I heard him, but was not sure he told the truth. “Would you take me to visit Carabosse?”
“Old Carabosse of the clocks?” asked Fenoderee. “Old tick-tock?”
“Will you?”
“I will,” he said. “I will come for you soon,” and with that he was gone.
It was Puck who came for me. I was alone when he came. “Get yourself upon a horse,” he said, “ride out and call for Fenoderee.”
So I had a stableboy saddle me a lovely horse, rode out some distance from the castle, paused beside a large rock and said into the air, “Fenoderee, I need a friend.” Immediately, both he and Puck were standing beside the rock, Fenoderee grinning, Puck picking at a toenail. He liked to stand storkwise, on one leg, his fingers playing with the toes of the upraised foot.
“The fairy Carabosse has invited you to tea,” Puck informed me.
“Clockwork Carabosse,” chanted Fenoderee, cutting a circle about himself with his scythe. “Old gears and ratchets.”
“Who calls her that?” I wondered.
“I just did,” said Fenoderee. “Lots of the Bogles do.”
“Some,” admitted Puck. “Not lots.”
“Why do they?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
Puck got up behind me on the horse and held me around the waist. It reminded me of all the times Bill had held me in the twentieth, when I was tired or discouraged or didn’t know what to do next. Both he and Puck were small, but wiry and strong. Capable. I relaxed and let him guide the horse. Fenoderee bounded ahead like a fawn, disappearing behind clumps of grass and then appearing again, far ahead.
We came to the forest, went along it to the left until we came to a small stream, followed the stream into the woods, up a narrow defile, and then out into a clearing where a cottage stood, smoke rising from its chimney. It was a fairy-tale cottage. Though I don’t know much about tales of that kind, I had seen cartoons in the twentieth. This cottage could have appeared in “Hansel and Gretel” or “The Three Bears” or “Red Riding Hood” without any changes at all.
“We’ll wait,” said Puck. “Just in case you need us when you come out.”
I was fairly sure I could find my way back, but company on the homeward ride would be welcome. I dismounted and walked toward the cottage, hearing as I approached a sound like the muttering of rain on dried leaves. It grew louder and louder, and as I stepped onto the stoop, a chime rang, followed immediately by a cacophony of bells, whistles, cuckoos, gongs, all telling the hour with indiscriminate fervor. After a time the noise died away to the murmur once more, which I now recognized as the ticking of countless clocks, and I knocked firmly upon the cracked panels of the door.
“Enter!” cried a cracked old voice.
She was sitting beside the fire, under her tumult of timepieces. They dangled on every wall; they squatted on every flat surface. They made a noise like a storm of rain until she raised her hand and the sound stopped. All the little pendulums swung, all the little hands moved, but they moved in silence.
“So you’ve come,” she said.
“I’ve come,” I agreed. “I’ve come because you are the only one who knows what’s going on, and I cannot go on, not knowing.”
“You weren’t supposed to know,” she muttered. “You weren’t supposed to be bothered with it. All we intended to do was keep it safe, inside you, until the proper time comes.…” Her voice dragged away into the clock-silence, the endless movement of hands and swinging pendulums, and she stared into the fire.
I did not disturb her. If she would tell me, she would. If she wouldn’t, there was nothing I could do.
“Long ago,” she said at last, “when man was made, which was long after we were made, I looked into the future and saw an ending there. You have seen that ending.”
I had seen it. Of course, I had seen it.
“At that ending is no magic,” she said. “At that ending, all beauty stops. There may be some life after, bacteria perhaps. Small, senseless things moving endlessly on the winds and in the seas. No matter.
“I saw an end. And those of us who could—they were not many, for most of us have been less than diligent in learning what may be done—decided that a certain thing should be preserved.”
“In Baskarone,” I said, suddenly sure of it.
“Of Baskarone, partly. Israfel was one of them who did the preserving. He and his kindred distilled a thing from.… From the necessary materials. They made it. But then we had to hide it.”
And I knew then. “You hid it here,” I said, putting my hand to my breast. “It burns.”
She looked at me pitifully. “Does it hurt you?”
I shook my head at her in wonder. No. It did not hurt. “What is it?”
“It is what it is. It is what Oberon wishes for but has never been able to hold. It is what the Dark Lord lusts for. We must keep it from him.”
“That’s a riddle, Carabosse!”
“It is how we old fairies speak,” she said, looking at me from under her scanty lashes. “If you knew what was going to happen, you could not behave normally.”
“This thing … I suppose it’s important.”
She sat unbreathing. It was as though the universe had stopped for that instant. At last her breath left her in a sigh.
“Important,” she whispered to herself. “Yes. Important.” She sighed again. “We thought no one would look for it in a child. Then we planned to entice you into some place where you could live happily for a long time. We picked Chinanga, the timeless land. No one had ever aged in Chinanga. Chinanga was poised there in the always, and we thought it would go on forever. How long did we need, after all? Only a few hundred years.
“We planned you would want to leave Westfaire, that you would think of the boots, that you would
