Darkness.
Then less of it.
Kevin remembered the eerie blue glow, then the sudden jolt, then this. The experience hadn't been painful - nothing like the shock he'd gotten in the ship - but it had felt very unsettling, like he and the space around him had been sucked through an impossibly small hole in the space of an instant. And now...
As his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, Kevin could just make out the walls of the room that he was in. It was a small one, smaller even than the bedroom he and his father shared back at the inn, more like a large closet than anything. One end was open, but it was too dark for him to see anything beyond. He wondered where on earth he was.
Gradually, sputtering, flickering, then finally steady, light came to the room. Kevin winced slightly at the pale glow, squinting as his eyes had only just adjusted to the near-total darkness, but as they readjusted once more, he could see the room more clearly. It was indeed a small, almost featureless closet-sized space; the only distinguishing features were the lines of light that traced along the walls at about waist level, and similar luminescent lines forming a pattern of concentric circles on the floor, which was a slab of that same peculiar black stone.
The lights were strange; they weren't like the light from a lamp or a fire. They weren't even like the light from sun-stones, which he'd seen wealthier travelers use in their lanterns; like these lights, sun-stones gave light which was smooth and constant (though portions of these lines flickered weakly now and then,) but they glowed with a warm yellow light, not this pale, cool blue-white color. Moreover, this didn't seem to be a stone or anything like that so much as just a line of light on the wall itself.
Kevin could see the room outside now; it was only dimly lit, but it was enough to see by. It was a much larger room, and he could see rows of benches and the occasional lamp-post, which had orbs of the same pale light atop them. Cautiously, he stepped out into the larger room. The floor out here was blue-grey tile, not the black stone, and the ceiling was much higher, with a glass roof that showed the night sky above. The sky was different than he remembered; in one direction he could see some of the familiar constellations, but their shapes were vaguely distorted, and toward the other end of the room the sky didn't look familiar at all. He'd heard sailors talk about how the sky looked different the further north or south you sailed; he wondered how far he was from home now.
Looking around, he could see that the room was bordered by many similar little closets; he felt a nagging feeling at the back of his brain and, remembering some of the stories he'd been told as a kid, he tried to think of something he could leave here to remember which one he'd come out of. He didn't have anything to hand besides his clothes, so he eventually settled for removing his socks and leaving them on the floor just outside of the little closet space, then resumed looking around.
Aside from the benches and the lamps, there wasn't much in the room, despite its size. At the corners of the sitting area, there were large slabs planted on the floor; these were covered with writing of some kind. Kevin wandered over to one. He wasn't all that good at reading; his sister was better. His mother had used to read to them, and Mary...had just taken after her more, he guessed. But it didn't matter much anyway, since this wasn't in any language he knew. Even the letters were different - though they felt familiar for some reason...hadn't there been symbols like these in the ship?
Shaking his head, he walked over to one of the other slabs; it seemed to have the same inscription as the first. The room was preternaturally quiet; aside from the sound of his own footsteps and breathing, there was only a low hum somewhere off in the distance, and nothing more. Even with these new ears, which seemed more sensitive, the place was absolutely still. He wasn't used to this; at home, even if he went out into the fields surrounding the village, there would be the sound of the wind in the grass, the buzzing of insects, the cries of seagulls, or any number of other things. Here it was like there wasn't a single living thing anywhere, besides himself.
...in fact, was there? Nobody was in the big room here, nobody seemed to be in any of the other little closets. He could see, at the far end of the room, one of those panels which he recognized from the ship, which must mean that there was a door there, but he couldn't hear any distant voices or sounds of people working - just the quiet. It was eerie...frightening, almost. What if he was the only living thing in this entire place? What if...what if he couldn't get back home? He didn't even know how he got here in the first place...nervously, he called out, "Hello?"
There was no answer - no sound at all, other than his own voice echoing back at him from the glass ceiling. Kevin felt a sinking feeling in his stomach; was he truly alone, then? As big as the room was, it felt like the walls were closing in on him. "H-hello? A-anybody?" he called again; then, desperate for an answer, "Please! It's an emergency!"
As soon as he'd said it, there was a sudden flare of soft light and the ghost stood before him. No, it was a different ghost - still the same kind of doll-creature as the other had been, but with a different hairstyle and clothes. But it was such a relief to see somebody in this empty place that Kevin found himself glad to see her in spite of the fact that he was still uncomfortable being around a ghost at all.
She stood there, feet on the floor just as if she were a real person, but she glowed softly, illuminating the tile rather than casting a shadow, and he could see the other side of the room filtering faintly through her. She looked down at him. "You are the unregistered girl who declared an emergency at Endpoint 1606-QY," she said. "What is the nature of your emergency?"
"I...I called and nobody came an' there's nobody here an' I don't even know where I am or h-ow to get home!" Kevin said, his voice cracking slightly as his mouth kind of ran off without him. He coughed, then frowned. "A-and don't call me a girl!" he added. His voice sounded slightly off. Maybe it was the air in this place?
"I do not know your name."
"It's Kevin, okay?" he said irritably. "I...I just wanted to get my ship back..."
"Subject is registered as 'Kevin,'" the ghost said. Her speech was so...mechanical. Kevin wondered why she sounded that way when the clockwork girl who'd come to stay at their inn didn't. "To which ship are you referring?"
"The one I found!" he said. "It wasn't far from that weird stone block that brought me here..."
The ghost paused for a moment, as if she was searching her memory for something. "Ship has been identified," she said. "It is a privately-owned vessel and does not belong to you."
He scowled. "I found it! It was abandoned for years 'n years and I found it! Law of the sea says it's mine!"
She shook her head. "Even in the event of a legitimate salvage claim, you are not old enough to be eligible for ownership of a vessel. Your parents may file claim to it if they deem it appropriate."
Kevin couldn't believe his ears. She was trying to tell him it didn't belong to him because he wasn't old enough? That wasn't fair! "J-just take me to it, okay?" he snapped, beginning to get angry at her.
"You do not have authorization to demand access to it."
Kevin could feel his ears burning. Incensed, he lunged at the ghost - but even as he was realizing that this was a mistake, he sailed right through her and tumbled onto the floor, cracking his head pretty good on one of the benches. Groaning, he got to his feet, rubbing his forehead - then stopped as he felt something warm and sticky. "Aw great," he moaned.
The ghost moved around in front of him. "You are injured," she said. Kevin scowled - as if she didn't know it was because she cheated by being untouchable! "Please wait," she continued. "An escort has been dispatched and will take you to medical care momentarily."
Kevin wasn't in a mood to be escorted anywhere other than his ship, but the blood was pretty worrying nonetheless; he'd gouged himself pretty well, it seemed. He tried to remember what he knew about dressing wounds; an innkeeper's son didn't have a lot of call for such things, but his father had taught him some basics anyway. He didn't know if applying pressure would help much if the cut was on the forehead, but he imagined it couldn't hurt; unfortunately, he didn't have much handy other than his clothes.
His father would probably be miffed about the loss of a perfectly good shirt, he supposed, but it wasn't like he didn't have a good reason. Shrugging, he took it off, tore a strip from the hem, and tied it tightly around his head. His first attempt pinned the tips of his ears against his skull; annoyed, he undid it and carefully looped the fabric around between his ears and his head before pulling it taut.
There was a soft pop behind him; he recognized it as the sound the door in the ship had made. Whirling around, he saw a hole in the wall at the far end of the room, next to the panel - just as he'd suspected. And in the doorway...it was the ghost, only not. Instead of being a shimmering, transparent phantom of light, this was a real thing of...well, not flesh and blood, surely, but whatever it was that strange clockwork girls were made out of. She walked toward him, and he could hear the same whirring and clicking that that Sarah girl made. This girl, however, like the ghosts, didn't seem to have that big wind-up key sticking out of her back; he wondered what made her go.
"I am here to escort you to medical quarters," she said. Her speech was just as flat and mechanical as the ghosts', but her voice had that kind of tinkling, metallic musical ring to it that Sarah's did. "Can you walk? Automated transportation is unreachable at the moment."
Kevin nodded. "Y-yeah."
"Very good. Please follow me, Kevin." She turned back toward the door and motioned for him to follow her. He began to walk along and she attempted to keep pace with him, occasionally glancing down at him to see if he needed assistance. They passed through the door and into a long hallway which was all window down one side.
Kevin gasped.
Outside the window was a landscape that was simultaneously alien and familiar. He knew this terrain; he'd looked at it often in the night sky, thinking about stories that lady Brook had told him. And there, on the horizon, was a looming half-circle of blue and white and green that he didn't recognize, but which could only be...
He was on the moon, and far off in the distance hung the earth.
The strange doll-woman led Kevin through a series of hallways on a course that only she knew. As they walked along, Kevin glanced out the windows at the landscape outside. The moon was...so rocky and barren, it seemed, but it glowed with a firey silver light. Now and again, they passed some other building or structure, which must've been built by the same people who built this place - the Ancients? He never would've guessed to look at the moon that this was here - how far it must be if a place this big couldn't even be seen upon it! He thought about the stories Brook had told him, and wondered if they were really true...
There was no more sound or sign of life in the corridors of this place than there had been in the room he'd arrived in, aside from the clockwork girl's soft ticking and whirring. She didn't say anything as they walked; he found himself kind of creeped out by her. He was still grateful to have anybody else with him in this great empty place, but she seemed less like a person and more like an unusually complex machine. He wondered again why Sarah should be so different if they were, as far as he could tell, the same sort of creature.
They walked on for some ways until they reached another long corridor; this one had some kind of strange black carpet running down one side of it. The doll-woman led him onto it, and he found to his surprise that it was moving beneath them! It took him a moment to catch his balance, but once he'd steadied himself against a railing which was, amazingly enough, moving along with them, he found that they were being carried at a fairly brisk pace without having to do any more than stand. This was a relief to him, as he was beginning to feel a little woozy, and his forehead was starting to throb. He leaned against the strange lady for support, and she put an arm under his shoulder and helped prop him up.
After they dismounted the strange moving carpet - a little awkwardly on his part, but the clockwork girl was still holding him and kept him from tripping - they turned a corner and came to a door which she opened, revealing a little room with a sort of bed-table and a bunch of cabinets. "Please sit on the table," she instructed him.
Kevin did, looking over the strange girl as she looked through the cabinets. He still felt a bit unnerved by her, but she was trying to help him... "U-um, what's your name?" he asked.
She stood back up, holding a bottle of something and a box of something else. "My designation is I-5483113."
Kevin frowned. What kind of a name was that!? But he couldn't think of anything sensible to say to it, and if the ghost was any indication it was impossible to argue with these things anyway.
The clockwork girl removed his makeshift bandage, then took some kind of little packet from the box. She unwrapped it to reveal what seemed to be a soft, damp cloth, and proceeded to wipe the sticky, drying blood from his forehead. Kevin winced; something on it stung and there was a sharp odor to it, but it did feel good to get the blood off. She removed another item from the box, some kind of little tuft of cotton on a stick, and opened the bottle. Dipping the cotton end in, she got a healthy dollop of some kind of goop on it. Kevin eyed it curiously. "What's that for?" he asked.
"It promotes rapid healing and prevents the formation of scar tissue." She smeared the swab across his forehead. He winced again; he hadn't realized until she was putting this goop in it how long and deep the gash was. This stuff burned a little too, but not as much as the cloth had. She picked up a different cloth and dabbed away the excess, then reached into the box again and removed a strip of brown mesh material with paper on the back of it. Peeling the paper, she stuck it to his forehead; he was surprised to find that the one side of it was sticky and the entire thing stayed in place on his head without her having to secure it.
"Please leave the bandage in place," she said. "It will require time to fully heal." She picked up the detritus of her wound-dressing and deposited it in a canister next to one of the cabinets, but took the blood-stained cloth over to some kind of little apparatus that looked like a scale or something. Setting it on top, she deftly poked at a series of buttons; there was a busy hum from it as the top surface glowed softly, then a soft musical chime as the air above it lit up. To Kevin's astonishment, letters made of light formed above the contraption, hovering in mid-air, slightly transparent like the ghost had been. He puzzled over it, wondering how it was done.
The clockwork girl studied the strange writing for a moment, then turned to him. "Bodily development does not conform to genetic markers," she said. "Are you suffering from some kind of developmental disorder?"
Kevin frowned. "I...don't understand," he said. "What's that mean?"
She paused for a moment, as if searching her memory for something. He could hear the mechanisms inside her pick up in their tempo. Then she returned her attention to him. "In simple terms: your body does not match what your blood says it should be."
"Y-yeah!" he said, nodding. "This just started happening yesterday, after I was in the ship. I started changing for some reason..." He thought for a moment, then brightened. "C-can...can you do anything about it?"
She paused for somewhat longer, staring off into space as if her mind were somewhere else. Finally, she looked back down at him. "Unknown. Analysis can be performed, but the condition is unknown and no medical professional is available to consult. Results of any experimental treatment could not be guaranteed."
That...was a little disconcerting. He wanted to do something about this, and the strange doll-woman certainly seemed to know about treating sick or injured people pretty well, but...well, there was still that feeling that what he was talking to wasn't really a person, and even she admitted that she didn't know about this...he wanted to fix the problem, not gamble his well-being. But then, if he didn't take care of it here, he wasn't very well going to get anything better at home, was he? That would leave him with just hoping it went away like many of the changes the folks of Robin's Heath underwent did...but what if it didn't?
Kevin really didn't know what to do. He'd have to think about this...but at the same time, he also wanted to figure out how to get back home, not to mention find his ship and bring it back with him. And he didn't really know how he was going to do any of those things...but, well, at least he had someone to ask for help.
The soft light of morning filtered in through the curtains in the little bedroom in the inn. It wasn't all that roomy, but it was enough for Mary. Though truth be told, she sometimes missed sharing a room with her little brother; it was nice not to sleep all by herself. But, well, she was growing up and he would be too, soon enough, and she knew enough to understand that that would get awkard sooner rather than later. Plus it was nice to have a little extra space to herself.
The teenage girl stirred as the sunlight fell upon her face. She had to get up early to help around the inn, and at her age she was beginning to wish she could sleep in more, but today she actually felt pretty refreshed, as if something inside her was already ready to spring into action. That was nice; she'd felt so odd yesterday, after her brush-in with that strange doll-girl, but now things felt...normal. Yawning and stretching, she rolled over onto her back.
Or at least, she attempted to. In fact, she only made it partway before something caught against the mattress - something that, inexplicably, felt like it was attached to her back. Surprised and mildly unnerved, Mary pushed off the covers and sat straight up. She could feel...something...there, something hanging out from the midpoint of her back. Despite whatever it was not actually belonging there, it felt strangely as if it was a part of her body. A mirror, she thought, beginning to worry about what was happening to her. I need a mirror.
Fortunately, like the guest rooms, hers actually did have a mirror, behind the little dressing partition. Getting out of bed, she stumbled over to the partition and looked into the mirror, twisting her head around to get a clear view of her back. She gasped in astonishment. On her back, sticking out through a rather severe tear in her nightdress, was a large, shiny metal post, with two circular loops at the end of it. She turned sideways to get a better look, but she already knew what it was, because she'd seen the exact same thing on their guest.
She reached back and tentatively felt at it, bending her arm around to feel at the base of it. Yes, it...it really was part of her; the shaft sank straight into her back, with a sort of metal grommet or bushing embedded in her skin around the base, as if it had always been that way. But her...her...her winding key...wasn't turning. Unlike Ms. Sarah's, which was always slowly spinning as the mechanisms inside the strange clockwork girl ticked away, this simply sat there.
She gently pushed at one of the loops - yes, it could turn. She could feel it turn in her back, in fact. But it didn't move of its own accord, nor did she hear - or feel - the kind of clicking and whirring that Sarah made when she moved or even when she stood still. A thought suddenly came over her - she knew that the people here in Robin's Heath sometimes changed slowly, over the course of a day or two, and might change back just as slowly. Perhaps this was only the first symptom of her change...?
But...but she shouldn't be changing at all! That was supposed to be only the descendants of folks from old Truman Town, right? But she could hardly deny that this was real when she could feel the evidence herself...
There was a knock on the bedroom door. "Mary," her father called, "are you up? We need to get breakfast going!"
She practically threw the door open and launched herself into the arms of her startled father, still in her torn nightdress. "Oh, Papa!" she said, feeling herself beginning to tear up. "Oh, Papa, what's happening to me!?"
Her father stared wide-eyed at the piece of metal growing out of his daughter's back. He gently prodded at the base of it, verifying what he already guessed to be the case. "It...it shouldn't be possible," he said, confused. "I don't understand..."
One of the doors down the hall opened. He looked up, still comforting his daughter, to see none other than the clockwork girl who'd come to stay with them yesterday. Sarah looked around in confusion. "Is everything alright?" she asked. "We heard-" She stopped dead as she saw the key sprouting from Mary's back, looking at it first with confusion and then with stunned realization.
"I...oh...oh my God," she said, awestruck. "Oh God, I'm so sorry...I had no idea this would..."
The innkeeper shook his head. "It...it shouldn't, by all rights," he said. "I've never heard of anything like this before...it should be only the descendants of the old town. I don't know...maybe one of them picked it up from you and somehow Mary got it...I don't know...this just doesn't make sense..."
"I...I'm so sorry," Sarah said, trying to process this. "We should never have come here..."
He looked up at her, thought for a moment, and shook his head. "Don't blame yourself," he said. "This kind of thing happens all the time around here - we've just been lucky enough to escape it until now, I guess." He gently pried Mary off of his chest and looked her in the eye, doing his best to give his daughter a reassuring smile. "Anyway," he said, "if it's like most of these spells the folks go through, she'll be right as rain in a week or two."
Mary looked around, sniffling, and saw Ms. Sarah standing there. I...am I going to be like her? she thought. Like that? She wondered what that would be like...
"I suppose if nothing else," her father continued, "at least this happened while you're still here, so we can have some idea what to expect. Anyway," he added, chuckling softly, "if we have to I can have Kevin follow her around to wind her..." He frowned. "Say, where is Kevin?"
