Tale 2- The Clock and the Helper

 The Traveler found herself in a new town, where, ironically, she wasn’t the only traveler. In fact, an entire circus had appeared, enticing visitors with its sickly sweet smell of candyfloss and the loud blaring music so typical of these attractions. Following a family inside, she found herself surrounded by strangers and curiosities alike. Which one to ask for a tale, though? She moved from stall to stall, from curiosity to curiosity. All fake, all attractions, all staged. Fortune tellers beckoned her over, but she hastily shook her head. Clowns tried to pull off her cape to reveal her face- she ran away. Behind one of the crates holding up a sign, she hid, pulling out the book to try and remember her purpose. Ninety nine tales more. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. But who could tell her a tale worth keeping? She suddenly spotted a young man, quite handsome, calling visitors to his attraction. According to the brightly painted sign, he told a story for a story. She raised an eyebrow. That was convenient. Walking over to the tent, she peeked inside, where he sat at a table, rearranging some jewels and fiddling with the bow around his neck. The Traveler sat down in the seat opposite, the man finally noticing her. In a typical showman style, he flamboyantly asked her for a tale, so she took a deep breath and recounted the tale of ‘The Beast of the Woods’, reading every detail just as the child had told her, painstakingly written in beautiful calligraphy and the finest ink she could find, pages decorated with blots of watercolour and illustrations of the boy turning into the beast. When she finished, the man, seemingly awestruck, leaned forward in his seat and nodded. A deal’s a deal, after all. He smirked, and stood up, ready to tell the tale of ‘the Clock and the Helper.’

‘Once, there was a town full of people animated by clockwork, gears taking up the spaces for their brains and their hearts being little more than a metal gear pounding away. Each of them moved rhythmically, every kinetic movement perfectly in time with one another, as if they were a child’s figurines. With every pound of that central gear, a tick resounded across the town, from the elaborate centerpiece which they all moved around. A brass Clock, the king of all time and father of these mechanical children. As its bells rang out every hour, the children were obliged, day or night, to walk in circles around it. Unfortunately, one terrible day, the clock went haywire, its bells ringing out every minute instead of every hour. Thus, the town was unable to function- there was nobody to heat the gears to keep the workers alive, nobody to create the gears needed, nobody to scout out the metal necessary, as everyone was sent walking in circles for hours on end. Luckily, there was a little fellow, known as the Helper, who had different gears to the rest of the group- due to an imperfection during his creation. Unlike most of the mechanical children, who all had assigned jobs and functions, and who were all identical, the Helper was built of wooden gears instead of metal, and thus did not function like the others. Normally, he was left to his own devices or sought out to “Help”, as the name implied, but today, sighting that nothing was getting done, the little fellow decided to climb into the Clock and try and fix whatever was wrong. He noticed that one of the gears was moving too fast, and tried to push a nearby lever to slow it down, eventually using all of his force to stop the gear entirely. Thus, the mechanical children, left with no purpose, started to hail the Helper instead of the Clock, and follow his every move. The Helper, now excited to have a large group of friends, decided that the first thing he wanted to do with them was go swimming in the nearby lake, and they all followed him and jumped in. Unfortunately, though, the Helper was made of wood, and was the only one who could float, whereas the rest of the children sank, quickly starting to break. Due to this, the Helper decided to repair the Clock in hopes of trying to get them out of the lake and back to their jobs. With a push of the lever, one by one the figurines stepped out of the lake, confused and bothered that they had been absent for so long. Quickly fixing each other up, they returned to a life of monotony, whilst the Helper decided that he had caused enough trouble for a lifetime, and jumped into the furnace used to create the gears.’

For a moment, the Traveler sat, finishing the transcription of the story. She then seemed to look up at the man from under her hood, to which he shrugged. After all, things happen for a reason, and those who don’t follow the status quo are often the ones who suffer the most. The Traveler sighed and thanked the man for his time, paying him a gold coin, and left the circus, walking away into the fog.