Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

“As we passed through the last of the great Iron Gates and approached Mechanicsburg for the first time, the Bishop was struck anew by the grandeur of the surrounding cliffs, the majesty of the encircling mountains, and the awe-inspiring fury of the River Dyne as it roared far beneath the Bridge of Thorns.

As we crossed toward the town, he rhapsodized at such length that I feared it would take a double dose of poppy-juice tea to settle him in for the night.

The more strategically inclined Captain Van der Vheer pointed to the same features and glumly explained why, for the last thousand years, the Valley of the Heterodynes deserved its reputation as unconquerable.

I am already resigned to never leaving this place, but I take some small comfort that, at the very least, my last memories of Earth will be filled with some of God’s finest landscapes.”

—Excerpt from the journal “The Building of the Red Cathedral, or Why God Now Hates Us” by Brother Martanus, “The Unkillable.” Located in the Papal Library of Banned and Forbidden Books, Avignon, France.

CHAPTER 1

Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

Welcome to Mechanicsburg!

There’s no finer city from

Saint Petersburg to Rome.

Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

The loveliest we’ve ever heard of,

Jewel of Europa and

The place where we call home.

How mighty are her mighty walls,

How shiny are her clanks,

How beautiful her mountains tall,

And for her snails we all give thanks.

How glorious her Hospital

Which helps folk far and near,

Bill and Barry Heterodyne

Built it for us here.

Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

Welcome to Mechanicsburg,

We thank you so for visiting,

With every erg and ohm.

Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

The greatest burg we’ve ever heard of,

Jewel of Europa and

The place where we call home.

—“The Mechanicsburg Tourism Song,” Tom Smith

Arella Heliotrope climbed the stairs to her family apartment, her mind buzzing with news. She opened the hidden locks on the front door and peered inside. “Poppa?” she called. The sitting room had been tidied in a rather haphazard manner. Couch cushions were lined up wrong side out, the great salvaged clank head that had been repurposed as a fire-front had been left with jaws agape, books had been stuffed onto bookshelves with no regard to order. Arella sighed. The old man did try to stay useful. She wished he would go out but more and more, he just stayed in the apartment. He was not taking retirement well.

She walked past walls lined with family mementos: portraits of old Heterodynes, monsters, ancestors, and nervous-looking dignitaries.

The apartment itself was more spacious than its exterior would suggest. It actually occupied the top floor of what, observed from the street, would appear to be three conjoined yet separate buildings. Even from the beginning, the family had sought to keep a low profile.

“Poppa?” she called again. He wasn’t in the library, a room lined with meticulously oiled leather-bound volumes containing everything one could wish to know about Mechanicsburg and its former rulers.

He wasn’t napping in his room. With a small pang of guilt, Arella saw that the votive candle before the portraits of her husband and his mother had melted down. She replaced it with a new votive, setting it securely into the cut-glass safety lantern.

“Poppa?” Arella continued on to the kitchen where she set her purchases down on the counter, trying to avoid a scattering of dirty bowls and small drifts of flour. She scowled. “Poppa?”

“I’m on the balcony,” the old man’s voice called out.

And indeed he was. Carson Heliotrope rested, ensconced in a large comfortable chair. The cat, Electrode, so named for its ability to store up static electricity, lay sprawled in his lap. The old man put down the book he was reading and smiled at her as she stepped out the back door.

“I got us a pork pie for supper, and some fresh onions.”

Carson looked pleased. “Wonderful! I have some bread rising.”

Arella had noticed the covered loaf pans arranged upon the balcony railing. “You shouldn’t have!” She remembered the disarray she’d seen in the kitchen. “Really.”

The old man waved a hand in dismissal. “Ha! Did it anyway.” He cast an eye over the side of the balcony. Below, on the normally sedate Avenue of Schemers, there was an excessive amount of traffic and a suspicious number of people clustered together, conferring. His voice was deliberately casual. “Any news?”

Of course, Arella realized, he knows something is up.

“Yes, indeed,” she reported. “They say a new Heterodyne heir has—”

But Carson had lost interest, waving at her to stop. “Ah. Enough.” He sighed as he picked up his book.

Arella hesitated and then spoke slowly. “I don’t know, Poppa… this one sounds different.” The old man noisily turned a page. “It’s a girl, for starters.”