Into the Hourglass

by King, Emily R.

  “You win this time,” I say. “But you have to help us find Claret and the sword or we don’t have an agreement.”

  “How can I work with you if you cannot do something as simple as throw a pearl overboard?”

  I bend over him, lowering my face near his. “Did you understand my terms?”

  “I’m to free your friends and recover your precious sword. You’ve made your demands very clear. Now I shall reiterate mine: cast off the pearl tonight, and tomorrow our hunt for the sword continues.”

  “How do you intend to get us off the ship?”

  His lips purse. “I’m not a stranger to this world, as you’re discovering. And I have no shortage of allies.”

  Could he have allies aboard this ship? I wait for him to enlighten me, but he discloses nothing more. I would walk out right now, except Markham always has lackeys at his disposal.

  “We can wait until tomorrow, but no longer.” The merrows’ song still plays, jarring at my bones. “I have to go. I’ve been out of my cabin for too long.”

  “Part of our agreement was for you to untie me.”

  “Oh, I think not. I’ll sleep better knowing you’re locked belowdecks.”

  I expect him to chuckle, since most everything I say and do is laughable to him, but he tips his head to the side in thought, pondering me as he would an anomaly. “You didn’t always find me contemptible.”

  He refers to the few times we met before he and my father departed on their explorations. I have successfully put those encounters out of my mind, for even then, the prince was too handsome, too charming, too quick witted.

  “You were such a curious child,” he muses. “I sensed your spirit for adventure straightaway.”

  “Stop,” I snap.

  He gives me an injured look. “You should have more respect for our history. How many people in your life have known you as long as I have? Doesn’t time mean anything to you?”

  “Tomorrow, Markham.”

  He sends me a saccharine smile. “Sweet dreams, Evie.”

  I dart out of the cabin, down the corridor, and up the ladder. The merrows’ song is louder and bolder on the open deck. Everyone appears to have been chased inside by the singing, including the watchman in the crow’s nest. I cross to the gunwale, my blood humming as though I am standing close to a pianoforte.

  Overlooking the sea, I search for a glimpse of our tormentors, and a buzzing starts in my ears. The vibration grows faster and more intense as I arrive at the rail.

  Several merrows float at the surface below, their green skin and hair lit by moonlight. The buzzing in my head increases, like an angry bee stuck in my ear.

  Clutching the pearl in my fist, I climb onto the rail for a better view and hold on to the rigging. An inner warning tells me this is dangerous, but in addition to the buzzing, a message blares.

  Come for a swim, child. Let us show you the many wonders hidden under the sea.

  I lean forward over the water. Farther . . . farther . . .

  “Everley!”

  The call comes from behind me, from someone on deck. I blink fast and shift back. The buzzing in my head fades a little. Why am I on the rail?

  I hop back down onto the planks, my clock heart fluttering swiftly and my chest pumping hard. The person who called for me is nowhere in sight. I toss the pearl overboard and flee into the day cabin.

  My hands and knees tremble, the rattling in my head painfully insistent. I lie on the bunk and cover my ears with the pillow. Suddenly everything goes very quiet. I lift one corner of the pillow, braced for more pain. Nothing comes.

  The merrows quit singing.

  Moments pass while I wait expectantly for their return, but the throbbing in my head stops. I cannot determine which astonishes me more, that Markham told the truth or that his pearl has bought us peace.

  I turn onto my back, exhausted and shaken, my mind swimming with a torrent of unknowns. The day has brought more questions than answers. What would have happened had I stayed on the rail any longer and someone hadn’t called my name . . . ?

  A shadow passes in front of the keyhole of the door, and then someone inserts the key and locks it. Osric must have remembered he left the door unlocked, or did he leave it open on purpose?

  Peculiar things have happened all night, and Osric could be behind every one of them. He may have left the door unlocked to draw me out. Perhaps he knew I would speak with Markham, or maybe he’s trying to uncover the prince’s allies in the crew. But without understanding Markham and Osric’s past, I am left with one conclusion.

  Osric has laid a trap. Only I cannot decide if it is for Markham or me.

  Chapter Eleven

  By midmorning, with just hours to go until high tide, I am awake and waiting for Markham’s escape plan. The door opens and the oversize cabin boy walks in.

  “Good morning, poppet,” says Neely, setting down his tool bag. “My apologies for interrupting your breakfast.”

  I’m finishing off the sack of dried seaweed and kelp pods from yesterday. My hunger finally made the fish food enticing enough to eat. I wash the briny taste from my mouth with the last swig of water from my cup and side-eye the giant. Could Markham have sent him?

  Neely wanders over to the workbench, sets down his tool bag, and sorts through his instruments. “The captain asked me to take a closer look at your timepiece.” He gestures at the bunk. “I need you to lie down.”

  After yesterday’s dizzy spells, I feel more myself today. I don’t want someone tampering with my ticker. “What if fiddling with the gearwork makes it worse?”

  “I’ll be careful. I was a mechanic in my home world.”

  I do want my ticker fixed, especially before I escape, so I shuffle toward the bunk. “What brought you here?”

  “Giants are given a trade at birth that follows family lines. Butchers raise butchers, candlemakers raise candlemakers—”

  “And mechanics raise mechanics.”

  “Aye,” Neely says. “Back home, giants are trained to do one thing well. Mastering our trade shows appreciation to the Creator for our life. My father was a skilled mechanic, but his business was struggling. Our family was on our last meal when I was caught stealing grain from a farmer. My father was so ashamed of me he turned me in to our township officials. I was banished from my world the next day.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Longer than you’ve been alive.” Neely pats the bunk again for me to come over. “I could call for crewmen to force you down and restrain you, but that would be very unpleasant for everyone.”

  I agree, so I lie down.

  The giant’s fingers are too big to unbutton my shirt, so I undo it. Neely puts on his monocle and pulls the stool up to the bunk. He pries off the glass face from my ticker with the flat end of a chisel. “Close your eyes and relax.”

  “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

  “Anything that will reveal the impetus of your ticker. Understanding what animates it may provide me with a solution.”

  The inner workings of my ticker have been a mystery for years. I almost wish him good luck, but he may think I’m being sarcastic.

  The wrinkles around Neely’s eyes double as he concentrates. He must have eaten a peppermint after breakfast, because his breath is cool and sweet. He starts to hum to himself, causing me to jump.

  “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Habit I learned from working alongside my father.”

  My muscles tense as Neely hums some more. At one point, I hear a clink and then my gears start to turn faster. I breathe more deeply and relax my muscles, but I cannot make the ticking slow down. Dizziness grips me and whirls me around.

  “Stop,” I whisper.

  Neely hums right over me. My strength to speak louder or push him away drains right out of me. Whatever he touched continues to knock me down a hole. I spiral further and further into that racing ticktock, plunging through a crack in my wooden heart.

  I land on my feet. The falling sensation s
lowly empties away and my vision refocuses.

  I’m at home in my uncle’s workshop. He’s here, at his workbench. Blood and ash cover the front of his good clothes, the evening attire he wears on holidays and birthdays. His face is buried in his hands and his shoulders quiver as he sobs.

  “Uncle Holden?” I say.

  As I go to him, my view of the table expands. I make out two small feet, one of them shoeless, and then the rest of the child comes into sight. She lies on her back, unconscious. Her hair is burned and her eyebrows singed. Soot covers her arms and legs. Her chest . . .

  My knees give out. I stumble toward my uncle for support and float right through him. I am in a spirit form again, with no impact on my surroundings. Pulling back, I flee for the door, and there, in the threshold, stands Father Time.

  His stately poise is as familiar as the swish of a pendulum on the first stroke of midnight. He wears all black, like the most distinguished of gentlemen. Eternally young and forever solemn, he has a daisy tucked into the lapel of his fitted jacket, an odd splash of brightness to pair with his dour apparel. He places his fingers to his lips, requesting my silence.

  “Holden,” he says, gliding to him.

  My uncle drops to his knees and grabs the hem of his jacket. “Save her. Please save her.”

  “We don’t have the power to bring her to life.”

  “You can give her more time.” My uncle weeps against Father Time’s leg. “She’s just a child.”

  Father Time meets my gaze from across the workshop. I sense he wants me to look at the shell of a girl lying on the table, but I cannot. Not without also seeing the life I lost and the loved ones I buried.

  “She’s all I have left,” says my uncle. “I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t help the others. Please do this.”

  “It will require a sacrifice of your time. An entire decade.”

  My uncle looks up at Father Time, his eyes shining with tears. “Whatever you require, I’ll do it. She will have what she needs.”

  Father Time strides to the lass on the workbench, and I turn around and face the storefront. I can hear the clocks for sale ticktocking on the other side of the door.

  “Do you know what this is?” Father Time asks, his voice a notch above a murmur. My uncle must not know, because Father Time answers his own question. “This is heartwood from an elderwood tree.”

  I whirl back around. In the palm of Father Time’s hand is a piece of heartwood. Markham called the heartwood the most precious treasure in all the worlds.

  “What do I do with it?” asks Uncle Holden.

  “Bring us the sword and we will show you.”

  While my uncle thuds upstairs to his loft where he hid the sword, Father Time holds the heartwood over the girl.

  I stare at my boots. “You can see me.”

  “We have seen your whole life,” Father Time replies, “from birth to death. Do not fear what was or what will be.”

  My curiosity builds until I muster the courage to look up.

  The lass—me at age seven—is so little. Back then, I still had all my baby teeth. I had never ridden horseback alone. Never gone for a swim in the sea or stayed up past midnight to dance. Never made a best friend or learned how to bake my father’s special plum pudding recipe. I had barely begun to live, and there I am, limp and bloody in the ivory party dress that I wore for my mother’s birthday.

  I expect an emotional purge of hysteria or fury or mourning. But as I tread over to my younger self, I am engulfed by astonishment. How did Father Time and my uncle take this broken, battered body and make it whole again? They wrought a miracle.

  My uncle returns with the sword of Avelyn, and Father Time sets to pulling aside the girl’s tattered dress, revealing the gruesome mess of her chest.

  “I can clean her up,” says my uncle.

  “We’ve no time. Please, hold out your hand.”

  Father Time takes up the sword. It should look strange, an old-fashioned gentleman with an ancient blade, but he is its master.

  “Are you certain this is what you want, Holden? The years must come from you willingly.”

  “I’m certain.”

  Father Time cuts my uncle’s palm and then presses the heartwood into his hand, over the cut. Next, he lowers the bloodied part of the sword to the girl’s chest wound. I scrunch my eyes shut, too squeamish to watch, but I can hear him working. It sounds like a butcher sectioning apart a lamb. When the sawing stops, I open my eyes.

  Father Time takes the heartwood from my uncle, the wood stained with his blood, and slides it into the cavity of the girl’s chest. A glow starts in her chest and ripples out across her body to her head, fingertips, and toes. She does not wake or stir. The only difference, besides the fading light, is her chest rising and falling with unbidden breaths.

  “She has reanimated with time,” Father Time declares. He sets the sword beside her and strokes her pale cheek. The movement is so intimate and tender that I blush. “Carve the heartwood into a clock and disguise her heart. Although the clock will be powered by time, ultimately the heartwood, animated by your blood sacrifice, will preserve her. We will leave her and our other treasures in your care.”

  “Thank you,” my uncle says, gripping his arm.

  “Go to work before she wakes.”

  Uncle Holden gathers his tools and sets to carving the heartwood into a clock. I observe from the other side of the table, fascinated by how quickly he toils and the brilliancy of his artistry. Father Time steps out of the workshop into the storefront.

  “Wait,” I say, hurrying after him. “Is my clock heart permanent? Or can it be changed?”

  “You wish to live without it, but you cannot.”

  My chest sinks, my spirit drooping. I’ve never told anyone my dream to become whole, yet I feel the future grow dimmer and drearier, hearing that I cannot live without my ticker. “You’re Father Time. If you can give me a clock for a heart, can’t you make me whole again?”

  He scowls, offended. “The heartwood has made you better than whole.”

  “No.” I shake my head over and over, refusing to think I’m better off this way.

  “Your heart is crafted from the heartwood of an elderwood tree. Its creation power is not to be taken for granted.”

  The clock heart saved me, but the finicky mechanism is too demanding. “The pirate captain says my ticker is broken.”

  Father Time’s expression becomes severe. “Your clock heart is more powerful than a world full of pirate captains. Holden gave you something infinitely valuable, an entire decade of his own life to prolong yours.”

  I hear the ticktocking of the clocks around us, all competing for the loudest boom in my head. I glance through the doorway at Uncle Holden bent over the lass. “I took time away from my uncle?”

  “Time was necessary to stimulate the creation power within the heartwood. For time is love, and love cannot be forced upon another.”

  My throat and eyes burn with withheld tears. Standing in my uncle’s storefront, each clock that he crafted with painstaking care and set out as merchandise signifies the sacrifices he made to take me in. I cannot change what was, but I can choose how to move forward. “You sent me to find the sword. It’s at the bottom of the sea and I cannot retrieve it.”

  “Can’t you?” Father Time removes the daisy from his lapel and then closes my gloved hands around the bloom. “The sword of Avelyn was always meant for you. Holden could have stopped you from learning swordplay, locked you in your room, and kept you from the world, but he knew you had a great purpose. Find the sword of Avelyn, and you will have all you need to bring Prince Killian to justice.”

  More vague promises. More indistinct directions. More faith I do not have. “But I stabbed Markham with the sword, and it did nothing.”

  Father Time sets a top hat on his head, his striking young face dismayed. “You proclaim what cannot be done too often. Everley, you are a Time Bearer, a protector of the worlds and a knight of Evermore. You must see
with infinite eyes.”

  My legs grow weak. I need to sit down, but I cannot, or my spirit will drop straight through the chair. “What’s Evermore?”

  “Evermore is yesterday, today, and forever.”

  “I don’t understand.” He stares wordlessly, offering no other explanation. I groan in impatience. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to be a knight. I don’t want to be a Time Bearer. I want to go home!”

  Father Time snaps his fingers. Every clock in the storefront stops, the silence deafening. He lowers his hand and they restart their march, all of them ticking and tocking sharply in perfect rhythm.

  “Your purpose, and the gifts you were given to fulfill that purpose, would come to you sooner if you would open your heart,” he says firmly. “You keep trying to change what was, when you should be concentrating on what will be. The past is out of your control.”

  He speaks of control, but I was given none over my own heart. The first nights after I woke to learn my family was gone were agony. In my darkest moment, I wished my uncle had not helped me survive. What happened in my past very much affects my present and future.

  “Markham changed everything,” I say. “You let him, and you continue to let him.”

  Father Time’s voice softens, and with it, the ticking clocks around us gentle. “We replaced your heart with a timepiece, but the essence of who you are was not altered. You will find wholeness in accepting your place as Time Bearer. Do more than survive, Everley Donovan. Bloom.” He waves his hand over the daisy in my grasp, and the flower blossoms fully, the yellow petals spreading wider.

  He tips the brim of his hat at me and vanishes between the next tick and tock of the clocks.

  The second he disappears, the clocks resume their rival tempos, a loud, disorganized mess of noise I associate with home. But I am not permitted to stay, because my spirit starts to float upward. I catch one more glimpse of my uncle in his workshop and then pass through the ceiling and into the rooftops.