London, September 1876
The clock counted every painful second with ticks as thunderous and regular as a heartbeat. It was half past two, the hands slowly climbing their way up to three o’clock. Ten minutes hadn’t yet passed, but already Daphne felt as if she had been sitting here all day.
It didn’t help that the chair beneath her was uncomfortably hard. The plain, whitewashed room contained better, padded seats than the wooden one her mother had been slumped in when she arrived, but Daphne didn’t want to drag over another and draw attention, lest it upset her mother.
St. Agnes’s Home for Women was a quiet place, where residents woke at seven in the morning and went to bed at seven in the evening. After they performed chores and underwent treatment in the afternoon, they gathered in the parlor for tea and socialization. Over and over, the cycle reset every night to begin again at dawn, like the old Greek tale of a mechanical eagle pecking out the fire-stealer’s liver.
The radio crackled and Daphne started; she’d forgotten it was on. The box beside them was a clunky, wooden-framed device that had grown popular in the last few months, a new marvel of telegraphy. Her mother liked to turn it on after luncheon, according to the nurses. The knobs were large and stained with greasy fingerprints.
“—it is, of course, quite an honor, and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that England is quite proud of Her Majesty. Only fitting she should officially be named Queen-Empress of India this year. She’s done a marvel there already, even after the events of the Mutiny—”
The male voice coming through the speakers was tinny and high-pitched. Daphne wished she could turn the dial down, but her mother raptly watched the radio, as though the words would form an image if she stared hard enough.
Daphne realized that her mother’s fair hair was beginning to pale, her thin hands knobby and dry. A hawk-sharp face had grown even sharper in this place, her nose and chin more prominent, her eyes more sunken. Still, she had managed to hold onto a bit of beauty about her mouth and cheekbones, relics of a time when men’s eyes would linger as she passed them on the street, even when she tugged her young daughter behind her.
Those other eyes had meant nothing; Daphne’s father’s had been the only ones that had mattered. Until they’d closed forever, and her mother’s had grown vacant.
“—so let’s all congratulate Her Majesty on a job well done!”
Daphne leaned forward. “Mother,” she said softly, “don’t you want to speak with me?”
Her mother sighed, gaunt shoulders rising with the breath. “What is there to talk about?”
Me. My job. How the hospital staff is treating you. If they medicated you last night to make you sleep.
“We can discuss the news.” Daphne gestured to the radio. “What do you make of it?”
“Make of what?”
“Her Majesty being named Queen-Empress.” The subject of India had always been a delicate one between them, yet Daphne still scrounged up a thimbleful of hope that this, at least, would spur her mother into conversation.
Her mother’s shoulders lifted again, this time in a shrug.
Daphne leaned back, defeated. A year ago, she would have prattled on just to fill the empty space. Now she didn’t bother. She could no more conjure hope than she could conjure birds from thin air. She’d learned too soon how painful it was to have disappointment constantly sinking its barbs into her. How they liked to twist and rip her open, filling her with holes.
A girl full of holes had no room for hope.
Daphne tried to visit St. Agnes’s at least once a week, but she wondered if her mother would even notice if she stopped coming. Guilt choked her at the thought, and she looked down at the weak sunshine that touched the edges of her boots. The distant roar of a busy London rumbled through an open window under the radio’s chatter. Daphne found it strangely soothing. She was unquestionably a child of London, bred from metal and steam and ash. All better caretakers than the woman before her.
Her whole life, her family had suffered echoes of the scandal caused when her English mother had married a man born to an English officer and an Indian woman. The struggle certainly had not improved after her father had passed. Listless days and frantic days and kill me days and I hate you days. Days when Daphne had been glad to be an apprentice clock mechanic, busy earning her own money, and days when she’d been reluctant to leave her mother alone to play with knives and hollow herself with hunger.
Doctors had advised committing her mother to the asylum many times, but it wasn’t until she had nicked Daphne with one of her treasured knives that she’d finally condemned them both: her mother to this place, herself to loneliness.
Daphne looked around the room. A nurse shuffled to each woman, handing out little pills. A weary-looking woman with frizzing hair stuck her hand out for the proffered tablet, then knocked it back like it was a tumbler of whiskey.
“Dreams,” her mother muttered. Daphne wondered if she had misheard. Then, again: “Dreams.”
“Dreams? Of what?”
Her mother lifted a hand and let it fall back heavily into her lap. “I have them.”
The nurse stopped beside them and offered a pill. Obediently, without even looking down, her mother accepted it and swallowed.
Daphne waited for the nurse to leave before she repeated, “Dreams of what?”
“My parents. My old stuffed rabbit. A silk fan my uncle brought back from China. James.”
Daphne winced at her father’s name. “Do you … miss these things?” Her mother nodded. “I’m sorry. I wish I could give them to you.”
“So do I,” she whispered.
They slipped into silence again, but it was a different kind; not the silence of deep water, but the silence of a lazy Sunday. Daphne almost felt pleased. It had been weeks since her mother had spoken so many words.
The radio warbled, and her mother instinctively leaned forward to adjust the knobs. When the channel returned clearly, the high-voiced announcer was still at it:
“—tell them to try Bill’s Brake Solution, the only solution to all your automotive troubles. Now we—oh.” The radio was unnaturally quiet for twenty loud ticks of the clock. “It seems we have incoming news from the jewel colony itself.”
Daphne grew very still.
The announcer cleared his throat. “Early this morning, a protest broke out in the heart of the city of Rath, where their clock tower stands. In the midst of the commotion, there was a loud report, and a mechanism within the tower was blown to pieces.”
Daphne couldn’t tear her eyes away from the radio. Neither could anyone else in the room.
“Although the rioters were subdued, the cause of the explosion remains unknown. After consulting the local clock mechanics, it’s been confirmed that the tower … has fallen.”
Hushed whispers and gasps from the other women. Daphne’s vision tunneled. Suddenly, she was back at that moment of perfect horror in Dover, frozen as the world went white and time shuddered to a stop.
Her body rang with an echo of that terror. As nausea clenched her belly, she swore she could smell blood.
“Soldiers helped the injured out of the rubble, but a search through the debris yielded no bodies. The central frame of the clockwork has not yet been located.”
Muttering issued from the radio, the announcer conferring with someone just beyond the microphone. “At this time, there is no clear connection between the riot and the tower falling. The strangest part the soldiers have reported”—the announcer’s voice faded—“is that Rath has not Stopped. There is no barrier.
“So far, time continues to move forward.”
Daphne released a sharp breath, then inhaled another. The announcer must be mistaken. The news was coming all the way from India. Along the way, some piece of the report must have been misinterpreted.
It wasn’t possible for a city to run without its tower.
“Unfortunately, we know nothing further regarding this incident, but we hope to have more information soon.” There was a lengthy pause. “And now, the season’s cricket rankings.”
The room gradually stirred back to life. Voices rose in speculation, some entranced by the report, some startled, some skeptical. Her mother continued to watch the radio.
Daphne thought of the clicking sounds she’d heard just before the Dover clockwork had exploded. Of the little girl who had flickered before her eyes. Daphne rubbed her neck where a small scar lingered. There was a larger, more jagged scar on her shoulder where a gear had cut her, and it ached.
Music drifted from the radio. Or at least, Daphne thought it was coming from the radio until she realized her mother was singing.
“Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock.” Her voice was raspy and thin; she had not sung in years. “The clock struck one, the mouse ran down …”
Daphne gaped at her mother as she sang, gripping the wooden armrests of her chair.
“The clock struck one, the clock fell down …”
Daphne stood, uttering a quick goodbye before she hurried from the room. Her mother didn’t even look up.
The once comforting roar of London became overwhelming as soon as Daphne stepped outside, swallowed by sticky heat and smoke and the ripe odor of bodies. She was jostled this way and that, following the current like a clueless fish.
When she found her motorbike, she threw a leg over its metal bulk but didn’t start it up. Instead, she sat waiting for her blood to settle and her pulse to grow quiet, staring at the macadam road beneath her as her shoulder throbbed.
The clock struck one, the clock fell down …
It was happening again.