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

them, and of how the riverbed creatures had mended her as best they could. But the Princess was not as once she had been. Scars of livid mother-of-pearl disfigured the porcelain features. One eye was still crazed and sunken; one arm was bent and unable to flex; and although this did not affect the Watchmaker’s love for her, he was sorry that he did not have sufficient skill to make her whole.

The rider of the mechanical horse had only once seen such craftsmanship as that of the Clockwork Princess. Long ago and far away, and yet she remembered enough of her skills to understand what needed to be done.

“I can mend her,” she told the pair. And so she did, in porcelain, and also restored the Princess’s hair with strands of hand-spun golden thread, and took out and reset her eye, so that she was once more as beautiful as she had been in the days of her reign.

But the Princess and the Watchmaker soon found that this beauty was dangerous. Folk who had never noticed the Clockwork Princess in her headscarf and rags now gazed at her with covetous eyes. Twice she was kidnapped by pirates, hoping to sell her across the Sea, and only the perseverance and courage of the Watchmaker and his new friend were able to secure her release.

The Clockwork Princess once more took to veiling her face, like the Sand People. But that, too, attracted attention. The Sand People were not greatly loved in that part of the Worlds, and many folk flung insults at the pair—insults, and sometimes even stones. They even considered crossing the Sea and going to join the Sand People—but clockwork and sand are enemies, and the Watchmaker feared for his Princess’s life. The woman with the mechanical horse travelled with them awhile, and while she was there, she kept them safe. But she grew increasingly restless; and soon the Watchmaker understood that she was eager to move on.

“If only we could find a place where folk would leave us in peace,” he said. “Surely there must be somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” said the Clockwork Princess in her wistful, rusty voice. And she slipped her porcelain hand into the hand of the Watchmaker and laid her head on his shoulder. “Somewhere,” said the Princess again, and from the depths of her mechanism, there came a sound like weeping.

The rider of the mechanical horse, who had never cared about acceptance or community, did not understand their desire to flee. Her way was to fight, not hide. But her two friends were not fighters. Outcasts from their own world; their love unrecognized by the Folk, they needed to find a place of their own; a place where they could be happy.

“There is a place,” said the woman at last to her two companions. “A place of which I’ve sometimes heard, where people go to escape the world.”

And so the woman told the pair about the Labyrinth of Forgotten Things. A place where the lost and forgotten could find shelter from the world outside. Rumours of it abounded, but the rider of the mechanical horse had never met anyone who claimed to have actually seen the Labyrinth, or knew where they could find it. And yet it was real, she was sure of it; not least because she’d heard of it so many times in stories.

And so the Watchmaker and the Clockwork Princess set off in search of the Labyrinth. They began by scouring the city streets and following the beggars that no one saw; they went into asylums; hospitals for the old and confused; they searched prisons and leper colonies and refuse tips and disused mines. They spoke to the poor and the lonely, the displaced and the homeless, until at last, after many years, they found their way into the Labyrinth of Forgotten Things. And there, among the broken things, the lovers found their sanctuary; and lived together in peace and joy for many uneventful years.

But they never forgot the Lacewing King, or gave up hope of finding him. And because the folk of the Labyrinth had no need of watches or clocks, the Watchmaker gave up his trade and simply became the Watchman; watching the Labyrinth day by day for any sign of the Lacewing King—a broken button, a bee’s wing, even a cloud of fireflies—

87

T

HE

E

MPRESS

’

S

N

EW

D

RESS

An Empress once commissioned a dress from a famous couturier. It was made of the finest silks, and trimmed with the most exquisite lace, and embroidered all over with seed-pearls and rosettes of grosgrain ribbon.

The first time the Empress wore it, her courtiers all fell over themselves to express their admiration. One said, “Its blue is like the azure of the tropical oceans.”

Another said, “Its gold is like the hair upon the heads of the very angels on high.”

A third said, “Gold and azure are mere words. This dress is the colour of lost dreams; of stardust; of eternity.”

The court Poet, who found himself in danger of being eclipsed, said, “This. Dress. Is…” and assumed an Enigmatic Gaze, as if at an unusual smell that he was trying to identify.

But the Empress’s Fool, who usually had plenty to say, said nothing.

Finally, the Empress asked him what he thought of her beautiful dress. But the Fool was strangely reluctant to speak. Instead, he capered, and juggled, and danced, and made hilarious work of a pig’s bladder, which he carried on a stick on his shoulder.

The Empress became intrigued, then concerned. “Don’t you like my dress?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” said the Fool. “It’s very nice.”

The Empress was not appeased by this. “Could it be,” she suggested, “that you believe that this dress, with its many embellishments, represents the kind of expense that a compassionate ruler such as I should eschew, in favour of helping the poor, or offering aid to the needy?”

The Fool merely shrugged and once more deployed the pig’s bladder, to hilarious effect.

“Could it be,” said the Empress, “that