Chainbreaker (Timekeeper)

by Tara Sim

  “I’ll be safe. People travel from England to India and back all the time.”

  “I know.” She bit her lower lip, and Danny knew he owed her this moment. She’d never used to worry so much, but ever since her older brother, William, got into a fatal auto accident, her world had been tinted a little darker and a little more dangerous.

  “There will be soldiers,” Danny added.

  “Oh. Well, that’s good, at least.” Still, her next breath was strained. “You’ll have to tell me all about it when you come home,” she said, thumping a fist against his chest.

  He thought again of that mysterious letter, lying crumpled in the drawer in his bedroom. We’ll be watching.

  “Cassie, just in case something happens—”

  “No,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that! You will come back.”

  “Cassie, listen.” He took her wrist. “Just in case, you have to make sure Colton will be all right. Check on him for me. Make sure he’s safe. And if anything happens to me, or if I come back and they exile me from Enfield … Please promise you’ll talk to him.” Colton liked Cassie. He would listen to her.

  She grimaced, and he shook her arm.

  “Cassie.”

  “Yes, all right. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thank you.”

  They stood together another minute, Danny listening to the autos passing up and down the street, the nearby whistle of a bird on a telephone wire. London seemed too familiar to leave. When he returned from India, he wondered if it would be the same: the autos coming and going, the birds singing. He wondered if his father would change his mind.

  “I should be go—”

  Cassie threw her arms around his neck, choking off his words. “Can’t I at least see you off, when you go?”

  “Yes. I’ll be back in London on Monday.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Drive safely.”

  As he started up the auto, she leaned in through the open window. “I’ll talk to your dad when you’re gone. If it’ll help.”

  “I don’t think it will.”

  “I can always use this,” she said, pulling a wrench from her pocket.

  To his amazement, a weak laugh escaped him. “Cass …” There was no way to tell her how much she meant to him. That she was the only person who could coax that laugh out of him when his world was on the brink of collapse. “Thank you.”

  She backed away and he drove down the street, toward Enfield.

  “You have to close your eyes,” Danny insisted.

  Colton rolled them instead. “I already know what it is.”

  “If you keep mouthing off, I won’t give it to you.”

  Colton shut his eyes at once, and Danny grinned. It felt odd to smile after his father’s anger the previous day. But after telling Colton about the assignment and the argument, some of the weight had lifted, mostly because Colton’s reaction to the whole situation had been so simple.

  “I may be similar to Evaline, but I’m not her. I won’t hurt myself while you’re gone.”

  “I know you won’t, but my father—”

  “Should come here.”

  “What?”

  “Here, to my tower. I’d like to speak with him.”

  The idea seemed absurd at first, but his father would be more likely to understand if he spoke to Colton. Strangely, the conversation had made him feel better. Perhaps he’d been overreacting to something that had an easy solution.

  Still, he had no idea what he would find when he returned from India.

  Now, standing in the clock room, Danny watched Colton waiting, his blond eyelashes quivering impatiently against his cheeks. Danny’s chest tightened with the urge to say so many things—things that went beyond language, things that felt the way the shape of Colton’s name felt. But every other word remained cramped and messy inside his head.

  He took Colton’s hand and placed the object on his palm. Colton’s eyes shot open and widened in delight. It was a photograph of Danny from the shoulders up, taken with a camera box Danny had borrowed from a friend of his mother’s. In the photo, Danny was looking at the camera, barely smiling. His hair had actually been somewhat tame that day.

  “I hope you like it, because that’s the best one of the lot,” Danny said. Cassie had wanted to take more, but Danny had been exhausted after an hour of posing.

  “I love it. Although I wish you were truly smiling. You look so nice when you smile and it shows in your eyes.”

  Danny blushed. “It was the best I could do.”

  Colton examined the photo for a while, then put it carefully in his pocket. “What about the one you took of me?”

  “It didn’t come out,” Danny sighed. “I didn’t expect it would. It was all blurry and out of focus.” He took his sketchbook and a pencil from his bag. “Since the photograph didn’t work, I’d like to draw you. If … If that’s all right.”

  Colton, always fond of watching Danny sketch, nodded eagerly.

  Danny directed Colton to sit on a box near the clock face—Danny had cleared most of them from the room, but had left a few to use as seats—and positioned him just so. Thankfully, clock spirits could sit still for a long time, so Danny didn’t have to bark at him about moving around. The clock tower bells rang four o’clock as he sketched. He tossed away the first attempt and focused more on the second, but it was difficult to concentrate when those amber eyes were taking in Danny just as thoroughly as he was taking in Colton.

  Danny carefully penciled in the tiny nuances of Colton’s face, the way his hair fell in a clockwise whorl, the small shadow of his nose against his cheek. Colton’s gaze never strayed from his own. Danny tried to capture those eyes, innocent and old and warm, but couldn’t quite manage it. He struggled to find the source behind what made those eyes so special.

  It’s the way he looks at me, he realized. Like nothing the world had to offer could compare to what sat before him in that moment.

  Each tiny stroke with his pencil was a plea. Don’t forget me. Don’t change the way you look at me. Please be here when I return.

  When he was finished, he showed the sketch to Colton. The clock spirit examined his own face and smiled softly.

  “Is that really what I look like?”

  “Yes.” In my eyes.

  They sat in the fading sunlight. Danny leaned beside Colton’s box, putting his head on the spirit’s thigh; he smelled of sunshine and winter mornings. Colton threaded his fingers through Danny’s hair.

  “I’ll miss you.”

  Neither was sure who said it first.

  Danny couldn’t sleep. He lay awake in bed, staring into the depths of his humble Enfield cottage, wondering if it would still be his in a few weeks’ time.

  Sighing loudly, he turned onto his back. The curtains were drawn across the window near his bed, but moonlight shone through the crescent window above, splashing across his sheets. Most nights, the moonlight crept up the bed, caressing his face briefly before it hid beyond the window. It seemed almost purifying.

  He didn’t want to think about tomorrow, or the day after. He wanted to stay right where he was and force the moon to stay still, to refrain from pulling the night onwards. But on the nightstand his timepiece ticked away the seconds, reminding him that the night would eventually end and time would go on as usual.

  There had been a moment—just one moment—when Danny had been able to manipulate time beyond the normal limits of the clock tower. Reaching out, he picked up the small cog that rested beside his timepiece and ran a thumb over its surface, thinking about how his blood had connected him to Enfield, when he had shifted time with just a thought.

  In India, time was moving forward even when towers were destroyed. Who was to say someone wasn’t controlling it the same way he’d controlled Enfield’s?

  A small knock made him jump. Danny threw off the covers and hurried to the door.

  Colton stood on the threshold with a sheepish smile.

  “What are you doin
g here?” Danny demanded.

  “Sorry. I wanted to see you.”

  Danny leaned out the doorway, looking both ways, then ushered Colton inside before he was seen. “Is something wrong?” Colton usually didn’t knock, taking great joy in waltzing into the cottage whenever Danny least expected it.

  “No, nothing’s wrong.”

  “You saw I couldn’t sleep,” Danny guessed.

  Colton shrugged. The spirit, like Cassie, tended to worry about him. Danny recalled the fever he had run back in February. He’d been too sick to leave his bed, so Colton had fed him broth and watched over him as he slept. It had almost felt normal.

  “I just wanted to see you,” Colton insisted. “To stay with you.” When Danny hesitated, studying him for the signs of weakening he’d shown in the factory, Colton added, “Please?”

  The thought of having Colton beside him was more comforting than having only the moon for company, so Danny passed him the small cog to put in his pocket for strength.

  “I still have to sleep, though,” Danny said as he crawled back under the covers. “You’ll be terribly bored.”

  “I won’t be.” Colton joined him under the blankets, settling into the space Danny left unoccupied.

  Danny shifted so they were face to face. “Did you mean it? About speaking to my father?” Colton nodded. “I don’t know if it will help, but you can try. Dad’s not unreasonable. I think he’s just scared.”

  “He was trapped in Maldon. It makes sense.”

  Danny breathed, in and out, a slow and steady pattern that Colton couldn’t imitate. As if reading his thoughts, Colton placed his fingers against Danny’s neck, feeling for his pulse.

  “I wish I could be like you. Things would be so much easier.”

  “Stop talking about it, Colton.” It’s too painful.

  Colton idly traced the vein down Danny’s neck until Danny shivered. “But it’s true. Your father likely wouldn’t have a problem if I wasn’t … this. I could offer you so much more.”

  “You’re fine just the way you are.”

  He couldn’t tell Colton that he secretly wished for the same thing: for them both to be the same, equal in all things. That he wanted what Colton could never give him. That life didn’t have to be made up of secrets and compromise.

  Slowly, Colton scooted closer. Danny could see the faint glow of his skin, the amber gleam of his eyes. The moonlight inched up the bed, contesting its silver shine against Colton’s gold.

  The spirit leaned in and kissed him. His lips were soft and parted easily. Danny closed his eyes and returned the pressure, matching the slow, thoughtful rhythm of his mouth as Colton’s thumb swept over his throat.

  The air around them warped slightly, and Danny could almost sense it gliding over his body. The timepiece still ticked on his bedside table. The moon still journeyed through the sky. But in this bed, time was momentarily forgotten.

  Colton reached under the covers and slid a hand up Danny’s nightshirt, over his bare ribs. Danny’s breath hitched.

  “I can’t give you much,” Colton said, “but I can give you something.”

  Colton gently turned him onto his back. The touches on Danny’s chest and sides seared into his skin. They made something deep within him tremble, the first signs of an earthquake traveling from core to surface. It didn’t feel like his body—it was as though Colton were touching someone else entirely.

  When Colton’s fingers reached his stomach, he finally found his voice. “You don’t have to.” His words barely stirred the air between them.

  “I want to.” Colton looked at Danny through his lashes, and they were spangled with moonlight. There was a tenderness in him that broke Danny’s heart a million times over. It was in the way Colton caressed his cheek, the slope of his neck. It was in the way he leaned down and kissed Danny on the mouth, slow and gentle, like testing new waters.

  “Can I?” Colton asked against his mouth.

  Danny shaped the word yes.

  Colton’s lips trailed down his neck. He found his pulse, life under his lips, and then there were teeth. Danny gasped, and Colton let out a small laugh, lower than usual, as he traced his name on Danny’s hip.

  Danny was burning. It scared him; he had never felt this way before, this punch-drunk sensation of affection and longing, allowing his body to speak for him. Allowing Colton to read that body to his own interpretation. Even the slight weight of him lying on top of Danny was too much, too close, too everything. He was going to turn the bed to ashes.

  His bones ached with the force of his want, this intangible thing now being measured in sighs and kisses and whispers. He ran his hands over Colton’s shoulders, pressed his palm to the still chamber where Colton’s heartbeat would have been. But Danny’s heart beat so hard he could feel it for the both of them, monstrous with desire.

  Everything was raging and desperate and splintering. The cracks started straight from the middle of his chest, where Colton’s tongue tasted his skin, to the insides of his thighs, where Colton made patterns with feathery fingertips. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see. Only feel. Only breathe. Only hear his blood echo on Colton’s lips.

  His chest pulled like a magnet, toward this brilliant golden boy who was everything.

  And those eyes, looking at him that way, devouring him like he was the shining one, like he was the one full of light. But it was Danny who was blinded. He pulled Colton closer and buried a hand in his hair, putting his lips to his temple, his jaw, anywhere he could reach. He tried to reach under his shirt, for the waistband of his trousers, but Colton gently caught his hand and pressed it to the bed.

  He nearly didn’t catch the way time contracted around them. Almost effortlessly Danny cast out his own power, reining Colton’s in, recognizing the moment when Enfield’s time got snarled in Colton’s emotions.

  But together they made a shield against the night, a barrier of golden threads where time was theirs to control. Each small contact scattered him across the sky, as distant and bright as stars. Every second Colton took from him was a second he gave back. Each gasp was like being reborn. Building and stretching, as thin as glass.

  “Danny,” Colton whispered in his ear.

  He shattered.

  Danny woke in the middle of the night to find Colton watching him. Half-embarrassed, Danny smiled shyly.

  “You don’t have to stay if you feel tired.”

  “I feel fine,” Colton said. Danny smoothed away the spirit’s fair hair. “What about you?”

  “Good. Thirsty.”

  Colton rose before he could get up, so Danny fell back onto the pillow. Fully dressed, Colton padded to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. Danny sat up and let the covers slip off his bare shoulders. Strangely, he wasn’t embarrassed anymore. He savored the weight of Colton’s hands and lips on his body, the welt of burn marks without the pain.

  “Come here a moment,” Danny said. Colton put the water on the nightstand and stood before where Danny knelt on the bed. He held Colton by the hips, looking up at him with curiosity.

  “You really can’t feel anything?”

  Colton shook his head. “I can feel your touch, but not like you do. It’s not the same.”

  “But …” He thought of what they’d just done, and that intense moment in the clock room, when time had skewed so sharply.

  “It’s more emotions than touch,” Colton explained. “I’m not sure how it works. I just can’t … do certain things. The things your body does.”

  “Oh.”

  Danny’s thumbs brushed up under Colton’s shirt. A silent question passed between them, and Colton nodded. Danny carefully removed the shirt to reveal Colton’s belly, flat and flawless and smooth to the touch. Danny couldn’t even feel any small, downy hairs on his skin. “You have a navel,” he said, surprised.

  Colton looked down. “Is that what it’s called?”

  Danny circled the spot with a fingertip. He leaned in and kissed it.

  “
Are you sure you can’t feel anything?”

  Colton smiled sadly. He framed Danny’s face with his hands, then trailed one down to his chest.

  “I feel this.” He pressed his palm over Danny’s beating heart. “That’s all I need.”

  Danny rested his head against Colton’s chest and wrapped his arms around his waist. There was a strange urgency to this moment, as if he held a memory, something made out of prisms of light. He didn’t want to separate himself from this thing that grew sharp and irresistible every time they were close. Every time he held him in his arms, or counted every shade of gold within his eyes, he felt it grow and spread and tangle deeper. It bled him with every tiny kiss Colton pressed to his jaw and every laugh he managed to draw from within him. He chimed like a bell, infectious and unfading.

  The moon was already gone. Tomorrow beckoned, and beyond was a land too far away and too unfamiliar to fully imagine.

  “Wait for me,” Danny whispered, holding Colton tighter.

  “I always do.”

  Danny stared at the fading wood of the front door for several minutes, silently willing his hand to reach for the knob. He was still caught up in memories of the night before, the weight and promise of Colton’s touch. It turned the world around him fuzzy and inconsequential.

  When he finally opened the door, he found his mother reading the paper at the kitchen table. She leapt to her feet.

  “Thank goodness!” She hurried over to hug him, the top of her head resting just underneath his chin.

  Danny was out of practice with hugging his mother, but as he uncertainly returned the embrace, it helped his mood somewhat. It was like embracing a thought instead of a woman, the kind of nostalgia that brings both a smile and a sigh.

  She stepped back to wipe her eyes. “We were afraid you wouldn’t come back. Your father was upset for scaring you off. For all he insists you’re grown now, he still has trouble remembering you aren’t fourteen anymore. We tried to call you.”

  Jane had told him his mother had rung twice, but Danny had claimed he was too busy. “Sorry, Mum. I just needed some time.” He looked around the room. “Where is he?”