My name is Mirror and I am dancing with Mr Loveheart in the Underworld. I don’t know what has happened to the other princesses. I can see Myrtle sitting on the knee of the King of the Dead. But where are the others? Mr Loveheart is spinning me around the floor. I ask him, “Where are the other princesses?”
He replies, “My brothers have taken them away, deep into the Underworld.”
“What will happen to them?” I ask.
“I am afraid they will be all gobbled up. For there’s nothing much else we can do with them but eat them.”
“What about Myrtle?” I look over to her; she is frozen like a doll.
“The King of the Dead will turn her into a clock. She will become lost in his time.”
“What about me?”
“I haven’t made my mind up yet”
We dance around the great hall; we dance in spirals while the moths beat their wings around our faces. A soft furry kiss of wings. Mr Loveheart is dressed in red with hearts embroidered on his waistcoat. His hair is the colour of lemons. So bright. His eyes black as octopus ink. I think to myself, he’s a wicked prince and I am not going to get out of here.
We dance and dance. My feet are starting to hurt.
There’s a beating at the great door of the hall. And in arrives another king. Goliath Honey-Flower. “I am the King of the Stars and I have come for Myrtle and Mirror.” He opens his great hands out to us both.
The King of the Dead will not let Myrtle go. My wicked prince holds me tight and laughs.
The King of the Stars says, “Let them go or I will tear down your kingdom with my bare hands.”
“No,” says the King of the Dead, and the clocks chime a quarter past, politely. I don’t think any of us are getting out of this.
IV: August 1887
Mr Loveheart & Mr Fingers
My name is John Loveheart and I was not born wicked.
When I was a child, I was taken away from my home by a demon. I was taken away to the kingdom of the dead. When I came back to Earth I could not look into mirrors, for my eyes were black. The colour of dead things.
I remember our house. It was like something from a fairy tale. A magical kingdom of a king and queen, and I was the little prince. I remember in winter the snow would cover the house like diamonds: glistening, supernatural light. I remember thinking how lucky I was.
On my seventh birthday my father returned from Paris with a telescope and a map pinpointing the stars in the galaxy. I remember that time so clearly, as he was hardly ever home. He stood with me on the balcony, his finger an arrow aimed at the heavens, naming every star.
“John, remember the stars. They are constant when all else falls apart. They contain the souls of man. When I die, I will be up there forever watching you, forever with you.”
My father had an enormous collection of machines and contraptions, which he had acquired over the years and throughout the world. Each machine was an invention. Each machine held the possibility of time travel.
I was under the strictest instruction never to play with these contraptions, as they were dangerous and also expensive. To me they looked like strange and beautiful sculptures throughout our house. A spiked wheel engraved in symbols in the hallway; a mirrored black coffin-shaped box in the dining room, an Egyptian throne of gold that used sunlight as a source of energy in the conservatory, even a set of shrunken Pygmy heads and a lightning conductor on the roof. In my father’s study was a grandfather clock, his prize possession. He had acquired it from a clockmaker in London: a very unusual clockmaker.
“This clock,” he said, “is very, very special. It has something inside it. Something trapped in time.”
“What is inside it, Father? How does it work?” I asked.
“The clockmaker tells me it will start speaking to me. It will tell me how it works.”
I gazed at that clock; it was a beautiful and frightening thing. It stood over six feet tall with a great painted face, its smile demented. Ladybird engravings crawled up the sides. What worried me was that it was shaped like a coffin.
When my father was out of his study, I secretly touched it with my hand. It was warm and I am sure I could feel it breathing.
It became my father’s favourite thing in the world. He loved it more than anything.
My mother had become mysteriously ill over the last few months and was confined to her bedroom, as she was too weak to move about. The curtains were always drawn in her room as the sunlight was hurting her eyes and gave her headaches. Many doctors came to visit, each prescribing different potions and remedies, none of which ever made her any better. Eventually the doctors stopped coming. It was believed she simply had a weak heart and must rest and let nature take its course. As Father spent most of his time abroad with business or in his study worshipping his new clock, she was very lonely, and only had me and her sister for company.