out of here.”

  Between the two of us, Wyatt and I had managed to get around fifty children to the surface. Wyatt had his work cut out for him, there was easily a couple hundred left to go. The children were huddled close together, eyes adjusting to the bright morning sunlight, unsure what to do or where to go. I suppose we hadn’t thought this far ahead.

  “Miranda!” A woman dressed in a flowing green dress with gold embroidery, was running across the square with her skirts held high.

  The girl with the doll I’d helped looked up, a wide smile spreading across her dirty face. “Mother?”

  The woman, who seemed unaware of her finery, skidded to her knees, and hoisted the child into her arms. Both were sobbing as the mother murmured into the child’s matted and dingy hair.

  The crowd on the other side of the square suddenly exploded. Men in bright yellow trousers, followed by their lower-class counterparts in ripped tan pants and suspenders, all flooded the square. The shouts of children’s names filled the air, as a plethora of small voices answered their parents’ calls.

  I slung Aila’s arm around my shoulder. “Come on, we have to get out of here, before this crowd traps us.”

  My eyes locked onto the narrow alley where I’d left Dinga. Even injured, he would know where we could go. I swept the courtyard, looking for any sign of Sebastian, or the Keeper. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I was wrong, and he wasn’t headed here. Maybe he’d headed to the palace.

  It was slow progress across the courtyard. Men and women were pushing to get ahead, some falling and rising over the debris, oblivious to their cuts and bruises in a rush to get their children.

  Aila let out a scream and grabbed her stomach. I felt a rush of water hit my pant leg and I panicked.

  “Oh my god.” I clamped a hand over my mouth.

  “What’s happening?” she cried.

  “Hold on! Come on, we have to get out of here.” I knew she was scared, and her water had broken and flooded around us. This baby was coming quicker than we had time for.

  She could barely walk, so great were her pains, but I managed to half drag her to the alley. I urged my power forward, channeling my healing energy as much as I could. Dinga was nowhere in sight. I cursed under my breath. Halfway down the alley I spotted a brown door, painting to look like brick. I released Aila to the ground and crunched over, holding her stomach. “He’s coming, Alayna, he’s coming! I can’t...”

  “You can’t have the baby here!” I pounded on the door. “Please, is someone there? We need help!”

  “You stay away!” a female voice called from inside the entrance.

  Aila’s scream split my ears. I looked down to see a puddle spreading around her, staining her brown skirt dark. “Oh god.” I knew time was of the essence now.

  She looked up at me, tears dripping down her face. “I can’t hold on, Alayna, I can’t.”

  I pounded on the door again. I didn’t know the first thing about babies. I didn’t even know where to start. “Please!” I cried again. “There’s a young girl out here and she’s about to have a baby! Show mercy, please!”

  The door finally creaked open an inch. The sleepy face of an older woman peered at me, still in nightgown and sleeping cap, despite the spreading dawn and the chaos at her doorstep. I recognized her red lips and rosy cheeks – she owned the seamstress shop. When I first entered Clock City, escorted by knights, I had watched her carefully tie brown paper packages with twine and hand them to the finest dressed ladies.

  “I want none of this nonsense!” She hissed and shut the door again.

/>   “My friend is going to have a baby any moment, and I need your help!”

  “Nonsense!” The old woman said again. “A baby hasn’t been born in this kingdom in a cog’s twill. You lie!”

  Cog’s twill? I had no idea what that meant. Aila moaned again, and the water beneath her was turning a shade of crimson. Oh, no. Oh, God, this was bad.

  I tried again and braced myself to the fact I’d be the only one to help this baby into the world. “If that’s true, then this is a miracle. And if you don’t help us the rebellion will have died for nothing!”

  Then, a young female voice: “Alayna?”

  I recognized that voice. “Yes! It’s me, let us in!”

  “Mother, she knows of the Order. You have to let them in.”

  I heard a hushed argument between the two women I couldn’t make out.

  The door flew wide open, then. The young girl that stood behind the old woman looked so different from the last time I’d seen her. She’d traded in the pale-yellow lacey hat that covered her eyes and ivory evening gown that buttoned to her chin for a blue striped nightgown that reached the floor. She had been by far the youngest member of the rebellion, who sat silent, only two seats down from Victor.

  I’d last seen her the night that Edwin had brought us to the Order of the Dragon Key, in the base under Bailia’s bakery. The base that was now buried under a mile of rubble.

  “I’m Pearl,” she nodded, “and my mother, Madeline.”

  I nodded a swift greeting.

  “Help me get her inside.”

  Pearl and I managed to shift Aila’s small frame into the door, which was no easy deed. Madeline was busy clearing a cluttered sofa near the back door of the seamstress shop. “Here, put her here!” she demanded.

  Aila moaned and threw her head to one side. Her eyes popped open and she shuddered with another contraction. Pearl threw up Aila’s skirt to inspect the progress.