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The clockwork child was back. She was motionless, at the entrance of another avenue, her porcelain face staring at the merry-go-round.
Ambrose stared at the tiny creature and pondered. How many times had she come here, to stare at the merry-go-round and its mighty steeds, its fine carriages and ornate ornamentation? Always, he knew, it had been still and quiet.
The clockwork child clicked and rocked, and her face turned 'round to look at Ambrose. A great red, glistening tear rolled down her cheek and splashed on the cobblestones, where a pool of red liquid lay.
Of such as this are clockwork dreams and clockwork fancies made, Ambrose thought.
He strode forward purposefully, onto the great disc of the merry-go-round and up to the central spindle. There he poked and prodded for a few scant moments while the clockwork child edged occasionally closer, a few feet at a time, curious and dripping.
All at once a great whine and squeal came from the merry-go-round, and a hideous piping ensued. The disc began to move, the horses began to shift up and down, and then the sound sped up and became a wonderful, great cacophony of noise.
It was music! Ambrose knew this--he who had not heard music in all his life here in this city. It was music, and it was beautiful.
The great wheel spun around and around, and the horses moved up and down and up and down, and the little clockwork child--who had rolled up a ramp and onto the platform of the merry-go-round before Ambrose had started it up--rolled and clacked and wobbled amongst the horses and carriages, delighted, her little arms spinning in circles as her head spun this way and that trying to take it all in. Her big wheel spun and her little wheel spun and she raced to and fro as the music rampaged madly and sweetly through the air and the merry-go-round spun and spun.
For several minutes it spun so, and then began to run down. The music slowed again, the horses lost their great, fiery speed, and soon the whole merry-go-round came to a halt.
The clockwork child rolled off the platform and into the square as Ambrose watched, transfixed. As she passed into one of the great avenues that would shortly swallow her up in its immense and ever-changing scenery, the clockwork child's head spun round on its stalk and looked back at Ambrose, and it kept looking back at him, her face a mask, until she had passed from sight.
Ambrose looked after her passing for a full minute, and then set to work. There was much to be done.
* * *
There seemed no point in moving the massive parts of the merry-go-round to his workshop, so Ambrose moved his workshop to the great square. This frightened him, for he knew that the city was always changing and that the square might one day vanish, never to be found. So Ambrose thought of the square constantly. He pictured it in his mind, he described it to himself aloud, he constantly talked of the square and what it was like. Ambrose had learned one thing about the city: he could make it behave a little, if he tried to. The more he thought about the square, and the more he could see the square in his mind, the better the chance that it would still be there when next he went.
This wasn't hard, for Ambrose was in the square almost all the time. He brought his tools, and the sheets of metal, and the great bronze heads, and the eleven globes. He slept there, he worked there, and slowly but surely the flying orrery of his dreams came together.
By the end of the fifth day after he received the invitation, Ambrose was finished.
The orrery was a wonder to behold. Ambrose gazed at it with pride. It was about the size of the merry-go-round, but in place of the colorful roof and all the prancing horses and noble carriages there were a set of brass globes mounted on sturdy metal arms. The arms joined at the center, where Ambrose had tinkered up an elaborate set of gears and cogs that moved the globes around in great ovals. He had placed a strong magnet within each globe, and as the globes whirled about, the magnets would whirl about and the patterns of their movement created a force that pushed the orrery off the ground. Ambrose had planned it all out very carefully, though he could not say how he knew it would work. Yet work it did. With the orrery off the ground, Ambrose would work the bellows on the massive heads to push the orrery this way and that. It was, Ambrose reflected, not the most efficient of machines, nor the easiest to operate. But it was, he believed, quite a fine thing nonetheless.
The masquerade was tomorrow night. Ambrose went to sleep that evening, lying on the platform of his amazing orrery, and though come morning he could not recall his dreams, he knew them to be glad ones.
* * *
The following morning, Ambrose got up and realized that he didn't have a costume for the masquerade. That simply wouldn't do! He could hardly arrive at the fine castle across the rolling water dressed like any ordinary inhabitant of Carcosa. Ambrose decided to return to his home and put something together.
But his home was no longer there.
Ambrose walked the streets, trying to remember what his workshop looked like, trying to find the door that would lead him in. He used to know it so well; it was where he had spent most of his life in Carcosa. Yet it simply would not reveal itself to him. His step quickened, his brow furrowed, and he went from place to place trying to find his home, his workshop. Every time he saw a familiar door, it led someplace unfamiliar. Every time he heard the clatter-clack of all his clockwork tinkerings, he could not find the source of the sound. Every time he recognized a corner, a street lamp, a crack in a wall, they brought him no closer to his home.
It was gone, lost. Ambrose cursed himself for being such a fool. In his driving need to construct the orrery and cross the lake to the palace, he had lost touch with his home and now the city had taken it away from him. Ambrose beat his fist against a wall, breathing heavily, and felt like a tired old fool of a man with no home.
Finally, he gave up. His home was gone--so be it. He stood on the threshold of a new life, perhaps a new home, in the distant palace. He might not ever return, anyway. The people of the palace might be so glad to see him, and so admiring of his amazing orrery, that they would take him as their court tinker and he could make wonderful things for wonderful people for the rest of his life. Ambrose told himself this must be the case. He told himself that the home he had lost was no true home, anyway--it was just a part of the city he had borrowed for a while, and now the city had taken it back. He stared off down the street at the churning water of the lake and swore, then and there, that he would never return to Carcosa. His destiny lay on the far shore.
Within a few minutes, Ambrose was back in the great square. He began rummaging through all of the parts he had taken off the merry-go-round, picking up this piece and that and wondering what could be made of it. Finally, he decided on his costume. He would go as a minotaur, who (he seemed to recall from some half-forgotten tale) was the master of a labyrinth. Carcosa was a labyrinth, and Ambrose fancied that in leaving it behind, he would become its master. A minotaur he would be.
He took the red velvet curtains he had taken down from the center shaft of the merry-go-round, and fashioned them into a beautiful red cloak. He took parts from the horses and the carriages and the great pile of cogs and junk he hadn't used, and built himself a mask in the form of a minotaur's head. It was no ordinary mask, of course; Ambrose wanted to make a grand impression on the grand folk of the palace, and so he decided his mask had to be something special. He took a horse's painted iron head and used it for the face, separating it into two halves and adding portions from other horses to widen the whole thing. He took the horns from a pair of gilt unicorns and attached them to the top. He took a great many ornaments--metal roses and fine brass fittings--and worked them into the mask so that they would spin and move and draw the eye. He tinkered with the ears so that they would turn this way and that, and wove tassels from the curtains into a fine mane that would toss to and fro as he walked. All of this came together--like clockwork--until he had a beautiful minotaur mask that was always in motion. Ambrose put on the cloak and mask and then looked into one of the cameo mirrors mounted in the side of a discarded merry-go-round carriage and admired his handiwork. It was a beautiful costume, probably the best anyone in the palace would ever have seen. Behind the mask, Ambrose smiled in contentment. He had done well.
* * *
By then, it was late afternoon and the masquerade would be just a few hours away. Ambrose knew it would take him a while to cross the lake, and so he decided it was time to start. He stepped on the platform and started the orrery, admiring the way it came to life under his touch. The orrery had just started to lift off the ground, when he heard a sound from the square. He looked around, and saw that the little clockwork child had returned.
She stood, wobbly, at an entrance to the square. She stared at the orrery, at Ambrose, and then spun in happy circles. Then she raced up to the edge of the platform and looked up at Ambrose.
Ambrose looked down at her. She wanted to come with him, it seemed. Well, she had brought the invitation--why not? Perhaps she had received an invitation of her own. Ambrose had removed the ramp that once led up to the merry-go-round, so he leaned down and picked up the little clacking girl and set her down on the platform. She spun around again, once, twice, three times, and then stopped and looked at him once more. Though the features of her porcelain face did not change, Ambrose thought that she must be smiling.
Returning his attention to the controls, Ambrose increased the speed at which the great armature drove the globes around and around. The platform lifted higher, and then higher still, and as it rose Ambrose and the clockwork child could see more of the great city than they ever had before.
It was a marvel. From their vantage point--two stories above the ground, then four, then twelve, then above most of the rooftops--the city was a beautiful creature. The streets of the city extended out like welcoming arms, each with a gentle curve, embracing the buildings that stood upon them. Ambrose could not see where the city ended. It simply seemed to go on to the horizon, and perhaps beyond. Most wonderful of all, it was always changing. Ambrose would look one way, then another, and then back--and things would be different. Buildings would be taller, or shorter. There would be more windows, then fewer. Streets would widen and narrow, or vanish altogether to be replaced by a fine park or a monstrous cathedral. The city would never change before Ambrose's eyes, but only when he was looking elsewhere. It seemed to Ambrose that the city was alive, and always new.
They rose higher, and higher, till Ambrose felt it was high enough and stabilized the speed at which the orrery spun. Then he turned and looked at the lake. It was not far off, but the distance to the palace was impossible to guess. Hoping for the best, Ambrose began to work the bellows on two of the great heads and the orrery began to drift off over the water.
As Ambrose went about his work, the clockwork child was ever at his side. She would race from one spot to the next, looking at everything, her little arms spinning about as she saw each new thing. She watched Ambrose intently, seeing everything he did, sometimes cocking her head to this side or that as she puzzled out what he was doing. Ambrose did not speak, thinking that his words would be lost on her. But he was happy she was here--somehow, she had a connection to the place they were going. Had she come from the palace? Had someone from the palace crossed the lake and chosen this little girl as a messenger? Ambrose couldn't guess. But she was real and new to him, and new things were scarce in Carcosa.
* * *
The orrery flew on, across the water. Behind them, Carcosa quickly receded over the horizon, yet the palace seemed no closer. A fog had spread across the water, and clouds had filled the sky above. Ambrose could scarcely see the palace, in fact. It was visible only at rare moments, at a break in the mist. Yet it was always straight ahead, for Ambrose held his course steady.
There were sounds coming from the water. They did not come often, but there was no mistaking them. Ambrose could hear deep rolling calls from something beneath the water, and occasional squawks and splashes as if from some diving bird. Not once did he see anything, above or below. But Ambrose watched intently, hoping for a glimpse.
In watching, Ambrose came to realize that something was happening. The fog below was getting thicker and rising closer to the orrery. The clouds above seemed to be growing, or sinking, so that they were closer, too. Before too much longer, the orrery was completely engulfed in mist.
Ambrose paced around the platform, the clockwork child at his heels. The mist worried him. He couldn't see more than a few yards past the edge of the platform now, and though he felt sure he had maintained his course, he could not be positive that they were still heading for the palace. It had seemed so far off that even a slight change in direction could surely put them in the wrong. But there was nothing to be done--the mist was all around them, and he could not clear it. He had to hope for the best.
Then something else happened. The orrery began to slow down. Unaccountably, the great armature was losing speed and the great whirling globes were doing the same. Ambrose raced to his machinery, and opened the throttle. It didn't change a thing. Within moments, he felt butterflies in his stomach and knew that the orrery was dropping, very quickly, towards the water.
In a panic, Ambrose worked the bellows faster, trying to propel them (hopefully) closer to the palace. He raced back and forth between the bellows and the armature, torn between gaining speed and restoring altitude. But the globes were now moving very slowly, and within moments they stopped altogether. The orrery was dropping fast now, almost plummeting, and the wind roared past the edges of the platform. It got inside the great brass heads so that they howled with a heart-wrenching sadness. Ambrose cried himself, screaming in frustration at the controls that simply would not respond. He was doomed--he would strike the water and drown. All would be lost. He would not reach the palace, would not join the masquerade. Even now, perhaps a royal attendant was crossing Ambrose's name off the guest list.
But the clockwork child was not concerned. She had stopped following Ambrose, and now simply wandered about to and fro. She would go to the edge of the platform and look off into the mist, or wander over to watch the pumping bellows behind a brass head. She showed no excitement, no uncertainty, no fear. Ambrose stared at her, stopped in his tracks by the realization that the child was at peac e.
All at once, they hit the water--but the water was not there. Instead, it had been replaced by still more mist. But this mist was a rich gray, and seemed much more solid than the wispy clouds they had been flying through. Yet Ambrose was sure this was the water. They were in the lake, and the lake was mist, and they were not dead.
The noise of the wind stopped, and the brass heads ceased their airy lament. It was calm and quiet, as if they were underwater. Ambrose looked about, confused.
Then he heard it. A great bellow, almost a wail, but impossibly loud and rich. The lake-mist that enveloped them resonated with it, it echoed within the hollow heads, it caused the globes to vibrate. There was something in the lake with them, something large, and by the sound of it the thing was coming this way.
