For the first five minutes of owning the alarm clock, everything was going well for Sparrow.
He had his head held high, his chest was puffed out. He was confident. He was finally prepared to take on anything the road could throw at him.
His path took him through a steep gorge with a track cut in the rock which was so slim that if two people tried to pass each other, they'd have to turn sideways.
As he walked Sparrow heard a rumbling above him. He pulled out the alarm clock. The thing was silent, so he shrugged his shoulders and kept going.
A few steps later a mass of rocks, tipped down toward him. Sparrow ran as rocks and dust crashed around him, biting at the path. One tore at his shoulder and another bounced off his shin. Finally, the rocks came to a stop, and a cloud of dust spread out from where they had landed.
Sparrow pulled the alarm clock out from his pocket. Nothing. The clock hadn't said a word.
Perhaps it only works for attackers that are living? He thought. Not things such as rocks.
But as he was putting the alarm clock back in his pocket, the thing began to squawk.
‘ROCK ABOVE YOU COMING AT 10 METERS A SECOND. SMALL ROCK ABOUT TO HIT YOUR SHIN. ROCK HEADED FOR YOUR SHOULDER. DIVE TO YOUR LEFT. ROCK ROCK, ROCK ROCK!’
Sparrow tried to quieten it. There were no buttons so he hit it against the ground a few times. If anything, they seem to make the alarm clock angrier.
‘ROCK, ROCK, ROCK!’ It screamed at the top of its lungs. The sound waves travelled up the mountain and caused another mini avalanche of rocks that Sparrow had to sprint through to escape. All through the second avalanche, the alarm clock was silent. Then, about five minutes after the avalanche had finished the clock began squawking again.
‘Rock to your right! Rock above. Rock left!’ 'What the heck?' Sparrow said, ‘You’re meant to warn me of danger. Not tell me about it afterwards.’
He took a good long look at the alarm clock, suddenly glad he hadn't paid for it. The thing was useless, no worse than useless. It was almost dangerous to have around.
He rubbed his aching shoulder and screwed up his face. Well, best to cut my losses, he thought and threw the clock over the side of a cliff.
The thing bounced down the rock face with a series of angry dings. 'Good riddance,' Sparrow said and he carried on with his hike.
The higher he got into the mountains the colder it got. At the end of his first day in the mountains, he found himself a small cave. He gathered some bone dry pieces of petrified wood from the path by the mountain and stacked them in a pile in the cave.
He twisted his hand and a small dragon made of fire leapt out and caught the branches on fire. Sparrow grinned.
As the fire began to crackle away, he leaned back, yawned, and then stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cloak. Inside the right pocket was something cold and metallic. Sparrow frowned and shifted his fingers around, he could feel a circular piece of glass. He pulled it out.
There in his hand was the alarm clock, completely undamaged from its fall down the mountainside. The thing showed no signs of wear. It was as good as before he’d thrown it.
Sparrow wasn't sure exactly how to explain it, but there was almost an annoyance on the hands of the clock. Sparrow walked to the mouth of the cave, gripped the clock in his right hand, bent his arm back and threw it with all his force over the edge of the mountain. Then he gathered some more wood, put it on the fire and five minutes later reached into his pocket and pulled out the alarm clock. Once again, undamaged and once again, looking even more annoyed.
The next day Sparrow was walking through a beautiful tree-filled valley with birdsong. There was a small rushing sound from a nearby stream.
Then, all of a sudden when he rounded a hill, the bird song disappeared. Sparrow felt his heart start to beat slightly faster in that animal instinct that came from years and years of humans being hunted. Carefully, he reached for the alarm clock in his jacket pocket. The device was silent. He shrugged. Maybe I'm just being superstitio-
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
An arrow hit Sparrow's shoulder, sending him flying backwards. Hot blood began to seep through the side of his cloak, and Sparrow cried out. More arrows flew off to his right and then a fireball came at him.
With his uninjured arm, Sparrow reached out and caught the fireball, turning it in his hand, and then spinning it into a heated disc of flame that scorched the other arrows as they pass through. He kept the flame spinning, tightened his belt a notch and then moved out from behind the flame completely invisible.
Arrows kept hitting the shield of flame as Sparrow took a moment to work out where his attackers were coming from and who they were. Four bowmen peeked out from behind trees and a cultivator with a twisted arm, dressed in a black coat, was hurling fireballs at his shield.
Okay, Sparrow thought, I can deal with these guys, I've just to stay hidden while I... He was cut off by the sound of his alarm clock screaming at him ‘FOUR BOWMEN ONE CULTIVATOR TO YOUR LEFT!' It screamed.
'Hey,' Sparrow said, 'Shut up. You'll-'
The bowmen turned their arrows towards Sparrow.
'He's over there. He's got some sort of invisibility spell,' one of them yelled, 'We'll never be able to find him.' called another, just as the bowman said that the alarm clock squealed. 'ARROW!'
Two more arrows were released. One hit Sparrow in the leg. 'Oh god,' Sparrow shrieked,
'ARROW!' The alarm clock screamed so loud it pushed Sparrow off-balance and onto his side. 'ARROW!!' The alarm clock screamed 'ARROW!!!' It screamed again. 'FIREBALL' it yelled.
As more arrows and fireballs rained down on him, Sparrow took the alarm clock and threw it toward the bowmen. He saw the thing hit a tree and then disappear.
'Oh man,' Sparrow murmured to himself. 'This is what it feels like to be shat on by a master cultivator.'
He gently used his hands to twist the arrows from his leg and shoulder. The sound of the alarm clock hitting a tree had distracted the bandits, but then Sparrow heard a noise coming from his cloak, 'ARROW TO YOUR RIGHT, TRAVELING FAST, AIMED AT YOUR SHOULDER.'
Sparrow gave a groan and looked inside his jacket pocket. The alarm clock was back, almost smiling at him, Sparrow sighed as the three bowmen surrounded him, there was no point in Sparrow being invisible with the alarm clock beside him.
Sparrow loosened his belt a fraction and held up his hands. Ready for what was to come.
'There he is!' the cultivator shrieked. The guy had one crippled arm while the other was unnaturally large. He held his shrivelled arm out towards Sparrow and the ground underneath Sparrow began to burn.
Moving his hand in an arc Sparrow blew the fire out from under him, then curled it into a small dragon-shaped beast that clamped the cultivator's strong arm between its burning teeth, the man shrieked and one of the bowmen used a shirt to whack at the flames.
The other three bowmen launched another attack at Sparrow who was using all of his ability to keep the fire dragon going. Sparrow rolled beneath their arrows and then flew toward their bows. He grabbed onto the bows, holding them in one hand, but the men were stronger and ripped them from his hands.
Sparrow waved his hand and the fire dragon disappeared. The four men's bowstrings went up in flames. The bowmen didn't stop to think. They pulled arrows from their backs and used them like knives to stab at Sparrow.
One caught the side of his back. It barely penetrated his skin but it still hurt like hell and made his right shoulder loose and floppy. Finally, Sparrow decided he was done.
The alarm clock gave another squawk, 'THERE'S A LOT OF ARROWS COMING YOUR WAY,' It screamed.
‘HOW?’ Sparrow screamed back in it. 'HOW?! I DESTROYED THEIR BOWSTRINGS, THERE ARE NO ARROWS COMING MY WAY.'
But the alarm clock just screamed louder. 'TEN ARROWS COMING YOUR WAY. ONE OF THEM'S ABOUT TO HIT YOU IN THE LEG.'
'You stupid piece of junk.' Sparrow screamed, throwing the alarm clock at a tree and raining his fists down on it. His hands glowed the colour of rage and drove into the glass over and over again. Flames spilled out from where Sparrow stood, knocking the archers off their feet and mini-tornadoes of flaming rage, curled around the cultivator with the crippled arm, throwing him backwards into a tree. The bandits just stood there, mouths open as the forest around them began to be pulverized by Sparrow's rage, he threw rocks, smashing them into the glass of the alarm clock until the alarm clock was pushed so hard against the 100-year-old tree behind it, that it had passed right through and cut the tree in two.
The tree fell over backwards, splintering under the pounding taken by the alarm clock. Finally, Sparrow's rage began to die. He took deep breaths. His shoulders, his bones, his every muscle ached from the energy he'd taken from his body. Smoke curled around the spot with the alarm clock had been. The bandits saw their chance to avoid an encounter with such a powerful and furious cultivator and fled.
Sparrow sucked air into his lungs and then used his hand to part the smoke. There was no sign of the alarm clock. 'Thank God,' He said, wiping the sweat from his brow. 'I couldn't go another moment. With that stupid thing.'
He slowly pulled his cloak back onto his shoulders and then limped his way through through the forest. It was five minutes into his walk that Sparrow had a terrible thought. With quivering fingers, he reached into the pocket of his jacket. His hand closed around something metal and circular, with a glass face. Gently, he pulled the alarm clock from his pocket and just stared at it. The smug little figures on its face almost seemed to grin back at him.
He tossed the alarm clock down a massive ravine and continued walking.
It didn't surprise him that two minutes after he had thrown the alarm clock away, it was back in that jacket pocket. Grinning at him as it always did.