Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

nearly level with the ship’s engines, then picked it up and flung it even higher into the air. For a couple of sickening seconds, the gondola was blown fully sideways as the ship shot upward, just missing the cliff below.

Through all of it, the modified engines roared in protest, driving the ship ever faster ahead. Agatha hauled on the wheel, fighting to keep the ship—not steady, that was impossible—but at least pointing in roughly the right direction through the madness. If she could keep the ship above the tearing rocks below and pointed toward the gap in the mountains ahead, there was a chance she could get them through alive.

The winds whipped her hair into tangles across her face, tearing it from the strip of greasy rag she had used to tie it back while working on the engine. At least the flight goggles someone had left hanging from the dirigible controls fit over her glasses, but vision was still difficult. There was moisture in the morning air, and a cold mist was continually forming on the goggle lenses, then streaking away as the droplets condensed and blew aside.

The air above the mountains was icy. Agatha’s gloveless hands were growing raw and numb, making it difficult to hang on to the wheel. She grit her teeth, braced her feet, and hung on. Whenever she flew higher, vicious blasts of air—full of tiny particles of ice—stung her cheeks painfully. She winced and hung on, as the winds finally seemed to cooperate, driving the airship hard forward.

Suddenly, they were on the other side, the ground below dropping away as the rocky peaks turned to scrubby, bracken-blanketed slopes, then wooded, boulder-strewn foothills.

The wind was less ferocious here, but now the engines had nearly given out. The ship was roaring along—still forward, but now heading toward the ground at an alarming rate.

A quick glance upwards confirmed that the high winds over the mountains had torn out the patch and enlarged the hole in the ship’s envelope. The little craft would not remain airborne much longer. Agatha squinted at the landscape ahead: the glare of the newly risen sun made her eyes water, but as she looked out across the approaching valley she could see fields here and there between the trees, and light flashing on the surfaces of streams and ponds. She shut down the engines, allowing the ship’s forward momentum to carry it on its course.

“Aim for that field!” Krosp shouted. He had been hiding under a blanket during the worst of the trip over the mountains, but had now returned to Agatha’s elbow.

“I’ll aim for that pond!”

The ground was approaching faster now. Too fast. Mentally, Agatha paged through the manual she had studied, then glanced down, and kicked hard at a pedal on the floor beneath the controls. A series of jolts ran through the entire vessel—the emergency chutes had engaged. With luck, they would slow the ship to the point where its passengers might have a hope of surviving a crash landing.

Her concentration was broken by Krosp’s scream of anguish. “No! Anything but that! Land in the field! The field!” He grabbed the wheel with his small furry hands, and with his full weight, dragged it to the left.

“What are you doing! Stop that!” Agatha screamed as the ship lurched sideways. She jerked the wheel back, disengaging Krosp, who fell off with a furious yowl. The sudden lack of thirteen kilograms of frantic cat-creature dragging on the wheel caused Agatha to spin it much too hard in the opposite direction.

The ship missed the pond, skittering, bouncing, and then juddering through scrub bushes like a giant sled before coming to a rest neatly among the rocks on the pond’s bank.

After some minutes, Agatha realized that she was still alive and no longer moving. This was good. For several more minutes, she lay still, clutching the edge of the wrecked gondola and noting with a detached interest how long it took for her breathing to return to normal.

Gradually, she became aware of her surroundings, and the voice of Krosp somewhere nearby. “Agatha? Agatha! Hey! Agatha! Are you okay?”

Agatha moved her head. “Uhhh... yes... I think so...”

“Can you move?” Krosp’s voice sounded close. Where was he?

She answered. “Ughr... yes, I think so...”

“Then get off me!”

The tumbled heap of the gondola’s contents shifted beneath her as she hastily rolled to one side, and Krosp, grumbling, hissing, and slightly flatter than before, clawed his way out.

Agatha sat up and gingerly swung her legs around until she was sitting on the edge of the battered craft. She eyed the chaos with chagrin. Debris was smeared across what looked like almost a hundred meters, bracketing a huge scar that had been carved into the ground. It was obvious the airship wouldn’t be going anywhere.

She glared at her companion. “Look at this! It’s completely destroyed! There’s no way I can repair all this. We’re lucky we’re even alive! Why didn’t you let me land in the pond?”

Krosp glared at her, then his green eyes narrowed and he turned away to lick one paw. “Jeez. Then I would have gotten wet.”

Agatha rolled her eyes weakly, and let it pass. After a few long breaths and a quick self-examination, she realized that she was mostly unharmed. True, her clothing was torn and singed, she was covered in small cuts and bruises, and a large scrape on her leg was still bleeding, but none of that mattered. The important thing was that she could, she discovered after some wobbly experimentation, walk. Good. When the inevitable pursuit from Castle Wulfenbach arrived, she would be long gone.

Somewhat unsteadily, she got to her feet and watched Krosp. The cat had already shaken off the panic of the crash, smoothed his fur, and was now rummaging through the remains of the airship.

“Well, so much for traveling easily.” She said in disgust.

Krosp flicked an ear. “Yes, yes, mistakes were made. Now we should see what we’ve got to work wi—hey hey!” He sounded triumphant. “You know that chest we couldn’t open? Weapons locker!”

He pulled a decoratively etched metal cylinder out of the demolished box. It was connected by bare wires to a piece of unidentifiable machinery that had been housed in a now-shattered glass casing, and another ornamental piece that looked like it had once been an inlaid wooden grip. He held it up for inspection, its damaged parts dangling forlornly from his paws.

Agatha frowned as she leaned past Krosp to examine the rest of the stash. “They all look pretty messed up. I think something in here exploded. See? This box was smashed open from the inside.”

Krosp glanced at it again. “I’ll take your word for it. Can you fix them?”

Agatha looked at him askance. “Are you serious?”

Krosp nodded. “Absolutely. You do understand that we’re in the Wastelands, right?”

Agatha swallowed. It was true. Lost though she was, she could see that plain enough. After all, “The Wastelands” was simply a convenient, catch-all term for the parts of Europa that were not under direct human control... and there was a lot of that.

At their best, the Wastelands were simply vast stretches of untouched forest and wilderness, places where humans had never held sway. The dangers in these areas were usually those of the natural world, which, admittedly, could be formidable. But at their worst, the Wastelands could be terrifying.

The Sparks that had fought each other in the chaos that came to be known as “The Long War” had unleashed upon each other a most astonishing range of creations—monstrosities born of madness and fury that had left whole towns—whole kingdoms abandoned. The Wastelands at their worst were full of hazards of all descriptions.

Agatha had heard stories of roving bands of half-human brigands, mysterious poisoned fogs, and a vast bestiary of Spark-created monsters.

There were always explorers chasing rumors of lost civilizations, hunting rare beasts, or searching for treasure. Many of the once-inhabited areas of the Wastelands were now desolate due to the actions of Sparks.

In larger cities, and in University towns like Beetleburg, there was a brisk market for Spark-made devices salvaged from such ruins. It was common for adventurous undergrads from the University to brave the abandoned laboratories and castles in search of the secrets of their past inhabitants. Agatha thought of all the times these teams of explorers didn’t come back. Then, with a shudder, she thought of the other times, when they did come back. She remembered the bizarre stories they told, and the unspeakably strange specimens they often brought back with them. Perhaps some kind of weapon would be handy...

“There were some tools, I’ll see what I can do.” She lifted a brass tube, and then another, examining them