Cecilia turned the automaton sculpture over in her hands again and again. The brightly painted metal sculpture was of a maiden and a knight separated by a round clock face made out of polished opal so that it glimmered in the light. Upon closer inspection instead of numerals to tell time on the clock, there were images of constellations. The same ones painted on the ceiling of Grand Central Station: Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Orion, Pegasus, Musca, and Triangulum. The three figures stood on a landscape of oak leaves and acorns. It was a gift. The last gift her father had given her before he disappeared from her life all those years ago. She had always thought that he had abandoned her mother and her. Walked away from them in the middle of the night for some unknown reason but to find out that he had been murdered instead… Guilt crashed down on her for all those years of hating him and resenting him. He had never abandoned them, he had fought so hard to get back to their family but the Peregrine had murdered him in some dusty ally lost in time.
She remembered that night so clearly. She was 16 sitting on her bed reading a book when a soft knock proceeded her father into the room. He had sat on the edge of the bed looking so sad and tired but he had always looked tired those days so she thought little of it. He had sat there on the edge of her bed gazing at her until she shifted uncomfortably.
“What is it Dad? You look sad. Is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry. You just grew up so fast, right behind my back when I wasn’t looking. Just yesterday you were running around the house in your diaper.”
“DAAAD! I’m 16. The diaper stage has been gone for long time.”
“You’re not 16 until tomorrow.” Cecilia rolled her eyes at the parental semantics. “But to celebrate I wanted to give you this.”
He had handed her the statue then. A curiously heavily thing despite its small size.
“What is it?”
“It’s a puzzle automaton.”
“A what?”
“A mechanical puzzle. Rockefeller commissioned it originally. See, the oak leaves and acorns are a symbol of his family.”
“How did you get it?”
“It was entrusted to me and now I’m entrusting it to you.”
“You said it was a puzzle. What does it do?”
“Well it wouldn’t be much of a puzzle if I told you how to solve it.”
Cecilia had poked at the automaton half-heartedly before giving up. “I don’t get it.”
“You will. When the time is right, you will.” With those cryptic words he had kissed her on the forehead goodnight and that was the last she had ever seen of him.
In her bitterness and rage over the coming years she had thrown the automaton into a box and shoved it to the back of her closet. But now 10 years later, here she sat, his long-forgotten gift in her hands. This small metal sculpture held the key to unlocking time travel to the future, a secret that her father had died to protect. And now Matthias’ life depended on her solving the riddle of the automaton. From Iris’ descriptions before she had died, Cecilia knew that the maiden and the knight had to touch hands in order for the automaton to open. But how to get the metal figurines to move was beyond her. There had to some connection, some clue, she just had to find it – and fast.
©2020 by Leila Ghaznavi. All rights reserved.