Honeycomb by Joanne Harris (book series for 12 year olds .txt) 📕

was a stranger both to the place and to the tales that haunted it, had taken the short-cut through the woods to deliver a watch to a customer—a wealthy merchant who lived nearby.

The watch was as large as a turnip, and the key required to wind it was as thick as the boy’s thumb, but the merchant felt that the size of his watch added to his consequence, and so was most impatient to have it returned to him as soon as possible. The watchmaker, a stern employer, had sent the boy with instructions not to waste time, but the boy craved adventure, and when he saw the ruined tower in the woods, his curiosity overcame him and he went in for a closer look.

The stairs were rotten; the balustrade, once-gilded and carved with roses, was all that kept him from falling as he climbed up the tower. The stained-glass windows were all gone, shot through with sprays of briar. But the boy was light-footed and nimble and reached the top without difficulty, finally opening the door that led to the Princess’s bedchamber.

The Princess had lain there a hundred years, under rain and sun and snow. Moss had grown on her porcelain face, and a colony of spiders nested in one sunken eye-socket. Her hair had mostly fallen out, and a piece of falling masonry had knocked off her right arm to the elbow, exposing the intricate system of cogs and wheels that it contained.

The watchmaker’s boy came closer. He had understood at once that this was no ordinary girl, but a wonderful machine of sublime and intricate craftsmanship. Water had rusted the mechanism, but, on closer inspection, the boy believed that maybe she could be mended.

He tried to move her. No result. The Clockwork Princess was rusted fast. But, with the aid of his bottle of oil, his toolkit, and the big key from the merchant’s turnip-watch, the watchmaker’s boy finally managed to loosen, then to wind up the ancient, long-dead mechanism.

There came a terrible squealing of gears and rusty cogs in motion. Then the Clockwork Princess sat up. In spite of the ravages of time and the damage done by the elements, a part of her beauty still remained, as she fixed her remaining eye upon the watchmaker’s boy.

“Father?” she said in her rusty voice. “Father? Father? Father?”

It was the first word she had ever learnt from the craftsman who made her. It was the only word the old King had ever heard the Princess speak. It was the first word she’d spoken for well over a hundred years, and it sounded strange and sad.

The boy said, “No, I’m not your father.”

The Clockwork Princess got to her feet. “No,” she said. “No. No.”

Her voice was quite expressionless, and yet it seemed to the boy that there was a world of sadness in the single syllable. A tear of rust came from her sunken, dead eye and trickled down her porcelain face.

The boy took a rag from his pocket and wiped away the rust and moss. Then he picked up her broken arm. “I’m pretty sure I could fix you,” he said. “Will you come back home with me?”

The Clockwork Princess tilted her head. “Home.”

“That’s right,” said the watchmaker’s boy, and told her about the workshop; the watches waiting for repair; the cuckoo clocks; the grandfather clocks; the endless, quiet ticking. The watchmaker was not a kind man, but he was a very skilled craftsman. He would be able to mend the Princess—but what would become of her afterwards? The boy suspected she would be sold; maybe to a travelling show, or to a museum of curiosities, or even to a merchant, who would use her to enhance his prestige among the other merchants.

“Home,” repeated the Clockwork Princess, and the boy thought there was doubt in her voice. “No. Home. No. Father.”

The boy looked at the broken arm with its ruined, rusty clockwork. He knew that at the workshop, there would be plenty of spare parts. Then he looked at the turnip-watch he’d been paid to deliver, the key of which he had already used to wind up the Princess’s mechanism. Slowly he became aware that she, too, was looking at the watch, a gleam of hope in her one blue eye—

He opened the watch and took out the works and used them to mend the Princess’s arm. She waited in patient near-silence, occasionally whirring rustily. When the arm was re-attached, she flexed it experimentally. Although the porcelain shell was damaged beyond the boy’s skill to repair, the arm itself still worked; and when the Princess pulled the sleeve of her dress down over the exposed joint, the illusion was complete.

The boy looked at the ruined watch. “Well, that’s done it. I can’t go home now. That watch was worth a fortune.”

“Fortune,” said the Clockwork Princess, and the boy thought she sounded wistful.

He looked at her. “What’s that you say?”

“Fortune,” repeated the Clockwork Princess, and lifted her delicate porcelain hand to point at the distant horizon.

The watchmaker’s boy had always dreamed of travelling and adventures. “You think I should go seek my fortune?” he said.

“Fortune,” said the Clockwork Princess in her sweet and toneless voice, and the gears and cogs in her abdomen moved a little faster, almost as if she had a heart under the silk and porcelain.

“But what about you? Would you stay with me?”

“Stay. With. Me,” said the Clockwork Princess.

“All right,” said the boy. “I will.”

And so the two of them climbed down the stairs and into the ravaged garden, where the watchmaker’s boy and the Clockwork Princess went off into the wilderness, she whirring occasionally to herself, he whistling a cheery song.

The watchmaker hired another boy, one who was nervous of the woods and not remotely curious. As for the merchant, he never got his watch back. Instead he bought a stovepipe hat and an amber-clouded cane, and set such a trend among his peers that watches went quite out of fashion.