The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,150

I drank the potion. I tasted nothing but water – though the water of Märchen was anything but ordinary. So swift was the spread of lethargy through my limbs that I would have dropped the glass had she not plucked it from my hand.

‘Now ask your questions,’ she said.

It was difficult to focus my thoughts, much less speak them aloud. But I persevered. ‘The automatons, Corinna. How is that I saw myself there? And why did you not wish to tell anyone what we had seen? Why did you make up that story about a kiss?’

‘Why, would you not like a kiss from me?’ she answered coyly.

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but—’

‘Then you shall have it,’ she said and, before I could say another word, pressed her lips to mine. Despite the lassitude instilled by the doctor’s potion, I responded. That her father or Frau Hubner might enter the room at any time and discover us did not cross my mind. But even as I sought to deepen the kiss, opening my lips to coax the same from her, she pulled away.

‘That was nice,’ she said. ‘I could feel your heart beating so fast, like a hummingbird!’

But to me my heartbeat seemed rather like a clock in need of winding, or like the cogwheel slowing on the cover of Herr Doppler’s book as whatever energy had powered its turning ebbed away. I felt myself slipping under. I did not think even another kiss from Corinna could keep me awake. I struggled to speak. ‘Tell me about the clock, the automatons.’

She frowned but then answered. ‘It is some wizardry of Herr Wachter’s,’ she said. ‘The figures are always the same, modelled after the townsfolk. Except today. Today you appeared among them. A stranger. That has never happened before. There is something special about you, Michael. The clock has chosen you.’

I understood her words, but the sense behind them was as far beyond my comprehension as the script in Herr Doppler’s book. ‘Chosen? How? And for what?’

‘For me,’ she said, blushing most becomingly. ‘We are to be husband and wife.’

I confess I did not follow the logic. Yet there was nothing more I could say; the potion had done its work, and even as she bent to give me another kiss, I felt myself falling away from her as if the mattress had yawned open beneath me. Before her lips reached mine, darkness closed over my eyes.

‘I will come back later tonight.’ Her voice threaded out of the black. ‘When you are awake again. I will show you …’

Her words were lost as I slipped completely under.

I was awakened by the sound of a closing door. I sat up, alert in an instant, the effects of Dr Immelman’s draught utterly spent. The lamp had gone out, and the only light in the room was a soft glow from the stove, a reddish nimbus like the heart of a dying coal. It illuminated nothing beyond itself, clinging to its source as if for warmth, for the temperature in the room had plunged while I slept. Behind me, I heard the rattle of sleet against the windowpane.

‘Who is there?’ I whispered. ‘Corinna, is it you?’

There came a dry rasping, as of something heavy being dragged across the floor. At that sound, the memory of the dream that had ravished me on my first night in Märchen, when Corinna had crept into my room and stolen my tool kit, flooded over me. I recalled the eldritch glow that had pervaded everything like some radiant property of cold, remembered the inhuman beauty of the woman who had stood before me like some aloof yet hungry goddess made of metal and jewels, demanding a tribute I could not deny. I began to tremble, afraid that the dream was playing itself out in real life … yet also half desiring it.

Then the pungent odour of fresh-baked bread rolled over me, as if an oven door had been opened, and I knew who my visitor was.

‘Inge,’ I said.

And from the darkness, near enough to touch, a whisper: ‘Shh.’

As had happened before, her scent proved stimulating, a force of nature beyond my control, and my little soldier had already sprung to attention when I felt her settle onto the bed, which groaned at the weight of her. I reached out, intending to push her away, but my hand sank as if into a mass of dough. She was naked. Her skin did not just envelop my hand but seemed to absorb