 "I'm not meant to be here either... At least we have that in common." |
Lucy's unusual sidekick in Hollow Fields is a talking clockwork puzzlebox. A brilliant scientist in his own right, he acts as a sort of mentor and tutor for Lucy as well as a kindly adult influence. His small size allows her to smuggle him around the school in her bag, a process that, as a grown-up, he finds rather demeaning. As yet, Lucy knows nothing of his past.
- Hollow Fields School Files, Vol. 1
Dr. Bleak, full name Doctor Atticus Normandy Bleak, is a soul trapped in a clockwork box. Lucy finds him under a shelf in the library of Hollow Fields.[1]
He tells Lucy that his first name is Atticus, though later in a flashback Miss Weaver calls him Artemis.[2]
Appearance[]
He is a square box, with circular windows on each side showing clockwork gears on the inside. He can let off steam, as the box presumably uses some form of steam-power. In the colored version, the box is grey metal and the inside clockwork glows orange and yellow.
As a human he wore round glasses and had blue-grey hair along with a stubbly goatee.
Personality[]
Dr. Bleak is a kind man overall though he can be stuffy and rude at times, especially if he sees someone as beneath him. His first interaction with Lucy is him expressing indignation at being tossed around, calling her a "street urchin," and when Lucy asks him to keep his voice down later he sharply corrects her in address of him as "Mister Bleak" to "Doctor Bleak."[1] Despite this, he shows sympathy for her and shows that they have common ground and agrees to tutor her. He has strong morals and is against all those associated with Hollow Fields and its "use and abuse of forbidden science."[1]
He is a gifted scientist and has traveled the world in his pursuit of science that can help people.[2] He is well known in the scientific world; Weaver calls him "the social butterfly of the scientific world" and says that she struggled to move out of his shadow as a scientist in her own right while she was married to him.[3]
History[]
He was the husband of Miss Weaver[3] when they were both still human. He knew Miss Notch as Weaver's personal maid and Miss Ricketts as Weaver's nurse. He presumably also knew Mr. Croach as another scientific mind in the nearby community. He knows of the Engineers in the school, including Stinch by name.[1] He owns Hollow Fields, as it is the estate of his father that was then passed down to him.[2]
Weaver trapped his soul in the clockwork box as a part of her personal experiment to be able to transplant souls between different vessels in order to escape her own illness. He was presumed dead and she inherited Hollow Fields and his money,[3] which she had already begun renovating to suit her own needs before his 'death.'[2]
After the events of the original trilogy Dr. Bleak assumes the role of principal of Hollow Fields, shifting its focus away from evil mad science and into positive scientific discovery instead.[4]
References[]
Gallery[]
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