“The Worry Vials have a flaw.” Tomik’s blond hair hung in a short curtain around his face as he looked down. “Father designed them so that the problems and fears people whispered to the vials couldn’t be known to anyone else. When the bottle turns different colors it’s because there are tiny crystals lining the inside, and they bite into the worries like little teeth. The whispers turn green and brown as they’re broken down into fragments. Then the glass turns purple as it absorbs the pieces. The more you use the vial, the darker it gets. But each time you open it, there’s nothing inside, and even if you break the glass, the worries never escape. They stay in the pieces of the glass. But I recently discovered that there’s a way in which you can actually hear whatever somebody told a vial.”
Petra immediately saw that this was a big problem. “But you’ve sold hundreds of them! And to members of the court. I bet they’ve told their vials lots of things they don’t want anybody to hear.”
“Exactly. When I told Father, he was so embarrassed. I don’t know what bothered him more—that there is a flaw, or that I was the one who told him about it. He hasn’t decided what to do. If he tells everybody, it could ruin our business. It would be all right if people who bought the vials just demanded their money back. But what’s worse is that they wouldn’t trust the Stakan name anymore. And if Father stops selling the vials, people might begin to wonder what’s wrong with them, and somebody besides me might actually figure out how to extract the secret worries.”
“How do you extract them?”
“It’s simple, really.” Tomik shook his head miserably. “Lucie decided to use her Worry Vial as a vase for flowers from Pavel. No one thought anything of it when she poured water in the vial, and the glass stayed the same color it was before. It was violet, because Lucie doesn’t have enough worries to make the vial a darker color. The next day, the flowers were withered and Lucie was sad. I was in the kitchen when she poured the water out. I heard her say, ‘That’s odd,’ and turned around to see that her Worry Vial was clear again. Then I realized that the water had somehow sucked the worries out of the glass. The water had been violet, not the vial. I did some experimenting, and discovered that if you put water in a Worry Vial, and pour it out later, the water’s different. It’s dark. It’ll evaporate eventually, like water always does, but vial water leaves behind a light dust. When you stir the dust with your finger, you can hear the whispered worries again.”
“Most people aren’t like Lucie,” Petra comforted. “Who would think of putting anything inside a Worry Vial but worries? Your family is so used to having the vials around that they don’t seem special, but they’re very valuable to everyone else. They wouldn’t treat it like an ordinary bottle. Has anyone ever complained to the Sign of Fire?”
“Not yet,” Tomik said gloomily.
“At least someone will know if his vial has been tampered with. If you walk into your bedroom and see that your purple vial has become clear, you know that something’s wrong. Somebody would have contacted the Sign of Fire if this had happened.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“You should come up with an antidote. Then offer it for free to anyone who has bought a Worry Vial.”
“An antidote?”
“Yes … you know, something that will stop the water from pulling the secrets out of the glass. Maybe you could mix a sort of syrup that you pour into the vial after the glass has absorbed the worries. The syrup could seal the worries into the glass, like melted wax.”
“Hmm.” Tomik became pensive, and they were quiet until a cuckoo called from the trees, breaking the silence. “Hey, where is that spider of yours? I have to go home.”
“Astrophil!”
The spider twinkled toward them, walking across a bed of moss. “The organizational skills of ants are really quite impressive.”
As he approached, they heard a shatteringly loud crack. Astrophil squeaked and jumped to Petra’s shoe, ducking under the hem of her trouser leg.
“Was that a tree falling?” Petra said uncertainly.
“Too loud.” Tomik peered up between the trees.
A flash of light stitched across the blue sky. Thunder shuddered.
“But it’s a beautiful day!” Tomik protested. “This is bizarre.”
Not as bizarre as what happened next. Light brown grains began to sift down through the trees, hissing across the leaves and settling onto Tomik and Petra.
Tomik rubbed a hand through his hair. He stared at his fingers incredulously. “Is it … is it raining sand?”
As if startled by Tomik’s voice, the sandstorm stopped.
Tomik kneeled to inspect the sand-sprinkled moss, muttering in disbelief. Petra and the spider were silent, but they were both thinking about the same thing: the prince’s clock.
7
Greensleeves
PETRA SECRETLY BEGAN preparing to leave the house at the Sign of the Compass.
She worked harder in the shop than ever before. She made sure that the gears were well oiled, with not a speck of rust. She convinced a merchant passing through town to buy the tin monkey. She felt a pang when she told him that the pets were one of a kind, and that her father would not make any more. Master Kronos was feeling better, and enjoyed sitting in the shop and chatting with the customers. He liked the merchant, who had a gloomy voice that became excited when he first saw the monkey. But after that day, Master Kronos decided that he would give the remaining tin animals to his family and friends.
Dita said, “No, thanks,” when her uncle offered her one. “David’s Stella is enough for me.”
Josef surprised them all by choosing a mouse, dipping his large hand to scoop up the one with the tiniest paws and longest tail. “Thank you, sir.” Josef put the mouse in his pocket and never said what he had named it.
Petra asked Mikal Kronos if she could give the last puppy to Tomik, and he readily agreed. “I’m not sure she’ll get along with Jaspar, though,” her father warned.
Petra had not seen Tomik in a while. They each had to work during the day. At night he was preoccupied with trying to figure out how to fix the flaw in the Worry Vials and how to make a working pair of eyes for Petra’s father. Tomas Stakan had finally agreed to let his son help him in designing the eyes, but they had no luck. Two more leather bags sat next to the first one on Mikal Kronos’s nightstand.