Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (17 page)

They saw nothing praiseworthy in work well done. They had their hearts
fixed on some goal even they did not understand. To them, writing was not a supreme
source of expression, not a means of entertaining, not a means of living and
enjoying work while one lived. If you wrote for a living, they branded you a hack.
But they will never write.

Poor fools, they haven't the stamina, the courage, the intelligence, the
knowledge of life's necessity, the mental capacity to realize that whatever you do
in this life you must do well and that whatever talent you have is expressly given
you to provide your food and your comfort.

My writing is not a game. It is a business, a hardheaded enterprise
which fails only when I fail, which provides me with an energy outlet I need, which
gives me the house I live in, which lets me keep my wife and boy. I am a manuscript
factory but
not
—and damn those who so intimate it—an
insincere hack, peddling verbal belly-wash with my tongue in my cheek. And I eat
only so long as my factory runs economically, only so long as I remember the things
I have learned about this writing
business
.

The Grande Complication

written by

Christopher Reynaga

illustrated by

OLIVIA XU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Reynaga's earliest memories are of telling stories about the magical world around us to the grownups who seemed so unaware of it. “I would tell my parents, and they would laugh, but I would tell my grandmother, and she believed. I was a child, and she an old woman, but we were both the right age to understand—my youthful belief and intuition that all children possess, and her old traditions of Mexico and the Yaqui. Miracles and magic existed alongside baseball, bicycles and skinned knees—this was the way the world worked.”

Christopher grew up in a normal American neighborhood where all the houses were the same, only differing in color. He read everything, including his parents' college textbooks. When he was nine, he had a dream that he would grow up to be a writer—a dream that is starting to come true.

He is a graduate of Clarion West and winner of both first place for L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future and a Bazzanella Literary Award. He has stories in
The Book of Cthulhu 2, GigaNotoSaurus, The Drabblecast, Cemetery Dance,
and the
American River Literary Review.
Follow him at
ChristopherReynaga.com
.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Olivia Xu lived in Nanjing, China—a historical city with beautiful sycamore trees—for twenty-two years before moving to New York for graduate school in 2011. When she was little, she would imitate her grandmother's traditional Chinese paintings. She believes that's where she inherited her artistic talent. Admittedly, she was quite a troublemaker as a kid, and the only time she sat still was when she was doodling. Olivia went to an art-oriented high school and later entered an animation program in college. Animation has been the love of her life. She is always fascinated by its unique way of storytelling and its capacity and independence as an art form.

Currently Olivia is attending the 3-D animation and motion art program at Pratt Institute. She is enthusiastic about illustration and sees it as more of a “snapshot” from a story. She likes to make her illustrations exquisite in terms of color balance and detail, while keeping the story/concept a little ambiguous. Olivia wants her audience to feel the story but be unable to tell it from her illustration. Constantly she is inspired by the lives of people around her. She loves making illustrated cards for her friends, hoping her small artwork can bring happiness to the people she cares about. In the near future, Olivia hopes to work as a 3-D lighter or generalist, but she will never give up her passion for illustration.

The Grande Complication

T
he moment that the world stopped, Neil
was trying to yank his hand free of Miss Dutton's grip. He would have thrown the
suitcase of what little he owned onto the train station steps, but his keeper would
have dragged him on without it, even as she warned him, “I've slapped many a
nine-year-old boy in the mouth, thank you very much.” Instead, Neil swung the heavy
suitcase at her ankle and loosed a scream for the death of a world that had taken
his home and dragged him alone and frightened into this cold October dawn. Neil
howled, but the world howled louder as it ceased with a sound no boy would have ever
imagined.

The London air clattered with a jangle like spilled silverware. The
rattle of the windows was a dying engine. The people crowded in Greenwich Station
glanced around as if expecting the gray clouds to split open and rain pig's blood. A
startled flock of pigeons burst into the air as the beat of their hearts pulsed
arrhythmically, then stopped.

Everything stopped. The people stopped midstride. The train rolling into
the station stopped midscreech. The birds hung motionless in the air, their feathers
splayed out to catch a frozen wind.

A silence followed so profound that, had there been anyone left to
witness it, they would have felt the ever-present heart-thrum of the world go
out.

Neil was such a boy.

His fingers ached, trapped in Miss Dutton's grip. He fell silent now,
lungs spent. Only the shift of his head gave him away as he gaped at the silent
world. At Miss Dutton's lower lip tucked into a snarl. At the way his suitcase hung
in the air when he released the leather grip.

The birds captured his attention the most—eyes wild, wings
outstretched.

After a time, a soft grinding rhythm returned to the world. Approaching
footsteps.

Neil squinted into the sunlight above Greenwich Station. A man with a
gray cap and grayer beard walked toward him, shoulder slumped at the weight of the
black valise that hung in his hand like a dark fruit.

Neil froze as the old man circled the birds and started up the station
steps. His gray eyes didn't glance down at him. The man paused next to Miss Dutton,
captured by the way her glare had frozen as if to stare right at him. He touched
Miss Dutton's hand almost reverently.

“Won't be a minute,” he said to her with a graveled voice. “Two at
most—two minutes lost.”

Neil scrambled backward, as far as his pinned fingers allowed.

The old man gasped and dropped his valise. “Did, did you…say something?”
asked the old man.

“No,” said Neil.

“By grace,” said the old man, stepping back. “I've never seen a person
fall out before.”

“Are you here to take me away?” Neil asked in a small voice. “Did I make
the world stop?”

“No,” said the old man. “I didn't come to take you, and you didn't break
the world. It's been doing that well enough on its own.” The old man doffed his cap
with trembling fingers. “I am here to fix it.”

“Oh,” said Neil, relieved that whatever had broken, he had not been the
one to cause it.

“The question,” said the old man, “is why
you're
here. The World Clock must have called you for a reason—”

“Can you help?” interrupted Neil as he yanked his arm against Mrs.
Dutton's stony grip. His fingers were starting to feel as if they were filled with
angry insects.

The old man blinked. “No, boy, stay with your mother here,” he said as
he reached for his valise. “I must discover what purpose—”

“She's not my mother,” said Neil with such quiet force that the old man
sputtered. “She's from the wretched Foundling Hospital.” Neil yanked his body
against the woman's stone grip with all his strength. With a gasp, he stumbled free,
clutching his reddening fist to his chest.

Neil made a grab for Miss Dutton's other hand, which she had raised
triumphantly as if bearing a prize.

“What are you doing?” said the man.

“Going home,” said Neil struggling to reclaim what lay in her palm. His
voice was edged with anger, or something more fragile. “If home is still there. They
took father's watchmaking tools and put our things in the street.”

“Your things? Where is your family?”

“It was just father and me.”

“Where is your father?”

“Gone.” Neil released his grip, revealing the outline of the pitted gold
watch that still lay in Miss Dutton's grasp. “This was his.”

The old man bent over the boy. “That looks like a fine timepiece,” he
said, studying not the watch, but Neil's watering eyes. “My own father was a
clockmaker who designed such beautiful things. He raised me himself before he passed
and left me to continue his… Yes, a fine timepiece. May I?” He reached out to touch
it.

Neil shielded it from the old man, gripped it and yanked. Not even the
gold chain that draped from Miss Dutton's hand would flex.

“It hasn't fallen out of time like you have,” said the old man. “I'm
afraid there's no moving it as long as time is stopped.”

Neil let go completely, revealing a ring of black numbers on the smudged
white face. The watch had no hands.

“I took it apart.” Neil said, glancing down at the cobblestones. “I
couldn't put all the pieces back.”

The old man touched his shoulder. “These things can be fixed,” he said,
a smile hidden in the gray of his beard, “especially if one learns how. I'll show
you how to put it right as soon as we can. You were your father's apprentice?”

“I was supposed to be,” Neil said hesitantly.

“My father taught me that all things that fall out of time serve the
World Clock. Come,” said the old man as he picked up his valise, “I've something to
show you.”

“Where?” asked Neil, not wanting to leave the watch behind.

“Right here,” the old man said moving toward the platform. “Time's
breaking down in many places. This is one of them.”

“Why?”

The old man turned. “If I knew that, the world wouldn't be ending.”

T
he huge black engine had been
pulling into the platform when time ceased. Great gouts of smoke and sparks hung
motionless around its oil-stained face, as if it were a mist-shrouded dragon with an
all-seeing yellow eye. Neil liked trains but the blind stare of this one unsettled
him, and he knew it must be the one Miss Dutton intended to put him on.

The old man paused in the middle of the platform before the engine. Neil
stopped five paces away.

“Do you have a name?” the man asked.

“Neil,” said the boy, sweeping his hair from his eyes.

“Are you very good at fixing things, Neil?” the man said, pausing to
examine the boy.

“I'm good at taking them apart.”

“Well, Master Neil, my name is Mr. Harrison, and my father taught me how
all things fit together.” He reached into his collar and drew out a long black
clock-winding key. It was larger than any key that Neil had ever seen. The only part
that gleamed was a gold pinion gear, set into the head like a precious stone.

“What is it?” asked Neil.

“The key to nearly everything,” said the old man with a smile. “Your
key.”

“But I don't want that. I just want my father's watch.”

“Boy, forget that for a moment. You are no mere object fallen from time.
You are meant to know its very movements and secrets.
You
must be the apprentice for whom the key and I have searched for so
long.”

“That's not possible,” whispered Neil, yet his pulse quickened.

“Not possible—does any of this seem possible?” said Mr. Harrison waving
the key at the silent world. “The World Clock is breaking down. I need an apprentice
to learn its secrets and keep it running. Impossible things are what you must be
trained to do.”

“My father tried to teach me.…” He could remember his father's hands
guiding his into the belly of a grandfather clock, until it came crashing to pieces
on the workshop floor. “It's just that I'm not very good at it.”

“Nonsense. You just need to have faith in yourself.”

Mr. Harrison draped the key into Neil's outstretched palms. “Grip it
tightly now, both hands.”

Neil squeezed the black metal, afraid to drop it. His skin began to itch
against it and after one unbearable moment he opened his hands again, certain the
key had become something else. It was still a key.

“Strange,” said the old man, his voice drawn into a whisper.

Mr. Harrison reached to take it. The moment the old man's fingers
touched it, an orange glow traced through the black metal like the heart of a
burning ember.

“The key should have wakened when you touched it. Perhaps…” The old man
pressed the key back into Neil's hand. It glimmered with fire, but when Mr. Harrison
drew his fingers away, it went black as a lump of coal.

“Well, you must have been called here for a reason. What else can you
do?”

“I can whistle real loud,” said Neil haltingly. “I can cook. My dad
always said I was good with animals.”

“No, no, no. You must
do
something.” The old
man reached out a bony fingertip and poked him in the chest, as if testing to see if
he turned into something the key had not.

“Do…Do I still get to be your apprentice?”

Mr. Harrison gazed at Neil carefully, as if he were peering through a
jeweler's loupe. “The clock needs a keeper more than anything. I can think of no
other reason it could have called you. Unless the reason you fell out of time is
that the breakage is far worse than I feared.”

Mr. Harrison held the key out before him like a dowsing rod and searched
the air. The black metal began to glimmer as he pointed it beyond the edge of the
platform.

The great grease-streaked engine bore down on the empty spot, its dark
lines blurred faintly as if still in motion. Two polished rails stretched across the
black gravel before it.

“Are you going down there?”

The old man stared at the spot for a moment, glancing at the train.
“It's not for us to choose where the key opens. It knows where the breakage is.” Mr.
Harrison gathered his valise and lowered it down to the tracks to use as a step.

Neil hesitated at the edge, then jumped down.

Mr. Harrison was already testing the air with the key. He seemed to
carve at a spot until he twisted the key into the air itself. Neil heard a
click.

The air turned dirty, stretched open, and peeled back like a scab. Neil
stepped closer, looking into the dark, hollow wound.

Gleaming treasure filled the portal. Gears, pinions and bridge plates of
shining gold and silver, some large enough for a man to leap through the gaps. Neil
gasped when he saw golden salamanders clinging to the spokes of the closest gears.
The salamanders were the spokes, he realized, their noses touching the hub in
irregular symmetry. He touched one whose head seemed craned to look right at him. It
was part of the machine. A tremendous ticking echoed in the darkness, but the
clockwork did not turn, merely twitched with each cavernous beat.

“Why does the sequence look like a lizard?” asked Neil.

“Good eye. These parts of the World Clock are called the complications,”
the old man said proudly. “These are just a few of the natural cycles influenced by
time: seasons, migrations, tides. This one determines the mating season of fire
salamanders,” Mr. Harrison said, tapping the gear Neil had touched. He pointed to
another one back in the shadows that looked like a flock of birds wheeling around
the edge of a silver gear. “And that one over there influences the migration of
terns.”

The old man crouched and opened his leather case. A black pigeon poked
its head up from where it had been roosting in a nest of iron tools between a red
wooden top and a constable's truncheon. Its feathers were so black, they shimmered
like an oil-slick rainbow.

“What are
you
doing in here?” The boy gasped
as he reached for the cooing bird, but the old man waved him back.

“Old Jack's not a toy.” He picked up the placid bird and set it in the
upturned lid where it began to preen one wing.

“Well, this thing is,” said Neil in a low voice. He picked up the top
with the flecking red paint.

“That may be what it
was,
” said the old man,
reaching out—not to take it, but to hold it still in Neil's hands, “but when
something falls out of time, it always becomes something more. Try giving it a
little spin. Go on.”

Neil took the top in both hands and put it on one of the wooden sleepers
that lay under the tracks. The string meant to spin the top had worn away to a
cotton nub.

“Careful now,” said the old man.

With the first hint of a smile, Neil gave it a fierce spin with his
hands.

Neil felt the whole world launch into movement around him. Though he'd
been on his knees an instant before, he found himself sliding backward, arms
splayed. Mr. Harrison was yelling, his hat tumbling down the tracks, but Neil's
focus remained fixed on the top.

It seemed to stand perfectly still on its point while the whole world
spun around it with the dizzy outward pull of a merry-go-round. The vertigo slowed
and the toy toppled over and rattled in place.

“What was that?” said Neil with the first real smile he'd felt in a long
time. The pigeon landed atop the hooded eye of the train engine.

“That,” said the old man flat on his back, “was much harder than you
needed to spin it!” The old man scowled at Neil. “What possessed you, boy? You could
break something.”