by Tara Sim
“Tell them I married a British boy and ran away to his country. That will make them happy.”
Akash made a sound as if he were trying to laugh, but it came out as a sob. He held his sister tighter, burying his face in her hair.
“I wasn’t there for you. I couldn’t protect you. This is all my fault.”
“None of this is your fault. I made the decision, and this is my choice. I want to die on my own terms, Akash. They took my life, but I have control over this, at least. You have to let me go.”
Akash cried harder, and Meena rubbed his back as if he were a small boy. Daphne turned away, pressing a sleeve to her eyes.
Zavier and Felix walked out of the tower, their faces somber. “It’s done,” Zavier said, “but we’ll need to use the water. There’s just enough left on the ship.”
Meena stepped back and took Akash’s face in her hands. “Main tumse bahut pyar karthee hoon.”
He whispered the phrase back to her, kissing her on her forehead, where her red bindi would normally be. Then he turned and walked back to the plane, forcing himself not to look back.
Meena silently watched him go. “Please take care of him,” she whispered to Daphne.
She took the girl’s hands in her own, time shivering through her. “I will. I promise.”
Meena managed a smile, but the devastation in her eyes filled Daphne with sorrow and helpless rage. Meena reached up and wiped away Daphne’s tears, such a loving, sisterly gesture that Daphne only cried harder, kissing Meena’s hand before she slipped away.
Then Meena turned to Danny and Colton. “If there’s a way to save your tower, Colton, I hope you find it.”
Daphne saw the boys’ hands clasp tighter together.
It took Danny a couple of attempts before he could speak, and when he did, his voice was low and hoarse. “I’m sorry, Meena.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m going to stop her,” he whispered, a dangerous glint in his eye. “We’re going to find Archer, and I’m going to make her regret everything she’s done. I promise.”
Daphne expected Meena to protest, to scold him for instinctually turning to violence.
Instead, she said, “Good.”
Finally, Meena turned to Zavier and gave him a single nod. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and ducked his head. “I’m sorry.” He walked away, back to the Silver Hawk, before she could respond.
The others followed. When they reached Akash’s side, they turned back. Meena put her hands together and bowed over them in prayer, or maybe in farewell.
Then she disappeared.
Everything that is born must eventually die.
That’s what Meena had once told Danny, when she had taken him to the temple in Meerut. She’d explained to Danny that Shiva had created the world, but that one day he would destroy his own creation. It was a cycle that would be repeated throughout time, birth and life and death and birth. That was simply the way it was.
He watched from the Prometheus’s observation deck as Felix flew the water over the small tower. In five seconds, the tower crumbled. A golden glow radiated outward from its center as time was restored. Birth and life and death.
Akash cried out, falling against the window. Daphne held him from behind, hiding her own tears against his back. Danny turned and walked away, feeling nothing; not his body, not his thoughts, not even Colton behind him.
“Danny.” Colton reached for him, but Danny pulled his arm away. Danny.
Danny walked through the corridors. He might have passed the others, but he couldn’t be sure. There were tears. There were whispers. He was numb to it all, sheltered by a screen they couldn’t penetrate. He just kept walking, looking for nothing, hoping to find something, anything, to fill the yawning emptiness inside him.
He stopped and leaned his shoulder against the wall, savoring the new flash of pain that ran through his body like an electric shock.
I want to die on my own terms.
Everything that is born must eventually die.
He didn’t remember sliding to the floor, or when he’d started crying. He took every little thing from inside that pit in his chest and pulled it out, piece by painful piece, opening a fresh wound inside himself—gaping, raw, bleeding. He sobbed and punched the wall, the floor, the spirit before him who tried to grab his wrists.
“You’re hurting yourself!”
That’s what he wanted. To hurt himself on his own terms. To not let people—not let others like Archer—make his pain for him. He wanted to choose for once. He wanted to say whether or not he wanted this pain.
“Danny, that’s enough.” Colton pressed Danny’s arms to the wall. “I know you’re upset. I know you’re hurting. I know you’re afraid that will happen to me, too. But it won’t, because I won’t let anything touch my tower. We can still stop the Builders. This isn’t the end of us or the others. We can still find a way.”
Danny couldn’t stop the tears, or the hemorrhaging inside of him. He kept seeing Meena, golden Meena and human Meena, and the knife they’d pressed to Colton’s throat.
Colton put his lips to Danny’s cheek. He kissed up to his eyes, kissing the tears away. When their lips met, Danny tasted his own grief. He tasted the ocean.
I won’t leave you. I promised.
Promises can be broken.
Not mine.
Colton kissed Danny all the harder, drawing him in so tight he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to—wasn’t sure he wanted to. Colton swallowed his small broken sobs, stanched his internal damage, placed a hand upon his chest to remind him that his heart still beat. He let Colton sew him back together with a promise in the thread, the only one that mattered. The one he would fight to keep or die trying.
Danny found Zavier in a small sitting room far from his office. Prema had said Zavier didn’t want to talk to anyone, though questions flew about the ship. Where to now? Will the others leave? Are we still freeing Aetas? What about Sally?
But Danny had remembered something when he woke after hours of dreamless sleep, something he hadn’t told Zavier before.
The young man barely looked up as Danny entered. Zavier held a paintbrush in his hands, and all of his attention seemed to be focused on it.
“Sally’s,” Zavier croaked. “She’s quite good, but too shy to let anyone but me look at her paintings.”
Danny sat across from him. Zavier closed his eyes, releasing a shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry about Meena,” Zavier whispered. “What happened to her is my fault. All of this is a product of my vanity. My impatience. They kept telling me I was losing sight of what I wanted, and they were right. Now an innocent girl is dead, and my sister could be next. She wasn’t trained, but she can still sense time. They knew that. That’s why they took her.”
“That’s what I came to warn you about.”
Zavier looked up, his eyes darkening like clouds before a storm.
“Archer said something to me when I was on her ship. She touched my blood to the small cog Big Ben had given Colton. She said … She asked Colton if—if I should be the new face of Big Ben.” He fought to swallow. “Zavier, I think they’re going to turn Sally into the new London tower. We have to go back to England.”
Colton felt pain every single minute. Whether it was the throb in his side, the ache from Danny through their bond, or the hurt that permeated the very air of the ship, he was at its mercy with no means of escape. But that pain was nothing compared to what they were about to face.
The possibility that the Builders would attack London scared him, but it scared Danny even worse. They spent hours discussing with Zavier what they might expect and what they should do.
“We should forget London altogether and free Aetas now,” Edmund said at a meeting.
“What about Sally?” Jo demanded, hand clenched around a brandy glass. Dark circles were under her eyes. “We can’t just let them butcher her!”
“Not to mention,” Zavier said, tap
ping a file on the table, “that there are reports of the Kalki near London.”
Danny’s head shot up. “The Indian rebels?”
“Their mission was aborted when you intervened. Enfield is Stopped, true, but that didn’t put much of a dent in the British armory. My guess is that the Builders formed some sort of alliance with the rebels after we dropped our ties.” He looked pointedly at Akash, who stared at the tabletop as Daphne held his hand. He hadn’t spoken a word since Meena’s tower had been destroyed.
“Will they try to attack Parliament?” Daphne asked.
“Danny said that Archer mentioned something about using London as their base of operations. If they’ve betrayed the Crown, that means their only method for accomplishing that is through sheer force. Therefore, we should set our sights on London. We can piece together a more cohesive plan in the next twenty-four hours.”
Colton heard Danny’s thought before he spoke it. “Could … Could Colton and I visit Enfield? I want to see how it’s doing. I want to see Colton’s tower.”
Zavier looked as if he wanted to protest, but thought better of it. “Yes. But you can’t take too long.”
Which was how they landed several hours later, beyond the forest on the western side of Enfield. Colton still felt as if he were in India, so taking his first step off the plane onto British soil was like a slap of cold wind. Literally, as the air that greeted them was chilly and damp.
Danny stopped beside him, overcome by the same sudden, bizarre feeling of homecoming. They looked around in awe, taking in the gray sky, the lush field, the smell of rain and peat.
“We’re back,” Danny whispered. “We’re actually back.”
Edmund stepped out of the Prometheus’s landing plane and drew in a deep breath. “Ah, cow dung. Had to have missed that. All right, I know it’s hard to gauge time in there, so take this.” He attached a small timepiece to Colton’s cog holder. “Colton should have enough power to create his own little area of time, so stay close. Zavier wants you back in two hours.”
They had asked Daphne if she wanted to come, but she’d shaken her head no. She needed to be with Akash and wanted to hear the plans Zavier was spinning. So they struck out, just the two of them, toward the gray dome that had once been Enfield.
Colton hesitated beside the road.
“We only have two hours,” Danny reminded him.
“I know.” He shifted on his feet, the timepiece on his back ticking. “What if they hate me? I’ve been away for such a long time. I don’t even feel like I’m here right now.”
“Trust me, I know.” Danny held out his hand, and Colton twined their fingers together. “We’ve been threatened, kidnapped, and tortured. I doubt they’ll hate us for being a few months late.”
Colton squeezed his hand. “I hope not.”
They were able to walk through the barrier together—Colton because he was a clock spirit, Danny because he was a clock mechanic touching him. Colton remembered walking through that barrier six months before, desperate and afraid. They’d both been desperate and afraid when they had first passed through the barrier when Enfield had Stopped because of Matthias. Colton was still desperate and afraid, but at least he had Danny at his side, and that was worth the world.
Time warped around them. Colton could feel it stretching and pulling about him like taffy, unsure what to make of him and his new power. The timepiece ticked louder and his cogs grew hot. Danny reached into his pocket with his free hand and clutched the small cog. Colton touched the time threads he could reach, as familiar to him as his own fingers. With some tampering, time flowed smoothly across their bodies as they pressed through the gray barrier.
On the other side, Danny gasped. Colton would have, too, had he been able.
It was Enfield. It was home.
Colton could see the wide village green, the parish church, the quaint squashed-together homes that lined the dirt road. Relief, warm and strong, ran through their bond, but he couldn’t tell who it came from. Maybe both of them.
Two people were walking away from the barrier as they entered. At the sound of Danny’s gasp, they turned and gasped themselves. One was Mayor Aldridge, the other his assistant, Jane.
“You’re back so soon?” the mayor wondered at the same time Jane exclaimed “Danny!”
The two of them had walked him to the barrier, Colton realized. Half a year ago.
“My boy, I thought you’d gone to India,” Aldridge said.
“We, er … did.” Danny exchanged an awkward look with Colton. “It’s been a little while.”
Their faces fell. “How long?” Jane asked.
“About six months.”
The mayor groaned and rubbed his forehead. “We can handle that later. The important thing is: can we fix the tower?”
“Show me.”
Colton didn’t want to see it, but kept hold of Danny’s hand all the same on the awkward walk to the tower. Awkward, because time sometimes made them backtrack to where they’d been, or propelled them farther down the road. Annoyed, Colton grasped the Enfield threads again, weaving them until time around the four of them eased to normalcy. Aldridge and Jane couldn’t feel it, but Danny did, and he sent Colton an impressed look.
The pain in Colton’s side grew worse. By the time they stood before his tower, he was pressing a hand to his ribs, trying not to make a sound.
“Oh, no.” Danny dropped Colton’s hand and stepped forward. He took in the slanted building, the shattered glass, the crumbling brick. The gaping, open wound in the tower’s right side. He looked back at Colton, his eyes going to where he pressed his hand against the scar.
“Can it be fixed?” the mayor asked, wringing his hands together. Danny blinked at him, and through the bond Colton felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu.
“Er … yes. Yes, it can be fixed.” Danny examined the hole again. “I hope.”
Colton and Danny went inside. The stairs were broken in the middle. Colton reminded Danny to be careful, that he was still weak, and if he fell from this height—
“Calm down.” Danny hopped easily over the break. “Time is Stopped. It’s not going to fall out from under me.”
As they climbed higher, the damage grew more severe. Broken beams slanted through the ceiling, two of the four bells had fallen—one had rolled down the stairs—and gears and cogs were scattered everywhere. It was eerily silent, too; the normal sounds, the whirs and clicks and tocks, were gone. It was just them, and the sound of Danny’s breathing.
The central cog on Colton’s back pulled him toward the clockwork. Colton kept far away from it.
Danny turned in a circle, taking in the damage. They could see a sliver of Enfield through the massive crack in the limestone. Danny put his hand over it, running his fingers over the edge. Colton felt those fingers against his side and shivered.
Danny was remembering Meena’s tower. Watching its destruction from the safety of the Prometheus. Colton walked up behind him and slid his arms around his waist, putting his forehead against the back of his neck.
“I’m sorry, Danny. I know she was your friend. She was mine, too.”
“Look at it, Colton. This tower—this thing they built with your blood.” He turned suddenly and kicked a gear away. Colton winced.
“It’s going to fall.” Danny faced him, breathless. “The way the structure is damaged, it can’t hold once time restarts.”
“But time will Stop again when it falls,” Colton pointed out. “Maybe the tower can be rebuilt then.”
“Maybe.” Danny rubbed his eyes. “What do I tell them? How do we give them hope?”
“Just tell them the truth. It’s the simplest thing to do.”
So that’s what Danny did. He and Colton returned outside and explained to the mayor and the other Enfield residents who had gathered on the green that the tower might not be able to stand once time was restored, but that they would still try to rebuild it. The news wasn’t welcome, but no one seemed surprised. Some of the townspeopl
e crowded around Colton, asking if he was all right, what the cog holder was, where he had been.
He answered as best he could, all the while keeping track of the time through the timepiece on his back. He wondered if he should tell them what they’d discovered about Aetas, about the sacrifices, about the true nature of his existence.
Don’t, Danny thought at him. They’ll find out eventually. There’s no need to do it now.
“Will Danny go to London and come back with more mechanics?” Jane asked.
“Yes, I expect he will. I need to go with him, though. He won’t be able to pass through the barrier otherwise.”
When he turned, Danny was talking to another one of Enfield’s residents. A bolt of displeasure hit his stomach; it was Harland, an admittedly attractive young man who had once kissed Danny. Colton had long since dropped the matter entirely. Or so he’d thought.
He went to Danny’s side, trying not to glare at Harland. The young man smiled at him, but he looked nervous. He was tall and well built, with thick brown hair and dark eyes.
“Colton, hello. I was just telling Danny that it was good to see you. I mean, good that nothing’s happened. Nothing’s happened, has it?”
“A little of this and that,” he replied coolly. Exasperation trickled through the bond.
“Harland was asking if he might help with repairs when we return from London,” Danny said in a tone that commanded: Be nice.
“Oh. Yes, that would be … nice.”
Danny rolled his eyes, but Harland nodded.
“I’m sorry about the tower, but I think with some adjustments—”
They let him talk a little longer while Colton felt Danny’s exasperation growing. Finally, Colton tugged on Danny’s sleeve.
“Our two hours are nearly up,” he muttered.
“Right. Erm, thanks, Harland. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“Of course. I suppose it’ll be no time at all until I see you again.”
“No time at all,” Colton mumbled.
Danny sighed as Harland left. “Will you let it rest? He’s just trying to help.”
