Justin Fisher - The Gold Thief

What with that, the snoring, the loss of his parents, and his fear of the voice that awaited him in his nightmares, Ned wasn’t hopeful of getting much sleep at all.

At least he was back at the circus. George had endearingly and exhaustingly kept him company after their meeting with Madame Oublier. He’d brought him food, offered to bend bars for his entertainment and even tried to impress him with banana-induced flatulence.

Ned opened up his backpack, lifted out the carefully wrapped Christmas presents he’d taken from his home and placed them under his bunk.

To Ned they were more than presents, they were a doorway to his mum and dad, a promise – a false one perhaps – of a normal life. A life where the ones you loved weren’t taken from you, where Christmas was still Christmas no matter who you were.

Now, in a single day, he’d lost his parents and said goodbye to two of his closest friends. It was as if his entire life on the josser side of the Veil had been erased and all because of the thief at his letterbox.

Ned sighed, and lay down on the bunk. He closed his eyes for a moment.

His mum had told him that in their long years of separation, the one thing that had consoled her was the sky at night. Hidden away at the convent of St Clotilde’s, she had watched it every evening, knowing that Ned and his dad were under the very same sky and that, even unwittingly, they would from time to time look at the stars with her.

Ned smiled. He wondered if the stars were out tonight. He could go and see but it was warm and comfortable on the bunk. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow , he thought.

It was a nice thought, a lulling thought, and Ned felt his mind begin to drift …

… and then his dream took him into its arms, the very same dream that always turned to a nightmare.

Ned’s hand was trailing along hot metal walls, as it had a hundred times before. He was lost, frightened and completely alone but for the urgency of his mission. Then, as always, the walls buckled and ripped as he found himself looking at the blackness of space. The world before him was broken and burnt and his ears rang with the sound of trumpets and grinding rock.

“ YesSs ,” said the voice.

And as always, he whimpered back, “No.”

But it was no good. The dream had him. The voice had him. And once it had him, it never let go.

hen Ned woke, it was to the excitable blinking of Whiskers, who was sitting on his chest. The same Whiskers who had slept in Lucy’s bunk and not his own. Sunlight flooded the trailer – he’d slept a long time, it seemed, though it had felt like only a moment.

“Oh, so you’re back, are you?” he said, feigning a sulk, though in truth more than happy to see the mouse and especially now. The little rodent was uncommonly twitchy, though, Ned now noticed, his fur standing on end and his lit-up eyes blinking furiously.

“What’s got into you?” managed Ned, who was still reeling from the echo of the voice in his nightmare. Somehow it always managed to linger even when it made no sound.

Whiskers nodded his head towards the door of the trailer and Ned heard raised voices from outside. The Tinker and George. It sounded like they were right outside the door to George’s trailer and they were angry about something. Ned dragged himself out of bed, quickly pulled on his clothes and pocketed Whiskers, before stepping outside into the biting December air.

It seemed like half the troupe were out there, and none of them were happy.

“You cannot let this damnable toaster stay with us! They were banned with dashed good reason!” shouted George, who never let his animal side do the talking, unless gearing up for a fight.

What was even more alarming was who he was shouting at. No one ever raised their voice to Benissimo, not if they wanted to keep it.

Next to George, waist height in his lab coat and multi-lensed spectacles, stood the circus’s resident boffin and head of R & D. Minutians are extremely small, gnome-small, but take great offence at being compared to their diminutive cousins, who though similar in stature have none of their aptitude for the sciences. Whatever the Tinker was, though, he was not himself and looked as though he hadn’t eaten in days.

“George is right, boss,” the Tinker said. “The last malfunction ended in a bloody massacre and that was over a hundred years ago. It really has no place here and if you’re expecting me to keep it going, well!”

Which was when Ned turned his head to see the root of the problem. Standing there was a vast and aged ticker, the size of a full-grown man. Ned’s own mouse was a ticker and he’d seen countless others in the hidden city of Shalazaar. Mechanical wonders in the form of eagles, monkeys, dogs, they could be incredibly useful machines … and dangerous ones. A ticker in the form of a tiger had nearly bested George on the snow-swept mountain of Annapurna.

George, it seemed, had not forgotten. He was regarding the man-shaped ticker with an expression of fury, suspicion and disgust. Nor was he alone. A chameleon-skinned girl from the dancing section was rippling her colours uncontrollably, Alice the elephant’s feathers were all over the place and Finn’s lions, Left and Right, were whimpering behind the wax-coated tracker like a pair of wet dogs. Of everyone, no one was more terrified than Ned’s wind-up mouse. The Debussy Mark Twelve sat on his shoulder, looking as though someone had plugged his tail into an electrical socket. His minuscule mouth was now locked in an open stance, as if the mere act of seeing the ticker had somehow overloaded his tiny pistons.

“What … what is it?” said Ned.

George turned to him, and blinked. “Oh, good morning, dear boy,” he said. “ It is a gift from Madame Oublier, if you can call it that. Her men delivered it in the night. And it is not staying. These things are dangerous.”

Ned could well believe it. The ticker was hewn from dark iron. Its body was a mass of jagged edges and rusting weaponry. A web of pipes, gears and pistons filled its chest and it looked to Ned like some haunted junkyard come to life.

All, that was, except for its face. It wore a mask of polished white marble. Its features were elegant, like the face of some fallen angel, and all the more disturbing because of it. Beauty and the beast, black and white, heaven and hell.

It was terrifying and also – Ned had to admit to himself – fascinating. As an Engineer, part of him wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. It was the sort of thing he could have spent hours on with his dad.

His dad. He blinked as the pain of his parents’ loss came rushing back in.

“I agree with George,” said the Tinker. “The Guardian goes, or we go.”

The Ringmaster tapped his foot impatiently, before finally erupting with a crack of his whip.

“QUIET! Before I box the ears of the lot of you and stick you all in irons!”

The campsite was suddenly devoid of any noise, apart from the low tick, tick, tick of the Guardian’s metallic heart.

“Have you forgotten what the boy and his family have done for us?” continued Bene. “Are your memories really that short? Need I remind you of their plight?”

The troupe collectively blanched.

“Now, if Madame O says she’ll sleep better for leaving it here, then so will I. It’s been programmed to watch the boy’s back and I suggest you do the same yourselves. None of us would be here were it not for Ned and Lucy, none of us .”

Benissimo glared at them all, his great bushy eyes like the beam of a lighthouse, his troupe the cowering night. George’s mighty shoulders dropped and his fur flattened. The argument was over.