Timekeeper

by Tara Sim

  Colton struggled to keep his eyes open. “Danny, no—”

  “Are you mad?” Brandon snapped. “You know nothing can come in or out!”

  “I have a theory I’d like to try. I think that so long as I’m holding onto a clock spirit—” he nodded to Colton—“I’ll be able to pass through the barrier.” After all, Evaline had done it.

  “What’ll that do to the town?”

  “Nothing. I know it won’t, because it’s been done before.” Not sparing much time for details, he filled Brandon in on what he’d discovered in Matthias’s house and how Evaline had escaped Maldon. The apprentice stared at him with parted lips.

  “Come off it. There’s no way that’s true.” Brandon glanced between Danny and Colton. “Is it?”

  “That depends on how much you trust me.”

  Brandon was silent for a while, eyes flitting between the two of them, before he sighed. “You’re too bleeding insane to be lying. Damn it. What’m I to do, then, while you’re out there playing detective?”

  “Danny, no,” Colton whispered again. He plucked weakly at Danny’s sleeve. “I can’t.”

  “It’s the only way I can get to London,” Danny said. “Besides, you might be safer there. Brandon and the others will search for your cog.”

  Brandon grabbed Danny’s arm. “You’ll come back, won’t you? You won’t leave us here?”

  “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  Danny carefully lifted Colton. The spirit turned his head at the sound of the townspeople’s voices. Danny saw the desire to stay in his pale eyes, to not abandon the people he had grown to love, generation after generation of Enfield families all watched over by a spirit who mourned their deaths and celebrated their births. Danny almost turned around, almost gave in to the same longing.

  He forced himself to swallow. “We’ll be back soon.”

  He hoped his theory was correct. Colton sagged in his arms as Danny pressed their bodies against the barrier. He braced himself to be rejected, electrocuted, something—but his shoulder sank into the grayness, and he gasped. Holding Colton tighter, he plunged through the barrier.

  Colton’s influence helped them both squeeze through the murky ocean of gray threads. It was a muted, colossal space, an impossible distance to cross. Veins of gold shot through the gray, slivers too thin for him to touch or feel, and in the distance he heard a muffled sound like waves crashing. There was a horrid weight in his chest, pressing all his organs together until he couldn’t breathe.

  And then they were on the other side.

  Danny stumbled. When he turned, he faced a wall of gray, rising up into a dome with no hint of the town beyond. The familiar sensation of Big Ben’s energy washed over him.

  He let his forehead fall against Colton’s. The spirit felt even lighter now, like his entire substance was dissolving. Danny drew in a shuddering breath and turned to where his father’s auto sat waiting.

  As he laid Colton in the backseat, the spirit opened his eyes. Danny stared at him for a helpless moment and touched the cog in his pocket. He drew it out and pressed it against Colton’s palm. The pale hand closed around the little cog like a lifeline.

  Halfway to London, it began to snow. Danny worried that Colton would catch his death of cold until he remembered that Colton did not function the way humans did.

  Danny himself was frozen inside and out. He couldn’t erase the image of that gray nothingness from his mind, the feeling of time stiff and strange as he passed through the barrier. Had the protesters snuck to Enfield? Why hadn’t there been a bomb? Who’d want to steal a central cog?

  He thought of his father, of Matthias, of the clock spirit who had started all of this. Evaline might not have a face that could launch a thousand ships, but Matthias had found reason enough to allow hundreds to suffer because of her. The fall of Troy, indeed.

  Evaline had said Matthias was searching for a new clock tower for her. The suspicion that had latched onto him in Matthias’s house reemerged.

  One thing at a time. One bloody thing at a time.

  A few hours had passed outside of Enfield before Danny crossed the barrier. Afternoon light was already fading to evening by the time he reached Kennington and rolled to a jerky stop in front of his house. He looked around in case anyone happened to be watching, but only spied a shadowed couple with a poodle on the corner and the tail of a neighbor’s cat disappearing behind the next house over.

  Danny clambered out and ripped his goggles off. He leaned over Colton, his breath bursting into clouds before his face, but the spirit didn’t stir. The glow had finally left his body; he looked like a pale, sickly boy. The cog, however, seemed to have done some good.

  Colton murmured Danny’s name as he scooped him up in his arms.

  “You’re all right,” Danny said, minding his head as he backed away from the auto. He checked the couple at the end of the street, but they were still lingering over their conversation as the poodle lifted its leg beside a letter box. “Come on. You’ll have to meet my mother sooner or later.”

  Danny fumbled with Colton and his key, then pushed inside and shut the door with his back, calling for his mother. Judging by the clanging of pots in the kitchen, Leila was preparing dinner. She walked into the hall with a hard shove at the sticking kitchen door.

  “There you are. I’ve been dying to tell you—” She stopped at the sight of her son carrying another boy in his arms.

  “’Lo, Mum.” Danny felt like he was ten again and had brought home a muddy frog. Except now the frog was a clock spirit. The situation was suddenly so ridiculous he couldn’t stop a small laugh, which sounded dangerously like a sob. Leila hurried forward.

  “What’s all this, Danny?”

  “He’s sick. I’m going to carry him up to my room. Could you bring—?” He would have asked for a hot compress, tea, something of the sort, but those were for humans. What would an ailing clock spirit need?

  His central cog, Danny thought bitterly.

  Leila put the back of her hand against Colton’s forehead. “He’s like ice! Get him under the sheets quickly. I’ll get the hot water going.”

  Danny did as his mother ordered, carrying Colton upstairs. He was glad he didn’t have to answer questions right now, though knew he couldn’t evade them forever.

  His room was a mess, the floor littered with dirty socks, shirts, and crumpled bits of paper he’d used for meaningless sketches. He kicked away some of the debris as he made his way toward the narrow bed, which he hadn’t bothered to make that morning. He wondered when he had last washed the sheets. Setting Colton down, he wished he had something better to offer.

  Danny stared down at him, the once-golden boy now lying in the spot where Danny’s nightmares found him, a manifestation of a new nightmare. Colton’s eyes were always open, his mind always whirring. Now he was utterly still. Even though the spirit lay right before him, even though Danny could touch his cold cheek, he’d never felt so far away.

  Danny had spoken of the riches of London, of the fantastical places beyond Enfield. What good were they if Colton was dying?

  Dying. The word tore him open.

  Still wearing his coat and cap, Danny drew the blankets up to Colton’s chin and knelt beside him, taking his unresponsive hand. His mother appeared with a hot water bottle. She gave him a bemused look before placing the bottle under the sheets. Danny doubted it would have any effect, but didn’t have the heart to say so. Colton was a son of time; he had no mother to care for him.

  “Danny,” Leila whispered, kneeling beside him. “Who is he?”

  “Do you remember when I found out that Father Christmas wasn’t real, and you tried so hard to make me believe again?” She nodded, confused. “I imagine this is exactly how you felt then.”

  And he began to explain, right from the moment he accepted his first job at Enfield. Leila listened with pursed lips. She hadn’t taken her hair out of its chignon yet, but a few curls framed her lean face. Her eyelashes quivered every so
often, as though she wanted to react but prevented herself from doing so.

  “I don’t know why this is happening,” he said, turning to Colton so he wouldn’t have to take in her dark eyes. “This’ll be news by morning. The Lead might call me in, and if Matthias is somehow involved … Mum, what do I do?”

  He sat hard on the floor and pressed his forehead to his knees. His mother transformed from a statue to a woman again and tentatively touched his back.

  “So they’re real,” she murmured. “Clock spirits. Your father mentioned them from time to time, and there was that whole affair with Matthias, but I didn’t know …” She stared at Colton as her eyebrows furrowed, and he half worried she was about to tell him off for what he’d done.

  “Are you sure, Danny? Do you really think Matthias has Maldon’s clock spirit hidden here in London?” When Danny nodded, her breath caught.

  “What do I do about Matthias? I can’t just betray him.” He turned cold again. “But he betrayed us, didn’t he? He acted so sympathetic, and all this time—”

  “Don’t pass judgment yet, Danny.” Yet Leila’s face was firm, and he could see the lines in her skin like deepening cracks in fine china. “Let’s try to settle this between us before we involve anyone else. I’ll try giving him a ring.”

  “No, don’t. I don’t want him to know what we know. Not until I can track him down.”

  His mother gazed at Colton’s prone body on the bed. Danny knew her focus wasn’t on the clock spirit, but leagues away, on Maldon. Lost in the possibility of her husband’s return. Danny kept one eye there, and one on Enfield—on the heart of the town itself, whose own heart was missing.

  Danny wished he could offer his own as a replacement.

  “Hello then, you’ve finally thought to ring me?” Cassie’s voice, normally able to fill a room, came out strangely muted through the telephone wire.

  He clutched the receiver in one clammy hand, holding the other end close to his mouth. “Cass? Listen, I’ve got to ask you a big favor. Will you come over?”

  “What’s the matter? You sound odd. Not the auto again, is it? Have you tried out the holster?”

  “Can’t explain through the telephone. Just come over.” There was a pause, and he added, “Please.”

  “Hold on, I’ll be over in a mo’.”

  Danny hung up and peered out the window, catching a glimpse of ominous clouds. It would snow again today.

  The house was freezing, so Danny wore his coat loosely over his clothes. Climbing the steep stairs, taking care not to slip in his socks, he pushed his bedroom door open only to find Colton in the same position as he had left him.

  Colton’s skin was pale, as were his lips, and even his hair had lost its luster. A piece of metal in need of polishing. Danny pulled over his desk chair and sat. His body ached from lack of sleep.

  The proximity of Big Ben seemed to be working. Sometimes Colton woke and had been able to exchange a few words with Danny over the course of the stressful night. Leila had been present for one such conversation, looking greatly disturbed when the spirit spoke. But Colton had politely said hello, and that it was nice to meet the mother of Danny, before he passed out again. Leila had tucked him in more thoroughly afterward.

  Danny would never have been able to pass through Enfield’s barrier without Colton, but he wondered if it had been a mistake to bring him here.

  If all of this had been a mistake.

  The guilt that weighed heavily on him was a hand against his chest, pushing him back, making him look at all that had happened since he first stepped foot in Colton’s tower. This, too, he thought—my fault. He’d known that a mechanic and a clock spirit could never be together. But one kiss had tossed that knowledge like ashes to the wind.

  He’d been lost in a chamber of his heart that bore no windows, blind to the outside world. His newfound happiness had burned so bright he hadn’t seen the shadows it cast at the edges. Ignorant about what sacrifice truly meant until it was too late.

  Because of his desires, Enfield had to pay the price.

  But … that wasn’t entirely fair. It wasn’t only his desires. Colton had wanted it, too—had wanted to feel what the people of Enfield felt, the heat of laughter and the pleasure of dancing, the press of someone’s hand against his own. To understand all of the emotions that had been denied him, to hold onto something as tight as he could as if that would make it his.

  Surely that was worth something, even if it came at a cost.

  Wasn’t it?

  Danny rubbed his dry, hot eyes and wondered if a fifth cup of tea would be appropriate. His stomach was too cramped to think of food.

  Sighing, he checked to see that Colton was holding the small cog. That was also having a positive effect. Danny suspected that it acted as the central cog did for Evaline, although to a lesser degree.

  Danny leaned over and touched Colton’s cheek. Still cold, though he knew that didn’t matter much to a spirit. It was disquieting to watch Colton and not see the rise and fall of breath.

  “I could pretend,” Colton had once offered, sticking out his chest and then drawing it back in. Danny had laughed until his belly hurt.

  Why couldn’t it be like the stories? In fairy tales there always seemed to be an obvious villain and an obvious hero. If Danny was the hero, who was the villain? Matthias? But he knew Matthias, and the man wasn’t evil.

  He hung his head, his thoughts a jumbled mess. Danny didn’t know what he would say to Matthias, or how to stop him if he tried to run away with Evaline.

  Matthias had lied. His mother didn’t understand. His father was trapped. Colton was dying.

  Everyone leaves, in the end.

  When he looked back at Colton, he thought of Sleeping Beauty and how one kiss had woken her from the enchantress’s spell. Danny scooted to the edge of his chair and wiped sweaty palms on his trousers. He looked around. They were alone; his mother had reluctantly left for work. He swallowed and bent forward until his face hovered just above Colton’s. Then, closing his eyes, he kissed him.

  Even his lips were cold. When Danny broke away, there was no change, although Colton turned a little toward him. Danny shook his head, annoyed with himself for thinking a fairy tale cure could work.

  The door opened below and Danny was beyond relieved to hear Cassie holler up. He jumped to his feet and met her at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Will you tell me what’s going on?” Cassie demanded. She wore her baggy work overalls, her hair done up in a thick braid.

  Danny jerked his head toward the stairs for her to follow. Up in his bedroom, Cassie gasped at the sight of Colton.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. He briefly told her what had happened in Enfield.

  “Oh, Danny,” she whispered.

  At just that moment, Colton opened his eyes and searched for Danny, frowning when he saw Cassie instead. Danny took his hand.

  “I’m here.”

  “Are we going back now?”

  “No, not yet. I have to find Evaline, the Maldon spirit. She’ll be able to help. Cassie will take care of you while I’m gone.” Colton looked at her again, and she waved weakly.

  “I want to help,” Colton croaked, attempting to rise to his elbows.

  Danny gently held him down. “You can’t do anything in the state you’re in.”

  “But what if she’s gone? If you take me with you, I’m sure I can find her.”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t think Matthias would let her leave the house.”

  Colton opened his mouth, but must have realized that Danny wasn’t going to budge. He fell back against the pillow and closed his eyes with a grimace that twisted Danny’s stomach even tighter.

  “I promise I’ll be back soon.” Danny pressed his lips to Colton’s forehead.

  The spirit brushed his fingers over the back of Danny’s neck. “Be safe.”

  Danny nodded and turned back to Cassie. “I know this isn’t ideal, but I have to find Matthia
s and that clock spirit. It’s the only way to understand what happened. Please, look after Colton until I’m back. He’ll need protecting in case someone comes.”

  “Like who?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t trust Matthias anymore, and I don’t know if other mechanics can feel Colton’s presence. If the Lead Mechanic suspects I did this, then the authorities might come, and … I know I’m asking a lot. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  Cassie shivered, but not in fear. Not for herself, anyway.

  “Will it be dangerous?” she asked.

  Danny felt the burn of Colton’s stare, waiting for his reply. “I don’t know.”

  She breathed out through her nose. “Go on, then.” She pulled a large wrench from her pocket and set it down with a satisfying thud on the desk. “We’ll be all right here. Good luck.”

  Danny wanted to hug her, but there was only so much time. He nodded his thanks and hurried down the stairs. “And wear your holster!” she shouted after him.

  Shoving on his boots, he pounded into the winter-clad streets of London.

  At this hour, Matthias was usually at the office filling out paperwork or training the apprentices. As Danny walked from his parked auto to the blue-trimmed house, he wondered which would be worse: not finding Matthias or confronting him on his doorstep.

  Danny forcefully knocked. He stood there, tense, waiting to hear the scrape of the lock. It never came. Danny stepped away and tried to peer into the window, but the curtains were too thick.

  The clock spirit was here, he was sure of it. Matthias would never allow her to roam London, especially not once the news that Enfield was Stopped began to spread, if it hadn’t already.

  Nothing for it, then. Danny breathed in deeply, steeled himself, and kicked the door.

  “Mummy!” a little boy shouted. He was walking toward the park, a woolen cap hiding the tips of his large ears. “That man is breaking in, look!”

  The mother swung a suspicious glare on Danny.

  “Ah—no,” Danny said, perhaps a little too loudly. “I’ve only forgotten my keys, and my mother’s out. I suppose I’ll have to wait for her.”