Alex in Wunderstrande: The Clairvoyance Clock [BOOK ONE]

Chapter XXVIII: The Memory Perambulator

All the way back to Alistair Tower, I struggled to surface from the depth of my anxious thoughts. After explaining to Sheridan and Castor about Jayce's sudden departure, I quietly wondered if she had made it back through the portal all right. Additionally, my internal speculation of what Lucian and his crew had been doing since the lighthouse incident spawned several scenes in my rampant imagination, none of which were very pleasant.

Though I didn't want to admit it—at least, not audibly—I was particularly concerned about Imogen. I missed her. But even more than Imogen, I had started to miss the very one who propelled me into this mess in the first place: Brody.

After hearing Jayce's account of the war, I couldn't shake the undeniable sinking feeling within the pit of my stomach. I started to feel as if I'd been wrong about my former guardian. Brody could have easily left Jayce, a low-rank soldier, to face the wrath of Chancellor Gage alone, but he didn't. He returned to save her.

That's what true leaders do, my conscience explained to me. That's how you know the authentic from the counterfeit.

Night quickly faded into dawn. I lay hopelessly awake, staring at a beam of sunlight spilling across the ceiling. I rubbed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh, turning onto my side. No matter how hard I tried, stubborn sleep still wouldn't come on Wunderstrande's timetable. Groaning, I decided to abandon it altogether.

I found myself aimlessly wandering the tranquil halls of Alistair Tower. Not even the servants were awake at this hour, leaving me to explore freely.

However, an unexpected noise brought me to a standstill in the corridor crossroads of the forty-second floor. A tiny tinkering sound, small yet insistent, tugged on my awareness.

Slowly, I drew closer to an aged door, adorned in clock hands of various shapes and sizes. Unlike the other doors in the tower, this one did not require a special Thumb Key to enter. My inquisitive nature was grateful to that fact as I pushed on the latch.

Inside, purplish-blue sparks immediately spat into existence, illuminating the circular room with an otherworldly brilliance. A metallic, wheel-like contraption rigged to the ceiling rotated at a barely detectible speed. Transparent wires hung at various levels and held glowing portraits at their ends, giving the illusion they were drifting throughout the room on their own accord. The mechanical mobile twirled and radiated a mystical, sparkling light, a carousel of true photographic wonder.

I extended my fingers to touch one of the sepia-washed portraits as it floated past. Innumerable, the photographs contained frozen moments of my family members' lives: my parents' wedding ceremony, my father as a young alchemist in training, a toddler I assumed was Castor, and so on. Others displayed glimpses of the brightest star I had ever seen and assorted celestial skyscapes. However, my heart couldn't be controlled when several stills of me rotated into my line of sight. The younger version of myself looked incredibly happy, but for some reason, it pained me to stare too long. This wasn't me. This wasn't my life; these were the life prints of a stranger.