Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

So caught up was he in memories that, when the trio of horses stopped in front of him, he continued to drift. The young man on the lead horse had to repeat himself several times, in a slightly louder voice each time, before he was startled back to full awareness.

A tall, friendly-looking fellow looked down at him and nodded his head respectfully. Behind him was a young woman, most likely his wife: young, alert, and wide-eyed. Currently she was staring up at the gate. Fair enough, it took some getting used to. At the gateway, the walls blossomed outwards, and a person entering the town experienced the disquieting sensation of entering a lair of grinning, cavorting gargoyles and other assorted monstrosities. The old Heterodynes were accused of many things, but no one ever said they were unfair. They always enjoyed letting visitors know exactly what they were walking into.

Behind her was—Carson perked up a bit. The woman looked like one of those warrior nuns he’d heard of, from…the old man frowned. That convent fortress up near Lake Geneva…he cursed this further evidence of his aging memory. Twenty, no, even ten years ago, he could have reeled off the name of the place as well as what they usually ate for breakfast.

He shook his head. In the nun’s lap was a—Carson’s breath hissed inwards in shock. It was a child. A terrible, misshapen child, tightly wrapped in bandages. The only thing he could see was a pair of mad, glaring eyes. He shuddered.

Even before the rider spoke, the old man knew what he wanted.

“If you would be so kind as to tell us the way to the Great Hospital?”¹

“Certainly. Straight down this avenue until you get to a square with a statue of the Heterodyne Boys. Turn left at the statue, and you’ll start to see the signs.”

The young woman broke off her staring at the gate and turned to him. Her eyes held him transfixed and the old man felt his heart skip a beat.

“Thank you, kind sir.” She broke the connection as she turned to her husband. “Let’s go, darling.”

The old man let out a breath as the horses clopped off. Well. Apparently one is never too old to feel foolish over a pretty girl. He impatiently shook his head.

“It’s unfortunate, that’s what that is,” he muttered. “Now’s a particularly bad time to show up with a sick child. The hospital will be in chaos what with the Baron there and everyone all stirred up.”

He glanced upwards. “Perhaps I could—” He froze, then twisted around and stared up at the gargoyles that lined gate into town. All of them—every blessed one of them—had shifted on their pedestals, gazing after the trio of newcomers as they entered the city.

Agatha glanced at her companions and couldn’t help the small smile that crossed her face as they left the old man. The idea of the boisterous and unrestrained Zeetha as a nun was almost as amusing as the thought of her being married to the normally prim and decorous ex-valet Ardsley Wooster, who had joined them in Sturmhalten. She caught a glimpse of Krosp’s furious eyes and turned away. Intelligent he might be, but Krosp was still a cat, and his dignity was suffering greatly under those bandages.

As they finally cleared the tunnel through the great wall, Agatha had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mechanicsburg! She’d heard so much about it. It was the home of the Heterodyne Boys, after all, and for the last two months, she’d been slowly wending her way here—because she’d been told that she was a Heterodyne as well.

As far as the rest of the world knew, the Heterodyne Boys had vanished years ago, putting a stop to the devastations of the Other: the secretive power that had nearly broken Europa nearly two decades ago. Agatha sighed. She had learned much in her travels, and almost all of it bizarre and unsettling. She, Agatha, was the daughter of the hero Bill Heterodyne, and the Other had been her own, equally brilliant mother, Lucrezia Mongfish. Agatha figured that she was now the only person in Europa who found the Other not just mysterious and terrifying, but horribly embarrassing.

It would have been nice to be able to discount this as hearsay, but as Agatha currently had a copy of her mother’s mind lodged inside her own head, determined to break free and wreak havoc, she had to accept that hers was a family with…special problems.

As the horses ambled down the street, they were approached by swarms of touts for many of the local establishments.

“Try the Rusty Trilobite, sir! Soft beds! Hot running water! And you can’t even see the tannery!”

“Nothing like a hot mug of golden rum to clear the dust of the road, ma’am! Come on over to the Laughing Construct! And don’t you pay attention to what anyone says—he’s laughing ’cause he’s happy!”

“Hoy! You look like a man of the world, squire. Stow the ball and chain and get yourself over to Mamma Gkika’s. They’ll treat you right.”