Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania, Romania - 1960
"Her name?"
The old man, bent and aged, his body twisted like an ancient tree root bursting free of the soil, looks at the girl across whose features fire plays, and for a long moment, he cannot remember his granddaughter's name, though it was he himself who gave the name to her and told her to keep it safe forever.
He finds that it is difficult to speak, to even think - it is as though this stranger's presence has drawn all of the words out of the air so that his mind spins in an attempt to slot sounds together. His gnarled oakwood cane is all that keeps him upright as he tries to avoid the other man's strange feline eyes that share the same predatory look as the lean, mange-ridden streetcat his granddaughter lets in the workshop window when he is absorbed in his work.
How can he remember that but not her very name?
She speaks before he can. "My name is Vika," she says, and although her voice rings hollow of the fierceness that flickers in her eyes like the reflection of a faraway fire, it is certainly more than her grandfather has so far managed and it causes the visitor to regard her with a strange expression apparent in his strange cat-like eyes. She meets his gaze, more from curiousity than the bravado she displays, and they stay for a moment locked in an intangible competition, as her grandfather begins to fully realise the extent of the regret he feels for ever allowing the stranger to pass over his threshold.
"Vika," the stranger repeats, and then a smile spreads across his face like the sunlight staining the horizon at sunrise. "I suppose," he says to the slender girl who holds herself like a willow reed - as though there is a string passing through the top of her head, pulling her straight, as though she is considering taking flight like a bird. She looks little like her grandfather, although they share the same bronzed skin and dark hair. Her features are delicate where his are strong, but her eyes contain a spark that his do not. "You are the one who made this?"
He holds out the watch that he grasps in one hand, a small clockwork mechanism that is as delicate in its detailing as it perfect in its engineering. Just as each cog fits together to perfection and clicks almost silently to turn the tiny pieces, a silver dragon curls about the face of the watch, stretching out with each passing hour of the day. A princess paces the tiny cogs, her steps rising and falling as she clambers over the tiny grooves of the clockwork mechanisms. The tiny stars and moon that surround the face move with each passing hour and each passing day - if wound correctly, the clockwork moon and stars ought to align correctly with the real ones, and it causes an amused quirk to twitch the stranger's lips as he notices the petulant annoyance that crosses the girl's face when she notes that this has been neglected.
"I was very impressed," he says. "Very impressed."
She smiles, the first true smile she has allowed to slip since he stepped over the threshold shrouded in his cloak, although her eyes still flicker to her grandfather.
"Where did you find it?" she asks, her words hesitant and stumbling - unlike her grandfather, she has learnt her English from radio and a few snatches of the chat of foreigners at local markets, so that it takes on a sing-song quality.
"A place far from here," the stranger says, and carefully hands it to her. "Across the sea. But look - it is broken." And so it is - one of the slender gold hands jumps and jitters with each passing second, but fails to move on past its current position, frozen as though time itself has stopped. "Can you repair it?"
"Of course." That same look of petulance and exasperation, as though he is an idiot to consider otherwise. Her shyness and fear seems forgotten as she takes the watch from him. She bends her dark head over the mechanism, and sets to work without tools, spinning one of the cogs with the edge of her thumbnail.
As the girl, Vika, silently works, the stranger looks at the grandfather, whose dark eyes have not stirred from his granddaughter. For the first time in what feels like forever, Magnus Bane smiles.
"I'll take her," he says, and his tone allows no arguments.