Chapter 14

DUCK'S TALENT

"Duck? Duck, wake up," Fakir said as he held her gently.

He was worried that whatever had happened to her was because of that box. He didn't understand what Duck meant about Lillie's ribs. All he knew was that Duck was in his arms out cold.

"Oh, dear me. What just happened?" the store owner asked as he walked around the counter to the two young people. "Is she all right?"

"She had better be. This is going to tear Rue in half if anything happened to her," Fakir said as he looked down at Duck.

Almost as if just mentioning her name, Rue and the others rushed into the store. Rue saw Duck first and raced over to her.

"Oh my god. Duck. What happened?" she asked.

"She touched that box," Fakir said and pointed to the object in the owner's hand. "There was this weird light and for some reason it didn't let me get near her."

"She just…touched a box? She just touched a box and it causes her to pass out? That's lame," Pique said.

"Maybe she's tired," Mytho said from the back of the group.

"Nobody asked for your opinion," Pique said and stuck her tongue out.

"Did she say anything?" Rue asked.

"After the light faded she said that Lillie's ribs were returned but…I didn't see any ribs," Fakir said.

"See? I told you I felt something. I knew I grew two more inches," Lillie said and pushed Pique.

"So? That doesn't mean anything. You could have just decided not to have bad posture," Pique said.

"I think Lillie might be right for once," Rue said. She held her hand out to the owner and asked, "May I please see the box?"

"Oh, sure miss."

"What do you want to look at? It's just a box," Fakir said. He didn't realize it but he was still cradling Duck in his arms and to onlookers it would seem more than just a friendship between them.

"Maybe there will be an answer somewhere on this box," Rue said and began to spin it in her hands. "Can you tell me what it looked like before Duck touched it?"

"It looked just like that," he said then looked closer. "Wait, it had two rungs on the lid. Where did they go?"

"If my hunch is correct, then the box not only held Lillie's ribs but they were also a part of it," Rue said.

"Ha! I got my ribs back, I got my ribs back, la la la la la la," Lillie said happily and began dancing around Pique.

"Oh, shut up. That's nothing, wait until I get my elegance stuff back," Pique said with her arms crossed.

"If we're able to find it," Fakir said bluntly.

"That is very true. A question that is still bugging me is…how did she know which box to touch? There are several other boxes in this store, why did she want to touch this box so badly?" Rue asked.

"She said it was pretty. I think it's really plain but she was very persistent that it was pretty," Fakir said.

"That might be it."

"What might be it?" Pique asked.

"To us, we see something unimportant but because of Drosselmeyer's magic I suppose Duck saw something different. Perhaps she…has magic too," Rue said and brushed a feather from Duck's face. "If only she had it earlier, maybe she would have had something to look forward to at the circus."

"Yeah, and maybe she could have used it to fly. Get real Rue, if Duck could have used magic in the circus don't you think that Drosselmeyer would have used her to his advantage even more?" Fakir asked.

"Oh, I didn't…"

"He'd have had two performers with magic," Pique said. "That would have been interesting."

"Yeah okay, let's stop with the being down cast. Who wants ice cream?" Lillie asked happily.

"Ugh, shut up Lillie," Pique groaned.

"But she's right. A crowd's forming outside, we should go," Rue said as she stood up. "Fakir, can you pick her up?"

"Guess I'll have to," he said and gently wrapped his arms under the young girl's body. "Being half bird makes her easy to carry."

They made their way through the crowd of onlookers that conjugated in front of the store and headed back to Altor's invention shop. Fakir was carefully holding Duck so her head rested against his shoulder and he couldn't stop feeling that perhaps if he hadn't brought her along this wouldn't have happened. Oh, there he goes again, blaming himself for the things happening to others when it wasn't his fault. Duck and Altor were so right when they said he beats himself up over nothing. He literally did. He didn't make her come, he didn't make her touch the box so why did he think he did? He just had one messed up brain sometimes.

Something else was bugging him: why were Lillie's ribs apart of the box? Why weren't they just ribs laying somewhere? He decided to ask Rue when they got back.

Well, they finally got back and Fakir placed Duck carefully on the bed. He watched as Rue pulled the blanket up to her chin and put a warm, damp cloth on Duck's head.

As she patted her face with another cloth Fakir asked, "Why were Lillie's ribs a box?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why weren't they just…there as ribs? Why were they a part of a box?"

"That's a good question," Rue said and thought for a second. "I guess Drosselmeyer had to turn the unobtainable objects into something he could hold. If you think about it, he probably turned them into things that represent what was taken."

"So what did the box represent?"

"It could have represented her chest and the two ribs were the rungs keeping it safe and secure," Rue said and Fakir nodded in agreement.

"That could be it but what about the others?"

"I have no idea. I'm sure that when Duck's sees it she'll know," Rue said. She got up and walked to the door. "We'll just have to be patient. Come on, we should leave her alone. She'll be fine."

"Actually, I'd rather stay here and just make sure," he said as he looked at the girl on the bed. "Besides, I need some place quiet to work on a design. I'm having some trouble getting the pieces to work in Uzura's head."

"Well, okay, just don't bother her and if she wakes up you can tell one of us," Rue said and left.

He stood there silently for a few more minutes, still starring at the bird-girl. He was sort of thinking and sort of in his own world. She looked so tranquil and peaceful that he actually felt jealous of her. Him being peaceful was like saying a pig doesn't like rolling in mud, it just wasn't going to happen.

He finally walked over to the small desk that sat at the opposite wall of the bed and began to scribble out shapes of gears and pieces, trying to figure out what wasn't working with what.

He was working on it for so long that he actually fell asleep. It was about five when he fell asleep and it was several hours later before he woke up.

Of course he didn't wake up on his own, someone woke him up and guess who that was. If you guessed Duck then congrats for amazing guessing skills.

She had finally started to wake up when she realized that she was back in her room at Altor's shop and she felt that perhaps she missed something. How did she get there? Why didn't she remember coming back? And why was Fakir in her room? She slowly got out of her bed and it took her a few seconds to get her balance back before she could walk over to Fakir.

She got to him thinking he was awake and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, Fakir," she said softly, her voice still weak from being tired.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked back to see Duck. He blinked several times and shook his head to wake himself up.

"You're finally awake," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked sincerely.

"You've been asleep since the incident at the hardware store," he said and looked at her eyes. Something was different about them. He couldn't put his finger on it but he knew that there was definitely a change in her eyes. "Do…you remember what happened?"

"I touched a box…and um, I fell asleep?" she asked with a shy grin. "Okay, I don't really remember but I know a box was involved."

"Yeah, you touched a box and gave Lillie her missing ribs back," Fakir said as he turned back to his sketches. "Don't ask how that works exactly but it did."

"Lillie got her ribs back?" Duck asked happily. "That's great!"

"How did you know which box to touch?"

"I don't know. At first the box looked normal and all but then it got really pretty and there were so many colors and designs that appeared and it just seemed to call to me," Duck said as she remembered the box. "I think that the box wanted me to see it."

"Okay," Fakir said and grabbed the sketches. "Damn it!"

"What's wrong?"

"I can't figure out what's wrong with Uzura. Altor and I have been working on her for hours and no matter what we do we can't seem to get the right gears to work the right way," he said and put his head in his hands as if to say 'I give up'.

"Can I see?" Duck asked.

"Why? You don't know anything about mechanical things," he said and sighed. "You know what? Sure, go ahead and look at them but don't expect the answer to jump out at you."

"Okay," she said and looked at the drawing. She turned it this way and that and finally said, "Maybe you should just get rid of these little gears and put in a big one. It would probably give you more room and stuff and it would make it all so much simpler."

Fakir looked up in amazement. She didn't really just figure out how to fix the problem did she? No way. He had been mulling over it for hours and after just a few minutes of studying it she found the answer? Huh, maybe the answers did just jump out at her.

"Let me see that," he said and reached for the paper. He brought it down onto the desk and changed the small gears with the larger one. "Oh wow! How could I not figure that out?"

He leaned back and hit his forehead with his hand. Face-palm!

"I'm so stupid!" he said, again beating himself up.

"No you aren't. It's just that sometimes you need to think simply instead of complicatedly," Duck said and grinned again at Fakir's face.

He looked at her with wonder and amazement. How the hell did she keep being so smart and yet so dumb at the same time? How does that even work?

He picked up the sketch and began to leave when Duck, as she began to follow, tripped.

"Whoah!" she said as she fell and he just barely caught her before she hit the ground.

She was leaning against his chest and his hands held her arms firmly but not to the point he hurt her. She looked up at him and noticed how his dark green eyes said something completely different than his face. She didn't understand why they did that but she was beginning to really like his eyes and even if he got mad at her a lot she still could look at his eyes and see the kindness he was concealing.

"How do you do that? There was nothing to even trip over?" he asked as he helped her to a proper standing position. "You're sometimes more clumsy than Pique."

"Sorry," she said and leaned against him some more.

He looked down at her with shock. What was she doing? She just tripped into his arms and now she looked like she was going to fall asleep with her head against his chest.

"What…what are you doing?" he asked, his heart starting to speed up a bit.

If she was trying to be a little more than friendly with him then he was so going to freak. He didn't know how to deal with love-struck girls but then again, Duck didn't seem like she would even know how to recognize the concept of being love-struck. That made it even worse.

"I really want to help you Fakir," she said softly. "I want you to be happy again."

Fakir's eye's opened even wider. She didn't know about what was taken from him…did she? The way she said it she didn't sound like the normal Duck he was used to, she sounded far more mature and almost as if she wasn't herself.

"Uh, well, that's really…nice and, uh…thoughtful but you really don't need to…" he tried to push her away but the look on her face made him stop.

She had the look that Rue always got when she gets her flash forwards. She had a faraway look in her eyes and it sounded like someone was talking through her.

"Fakir, I can help, just let me. I know what you need and I'm willing to help you get it back. Your heart speaks for you and you cannot hide how you feel from me," she said.

Oh, crap! He didn't want anyone to know what he felt…especially Duck but if she can hear it from his heart then…He's screwed. He won't ever be able to keep his emotions to himself with her around anymore. Great. Just great.

"Duck, we need to get back to the others," he said and finally pushed her away.

The second her head left his chest her face went back to normal. She tilted her head in confusion because of the flustered looked she saw on Fakir's face and took a step back.

"Fakir, are you okay? You look a bit scared," Duck said.

He tried to tell her something like 'don't ever touch me again' or 'you need to stop tripping' or 'please don't come that close to me ever again' but he couldn't actually say any of those things. Duck stood there patiently watching him try to say something but not able to get the words out.

He finally just gave up and sighed, "Let's just go. You need to go talk to Rue and I need to work on Uzura."

"Okay," she said happily and followed him out of the room.