Jay Lake - Mainspring

ONE

The angel gleamed in the light of Hethor's reading candle bright as any brasswork automaton. The young man clutched his threadbare coverlet in the irrational hope that the quilted cotton scraps could shield him from whatever power had invaded his attic room. Trembling, he closed his eyes.

His master, the clockmaker Franklin Bodean, had taught Hethor to listen to the mechanisms of their work. But he'd found that he could listen to life, too. Hethor heard first and always his own breathing, even now heavy and slow despite his burgeoning sense of fear.

The old house on New Haven's King George HI Street creaked as it always did. A horse clopped past outside, buggy wheels rattling along with the echo of hooves on cobbles. Great steam-driven foghorns echoed over Long Island Sound. The new electrick lamps lighting the street outside hissed and popped. Underneath the noises of the city lay the ticking of Master Bodean's clocks, and under that, if he listened very hard, the rattle of the world's turning.

But there was no one in the room with him. No one else drew breath; no floorboard creaked. No strange smells either. Merely his own familiar sweat, the hot-tallow scent of his candle, the oils of the housewood and machineand a ribbon of salt air from the nearby sea.

Was this a dream?

"I am alone." He said it as something between a prayer and the kind of spell he used to try to cast in the summer woods when he was a boycalling on Indian lore and God's word and dark magic from the Southern Earth and the timeless power of stone walls and spreading oaks.

Finally Hethor opened his eyes.

The angel was still there.

It no longer seemed made of brasswork. Rather, it looked almost human, save for the height, tall as his ceiling at the attic's peak, close to seven feet. The great wings crowded the angel's back to sweep close across its body like a cloak, feathers white as a swan. Its skin was pale as Hethor's own, but the face was narrow, shaped like the nib of a fountain pen, with a pointed chin and gleaming black eyes. The lines and planes of the angel's visage were sheer masterwork, finer than the statues of saints in the great churches of New Haven.

Hethor held his breath, afraid to even share the air with such perfection. No dream, this, but perhaps yet a nightmare.

The angel smiled. For the first time it appeared to be more than a statue. "Greetings, Hethor Jacques."

With voice came breath,, though the angel's scent was still that of a statuecold marble and damp stone. Or perhaps old metal, like a well-made clock.

Hethor dropped his grip on the blanket to grab the chain around his neck and traced the wheel-and-gear of Christ's horofixion. "G-g-greetings... ," he stammered. "And welcome." Though that last was a lie, he felt he must say it.

"I am Gabriel," said the angel, "come to charge you with a duty."

"Duty." Hethor sucked air between his teeth and lips, finally filling aching lungs with breath he had not even realized he had been holding in the strangeness of the moment. "My life is filled with duty, sir." Duty to Master Bodean, to his studies at New Haven Latin Grammar School, to his late parents and the church and the crown.

The angel appeared to ignore Hethor's statement. "The Key Perilous is lost."

Key Perilous? Hethor had never heard of it. "I..."

"The Mainspring of the world winds down," the angel continued. "Only a man, created in the image of the Tetragrammaton, can set it right. Only you, Hethor."

Hethor's fists clenched so tight he felt the tendons stand out. His pulse hissed in his ears. This was a trick, a trap, some fiendish silliness dreamt up by Bodean's dreadful sons and their Yale friends. "There are no angels. Not anymore."

Gabriel extended a fist toward Hethor, nearing the apprentice in his bed without seeming to move. The angel's wings parted to reveal a body of marbled perfection clothed in a state of nature. The angel twisted its hand palm up and opened its ringers.

A tiny feather lay there. It was not much larger than the goose down from Hethor's often-patched pillow. The angel pursed its lips, blew a breath that sparkled like shooting stars in a summer sky, then vanished. A thunderclap nearly deafened Hethor. As he shook his head to clear the noise, he heard all the bells of the house and shop below him ringing, clanging, banginghundreds of clocks chiming heaven's hour at once.

Master Bodean's sleep-muddled curses rose through the floor as the tiny feather circled where the angel had stood.

Hethor scooped it up, cutting his right palm in the process. As he struggled left-handed into his breeches, he looked at what he had caught.

The feather was solid silver, with razored edges. It gleamed in the candlelight. The cut on his palm was in the shape of a key.

"Hethor!" bellowed Master Bodean from below. "Are yer alive up there, boy?"

"Coming, sir," Hethor yelled back. Setting the feather on his writing desk, he stepped into his bootstwo sizes too smallgrabbed his coat, which was a size too small, and raced out the little door and down the attic stairs.

It took more than an hour to settle all the clocks in Master Bodean's workshop. Some had sounded out the sum of the hoursthe holy number twelvethen resumed their ticking slumber. Others, especially the smaller, more delicate mechanisms, had been possessed of a nervous tinkling that could only be dampened by careful attention with rubber mallets and soft chamois. Hethor and Master Bodean moved from clock to clock, ministering to their brass and copper hearts, right through the chiming of eleven o'clock of the evening.

Finally they stood in the workroom. Both were exhausted from the hour and the work. Master Bodean, red-faced and round-bodied in his nightshirt and gray cable-knit sweater, nodded to Hethor. "Good work, boy." He was always a fair man, even in meting out punishments.

"Thank you, sir." Hethor glanced around the workroom. All was in comforting and familiar order. A tiny furnace, newly powered by electricks. Casting slugs. Tools, ranging from hammers almost too small to see to vises large enough to crack a man's head. And parts in their bins; springs and gears and escapements, all the myriad incarnations of brass, steel, and movement jewels.

It seemed as if the angel Gabrielarchangel? Hethor suddenly wonderedhad risen from the genius loci of this workshop. He had felt a sense of deliberation, precision, even power, from his visitor that reminded him of the greatest and slowest of clocks.

"Yer all right, boy?" Bodean asked, interrupting Hethor's reverie. "You're ordinarily a bit more talkish than this."

Hethor found himself unwilling to mention the angel. Bodean would have thought him mad, for one thing. The very idea sounded horrendously self-important. He needed to sort his own thoughts, try to understand what had taken place. "I... it was the lightning, Master. It frightened me."

"Lightning, eh? Some bolt that must've been. Never'seen a storm set all the clocks a-chiming before." Bodean shook his head. "Lightning and more than lightning. One of the good Lord's mysteries, I'll warrant." He walked over to his locked cupboards and pulled a set of

keys from a pocket in his nightshirt. He took down a small pewter flask and two tumblers. "Sounds like you need a little lightning of your own, boy." Golden liquid splashed into each glass. "This'll help you sleep."

Hethor had never tasted anything stronger than table wine. The whiskey, or whatever it was, had no attraction for him. Yet here was Master Bodean, holding out the little glass, smiling. Hethor took it and sniffed. He almost choked on the sharp scent alone.

"This is true lightning," said Master Bodean with a broken-toothed grin. He tipped the glass to his lips and drank it all in one quick swallow.