by Jon Jacks
‘Neris? What’s wrong?’
Neris smiled wanly.
‘My…flame…fighting for ox…oxygen, I thi–’
She froze, her eyes wide with surprise.
‘Durndrin!’ Carey cried out as she dashed towards where he was painstakingly inspecting the doors. ‘I need to take a light from your flame–’
‘Carey!’ Durndrin interrupted her urgently, having fleetingly glanced back to see the motionless Neris. ‘She’s the ultimate professional, who always insists the show must go on! And the show this time is getting you through these doors before those soldiers tire of chasing Dougy and head back here!’
Carey uncertainly looked Neris’s way. Then she looked back to Durndrin and nodded; yes, he was right.
‘So we need a code,’ she said, studying the door panels as closely as he was, pressing on a piece of embossed coral in the hope that it would set in motion some secret mechanism.
‘It’s not the coral even though, yes, that’s what sank the ship.’
Durndrin spoke disinterestedly, his focus still on working out how to open the doors.
Turning his head, he looked back towards the gallery.
‘The nail; according to the Illuminator, the weakness was a nail.’
‘A nail?’ Carey moaned desperately, looking the doors up and down. ‘Have you seen how many nails there are in these doors?’
Bulbously-headed iron nails formed a great deal of the design, giving a sense of robustness to the general pattern. The huge iron hinges that stretched across each door were also held firmly in place by thick bolts and screws that could also easily be described as being nails. Even worse, various types of smaller, less obvious nails had been used to fix the copper panels within their decoratively carved wooden frames.
‘Besides,’ Carey added more hopefully, ‘these doors have obviously been here long before he started thinking of his story.’
‘Hmn, you’re sure of that are you, Carey?’ Durndrin was doing his best to carefully check each nail. ‘What if he’s had his idea for the story flowing around in his head for years?’ With a flick of his head, he indicated the gallery lying behind him. ‘What if all this work’s not meant to be published, but is just here as a clue to cracking the code?’
‘Why give anybody a clue? And just how literally are we supposed to take his tale anyway?
‘Your first question; who knows? A test? Your second; very literally, I suspect. This is the Illuminator, remember?’
Carey tried to push on both doors at once, in a vain attempt to see if their movement revealed anything that seemed slightly loose. The doors didn’t even move.
‘It’s like trying to move aside two massive ships!’
‘Two?’ Durndrin repeated curiously, stepping back and taking a fresh look at the doors. ‘There was only one ship.’
‘Now that’s really being too literal, Durndrin!’
‘Hmn, I’m not so sure,’ Durndrin answered, moving away from where the doors came together and, stepping over towards one side of the door frame, swiftly running his hands over every piece of wood, copper or iron decoration he could see. ‘One ship, one door?’
He touched one of the huge hinges that fixed this particular door to the frame.
‘Iron,’ he whispered, deep in thought. ‘The elemental flaw.’
His fingers moved lightly and quickly over the hinge’s elaborately ornamental swirls.
‘Iron’s an element; does that mean it has a flaw?’
He grimaced in disappointment as, arriving at the point where the hinge was fixed to the frame, he had to admit he hadn’t found any deliberate weakness along its entire length.
‘No no; wait!’ he declared excitedly. ‘It’s a flaw which makes it entirely useless! The nail without its head isn’t a nail!’
He ran his fingers and his eyes over the area where the hinge flared out to accept the iron bar holding both it and therefore the door in place.
‘So for a hinge that would mean it isn’t really a hinge, which would mean – yes!’
There was an almost invisible gap between the great piece of iron that was fixed to the door and the flared section that supposedly held it to the frame.
‘So if I’m right that all this is really one great door–’
Grabbing a decorative swirl of the hinge and using it like a handle, he pulled hard; and the hinge on his side cleanly snapped apart, the great door beginning to swing open on the hinge fixed to the other side of the frame.
‘It is one door!’ Carey gasped with relief.
Durndrin was obviously struggling to pull the door open. Even though there wasn’t much of a gap, he urgently groaned, ‘It’s got a really strong spring – quick, Carey! Get through the gap!’
Carey slipped through it, spinning around with the intention of pushing against the door to allow Durndrin to follow her.
‘Carey!’ Durndrin yelled in alarm. ‘I can’t hold it anymo–’
The door slammed shut behind Carey, leaving her last friend on the other side.
*
Chapter 35
Normally when a door slams shut on you, you suddenly become aware of the silence.
In Carey’s case, she suddenly became aware of the clash of steel, the frightening whinnying of a horse, and the aggressive snorting of some unknown beast.
She whirled around.
A knight and his mount, both of whom were suffering the Fading, were desperately fighting a ferociously taloned dragon. Carey had always thought of dragons as being mythical creatures, but apart from the fact that he was as faint and mirage-like as his opponents, this one seemed real enough.
The thunderous noise vanished in an instant as the knight and dragon disappeared, an old woman feeding hungrily clucking chickens appearing alongside in their place. She, too, seemed to be a victim of the Fading, and she too suddenly vanished, replaced by sailors being uncontrollably tossed across the angled deck of a storm-tossed ship,
Abruptly, the booming roar of wind and waves vanished, but this time the men were left struggling against the storm in total silence until they in turn were replaced by a young couple trying to make their way through a mountain’s thick snow.
A tinkling of cups to her right made Cary turn away from the transparent reflections of life and look over to another part of the room. A man was standing by a small table, set out for tea-for-two. He was reasonably young, even handsome, and dressed like a meagrely paid teacher; not at all what Carey had been expecting.
‘It’s a good to see you again, Carey,’ the man said as he poured tea from a teapot into the two cups on the table.
‘Again?’
‘Ah yes, of course, you don’t remember of course.’ Putting down the teapot, he began to add milk to the tea. ‘A necessary precaution, I’m afraid; but one I finally hope to set right.’
He poured just a hint of milk into one cup and, with a wave of his hand, he invited Carey to take a seat.
Carey’s eyes were on the tea set; half white, half flame red, with three fleeing figures portrayed in magenta.
‘So it was true?’ Carey asked as she drew closer to the table. ‘The tale of The Porcelain Doll was true?’
The man carefully placed the milk jug next to the elegantly tall teapot. The faint images gradually circling the room were now passing behind him; a family boating on a lake, an elaborate ballet production, a battle waged between armies mounted on mammoths.
Carey noticed that the teapot was missing its fleeing family.
‘Some say such a story isn’t possible,’ the man said, his voice rich and melodiously entrancing, ‘but who decides what’s possible and what isn’t in a story; or, for that matter, what is and what isn’t in reality?’
Now seated at the table, Carey took a sip of her tea. She couldn’t mistake the perfumed tones of an excellent Earl Grey.
‘You have to stop your
carriage,’ Carey declared firmly, as if suddenly remembering why she was really here. ‘We don’t want our story told!’
Sitting down at the table, the man shook his head apologetically.
‘Too late for that, my dear; I mean, I’m afraid your story was being told long before you entered the forest.’
‘But I just saw your carriage leave!’ Carey protested.
‘Ah, yes; just a little bit of theatre to spur you on – and to prove to you that the Princess isn’t completely aware of everything I put in motion. This story of you for instance; I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve added my own, personal postscript? I’d like someone very dear to me to finally have something a little better than a “sort of” happy ending.’
‘Someone dear to you? The Princess? What right do you have to decide what makes someone happy?’
The man hung his head almost shamefully.
‘I don’t presume any such thing, Carey; as you can see, this room and I just act as a conduit, a channel, for all the world’s imagination and emotion.’
He drew Carey’s attention back to the images languidly whirling around the room. The knight was now badly injured and, in a daze, he and his exhausted horse were being led by a cackling demon. A wolf slinked back into the forest, a chicken between his teeth. The ship rose out of the water, caught in the fateful embrace of the multi-tentacled kraken. The young couple were crossing a precariously delicate bridge spanning the gap between mountains.
‘Ask any writer, any composer, any artist, Carey, and they will tell you that their creations seems to flow through them from something lying outside and beyond them; and that’s because they mistakenly believe that they are the reality, rather than this something, the linking of the consciousness of each and every one of us.’
‘But you’ve taken control of it; turned yourself into some sort of…of god!’
As he rose from his seat and stepped towards the ever-changing images, the man shook his head sadly.
‘That’s the elemental flaw, to believe that there are gods or such things that have control over us. Yet if that were true, we’d have no control over anything – when we quite clearly do. But by thinking they might exist, we give them life, relieving ourselves of any sense of responsibility while placing control of our lives in their hands.’
He reached into an image of a library and, when he withdrew his hand, he was holding a book. He placed it on the table in front of Carey.
The Porcelain Room.
Carey stared at the title of the book placed before her.
‘While you read it, I’d like to finish some work,’ the man said, stepping away again and this time completely immersing himself in one of the images.
The grappling armoured bears froze around him, their sword strokes and defensive moves of their shields halted in mid-action. With a whirl of his hands, a two-dimensional version of the scene began to appear before him, hovering in the air, the colours smoothly flowing from his fingertips.
Carey would have liked to watch him work.
But most of all, she wanted to read the book.
*
Chapter 36
When she opened the book, the very first illustration made her gasp.
‘Father!’
She shook her head, telling herself not to be so silly.
Of course, it was her grandfather, or great granddad, or whatever relation he was to her. Obviously, there’d be a family resemblance.
She was tempted to flick through the first part of the story, as the Princess had already told her that part. But even at a glance of the text and illustrations, Carey could see that the book’s version of the tale differed slightly to the one told by the Princess.
A book will always be different to a remembered tale. But it also contained details that the Princess had probably deemed unimportant when it came to her retelling of the story; yet to Carey, they were very important indeed.
The wonderfully vivid illustration of the puppet theatre putting on The Porcelain Child showed Grudo before he had attained his mechanical life. Yet here he was given a semblance of life, for Carey’s grandfather had ingeniously connected his own limbs to Grudo’s using thin rods, such that the looming giant – positioned high above even her grandfather on a raised section behind the stage – appeared to be the real Puppet Master. Another revelation was the unveiling of the porcelain child at the end of the show, for she was truly beautiful, truly astonishing, as she sparkled whiter than a crisp layer of snow.
Naturally, all the illustrations were wondrously beautiful. There was a particularly highly detailed series portraying her grandfather working on the mechanism for the puppets that the Illuminator had revealed to him. Carey could clearly make out the way he’d painstakingly constructed the spirit reservoirs, the complicated array of cogs, pulleys and wires, all in sizes that would have confounded an accomplished watchmaker. Then, studiously and laboriously, he had fixed all these workings into his chosen puppets.
Once he knew the secret, Carey wondered, why didn’t he give life to more of his puppets? Was it something to do with whatever agreement he’d made with the Illuminator?
When it came to bringing life to his daughter, it wasn’t just his skill that shone out from the illustrations, but also his incredible love for his child. And whether it was the addition of that love, or whether it was something extra included in that agreement with the Illuminator, there was obviously already something different in the way his daughter came to life as he lit her flame and closed the compartment over her heart.
‘Father?’ she said, smiling at him dreamily as her eyes unhurriedly blinked open. ‘How long have I been sleeping?’
Her father reached out towards her, stroking her face with the most incredible tenderness.
‘A long long time, my darling,’ he said, fighting hard to hold back his tears. ‘Far longer than I would have wished for; but you’re awake now.’
Rising up from where she had been uncomfortably slumped in the caravan’s cosiest chair, she wrapped her arms around her father.
‘I do love you dad!’ she cried happily.
*
Chapter 37
The Princess had known her father after all!
She had loved her father!
And yet her father had freely given her up, leaving her to live here instead with the Illuminator!
Carey was shocked. She had even stopped reading the book for a while, glancing up at the Illuminator as he swiftly worked on the illustration of some strange contraption that seemed to be flying in the air.
How could he have insisted that the Princess was separated from her father and left with him?
Over the next few pages of the book, it was patently clear that father and daughter loved each other so much that they delighted in enjoying the simplest pleasures together; repairing a wheel of the caravan, taking a walk in a country lane, mixing paints for the posters and puppets. He was joyfully amazed when she simply called him ‘Father’, and happier than any man could be when he held her in his arms and told her he loved her. And in each illustration, the girl was incredibly becoming more beautiful, more real, such that there was increasingly little difference between her and a real girl.
As Carey read on, she began to spot more and more elements in the tale that the Princess either hadn’t thought to mention or wasn’t even aware of herself. Then again, of course, Carey had fled the room before the Princess had had the chance to explain more.
She turned a page; and her grandfather was standing for the first time in the very room that Carey was now seated in.
*
Chapter 38
The Porcelain Room
Pages 25 to 35
When he had finally gotten over the shock of seeing all the flickering images revolving round the room, the Father looked more closely about him with even more confusion.
‘But my materials; to do as you ask, I need the clay, my work tools.’
The Illuminator smiled as he shook his head.
‘No; you need only your love, which you have in abundance.’
With a wave of his hand, the images surrounding them vanished. In their place was an image that made the Father gasp with joy.
It was his daughter, happily playing in the palace’s garden where he had left her only moments before. She was watching the butterflies flitter between the blooms, their bright tones contrasting with equally vibrant shades of the flowers. She laughed in delight as swallows swooped low across the garden’s fountains, dipping their beaks in the pooling water.
‘Now, you’re sure you’re willing to make the sacrifice we spoke of?’
‘I’m sure,’ the Father answered.
He loved his daughter more than he could ever have possibly imagined he would. To give his daughter a real life, he would happily give even his own life.
‘As we both know,’ he continued resignedly, stepping closer to the translucent image of his daughter, wanting to touch and hug her once more, ‘handling the chemicals for my porcelain has already shortened my life anyway; I’m willing to embrace the Fading for the sake of–’
He gasped in surprise as, reaching out to touch his daughter’s cheek, materials began to flow from his fingertips. As his hands now instinctively moved through the air, he saw he was recreating a physical image of his daughter right before him.
But no; it wasn’t an image, he realised. This girl he was creating was every bit as real, as beautiful, as his own daughter. There were slight differences too; this girl was made of porcelain, just as his own daughter had originally been formed from it. Her dress was different too, being the white lace and expensive pearls of a dress fit for a princess.
He cried as he was filled with a sense of incredible joy, feeling the presence of his wife as she worked through him, her love combining indistinguishably with his love in this act that would finally grant a real, true life to their daughter.
The Princess standing before him opened her eyes dreamily, as if simply waking up from a long long sleep.
‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry,’ she said drowsily, ‘I must have been asleep.’
