The Clockwork Princess

24 A Really really nice day for a really white wedding

'can I help' said the clockwork Princess.

'Uhu!' was the only thing the Clockwork Princess could say at seeing another clockwork Princess.

'Me too!' said yet another Clockwork Princes.

'There is too many of me what's happening!' said the Clockwork Princess.

'We will help too' said Coppélia and Olympia from the clockwork museum.

Soon the city was filled with thousands of Clockwork Princesses. They all ran around picking up the mechanical people and pulled each one back to the train stations. With their help all the King's horses and all the King's men managed to bring the city back together again.

*** 

Eventually, Manchester came back to some sense of order. If you could call it order. In the cathedral everyone was having a sit down after a long afternoon of struggling.

'So where did you come from?' the clockwork Princess asked one of the other clockwork Princesses.

'Same place you did' said a voice behind the Princess.

The Princesses turned and looked back. There behind them was the blind watchmaker being lead by Coppélia and Olympia.

'I realised after you left that you where my most successful machine I had ever built. So I did what I always do – I made more and more copies of you' Said the blind watchmaker. 'Each one a bit different'

The Princess looked around, all the versions of her were slightly different. Some were taller, shorter others were fatter, thiner, browner, whiter, every possibility.

'Then Caligari came, so I made may more copies more of you. Unfortunately we were in a hurry, I didn't get the clockwork wound up enough, they will all wind down in an hour or two.'

Calgari, now tied up, was brought to the King by Captain Dobbin. With him was Paparazzi trying to interview him for the book of faces. Calgari looked very sad.

'What shall we do with him?' asked the King surrounded by his advisors, the Princesses, the rat, the cat and flyboy.

'Your majesty, he must make a bad thing good. He must fix everything.' said the rat.

'I'm sorry, your majesty. I just wanted to have a best selling book' Caligari said.

'You have got a best selling book' said the reporter from the book of faces.

The reporter explained that battle had made the whole country go out and buy Caligari's new book to find out what all the fuss was about. It was Albion's number one best seller. Caligairi sounded very pleased by that.

'Look at all the damage he did to Manchester' the Mayor complained.

'Then Dr Caligari – you will order your mechanical people to fix everything that you and they broke' said the King wisely.

'But what about the cost of all those broken windows? That glass doesn't come cheap' said the Mayor.

'And' the King continued 'all the money from your book will go to pay for all the things that you and your followers broke'.

'Oh' said Caligari disappointedly.

'Then after that you can go back to your island factory with your mechanical people and sit in your own prison FOR A YEAR!' the King said to a round of applause.

'Three cheers for the King' someone announced. Everyone in the room began to shout 'hip hip hurray'. As they did some of the clockwork Princesses began to wind down and looked like they falling asleep.

'Now which one of you thought of fooling Caligai by getting the real Princess pretending she was made of clockwork?' the King asked.

'She did' both Princesses said, 'but I helped' they both said again. Lots of the other clockwork Princesses giggled at this.

'Clockwork Princess – the country and I owe a great debt. You found the real Princess and you even stopped Caligari, how can I ever repay you?' the King asked.

'Well I would say let me marry Prince Harry, but I'm already married now so I can't' said the clockwork Princess.

'No your not' announced the rat, 'you see people cannot marry things even things made of clockwork. Otherwise people could ground marry chairs, tables even trains. So you can't be married to Caligari'

'Oh' said the clockwork Princess disappointedly 'but that means I am not married to Caligari, but also I can't marry fly boy – I mean prince Harry EVER!'

The clockwork Princess would have burst into tears but she never refilled her tear drop bottle.

'Don't worry' said the King 'I am also head of the Church of Albion, I can announced a new law that says that a clockwork Princesses can marry who every they like'

'S,S,S,So we can get married?' said Prince Harry.

'Yes' said the King 'with my blessing'

So that evening the flyboy - the Prince, married the clockwork Princess and while the rat and the cat looked down, the Prince and Princess danced by the light of the blue moon.

As for the rat, the King in gratitude made the rat a professor of a university and the rat retired back into the Queen's library to finish his reading. Professor rat was very happy as he had his good friend the Quantum Cat who came every day to keep him company and for him to read too.

Now that there had been one royal wedding at the full moon the King was happy to let the real Princess marry who ever she wanted to. Even with all the Princess of Europe available she couldn't quite make up her mind. Still the King and Queen were so delighted to have their daughter back they were quite happy to forget about it.

The real Princess was delighted to have some one like a sister and both Princesses got on really well with each other which is a good a test of who you really are as anyone can invent.

As for Caligari's mechanical people they spent an entire year rebuilding Manchester brick by brick. When they finished and had gone back to the cloud factory they were so angry with Caligari they refused to read another one of his books again. Dr Caligari spent his entire year sitting mumbling like a sick otter in the prison cell in his cloud factory. After he was let out he wrote his next book – my life the sequel - which wasn't a huge success. Dr Caligari decided to stop writing and left to perform magic tricks in a circus.

The clockwork Princess decided to help her farther, her mother and her new sister. To help her sister the clockwork Princess spent half of the year standing in for the real Princes opening things. Now they could both take turns both going off having adventures and doing princesss thing. Both the Princess and the clockwork Princess always made sure their friends knew things which they never told the book of faces. That way they could be sure that no one would ever steel their real identity again.

This made everyone very happy, especially Flyboy as everyone started to call Prince Harry, he lived a long and happy life with his clockwork Princess.

With the Clockwork Princesses help Glenda the Turing fairy was able to rescue her six sisters and return them to fairyland.

What of the wizard of speed and time you ask? Well after all that I had a very nice holiday to recover from the Princesses' adventures. Or was that recover in time for the Princesse's next adventure? I can never quite remember which way round these things go, it's so confusing.

The end 

Thank you dear reader for your kind attention to my humble tale. Hopefully you will delight us with your attention on our next tale Captain Kitty Hawk and the Sky Pirates. RK