The Cabinet of Wonders: The Kronos Chronicles: Book I (8 page)

“Why?”

“The Worry Vials have a flaw.” Tomik’s blond hair hung in a short curtain around his face as he looked down. “Father designed them so that the problems and fears people whispered to the vials couldn’t be known to anyone else. When the bottle turns different colors it’s because there are tiny crystals lining the inside, and they bite into the worries like little teeth. The whispers turn green and brown as they’re broken down into fragments. Then the glass turns purple as it absorbs the pieces. The more you use the vial, the darker it gets. But each time you open it, there’s nothing inside, and even if you break the glass, the worries never escape. They stay
in the pieces of the glass. But I recently discovered that there’s a way in which you can actually
hear
whatever somebody told a vial.”

Petra immediately saw that this was a big problem. “But you’ve sold hundreds of them! And to
members of the court.
I bet they’ve told their vials lots of things they don’t want anybody to hear.”

“Exactly. When I told Father, he was so embarrassed. I don’t know what bothered him more—that there is a flaw, or that I was the one who told him about it. He hasn’t decided what to do. If he tells everybody, it could ruin our business. It would be all right if people who bought the vials just demanded their money back. But what’s worse is that they wouldn’t trust the Stakan name anymore. And if Father stops selling the vials, people might begin to wonder what’s wrong with them, and somebody besides me might actually figure out how to extract the secret worries.”

“How
do
you extract them?”

“It’s simple, really.” Tomik shook his head miserably. “Lucie decided to use her Worry Vial as a vase for flowers from Pavel. No one thought anything of it when she poured water in the vial, and the glass stayed the same color it was before. It was violet, because Lucie doesn’t have enough worries to make the vial a darker color. The next day, the flowers were withered and Lucie was sad. I was in the kitchen when she poured the water out. I heard her say, ‘That’s odd,’ and turned around to see that her Worry Vial was clear again. Then I realized that the water had somehow sucked the worries out of the glass. The
water
had been violet, not the vial. I did some experimenting, and discovered that if you put water in a Worry Vial, and pour it out later, the water’s different. It’s dark. It’ll evaporate eventually, like water always does, but vial water leaves behind a light dust. When you stir the dust with your finger, you can hear the whispered worries again.”

“Most people aren’t like Lucie,” Petra comforted. “Who would
think of putting anything inside a Worry Vial but worries? Your family is so used to having the vials around that they don’t seem special, but they’re very valuable to everyone else. They wouldn’t treat it like an ordinary bottle. Has anyone ever complained to the Sign of Fire?”

“Not yet,” Tomik said gloomily.

“At least someone will
know
if his vial has been tampered with. If you walk into your bedroom and see that your purple vial has become clear, you know that something’s wrong. Somebody would have contacted the Sign of Fire if this had happened.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“You should come up with an antidote. Then offer it for free to anyone who has bought a Worry Vial.”

“An antidote?”

“Yes … you know, something that will stop the water from pulling the secrets out of the glass. Maybe you could mix a sort of syrup that you pour into the vial after the glass has absorbed the worries. The syrup could seal the worries into the glass, like melted wax.”

“Hmm.” Tomik became pensive, and they were quiet until a cuckoo called from the trees, breaking the silence. “Hey, where
is
that spider of yours? I have to go home.”

“Astrophil!”

The spider twinkled toward them, walking across a bed of moss. “The organizational skills of ants are really quite impressive.”

As he approached, they heard a shatteringly loud crack. Astrophil squeaked and jumped to Petra’s shoe, ducking under the hem of her trouser leg.

“Was that a tree falling?” Petra said uncertainly.

“Too loud.” Tomik peered up between the trees.

A flash of light stitched across the blue sky. Thunder shuddered.

“But it’s a beautiful day!” Tomik protested. “This is bizarre.”

Not as bizarre as what happened next. Light brown grains began to sift down through the trees, hissing across the leaves and settling onto Tomik and Petra.

Tomik rubbed a hand through his hair. He stared at his fingers incredulously. “Is it … is it raining
sand?”

As if startled by Tomik’s voice, the sandstorm stopped.

Tomik kneeled to inspect the sand-sprinkled moss, muttering in disbelief. Petra and the spider were silent, but they were both thinking about the same thing: the prince’s clock.

P
ETRA SECRETLY BEGAN
preparing to leave the house at the Sign of the Compass.

She worked harder in the shop than ever before. She made sure that the gears were well oiled, with not a speck of rust. She convinced a merchant passing through town to buy the tin monkey. She felt a pang when she told him that the pets were one of a kind, and that her father would not make any more. Master Kronos was feeling better, and enjoyed sitting in the shop and chatting with the customers. He liked the merchant, who had a gloomy voice that became excited when he first saw the monkey. But after that day, Master Kronos decided that he would give the remaining tin animals to his family and friends.

Dita said, “No, thanks,” when her uncle offered her one. “David’s Stella is enough for me.”

Josef surprised them all by choosing a mouse, dipping his large hand to scoop up the one with the tiniest paws and longest tail. “Thank you, sir.” Josef put the mouse in his pocket and never said what he had named it.

Petra asked Mikal Kronos if she could give the last puppy to Tomik, and he readily agreed. “I’m not sure she’ll get along with Jaspar, though,” her father warned.

Petra had not seen Tomik in a while. They each had to work during the day. At night he was preoccupied with trying to figure out how to fix the flaw in the Worry Vials and how to make a working pair of eyes for Petra’s father. Tomas Stakan had finally agreed to let his son help him in designing the eyes, but they had no luck. Two more leather bags sat next to the first one on Mikal Kronos’s nightstand.

When Petra walked the puppy to the Sign of Fire, the pet sniffed at the wind, drooled green oil when she saw a pigeon, and zigzagged every which way to look inside a shop or down an alley. Petra was glad that she had thought to put a leash on her.

The walk to the Stakan shop seemed to last forever, but when she arrived she was rewarded by Tomik’s delighted face as the puppy wriggled in his arms and he named her Atalanta.

Soon, all the pets had been given away. Some people, like the mayor, were miffed that they had not received such a gift from Master Kronos. But those who welcomed a tin creature into their homes treasured it, treating it as tenderly as if it were a baby—which was exactly what Mikal Kronos wished.

One day, when Petra noticed the first fallen leaf lying like a flake of copper on the ground, Mikal Kronos spent the empty hours in the shop quizzing his daughter on the properties of metal. She was making an unusual effort to do well. She remembered the more ordinary properties—metal’s ability to conduct heat and cold, for example. But she also was quick to recall aspects of metal that not many people knew, because her father alone had discovered them. Astrophil sat on Petra’s shoulder. He knew the answers to all the questions, and sometimes bounced impatiently when Petra was slow to respond, but he had been forbidden to answer.

“When is iron at its most dangerous, Petra?”

“When it bears a grudge.”

“Good. How do you teach metal not to be afraid of fire?”

“You must sing to it.”

“Which metal is said to have the best memory?”

“Silver.”

“Why?”

“Because it is still in love with the moon. Silver tries to be like the moon in all things.”

“All
things?”

“Well, except—”

The door to the shop swung open, and a grandly dressed woman stepped inside. As her gaze fell on Petra with her tangled hair and Master Kronos with his bandages, she instantly regretted coming here. Petra could tell from the way the two pink petals of her lips twitched. A footman followed his lady inside, and looked around the store with contempt.

The woman’s bell-shaped skirt floated across the rough wooden floor. Petra heard the clip of small shoes that were made to sound exactly like that. “Good afternoon,” Petra said.

The woman did not return the greeting. “I hear,” she said in a voice as light and delicate as a porcelain cup, “that you sell silver animals.”

“Tin, my lady,” Petra’s father replied. “But I am afraid they are all gone.”

“Can you not make more?”

“As you see, my lady, I cannot.”

She looked again at Master Kronos’s face. She turned to Petra, clearly displeased. Then her eyes narrowed, for she had caught sight of Astrophil. “But what is this? A tin spider? So you do have one such creature left.”

Astrophil immediately disappeared into Petra’s hair. Petra was about to order this graceful, horrible woman out of the shop when
her father said, “Unfortunately, he is not for sale. He belongs to my daughter, and has for six years.”

“I am willing to pay a very good price for it.”

“I am very sorry to repeat that he is not for sale.”

“I will pay even more. I know how you artisans operate. You will do anything to drive up the price.”

“Perhaps I can interest you in something else? A music box?”

She waved a gloved hand. “I have many.”

“But I doubt you have a Muse Box. Petra, show her.”

Petra used a footstool to reach the row of Muse Boxes on the topmost shelf. She stepped down and thrust the box at the woman.

“It plays whatever you need to hear,” Mikal Kronos said, and nodded at his daughter. “Petra, go ahead.”

Petra opened the box. It began to play a merry jig of a pipe and two fiddles. It took Petra a moment to recognize the tune. It was called “The Grasshopper.” When Petra was nine, or perhaps ten, it had been played on the night of the annual May bonfire. Ever since Okno survived the Black Plague centuries ago, the men in the village would head into the woods on the first day of every May, cut down the tallest poplar tree they could find, and carry it through the village streets. Everyone else followed behind in a long parade, and one child was chosen to sit on the tree as it traveled through the village. When the procession reached the town square, the May Child was lifted to the ground and handed a torch to light the bonfire once the poplar had been chopped into pieces. As Petra listened to the music box play “The Grasshopper,” she remembered how everybody was dancing but her. She watched the Tree of Life burn and felt angry that yet again, one more year, she hadn’t been chosen to be the May Child. Her father asked her to dance. And she forgot her disappointment.

Petra closed the box.

“This music means nothing to me,” the woman said, and turned to leave.

“It was my daughter who opened the box. Do try it yourself, my lady.”

With a look of amused disbelief, the woman lifted the lid. A quick, longing melody flowed from the box. Petra didn’t recognize it.

The woman listened, staring at nothing.

“It is not a Czech tune,” Petra’s father said. “Am I right? I believe it is an English song called ‘Greensleeves.’”

The woman shut the box. “I know the song. But I did not wish to hear it.”

“It plays what you
need
to hear, not what you want to hear.”

The woman’s eyes glittered. She ordered her footman out of the shop. Then she paid much more than the asking price for the Muse Box. She gripped the box in both hands as she left the Sign of the Compass.

That evening, when Petra bid her father good night, she hugged him and said, “You know I love you very much.”

“I do know that,” he said, and placed his wrinkled hand on her knotted hair.

“Do you know … did you hear that it rained sand last week? With thunder and lightning? On a clear day?”

“Did it?” His voice was indifferent, but in a practiced way.

She whispered, “Aren’t you worried?”

He paused, and Petra saw that he was. Still, he tried to persuade his daughter that everything was all right. “If the prince caused this, it only means that he cannot control the clock’s power. Perhaps he has been able to assemble the last part to some degree. That is possible. Lightning would be the easiest thing for the clock to produce. But I never designed the clock to rain sand. This suggests to me that he cannot assemble the last part properly.”

“But he’s trying.”

“Petra.” Her father’s voice was stern as he gripped her shoulders. “The clock is no longer our concern. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” His white bandages confronted her. She nodded, although she knew he could not see her. “I do.”