Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (62 page)

Ognian spoke up. “Jah, und not effen goot lookink vuns like uz.”

Dimo stared at him levelly for a second and then just continued. “Hyu’z better let de Baron deal mit dis. Iz vot he dozz.”

Agatha looked at him in frustration. “But I
squished
him with a
chicken house!
” All of the circus members gasped at this revelation. Agatha looked guilty. “Didn’t I mention that?”

Dimo waved his hand reassuringly. “A leedle ting like dot? Oh shoo—” he conceded, “He’z a bit messed op, but he gun be fine! Hy giffs him de first aid!”

Everyone took a second to contemplate what a Jägermonster would consider to be first aid.

Agatha cracked first. “Turn this thing around!” She screamed. Everyone flinched. Agatha’s voice was giving off harmonics that normally sent people racing for the hills. Combined with her increasingly frantic movements and overall air of barely contained fury, several of the more experienced performers seriously considered leaping from the airship.

Only Krosp stood his place. “Ain’t gonna happen,” he said firmly.

“It wasn’t a request!” Agatha roared. She grabbed her head and stared at the cat with a look of dawning awareness coupled with a mounting rage. “Everywhere I go lately, there’s chaos! I’ve got—I’ve got to try to
fix
something!”

She snapped upright and screamed in defiance. “I’m going to go down there and personally punch every monster in the snoot!” She focused back in on a suspiciously calm Krosp. “And don’t try to stop me!”

Krosp casually put his paws behind his back and cocked a fuzzy eyeridge. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

This was such an unexpected response that several circus members later swore that they could hear circuits snapping within Agatha’s skull. Emotions flickered across her face almost too fast to discern. She settled for an icy rage. “Why
not?
”

Krosp took a deep breath through his nose. “By the smell of it, all of those chemicals they stuffed into you are burning off. It’s also obvious that you haven’t properly slept in days.” He took another sniff and stepped back. “You’re not going
anywhere.
”

Agatha’s face went purple with rage. “
I’LL—”

She froze, a peculiar look came over her face and she began to swoon.

“Hy gots hyu!” Dimo cried, and no doubt he would have, if he hadn’t tried to catch her with his left hand. As it was, Agatha did a magnificent face-plant upon the deck.

Maxim nudged her with his booted foot and grinned at a chagrinned Dimo. “Should haff used hyu brains
dot
time, too.”

Dimo glowered as he attempted to scoop Agatha up with one arm. “Shot op!” He shrugged his left shoulder in annoyance. “Hy gets a new vun soon.”

Maxim nodded. “A new brain? Iz about time.”

Agatha slowly awoke. The first thing she noticed was that the sky outside the porthole was dark. Obviously hours had passed. She realized that she was stretched out on a snug airshipman’s bunk. The cabin was small and compact. The only sign of the regular occupant were a few framed tintypes of various women who apparently had trouble properly dressing themselves and a lovingly polished French horn hanging from a silk strap.

Agatha blearily raised her head and observed that she was clad in just a large, unfamiliar shirt. It said a lot for the state of her head that this observation, and the ramifications thereof was processed without undo embarrassment. She considered this, and realized that she was more concerned about the indescribably odd taste in her mouth.

She was surprised that she didn’t have a headache. Whenever heroines in the Heterodyne Boys novels awakened in similar circumstances, they invariably reported having them. Agatha however, was beginning to wonder if she’d ever have a headache again.

What she
did
have, was a terrible thirst. She spotted a large canteen hanging from a bedside hook. With a bit of effort, she pulled herself up to a sitting position and finding it full of water, took a deep drink.

She could hear the thrumming of engines. The ship was moving quickly, if she was any judge. She also heard voices. Many voices. As the murmur rose and fell, she realized from faint snippets, that the discussion was about her.

She closed her eyes. It was going to be awkward, there was no denying that. They knew she was a Heterodyne.

A tear surprised her by rolling down her face. It was only the first of many. She would have to leave the circus now. They wouldn’t trust her, and… and she had gotten Lars killed.

Now the tears flowed freely and she sobbed quietly as she remembered the feel of his arms around her, the way he had smiled when she had delivered a line perfectly, the taste of his lips.

Gone. Gone forever.

Eventually she snuffled one last time and knew that she had to get up. She swung her legs onto the deck, and felt it vibrating beneath her toes. Master Payne really was driving the ship hard. That made sense.

She swayed to her feet. Shaky, but not incapacitated. Good. She looked about, found her glasses and slipped them on. Then she searched, but saw no other clothing. She blew a lock of hair out of her face in annoyance. She found a small tin washbasin, and poured in a splash of water from the almost empty canteen. She scooped the water over her face, and tried to imagine that she was washing away her old life.

She dried her face and slid her glasses back on. As she did so, she caught sight of herself in the small polished metal mirror bolted to the wall above the basin. A gleam of gold at her throat made her pause.

She blinked in surprise. It looked like—it was! It was her old locket! The one that Moloch’s brother had stolen from her back in Beetleburg
months
ago!

But it
couldn’t
be.

Well there was a simple way to settle it. The locket contained pictures of her parents. Her hand stopped halfway to her throat.

Her parents. These would be portraits of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish. She had lovingly studied them for hours lying in her bed at night, or when she had been bullied at school. Wishing that the people in the locket would return from some magical, far-away place and tell her that she was a princess or some other squirmingly embarrassing fantasy.

Well, as far as fantasy parents go, she had hit the jackpot, and now she was terrified of what that meant. She had a sudden irrational thought: If the locket around her neck wasn’t hers—If there was someone else’s portrait inside, or even no portrait at all—then she could forget that she was a Heterodyne. It would no longer be real. It would be someone else’s problem.

She stared at the locket in the mirror. But where had it come from? Of course it was hers. She recognized it in a hundred subtle ways and knew—
knew
that it was hers, and that it, and everything it contained and everything it represented—was hers and would always be hers. Even if she were too weak or scared to take it, it would still be there, around her neck and inside her head. Forever.

This realization flashed through Agatha’s head in an instant. She looked at the girl in the mirror. The girl who had dreamed that that she could run away with the circus and avoid her destiny. The girl smiled back at her regretfully. It would have been nice.

Then she set her jaw, and reached for the locket.

“DON’T
TOUCH
IT!” Zeetha’s hand grabbed hold of Agatha’s wrist scant millimeters from the clasp.

Agatha blinked. “What’s wrong with it?”

Zeetha took a deep breath. “Something happened to you in Sturmhalten. You… changed.”

Agatha nodded slowly. “Yes… The Royal family had this machine. I know you won’t believe this, but because of it, I was possessed. My mind was taken over.”

She waited for Zeetha to scoff. Instead the warrior girl looked like she was thinking. “What was it you were possessed
by?
”

This question was so unexpected that Agatha blurted out the truth. “My mother. Lucrezia Mongfish. They said she was The Other.”

Zeetha looked troubled. “
The
Other? Then the Baron…This
will
cause problems.”

“You
believe
me?”

Zeetha looked up from her introspection and saw Agatha’s distress. She came over and to Agatha’s surprise, embraced her tightly. Agatha found herself relaxing within Zeetha’s embrace.

“We are Kolee-dok-zumil,” Zeetha murmured into Agatha’s ear. “We are a thing together.” She drew back slightly and looked Agatha in the eye. “And in retrospect, I can see that the person we found in Sturmhalten was
not you
.”

Her hand came up and touched the locket at Agatha’s throat. “But when whoever
was
there put that locket on—
you
—Agatha—came back. I
saw
that.”

The hand caught Agatha’s chin and tilted her head so the two were looking into each other’s eyes. “So you keep that locket on. You keep it on until you are strong enough to handle whatever is in that head of yours.”

Agatha looked distressed. Zeetha frowned. “Is there a problem with that?”

Agatha glanced at the locket in the mirror. “My uncle made me this locket many years ago. It was supposed to protect me.” She thought for a minute. “And I guess it did. It kept me from violently breaking through like most Sparks do, but it did it by keeping me… stupid.”

She brought her hand up, as if she wanted to claw it away from her neck, but her hand hovered, centimeters away from it. Her face showed the conflict she felt. “It used to make me feel safe. Now whenever I think about it, it makes me
furious
.”

She sat down hard onto the bed. “It’s a symbol of how awful my life was. The headaches. The inventions that never worked. The people who treated me like an idiot. All of that was because of this locket.” She pounded her fists upon her thighs. “This damned, stupid-making locket!”

She then slumped slightly and looked at Zeetha beseechingly. “But it
did
keep me safe. I
didn’t
go mad. And now you say it made the thing in my head go away.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I really don’t know how to feel about this,” she confessed.

Zeetha nodded seriously and sat down next to Agatha. She slung an arm around Agatha’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. The two sat together in silence for a moment.

Finally Zeetha said, “You’ve been wearing it for a while now. You don’t
sound
stupid. How do you feel?”

Agatha considered this. The answer surprised her. “I feel good. I think this thing—” she flicked the locket with a fingernail—“Has been off for too long.” She paused again, “I… I can tell that my thinking has… slowed down a bit. I have to
concentrate
more when I’m thinking hard, but it’s nothing like it was before. I think my mind has become too strong for it.”

Zeetha nodded slowly. “So—it’s something that you have overcome. Something that reminds you that you’re stronger. But it’s also something that is making you work harder to become even better? That’s good!”

Agatha looked at her askance. “Really?”

Zeetha bounced to her feet. “Of course! Any warrior would cherish such a powerful symbol!” She touched the locket at Agatha’s throat. “You were meant to have this.”

Agatha sighed deeply and stood up. “I sure hope so, because it looks like I can’t take it off.” She stretched. “That’s something else I have to accept.”

Zeetha nodded and declared in a ringing voice. “Think of it as a symbol of everything you’ve overcome, and everything you
will
overcome.”

Agatha looked at her with a pained expression. “That seems a bit… precious.”

Zeetha frowned. “When you’re stuck with something onerous, make it into a positive symbol.” She lightly smacked Agatha upside her head. “Unless you
want
to make yourself miserable.”

Agatha smiled, and took a deep breath. “So where are we going?”

Zeetha smiled. “Are you kidding? Payne’s been making a bee-line for Mechanicsburg as soon as we got the engines up to speed. The
last
thing they want to do is delay you.”

Agatha nodded. She opened the door. “Let’s get this over with,” she muttered, and strode out.

Zeetha closed her eyes and counted to herself. At “ten,” the door was jerked open and Agatha scuttled back in, slamming it behind her.

“Pants.”

Zeetha said nothing, but silently handed over the bundle she’d brought with her. Agatha dressed quickly. Over her sturdy undergarments she wore a green linen dress that was expensive enough to command respect, but unimaginative enough to make it hard to remember. She laced up the pair of stout walking shoes with the unusual soles that had been constructed by the troupe’s sparky leather worker and part-time cobbler, Sasho
⁷⁷
.

When Agatha finally appeared on the bridge, she found it packed solid. Everyone who was not actively involved in the running of the ship was gathered before Master Payne, who was standing on the elevated captain’s deck.

The old showman looked unnaturally somber. The Countess stood beside him. Usually the two refrained from what the Countess archly referred to as “public indecency” and what everyone else called “holding hands,” but now she was clinging on to her husband’s arm as if her world was ending. And in a way, it was.

“This is it,” Payne said in a voice that allowed no argument. “Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure is finished.” He paused as if he expected a reaction, but everyone remained deathly silent.

“By aiding the Lady Heterodyne, we have done what armies could not. We have humiliated the Baron and escaped to tell the tale.” He shook his head. “No matter what we promise, he cannot afford to let us get away, and we won’t—if we stay together.”

This caused some murmuring, which stopped instantly when Payne raised his hands. “After we have dropped off the Lady Heterodyne, we will fly to Paris. Once there we will sell the airship if we can, but more likely we will have to abandon it. Afterwards, we must go our separate ways.”

That provoked a sharper reaction.

“It cannot be helped!” Payne roared. “We have made our living by being fabulous creatures and thus, we are
memorable
. As a group we are even more so. We must change or we will die!”