Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Sun nodded, and the door shut between them. Gil took a quick turn around the room, examining the vents and tapping at certain points upon the floor and ceiling. Satisfied, he again checked his father’s machinery and finally allowed himself to once more stare out the window at the airship that floated above the town.

“That can’t be Agatha,” he muttered. “Unless they tried to fake us out by switching ships…” He dismissed this with a wave. “No, they’d want to hide, and I told Wooster to get her to England…” He gnawed on his lower lip.

“Wooster is good. If he’s somehow failed and she’s here…if that’s her up there…then something terrible must have happened to him.” Gil thought about this for a moment and his face darkened. “And if it hasn’t—it will.”

Agatha, Wooster, Zeetha, and Krosp followed the old man down the causeway. Wooster was furious with himself. “This old fellow is the one who gave us directions outside the city gates.”

Agatha nodded. “He was also sitting next to me at the café.”

Zeetha bit her lip. “Why didn’t we notice—”

The old man’s amused voice floated back towards them. “Because I did not want to be noticed.” He smiled. “It’s a knack.”

He led Agatha and her friends away from the Castle and through the streets of Mechanicsburg. They followed him warily—he refused to say anything more until they were “somewhere more private,” which they all agreed was wise, but unsatisfying.

Everywhere people were clustered on the streets and in doorways, talking with a great amount of gesticulating and hand waving. Voices were raised in argument and wonder. As far as Agatha could determine, the out-of-towners seemed inclined to believe the newcomer was the real thing, a genuine Heterodyne, returned at last! The natives were perfectly willing to concede that this might be true, in which case, any item purchased on this momentous occasion would obviously become a treasured memento. Thus, all of the merchants seemed to be doing a roaring business, with trays of souvenirs—or indeed anything that bore a “Made in Mechanicsburg” label—evaporating as fast as the delighted merchants could haul them out from their back rooms.

After a while, Agatha noticed that even though most people in the streets couldn’t take three steps without being solicited for their opinion, the locals checked themselves when they caught sight of the old man by her side and smoothly intercepted anyone who headed his way.

Thus, it was within a bubble of calm that the group turned onto a small drawbridge decorated with legions of grotesque little monsters in red-painted wrought iron and crossed to a barren islet in the center of the river that wove through the town. Something struck Agatha as odd, and she paused to look about. Though the rest of the town was a textbook example of high-density urban design, there were no structures on the island itself except for the bridge platform that crossed it. Agatha peered over the chest-high walls but could see nothing except patches of scrubby lichen. A small metal sign bolted to the stones warned them not to leave the path.¹²

There was no other traffic here. Agatha stopped and faced the old man. “I think this a good place for us to talk. Who are you, sir?”

The old man regarded her for a moment, then leaned back upon a railing. “That is what I intend to ask you, Miss.”

Ardsley shook his head. “I do not think we should reveal—”

Agatha overrode him. “But I do. I think he knows a lot. We know nothing.”

She took a deep breath and stood tall. She looked the old man in the eye. “I am Agatha Heterodyne. My parents were Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish.”

The old man smiled and nodded agreeably. It was disappointingly anticlimactic. “Interesting.” He paused. “Where are they?”

Agatha blinked. There were a number of possible answers to that question, most of them awkward: (“My mother? Well, her consciousness appears to be lodged in my head…”) but she decided to keep things simple for the moment.¹³

“I don’t know. I last saw Uncle Barry eleven years ago. I was raised in Beetleburg by…well…you’d know them as Punch and Judy.”

This caused the old man to raise an eyebrow. “Not a hidden monastery in the Americas? That’s different,” he allowed. “Did Punch ever mention a Master Heliotrope?”

Agatha frowned. “No, because he couldn’t talk.”

Now both eyebrows went up. “Not many people know that.”

Agatha leaned in. “They probably also don’t know that he got the hiccups after getting an electric shock.” The old man was silent. “I know you’re testing me. I can keep this up.”

An odd expression swept across the old man’s face. “But—it’s impossible,” he whispered.

“Yeah, I think it’s pretty weird myself.” Krosp’s voice was loud in his ear.

That snapped the old man out of his reverie and he turned on the cat that stared up at him with a smug gaze. “Don’t you try to boggle me, Mister Talking Cat. This is Mechanicsburg and you are by no means the oddest thing in this town!” Krosp looked slightly disappointed but the old man didn’t notice.