Clockwork Princess

in fear. “I have some questions to ask you,” said the man in the doorway. “And I wouldn’t try to run if I were you. Not if you want to keep your fingers attached to your body….”

13
T HE M IND H AS M OUNTAINS
    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep
.
    —Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No Worse, There Is None”
    Tessa could never remember later if she had screamed as she had fallen. She remembered only a long and silent fall, the river and the rocks hurtling toward her, the sky at her feet. The wind tore at her face and hair as she twisted in the air, and she felt a sharp jerk at her throat.
    Her hands flew up. Her angel necklace was lifting over her head, as if an enormous hand had reached down out of the sky to remove it. A metallic blur surrounded her, a pair of great wings opening like gates, and something caught at her, arresting her fall. Her eyes widened—it was impossible, unimaginable—but her angel, her clockwork angel, had grown somehow to the size of a living human being and was hovering over her, its great mechanical wings beating against the wind. She stared up into a blank, beautiful face, the face of a statue made of metal, as expressionless as ever—but the angel had hands, as articulate as her own, and they were holding her, holding her up as the wings beat and beat and beat and she fell slowly now, gently, like a puff of dandelion fluff blown on the wind.
    Maybe I am dying
, Tessa thought. And,
This cannot be
. But as the angel held her, and they drifted together toward earth, the ground came clearer and clearer into focus. She could see the individual rocks by the side of the stream now, the currents as they ran downstream, the reflection of the sun in the water. The shadow of wings appeared against the earth and grew wider and wider until she was falling into it, falling into the shadow, and she and the angel plunged together to the ground and landed in the soft dirt and scattered rocks at the side of the stream.
    Tessa gasped as she landed, more from shock than impact, and reached up, as if she could cushion the angel’s fall with her body—but it was shrinking already, growing smaller and smaller, its wings folding in on themselves, until it struck the ground by her side, the size of a toy once more. She reached out a shaking hand and seized it. She was lying on uneven rocks, half-in, half-out of the chilly water; it was already soaking through her skirts. She seized the pendant and crawled up the side of the stream with the remainder of her strength, and collapsed at last on dry ground with the angel pressed against her chest, ticking its familiar beat against her heart.
    Sophie sat in the armchair by the side of Jem’s bed that had always been Will’s place, and watched Jem sleep.
    There had been a time, she thought, when she would have been almost grateful for this opportunity, a chance to be so close to him, to place cold cloths against his forehead when he stirred and murmured and burned with fever. And though she no longer loved him as she once had—the way, she realized now, one loved someone one did not know at all, with admiration and distance—it still wrung her heart to see him like this.
    One of the girls in the town where Sophie had grown up had died of consumption, and Sophie recalled how they had all talked of the way the disease had made her more beautiful before it killed her—made her pale and slender, and flushed her face with a hectic rosy glow. Jem had that fever in his cheeks now as he tossed against his pillows; his silvery-white hair was like frost, and his restless fingers twitched against the blanket. Every once in a while he spoke, but the words were in Mandarin, and she did not know them. He called out for Tessa.
Wo ai ni, Tessa. Bu lu run, he qing kuang fa sheng, wo men dou hui zai yi qi
. And he called out for Will as well,
sheng si zhi jiao
, in a way that made Sophie want to take his hand and hold it, though when she did reach to touch him, he was burning up with fever and snatched his hand away with a cry.
    Sophie shrank back against the chair, wondering if she should call for Charlotte. Charlotte would want to know if Jem’s condition worsened. She was about to rise to her feet, when