Chapter 3: Clockworks, Confusion, and Volta

Cold.

Dark.

Sore and confused.

Tink found herself on a tiled floor as her eyes blinked out the flashes that still burned her retina even after they were long gone. Growing accustomed to the darkness she saw streetlights bleeding their incandescence through large plate glass windows latticed with iron bars. 

But, curiosity is always a good antidote for fear, and Tink had the curiosity of ten average kids. Her breath ached where the tweed man had shoved her- doctor bag and all- through the light. She shivered in her night gown as much from the cold air as well as the confusion. So much had happened all at once.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Around her she began to notice, as the bright spots retreated from her eyes, a large storehouse of clocks. She stood unsteadily to her bare feet, and stubbed a toe against the leather bag. It lay partially on its side spilling its contents.

Around her clocks moved pendulums on walls. Clocks measured barometer pressure. Clocks had doors for cuckoos. Clocks rested on class displays with four-pillared gears spinning back and forth in a silent waltz. Grandfather clocks watched over the room. Ancient time pieces silently marked each moment. Buzzing, clicking, purring, and ticking, always ticking- the instant of eternity, never to be seen again.

Tink crouched beside the doctor’s bag and flipped it open again.

Everything inside had been jostled loose, but it was immediately clear the chaos wasn’t natural. Straps, loops, and fitted pockets lined the interior—each piece meant for something specific.

She began pressing things back into place, more from instinct than thought.

There were nine leather slots for doorknobs. Only eight were filled.

Tink paused.

Each one was different- gunmetal dull, polished silver, brass, gold-toned, crystal-cut, even one painted a soft purple that felt like sanded wood beneath her fingers. No two matched. No two seemed meant for the same door.

She swallowed and set them carefully back into their places.

The bag held more than doorknobs.

A small wooden box, velvet-lined, revealed a set of delicate instruments- fine, precise, and unfamiliar. Not medical. Not quite mechanical either. She shut the lid and slid it into a side pocket.

Another case, no larger than a deck of cards and warm to the touch, opened with a soft latch. Inside lay a pair of opera glasses.

Her mother had used something like them once, leaning forward in her seat at Much Ado, watching the actors as though she might step onto the stage herself.

Tink folded them closed and returned them without a second thought.

A metal circlet caught her eye next.

It unfastened like an earring, and threaded along it were a dozen rings- each one different, each one worn smooth in places as though they had been used often. None would fit her fingers.

Except her thumb.

Tink frowned and set them aside.

Along the length of the bag, a narrow zippered pocket resisted her at first before giving way. Inside was a leather ledger, worn soft at the edges. She flipped it open. 

All blank pages… except one.

The entry was written in careful, deliberate script.

“Bowling Ball- 37 Greene Avenue, Harrisford, Ontario.”

Tink read it again, more quietly this time.

“Bowling ball…”

“Put that down.”

The voice cut cleanly through the shop.

Lights snapped on. Tink looked up.

A woman stood in the doorway.

Tall. Severe. Beautiful- if you found a gaze that sharp and unyielding beautiful. Tink only knew she could not look away.

She was dressed in tweed from collar to hem, a long petticoat falling in clean lines to her boots. A bonnet crowned her head, a single white feather trailing behind it like a quiet declaration. A watch chain ran from breast pocket to hip, glinting faintly as she moved.

In her hand she carried a rod. It spat small, bright sparks from its tip, each one snapping and dying in the air like distant fireworks.

“Drop the bag.”

She did not raise her voice. She didn’t need to.

Tink held her ground- though her grip tightened as her certainty slipped.

“He sent me here.”

The words came out before she could stop them. 

A pause.

“Did he know you’d be here too?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. 

The sparks at the tip of her rod died instantly.

She turned it in her gloved hands, collapsing it in a smooth, practiced motion until it was no larger than a pen, then slipped it into the purse hanging at her hip.

Only then did she move forward.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. Something in her voice caught Tink’s ear. Not just the tone. The accent.

Sharp. Clipped. German. The same.

Tink took a step back, angling the bag out of reach.

“You’re… you’re with him!”

The woman stopped.

“What?”

“You’re with the Tweed Man,” Tink said, more certain now. “You talk just like he does.”

For the first time, something shifted in the woman’s expression. Her composure cracked- just slightly.

“Is he here?” She turned, scanning the shop. “Huygens?” she called. “Huygens, are you here?”

The woman moved. Not hesitantly.

Directly towards Tink.

Tink stiffened, clutching the bag tighter, bracing herself as the woman closed the distance between them… and passed her.

Without a glance.

She continued on, peering down the corridor beyond.

“Excuse me!” Tink called.

The woman stopped. Turned. Folded her arms, her expression tightening.

“I’m afraid…” Tink began, then faltered. “I’m afraid-”

“Yes, I can see that,” the woman snapped. “As well you should be. A girl- alone- carrying something she clearly doesn’t understand-” She stopped herself.

“But never mind that.”

Tink swallowed. “What I mean is…” she tried again, forcing the words through. “If he’s the man you’re looking for… he’s not here.”

A beat. “And he’s not coming.”

The words struck.

The woman seemed to fold in on herself, as though something inside her had given way. She sank onto a nearby stool, suddenly smaller, the sharpness gone from her posture.

“Oh no,” she murmured. Only the ticking of the clocks could be heard. “Of course.”

Her gaze dropped. “Why else would Huygens give his bag to a girl?”

“I’m not- ” Tink stepped closer, then steadied herself. “I’m not useless. And he said he was being followed.”

“Followed?”

The woman looked up.

Tink saw it then- her eyes rimmed red, holding back something she refused to let fall.

“Not here,” Tink said gently, closing the distance. “Back in my room. He came…”

She hesitated. “… through my closet.”

“Yes… through a door,” the woman said, almost absently.

Tink blinked. “You know about that?”

The woman reached into her purse without looking and pulled something free, holding it out in her palm.

Another doorknob.

Or something like one. Older. Stranger. More deliberate.

“Who… who are you?” Tink asked.

The woman heaved a sigh and placed both hands flat on her thighs. Smoothing out her dress, she locked eyes with Tink.

“Now listen please,” she said in a very gentle yet curt manner. “Be a good girl and give me Huygens’ bag, and I will get you a lolly and help you find your way home.”

Tink’s jaw tightened. “Mister Huygens told me to keep it safe. How am I supposed to know you’re safe to give it to?”

The woman looked flummoxed. “Hear now,” she began but responded as sweetly as a tightened jaw allowed her. “My name is Volta. Mr. Huygens is… my mentor. If there is one person in the world he would like to have his bag, it would be me.”

Tink stood as strong and as tall as her sleep attire would let her.

“I don’t believe you.”

Volta’s face turned chalk white, and Tink wondered if she would faint. But the woman worried her lip and fiddled with bangles that fell down her silk gloves to her wrists. 

She sighed mightily for a long moment before finally announcing, “Fine! Just fine! You will come with me, for now. Goodness. Just… Just goodness!” Volta sprang off of the stool, and walked towards Tink with such purpose, the girl thought she might be run down, but again she passed right by her, towards an open storage closet.

“We’ve got little time, you know,” she said and noticed Tink hadn’t moved, still clinging to the bag. “Come on, come on!”

Tink shivered in the cool night air of the clockhouse. She reasoned that going with Volta now was better than being alone. Volta took a look in her leather purse, and Tink heard the clatter of several objects while she stirred the contents before pulling out another doorknob. 

A simple copper coloured knob. 

She pressed it on the storage door, and it clicked solidly. Two tugs to the left, and one to the right, and Volta shut the door. Immediately the red glow hummed to life along the cracks of the door frame beyond. Tink was beginning to understand and steeled herself for another bright flashing trip.

But there was a strange mechanical chime and Volta frowned, turning the doorknob to the right stiffly and the ensuing ruby light in the cracks of the door dissipated.

Instead she reached down to the watch in her vest pocket and snapped it open. The interior sparked to life. Tink heard an attenuated voice, not different than using her own radio set.

“Volta?” came the disembodied voice.

“Yes.” Volta said.

“The Dvergr are on the move.”

“Yes.” Volta said.

“They went into a house on Hillcrest Avenue. They were looking at a light on the second floor facing east. A moment later, some kid climbed out his window, onto a nearby tree and down…”

“Jack!” Tink gasped. 

The voice continued from the pocket watch. “ He ran through the backyard. I don’t know where he went after that.”

Volta looked up at Tink, jaw working in thought. “Hold for a moment.” She muffled the pocketwatch with her other hand and whispered. “Do you know this boy?”

Tink nodded fiercely. “I know where he went.”

Volta’s eyes locked with hers and nodded sharply uncovering the watch. “Well done,” she said to the voice on the other end. “Keep back. The Dvergr will certainly track him further.” She flipped the timepiece shut and replaced it in her pocket.

Reaching out with her hand for Tink’s she said. “Come on, little girl.. I…”

Volta’s eyes saw something on the floor and bent down picking up the glass doorknob Huygens had dislodged and tossed from Tink’s bedroom door. Volta swallowed and blinked twice seeing the knob in her hand.

Tink looked at the crystal knob gleaming in Volta’s hand. She looked down at the bag in her arms and realized she still held the leather ledger. On the open page, beneath the single entry now emblazoned a second one.

Jack West, Hespeler Dump, Ontario.

Volta saw the confusion and fear and pushed the glass doorknob in Tink’s bag, closed the ledger and replaced it in the zippered pouch as if she intimately knew the medical bag herself.

“Come.” she said and pulled Tink back to the storage closet. Activating the doorknob, she wrenched the door open, and they disappeared together into the light bright as a burning sunset.