Once upon a tomorrow,
before too long,
there will be a world that will finally live in peace.
At that time,
there will be new men
and there will be new women.
It will be the era of miracles.
THE ABSENT ONE
THE FESTIVAL
The clock was charging forward at full speed. It was a giant grandfather clock mounted on casters, its pendulum loudly marking every second. It wasn’t every day that Ophelia witnessed a piece of furniture of this size rushing toward her.
“Please excuse it, dear cousin!” exclaimed a young girl, tugging on the clock’s lead with all her might. “It’s not usually so forward. In its defense, Mom doesn’t take it out very often. May I have a waffle?”
Ophelia kept a wary eye on the clock, whose casters were still squeaking against the paving. “With some maple syrup?” she asked, plucking a crispy waffle from the counter.
“No thanks, cousin. Merry Tickers!”
Ophelia had responded half-heartedly, watching the young girl and her big clock disappear into the crowd. If there was one festival she wasn’t in the mood to participate in, this was certainly it. Assigned to the waffle stand, right in the center of Anima’s traditional market, she was seeing a never-ending procession of cuckoo clocks and alarm clocks. The continuous cacophony of tick-tocking and cries of “Merry Tickers!” reverberated against the large windows of the covered market. Ophelia felt as if all those clock hands were turning just to remind her of what she didn’t wish to remember.
“Two years and seven months.”
Ophelia looked at Aunt Rosaline, who had tossed these words out along with some piping-hot waffles onto the counter. She also found that Tickers put her into a dark mood.
“Do you think madam will reply to our letters?” Aunt Rosaline hissed, while shaking her spatula. “But then, I suppose madam has better things to do with her days.”
“You’re being unfair,” said Ophelia. “Berenilde probably has tried to contact us.”
Aunt Rosaline laid her spatula back on the waffle-iron, and wiped her hands on her kitchen apron. “Of course I’m being unfair. After what happened in the Pole, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Doyennes were intercepting our mail. I shouldn’t be complaining in your presence. These past two years and seven months have been even more silent for you than for me.”
Ophelia didn’t feel like talking about it. Just thinking about it made her feel as if she’d swallowed the hands of a clock. She hastened to serve a jeweler, adorned with his finest watches.
“Come, come!” he chided, when his watches all started frantically snapping their covers. “Where have your good manners gone, misses? Want me to take you back to the shop, do you?”
“Don’t tick them off,” said Ophelia, “it’s me that has that effect on them. Syrup?”
“The waffle will suffice. Merry Tickers!”
Ophelia watched the jeweler move off, and placed the bottle of syrup, which she’d almost knocked over, back on the table. “The Doyennes should never have assigned me a festival stand. All I can do is hand out waffles that I can’t even make myself. And even then, I’ve dropped half a dozen of them onto the floor.”
Ophelia’s pathological clumsiness was notorious within her family. No one would have risked asking her for maple syrup with all that clockwork around the place.
“It pains me to admit it, but for once I don’t think the Doyennes were wrong. You’re a fright to behold, and I think it’s good for you to do something with your hands.” Aunt Rosaline gave her niece a stern look, focusing on her drawn face, colorless glasses, and plait of hair so tangled that no comb could get through it.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not fine. You don’t go out anymore, you eat any old thing, you sleep at any old time. You haven’t even been back to the museum,” Aunt Rosaline added, solemnly, as if that particular detail were the most concerning of all.
“In fact, I have been back,” countered Ophelia. She had rushed straight there on her return from the Pole, as soon as she’d got off the airship, before even dropping her suitcase off at home. She had wanted to see with her own eyes the cabinets stripped of their weapon collections, the rotunda stripped of its military aircraft, the walls stripped of their imperial standards, and the alcoves stripped of their ceremonial armor.
She had left the place distraught, and had never returned.
“It’s no longer a museum,” she muttered between her teeth. “Relating the past but refusing to relate war, that’s lying.”
“You are a reader,” Aunt Rosaline rebuked her. “Surely you’re not just going to stay with your fingers crossed until . . . until . . . In short, you must go forward.”
Ophelia refrained from retorting that she wasn’t crossing her fingers and that going forward didn’t interest her. She’d done much research in recent months, without leaving her bed, nose buried in geographical tomes. It was elsewhere that she had to go, except that she couldn’t. Not as long as the Doyennes were keeping a close eye on her.
Not as long as God was keeping a close eye on her.
“It would be better to leave your watch at home during Tickers,” Aunt Rosaline suddenly declared. “It’s stirring up the others.”
Some clocks had, indeed, flocked around the waffle stand. Ophelia instinctively laid her hand over her pocket, and then indicated to the dials to go and tick somewhere else. “That’s typically Anima, that is. One can’t carry an unruly watch around without sensing the disapproval of all those in the vicinity.”
“You should get it treated by a clockmaker.”
“I have. It isn’t broken, just very troubled. Merry Tickers, dear uncle.”
Wrapped in his old winter coat, his moustache heavy with melted snow, her great-uncle had just sprung out from the crowd. “Yeah, yeah, happy festival, tick-tock, and the rest of it,” he mumbled, going straight to the other side of the stand and helping himself to a hot waffle. “It’s getting ridiculous, all this bunkum! Festival of Silverware, Festival of Musical Instruments, Festival of Boots, Festival of Hats . . . Every year, a new booze-up in the calendar! Soon you’ll see ’em celebrating chamber pots. In my day, we didn’t spoil objects like they do now, and then they’re surprised that they throw tantrums. Hide this, pronto,” he suddenly whispered, handing an envelope to Ophelia.
“You’ve found another one?” As she slipped the envelope into her apron pocket, Ophelia felt her heart beating faster than all the festival’s clocks.