The 13 Clocks Read online

  The Duke and Hark and Listen laughed. “Time is wasting, Prince,” the Duke reminded him. “Already you have only eight and ninety hours. I wish you every strangest kind of luck.” A wide oak door suddenly opened at the end of the room, and the Prince saw lightning and midnight and falling rain. “One last word and warning,” said the Duke. “I would not trust the Golux overfar. He cannot tell what can be from what can’t. He seldom knows what should be from what is.”

  The Prince glanced at Hark and at the Duke, and at a spot where he thought Listen stood. “When all the clocks are striking five,” he said, and left the room. The laughter of the Duke and Hark and Listen followed him out the door and down the stairs and into the darkness. When he had gone a few steps from the castle, he looked up at a lighted window and thought he saw the Princess Saralinda standing there. A rose fell at his feet, and as he picked it up, the laughter of the Duke and Hark and Listen increased inside the black oak room and died away.

  V

  HE PRINCE had gone but a short way from the castle when he felt a gentle finger touch his elbow. “It is the Golux,” said the Golux, proudly. “The only Golux in the world.”

  The Prince was in no mood for the old man’s gaiety and cheer. The Golux did not seem wonderful to him now, and even his indescribable hat was suddenly describable. “The Duke thinks you are not so wise as he thinks you think you are,” he said.

  The Golux smiled. “I think he is not so wise as he thinks I think he is,” he said. “I was there. I know the terms. I had thought that only dragonflies and angels think of time, never having been an angel or a dragonfly.”

  “How were you there?” the Prince said in surprise.

  “I am Listen,” the Golux said, “or at any rate, he thinks I am. Never trust a spy you cannot see. The Duke is lamer than I am old, and I am shorter than he is cold, but it comes to you with some surprise that I am wiser than he is wise.”

  The Prince’s courage began to return. “I think you are the most remarkable man in the world,” he said.

  “Who thought not so a moment since, knows not the apple from the quince,” the Golux said. He scowled. “We now have only eight and ninety hours to find a thousand gems,” he said.

  “You said that you had other plans than one,” the Prince reminded him.

  “What plans?” the Golux asked.

  “You didn’t say,” said Zorn.

  The Golux closed his eyes and clasped his hands. “There was a treasure ship that sank, not more than forty hours from here,” he said. “But, come to think of it, the Duke· ransacked the ship and stole the jewels.”

  “So much,” sighed Zorn, “for that.”

  The Golux thought again. “If there were hail,” he said, “and we could stain the hail with blood, it might turn into rubies.”

  “There is no hail,” said Zorn.

  The Golux sighed. “So much,” he said, “for that.”

  “The task is hard,” said Zorn, “and can’t be done.”

  “I can do a score of things that can’t be done,” the Golux said. “I can find a thing I cannot see and see a thing I cannot find. The first is time, the second is a spot before my eyes. I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart. What would you do without me? Say ‘nothing.’”

  “Nothing,” said the Prince.

  “Good. Then you’re helpless and I’ll help you. I said I had another plan than one, and I have just remembered what it is. There is a woman on this isle, who’d have some eight and eighty years, and she is gifted with the strangest gift of all. For when she weeps, what do you think she weeps?”

  “Tears,” said Zorn.

  “Jewels,” said the Golux.

  The Prince stared at him. “But that is too remarkable to be,” he said.

  “I don’t see why,” the Golux said. “Even the lowly oyster makes his pearls without the use of eyes or hands or any tools, and pearls are jewels. The oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.”

  The Prince thought of the Todal and felt a small cold feeling in his guggle. “Where does this wondrous woman dwell?” he asked.

  The old man groaned. “Over mountain, over stream, by the way of storm and thunder, in a hut so high or deep—I never can remember which—the naked eye can’t see it.” He stood up. “We must be on our way,” he said. “It will take us ninety hours, or more or less, to go and come. It’s this way, or it’s that way. Make up my mind.”

  “How can I?” asked the Prince. “You have a rose,” the Golux said. “Hold it in your hand.” The Prince took out the rose and held it in his hand, and its stem slowly turned and stopped. “It’s this way,” cried the Golux, and they started off in the direction the stem of the rose had pointed out. “I will tell you the tale of Hagga,” said the Golux.

  When Hagga was eleven (he began) and picking cherries in the woods one day, and asphodel, she came upon the good King Gwain of Yarrow with his foot caught in a wolf trap. “Weep for me, maiden,” said the King, “for I am ludicrous and laughable, with my foot caught in this trap. I am no longer ert, for I have lost my ertia. By twiddling my fingers or clapping my hands, I have often changed the fate of men, but now I cannot get my foot loose from this thing.”

  “I have no time for tears,” the maiden said. She knew the secret of the trap, and was about to free the fettered foot, when a farmer from a near-by farm began to laugh. The King beshrewed him and his wife, and turned them into grasshoppers, creatures that look as if their feet were caught in traps, even when they aren’t.

  “Lo, the maid has freed my foot,” the King exulted, seeing that she had, “but it is numb, and feels like someone else’s foot, not mine.” The maiden took off his shoe and rubbed his foot, until it felt like his and he could put it down. And for her kindness the grateful King gave her the power to weep jewels when she wept, instead of tears. When the people learned of the strange gift the King had given Hagga, they came from leagues around, by night and day, in warm and winter weather, to make her sad and sorry. Nothing tragic happened but she heard of it and wept. People came with heavy hearts and left with pearls and rubies. Paths were paved with pearls, and rivers ran with rubies. Children played with sapphires in the streets, and dogs chewed opals. Every peacock had at least nine diamonds in its gizzard, and one, cut open on St. Wistow’s Day, had thirty-eight. The price of stones and pebbles rose, the price of gems declined, until, by making Hagga weep, you could be hanged and fined. In the end, the jewels were melted, in a frightful fire, by order of the King. “I will make her weep myself, one day each year,” the King decreed, “and thus and hence, the flow of gems will make some sense, and have some point and balance.” But alas, and but alack, the maid could weep no more at any tale of tragedy or tribulation. Damsels killed by dragons left her cold, and broken hearts, and children lost, and love denied. She never wept by day or night, in warm or winter weather. She grew to be sixteen, and twenty-six, and thirty-four, and forty-eight, and fifty-two, and now she waits, at eighty-eight, for me and you. “I hope,” the Golux said, “that this is true. I make things up, you know.”

  The young Prince sighed and said, “I know you do. If Hagga weeps no more, why should she weep for you?”

  The Golux thought it over. “I feel that she is frail and fragile. I trust that she is sad and sorry. I hope that she is neither dead nor dying. I’ll think of something very sad to tell her. Very sad and lonely. Take out your rose, I think we’re lost.”

  They had become tangled in brambles by now, and the trees of the forest they had entered were tall and thick. Thorns began to tear the Prince’s raiment. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and all paths vanished. The Prince took out the rose and held it in his hand. The stem began to turn and twist, and pointed.

  “Around this way,” the Golux said. “It’s lighter here.” He found a narrow path that led straight on
ward. As they walked along the path, the Golux leading, they met a Jackadandy, whose clothes were torn and tattered.

  “I told my tales to Hagga,” said the man, “but Hagga weeps no more. I told her tales of lovers lost in April. I told her tales of maidens dead in June. I told her tales of princes fed to geese. I even told her how I lost my youngest niece.”

  “This is sad,” the Golux said, “and getting sadder.”

  “The way is long,” the torn man said, “and getting longer. The road goes uphill all the way, and even farther. I wish you luck,” he said. “You’ll need it.” He disappeared in brambles.

  The only light in the forest came from lightning, and when it flashed they watched the rose and followed where it pointed. This brought them, on the second day, into a valley. They saw a Jack-o’-lent approaching, his clothes all torn and tattered. “I told my tales to Hagga,” said the man, “but Hagga weeps no more. I told her tales of lovers lost at sea and drowned in fountains. I told her tales of babies lost in woods and lost on mountains. She wept not,” said the Jack-o’-lent. “The way is dark, and getting darker. The hut is high and even higher. I wish you luck. There is none.” He vanished in the briars.

  The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets. Farther along and stronger, bonged the gongs of a throng of frogs, green and vivid on their lily pads. From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets.

  A comet whistled through the sky, and by its light they saw the hut of Hagga high on Hagga’s hill. “If she is dead, there may be strangers there,” the Golux said.

  “How many hours do we have left?” the Prince demanded.

  “If we can make her weep within the hour,” the Golux said, “we’ll barely make it.”

  “I hope that she’s alive and sad,” said Zorn.

  “I feel that she has died,” the Golux sighed. “I feel it in my stomach. You better carry me. I’m weary.”

  Zorn of Zorna picked the Golux up and carried him.

  VI

  T WAS cold on Hagga’s hill, and fresh with furrows where the dragging points of stars had plowed the fields. A peasant in a purple smock stalked the smoking furrows, sowing seeds. There was a smell, the Golux thought, a little like Forever in the air, but mixed with something faint and less enduring, possibly the fragrance of a flower. “There’s no light in her window,” the Golux said, “and it is dark and getting darker.”

  “There’s no smoke in her chimney,” said the Prince, “and it is cold and getting colder.”

  The Golux barely breathed and said, “What worries me the most is that spider’s web there on the door, that stretches from the hinges to the latch.”

  The young Prince felt a hollow feeling in his zatch. “Knock on her door,” the Golux said, his voice so high it quavered. He crossed his fingers and kept them crossed, and Zorn knocked on the door. No one answered. “Knock again,” the Golux cried, and Prince Zorn knocked again.

  Hagga was there. She came to the door and stared at them, a woman neither dead nor dying, and clearly only thirty-eight or thirty-nine. The Golux had missed her age by fifty years, as old men often do. “Weep for us,” the Golux cried, “or else this Prince will never wed his Princess.”

  “I have no tears,” said Hagga. “Once I wept when ships were overdue, or brooks ran dry, or tangerines were overripe, or sheep got something in their eye. I weep no more,” said Hagga. Her eyes were dry as deserts and her mouth seemed made of stone. “I have turned a thousand persons gemless from my door. Come in,” she said. “I weep no more.”

  The room was dark and held a table and a chair, and in one corner something like a chest, made of oak and bound with brass. The Golux smiled and then looked sad, and said, “I have tales to make a hangman weep, and tales to bring a tear of sorrow to a monster’s eye. I have tales that would disturb a dragon’s sleep, and even make the Todal sigh.”

  At the mention of the Todal, Hagga’s hair turned gray. “Once I wept when maids were married underneath the April moon. I weep no more when maids are buried, even in the month of June.”

  “You have the emotions of a fish,” said the Golux, irritably. He sat on the floor and told her tales of the death of kings, and kindred things, and little children choked by rings.

  “I have no tears,” said Hagga.

  He told her tales of the frogs in the forum, and the toads in the rice that destroyed the poppycockalorum and the cockahoopatrice.

  “I weep no more,” said Hagga.

  “Look,” the Golux said, “and listen! The Princess Saralinda will never wed this youth until the day he lays a thousand jewels upon a certain table.”

  “I would weep for Saralinda,” Hagga sighed, “if I were able.”

  The Prince had wandered to the oaken chest. He seized its cover with his hand and threw it open. A radiance filled the room and lit the darkest corners. Inside the chest there were at least ten thousand jewels of the very sort and kind the Duke demanded. Diamonds flared and rubies glowed, and sapphires burned and emeralds seemed on fire. They looked at Hagga. “These are the jewels of laughter,” Hagga said. “I woke up fourteen days ago to find them on my bed. I had laughed until I wept at something in my sleep.” The Golux grabbed a gleaming handful of the gems, and then another, crowing with delight. “Put them back,” said Hagga. “For there’s a thing that you must know, concerning jewels of laughter. They always turn again to tears a fortnight after. It has been a fortnight, to the day and minute, since I took the pretties to this chest and put them in it.”

  Even as they watched, the light and color died. The diamonds dimmed, the emeralds went out, and the jewels of Hagga’s laughter turned to tears, with a little sound like sighing. There was nothing in the chest but limpid liquid, leering up at them and winking. “You must think,” the Golux cried. “You must think of what you laughed at in your sleep.”

  Hagga’s eyes were blank. “I do not know, for this was fourteen days ago.”

  “Think!” the Golux said.

  “Think!” said Zorn of Zorna.

  Hagga frowned and said, “I never can remember dreams.”

  The Golux clasped his hands behind his back and thought it over. “As I remember and recall,” he said, “the jewels of sorrow last forever. Such was the gift and power the good Gwain gave you. What was he doing, by the way, so many leagues from Yarrow?”

  “Hunting,” Hagga said. “Wolves, as I recall it.”

  The Golux scowled. “I am a man of logic, in my way. What happened on that awful day, to make him value sorrow over and above the gift of laughter? Why have these jewels turned to tears a fortnight after?”

  “There was a farmer from a near-by farm, who laughed,” said Hagga. “‘On second thought,’ the good King said, ‘I will amend and modify the gift I gave you. The jewels of sorrow will last beyond all measure, but may the jewels of laughter give you little pleasure.’”

  The Golux groaned. “If there’s one thing in the world I hate,” he said, “it is amendments.” His eyes turned bright and brighter, and he clapped his hands. “I will make her laugh until she weeps,” he said.

  The Golux told her funny tales of things that were and had been, but Hagga’s eyes were dry as quartz and her mouth seemed made of agate. “I laugh at nothing that has been,” she said, “or is.”

  The Golux smiled. “Then we will think of things that will be, and aren’t now, and never were. I’ll think of something,” and he thought, and thought of something.

  “A dehoy who was terribly hobble,

  Cast only stones that were cobble

  And bats that were ding,

  From a shot that was sling,

  But never hit inks that were bobble.”

  Hagga laughe
d until she wept, and seven moonstones trickled down her cheek and clattered on the floor. “She’s weeping semiprecious stones!” the Golux wailed. He tried again:

  “There was an old coddle so molly,

  He talked in a glot that was poly

  His gaws were so gew

  That his laps became dew,

  And he ate only pops that were lolly.”

  Hagga laughed until she wept, and seven brilliants trickled down her cheek and clattered on the floor. “Rhinestones!” groaned the Golux. “Now she’s weeping costume jewelry!”

  The young Prince tried his hand at telling tales of laughter, but for his pains he got a shower of tourmaline, a cat’s-eye, and a flux of pearls. “The Duke hates pearls,” the Golux moaned. “He thinks they’re made by fish.”

  It grew darker in the room and they could scarcely see. The starlight and the moon were gone. They stood there, still as statues. The Golux cleared his throat. The Prince uncrossed his arms and crossed them. And then, without a rhyme or reason, out of time and out of season, Hagga laughed and kept on laughing. No one had said a word, no one had told a tale. It might have been the hooting of an owl. It might have been the crawling of a snail. But Hagga laughed and kept on laughing, and precious jewels twinkled down her cheek and sparkled on the floor, until the hut was ankle-deep in diamonds and in rubies. The Golux counted out a thousand and put them in a velvet sack that he had brought along. “I wish that she had laughed,” he sighed, “at something I had said.”

  Zorn of Zorna took her hand. “God keep you warm in winter,” said the Prince, “and cool in summer.”

  “Farewell,” the Golux said, “and thank you.”

  Hagga laughed and kept on laughing, and sapphires burned upon the floor and lit the Golux toward the door.

  “How many hours are left us now?” the young Prince cried. “It’s odd,” the Golux muttered to himself. “I could have sworn that she had died. This is the only time my stomach ever lied.”