"For heaven's sake, will you please hurry with that door," Olivia whined, stamping her heel on the worn cobblestone for emphasis, "I'm about to catch my death, and this lantern is beginning to get unbearably heavy!"
"Shush!" Greta replied as she moved on to the next key on the heavy iron ring. The thick key slid noisily into the rusty lock, but wouldn't turn, and the old oaken door continued to mock the two young women with its' steadfastness.
"Ohhhhh!" Olivia moaned, "We're going to be here all night!"
"And look," the American added, lifting the satin hem of her dress and gesturing to the muddied leather of her laced, ankle-high shoes, "I just bought these in Italy, and now look at them!"
"Will you please hold the lantern still?" Greta cried, frustrated as much with her friend as with the failure of the next key on the heavy door's lock.
"This was your idea, yes?" the Bavarian reminded her American friend in heavily accented English.
Olivia only sighed reluctantly by way of a reply and steadied the oil lamp's beam on the old door.
"We should be shopping for your costume right now, instead of trying to get into some old clock shop," Greta chastised.
"The masquerade is only three days away, and, unless you are intending to dress as Lady Godiva again this year, you will have nothing to wear!" the German girl went on, fumbling at the sturdy lock with yet another key.
Olivia responded by taking her free hand and brushing aside a lock of curly red hair that had escaped from her chapeau. She fixed her friend with a practiced and pouty expression, which, although useless in the dark, was an affectation that had proved it's worth on more than one occasion, especially when dealing with the opposite sex.
"Well, your English has certainly improved since you last came to visit me in New York," the American girl retorted sourly, "but that does not change the fact that it's cold, it's dark, and this fog is so terribly thick that it's soaking me through right to the bone!"
"We are in the Black Forest, " Greta replied curtly as she tried another key in the lock, "they would not call it the Black Forest if it was not dark and foggy, and, perhaps, if you had dressed more warmly, you would not be so cold now, yes?" Greta's accent was heavy and rich, and she unconsciously turned the phrase over in the air with a tone very much like her mother's when she was still alive and scolded young Greta for eating too many chocolates before the evening meal.
"A true lady prefers form over function when she dresses," Olivia huffed back, adjusting her fitted bodice with a delicate and practiced gesture.
"Well then, you can always go back to the carriage and wait with the coachman," Greta offered as she jingled and jangled her way through the remaining keys on the ring.
"And miss the adventure...?" Olivia answered back, "Besides, did you notice that our coachman has a lazy eye? "
"It's quite disconcerting, I can assure you."
"Helmut has been my father's coachman for decades, and....Ahhhh!" Greta cried with a smile as the next key shot home in the lock of the door and turned with a loud clack.
Cautiously, Greta grabbed the twisted, wrought iron drake that served as the door's handle and pushed until the rusty creak of the door's neglected hinges was shattered by the raspy ring of an old, hanging bell mounted on the other side of the jamb to call the shopkeeper's attention to new customers.
Both young women took a step back, startled by the bell's chime as the door struck it.
Then, giggling at her own skittishness, Olivia grabbed her friend by the elbow.
"Hurry Greta...let's go inside!" she whispered eagerly.
The young German girl was still more than a little scared..."Why must you always be so impetuous?" she hissed. "One day, you will get yourself into trouble, and I will do nothing to help you out of it!"
"You're my best friend, and I expect you'll always be there to get me out of trouble." Olivia laughed.
"Now come then," the American whispered, "let's go inside...it is your Uncle's shop, after all."
"Yes, and now my uncle is dead," Greta replied haltingly now that she was suddenly facing the black maw of the open door.
"And so now it belongs to your father, his only living relative" Olivia added, "which means that it's practically yours...so let's go in!"
And with that, Olivia tightened her grip on her friend's arm and nudged past her, dragging Greta into the darkened shop.
"I cannot believe you convinced me to steal my father's keys, and come to this tiny village..." Greta began.
But now, it was Olivia's turn to demand quiet.
"Listen!" she whispered.
And there, in a darkness that was broken only by the sweeping beam of the small oil lantern, arose the sounds of ticking...a multitude of ticking sounds...a small cacophony of ticking sounds, each one running over the others so that the tiny shop was awash in low noises piled one upon other. And as Olivia ran the small lantern beam over the dark wood paneling of the room, the source of the noises soon became apparent.
Almost every square inch of the walls of the shop were covered, from the floor to the ceiling, with clocks of all shapes and sizes.
"There must be dozens of them!" Olivia said as she sent the beam dancing about the shop.
"Hundreds," Greta corrected "and look at how beautiful they all are!"
Slowly, amid all the ticking, the girls walked up to the shop's oaken counter and hunched down to peer at the polished wooden boxes that sat behind the glass windows of the display shelves.
"Music boxes!" Olivia exclaimed with delight at the objects on the shelves.
"Let's open one!"
Greta took a sharp intake of breath between her teeth and paused with second thoughts.
"He was mad, you know," she said solemnly.
"What?" Olivia asked curtly, her attention wrapped up in the deep varnish promises of the musical toys that were waiting for her on the other side of the counter's glass.
"Mad...my Uncle was mad...as mad as his patron was," Greta added.
"Yes, I know, you've already told me," Olivia reminded her, "and now he is as dead as Ludwig the Second is too...both of them killed by their own hands!"
"That's what makes it all so exciting!" she grinned.
"King Ludwig was murdered, drowned by his enemies, and my Uncle followed him to the grave, slitting his own wrists as soon as he heard of his king's death..." Greta said haltingly.
"You Bavarians are so superstitious!" the American chastised.
"Greta, it's almost the twentieth century...don't tell me you're still a little girl who's afraid of mad ghosts!" Olivia added, knowing the effect the taunting would have on her friend.
Straightening herself with effort, Greta strode purposefully behind the counter. "I am not afraid!", she said, rather too loudly.
Opening the door of the display case, Greta pulled one of the varnished boxes from the shelves and banged it down upon the dusty counter.
Olivia placed the lantern nearby, its' light reflected like smoldering embers on the box's rich, red finish, and her fingers jumped to turn the small key at the rear of the musical toy.
"Now let's open it...." Olivia whispered, her eyes growing wide.
Slowly, Greta reached out her hands towards the edge of the box, her fingers inching their way towards the finished wood... when suddenly a cuckoo bird sprang from out of its' clockwork home somewhere in the darkness around them, shattering the still air of the room with its song.
At the sound of the cuckoo, Greta started for the door with a yelp, not caring whether or not her friend might laugh at her, but before she could reach the outside, she was stopped by soft music winding its' way around the dying cries of the noisy clock. She turned to see Olivia, framed in the lantern's light, standing in front of the open music box on the counter, which plucked away a melody of delicate beauty that rose slowly into the air until it had banished all of the shop's ticking like a sun peeking its' way through rain clouds.
Greta walked towards the open music box.
"It's beautiful," the German girl whispered with awe in the lamplight.
"And look," Olivia cooed, gesturing to the inside of the lid with a devilish grin.
Following her friend's finger in the dim light, Greta's eyes slowly moved over a pair of small tin figures wrought in relief on the inside of the box's ornate lid.
Set against a background of painted flowers and made of enameled brass, finished with exquisite detail, was a tiny mechanical couple attached to hidden springs. The smiling woman, dressed only in a corset, lay on her side with her legs spread apart so that her equally small and lecherous partner, wearing only a painted waistcoat, could be seen taking advantage of her from behind while his hands eagerly cupped the woman's exposed breasts.
Greta felt a tiny tingle race through her fingertips, as her hands gingerly brushed along one dusty corner of the box.
With every other note of music, the tiny couple rutted with one another in mechanical bliss, and the German girl pulled back her hand and blushed despite herself at the tiny and lascivious pair, who ignored her with painted indifference and continued to frolic over the turning brass wheel of the music box as it slowly released its' melody with plucking, metal fingers.
"Oh, I simply must have it," Olivia giggled.
Greta grimaced, as much at her own reaction to the libidinous music box as to her friends desire to take it and spoil the sanctity of her dead uncle's shop.
"Please?" the American asked.
But before her friend could answer, Olivia had already closed the lid of the box and was exploring the rest of the shop, forcing Greta to follow her or be lost in the darkness.
