Clockwork Girl

Chapter 3: Ruse

A lot happened in the first month I was in Woodsvale. Six days a week, Anchelo and I sit down at the river in different spots to fish. On the first Sunday I was here, I found a girl selling a pair of shoes on the level in the trees where I was staying for a single bronze. Maybe she stole them or found them someplace herself, but they were small and fit my feet well. They weren't worn out, but certainly not new.

I bought some new clothes and another pair of shoes, a nicer pair that match the nice dress I bought. Pink with a white bow. I just like to look at them sometimes when I am in my little carved out cubicle. No one bothers anyone up here and, if people see belongings in a hole, they don't bother them unless they have been untouched for a month. That is, at least, what was told to me by a beautiful cat lady named Sarina that stays in the hole next to mine.

Well, the one I stayed in.

At the start of the second month, Anchelo told me that he'd gotten a letter from his brother asking him to come to Bazil, an island nation that had lots of great fishing. He was going to go. Within the next week, he was gone and I was sort of alone again, but still making money. More money. He'd taught me all kinds of tips and tricks, but nothing he taught me prepared me for the day that was coming.

It was a Sunday and I had brought my dirty clothes down to a low bend in the river to wash them. It was early, before the others that dwell in the treetops came down with their own laundry. I didn't have much with me, but a few shirts and my pink dress, undergarments.

I was off in my own world. I have saved enough in a month to equate to two gold. A good apartment on the second level was only one gold and was much safer, with doors and actual appliances. I would be just fine here, after all, and maybe I could find a better job. Not that I didn't like this one, but it was lonely without Anchelo and no other fishermen on the banks seemed to want a kid that wasn't there own hanging around with them.

From seemingly nowhere, I could hear a carriage rolling by on the other side of the foot path. Very common during the week, practically unheard of on a Sunday.

"Aisha!"

I don't know what possessed me to turn toward the voice, but I did, just in time to catch a finely dressed man emerge from the carriage. He sprinted toward me, throwing his arms around me as he approached.

"Where have you been? Your mother has been searching for you all over the kingdom and no one has seen or heard anything concerning your arrival. What are you doing out here, by the river?"

I looked up to the man and had absolutely no recognition of him, but I somehow trusted his words. He wore deep purple robes, his long black hair was tied out of his face, giving full view of clear blue eyes. Lean, but strong, he held my shoulders in his hands as he looked me over, waiting for an answer of some sort, any sort.

"Are you sure I'm Aisha? I don't...remember anything."

He sighed the heaviest of sighs I had heard.

"Oh dear, of course you're Aisha. Let's get you home to your mother."

With an arm around my shoulder, the man lead me toward the carriage.

"But my clothes! My stuff."

"All arbitrary, Aisha, dear. She has been waiting very impatiently for you. When the Queen goes looking, the princess better be found."

I almost gasped. There is no way I could be a princess, right? It didn't make sense, even if I really did want it to.

"Are you my dad? The king?"

He laughed heartily as he opened the carriage door for me.

"Oh, no, dear, Aisha. Get in, get in. We have a long way to go today."

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The ride was quiet with the exception of moments when wheels went over rocks, shaking the carriage just enough to make me realize the man had nothing with him, not even the smallest of suitcases. If he had been traveling, shouldn't he have something? Anything?

"Once we return to Rhyosengaard, your mother will be thrilled," the man said, not bothering to smile or look away from the window. "You cannot imagine the force of people she has hired to scour the planet for you. It was as if you had disappeared!"

"I suppose I did," I said quietly.

"Where were you? How did you even get to Woodsvale?"

I shrugged. "I woke up in a steel room, a shackle around my neck. I found a key and got free."

"Likely story," he scoffed. "You really don't remember anything? At all?"

I shook my head.

"Gods, why did you remove your memory, Aisha? Do you know how much important work dwells there? Of course not. You likely removed it and went off with a sailor. That is your mother's theory after all."

I remembered no sailor, but wouldn't it make sense to run away for love, for a romance?

Well, no. Not one that you have to remove your memory for anyway.

"If you're not my father, then just who are you," I asked him.

This made him turn his eyes from the scenery and came another heavy sigh.

"You won't like it when I tell you."

"I don't remember you so...how can I like or dislike it?"

He grinned. But the grin went a bit too wide, too jarring to be human, to be elven, to be...anything that wasn't magical or demonic.

"I am Ruse," he said with pride. "The only working animated body that was cast by Master Sylverthorne."

"I don't know who that is."

"Good," Ruse grinned. "He will take your kindness as a sign of forgiveness when you meet him."

"I don't know what that is supposed to mean, but if you mean to intimate me, that's not likely to work, especially once I am returned to my mother and my memories recovered."

Ruse raised an eyebrow and then burst out with laughter.

"Just wait until I tell my mom," he mimicked my voice, giving it a particularly whiny tone that I was sure I didn't sound like. Only, the mimic was perfect, eerily so.

"Oh, dear Aisha," came his own voice again. "I have a lot to catch you up on."