by Tara Sim
“Where I come from, there are several stories of how Aetas died. No one can agree on how exactly it happened. I was curious if any of your stories lined up with ours.”
She shook her head, her braid swaying. “I don’t think so. But the vasus are still important. They’re still in everything we see and touch. Shiva,” she said, nodding back at the temple behind her, “keeps the cycles and the elements moving. Now come on, Captain Harris must be burning under the sun.”
Danny followed her down the stairs and into the road. He looked around and was surprised by how many beggars had congregated at the temple. They sat slumped against the walls or nearby trees, dressed in rags or loincloths, some with fabric wrapped around their heads, all of them barefoot. Danny slowed to a stop.
“Leave them, Danny,” Meena said.
He saw a man walk up to a beggar and hand him a banana. The beggar thanked him. Down the street, another beggar sat with a child propped against his chest, his dark eyes bloodshot.
“Danny,” Meena warned, but he ignored her, approaching the beggar with the child. The child noticed him first and looked up.
Without a word, Danny handed them the mango from his pocket. The beggar looked him over, then took it carefully. He put his hands together in the same way Danny had in the temple, the mango between his palms, and bowed his head.
Flustered, Danny turned back to Meena. She was giving him that funny look again.
“Captain Harris,” he reminded her, walking past. She followed without a word. When he caught a glimpse of her face, she was smiling slightly.
The clock tower stood in the very heart of Meerut. Danny had not known what to expect, as the only tower he’d seen in India so far was the one in Khurja, and that had been a pile of rubble.
The Meerut tower was about as tall as Colton’s in Enfield. It was constructed mostly of limestone, though the clock face was made of a beautiful green glass. Meena told him the face glowed emerald at night.
“Hopefully we can witness it,” Captain Harris said as they were helped out of the tonga by a groom. “I hear the guards don’t let anyone except mechanics near once the sun goes down. Understandable, considering what happened to Khurja and Rath. Major Dryden’s orders were passed down from Viceroy Lytton himself.”
“Orders to guard the towers?” Danny asked.
Harris nodded. “They weren’t always this protected, but now the viceroy wants every Indian clock tower manned by soldiers. Seems a bit strange, though, doesn’t it? To protect the towers even though time’s still running in Rath and Khurja? Makes you wonder what the point really is.” He noticed Danny and Meena staring at him. “I meant no offense.”
“Many have been saying the same in Agra,” Meena said as they walked to the tower. “It is unnatural. But then again, people are redefining what they consider unnatural.”
Time running itself, Danny thought, is not natural at all.
Sepoys stopped them before they reached the entrance. One guard with eyebrows nearly as thick as his mustache eyed Danny and Meena before asking, “Why are these children here?”
“These children,” Harris said, “are clock mechanics sent by Major Dryden.”
The sepoy’s tall partner, who wore a turban, said something in Urdu. The other replied with a displeased hum.
“The other ghadi wallahs were here this morning,” he told them. “They were not happy to learn they were excluded from this … assessment.”
“They’re not affiliated with the army,” Harris said. “These mechanics are. If you’ll excuse us?”
Harris led Danny and Meena to the tower. The sepoy called after them, “Make sure they take off their shoes!”
“I know that,” Meena growled. “Do they think I am a new ghadi wallah?”
“How long have you been one, anyway?” Danny asked as he once again unlaced his boots.
“About two years. And you?”
“Uh …” He looked away. “A little less than that. You’re nineteen?”
“Sixteen.”
Danny coughed in surprise, though the thought was immediately driven from his mind as they walked into the tower. He breathed in the musty air, feeling the power in the building all around them. Time spread outward from this one point, dominating all of Meerut and its people, covering the city in a tightly woven tapestry.
“Captain Harris said there’s been no water around the tower,” Meena whispered as they walked up a flight of stone steps. “But they saw someone on the roof a few nights ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the person jumped. If that’s the case, no body was found.”
At the top of the stairs, a thin wooden railing divided them from the stem of the pendulum. Danny looked down and saw it far below, swinging back and forth. The gear train sat beneath the clock face, smoothly whirring.
He thought about Colton’s tower, and the familiar embrace of time that welcomed him whenever he walked inside. Time did not feel the same here. In Meerut, in this tower, time was colder—harder. Perhaps it was only Danny’s connection with Colton that made Enfield feel different. He felt discouraged, like he wasn’t wanted here.
Meena walked down a short flight of stairs to get to the clockwork underneath the gear train. “I do not sense anything wrong,” she murmured, her voice echoing above the loud ticktocks. She touched a finger to the bronze central cog, which turned steadily in the framework of the clock’s skeleton. Danny thought of it severing, of time instead being a hollow, airy thing he couldn’t grasp.
“I don’t, either.” Danny walked around the higher platform, looking through the green glass of the face. Meerut appeared warped on the other side. There was a small door next to the face, but no scaffolding. Just as well; he wouldn’t want to go outside, especially with all those soldiers watching his every move. But then how had this mysterious person gotten to the roof?
In his mind, he saw a flash of silver: the metallic rope the man with tinted goggles had used.
Danny took a deep breath. “There’s only one person who would know for sure.”
“There is? Who?”
Danny looked up at the rafters with a flutter of anticipation before he cleared his throat. “Hello? Can you please come out? Er, maazirat … chahta … hoon?”
“What are you doing?” Meena asked warily.
“Hello? Salaam? Namaste? We would like to speak to you, if only for a moment.”
Meena bounded up the steps, making the bangles on her wrists clatter. “Have you gone mad? There’s no one here!”
“There is.” He took the small cog from his pocket. Though it didn’t hold much sway here, he held it up and poured some of his own power into the metal. Nothing stirred, not like it did when he was in Enfield.
Meena lowered his arm to look at the small cog. “Where did you get this? Danny, please tell me what’s going on. You’re not making sense.”
“I’m trying to talk to the spirit of the tower.”
Her face hardened. “What?”
“They can tell us if anyone strange has been at the tower.”
“Danny—” She checked her tone, then began again. Slowly, calmly, as she would talk to a child. “There are no clock spirits.”
“Yes, there are.”
“No, there aren’t.”
“You believe in Shiva and the vasus, but not clock spirits?”
Meena’s mouth twisted.
“Hello?” Danny called again. “Please show this young woman you exist.”
“Danny, enough! I want to leave. Let’s just talk about what we’ve seen—”
“Hold on.” He walked around the platform and hurried down the stairs, toward the clockwork. He removed the bandage around his wrist. A soft scab had formed over the cut where Goggles had nicked him, which Danny now painfully scratched off, letting a dark bead of blood well on his wrist.
Holding his breath, he pressed a drop of blood to the central cog.
Time pulsed and lifted all around hi
m, a feeling so similar to falling that he nearly threw up. It was almost like Khurja, almost that same sharpness, but not quite. Intoxicated with the power, Danny tried to reach for the time fibers. To pull them and morph them into a different shape.
A scream tore through the air, and Danny was yanked away from the clockwork. He nearly toppled over the railing into the pendulum pit below. He held onto the railing and gaped as a middle-aged woman wiped his blood off the central cog.
She spun around and glared at him, swearing in a different dialect than Urdu. Her golden hair was tied back into a loose bun, her body round, her face puffy around the cheeks. Her skin was a dark tan, more bronze than brown, and her eyes were amber. She wore a faded yellow sari.
“I’m sorry!” Danny tried to say around her yelling. “I’m sorry—maaf kijiye!”
She stopped at last, her jaw clenched. Danny righted himself and wiped the last speck of blood from the cog. He shuddered to his toes, and the world shuddered around him.
“I wanted you to come out,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think of.”
She huffed and looked up at Meena. The girl stared down at them, mouth agape, the whites of her eyes more visible than her dark irises.
“Meena? Please come down,” Danny called to her. “I don’t speak her language very well.”
“Who … Who is she?” Meena croaked.
“The spirit of the tower.” Then, because he couldn’t resist: “I told you they existed.”
After getting over her initial shock, Meena acted as a translator between Danny and the annoyed spirit, occasionally interjecting her own responses. The spirit’s name, like her tower, was Aditi.
“She says she has been the guardian of this tower for too many years to count,” Meena said, her eyes never leaving the golden woman. The spirit stood with her chin up, as if she enjoyed the attention. “She does not like that you forced her to come out. What did you do?” That last question was solely Meena.
“Uh.” The wrist wound had clotted, and he hid it behind his back. “I can explain later. Please ask her about the intruder.”
What followed was a long conversation in Hindi that Danny could barely understand. The women glanced at him a couple of times.
Meena switched to English. “She says she doesn’t know. She remembers someone on the roof of her tower, but by the time she went up to confront the intruder, they were gone.”
“And there’s nothing altered in her tower? Nothing out of place?”
Another exchange, and Aditi shook her head.
“Odd.” Danny rubbed a hand over his thigh, thinking. The other two carried on without him. He was happy to let them, until he heard his name.
“She wants to know how you knew she was here,” Meena said. Judging by her narrowed eyes, she wanted to know the same thing.
“Tell her—” What could he say? “Tell her that I’ve spoken with others of her kind. Maaf kijiye,” he said again to the spirit.
“She says it is all right,” Meena translated under Aditi’s words, “but that you should show more respect in her tower.” Meena arched an eyebrow at him, and he shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Fair enough. Ask her again about the trespasser. Any idea of what they were doing on the roof?”
They went around in circles until Aditi grew tired of them and made a shooing gesture. Meena asked if they could come back, and Aditi agreed, but only if they gave her an offering.
“An offering to a clock,” Meena murmured as they left. “How strange.” She stopped Danny before they walked through the door. “You owe me answers.”
He swallowed. “When we’re back at headquarters.”
They reported to Captain Harris that they had seen nothing amiss. He asked the question running through their own minds: If time still ran strong through Aditi’s tower, why were they here?
A diversion, maybe? Danny’s stomach began to squirm as he thought about Daphne farther south.
Harris reminded the pair to take an escort if they decided to roam around the city. Danny just wanted to lie down, but Meena’s persistence kept him from his desired nap. She came to his door barely five minutes after he had returned to his room.
“Can’t I get a half hour to myself?” Danny complained. “Concussion, remember?”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Meena whispered. “You just knew she was there. You knew how to make her come out. How?”
He sighed and gestured to a chair. Meena took the seat, but didn’t take her eyes off him.
Danny sat on the edge of his bed and clasped his hands together. “Like I said, I know a few clock spirits back home.”
“How many have you spoken to?”
“Three.”
“Are they all like her?”
“No, not really. They all look different, and have different personalities. One is a man, another is a woman, and … another is a boy. About as old as me.”
Meena studied his face, and he worried what she saw there. “Tell me about them.”
He told her about Big Ben in London, and about Evaline and the disaster involving his father in Maldon. By the time he described Colton, Meena sat mesmerized, her mouth slightly parted.
“I’ve mostly spent time with Colton, the spirit of the tower I watch over back home. He’s always curious, and asks a lot of questions. Not like—” He nodded in the direction of Aditi’s tower. “I don’t think any two spirits are the same.”
Meena played with a fold in her sari. “I always thought the spirits were just stories. Something the older ghadi wallahs told the young ones for fun.”
“I thought the same, once. Colton was the first spirit I ever saw. Well, I saw Big Ben when I was younger, but I didn’t know he was a spirit until later. But Colton decided to show himself to me.” Danny stared at his fingers. “I was grateful that he trusted me enough. That he spoke to me like he cared about my life.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Danny looked up and met Meena’s eyes. Her face no longer held wonder, but suspicion.
“Danny,” she said slowly, taking something from her satchel, “you admitted there is a boy you love back home.” She unfolded the paper in her hands. “Is this boy also a clock spirit?”
Danny’s heart sank as Meena held up the drawing of Colton.
“You dropped it in Aditi’s tower,” she said.
Damn it. She stared at him, waiting for an answer.
“What would you do if I said yes?” he asked softly.
Meena stood and dusted off her sari, then pierced him again with dark, intelligent eyes. “I am not Danny Hart, so I cannot make decisions for you. But if I were you, I would stop this. I may have only just learned about the spirits, but I know enough that they should not be tampered with.”
“It’s not tampering—”
“This sort of union cannot end happily. You must see that. And if you can’t, then I will pray until you do.”
“Meena …”
She waited to hear what he had to say, but he had no words to offer, no defense to build around himself. He knew the consequences; knew them better than she did. He thought of the way time altered when Colton felt too much—felt because of him. If Harris worried about being selfish with Partha, he didn’t want to know what the captain would think of this.
It reminded him unpleasantly of what his father had said before he left: his warning that Danny putting Colton before all else would only lead to disaster. That the barrier between want and need was hard and unforgiving.
Danny lowered his eyes to the floor, where they caught a glimpse of black. He blinked, but the spindly leg he saw peeking from under the chair disappeared with a faint whir.
Meena sighed and put the picture on the table. “We should focus on one problem at a time. First, this spirit. Then you can worry about your own.”
She didn’t realize that he never stopped worrying.
They visited Aditi several more times in the next week. Every day, Danny grew more and mor
e convinced that something wasn’t right in Meerut. Each night ended with uncertainty and each morning dawned with anxiety. He was missing something, he was sure of it.
And he had heard that whirring, clicking sound again. He’d searched all over his room, even told Captain Harris about it, but not even the soldiers could find the source of the sound.
He remembered the mechanical spider he’d seen at the Taj and shuddered.
Danny and Meena’s visits to the clock tower provided only more frustrating clues. The scaffolding Danny originally thought was missing actually lay broken at the bottom of the tower. They asked what had happened to it as they performed routine maintenance on the clock.
“She doesn’t know,” Meena translated. “There are blank spots in her memory, as she sometimes focuses on other places in Meerut besides her tower. One day, the scaffolding was beside the clock face, and the next, it was broken. The ghadi wallahs made a fuss, saying someone needed to pay for the repairs, but no one came forward.”
Danny combed the tower for clues, but there was nothing to suggest a stranger had been there. Aditi was of little help; she liked to gossip with Meena while Danny prowled around. Their laughter was grating, and once Aditi even pinched his cheek. Meena insisted it was an act of fondness.
“She says you are too thin. You need to eat more.”
“I eat plenty.” He sat cross-legged in front of the clockwork. Sunlight shone through the clock face and turned the platform a bright emerald.
Aditi said something, and Meena called down, “She would like to know where the small cog in your pocket comes from.”
He hesitated. “Tell her another of her kind gave it to me. As a gift.”
Meena’s eyebrows rose. Blushing, Danny turned back to the clockwork. He thought of his father and how much Christopher would have loved to be in this tower with him, comparing Indian and English designs.
As the other two prattled on, Danny carefully reached for the time fibers around him. Bright and steady, as they had been every day so far. Once in a while, he caught a tiny tremor. He followed the anomaly to the central cog, to the spot his blood had touched.
