metal walls, as it had a hundred times before. He was lost, frightened and completely alone but for the urgency of his mission. Then, as always, the walls buckled and ripped as he found himself looking at the blackness of space. The world before him was broken and burnt and his ears rang with the sound of trumpets and grinding rock.
“YesSs,” said the voice.
And as always, he whimpered back, “No.”
But it was no good. The dream had him. The voice had him. And once it had him, it never let go.
“Oh, so you’re back, are you?” he said, feigning a sulk, though in truth more than happy to see the mouse and especially now. The little rodent was uncommonly twitchy, though, Ned now noticed, his fur standing on end and his lit-up eyes blinking furiously.
“What’s got into you?” managed Ned, who was still reeling from the echo of the voice in his nightmare. Somehow it always managed to linger even when it made no sound.
Whiskers nodded his head towards the door of the trailer and Ned heard raised voices from outside. The Tinker and George. It sounded like they were right outside the door to George’s trailer and they were angry about something. Ned dragged himself out of bed, quickly pulled on his clothes and pocketed Whiskers, before stepping outside into the biting December air.
It seemed like half the troupe were out there, and none of them were happy.
“You cannot let this damnable toaster stay with us! They were banned with dashed good reason!” shouted George, who never let his animal side do the talking, unless gearing up for a fight.
What was even more alarming was who he was shouting at. No one ever raised their voice to Benissimo, not if they wanted to keep it.
Next to George, waist height in his lab coat and multi-lensed spectacles, stood the circus’s resident boffin and head of R & D. Minutians are extremely small, gnome-small, but take great offence at being compared to their diminutive cousins, who though similar in stature have none of their aptitude for the sciences. Whatever the Tinker was, though, he was not himself and looked as though he hadn’t eaten in days.
“George is right, boss,” the Tinker said. “The last malfunction ended in a bloody massacre and that was over a hundred years ago. It really has no place here and if you’re expecting me to keep it going, well!”
Which was when Ned turned his head to see the root of the problem. Standing there was a vast and aged ticker, the size of a full-grown man. Ned’s own mouse was a ticker and he’d seen countless others in the hidden city of Shalazaar. Mechanical wonders in the form of eagles, monkeys, dogs, they could be incredibly useful machines … and dangerous ones. A ticker in the form of a tiger had nearly bested George on the snow-swept mountain of Annapurna.
George, it seemed, had not forgotten. He was regarding the man-shaped ticker with an expression of fury, suspicion and disgust. Nor was he alone. A chameleon-skinned girl from the dancing section was rippling her colours uncontrollably, Alice the elephant’s feathers were all over the place and Finn’s lions, Left and Right, were whimpering behind the wax-coated tracker like a pair of wet dogs. Of everyone, no one was more terrified than Ned’s wind-up mouse. The Debussy Mark Twelve sat on his shoulder, looking as though someone had plugged his tail into an electrical socket. His minuscule mouth was now locked in an open stance, as if the mere act of seeing the ticker had somehow overloaded his tiny pistons.
“What … what is it?” said Ned.
George turned to him, and blinked. “Oh, good morning, dear boy,” he said. “It is a gift from Madame Oublier, if you can call it that. Her men delivered it in the night. And it is not staying. These things are dangerous.”
Ned could well believe it. The ticker was hewn from dark iron. Its body was a mass of jagged edges and rusting weaponry. A web of pipes, gears and pistons filled its chest and it looked to Ned like some haunted junkyard come to life.
All, that was, except for its face. It wore a mask of polished white marble. Its features were elegant, like the face of some fallen angel, and all the more disturbing because of it. Beauty and the beast, black and white, heaven and hell.
It was terrifying and also – Ned had to admit to himself – fascinating. As an Engineer, part of him wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. It was the sort of thing he could have spent hours on with his dad.
His dad. He blinked as the pain of his parents’ loss came rushing back in.
“I agree with George,” said the Tinker. “The Guardian goes, or we go.”
The Ringmaster tapped his foot impatiently, before finally erupting with a crack of his whip.
“QUIET! Before I box the ears of the lot of you and stick you all in irons!”
The campsite was suddenly devoid of any noise, apart from the low tick, tick, tick of the Guardian’s metallic heart.
“Have you forgotten what the boy and his family have done for us?” continued Bene. “Are your memories really that short? Need I remind you of their plight?”
The troupe collectively blanched.
“Now, if Madame O says she’ll sleep better for leaving it here, then so will I. It’s been programmed to watch the boy’s back and I suggest you do the same yourselves. None of us would be here were it not for Ned and Lucy, none of us.”
Benissimo glared at them all, his great bushy eyes like the beam of a lighthouse, his troupe the cowering night. George’s mighty shoulders dropped and his fur flattened. The argument was over.
Ned felt himself blush and looked to Lucy, who smiled at him and nodded.
“Now, get your heads straight – we move tonight,” ordered Benissimo, before tipping his hat to Ned and retiring to his trailer.
The Tinker turned to Ned. He had the same unkempt bristles as ever and his lab coat and pockets were even more a forest of screwdrivers than the last time they’d met. He was also rather embarrassed.
“Master Armstrong, sir, I am most sorry that you had to see that. You know I’d do anything to keep you safe, but Guardians are no laughing matter. No matter what Madame what’s-her-name says.”
“Guardian?”
“Soldier-class and supposedly banned; how she got her hands on one I’ll never know. As if there wasn’t enough going on already, with Gearnish going dark, and …”
The little minutian suddenly looked close to tears.
“I heard about your city,” said Ned. “I’m so sorry, Tinks.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Master Ned. What little family I have left is still there and, well, if anyone knows how I feel, it must be you, sir.”
For maybe the first time since he’d stepped through the mirror Ned realised that he wasn’t alone. That his old friends needed him just as much as he needed them.
“Then we’ll just have to get them back, Tinks,” he said. “Your family and mine.”
“That’s