Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

Pix went red. She glared at Abner, “Oh, you seem to, do you?”

Gently he took hold of her shoulders. “Perhaps I should have said that I’ll never forget it.”

Pix went redder. “Oh.”

Abner waited for a moment, but that seemed to be all she was going to say. Gingerly, he slid his arm around her shoulders. Pix looked up at him. She was beautiful. He’d known that, of course, but never before had he quite noticed how beautiful. Perhaps he should tell her this. “Let’s talk,” he said.

Pix nodded. “Yes.”

Some time later, Lars lifted the lid of a barrel. Agatha was huddling inside. “Ah. There you are.” He laughed.

She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Have pity on me, whoever you are.”

The young man grinned. “Yeah, I guess we haven’t met. I’m Lars. I’m one of the show’s advance men.”

Agatha looked up at him. He was very handsome, with dark hair and well muscled arms that showed under his short sleeves. “Is that some technical term for a leading man?”

He laughed again, and effortlessly lifted her from the barrel. His hands were large and steady. “No, although I do play Bill Heterodyne a lot. No, an advance man travels ahead of the circus. We scout the terrain ahead. It’s our job to keep the show from riding into a nest of monsters or wasting time going down a road that ends up being washed out—things like that.

“When we get to a town, we make sure it’s not full of cannibals or blood frogs. If it seems okay, then we have to find a place for the show to set up, figure out who we have to bribe, collect local information that might be good to include in the show, and try to get a good deal on any supplies we need.”

“That sounds pretty dangerous.” Agatha said, then thought a little about Zeetha, and Zeetha’s stick. “Hey, the next time you go, take me with you!”

That got yet another laugh. Agatha liked the sound of it. “Ah, are you one of my fans, already?” Lars chuckled, “I know I have a magnetic personality, but...”

“No!” Agatha was blushing a lot, today. “I mean, I just thought it would be a good way to escape—”

“Interesting. Usually we get farm girls who want to join the show to escape.”

“Oh? Escape from what?”

Lars grew serious. She had asked the question lightly, but suddenly Agatha wondered what he’d seen. “The tedium of farming. A family that thinks of her as nothing but a servant, or worse. The dull lad she’s doomed to marry. A town that remembers every one of her mistakes...”

“What do you do with them?” Agatha asked.

Lars immediately brightened. “Why, we take them, of course!”

Agatha looked surprised. “You do?”

They had been walking away from camp as they spoke, following a path that led across a shallow brook. Lars gallantly held out a hand to help her hop across on the flat stones that served as a bridge.

He nodded. “Sure. Some panic their first night away from home, and most of them, having succeeded in escaping their old life, leave us at the next town. But some—ah, some people set foot on the stage and never step off.”

Agatha gave him a shrewd look. “Like yourself.”

“Ha! Caught!” He struck a dramatic pose and his voice boomed forth. “You see before you a former cheesemaker’s apprentice, who foolishly stopped to see a traveling Heterodyne show when he was supposed to be delivering a wheel of Hungarian Kashkaval!” Lars threw his arms wide and looked impressive for a brief moment, but he had chosen his stage poorly. His boots slipped on the wet rocks and he toppled, plunging ankle-deep into the water. Agatha laughed and helped him up.

On the bank, Lars continued. “It was The Heterodyne Boys and Their Anthracite Burning Earth Orbiter.” He sighed happily at the memory. “That was over ten years ago and I’ve never regretted it.”

Agatha smiled. “My favorite was always Race to the West Pole.”

Lars clapped his hands. “Oh, yeah. That’s a good one. We haven’t done it in a while, though.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Different shows work better with different actors. It’s not like it’s a problem, there’s so many of them, you know? It just hasn’t come around in the rotation.” He eyed Agatha speculatively. “It’s about due, actually. Hmm... but there are some tough scenes in West Pole. Remember the scene on the burning submersible?” His voice suddenly shifted timbre, becoming lower and more intense.

“Renounce your father, lest his evil corrupt you!”

Lars paused, and looked at Agatha encouragingly. Agatha shivered. His voice, as he’d said the line, had sent an electric tingle down her spine. She thought back to the last time she’d seen the play.

It had been years ago, in Beetleburg, during one of the annual Lightning Festivals. Booths and revelers had crowded the streets. It had been easy to slip away from Lilith, who had been busy dickering over a set of exotic canning jars—and who, Agatha knew, would not have approved of her foster-daughter’s enthusiasm for the show playing on the makeshift stage in the market square. It had been a rare forbidden pleasure, and Agatha had watched intently. Later, she would replay the wonderful story over and over in her head.

Lars had begun the scene where Bill Heterodyne and the villainous Lucrezia Mongfish were trapped together aboard the slowly combusting submarine. It was one of her favorite scenes, and she knew how it went:

“One cannot be corrupted by Science! And Science alone is my master!”

Lars nodded approvingly and moved closer. “Then your master is mad! As mad as you have driven me!”

“Is it madness to see clearly? You only confuse me!”

Lars swept her into his arms. “Allow me to elucidate.”

Agatha tilted her head back and looked him in the eyes. “...It could be an interesting experiment, if I but dared...”

“Don’t tell me you fear the experiment?”

“I fear the result! But the experiment itself—why, that is but Science!”

“For Science, then!”

“For Science!”

On the stage, it was an intense scene, romantic and passionate—and it was meant to end with a torrid kiss. Agatha and Lars blinked at each other. He held her tightly in his arms, pulled close so that their faces were only centimeters apart. She, gazing up into his face, was clutching at his shirt and pulling him down toward her in a most unseemly way.

They broke apart and Agatha fanned herself with her hand. The weather seemed to have turned unseasonably warm, and her heart was pounding.

Lars took a deep breath and grinned. “Say! You’re pretty good!”

Agatha licked her lips. “Really? I never... ah... so that’s acting? I... I wonder if...” A strained wheeze stopped her, and she glanced sideways at Lars. He was staring fixedly up over her head. “Lars?”

He gripped her arm tightly. “Shhh! Geisterdamen,” he whispered.

Agatha slowly turned to look, then froze in shock. Before them were a pair of gigantic, blue-white furred spiders. Eight long legs hoisted each creature’s body easily six meters up into the air. They wore harnesses and saddles, with packs, gear and weapons strapped behind. Astride each of these monsters was a tall, slender young woman. Moving only her eyes, Agatha glanced back and forth between the two and realized that they were identical. Both had extremely pale skin, long flowing white hair, and the same peculiar outfit of folded and draped fabric. Chillingly, both also had the same wide, pupil-less eyes.

The women were regarding Agatha with interest. Their spiders leaned down until the riders scrutinized her from less than two meters away.

“Twerlik?” The far one was apparently asking a question[21].

The closer one raised a staff and casually pointed it at Agatha. “Su fig?” She responded. She leaned back. “Klibber meeenak seg ni plostok vedik kliz moc twerlik?”

The second rider frowned. “Zo—zo flooda vedik.”

“Botcha hey za vedik moc nodok.”