The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber is, to borrow from his own words "something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before". No wonder Neil Gaiman selected that bit of text as an epigram prior to the Introduction he wrote for the new publication of the book by The New York Review Children's Collection. Here, the epigram in full:
Something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before came trotting down the stairs and crossed the room.
"What is that?" the Duke asked, palely.
"I don't know what it is," said Hark, "but it's the only one there ever was."
The 13 Clocks is the story of a very cold Duke and his warm-handed niece, the Princess Saralinda. The Duke and Princess Sarafina live in a gloomy castle on the hill that houses 13 clocks, all of which stopped seven years earlier at ten minutes to five. The Duke's hands are so cold that he wears gloves at all times, even when he sleeps. His hands are, we are told, almost as cold as his heart. If ever there were a blackguard, the Duke is it. He really wants to keep Sarafina around because hers are the only warm hands in the castle (and it turns out he has other reasons as well). He sets impossible tasks for her possible suitors, then runs them through when they fail to perform and has their corpses fed to his geese. (I told you he was bad.)
When a wandering minstrel named Xingu (who turned out not to be a wandering minstrel named Xingu at all, but was instead a prince in disguise) came to town, he engineered a way to pursue the princess, with the help of a magical being called the Golux. "He wore an indescribable hat, his eyes were wide and astonished, as if everything were happening for the first time, and he had a dark, describable beard." Man, do I love that description. The book also contains a Todal.
"What's the Todal?"
A lock of the guard's hair turned white and his teeth began to chatter. "The Todal looks like a blob of glup," he said. "It makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms. It's waiting for the Duke to fail in some endeavor, such s setting you a task that you can do."
"And if he sets me one, and I succeed?" the Prince inquired.
"The Blob will glup him," said the guard. "It's an agent of the devil, sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should."
The story involves an almost-impossible quest and curses and magic and, perhaps best of all, magical writing. The sort of writing that makes me want to write a story like this. Not that there can be another story like this, really. But having read this, I fancy that I can see a bit of its influence over the writing of Neil Gaiman, who says in the introduction, "I watch Thurber wrap his story tightly in words, while at the same time juggling fabulous words that glitter and gleam, tossing them out like a happy madman, all the time explaining and revealing and baffling with words. It is a miracle. I think you could learn everything you need to know about telling stories from this book." He may well be right.
I'm so glad I found my copy at Children's Book World. I encourage you to find your own copy, whether at a local independent or through The New York Review of Children's Books website.
