Timepiece

A girl mistreated by her mother who deserves a better world to live in, and a strange creature and place that can make her one…   

By Emma Gorton, age 12

The night outside was dark and thick with smog. Lamplight barely penetrated the smoky air and the windows of the houses looked like smaller lamps, squares of yellow amidst the grey.

In one window a blurry shadow could be seen, the shadow of a girl. Nisha was small, 12 and different. Her skin was dark where others were light, and she ached to see how the other people on the streets of London looked so alien to her.

Now, though, she had no time to be thinking about things like that. Her whole attention was focused on the object cradled in her hands. Her eyes glistened with sadness and also hope, and she wiped them with her sleeve. Because her mother had left. Her beautiful mother, who had skin as pale as the moon, who had left because she couldn't cope with the stares, the whispers, every time Nisha and her father stepped out onto the streets. She had even started calling Nisha, "Nora". Nisha hated the name, but now she wished she hadn't shouted at her mother so much over it. Maybe it was all her fault...

Then these timepieces had turned up, out of the blue (or rather grey) on her windowsill. She knew it was ridiculous and impossible, but Nisha hoped that... maybe... her mother had left them there. When she touched them their dull gold seemed to glow brighter. "Magic," she whispered to herself when she first touched them. Then she dismissed the thought. Absurd. What was wrong with her? 

Her mother had believed in magic - no. No thoughts about her were allowed in Nisha's mind.
Her mother... Nisha couldn't keep her out. Lost in a whirlpool of memories and sadness, she got into bed and fell into a fretful slumber.

In her dreams, Nisha heard something. A ticking resounded through her head and she blinked. Rubbing her eyes drowsily, she clicked open the timepieces and squinted at the hands. Two minutes until midnight, and with every jerk of the minute hand the ticking noise grew louder. Nisha must just be sleepy and confused - she must still be half asleep. She snapped the timepieces shut and turned over in bed, huddling up in her covers.

Yet the ticking grew louder still, persistently resounding through Nisha's head until it was the only thing in her head. BOlt upright, she groped around for the timepieces. Maybe she was shaking, or maybe the timepieces were vibrating, but Nisha almost dropped them as she fumbled for the opening. Her breathing came hard and ragged and her eyes were wide as the timepieces finally sprang apart and the room was filled with a bright light. She was sodden in sweat but her hands were still glued to the glowing timepieces. The light in the room got brighter, as the ticking grew louder, as Nisha panted more and more, until on the final decisive tick the hands met at twelve and Nisha wrenched the timepieces from her grasp.

The air around Nisha shimmered, and her surroundings seemed to break into shards. Everything was a bright white except for the coloured fragment, Nisha and the still intact timepieces. The shards rearranged themselves and clicked together to form an endless hall filled with shelves upon shelves, stretching beyond where she could see.

Nisha sat down heavily and slipped the timepieces into her pocket; she looked down to see a red carpet that would have been luxury in its time but was now holey, worn and greying. Her strange sweating had left her feeling as drained as a squeezed orange, but she slowly pushed herself up and took in her surroundings.

The hall was dimly lit by ornate lamps like the ones outside in richer London. The light cast upon the shelves made them look like the wood was glowing slightly. They seemed to be never-ending. There were ladders, tied together messily with string, balancing unsteadily against the shelves and looking like they would fall apart. Haltingly, Nisha padded towards the shelves and gasped; she quickly clapped her hand over her mouth: the room had previously been utterly silent. Each shelf filled with haphazardly placed glass bottles. Round ones; square ones; triangular ones; heart shaped; bell shaped... All crystal clear and all with a cork in the neck. And inside each was a beautifully coloured liquid - Nisha could see every hue she knew, and some that she had never seen or heard of before. She moved on, gazing at the colours raptly, at how different they were from the murky greys of her town.

A few minutes later. Nisha heard a faint crackling; a few minutes after that, she began to feel rather warm; and pretty soon she was in the presence of a blazing fire in a huge fireplace surrounded by armchairs. Here the shelves abruptly stopped and instead there were... cauldrons? Or maybe simply cooking pots. Still, she didn't doubt anything in this strange world.

Hunched over one of the cauldrons was a small figure. Nisha cautiously walked closer and it revealed itself to have a green tattered robe and to be leaning on a warped wooden stick. It had all manner of bottles by it and it was muttering to itself. "A drizzle of this... A splash of that... Pah! Too much! More to balance it out... Bouncing bloomers," - Nisha held in a giggle - "where's it gone?. Pah! Blooming things!"

Still muttering to itself, it hobbled away. Nisha peered curiously into the cauldron, and saw a blue liquid, shifting through shades from indigo to turquoise. Every so often it would spurt up bubbles and Nisha would leap away.

After a while, and with the being still showing no signs of returning, Nisha turned her attention to the bottles. Squinting at a round one, she saw people, animals and plants appear in the green liquid. They all seemed so happy... She reached out and they were gone like a mirage, the swirling emerald liquid becoming still once more.

She was trying to understand it when the being showed up. She saw that it had a long scraggly white beard, hair that looked very similar, aviator goggles and a moss green robe. He - she supposed it was a he - was as bent and knotted as his stick and he was clutching a triangular potion bottle of amber liquid in his hand.

"Excuse me?" tried Nisha. The person paid no attention, and poured some amber liquid into the concoction.

"I'm sorry, but - "

"Yes!" creaked the being as the liquid in the cauldron fizzed and crackled like a firework. 

Curiosity took over Nisha and she peered in. The bubbling liquid whirled with deep sapphire blues and ambers - then a deafening crack exploded through the hall, shaking the bottles. Once the smoke had cleared Nisha peered in again and the liquid was gone. She rubbed her eyes, still hazy from the smoke, looked in again - and the liquid was not there.

The being whooped - or rather, croaked - did a crackling jig, and caught sight of Nisha. Nisha smiled; the being frowned. The smiling and frowning went on for some time until Nisha blurted, "What are you?" She winced inwardly: she hadn't meant to sound so abrupt.

The being pushed up his aviator goggles and fixed a shrewd green gaze on Nisha. He opened his mouth - Nisha held her breath - muttered, "Questions!" and stumbled away with an armful of potions. Nisha sighed quietly. This was not going well.

When at last he shuffled back, Nisha enquired eagerly, "I mean, are you a human like me? You're so short - not that that's a bad thing, so am I - so I thought that perhaps you are a brownie? Or a wizard?" Seeing the being frown more intensely, Nisha hurried on, "No, not a wizard then... Perhaps a gnome? I have always wanted to meet a gnome. Or a fairy?"

"Questions!" 

A few minutes passed. The being - whatever it was - muttered and mixed liquids in another cauldron.
Nisha asked, "What is it you're doing? And are - "

There was a crackle, yellow smoke, and a "Bouncing bloomers!" from the being.

"And are those potions?" 

More mutters from the being.

"Are those potions?" repeated Nisha.

At last, the being fixed Nisha once more with that unnerving stare. "Potions - yes, I suppose so... I be creating... Bouncing bloomers! Curses!"

"Yes?" urged Nisha gently.

"I be creating... Worlds."

"I'm sorry?"

"Worlds. Is you being deaf, lassie?"

"Even my world? It is called 'Earth'... There is lots of fog, and wagons, and... Animals, I suppose. Cats and dogs and things."

"I be creating your whole universe, lassie. And all the other ones too. They is all my creations..."

"Even this one?"

"This, lassie, is not a world. This be the space - curses!"

A lot of fizzing and "bouncing bloomers!" ensued.

"As I be saying, lassie," the being resumed, "this be the space, where it be in between all the worlds. This, it be before all the worlds. I be here a long long time, lassie, since before everything except this space."

Nisha frowned. "I see," she said. "What happens when you run out of potions?"

"Bouncing bloomers, lassie! You be asking a lot of questions. As it so happens, I get them delivered from the Left side. Of this here hall. This hall be endless. But at the end of the endlessness on the Left side, there be stacks of potions. They be delivered specially. And on the Right side is where all the empty bottles, they be sent. There be endless space between them. But they still be meeting. So, they is sent to the Left side to be refilled."

The being took a breath, this evidently being one of the longest speeches he had ever made. He stirred the forgotten cauldron vigorously, plumes of amethyst smoke rising up. Nisha sniffed the lavender--scented smoke, inhaled too much smoke, coughed and gagged. When the choking subsided, she carried on, "But that doesn't make sense. There can't be an end to endless space. And things can't meet if there is endless space between them. How does that work?"

"Questions! And now it be my turn to ask you a question, lassie. How is you coming to be here? See, you is the most company I be having in a few millennia."

"Well, this may seem a bit mad, but I suppose you must have created the timepieces..."

"Not I. I may be creating the worlds, but the people in the worlds, they be creating the things."
"I see. Well, there were these timepieces. Here they are."

Nisha brandished the timepieces before the man, who pushed up his aviator goggles and squinted.

"And these timepieces, they are magical. I think. But anyway, they sort of started ticking loudly and they made light appear, and then my room sort of shattered and made the hall, a bit like a jigsaw. They turned up on my windowsill one day."

An idea struck Nisha.

"I say, would I be allowed to... Umm... Create a world?"

"To be sure, lassie. I be - bouncing bloomers! - creating a sort of base for you. A peaceful world be best, lassie. Now then, let me just... A cup of this... This vial... Bouncing bloomers, where it be?

A little while later Nisha was standing, intimidated, before a small cauldron. Her "expert" tutoring had been to "put in drizzles of things what you want, lassie" and she did not even know what each liquid contained. She squinted inside a bottle containing a scarlet and gold liquid. It swirled to reveal a fire... Blazing through streets, red hot and angry - she put it down quickly and looked through the other bottles on one particular shelf. Every so often, she would spy a colour hue that she liked, squint inside it, and keep some to take back to the cauldron. She spied the emerald green one with the people and animals and kept it specially to ask her "instructor" what it represented.

Soon enough she was back, and began adding drizzles and pours of different colours. She found out from the being that the green liquid was "harmony" and that he had added plenty to her world already. She began to get animated, walking briskly (running was not allowed) among the shelves, coming back with armfuls of potions, until her potion went from a sweet yellowish--pink to a pucey colour to a pinkish grey.

"Oh," said Nisha.

She called over the being, who came to look at it.

"Hmm, a drizzle of this be good," said the being, handing Nisha a little potion containing shades of pinkish red. "You be forgetting to add colour. Colours, they be in that shelf over by there. The world needs colour in it. You be leaving out a few colours if that suits - I be making whole worlds just green!" He chuckled and hobbled away.

Nisha added some oranges. The potion shimmered. A few blues and purples later, it was bubbling, and after the addition of pinks, reds, yellows, greens and browns, it was spitting out lavender liquid. After the last colours had been added it cracked across the room and was gone.

"Oh," said Nisha once more.

Again she called over the being, who came to peer into the cauldron.

"One more world done," remarked the being. "Now you be fancying making another?"

"But can't I go into it?" demanded Nisha. "With my clock maybe?"

"Sure you can, if you be wishing and wanting hard enough, lassie," reassured the being, and hobbled off.

Nisha wished and wished and wished. She so desperately wanted to be in this world. She wished as hard as she could, and then a bit more. She wished hard as the Left Side was far, and she wished so much that the empty bottles on the Right Side wobbled precariously. So much that, when the air began to shimmer once more, the being realised something Very Important. 

"Lassie," he began. But Nisha was gone.

"Bouncing bloomers," he muttered. "Curses!" And he went back to world-making, while Nisha was gone.

Nisha sat down, exhausted. She had expected it to be easier this time round. Instead she was this time as drained as a squeezed and re-squeezed orange. But the world around her filled her with hope. Colour was everywhere - in the sunset in the sky, in the wildflower meadows on the grape-green hills, in the buzzing bees and the hummingbirds and the trees sprouting apricots and plums and cherries. In her mother, coming towards her, not noticing her, beautiful and as alive and blissful as everything else in this world.

"Mama?" Nisha whispered. "Mama!" she cried joyfully, and her mother started and started running towards her. "Nisha!" her mother cried, and Nisha rejoiced to hear her mother call her by her true name.

"Mama, I had the biggest adventure," stated Nisha once the hugging was over.

And she told her mother everything.

Her mother was silent. "I did, Nisha," she told her. "I did leave the timepieces on your windowsill. Because they were mine. I travel between worlds too."

Nisha blinked. "But... How could you have even kept that from me?" she stuttered. "How could you?" Happiness turned to anger in a split second, as red hot and burning as the fire in the potion bottle.

"I couldn't risk it. But now. I hope you forgive me."

“I suppose so... I suppose I'd better keep the secret too," agreed Nisha, the rage dimming.

"You know," her mother went on, "I've realised something, Nisha. No matter what people look like, that's not what matters. I have missed you both so much. I'll come back now... Shall we go?"

This time the travelling was twice as easy, as there were two people. As they passed through the Place Between Worlds, the being started. "Ah-ha! You were her daughter!"

"But," Nisha said, "you said no-one had come for millennia. So how could you know my mother?"

"Pah! Questions!"

Nisha strongly suspected that he had forgotten.

She smiled, clutched the timepieces with her mother, and wished. "Goodbye!" she called. "And if I could make more potions with you, that would be nice... Could I?

But the being was back in his own muttering world.