Clockwork Twist : Waking (24 page)

“Come in!” he called to Jiran. “It's so warm...” he purred, diving back down, only to come up just as easily, to smile at her again.  The others, meanwhile, finally caught up to Jiran.

“I'm not dressed for swimming,” Jiran said, her words striking Twist as quite British in color, as she smiled down at him in the water.

“Idris!” Vane called, swimming closer to where the djinn stood on the pier. “I really wish Jiran was wearing a tiny little swimming costume, like the ones some of these island girls wear.”

“Don't you dare!” Jiran snapped instantly at Idris.

“But I'd like to see that, too,” Idris said, grinning at her.

“I'll second that as well,” Jonas said, raising a hand.  Quay nodded silently, watching the exchange with great interest.

“Men are all alike,” Cybele sighed, crossing her arms.

“If he grants that wish, I won't speak to you for a month,” Jiran said coldly to Vane.

“You're not losing much,” Jonas said to Vane.

“I'd take that deal,” Quay offered.  Jiran, meanwhile, was staring daggers down at Vane as he considered his options, hanging onto a loose piece of rope at the edge of the pier to keep himself afloat in the gentle bobbing of the light waves.

“All right, all right,” Vane said, disappointment ringing in his heavy voice. “Never mind, Idris,” he moaned, diving back down into the water and swimming under the shade of the pier.

“Damn it,” Jonas muttered.

“All right, let's get to work,” Quay said to everyone. “Once we finish with our chores, we'll all get to play.  The weather is so nice, I'm thinking to stay here for a week or two.”

Looking up to the sky, Twist saw only a handful of the puffiest, most delicious looking white clouds he'd ever seen, sailing pleasantly through the perfect blue sky.  Smiles broke to light on all of the faces around him, except for Cybele who wrinkled her noise.

“I guess it’s not so humid right now,” Cybele said, fanning herself with a hand. “It could be worse, I suppose.”

None of the others seemed to hear her this time, each one breathing in the beauty around them with big, full, eager breaths.

Quay and his crew split up to ask for information at the various small huts that lined the beach at the jungle's edge.  Many of them appeared to be small cafes and restaurants that served refreshments to travelers who arrived at the airship docks, or at the larger sea docks that filled the harbor further down the beach.  Cybele told Twist to wait with her and let the others handle things.  Apparently, neither of them would be very much help.  Listening to her tone, Twist decided not to question her.  They both sat at a small cafe table under a tall coconut palm that reached out over the white sand, and sipped at small cups of coffee.  As Cybele seemed to be perfectly content to watch the gentle waves in silence, Twist obliged her and made no attempt to draw her into conversation.

Eventually, Vane came to join them, reporting that he hadn't found out anything useful in his search.  Twist was surprised to see that he now looked perfectly dry, even after his impulsive swim in the bay.

“I'm magical,” Vane said with a shrug in response to Twist's question.

One by one, the others arrived as well; each reporting little in the way of success.  When Quay arrived, however, grinning broadly, he announced that he'd found a lead.  Someone had told him of a puppet maker who ran a shop in a nearby city, selling magical puppets that seemed to move entirely on their own, as if they were alive.  Once everyone had appeared at the cafe under the palms, they set out together to follow Quay's information.

To Twist's considerable surprise, the seemingly endless and savage jungle that covered the island gave way to a small but obviously thriving city of huts, with palm thatched roofs, that clustered together—in a rough and very disorganized way—from the edge of the beach, stretching deep into the jungle and up the nearest large, jagged, green mountain.  The trees, however, seemed to be trying to retaliate against this intrusion.  They grew tall and wide, as if clawing at the edges of the city to drag it back in.  As the pirate crew walked through the largest, relatively clear dirt street off the beach, Twist failed to find a single face in the fairly dense crowd of people that looked anything but foreign to him.

“Who owns this island?” Twist asked Jonas quietly, while the natives—all dark skinned with Asian features, and dressed in colorful cloths of shapes and designs Twist had trouble identifying—all paused in their present actions to watch as they passed.

“They do,” Jonas said, nodding at the people around them.

“Well, yes,” Twist said quickly. “But this is South Asia, isn't it?  Is this Island controlled by England?  Portugal?  Or the Dutch, perhaps?”

“Oh,” Jonas said, realization dawning. “Well, technically, Indonesian is under Dutch rule right now, but that's mostly over in Java.  This little island is hardly important to them.”

“So, there isn't a real European presence on this island?” Twist asked.

“You're off the map, mate,” Jonas said with a grin and a wink. “And I seriously doubt that anyone here speaks English.  You'd better stay with one of us.”

Twist looked at him quickly. “You speak a language other than English?”

Jonas gave a laugh. “You Brits are the weirdest ones on the planet.  Yes, I almost speak about four if you count Spanish, though I'm much better at French.  Then there's Mandarin and just a bit of Arabic.  I can usually find someone to talk to.”

“That's astounding,” Twist said, wide eyed as he tried to imagine learning even one other language. “But what do you mean, 'you British are odd?' Aren't you one of us?”

“I might have been born in London,” Jonas explained, “but I grew up in the rest of the world.  That country means no more to me than any other.  And your people are the only ones who have such an issue with speaking more than one language.  In Lebanon everyone learns five as a national standard.”

“Where's Lebanon?” Twist asked.

“See what I mean?” Jonas said instantly, then added under his breath, “Bloody imperialists...”

“Bleeding know-it-all sky pirates,” Twist mimicked.

“Now just a—”Jonas began with an accusing finger at the ready.

“Gentlemen, if I could draw you away...” Quay called to them from the front of the group.  When Twist looked to him, he saw that they had all stopped outside of one of the huts.  The front appeared to be open to the street, displaying wares of some kind.  Walking closer with him, Jonas stopped suddenly when he saw something on the ground just outside.

“That is a dead cat,” he said, staring down with uncovered eyes at a metal cat that sat at the edge of the dirt street.

The cat looked back up at him with red jewel eyes, its thin articulated metal tail waving lightly back and forth around its paws.  Tiny white metal wires hung from its round, shining, copper face like whiskers, and its large ears flicked absently in the light breeze that played down the street.  Overcome with curiosity, Twist stepped closer and crouched down near the cat.  He reached out a finger to touch it, but the cat got to its feet in a smooth, perfectly feline motion and stepped to the side.  It watched him carefully, while Twist admired the way the thin copper and silver plates of its skin slide together and apart along its slender body.

“It's not dead,” Twist said, recognizing much of its movements from Myra's puppet. “I think it’s a cat ghost, held in a metal body.”

“That's damned disturbing,” Jonas said, still staring at it with a look of extreme unease.

“Can I chase it?” Vane asked excitedly.

“No,” Quay said, peering into the depths of the strange little shop.

Standing up to look as well, Twist finally saw the items that the shop was selling.  Every wall was layered deep with bamboo racks of wood, paper, and metal puppets of every imaginable size and design.  The floor was crowded with the largest puppets, while thin, light, paper ones hung from the ceiling on strings like the innumerable leaves of the jungle that hung over the huts.  While many of them appeared to be no more than ordinary, lifeless puppets, each one was quite elegant and fascinating on its own.  A few of them, however, seemed almost as complex and refined as the cat did.

As Twist admired one bird-shaped puppet—with countless individual feathers of gleaming silver over its round body, and emerald jewel eyes staring blankly into space—it moved suddenly, opening its golden beak to release a shrill cry to the air before blinking its eyes quickly and turning to look in another direction.  Twist was so shocked to see it move among the lifeless forms that he leaped back a step and collided into Jonas with a solid thump.

“You see?” Jonas said, his hands falling onto Twist absently. “This is all bloody creepy!”  The moment of contact from Jonas's hands flashed Twist's Sight with a numb white fog that lingered at the edges of his mind.  He noticed instantly that his nervousness diminished.

“Wow, you jumped just like a frightened rabbit,” Vane said, grinning at Twist.

“I didn't know that one was alive!” Twist said, pointing at the bird puppet as he got himself back into a dignified position, away from Jonas.

“Hey, can I chase Twist?” Vane asked Quay brightly.

“No!” Twist snapped instantly.  In all the excitement, he'd forgotten about the cat, which decided at that moment to brush up against his leg with its slinky metal body.  Twist's Sight rushed over his senses, displaying the complex inner workings of the cat's clockwork body and the same set of crystals that he had seen in Myra's puppet.  These crystals, however, each pulsed with the vibrant life, memory, and feelings of a once living cat.

When the torrent of information ebbed away, Twist returned to himself with a shallow breath.  He looked down at the cat for a moment—while Vane seemed to be saying something clever—and then reached down to pick it up under the front legs.  The cat tried to scurry away, but Twist managed to get a hold of it and lifted it into his arms.  The weight of it was about the same as a normal living cat, and the metal was oddly warm to the touch.  Cradling it in one arm, Twist took its small metal paw to look more closely at it.  One of the little fingers wasn't set properly, causing a catch in the movement of the paw.  The cat made a sound; Twist felt an array of tiny crystals vibrate in its metal throat to create a sound that was only slightly different than the voice of any other cat.

Twist snapped the loose piece of metal back into place and released the cat's paw.  It shook its paw and then brought it up to its mouth to lick at it with a thin copper tongue.  The two pieces of metal made a sharp sound as they rubbed together.  The cat then seemed to relax a little in Twist's arms, and a soft, pulsing, vibrating sound began to pour out of its metal throat as it rubbed its smooth copper cheek against his chest.

“Hey, it likes you,” Jonas said as he looked over Twist's shoulder at the cat.

A new voice said something that made no sense at all to Twist.  He looked up to find a very old looking man now standing among the puppets in the dim little shop.  His dark, wrinkled skin hung loosely on his thin limbs like the faded silks that wrapped his small, hunched form.  His eyes, however, were sharp and clear as he stared at the cat, and at Twist, with a look of amazement.  He spoke again, pointing at them both.

“He says that the cat never likes anyone,” Quay said to Twist. “Apparently, he's never seen it let anyone pick it up without scratching at them.”

“Well, it was broken,” Twist said, feeling somehow awkward under the old man's steady gaze. “I think it's just happy that I fixed it.”

Quay turned to the man and spoke in words that Twist couldn't follow.  The man frowned, speaking again.

“He wants to know how you fixed it,” Quay said, grinning slightly.  He spoke to the man again.  This time the man's eyes widened in wonder.  Jonas laughed quietly to himself. “I told him that you're magical,” Quay offered to Twist.

Twist smiled lamely back at the old man, absently stroking at the cat's metal neck.  Quay continued to talk with the man for a little while, as the others slowly lost interest and began to wander off to look over some the other shops along the winding road.  The cat continued to purr softly, obviously content to remain in Twist's arms throughout the conversation.

“That's still a dead cat,” Jonas said, staring at it critically. “That's just not right at all.”

“It's not dead,” Twist said with a sigh. “It's just not...exactly alive.”

“So, it's an undead, zombie cat?  How's that better?”

“It's built exactly the same way that the princess's puppet was,” Twist said, his voice low.  “Its spirit is held in crystals, and they control the body.  Whoever made this cat, must have some connection to the man who made her puppet as well.  Do you know if he built it?” he asked, nodding to the old man.

“I guess so,” Jonas said.  He paused to listen to the conversation for a moment and then smiled. “Wow, you would love to hear all of this,” Jonas said. “I'm only getting bits, but they're talking about crystals, clockwork, and ghosts.”  Before Twist could ask him for more than just that, Quay walked closer to them.

“He's protecting something,” Quay said to Twist and Jonas. “I had to tell him everything about the puppet we've got on the ship before he'd even admit that he knew what I was talking about.  Apparently, there are crystal caves nearby where he gets the crystals that he uses to make his clockwork animals.  He said he'll take us there tomorrow morning.”

“Why not today?” Twist asked instantly.

“He said he's not going anywhere near the caves in the dark,” Quay said, glancing up to the sky. “The sun's going to set in a few hours, and he doesn't want to risk it.”

“What's he so afraid of?” Jonas asked. “Did he say?”

“I didn't recognize the word he used,” Quay said. “But it sounded like some kind of bat.  Either way, there's no harm in playing it safe.  Always listen to the natives.”