Timekeeper

by Tara Sim

  Danny gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands looked bloodless. Every exhalation rattled from his chest.

  “Calm down,” he whispered. “It won’t happen again.”

  He was parked outside of Shere. He’d suffered nightmare after nightmare about this place. Now that he was back, the first time since the incident, he realized what a horrible, stupid, idiotic idea this was.

  No one had given him an assignment. No one had forced him to come. He was here on his own, because he had questions.

  Swallowing painfully, Danny untangled himself from the steering wheel and walked into the village, the roads too narrow for his auto. The buildings were old, but in a way his mother would call “charming.” Ivy grew up the sides of houses, and the steeple of the church roof was wet after the recent rainfall. Children laughed nearby, playing a game with hoops.

  He wanted to run.

  He stopped in front of a statue and leaned against it. The stone was cold and made him shiver, but its solidness was reassuring. He focused on breathing as he stared first at the ground, then at the statue. After a moment he realized it was a shrine.

  It was common to see relics of the Gaian gods following in small towns and villages. Some probably still held fast to the old religion, but Danny had yet to meet anyone who actively prayed to the lost gods. Even some of the clock mechanics rolled their eyes at the mention of Aetas.

  Danny himself wasn’t sure if they had ever existed, despite his father’s stories. Sometimes a story was simply a way to put the extraordinary into perspective. To embellish a truth so much that it became nothing but fabrication.

  The goddess he was using as a prop was Terra, of the earth. Of course—Shere was surrounded by farmland. Farmers would sacrifice livestock as offerings to Terra in ancient times. Danny certainly hoped that practice had died out.

  Terra sat cross-legged, her weatherworn hands pressed to the ground. Her face had long since eroded, but it was tilted up as if receiving strength from the sun. Her long hair fanned over her shoulders, stone strands chipped and pockmarked. Ivy snaked around one of Terra’s arms.

  Danny patted her shoulder in awkward apology and stepped away from the shrine. He turned toward the village square where the clock tower stood in the center, gray stone stretching up to a white face. The ivy had even found its way here, the whole village choked with it, creeping up the tower walls. It looked more like a grave marker than a clock.

  The bomb had done the most damage inside, blasting apart the clockwork and breaking wooden beams. Nothing permanent; nothing that a few replacement parts and some carpentry couldn’t fix. The central cog—the most important part of all—had remained intact.

  If it hadn’t, he would have never made it out.

  Danny didn’t trust himself to draw any nearer, as if getting too close would make the clockwork explode all over again. Instead, he forced himself to approach the people around the square. Luckily, no one recognized him.

  A woman bounced a baby on her hip as Danny asked about the tower. “Missing parts?” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t see anything strange beforehand? A lost numeral, perhaps? Or something wrong with the hands?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  He asked a few others, but they all said the same: everything had been running smoothly until the bomb went off. No one could remember seeing a suspicious person, not even when Danny described the Enfield ironworker.

  “There was a mechanic who came before the bombing,” a man with long sideburns said. “A big man with a strange walk.”

  Danny recognized the description of Tom Hawthorne, one of the older mechanics. He had worked on the Shere tower a week before Danny, and had been the first suspect. After an inquiry, the authorities had declared him innocent.

  The clock struck three. The pealing of the bells shook Danny’s heart.

  He hurried back to his auto, breaths fast and shallow. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he closed his eyes as sweat rolled down his temples. He swore he heard the clock ticking even from here.

  I was in an accident. I got out. I’m safe now.

  Twenty minutes passed before he could drive home.

  Danny set his mug down with a loud sigh.

  “That good, is it?” Matthias asked, smiling.

  Danny sloshed the golden liquid, careful not to spill any. The color inanely reminded him of Brandon’s eyes. “You taught me how to drink, remember?”

  “I did, didn’t I?” Matthias laughed. “Shame on me, then. What’ll I say to your poor mother?”

  “That her son is now a drunkard.” Danny drained his mug and banged it on the table. The unimpressed barmaid snatched it up. The only thing preventing Danny from being thrown out was that he was sitting with Matthias, arguably the pub’s most frequent patron.

  Matthias set down his own mug, his first of the night and barely half-drunk. “Danny, I know something’s the matter.”

  “The truth, then?” Matthias nodded, so Danny leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “I’m actually Queen Victoria. Fooled you, didn’t I?”

  He snickered, but when a muscle in Matthias’s jaw feathered, Danny silenced himself.

  “S’nothing much,” he mumbled to his hands, which were curled on the sticky tabletop. “Just thinking about Dad.”

  The barmaid came and left. The newly filled mug of beer sat within easy reach, but Danny didn’t touch it.

  “Been three years,” Matthias said, taking a sip of his own pint. “I can hardly believe it.” He shook his head slowly, blue eyes darkening.

  “I suppose you haven’t heard anything more about the new tower?” Danny asked.

  “It isn’t coming along the way the mechanics want it to. They say there’s something off about it. Doesn’t help that the protesters are being tetchy, demonstrating all around the construction site.”

  Danny frowned. “I want to help, but the Lead won’t let me. He doesn’t believe I’m … recovered.” When Danny had approached him after installing the minute hand, he’d been rewarded with the same string of words: patient, wait, sorry.

  Matthias kept his hands clutched around his mug, gaze fixed on the murky drink. He took a breath as if to speak, then let it out again.

  “I know,” Danny said, finally collecting his mug. “‘Don’t despair.’ ‘It’ll come to rights, Danny.’ ‘You’re being too pessimistic, Danny.’ Well, Danny knows the truth, and he’s not an idiot.”

  Matthias put a strong hand on his arm. “It’s good to be realistic. No false expectations. But don’t give up hope.”

  Danny nodded and the hand slipped away. He took a sip, but found he had no desire for the drink anymore.

  Matthias knew all about grief. Danny remembered when his father had sat him down and explained that he should never ask Matthias about his late wife, Alice. She had died young, just four years after their wedding, leaving Matthias to grieve for twenty more. Christopher had told his friend to take a new bride, but Matthias had stubbornly refused.

  Then Matthias had been assigned to Maldon’s clock tower just over three years ago. People believed that while he was there, Matthias had fallen for a woman and lost focus of the job he was sent there to do. While distracted, he had done something irreparable to the clock—something grave enough to be fired as a mechanic and exiled from Maldon, although nobody could say what that was. A private meeting had occurred between Matthias and the Lead, where Matthias had entered the office as a mechanic and left only as a teacher.

  That was the story everyone knew. The one Matthias told went a little differently.

  In his version, Matthias claimed to have met the tower’s clock spirit.

  He told the story the same way he told all his stories, in that slightly lilting voice, his eyes dark and turned to something distant. Danny might as well have been a child again, sitting at his side with the man’s arm across his shoulders.

  “She was lovely,” Matthias would say. “And she could feel time in a wa
y no one else could, not even me. She was time.”

  Danny had grown up with the myth of clock spirits. Some claimed that each clock’s power over time manifested itself into a spirit that guarded the tower and the delicate clockwork within. Others said it was leftover power from Aetas that clung to the towers when the god died. That’s what his father believed.

  Danny wanted to believe it, too, but never could. As much as he devoured stories, he always held a kernel of doubt in his pocket.

  Still, superstitions were hard to snuff out. No one liked to be reminded of the mechanic in Glasgow who had fallen so in love with his tower that time reversed every time the sun set, making the day start over and over again in an endless loop. Or the mechanic in Paris who had caused a citywide disaster when time crawled almost to a stop within a one-mile radius from the tower where she had been secretly living.

  It wasn’t an official rule in any handbook, but it didn’t need to be. Everyone knew forming an emotional attachment to a clock was forbidden.

  Matthias had fallen in love, he said. The weak muscle of his heart had grown strong again. But as he tried to keep this supposed clock spirit affair a secret, something within the tower had broken. He had been unable to repair it, and time skittered wildly.

  Danny’s father had been sent to Maldon to fix things. Days later, the town Stopped.

  It was just another of Matthias’s stories, a fabrication built layer upon layer until the truth was so buried that Danny couldn’t see it. There was no witch in the Białowieża Forest. There were no man-eating dragons in China.

  There were no clock spirits.

  Danny understood that Matthias wanted to protect himself from his mistake, that his shame could momentarily be disguised with wonder. So Danny let him tell his stories. He pretended to believe.

  But he knew better. It didn’t matter how many stories you told if you were still at fault in the end.

  “Here,” Danny said, pushing the mug toward Matthias. “I think I’m finished.”

  Disappointment creased Matthias’s eyes, or perhaps it was guilt. He often looked that way, even though Danny had forgiven him a long time ago.

  “Heading home? Give your mother a kiss for me.”

  Danny knew she wouldn’t accept a kiss from her own son, let alone him. He was about to pay when Matthias waved his hand away.

  “Go on, get some rest. I’ll take care of it. And Danny? The next time you have these thoughts, don’t hesitate to ring me. I’ll always be on the other end of the line.”

  Danny managed a small smile. “I know.”

  The pub was not far from home. Kennington was loud with the sounds of autos, carriages, horses, and the cries of costermongers selling matches and rat poison. He kicked an empty tin toward the street. It would be picked up in the morning by the cleaning crew, a new development since the sanitation reform had kicked in. A young crossing sweeper with a broom in his hand shot Danny a nasty glance.

  Some thought the city was chaotic, yet Danny loved it. The cobbled roads, the tall buildings, the history, the technology. London was the thriving pulse of the civilized world. He weaved through ladies with spotless white gloves and grimy chimney sweeps dropping soot wherever they went. Steam and smoke rose from chimneys and engines, forming a gray cloud that loomed over them all.

  As he walked through the front door, Danny saw his mother on the telephone. She stood hunched over the holder, the chartreuse-colored receiver clutched in one hand.

  Danny’s heart stuttered. His mother had been in this exact position when they’d received the call about his father. This was the position of the world ending.

  But then he realized she was simply writing something on the pad beside the telephone.

  “Yes. Of course. All right. Thank you very much.”

  She hung the receiver back on its holder and ripped the paper from the pad. Leila turned and jumped at the sight of him.

  “Danny! When on earth did you get here?”

  “Just now. Who were you speaking to?”

  “Who …?” She pointed uselessly at the telephone. “Oh, that was nothing. Nora called to tell me about a new boutique on Piccadilly I might like.” Leila peered up at her son, the paper clutched in her small hands, as if waiting to be dismissed or told that her lie was good enough. Danny was too tired and too tipsy to argue. He shrugged and shucked off his coat. She disappeared into the kitchen and he followed slowly behind.

  A container of milk had been forgotten on the table. “Mum, put this in the cold box, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Don’t use that language,” she snapped, distracted as she cut up carrots at the counter. She had thrown on a stained apron and her eyebrows were knotted in concentration, as if she were performing surgery, not crookedly mincing root vegetables. Something had filled her with an almost manic energy. “Which reminds me—you should come to church this Sunday. An out-of-town bishop’s coming to give a lecture.”

  She hardly ever spoke this much to him. She was definitely in a good mood. Danny hid his face as he returned the milk to the cold box. “I’ll see if I’m free.”

  “You smell like the pub,” she murmured. “I think church’ll do you some good, Danny.”

  “Church won’t earn us money.” Or get Dad back.

  His mother sighed, but when she said nothing further, he escaped upstairs to his room.

  As it so happened, he was busy on Sunday after all. During a breakfast of crumbs he’d found at the bottom of the bread box—his mother hadn’t bought a new loaf—the telephone in the hall rang.

  “Hullo?”

  “Ah, Daniel?” The Lead Mechanic’s voice came through tinny and crackled. Danny automatically stood straighter, although the man couldn’t see him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, I’ve caught you in time. There seems to be another issue with the tower you’ve been fixing this week, the one in Enfield.”

  “Again?”

  His mother, coming down the stairs dressed for church, threw him a startled look.

  Danny cleared his throat. “Haven’t they caught the person doing this?”

  “We’re not sure if it’s a vandal or if the clock’s simply falling apart. The Enfield maintenance crew hasn’t reported anyone suspicious.”

  Danny imagined the ironworker in the dead of night, tiptoeing away from the tower with a sinister chuckle. “What’s wrong with it this time?”

  “There appears to be a crack in the face. We think it was caused by the minute hand’s removal. Nothing substantial, the time’s not skewed much; it’s just a nuisance. Don’t want it disturbing the structure, you understand.”

  Danny gazed heavenward, wondering if he should go to church after all. “I’ll drive out as soon as I can.”

  “Good show. I’ll ring up the apprentice.”

  Danny hung up the receiver and stared at the telephone, the bottom of his stomach feeling strange as he thought about the blond boy. Or maybe that was hunger.

  Danny enjoyed his work, or at least he used to; most mechanics were passionate about their field of expertise. But he had never heard of a clock having this many problems in such a short amount of time. Usually his jobs were spaced out to once a week, perhaps once a month in lean times. Thrice in one week was virtually unheard of.

  Especially three times for one small clock tower.

  Something was off. Sabotage? A bad attempt at a practical joke? Whatever the reason behind these incidents, Danny was getting more and more frustrated. And scared.

  The auto sputtered and rumbled as he drove into Enfield. Some people waved while others called hellos. Danny was so used to the anonymity of London that it hadn’t crossed his mind that the townspeople would know him by sight now. He waved back, perturbed, but didn’t stop to chat. An attractive young man smiled at him and Danny slowed for a moment, then forced himself onward with a scolding shake of his head.

  A crack marred the clock face between the numbers three and four. Danny parked the auto across the stre
et and eyed the damage for a moment. It would take some time to fix a crack that big.

  The back of his skull pulsed with sudden pain and he rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

  He had to prove himself. No more panicking.

  Curiously, there was another auto parked near his own. Danny gave it a confused glance before heading inside the tower. He reached the familiar clock room and set his bag down with a sigh.

  “Here we are again.” He turned and unbuttoned his coat. “There’s something seriously wrong with this ruddy old—Who the hell are you?”

  The boy standing in the clock room blinked at him. “I’m the apprentice. Brandon Summers.”

  Danny stared at him, unaware his jaw had dropped until he closed it with a click of his teeth. The boy was decidedly not the apprentice he had worked with before. This one had dark skin, with a snub nose and hooded brown eyes, his black hair clipped short. He wore a white cravat with his gray vest and trousers.

  “You’re not the … I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Can’t figure you would have,” the boy, also Brandon, said with a hint of impatience. New Brandon was younger, though a couple inches taller than Danny and broader in the shoulder. “I was sick. Didn’t you get my note? Would’ve called, but our telephone is faulty.”

  “But the office …”

  “Was I supposed to tell the office, too?”

  Danny stood marinating in his own disbelief. Something caught his eye and he looked over the apprentice’s shoulder.

  Standing just behind New Brandon was the blond apprentice. He grinned when Danny spotted him.

  He had a scar on his left cheek.

  Just like the crack on the clock face.

  “Something the matter?” New Brandon asked.

  Danny shook himself and looked again, but the boy had disappeared.

  “It can’t be,” he whispered. His veins throbbed with the force of his heartbeat.

  “What are you going on about?”

  Danny struggled to remember how words worked. He kept staring over New Brandon’s shoulder, but when the apprentice turned around, there was nothing to see.