by Tara Sim
“I’m returning her call about the bookkeeping position here in Chelmsford. Will you let her know she’s been selected for an interview in two weeks’ time? Thursday, at ten o’clock.”
Chelmsford?
His throat was too tight to swallow, but he let out a strangled, “Yes.”
“Thank you, dear. Have a nice day.”
He stared at the telephone until a loud and unpleasant blaring exploded from the receiver, then slammed it down and went upstairs. He couldn’t remember how to put away his socks. The rubbish bin stayed overturned where he’d kicked it. Unable to stand the questions that stabbed the backs of his eyes, he retreated to bed.
The front door opened and closed around ten. Danny had dozed off, and his stomach was hollow and vengeful. He went downstairs as if marching to the gallows.
His mother was puffing on a cigarette in the kitchen, flitting about like a worker bee. Smoke streaked the air in gray clouds. Danny waved them away.
“Mum?”
“Still up, are you? How’s the auto?”
“Cass has it in the shop. It needs a new boiler.”
Leila clucked her tongue. “Can’t be helped, the poor thing is getting on in years.” She dragged a pot onto the stove. “Had a chat with Cassie’s mum. She told me Cassie’s going to a social dance. You’ll be going, I hope? There’s a nice suit in your closet you never wear. I’ll straighten it up and make sure it still fits.”
“Mum?” He waited until she turned around. Leila’s face had become lined around her mouth, her lips pursed as if she always thought she were smoking. Runaway curls had sprung free from her coiffure, giving her a particularly mad look. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion.
“What is it, Danny?”
He took a deep breath. “Why have you applied to a job in Chelmsford?”
She stood stock-still, her dark eyes like a frightened deer’s when the hunter’s caught a glimpse of it. She turned and rearranged the pot, then grabbed a few potatoes on the counter.
“Mum.”
“It’ll pay more than my current job,” she said, studying the potato in her hand. “Much more.”
“Chelmsford is at least two hours away. How d’you expect to get there every day?” When she remained quiet, he finally understood. “You want us to move?”
“Chelmsford’s a nice place, and—”
“My life’s in London,” he said. “My friends, my job, my—everything’s here, Mum! Everything is in London.”
“Then you can stay here,” she said, “and I’ll move to Chelmsford.”
Life tilted a bit, and he looked at it from this new angle. Living in London without his mother? Was such a thing possible, or was it on the list of things he thought would never happen?
He knew he could have a place of his own, some grimy flat above a barber’s shop—that’s where people his age went to live, wasn’t it?—but then he would be truly alone. The gaping threat of the future chilled him.
Perhaps his mother simply didn’t want to be near him anymore. Perhaps, finally, she had stopped caring.
“You have a job, you have connections,” Leila said. “You’ll be fine here on your own.”
Danny detected something stiff about her, something in the way her eyes moved to the pot to avoid his gaze. He thought of Chelmsford and the towns around it. What the mechanics were trying to build on the very edge of its time zone, right where it met Maldon’s.
“You want to go because of Dad.” He said the words slowly, his voice hard with accusation. “You want to be closer to Maldon.” Danny flinched when she shoved the pot away with a scraping clatter.
“Of course I want to be closer to him! Why do you make it out like that’s a bad thing? I miss him, Danny. We both do.”
Danny was alarmed, and ashamed, to see that her cheeks were wet. She turned and wiped her face around a sniff like paper tearing.
“It won’t bring him back,” he said quietly. They had lived that first year in anticipation, thinking Christopher would come through the door at any moment. But just because his father now lived where time stood still didn’t mean their lives could stand still also.
“I know that,” his mother said. “I only want to be closer to him, to see if I can f-feel him, somehow.” Her shoulders shook. “If it were you, if it had h-happened to someone you … Wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t you do anything for the one you love?”
Danny felt the wound again, the sharp slide of stone. He clutched his stomach and closed his eyes. He deserved this. He deserved her leaving him.
Nothing would get through to her now.
“A woman named Collins called,” he said. “You have an interview in two weeks. Thursday, ten o’clock.”
Leila turned her head, her eyelashes formed into wet spikes. “Thank you, Danny.”
He went to bed hungry.
The news made the front page of next day’s paper:
ROTHERFIELD CLOCK TOWER BOMBED—CITIZENS ALARMED
Danny dropped the paper like it had caught fire. Bile burned the back of his throat.
“Don’t leave it on the floor,” his mother scolded. She bent to pick it up, but stopped when she read the headline. She turned to Danny, horrified.
He ran to the toilet just in time to empty his stomach.
The Lead didn’t waste time calling an assembly of clock mechanics. The small crowd of protesters was more riled up than ever, and police had to patrol the outside of the Affairs building as mechanics filed inside. Danny ducked his head and pretended not to hear the shouts and calls, the yelled questions he couldn’t answer.
He bumped into the mechanic in front of him in his hurry. She half turned with a frown, crinkling the diamond-shaped tattoo by her eye. Daphne Richards.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Maybe you should keep your eyes off the floor, Mr. Hart,” she replied. She slipped away before he could respond.
Solemn murmurs filled the assembly hall, speculating about the recent attack. Tom and George spoke with heads bent close together. Danny often felt eyes on him, on his scar. No one said a word to him.
The Lead announced that there would be further investigations, and that any suspicious behavior was to be reported immediately. Danny thought about Colton’s tower. Would the police come back? Would they find out that he’d been there on his own?
He hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday, but he felt ready to throw up again.
As the mechanics filed out after the assembly, Danny spotted Matthias in the far back. The man seemed to be looking for him, so Danny hid behind a group of apprentices. He wasn’t in the mood to be fussed over right now. He had already endured his mother’s particular brand of worry.
That morning, she had knocked repeatedly on the washroom door and asked if he was all right. The first wave of panic had been the worst, seizing his limbs and smothering his lungs. Danny hadn’t been able to move for some time, slumped against the tub and staring blankly at the wall.
Again. It’s happened again. In his mind, the clockwork gears blasted apart repeatedly, blossoming out like a sharp, deadly flower before retracting to its framework and exploding all over again.
By the time he’d found his way to his room, his mother was sitting on his bed. She’d been pale and frantic, twisting her thin hands together, dried tears on her face.
“Danny, do you need anything?”
He had shaken his head. Better to pretend he was fine; he didn’t want to go back to the hospital. He’d been forced to stay there after the incident in Shere, and it had made him feel lesser. Weaker. Alone.
His mother had cried then, too. He didn’t want to see her cry anymore.
In the atrium someone tapped his shoulder, returning him to the present. The Lead.
“Daniel, a word?”
He knows about Colton. He knows I went back to Shere.
Danny followed him, hands clenched at his sides. When they got to the Lead’s office, they didn’t bother to sit.
“D
o you know anything about this attack?” the Lead asked.
Danny was thrown off balance, and it took him a moment to answer. “No, sir.”
The Lead sighed. “The tower isn’t too damaged, thankfully. But we can’t let our guard down again.”
By some miracle, Rotherfield hadn’t been Stopped. The bomb had been misplaced or defective; the clockwork itself was fine. However, a clock face had been shattered and some of the paneling would need to be rebuilt. Time was jumping around the town, and officials wondered whether or not to evacuate residents.
It had been a close call.
“I’m starting to wonder if this is what happened to Maldon,” the Lead said. “What do you think, Daniel?”
“Maybe, sir.”
But for once, it wasn’t his father he was thinking of. It was Colton.
Did he worry about Colton’s tower? Of course. Did he want to go there? Yes. Did he still think about that kiss? Definitely.
Would he go to Enfield?
He shouldn’t. He knew now that a clock spirit or a bomb could wreck the tower. Danny could at least prevent one of those.
Instead of going to Enfield, he did something even more absurd. He waited a couple of days until the normal flow of time had been restored in Rotherfield, then drove two hours to the town. When he arrived, he almost turned around and drove straight back to London.
“Don’t be a coward,” he muttered to himself.
A mechanic was already here. A well-to-do mechanic, by the looks of the auto parked outside the town square. The auto must have come from London; it was much too nice for the country roads around Rotherfield. The black paint was shining and spotless, the wheels perfectly inflated. It looked as though the vehicle had been bought yesterday.
Wary, Danny walked down the narrow street. The smallness of the place unnerved him. He was so used to the sprawling metropolis of London that these tiny towns felt too close for comfort.
Danny passed an alcove carved into the side of a stone building. Inside stood an old shrine much like the one he’d seen in Shere. This one had been partially destroyed, but whether by the elements or by man or both, it was hard to say. The base of the statue was still visible, as was the scalloped pattern of what looked to be a wing. Caelum, then. The Gaian god of the sky.
Danny reached the square and looked up at the tower. It stood about the same height as Colton’s, but had four faces instead of one. The western face had been blown out by the bomb, leaving behind jagged bits of glass like yellow fangs in a gaping mouth.
According to the report, mechanics had stabilized time using the power of the other three clock faces. If this had happened to Colton’s tower, with its sole face, the town wouldn’t be so lucky.
Police surrounded the tower. Citizens stood a short distance away, muttering among themselves. Danny watched them for signs of protest, but his eyes kept returning to the empty, faceless circle.
“What are you doing here?”
Danny jumped. A familiar mechanic stood across the street, glaring in his direction.
“Lucas,” Danny said stiffly.
Now the other auto made sense.
“I asked what you’re doing here,” Lucas demanded, eyes narrowing slightly. Danny had always thought his eyelashes were absurdly long for a bloke.
“I …” Danny couldn’t say he was on assignment, not with Lucas here already. “I have a friend here. I was checking up on him.”
Lucas smiled. It was the type of smile that didn’t mean nice things.
“You have a friend?”
“Har, you’re so clever. I also wanted to get a look at the tower.”
The smile shifted into a frown. “There’s no need. I’ve already had a look, and so have two others.” Lucas’s gaze dropped down to Danny’s chin. “Unless you think you’re the expert.”
Danny’s neck grew hot. “I’m curious,” he said, heading for the tower. Lucas blocked his path.
“It’s closed off. No one’s allowed inside.”
“Except for mechanics, right?”
Lucas grabbed his arm when Danny made to step around him. “You’re not a mechanic. You’re an apprentice disguised as a mechanic.”
Danny yanked his arm away. “Shove off.”
“What’s going on here?” A constable had come to see what the commotion was about. Lucas put on an innocent show.
“No trouble at all, Constable,” he said, flashing his teeth in a grin. Unlike Danny, Lucas kept his brown hair neatly trimmed, just bordering on austere. Lucas’s clothes were fresh and new, all crisp lines and gleaming buttons. Danny resisted the urge to run his fingers over the threadbare collar of his own shirt.
The officer grunted and moved away, already bored. If Danny had attempted that, he would’ve been hauled off.
There was something to say for looking like you had money.
“You’re not going to figure out anything we don’t already know,” Lucas muttered. “You think you can take some notes, report back to the Lead, and be showered with praise as usual? It’s not that simple. Why are you toadying up to him, anyway? You miss your dear old dad so much you need a replacement?”
Danny’s hands curled into fists, but he couldn’t do anything in full view of the constables. Instead, he imagined someone pummeling Lucas’s face until his teeth looked like the shards of glass above.
He was right, though. There was nothing to be done here that the others weren’t already doing.
Fuming, Danny turned to where his auto was parked. Lucas laughed at his back.
He bumped into someone on the street and mumbled an apology. Danny hesitated, then decided he might as well make one last effort. “Do you know anything about the tower?” The man shook his head. “You didn’t see anything unusual before it happened, or after?”
The man pushed his glasses up his nose. “Not that I recall.”
Danny made to turn away, but the man cleared his throat. “Wait, there was one thing. The night before, I was walking through the square on my way home. When I passed the tower, I thought I heard …”
“What?” Danny pressed.
“Well, it sounds silly, but I thought I heard someone crying.”
Danny’s head was spinning with too many thoughts, and suddenly the house around him felt too small. Grabbing his coat, he decided what he needed was a walk to stretch his legs and some conversation to stretch his mind.
Danny walked through Hyde Park and enjoyed the bracing autumn air. He watched ladies taking a morning stroll with their servants, gentlemen on horses, young girls acting as caretakers for rich children. But he mostly watched the lower-class mothers and fathers chasing after their own children, laughing and making memories. Danny had his own cache of such memories: his father lifting him up on his shoulders to see Punch and Judy shows, giving him crackers to feed the ducks, buying him sweets. Christopher never had much time to spare, focused on work as he was, but he’d still taken Danny out as often as possible.
He remembered trying to fly a kite, throwing it up as an offering to the wind, only to have it sadly plummet to the ground. Christopher had laughed and said the wind currents were probably better at the top of Big Ben.
“Can we fly a kite on top of the tower?” Danny had asked, excited by the notion. “Is that even possible?”
His father had grinned. “Anything is possible.”
They’d never had the chance to try.
Danny felt the pull of Big Ben even from here. If he focused hard enough, he could sense the fibers running through the city, enabling it to thrive. They were golden arteries attached to the heart of London, the clock that made sure the leaves fell and the snow would come.
Danny left the park and walked down a couple streets, toward a row house painted a shabby white trimmed in chipping blue. Like Christopher Hart, Matthias was addicted to his work, and could not be bothered with menial household chores like repainting. Matthias lived on the outskirts of Kensington, an admittedly wealthy district, but he had inherited th
e house from a rich aunt. His neighbors often expressed offense that he didn’t take better care of the place.
Danny walked through the creaking iron gate and knocked on the blue door. He heard a distant “Coming!” on the other side and waited with hands in his pockets. The heavy yellow drapes in the window swayed. Matthias sometimes complained about a draft in the old house.
The door was unbolted and Matthias stood in the doorframe, running a hand through his long brown hair.
“Danny Boy! What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t know if you were busy,” Danny said, half turning. “I can go if you are.”
“Nonsense. Wait right there.”
The door closed and he heard heavy footsteps. Danny burrowed his nose and mouth deeper into his scarf. Matthias never let him inside his house. When Danny had once asked why, he said he was embarrassed by the state of disrepair. Danny tried not to take it personally. Others would just as likely be turned away, if there was anyone besides him who even visited Matthias.
The man emerged a minute later, dressed for walking, his hair tied back. “Where to?”
“The park’s fine.”
They set off in comfortable silence. Matthias glanced over a few times, but Danny’s eyes stayed fixed on the ground.
They followed the stone path through a corridor of trees and sat on an empty bench across from a mother and her young daughter, who were eating a midday snack. The girl crumbled the bread of her sandwich for the hungry pigeons below.
“How’s that housemate of yours?” Danny asked. Matthias let a room for extra income.
“Why do you bring him up?”
“Thought I saw him at the window.”
“No, it’s that bloody draft again. I’ll get to fixing it soon.” He tapped his fingers on his thigh, then sighed. “You’ve been thinking about Rotherfield.”
“Who isn’t thinking about Rotherfield?”
“I reckon it must be difficult, what with Shere and all.” Matthias glanced at Danny’s scar. “The Lead will find out who’s behind the attack.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” Danny’s voice shook slightly, despite his best efforts to keep it even. “What if this just keeps happening until—”