The tower was quiet. Well, not entirely; it could never be truly quiet. Ticks reverberated through the floorboards, the pendulum swung in lazy arcs through the air like the beating of a bird’s wings, and gears slowly turned with a low and methodical hum. The orchestra of time.
Colton sat at the window of the clock room, gazing out at Enfield. The sun was shining in full force, drenching the streets, the roofs, and the people passing by.
It had been one day since Danny left.
Colton didn’t get bored easily. He loved to watch people, and now, thanks to Danny, he could even go outside and talk to them. But today he only sat and stared. His eyes followed a couple walking down the street, but he didn’t listen in, or draw closer to look.
The way his senses worked was vastly different from the way Danny’s did, as Colton had found out after laughing at a conversation between two brothers.
“What’s so funny?” Danny had asked.
“Didn’t you hear the joke?”
Danny had peered down at them. Colton loved the way the sunlight had brightened his face, turning his green eyes two shades lighter. “How can I when I’m all the way up here?” He’d glanced suspiciously at Colton. “How far can you hear, exactly?”
“In Enfield? Everywhere.”
“And … your vision works the same way, I take it?”
“A girl is playing with a red ball a few streets down. You can go check, if you like.”
“No, I believe you.” Danny had grown pale. “Damn, that’s unnerving.”
Colton wasn’t sure why it was unnerving. It gave him something to pass the time, of which he had an eternity.
But today he didn’t use his senses at all. He didn’t do anything, except sit and stare in the direction of London.
He hadn’t been this prone to moodiness before he met Danny. Now his thoughts, once so fluid and immaterial, were rapid and thorny. He couldn’t stop the onslaught of emotions that compromised his mind. They were all so sharp, so painful, so maddening that he wondered—as he often did lately—if humans felt this, too.
Danny thought his clock spirit senses were frightening. But feeling what a human felt was terrifying.
Colton drew the photograph from his pocket. This strange, thick paper had somehow captured Danny’s image, but it wasn’t the Danny he knew. It wasn’t vivid, alive, with bright eyes that changed in sunlight and a smile like slow-thawing spring. How could this image be so like his Danny, and yet so different?
Still, he would take it over no Danny at all.
“Where are you now?” he asked it.
Colton leaned against the window and pressed the image to the pane, as if Danny could somehow see through the paper and into Enfield, the place where he belonged. The place he was needed.
Something tugged at his consciousness, and he turned and made an aggravated sound. The hands of the clock were rotating faster. Time had sensed his desire to speed up, and had done precisely that.
“Stop,” he commanded. The hands slowed, waited until they made up the difference, and then resumed at their normal speed.
He knew he was being ridiculous. He couldn’t mope the whole time Danny was gone, like Chessie the dog did when Thom went to work at the factory. Colton sometimes looked in on that poor dog, whining and watching the door, and wished he could do something to help. But seeing Thom return every night was its own reward. He, like Chessie, just had to be patient.
Colton sat on the floor and dragged over one of the books he’d taken from Danny’s cottage, the one full of Greek myths. He’d decided he wouldn’t read any new ones before Danny got back, so he browsed the ones they had already shared: Perseus, Troy, the labyrinth.
He flipped to the back, to the list of the Titans. Hyperion, Atlas, Rhea … Prometheus.
“I know I’ve heard this story before,” he said, before looking up and realizing he was speaking to himself. He’d never been guilty of that human habit before. It made him irrationally angry—yet another new peculiarity.
Colton’s memory was excellent, and he knew almost all these tales by heart, and even where he and Danny had been sitting while they read them. Yet there was no memory of reading this one.
Something rumbled in the distance, similar to the sound of an oncoming summer storm. Colton ignored it as he read and reread the story. In the illustration, the eagle flew in from the corner, coming to devour Prometheus’s liver while the Titan was chained to his rock. Over and over again, an unending cycle, and all because—
The tower trembled.
Startled, Colton vanished from his spot on the floor and reappeared at the window. Townspeople had begun to wander outside, disturbed by the noise. The sky was still bright and clear. No storm?
Then a cloud blocked out the sun, casting Enfield in darkness.
Colton looked up and his eyes widened. Not a cloud.
An airship.
He winked out and appeared on the roof, staring as the aircraft drifted above his tower like it was the eagle about to peck out his liver, if he had one to give. It glided in a smooth circle above the town, trailing a ring of smoke, until something detached from the ship. A piece of metal?
No. Something else.
Something bad.
Colton winked himself back inside the tower just as the object smacked the building’s side. It went off like a thousand peals of thunder, rocking the tower so hard that Colton fell. He screamed at the pain that lanced up his side.
He’d seen Danny hurt. He’d seen humans bleed. Colton did not bleed, but he felt the pain coiled deep inside him, sparking along on the surface, everywhere. The tower groaned, or maybe that was him. The windows were smashed, jagged remnants of glass scattered across the floor.
Time and He winced with each jab, hours slipping out of the loop even as they tried desperately to keep pressing forward. Colton grabbed at them, but it was too late. One second—four—negative ten
Colton struggled to his knees and swayed. Holding his side, he rushed for the stairs, almost stopping to retrieve Danny’s books. He used one of Danny’s favorite swears—“Shit on a toast point”—for being foolish and kept moving. When he reached the stairs he lost his footing, falling down each step until he crumpled at the landing. He tried to disappear, but found he was too weak. Groaning, he crawled down the next flight. He had to get to the clockwork.
The tower began to crack, then crumble. Metal heaved and moaned. The structure would start falling soon. There was only one way he could prevent it.
Colton grabbed his central cog and steeled himself. Closing his eyes tight, he pulled it away from the rest of the cogs and gears with a grunt of pain.
Time rippled and stiffened. All at once, a wave of gray nothingness washed over Enfield, and the injured time ceased pounding away on his body.
In fact, it ceased altogether.
The tower was quiet. Now, the sound of time was completely gone.
He held his chest, the ache there now a twin misery to the one in his side, sickly and poisonous. The tower stood frozen, its tumbling stones awkwardly defying gravity until the central cog, the heart of the clock, was replaced.
But he couldn’t replace it now. There was no telling what would happen to Enfield if the tower fell.
If he fell.
Using the last of his strength, he stood and hugged the cog to his chest as he tripped down the stairs. He could barely feel the wood beneath his feet.
Colton heard the crowd before he staggered outside—screaming, shouting, crying. He looked where they pointed. Against the gray dome, the clock tower was dull and lifeless. The face was ruined, Roman numerals scattered at the base of the tower. The structure could hardly even be called a tower, halfway to crashing to earth. The right side was exposed, metal and brick blasted away to reveal the broken pendulum within.
Colton stood unobserved for a moment. When Jane saw him, her mouth fell open.
“Colton!”
That quickly drew everyone’s attention. Soon they were shouting for answers, lunging forward like a wave. Colton shrank back, hiding behind his cog, a feeble shield against their fear.
“Everyone, stop this! Stop!” Mayor Aldridge broke through their circle and came to Colton’s side. “Yes, we’ve just been attacked. I don’t know by whom, or why. No one does—especially not this boy, who’s our only link to time. Let’s focus on taking care of him until a mechanic comes.”
“But no one can get inside!” a voice called out.
“Danny can,” Harland said above the mutterings. “He did last time, didn’t he?”
Only because he had me, Colton thought.
The mayor sighed. “Perhaps. For now, Colton, please come with me.”
Colton wanted to follow. But there was so much pain. Taking a step, his legs gave out, and he, like his tower, began to fall.
Colton’s awareness gradually returned. Danny called it waking up, but Colton knew he hadn’t been sleeping. He’d shut down, his gears ground to a halt, in order to preserve what little strength remained.
Someone had carried him to a chair in the mayor’s office. He looked slowly to one side, where his central cog was propped against him.
It wasn’t nearly powerful enough, but it would keep him functioning for now. Colton reached down to touch it, then froze.
He could see through his hand.
“Why am I so faint?” he whispered.
“We don’t know, but I admit it’s rather alarming.”
He turned and saw Aldridge walk into the room. Then the mayor disappeared. He walked in again. Disappeared again. Walked in again. Colton blinked. This was what happened in a Stopped town: time distorted one’s actions. People got caught in loops.
“Danny told me he was going abroad, but do you know for how long?” Aldridge asked when he finally managed to stay put.
“He said it might take a few weeks.”
It would feel like no time at all to a Stopped Enfield, but the mayor still looked worried. Someone had bombed the tower—his tower—for a reason. There was no telling what could happen outside the town during those few weeks.
“How was Danny able to leave before?” Aldridge asked.
“He had me. Spirits can go through the barrier.”
“Then anyone can go through, so long as they’re touching you?”
Colton shook his head. “They have to be a clock mechanic, too. Connected to time.”
“Blast.” Aldridge started wringing his hands. Then he disappeared again. When he walked through the door as if for the first time, Colton patiently repeated his side of the conversation.
“Blast.” Aldridge started wringing his hands. “Is there any chance you could go?”
“Me? Go to London?”
“You’ve been before.”
“I was very weak, though.” Then he remembered all the clockwork pieces in his tower. If he took a few of them, not just his central cog, maybe he would have enough strength.
“If you go to London and bring back a mechanic, we can get this sorted before Danny returns.”
Colton tried to imagine Danny’s reaction upon seeing the ruined tower. His voice would climb higher as he sputtered, “I leave for five sodding minutes and your tower gets attacked?”
For some reason, this made Colton smile. He picked up his cog and cradled it to his chest. It was disturbingly visible through his faded arms. Before, when something happened to his tower, there was a physical mirror on his body. This transparency seemed to be the reaction to the amount of damage his tower had sustained.
“Something is very wrong here,” Aldridge went on. “I’ve heard of those cities in India, where the towers fell but time didn’t Stop. So then why are we Stopped?” He looked at Colton, as if he might have answers. “Will you be able to reach London? Will you bring back a mechanic?”
Colton nodded. “I’ll try.” And he knew just the mechanic for the job.
Colton stood in Danny’s cottage staring at the books arranged on the shelf. There were a few gaps, but only one he could fill. He had climbed his tower to retrieve the book of Greek myths, which had been precariously perched on a broken beam. He’d dusted it off, but there had been, thankfully, no real damage to the book.
Colton slid the volume back into place, ran a ghostly finger over the spine, and would have sighed if he could. He looked around. The bed hadn’t been made; Danny never made his bed. Colton walked over and slowly pulled the sheets straight, wanting so badly to hide beneath them and wait for Danny to return. His body still hurt, but now another ache joined in, something elusive and indescribable.
He picked up one of Danny’s satchels, which now contained his central cog and a few smaller ones he’d detached from the clockwork. Their absence wouldn’t make a difference now. Together, the cogs made Colton stronger, more opaque. They even dulled the pain a little. His appearance was still a problem, though.
He grabbed Danny’s overcoat and put it on. Danny’s spare boots fit him well. Finishing the disguise with one of Danny’s flat caps, he hoped it would be enough to prevent others from giving him a second look.
Outside, Enfield citizens milled about. There was nothing else for them to do. What felt like a minute was only the illusion of time passing. The minute would repeat, conversations would repeat, thoughts would repeat. Over and over and over, Prometheus bound in chains.
The mayor and Jane escorted Colton to the barrier. He recalled that terrible moment the year before when Enfield had Stopped for the first time. The panic in Danny’s eyes, their frantic drive to London.
Now, he would have to walk.
“Are you certain none of us can pass through with you?” Aldridge asked.
“I’m fairly certain. And I don’t think we should risk trying.” Horrible visions of them getting trapped in some otherwordly time dimension made him grimace.
Jane eyed the barrier distrustfully. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Of course.” He didn’t miss their pinched eyes and mouths. “I’ll return. I promise.”
They stood back as he passed a hand through the barrier. It slid through easily, the grayness shimmering and distorting around his fingers, as though the wall recognized him. And why shouldn’t it? Colton looked over his shoulder at the town he knew so intimately, taking one last look at the sad, crooked figure of his tower. Gathering himself, he stepped through the barrier.
It flowed over him, tendrils of stale seconds and stolen moments and breaths he couldn’t breathe. A sea of gray, of blurred life streaked with the faintest hints of gold.
On the other side, the sun returned, and so did time; he recognized the sensation of Big Ben’s power. He gazed around the field, the forest in the distance, the nearby river. The road that stretched toward London.
He was alone, armed with nothing but a few cogs and a picture of a human boy. Colton drew the picture from his pocket and addressed it sadly: “I guess I’ll have to do it on my own this time. I wish you were here with me.”
He couldn’t waste these precious seconds on regrets, so he put the picture away and set off to find the only person who could help him now.