The Cabinet of Wonders Read online

  Petra sat across from David. He shoved an enormous chunk of carrot in his mouth and looked disappointed that Petra wasn’t going to get in trouble.

  After they had finished eating, Dita warmed a generous helping of chicken and carrots in the pot over the smoldering fire. She then arranged the food on a plate and dressed it with pickled onions. She passed the plate to Petra. “Take that down to your father.”

  Petra was worried that she might find him sleeping or, worse, wake him up. But he was alert and pleased when she walked into his room. “I have found a name for my enemy: ‘Boredom.’ “ He beckoned her to his side. “You will make him run and hide.”

  They didn’t discuss the fact that he would make a mess of things if he tried to feed himself. He simply straightened up and she sat down beside him with the plate on her knees. It felt very strange to be feeding her father, like writing with her left hand. But he chatted between mouthfuls as if they were sitting across from each other in the kitchen, having an ordinary meal. He asked about Tomas Stakan and laughed when she told him about her encounter with Jaspar, but she didn’t mention Tomik’s glass spheres or why she had visited the Sign of Fire.

  She did, however, tell him about Master Stakan’s angry explosion, and then added, “I just don’t understand something. He knew that the prince was a terrible person. Why didn’t you? Why did you accept the prince’s offer to build the clock?”

  He did not reply right away. “Well, Petra,” he began slowly, “you need to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Of course, there was that awful incident during the year of the drought when we lost several good people. They were friends of mine, Petra, people I wish you knew now. But the prince was a twelve-year-old boy then, and controlled by his father’s counselors in Prague. All decisions were made by them until he turned fourteen.”

  Bohemia was its own country, but remained part of the Hapsburg Empire, which was under the reign of the prince’s father. Emperor Karl ruled from his court in Vienna, and had three sons. When each was born, he gave him a country. The eldest, Prince Maximilian, ruled Germany. Hungary belonged to Prince Frederic. And the youngest, Prince Rodolfo, had Bohemia. When Karl felt his death to be near, he would choose which of his sons would become ruler of the entire Hapsburg Empire after him, judging how well each had managed his own country.

  “It’s easier,” Mikal Kronos continued, “to blame your sorrows on one person than on a group of them. Then you can believe that if only that person were to disappear, everything would be different, better. Maybe that’s true sometimes. But more often than not it’s just wishful thinking. Let us say that the prince had given the order to imprison, even kill, the people plotting rebellion when the fields dried up. It was a brutal choice. But how could I hold a young man accountable for a decision he made as a child?”

  “He was the same age I am now.”

  “I am old,” her father said, sighing. “And I still make mistakes in judgment.”

  Petra did not like to hear him say that. Her father’s straight salt-and-pepper hair flowed over his shoulders, and Petra only had to look at it to admit that there were more gray hairs than black. She knew that he had been older than most fathers when she was born. She had not been his first child. Her mother had given birth to three sons. Each had been stillborn or died soon after he was born, and the third had been Petra’s twin. There had been no midwife or doctor in the town then, or now. There was only an old woman, Varenka, who brewed medicine and helped deliver babies, though she was not particularly good at either.

  “Of course, I had my suspicions about the prince,” her father said. “If you remember, I went to Prague to meet with him first before agreeing to take the job.”

  “But how could you have agreed? Look what he did to you. How could you have met him and not seen him for what he was?”

  “It is not always easy to see people for what they are. I hope you will be better at it than I have been. Prince Rodolfo is charming and persuasive. He seemed keenly smart and friendly. I was ready to believe, after that first meeting, that people had misjudged him and blamed him for things that he could not control, like the weather or the decisions of his advisers when he was younger. Also”—her father paused—“I was intrigued by the project. When it was suggested to me, I couldn’t let go of the idea. It haunted my mind, and I had so many visions that I simply had to realize them.”

  Petra was silent, because she had the sense that although what her father had told her was true, the pause he had taken before he spoke meant that what he had said wasn’t the whole truth. “It’s just a clock. You could have built one for the mayor of Okno if you had wanted to.”

  “But such a clock? With such resources and talent from all over the Empire? No, never. Because …” He bit his lip. “Petra, you must be very careful not to tell anyone what I am going to tell you.”

  She was curious. “Of course I won’t.”

  “No one!” He gripped her hand. “Not even Tomik.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  His hand relaxed a little, but still held hers. “The clock is more than what it seems. You know, don’t you, that the relationship between the weather and time is a very close one. What we call a ‘month’ is the time it takes for the moon to wax and then wane. The moon controls the tides, and the tides change the shape of the land, sometimes taking pieces of it away, sometimes giving pieces of it back. The tides bring rain clouds, and then winds push them over the land. For years we have thought that the sun moves around the earth, but I learned at the prince’s court that it is not so. The exact opposite is true: the earth revolves around the sun. And we split the time that we see the sun and the time that we do not into hours. And it is the sun that decides how hot it will be.”

  Petra’s head was spinning. What was he talking about? The earth goes around the sun? That made no sense whatsoever.

  “The prince had an idea. You must admit it is an ingenious one. I never would have thought of it, but once he suggested it I saw its potential. I saw how much better it could make Bohemia. And I felt sure then that the prince could not have a bad heart. That if he had made wrong decisions, he wanted to make up for them. You see, he wondered if it was not possible to make a clock powerful enough to influence the weather. The elements of weather—the sun and moon—affect time. So perhaps we could make the very opposite happen. We could reverse the path of influence and make time change the sun and moon. The prince said that with a clock like this, there would never be another drought. The weather could be monitored to make the exact amount of rain, sun, and cloud needed to produce bumper crops of brassica every year.”

  So this was why her father had been so preoccupied with lightning and magic before leaving for Prague. As Petra listened to her father, she felt worse and worse. One of the things she had always loved about him—the way he would mutter to himself as if no one were around, or dip a quill into a glass of milk and not notice because of some idea in his head—was starting to seem like not such a good thing at all. He often worked on projects so much that he didn’t see the world around him. But never before had this resulted in something dangerous.

  “I wasn’t even sure I could do it when I took on the project,” Mikal Kronos continued. “I promised I would try, nothing more. I promised I would provide him with a clock able to stun all of Europe with its beauty, but as for producing something that could control the weather … well, that’s a tall order, to say the least. As far as most people are concerned, the new clock in Staro Square will just tell the time.”

  “So it can’t control the weather, then?” Petra asked with relief.

  “In fact, it can. Or, rather, it could.”

  “But, Father …” She hated to say this, but forced herself: “Don’t you think that maybe the prince won’t use the clock to make sure the harvest is perfect every year? What if he does the exact opposite?”

  “That thought did occur to me”—his fingers strayed across his face and touched his bandage—“afte
rward. But, Petra, the prince has nothing to gain from failed crops. The wealth of his country relies on brassica production”.

  “And the prince relies too heavily on his own cleverness. The clock’s ability to control the weather lies in one final part, which still needs to be assembled and installed. This part is like a puzzle. But no ordinary person could solve it. Assembling the part requires more than intelligence—it demands intuition, and the power to see the metal pieces as I do. Does Prince Rodolfo wish to prove that he possesses all of these things? Does this eighteen-year-old want to outshine his older brothers and be chosen as the next emperor? Of course he does. Blind as I am now, I can’t believe how blind I was to these facts before. ‘I will finish the clock myself,’ the prince told me. ‘I respect your talent. I admire the way you see the world. You have an eye for beauty. But you are no longer necessary.’

  “I have to believe that what he said isn’t true. Prince Rodolfo stole my sight, but he is not me. The clock could work to control the weather, Petra, but the prince will not understand how to make it work.”

  5

  What the Spider Said

  PETRA BEGAN to have trouble sleeping at night. If she wasn’t thinking about what the prince could do with the clock, she was wondering why her father was so sure it couldn’t be used to control the weather. If she wasn’t eagerly anticipating Master Stakan’s next visit to the shop at the Sign of the Compass, she was worrying that her idea wouldn’t work. Every night she got snarled up in her warm sheets and was sure that the morning would never come.

  “Life is much more interesting without sleep, anyway,” Astrophil promised.

  She groaned. “You just don’t know what you’re missing, you cold-hearted insomniac. I do.”

  But Petra had to admit that they did have fun in the evenings. She would sit on her windowsill with her long legs dangling in the night breeze and Astrophil would teach her the constellations, pointing out Cassiopeia in her chair, the belt of Orion the Hunter, and how to find the North Star. She taught him how to play cards. Since Astrophil could not hold his cards very well (there is a reason why the cards you are dealt are called a “hand”), Petra passed them to the spider with her eyes screwed shut and the cards faceup on the floor. But she always ended up seeing them anyway, even if she didn’t want to. So their games were not really games as such, but lessons where Petra taught the spider the finer points of betting and bluffing.

  Dita, who usually complained about Petra’s love of sleeping in, began to look with concern at her young cousin’s sunken eyes. Then one day when Petra was helping Dita pit and boil cherries for jam, Petra passed Dita salt instead of sugar. The batch of jam was ruined. They jarred it to eat later anyway, since Dita did not like waste. Petra did not like the thought of salty cherry jam, but everybody has his or her own priorities.

  This is why, when Dita found a small army of candle stubs hidden under Petra’s bed, she scolded the girl for her extravagance. She ordered Petra to make more candles, which is very boring work. Petra sat by the kitchen fire, where a small pot of melted beeswax simmered. She dipped a long string into the wax, lifted it up, let the wax dry, and then dipped it back in again. And over and over. The string got thicker and thicker with the creamy wax. The smell of melted beeswax was not that bad—it had a honey perfume—but Petra grew sick of it. Her arm got tired, her back got stiff, and she sweated from the combination of the late-summer heat and the fire.

  When there was just an inch-deep smear of wax at the bottom of the pot, Dita set it aside for sealing jars. That night she made Petra drink a cup of warm milk with marigolds. The next night it was cool violet water. Petra thought Dita’s concoctions tasted nice, but they did not help her sleep any better. So she refused the night Dita handed her a boiled willow branch to chew.

  One evening, Petra managed to doze off for a few minutes. She woke to find that Astrophil was gone. She walked across the hall to her father’s library with its uneven walls, crooked corners, and stuffed shelves, but she did not find the spider. So she slipped down to the ground floor, feeling her way along the dark staircase until she reached the constant hum and clank of the shop. The pets squealed delightedly, but she ignored them and cracked open her father’s door. His room was pitch-black.

  “Astrophil?” she whispered, wishing she knew how to communicate with him silently, like her father could. She had tried this many times over the years. Astrophil always just laughed at the way her face twisted into an expression of fierce concentration. “Are you there, Astrophil? Father?”

  “Yes?” said the spider.

  “Yes?” said the man.

  “Is the noise from the shop keeping you up, Father?”

  “No,” he replied. She wished she could see his face. “I enjoy the sound.”

  Then something occurred to her. She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier. “Why don’t I buy one of Master Stakan’s Worry Vials?”

  He probably smiled. “How about buying two?”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Petra went to the library to fetch some krona to pay Master Stakan. She sprang up each step.

  The library was lined with bookshelves much taller than Petra. Years ago, Master Kronos had built a ladder that hovered in midair. To make it work, you snapped your fingers and, like an obedient (if slow) dog, it would glide to wherever you pointed. When Petra asked her father how he had made it, he had replied vaguely, “You just have to understand a magnet’s emotions. Magnets are very affectionate, but they can be stubborn if you offend them, so building the ladder was really just a case of making friends.” Which may have been why the ladder was always quicker to obey her father than anyone else.

  When Petra entered the library, she snapped her fingers and pointed the ladder into the left-hand corner, where one wall of books met another. Then she climbed the rungs, noticing along the way a dried-up apple core her father must have left on the fourth shelf more than half a year ago. When Petra reached the top shelf, she pushed aside a number of books on how to build a water fountain.

  Growing out of the wall was a dandelion. It was a fuzzy white globe, the sort you blow apart to see every seed carried on little white wings. But the fluff of this dandelion was actually fine filaments of silver. Petra leaned forward and blew on the flower three times, two longs breaths and one short. The globe gently fell apart. The seeds drifted down. They fell into holes in the wooden floor that were so small Petra could not see them, though her father had assured her that they were there. Then there was a whisper as each seed, now invisible, turned in the same direction.

  A floorboard slid away, revealing a mound of krona and smaller piles of foreign money. Petra counted out as much as she needed to pay Master Stakan for two Worry Vials.

  She paused, looking at the mix of gold, silver, and copper coins. It struck her that there were very few glints of gold. And the piles had eroded over the months. Most of the family’s savings had come from the ordinary work her father would do every day, like fitting horseshoes and making iron hoops for barrels. How would their life change now that he could no longer work?

  The question weighed on Petra like a heavy hand on the back of her neck.

  She reached past the coins and flipped open a little trapdoor. There was another dandelion, but a springtime one. It was yellow and made of bright brass. The petals prickled against Petra’s finger as she pushed it like a button.

  She pulled her hand out of the hiding place and the floorboard slid shut. Like a flock of miniature birds, the silver dandelion seeds lifted out of the floor, soared up the bookshelves, and swept around their green stem. They formed a perfect sphere once more. Petra climbed up the ladder again to rearrange the books. When the flower was covered, she raced out of the library, down the stairs, and out the door.

  MASTER STAKAN GREETED HER CHEERFULLY. “Petra! I was just going to see your father.” He patted a soft leather bag on his work-table. “Shall we go together?”

  “Yes! But before we leave, can I buy something from y
ou?” She dug the coins out of her pocket. “Two Worry Vials, please.”

  “Hmm.” He hesitated. “Having bad nights, are you? Well.” He hesitated again. Then he turned and lifted two bottles down from a wall of shelves stocked with every shape and size and color of glass bottle you can imagine. The Worry Vials were short, fat, and clear. The opening to the bottle was wide, and sealed with a big cork. “Just be careful where you keep them, will you?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He clapped his hands together. “Then let’s go.”

  At that moment Tomik came in through the door, carrying a loaf of bread. His eyes fell on the leather bag. “They’re ready?”

  “Yes,” his father said, and pocketed the bag. “Petra and I are going to the Sign of the Compass. You stay here in case anyone comes to the shop.”

  Tomik’s fingers punched through the bread crust. “I’m coming, too.”

  Master Stakan drew in an angry breath.

  “You just don’t want me to see,” Tomik growled.

  “I want Tomik to be there,” Petra said. There was a firmness in her voice, as if she had forgotten she was only twelve years old.

  Master Stakan exhaled gustily. His gaze wavered between the two children. Then he said, “You needn’t mangle the bread, son. Come along.”

  But his face was that of someone acting against his better judgment.

  THE THREE OF THEM CROWDED AROUND Master Kronos’s bed in the little room on the ground floor. When Master Stakan explained why he had come to visit, Petra could tell that her father was excited, though he tried not to show it.

  Master Stakan opened the leather bag and tipped two small glass balls into his hand. Though Petra had known what was in the leather bag, she still felt an odd pull in her stomach when she saw the two eyes—for that is what they were, two white glass eyes with silver irises and black centers. They were her father’s eyes—No, she told herself, they’re just copies. But still, she blinked at the glass eyes on Master Stakan’s palm and felt unnerved.