Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

He tried not to roll his eyes as he faced this newest petitioner.

“I intend to waste it,” said Avery.

“W—?”

This was new.

The Tailor spread his hands and gestured Avery forward, indicating with the tilt of his ear that he should repeat the request.

“Waste,” said Avery, leaning in and enunciating carefully. “I want some time to waste.”

“Because…?”

“Because that’s exactly what youth is meant to do.”

The Tailor paused, even more confused than before. John Avery, he was convinced, was not young. But was he mad?

“I would waste every precious second. I would engage in all the childish pursuits my old-man frame would allow. I would run after dragonflies and kick at puddles in the mud and roll in grass and thread plastic spoke rattles onto my pushbike, I would—”

“Spoke rattles—?”

“Because this girl,” said Avery, reaching into a pocket, “deserves that, don’t you think?”

“Your…?”

“Daughter, yes.”

The Tailor drew breath.

He was trying to clear the constriction that threatened to overwhelm his throat and stomach, and ease the tension that dragged his shoulders backwards like broken wings.

Avery held a photograph of a girl (of—what?—seven, eight years?) Sunlight limned her fair head and lay on the top curl of her grin. She was squinting, standing by a pushbike with one hand gripped to the handlebar, one hand curling the seat.

“This is Bella. Some days she can breathe,” said Avery. “Some days she can even ride her bike. Some days she gasps and coughs up the fluid that is drowning her from the inside out.”

He let this sink in.

“Unlikely I could repay you, Tailor, understand.”

Not even a favour traded.

What was the Tailor to make of this?

He dropped his hands to his lap and sat, looking lopsidedly at his visitor. Then he gazed around at the drapes, the thick stone walls and finally, to the childish tyros who had returned, by degrees, to their work.

He looked at the chain of globes emptying from the room, the spill of blood on the cloth still caught in the machine, the floor and then, his own lap (filled with threads and scraps of cloth.) He shook his head slowly like he was waking from a dream.

How had he…?

How did any of this…?

How could…?

“One problem,” said the Tailor, voice heavy, “I don’t know how.”

“You…? Oh.” It was Avery’s turn to pause. “Is there someone who does?”

The Tailor gestured broadly. “No. Only…” He paused.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps the Engineer.”

“Okay?”

“She built everything.”

“An engineer?”

“ The Engineer.”

“You’ve met her?”

“No,” he grunted at the impossibility of that idea. “Well, once. Saw her, more like. But she was… I called out to her, but perhaps she didn’t hear. She was busy.”

The Tailor couldn’t find any other excuses for the way the Engineer had looked at him. Blankly, like he was a swatch of fabric and she was thinking what to do with him.

“Okay.” Avery looked like a man trying not to give up. “And she made this strange place?”

“Some suggest she built all of everything that there is.”

“Oh? Okay. And what does she do now?”

The Tailor shrugged. “Maintenance?”

Avery nodded, thumbing his beard thoughtfully. “Can she be found?”

The Tailor was uncertain. And even then, he explained, it was unlikely she could be prevailed upon. The Engineer was cold and unyielding, like the stone that made up this place.

Avery leaned back, clenching his hands over his stomach almost in prayer. He stared at the stone ceiling. “Unlikely…” he repeated.

They say time heals all wounds, but it wasn’t as true as this: time, most often, runs out.

Avery was thinking that then, as he leaned his chin into both hands beside the Tailor’s grand, grinning machine. He stayed there, bowed, for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was muffled by his fingers. “Then how…?”

The Tailor had never granted a request. Had, in fact, attempted to make sure he was in no position to hear them.

But now, stalled in his work, he couldn’t not consider John Avery and that cheerful girl with the sunlit grin who looked directly from the photograph like she might leap from its shallow page.

“Bring her here?” said the Tailor.

But here there were no dragonflies, no spoke rattles, no mud. And could such a small girl travel the whispers and rumours it had taken Avery just to reach here?

No. The only way to do it was to stall the globe. And not just any globe. What they needed was to stall the globe that was in use, the one determining time at that very moment.

The Tailor reached out a hand to Avery, but hesitated, uncertain, and said instead, “I will help you, John Avery. Somehow.”

For Bella, with the smile like daylight.

Avery stood to leave, the plan agreed. On a good day, when Bella could breathe without help, he would send word.

“You’ll know,” said Avery, cutting off the Tailor’s next question. “And Tailor—”

“Welcome,” nodded the Tailor. “You’re welcome.”

He left the way he’d arrived.

The Tailor returned to his sewing as best he could. His focus was gone and he was aware of the dull throb of his injured finger, and how the injury made him cautious now, lest he wreck some other part of him in the maul of the machine.

Almost at once the machine hit a snag and ran rough temporarily, and he was forced to reach for the pouch of tools in his pocket, to poke and prod it open and check its gears and screws, discover a loose one and right it, then return to his work. This he did as required while he waited.

Also while he waited, he drew in several of the tyros at a time, their bald heads shining in the light of the machine, and he lead them through what to do and how to clothe the globes.

Just in case there was ever another Tailor needed.

The word from Avery, when it arrived, was a whisper carried on whispers. It breached the room, starting with the tyro nearest the window and working its way around to where the Tailor sat ready.

“This is the best way to tell you that today is a good day for spoke rattles and dragonflies, dear Tailor,” whispered the nearest tyro.

“Time,” replied the Tailor, “has come.”

He rose from his machine and watched as his training took effect. The tyros shuffled into position, two of them dragging the swathes of cloth up to the machine; another two feeding it through.

Unsentimentally he left them to it, straightening his spine with effort and pausing a moment to savour the release of standing upright. He crossed to the tracks where the globes travelled and climbed, unsteadily at first, but with increasing assurance. He pushed out a gap in the line and pulled himself along, nose bumping the sheathed globe in front while the ones behind caught at his toes. He crawled, hands gripping hard to the track, knees pressing painfully.

The window caught him on each shoulder and threatened to dislodge him. He had to back up and remove his cloak and thick shirt, then clamber forward again naked to the waist, skin trembling from the effort, elbows alternatively locking then shaking.

When he breached the other room he took a moment to get his bearings. There was a passage, the track snaking across to exit another window just as small as the first, light glowing messily from the other side. He approached and squeezed through, scraping his upper arms, awkwardly pinning his wrist under him and wrenching it enough that it ached.

After the second window was daylight and a sheer drop over which the tracks meandered in confused circuits.