by Tara Sim
And here …
Well, he was more. It was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t shedding weight, but rather putting it back on, padding himself against the elements and the world. He wasn’t the ghost of a boy who once was happy. He was happy.
Happy.
It was an odd concept.
But Colton’s smile seemed to creep across his own mouth, pushing up the corners of his lips. Here, he was the opposite of eroding.
He was living.
Colton turned a few pages. “What’s that?”
Danny roused himself from his thoughts and focused on the book. Colton was pointing to a picture of a woman’s hideous face, her hair a riot of crawling snakes.
“That lovely lady is a Gorgon. Her name’s Medusa. With one look, she could turn you to stone.” He turned the page to show him a picture of a dark-haired, handsome young man holding a sword and shield. “This is Perseus, the only one who could kill Medusa. He couldn’t do it on his own, of course. He had help from the Greek gods, like Hermes.” Danny flipped to the back of the book, where the gods were depicted, and pointed at a curly-haired youth with wings on his sandals. “With their help, Perseus was able to chop off Medusa’s head.”
Colton lifted his thin eyebrows. “That’s rather violent.”
“A lot of Greek stories are violent. Best not tell you about Troy, then.”
“No, no—tell me.”
So they spent the afternoon talking about the fall of Troy and Achilles’s wrath, of Theseus’s heroism in the Labyrinth, and how Cupid and Psyche had fallen in love. Colton would have demanded more, but Danny wanted to show him the other things he had brought.
As he handed Colton the figurines, their fingers occasionally brushed. Each time a flash of heat started at Danny’s fingertips and traveled all the way to his stomach, where it sat like a hot coal.
Colton laughed over the drunken German, although Danny told him that not all Germans looked like that; they actually had a very nice German family on their street who did not wear lederhosen. He talked about the colonies in Australia, the American Revolution, and the Irish Question. Scotland was a land of kilts and bagpipes, and Italy of wine and art.
Danny took out the second book he had brought with him. An atlas.
“This shows you the world,” he said, opening it to reveal the maps within. He pointed at Greece. “That’s where all those stories come from. Here’s where Troy would have been, near Turkey.” He turned the page. “That’s Egypt, in Africa. Long ago, they built pyramids to appease their Pharaoh.” Danny drew a pyramid in the dust.
“They have their own gods, too, but not like the Greeks. Some Egyptian gods have animal heads.” He attempted to draw jackal-headed Anubis, but failed utterly. “There are different gods for each religion, for the most part. And then there are the Gaian gods.”
“What are those?”
Danny fiddled with the chain of his timepiece, thinking back to when his father had first told him the story of Aetas’s demise. “The Gaian gods once protected the earth. They were cast-offs from Chronos, the creator of time. One of them, Aetas, inherited the running of time from Chronos.
“But it went wrong. He gave the power to humans, and Chronos wasn’t pleased with that, so he confronted Aetas on earth. They fought in the sea, a storm raging all around them …”
Colton was staring at him so intently that Danny trailed off, mesmerized by the gleam of his amber eyes.
“And?” Colton prompted.
“And …” Danny shook his head. “Aetas lost. Some say that Chronos chopped off his head and fed it to a kraken. Other stories say that Chronos took away Aetas’s powers, turned him mortal, and then burned him alive.”
“But the version I like best,” Christopher would say as Danny sat on his lap, listening raptly, “is the one where Chronos tried to reattach Aetas as a finger on his hand. Aetas resisted. He took out his own beating heart and crushed it into dust, scattering time around the world. That’s why some parts of the world run on different times. Aetas’s blood pooled into the sea—”
“And that’s why it’s so salty!” a younger Danny would finish.
Danny took a deep breath, returning to the present. “So that was the end of the Timekeeper. We’re the Timekeepers, now.”
Danny felt a touch at his jaw and raised his head. Colton, golden and solemn, regarded him as though he was trying to read Danny’s story. As if everything was printed on his skin, his face a picture in substitute of words.
Danny ducked his head and pulled the atlas closer, turning the pages quickly. He stopped at random and pointed.
“This is India.”
Colton watched him a second longer, then leaned closer to take in the map. “It’s big.”
Danny picked up the elephant and handed it to Colton. The spirit tilted it this way and that, making the sunlight spark off the tiny jewels.
“Those beasts are huge up close. People ride them. From what I’ve heard, India is so different from England that it’s like stepping into another world entirely.” Danny turned back to the atlas. “Britain’s taken the place over, though.”
Danny’s schoolbooks had always painted India as a savage place, one in dire need of help, as the people barely knew how to run themselves. He doubted that was true. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to suddenly have your entire country snatched away from you, to have foreigners pressing their ideals on you in the hope you could change to be something you weren’t.
His thoughts briefly flitted to Daphne and her exchange program. He wondered what Daphne thought of those schoolbooks, or if her father had drawn distrustful looks. If she thought her pale skin was a blessing or a curse.
“And there are clocks there, too?” Colton asked, setting the jeweled elephant down.
“Of course. I’m sure there must be hundreds of towers controlling Indian time. I’ve always wanted …” It sounded stupid, even in his own head, but Colton’s look urged him on. “I’ve always wanted to travel abroad. To see clock towers elsewhere. I’m fond of London, but I’d like to see other things.”
Danny turned back a few pages and tapped his finger on France. “My family was supposed to go here on holiday. Mum was so excited. She even tried to teach me French, but I’m no good with languages. We would practice with a man she knows from work. Once I tried to say ‘the green chair,’ but it sounded exactly like the word for worm, so I ended up saying ‘the chair worm.’” Colton laughed softly, the sound like chiming glass.
“But then my father left.” Danny’s finger slipped off the page. “And that was that.”
France and Spain blended into one country as Danny’s vision blurred. He huffed at himself and closed the atlas.
“Never mind, that’s depressing stuff. You don’t want to hear about that.” He grabbed the book of mythology again. “Have you heard of the Labors of Heracles?”
Colton touched the back of Danny’s wrist.
“If it hurts,” the spirit said, “then why not talk about it?”
Danny shrugged. “It hurts more, talking about it.”
“Are you sure?”
Danny thought of his mother sitting by the window when she thought she was alone, her eyes faded, her face aging. The pity from his superiors and his peers alike, the way they tiptoed around him. The Lead telling him that there was still no way to fix Maldon.
“Sometimes, I … I don’t know if I can save him.” He opened the book to the picture of Perseus about to slay the Gorgon. “At this point it might take the gods themselves.”
The touch on the back of his wrist traveled down until Colton pulled Danny’s hands away from the book. Colton stared at Danny’s palms, rough and dry. His fingers skimmed the life and heart lines, the map of pale blue veins on Danny’s wrist. Like he wanted to put away every detail, the same way Danny took inventory of his clockwork, the pieces and gears that held him together.
Danny had never been so aware of anyone else in his life. Everything shran
k from a universe to a pinpoint, every turn of the earth dependent on his next breath, each touch lingering until those eyes found his.
Colton pressed a hand to Danny’s chest and laid his mouth gently against his. Danny wasn’t prepared for it—the reminder that Colton was not like him, that his palms were smooth and free of flaws, that his wrist showed no veins, that his mouth tasted of copper and of sweet clean air.
He was a boy of air and dust and sunlight. Everything that had gone into the making of the world.
Danny sat at his desk, scribbling on a piece of parchment paper that had once been a grocery list. He propped his head on one hand and stared at the lines without seeing them, occasionally stopping to gaze out the window at the bland view of the next house over. The soft patter of the rain was soothing, and he left his window slightly ajar for fresh air to come through.
The breeze blew up a corner of the paper and he smoothed it down again. The paper was riddled with drawings, the mechanism sketches he’d learned to do as an apprentice, and the full-face clock sketches he did on his own. At the top of one of these he had drawn a small figure reclining on the minute hand, gazing down at another figure at the foot of the tower. He started to add Rapunzel-like hair to the figure at the top, then snorted and crossed it out with a few swipes of his pencil.
He had gone to Enfield again, this time bringing a storybook in the hopes of teaching Colton how to read. He’d caught on quickly, sounding out words until he had them memorized and could recognize them throughout the book. Danny was pondering which book to bring next when the telephone rang.
He leapt down the stairs, hoping it was Cassie, even though she’d pestered him the other day about his secret love affair in Enfield. She begged for the boy’s name, but he refused to tell her, so they continued to call him “the blond bloke.”
“Hullo,” he sang into the receiver.
“Daniel?”
The Lead. Danny swallowed his usual crude greeting to Cassie—What’s up yer bum?—and endeavored to find a professional tone. “Oh, sir. Good morning.”
“I’ll need you to come into the office today. Is that all right?”
His chest fluttered. “Perfectly all right, sir. Is it another Enfield assignment?”
He had said it lightheartedly, almost jokingly, but the Lead’s unnerving silence wiped the smile from his face.
“Something of the sort. Come down when you can.”
Danny began to sweat on his way to Parliament Square. Had the officials heard about his extra trips to Enfield? Had someone seen him talking to Colton? Was there news about Rotherfield or Shere? The wind bit and rain splattered his goggles, but Danny barely noticed. He nearly caused two major collisions before the auto came sputtering to a stop in front of the large gray stone building.
There were only a couple of protesters out today, soaked and discontent. Danny hurried past them into the atrium, where he slipped a little on the marble on his way to the stairs.
The secretary was out, so he knocked on the Lead’s door and waited for permission to enter. When he did, he found the man seated behind his desk. The kinetic toy in the corner was pattering away, the metal balls jumping back and forth. Danny took that as a bad sign; the Lead only did that when he was stuck on a problem.
The Lead stopped the toy and regarded Danny, his look more kind than stern. “Sit down, Daniel.” He did. The Lead stroked his mustache, though Danny wished he wouldn’t. It only made the situation seem more sinister.
“Daniel, how have you felt about your assignments in Enfield?”
Danny sat back and tried not to stammer into apologies. “They’ve been fine, sir. A bit labor-intensive, but that’s to be expected.”
“Yes, that’s what I was afraid of. I thought the best way for you to return to work was with a difficult assignment. And it seemed to do the trick, but then more followed. I can only imagine how tiring it must be for you.”
Danny’s hands curled into fists on his knees. He imagined trapping the pity against his palms, crushing it like Aetas had crushed his own beating heart.
“No, sir, it’s nothing like that. I’ve actually enjoyed my time there. The people know me now, and the town is—”
“You don’t have to pretend. I know it’s been a strain on you.”
“But it hasn’t. I’ve—”
“I don’t want to exhaust you so soon after your return to work. I’ve heard that this town is not the best fit for you.”
Danny’s stomach hardened into a cold, heavy ball. He licked dry lips and tried again. “Who’s been saying that?” He thought about Brandon and how he’d looked at Danny like he had come to England directly from the planet Neptune. He thought about Daphne’s look of suspicion as he’d slipped out of Tom’s office.
“I would rather not reveal identities, but it’s an opinion I trust, and I want to make sure you’re well. Enfield is too difficult for you. I’m reassigning it to someone else.”
“Someone else?” The room grew hot and close. Danny smelled smoke. It burned his eyes and wove into the fibers of his shirt, a smell he couldn’t get rid of no matter how many times he washed it. He tasted copper on his tongue, rich and thick, cloying like blood.
He imagined the destruction that Colton Tower would face if he didn’t return, his threat of finding another mechanic turning the spirit toward grief, just like Maldon.
Colton, pulling apart his clockwork.
Enfield, Stopped.
“Daniel? Daniel!”
He must have fainted, because he awoke on the floor a moment later. His cheek was pressed to the maroon carpet that smelled of musk and canvas. His heart pounded, and he pushed a hand against his chest as if to prevent it from bursting out of his body.
“Sir, you can’t do that,” he croaked. “He’ll be upset.”
The Lead knelt beside him. “You’re not talking sense. Come on, up you get.”
Danny raised himself up and rubbed a hand over his numb face. “Please, listen to me. I … I like Enfield. I really do. I didn’t think I would, but—”
The Lead shook his head. “No, I see now that this was not the right assignment for you. I’ll find someone else to go up next time. You rest at home for a bit, take your mind off things. Take a holiday.”
“Sir, please—”
“I’ve had my say, Daniel. Your father would have wanted the same.”
You don’t know what my father would have wanted.
Danny was ushered to an empty sitting room and ordered to lie down on the couch. Tea and biscuits were brought in, but he didn’t touch the tray. At least, not at first; he couldn’t avoid the tea for long, and drinking it helped steady his shaken nerves.
Standing at the window, he looked at Big Ben through the rain. He couldn’t let this happen, even if the Fates themselves had woven this turn of events. No matter where his thread ended up, he would spin it in his favor.
You don’t look happy at all,” Cassie complained, fiddling with the buttons of her dress. “I don’t want to be seen with a dismal Jimmy. At least try to smile, Dan.”
“Hark who’s talking,” he mumbled. “You look ready for your own execution.”
They stood beside his auto, which was parked on the street alongside a dozen others. The moonlight shone against the auto’s black paint—paint that was scraped and chipped, with a large scuff on the passenger-side door. A lantern over their heads flickered, its indecisive light showering them with flashes of sodium yellow glare.
Although Danny had no desire to attend a social, Cassie had reminded him numerous times of the promise he had made her. His mother had even taken the mothballs from his suit and smartened it up. It still smelled like dust and the sour odor of old things. The collar and cuffs were tight, and the fabric of the trousers rasped uncomfortably against his legs.
Cassie was also dressed for the occasion. Her dark blue bodice had a high collar and gleaming black buttons down the front, and flared out over her hips above a ruffled skirt. Her hair had been coiled
behind her head, her rough brown work gloves replaced with dainty white ones. It was so strange to see her without her usual coveralls or a braid that Danny couldn’t help but stare.
“What?” she snapped. She unpinned her grandmother’s rose brooch and fumbled to re-adjust it. “Do I look silly?”
“No,” he said honestly, reaching out to help her. “You look nice.” He glanced at the back of her skirt, where he knew she wore a bustle to make her dress flare out. “Your bum looks big, though.”
Though he was teasing, she smacked him hard on the arm anyway, as if she’d been waiting for an excuse. A pair of girls walked past and hid their giggles behind white fans. Cassie’s face turned pink.
“I don’t want to be here long,” Danny said. “You have your escape plan ready?”
Cassie shifted on her feet. “Yes.”
“Then let’s get this over with.” He held out his arm, and she took it.
It wasn’t just the social. Danny didn’t even want to be in London. He wished he were on his way to Enfield to see Colton. But now a visit there would be suspicious, and he needed to toe the mark until he was deemed fit for the Maldon assignment.
You haven’t even been thinking about the Assignment, he scolded himself, guilt flaring uncomfortably in his chest. Get your act together, Danny.
The old stone building where the social was being hosted was tall and wide with Gothic windows, and the open doors spilled light onto the street. Boys and girls chatted and laughed and flirted inside. Danny grimaced and Cassie pinched his arm.
The chaperones at the door asked for their passes. “Daniel Hart and Cassandra Lovett?” They both nodded. “In you get.”
They shuffled across the threshold. Inside, a wide ballroom had been adorned with green and blue streamers, tables of finger food, and crystal bowls of punch. A piano, violin, and cello warbled out songs in the corner. A set of double doors stood open to their right, allowing them a view of the card room where games like whist and speculation were being played amid bursts of laughter. A massive chandelier hung over the marbled floor, casting light onto the partygoers. Candle wax dripped onto the beeswax-polished floor below.
