“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” Lucy said glumly, and she slid open the doors to an adjoining room. “My solar panels!” she cried, her mood turning on a dime, and Oliver followed her into an enormous library with tall windows—the same tall windows they had seen before from outside. Below them was a faded, velvet-cushioned window seat, and built into the walls were dark wooden bookshelves crammed so high with books that rolling ladders had to be used to reach the ones at the top.
And it wasn’t just a library, Oliver realized, but a laboratory, too. Off to one side, there was a long table cluttered with chemistry equipment; and directly behind it, the bookshelves were filled with all sorts of bottles and jars labeled with chemical symbols.
“How cute!” Lucy said, and she squatted down beside two wooden statues near the fireplace. One was a lovable-looking dog, the other a snarling cat. Each was carved to look as if it were running—only the little dog was looking back over its shoulder as if the cat were chasing it.
“Did this mean cat hurt you?” Lucy asked, and she pulled out a small triangle of wood from between its teeth. “Look, it’s his ear, Pop! The cat bit off this poor dog’s ear!”
Lucy laid the ear against the dog’s head. It was a perfect fit.
“Someone must’ve put it in the cat’s mouth as a joke,” said Mr. Tinker. “Maybe the other clocksmith Mr. Quigley tried.”
“You think these could be some of the missing animals, Pop?” Lucy asked. “You know, the ones that go in the clock?”
Mr. Tinker shrugged and shook his head. “I doubt it, Lucy. They’re the wrong shape for those niches and look to me like a set. Still, that’s pretty funny, don’t you think? Someone putting the dog’s ear in the cat’s mouth like that?”
Oliver pushed up his glasses and looked around.
There’s nothing funny about this place, he thought.
No, nothing at all.
Five
Torsten
After a quick lunch of bologna sandwiches that Oliver had packed for them back home, the Tinkers spent the remainder of the afternoon settling in and readying their rooms in the servants’ wing. They had very little to unpack, but lots to do.
Mr. Tinker took the first room off the kitchen, which had a single, unmade bed in which the previous clocksmith had slept—or at least that’s what Mr. Tinker thought because the linens were stained and smelled of oil. He exchanged them for some fresh ones he found in the closet across the hall.
Lucy and Oliver took the room next door. It had two beds, but before making them, Lucy swept the floor and dusted the furniture while Oliver helped their father set up the generator outside. They were still busy with it when she was finished, so Lucy wandered first into the dining room to look at the painting of the house again and then into the library to look out her windows.
Yes, they were her windows, Lucy decided. At least for the summer. But maybe when the job was over, her father would have enough money to buy a house with windows just like these for real. The way the afternoon sunlight filtered in through them made Lucy feel warm and safe. And when she looked out at the woods, they didn’t look nearly as creepy as before.
Maybe the windows were magical, Lucy thought. Or maybe she was just happy. Lucy knew from experience that, depending on whether you were happy or sad, the world could look different even when you weren’t looking at it through ten-foot-tall windows.
Eventually, Lucy’s eyes drifted to the wooden statue of the dog, which she’d set amid the chemistry equipment on the table before lunch. She’d set the ear there, too—no way she was going to give it back to the cat. Lucy did not like the cat. It was mean and ugly; and its eyes, which were made of black stones, seemed to follow her wherever she went. The dog’s eyes were made of black stones, too, but unlike the cat, they looked lonely and sad.
“I’d be sad, too, if someone broke off my ear,” Lucy said, and then she spotted a jar labeled Wood Glue on the table.
Impulsively, Lucy unscrewed the top and stuck her nose inside.
“Blech,” she said, making a face. The glue looked like peanut butter and smelled like sour milk. But there was plenty left to repair the dog’s ear.
Holding her breath and using a small glass stirrer that she found in a beaker nearby, Lucy carefully smeared the glue onto the dog’s ear and stuck it back onto its head. Then she set the dog on the window seat beneath the tall windows to dry.
“You rest there while your ear heals. Doctor’s orders.”
Lucy barked a reply for the dog and then frowned. She was too old to be playing make-believe with wooden animals—not to mention, if word ever got back to Betty Bigsby, the whole school would know about it. Betty was the meanest girl on the planet. Word on the street was that she and her fat brother, Theo, had been at the park looking for her yesterday. Too bad they didn’t find her—Lucy would’ve been happy to give Betty another beating—but when she mentioned this to Oliver, he looked her square in the eyes and said, “You just stay away from the Bigsbys, you hear? Last thing you need is to be grounded all summer.”
Lucy’s eyes swiveled over to the mean-looking cat near the fireplace. “Yeah, you remind me of someone I know,” she muttered, and impulsively carried the wooden statue upstairs to the clock. Her father was right. The hole where the twelve should have been was shaped for a cat sitting in profile, but the statue she was holding had been carved to look as if it were running, almost leaping for the dog. Maybe they were a set after all.
“Weird, though,” Lucy muttered, bending over to look more closely at the hole for the dog, the six. It was the perfect size, shape, and depth for the wooden dog she’d found; but it, too, was cut for an animal sitting in profile—totally different from the statue of the dog looking over its shoulder in the library.
Lucy sighed. Probably for the best—who wanted to see this cat’s ugly mug every time they walked up the stairs? So Lucy began roaming about the house, looking for a place to hide it. She settled for a shelf in the broom closet, where she also returned the stuff she’d used to clean her bedroom. A moment later, the generator started up out back loudly enough to make the glassware in the kitchen cabinets rattle.
Lucy spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning and helping run power cords from the generator to the appliances in the kitchen, as well as up into the clock’s mechanical room—where, much to her father’s surprise, he found a work light and a set of tools left by the previous clocksmith. Lucy thought he looked worried, but when she asked Oliver about it later, he explained that their father just needed time to figure out how the clock worked. It was unlike any clock they had ever seen. Lucy didn’t bother asking him why. Even if Oliver told her, she wouldn’t know the difference.
After that, Lucy helped her brother fix a supper of clam chowder and corn bread with the food Mr. Quigley had stocked for them. Most of the food was canned, and the rest was the dried, just-add-water kind people used when they went camping. There was even powdered milk, which Lucy hadn’t known existed but which she thought tasted wonderful.
In fact, Lucy couldn’t remember having eaten so well, nor could she remember a time when it felt so good to be together as a family. True, the house was spooky when it got dark, even after Lucy’s father turned on a bunch of battery-powered lanterns Mr. Quigley had given them. They cast strange, shifting shadows on the walls that reminded Lucy of ghosts. And when she thought about spending a whole summer without the internet and TV, Lucy got a tense, panicky feeling in her stomach.
“Think of it as an adventure,” her father said. After all, it was a new beginning for them. And what was a new beginning if not an adventure?
Lucy thought she understood what her father meant, especially after supper when they all played an epic game of Monopoly at the kitchen table. Her father had packed it along with some other games that Lucy hadn’t known how to play. She lost, but still it was fun; and her father promised that they would do things like this more often when they got home. This gave Lucy a tingly feeling of excitement and
hope; and if that was what being on an adventure felt like, then it wasn’t so bad.
Later that night, however, when she crawled into bed and Oliver turned off the lantern on the nightstand, Lucy did not like being on an adventure at all. She was scared, of course, being in this big strange house with the wind whistling all around—not to mention she could still see that scary tunnel in the woods outside her window. But even worse, Lucy felt all sorts of sad and lonely.
Lucy closed her eyes and imagined her windows in the library, hoping that they would make her feel safe and warm like they did when she was looking at them for real. But soon her thoughts drifted to the statue of the little dog. The poor thing had looked scared and sad and lonely, too.
Suddenly, more than anything, Lucy wanted the little dog by her side—but there was no way she was going through this big dark house all alone to get it. Lucy flicked on the lantern and asked Oliver if he would come with her to the library. She wanted to see if the little dog’s ear was dry, she told him.
“Why the heck do you need to do that now?” he asked, sitting up and squinting. Lucy shrugged—she didn’t have an answer—but Oliver sighed and put on his glasses as if she’d answered him anyway.
Using the flashlight in his watch, Oliver led Lucy through the darkened house and into the library, where she picked up the little dog from the window seat and brought it back to their bedroom. Oliver didn’t give her a hard time when she laid down with the statue in her bed. He always seemed to understand when Lucy needed him to let her be.
“Just be careful you don’t roll over and hurt yourself,” he said, crawling back into bed. “It’s not a stuffed animal, you know.”
Oliver switched off the lantern, and the children exchanged their good nights. Lucy tucked the little dog under her arm and closed her eyes. The window was open, and she could hear the wind rattling the branches outside. With the little dog by her side, Lucy wasn’t scared of the tunnel in the woods anymore. Well, maybe just a little.
Lucy pulled the dog closer. Someday, she thought, when they moved into their new house with the big windows, her father would get her a real dog. Until then, a wooden dog would have to do. And it would need a name, of course. However, before she could think of one, Lucy fell asleep and began to dream. Or at least she thought she did; for what happened next had to have been a dream.
“Wake up, miss!” someone whispered in her ear, and Lucy felt a tickling sensation, like wet sandpaper, against her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, and for a moment she had no idea where she was. The room was silver with moonlight and filled with unfamiliar shapes and shadows.
“Please, Miss Lucy, I need to get back!”
Lucy turned her head on her pillow and found the little dog, eyes wide and tongue lolling, hovering over her. It licked her cheek, and Lucy bolted upright.
The little dog was alive!
“Don’t be afraid, miss,” it said, backing away on the bed. “I just need you to open the door for me so I can get back to our hiding spot!”
Lucy just sat there, eyes blinking and mouth hanging open.
“I must be dreaming,” she muttered, and the little dog moved closer again.
“No, you’re not, Miss Lucy,” he whispered. “You’re the new caretaker.”
“Caretaker?”
“Well, you took care of me, didn’t you?” the dog said, wiggling his repaired ear. “But if Meridian finds out you brought me near an open window, she’ll never believe you’re on our side. Open windows are against the rules!”
“What are you talking about? Who’s Meridian? And who are you?”
“My name is Torsten Six,” said the little dog, wagging his tail. “And Meridian is the cat who had my ear in her mouth.”
“But you’re just . . . statues. And statues don’t talk—or bite—or—”
“We can do all those things—but only after midnight. Meridian thinks it’s because that’s when our magic is the most powerful. After midnight, we can go back and forth between being alive and wooden just by thinking about it. See?”
Torsten closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his pupils were black stones and his body had hardened into wood. Lucy gasped, and then the statue’s eyes blinked, and Torsten became real again.
“Neat, isn’t it?” he said. “Except when the sun comes up, we can’t do that. We have to remain statues until midnight whether we want to or not.”
“But—I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we, really. This is all new to us—been going on ever since the clock stopped—which is why Meridian and I got caught in the library.” Torsten’s stomach growled. “It was all my fault. I was only trying to find us food. None of us has eaten in days, and I was so hungry. I thought I had more time before sunrise—and Meridian was only trying to pull me back again—and then, rip, off came my ear. That’s something else that’s new to us—eating. We never had to do that when we were in the clock.”
“Wait—so you and Meridian do belong in the clock?”
Torsten nodded.
“But I tried putting you back in your holes and—”
“Again, that’s my fault. We froze in different positions at sunrise so we don’t fit anymore. And since your father and brother saw us, we have to stay that way until—” Torsten turned his head to the door. “Oh, it’s all my fault! I should’ve never left the hiding spot!”
“Hiding spot? What are you hiding from?”
As Torsten opened his mouth to speak, the wind moaned loudly through the trees outside. The little dog flinched and shivered.
“Please, Miss Lucy,” he whined. “There’s no time to explain! I need to get back. It’s too dangerous for me to be roaming about. And if something happens—if Meridian finds out that the window was open and you got me snatched, she’ll never believe you’re the new caretaker—”
Just then, Oliver stirred in his bed. “Lucy, shut up,” he mumbled groggily. He was facing the wall, just a big gray lump under his sheets. Lucy could see the rise and fall of his chest, and when his breathing became slow and steady, she turned back to Torsten.
But the little dog was wooden again, his body in the same position as when she’d first found him in the library. Lucy growled in frustration and shook him.
“Torsten, wake up!”
“Lucy!” Oliver groaned, rolling over to face her. His eyes were only smudges of shadow in the moonlight, but Lucy could tell they were open. “What are you doing?”
“Er—nothing,” Lucy said, setting Torsten back down on the bed beside her. “I guess I was dreaming.”
“Well, lie down and go to sleep.” Oliver checked his watch on the nightstand. “It’s after midnight.”
The wind moaned again outside. Lucy shivered, and her heart began to beat very fast. She quickly slipped out of bed and closed the window.
“What did you do that for?” Oliver asked.
“I’m chilly,” Lucy lied. Even though Oliver was the most understanding person on the planet, she didn’t quite know how to explain to him what had just happened. If she had been dreaming, it was the most vivid, real dream she had ever had. If she hadn’t been dreaming, then only one of two things was possible: either the wooden statues she had found in the library were magical, or she was going bonkers.
All this ran through Lucy’s mind in a millisecond. And as Oliver rolled over to face the wall again, she got back into bed and lay there with the statue of Torsten on her chest, staring into his black stone eyes for what seemed like hours until, eventually, Oliver began to snore.
“The coast is clear now,” Lucy whispered, so quietly that she could barely even hear herself. But the little dog’s eyes showed no signs of life, and his position remained the same as before.
Well, not exactly, Lucy thought. It was hard to tell for sure in the moonlight, but Torsten’s shoulders seemed a bit lower now, and his head wasn’t turned as far around as when he’d been looking at the cat. His ears looked more relaxed, too; and best of all, his eyes weren’t n
early as scared and sad and lonely as before.
Lucy tucked the statue under her arm again. “I’ll protect you,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Lucy was certain Torsten could hear her. After all, he’d known her name and that she’d fixed his ear.
Unless, of course, the whole thing had been a dream.
Dream or no dream, Lucy felt strangely safe and warm with the dog there by her side—like she did when she stood in the light from her windows in the library. Maybe this place was magical after all. Lucy hoped so. But either way, she thought, there was nothing to be afraid of.
At least, not yet.
Six
The Boy in the Woods
The next morning, Oliver awoke to find Lucy fast asleep with the little dog tucked under her arm. They were both too old to be sleeping with stuffed animals, never mind wooden ones, but Oliver could sympathize. It was a little scary sleeping alone in such a big house after sleeping for so long in the same bed back home.
Oliver quietly dressed and slipped across the hallway into the bathroom, where he found a new zit blazing back at him in the mirror. It was on his chin, making the grand total there six. Oliver’s heart sank. He had secretly hoped that the fresh air in Rhode Island would work wonders for his complexion, but so far, no dice. The fact that there was only cold water in Blackford House wasn’t going to help things either.
Oliver pressed his lips together tightly and washed his face—superheroes didn’t feel sorry for themselves about zits and living with no hot water. Then he brushed his teeth and padded out into the kitchen, where he found his father eating a bowl of cereal over the sink. Oliver informed him that Lucy wasn’t awake yet. “She had a bad dream,” he said, voice cracking with his first words of the day. “Didn’t sleep well, I think.”
“Poor kid,” said Mr. Tinker. “We’ll wait to turn on the generator, then.”
Oliver wolfed down his own bowl of cereal and then accompanied his father up into the clock. The morning sun hit the mechanical room’s tiny, round window in such a way that there was no need for the work lights. But still, Oliver’s father was as confused as ever by the clock’s machinery. Oliver, too.
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