The Lost Track of Time

by Paige Britt

  substance was spread in a thick layer between two slices of bread. She took a

  small, uncertain bite and was surprised to find it tasted a little bit like peanut

  butter and a whole lot like chocolate.

  “What did I tell you?” said Dill through a mouthful of sandwich. “Wise choice.”

  After the first bite, Penelope hardly tasted her sandwich. She was too busy

  thinking about the journey ahead. “Are you sure we should go to Chronos City?”

  she prodded Dill.

  “I can’t think of a more unlikely place to find the Great Moodler,” he

  answered. “Can you?”

  “No, but won’t there be Clockworkers on the lookout? What if we get

  caught and taken to the tower?”

  Dill stuffed the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and began to lick his

  fingers clean. “I agree,” he said in between licks. “That is a possibility.”

  Penelope put down her sandwich. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “And

  where will we look?”

  “No idea,” said Dill. “You could try the moodle hat again. I brought it along.”

  Penelope shook her head. Nothing came to mind before. It was bound to

  happen again. “I guess we’ll just have to hope for some awfully good hunches,”

  she said.

  Dill nodded. “A hunch can take you a very long way.”

  The Coo-Coo returned from his dinner and the rest of the evening was

  spent planning their

  search for the

  Great Moodler.

  First thing in the morning, the bird would take Dill and Penelope to the farthest

  reaches of Chronos City. If he came any closer, he risked being seen and taken

  away. The Coo-Coo would return to the same spot in three days to see

  what they had discovered. At that point they would regroup and decide what

  to do next. Nobody talked about what they would do if Dill and Penelope

  didn’t discover anything, or if they got captured by Clockworkers. It was too

  terrifying.

  Once the plan was settled, they all went to bed. Dill and Penelope slept

  on the floor on pallets stuffed with the Coo-Coo’s giant feathers. The Coo-Coo

  slept in his nest, head tucked under a wing, his plume bobbing in time to his

  snores. Every sixty minutes he popped awake and scurried outside to sing the

  hour. None of this seemed to disturb Dill, but Penelope always woke with a

  start. At first she used the time to write in her notebook, capturing with words

  as best she could the events of her day. But soon she grew too tired to hold her

  pen, so she simply lay awake trying to imagine what her parents were doing.

  Were they trying to find her? Was her mother organizing a search party? Was

  her father giving pep talks to worried parents in the neighborhood? Or had they

  simply gotten on with their lives as if she had never existed? When sleep finally

  overtook her, Penelope fell into a dream.

  She was riding on the Coo-Coo’s back, soaring over the Range of

  Possibilities. Her mother was seated behind her, smiling and laughing,

  pointing at the beautiful mountains. It was wonderful! Penelope flung

  open her arms and trailed her fingers in the air. Splat! Something soft and sticky

  stuck to her hands. It smelled like daisies. She licked her fingers. Clouds!

  She was eating fluffy white clouds and they tasted like cotton candy, just

  as she always thought they would. Penelope reached out for more, but instead

  of sticking to her fingers, the clouds shrank back. Penelope looked over her

  shoulder. The Shadow was rolling across the sky, consuming everything in its

  path. The clouds were disappearing as if sucked up into a vacuum.

  The Coo-Coo sensed the danger and began to struggle, beating his

  wings harder and faster. “Hold on!” shouted Penelope to her mother. Her

  mother dug her nails into Penelope’s waist, but the pull of the Shadow was

  too strong. Her grip weakened. “Don’t let go!” Penelope pleaded, but it

  was too late.

  Whoosh!

  There was a horrible sucking sound and her mother vanished into the

  darkness.

  Penelope longed to cry out, to tell her mother she would save her, but she

  could hardly breathe, much less speak. She felt like a rock, heavy and dumb. A

  thousand pounds at least. The Shadow drew closer, stretching out to meet her.

  Soon it would swallow her.

  Penelope felt herself sliding off the bird and everything faded into black.

  “Wake up! Wake up!”

  Penelope opened one frazzled eye. Dill was leaning over her, pack in hand.

  “Come on!” he begged.

  She struggled to sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  The Coo-Coo stood near the doorway, hopping nervously about.

  “Coo-coo! Time we . . . flew-flew!”

  “Yes, yes, yes! We’ve got to go!” Dill practically screamed. “No time for

  explanations.”

  Penelope stumbled over to the Coo-Coo, slipping on her shoes as she

  went. Dill cupped his hands together to make a step and Penelope climbed

  onboard the bird’s back. Once she was settled, Dill took a running leap and

  landed — umph — behind her. He was barely able to fling his legs up and over

  before the agitated bird bolted out the door and into the dawn.

  Penelope couldn’t understand what was wrong. It was a beautiful

  morning. The arms of the sun were just beginning to stretch across the sky.

  Where the sunlight touched, white clouds turned gold. The gold was reflected

  in the mountaintops and made their pastel peaks shine. Below the peaks,

  birds were waking the world with the first songs of day.

  “Why are we in such a hurry?” she shouted.

  chapter twelve

  Almost as if in answer she heard the boom of dynamite. Penelope looked

  down. Swarms of trucks were at the foot of the Coo-Coo’s mountain.

  “A . . . crew-crew . . . of workers arrived at my mountain first thing this

  morning,” called the bird.

  “They’ve picked up their pace!” yelled Dill. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  The bird veered sharply to the east toward Chronos City — toward the

  Shadow. Even though morning had arrived over the Coo-Coo’s mountain,

  the air here had a gray pallor, as if the sun were shining through a dirty filter.

  Penelope stared at the wasteland below them. Now she knew the miles of rocks

  and boulders were the remains of once-beautiful mountains. The farther they

  flew, the flatter the terrain below them grew. The rocks and boulders turned to

  pebbles and dust. The pebbles and dust turned into a dirt road, and the dirt road

  gave way to asphalt. The City had begun.

  The bird started a slow, circling descent before landing near a large

  rock. Dill and Penelope quickly dismounted. When they were both safely

  on the ground, Dill turned to the Coo-Coo, hand outstretched. “We’ll do

  our best to find the Great Moodler,” he promised. “Thank you for all

  your help.”

  “Yes,” agreed Penelope, holding her hand out as well. “Thank you.”

  The Coo-Coo hesitated for a moment before rushing at Dill and Penelope

  and scooping them up in his wings. Huge tears slid down his face and splashed

  onto the asphalt. “Boo-hoo-hoo . . . boo-hoo-hoo,” he cried. “Please . . . do-do . . .

  be careful.”

  Dill and Penelope made re
peated, although muffled, promises to be as

  careful as they could and return to this spot in three days with any news of the

  Great Moodler. The Coo-Coo finally released them and took off into the air.

  Dill and Penelope watched him until he disappeared, and then they turned to

  face the road.

  “Here goes,” said Dill, his voice grim.

  Penelope shuddered. “Here goes.”

  Off they went, heading for the City, their hearts heavy with the memory

  of the Clockworkers waiting at the foot of the Coo-Coo’s mountain.

  As they walked, the sun rose higher in the sky and the day grew warm.

  After a while, the road widened from a single lane to two, then three, before blos-

  soming into an intersection. The intersection was shaped like the spoke of a wheel,

  with roads stretching in twelve different directions. Off in the distance they

  could see the outline of the City, running across the entire horizon like a wall.

  Dill and Penelope came to a halt. “Which road should we take?” asked

  Penelope. There were so many to choose from. How would they know which

  one was right?

  Just then Dill’s stomach let out a loud growl. “I’d say follow a hunch, but

  I’m so hungry I doubt I could get very far. Let’s eat breakfast.” Dill dug around

  in his pack for a moment before unearthing a small brown envelope. “Hold

  out your hand,” he instructed, and shook a bunch of tiny gray pellets into

  Penelope’s palm. Penelope just assumed they were some sort of mushroom and

  popped them into her mouth.

  “Good gracious,” cried Dill. “One at a time!”

  Too late. The tiny pellets exploded in Penelope’s mouth, filling it with a

  sticky, puffy substance. The pellets grew to five times their original size. Then

  ten times. Then twenty.

  “You’re eating mushmellows,” explained Dill. “A cross between mush-

  rooms and marshmallows. I invented them as rations for long trips. But you

  really should eat them one at a time.”

  Penelope tried to say, “Got it.” But it came out more like “Awt ehh.”

  “You could live off these for days and days,” Dill rattled on, popping a

  mushmellow in his own mouth. “They’re full of protein and all sorts of nutri-

  ents. Not to mention, they’re yummy. Delicious. Absolutely scrumptious.”

  Penelope just nodded. Her cheeks were so full they were beginning to

  hurt. She tried to move the mushmellows around in her mouth, but there was

  no room to maneuver.

  “Try sucking on it,” offered Dill and delicately placed another pellet

  on his tongue.

  Penelope squeezed in her cheeks and tried to draw a breath. Gurgle. An

  odd sound came from the back of her throat as her saliva went to work breaking

  down the sticky substance. After a few moments the mushmellows began to

  shrink and slid down her throat.

  Gurgle. Gurgle. This time the gurgling sound came from her stomach.

  Penelope looked down in surprise. The mushmellows had continued to expand.

  It looked like she was carrying a bowl underneath her overalls.

  “Just a minor side effect,” said Dill, patting his own protruding belly. “It’ll

  go down in a minute. I might need to fiddle with the recipe a bit.” They sat there

  quietly, digesting their breakfast, until Dill let out a laugh. “Look! I’ve got a

  hunch!” He was staring out of the corner of his eye at a tiny, translucent

  creature on his shoulder. He cocked his head to one side so he could listen to

  it better. “Someone’s coming,” he said slowly, as if repeating what he heard.

  Penelope didn’t like the sound of that. She quickly swallowed the last of

  her mushmellows. “Someone who?” she asked.

  Dill listened to his hunch, his thick brows huddled over his eyes.

  “Someone . . . someone . . . from the City,” he said finally.

  They heard them before they saw them. Far off in the distance came the

  sound of sirens. The sound grew louder and louder as it grew closer and closer.

  Soon they saw the lights — flashing lights that quickly became police cars.

  The cars approached from every direction, speeding down each of the twelve

  roads until . . .

  Screech. Twelve squad cars came to a stop at the same exact moment.

  Click. Twelve car doors opened and twelve uniformed police officers

  stepped out.

  Slam. Twelve car doors closed.

  Twelve police officers glared from under twelve hats, their lips

  flattened in grim frowns. Each officer had a large patch sewn onto his or

  her left shoulder with black, angular markings on it: I, II, III, IV, V . . .

  Penelope knew what the markings were — she had seen them before on a

  grandfather clock. VI, VII, VIII . . . They were Roman numerals and they

  were used to mark time. IX, X, XI . . . Sure enough, the numbers went all

  the way to: XII.

  Suddenly a voice shouted at them through a bullhorn.

  “HALT RIGHT THERE!”

  Dill and Penelope stood frozen in the middle of the intersection as a pecu-

  liarly short police officer stepped forward. He was shaped like a fire hydrant,

  with a square lump of a head sitting on a pair of neckless shoulders. “It’s

  10:00 a.m. and you’re under arrest for idling at the crossroads. I am Officer X,

  man of the hour and keeper of the timepiece.” The policeman whipped out a

  pocket watch and dangled it in front of Penelope and Dill. “As you can see,

  you’ve disturbed the piece.”

  The watch did seem disturbed. The second hand swung wildly around

  and the minute hand was actually moving backward. Officer X snatched the

  watch back and snapped the cover closed. “You’ll have to come with me,” he

  barked.

  Penelope’s mouth dropped open. They couldn’t go with him. This wasn’t

  part of the plan! She whirled around and stared at Dill, willing him to do

  something.

  Dill straightened his jacket and then cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir,

  but we —”

  “Now!” yelled the officer, pointing at the squad car. “We haven’t got all day.”

  Dill and Penelope both cringed and scurried over to the car. Once they

  reached the door, Officer X leaned forward and snatched Dill’s pack from his

  back. “I’ll take that,” he said, dumping the contents on the ground. He poked

  at things with his foot, making sure to stomp on the leftover sandwiches. He

  stopped when he saw the moodle hat. “What’s this?”

  Penelope held her breath. What would Dill say? If moodling was illegal,

  then having a moodle hat was certainly forbidden. Dill just shrugged an inno-

  cent shrug. “A toy,” he answered.

  In its collapsed state, the hat did look like it could be a toy. Officer X

  must have thought so, too, because he picked it up and threw it as far as it

  would go. Then he turned back to Dill and Penelope and opened the car

  door. “Get in.”

  They did as they were told. Officer X slammed the door and slid behind

  the wheel. He executed a quick U-turn and sped off in the direction he had

  come. Eleven police cars followed, sirens screaming.

  — — —

  As they drove, the monstrous skyline of Chronos City came closer and closer.

  Buildings crowded the sky like giants fi
ghting for air, their heads lost in the

  Shadow, their feet swarming with cars. The outskirts of the never-ending City

  were full of bulldozers, concrete mixers, and giant cranes. It seemed like a new

  building was completed every minute and caravans of moving trucks clogged

  the highways.

  Penelope thought about the Coo-Coo. They were tearing down his moun-

  tains for this? It was too horrible to think about! And now their plan to help — to

  find the Great Moodler and stop Chronos — was ruined. Penelope would never

  moodle again . . . Dill would never find his lost way . . . and the Coo-Coo’s

  home would be destroyed. Penelope felt more like an anomaly than ever!

  Just then Dill reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry,”

  he whispered and began poking his face all over as if counting warts.

  Penelope smiled weakly. He was right. Now was not the time to worry. It

  wouldn’t help a bit. Instead, she needed to focus and start working on a new

  plan. She took a deep breath and tapped her forehead. Dill gave her a

  knowing look and tapped his forehead, too. Good. They were both working

  on it. Together they would figure out something.

  Penelope peered out of the squad car, trying to determine where they

  were. The city was built around one gigantic structure — the clock tower. It

  was taller than the tallest skyscraper and visible from every corner of the City.

  Its sharp spire pointed imperiously at the sky. Beneath the spire were four clock

  faces, one on each of its four sides. The clock faces shone with a garish green

  light. They peered down on the City, bathing it in a hateful glow. The sun was

  nowhere to be seen.

  Even from miles away, Penelope could see exactly what time it was on

  the tower: 10:48 and 32 seconds . . . 33 seconds . . . 34 seconds . . . She was

  mesmerized by the second hand as it swung around and around. Where did all

  the time go? she wondered.

  Dill nudged her sharply. “If you stare at it too long, you’ll reset your

  internal clock.”