Timekeeper Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Tara Sim

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-5107-0618-7

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0622-4

  Jacket design by Georgia Morrissey

  Jacket photograph © iStock.com / MartinM303

  Printed in the United States of America

  Interior design by Joshua Barnaby

  For those who are still searching, and for those who are waiting to be found.

  “To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

  And Heaven in a Wild Flower,

  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

  and Eternity in an hour.”

  — “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake

  Enfield, England

  September, 1875

  Two o’clock was missing.

  Danny wanted it to be a joke. Hours didn’t just disappear. But the clock tower before him and the silver timepiece in his hand read 3:06 in the afternoon, when not fifteen minutes before they had read 1:51.

  Because the hour between no longer existed.

  A single thought registered, stunned and succinct: Oh, hell.

  Colton Tower was a pillar of limestone and cast iron with a brick base and pointed spire. The iron gleamed gold in the weak sunshine, illuminating the sentinel-like tower that rose above the shingled roofs of Enfield. It stood apart from the other buildings as if to showcase its power, easily visible at the heart of town. The clock face shone yellow, its numbers and hands black against the opal glass.

  Danny approached the tower slowly, as if his presence would trigger something else catastrophic: the pendulum detaching, or the hands falling off. He kept his eyes on the blank space between one and three as he pressed his hands against the tower’s side.

  His palms began to buzz with feverish warmth, and he felt the loss on another level entirely. Time pulled at his skin, whistled in his ear, blurred his vision. The tower was warning him, begging to be fixed.

  This was no joke.

  “Who did this to you?” he murmured. Of course, the tower couldn’t answer.

  The hum of the crowd grew louder, breaking his concentration. Danny looked over his shoulder. The small homes and shops along the street were empty, their owners huddled near the village green. The townspeople had come not only to stare ineffectively at the clock, but for a glimpse at the young clock mechanic who sensed time in a way they couldn’t.

  The back of Danny’s neck prickled. He looked up again, but saw nothing.

  The mayor of Enfield wrung his hands nearby, glancing between Danny and the tower. The thin man cleared his throat with a sound like an engine stalling.

  “Can it be fixed?” he asked. The mayor was sweating, but then again, so was Danny.

  Danny wrenched his eyes away from the tower and lowered his hands. “Uh, yes,” he said, trying not to make it sound like a question. “Yes, it can be fixed.”

  The set of the mayor’s shoulders relaxed, but not by much. “Then, please, by all means.” He gestured to the tower as if Danny had forgotten where it stood.

  The mayor was on edge for good reason. Blue uniforms flashed in the corner of Danny’s eye as the London authorities combed the town, searching for the missing numeral. They rummaged through houses without a care for the citizens’ belongings, if the crashes were anything to go by. Danny watched as a woman in a rose-colored dress was pulled away by a constable. Her son tried to cling to her skirts.

  “Where are you taking Mummy?” the boy demanded.

  “I’ll be back shortly, love,” the woman said. She pried his hands off with a smile that barely concealed the worry in her eyes. “They just need to ask Mummy a few questions.”

  The police would be asking everyone questions. This wasn’t a simple matter of a clock falling to bits; otherwise, the numeral would have been found by now. No, this was far more complicated. This was an act of burglary or vandalism.

  Stolen. An entire hour taken like it was the last piece of cake on a neglected platter.

  The clock ticked on despite the malfunction, but Danny felt the hour’s absence as he would a missing finger. Enfield’s web of time shivered around him in agitation. That wrongness bore down on his body, his lungs squeezed by the pressure, until it became difficult to draw his next breath.

  The threat wasn’t as simple as missing an appointment or rushing through afternoon tea. If one hour was subtracted every day, Enfield would slide out of alignment with the rest of the world. There was no telling what would happen to the town then—no telling what would happen to the people who lived here.

  Enter Danny, the clock mechanic. The healer of time. Enfield’s supposed savior.

  Damn.

  He snapped his timepiece closed with a loud click. This was his first assignment since the accident, and they had given him the most difficult one they had.

  I asked for it, he reminded himself. Now I just have to prove I can do it.

  Turning back to his auto, which sat dusty and exhausted beside the village green, he bit the inside of his cheek. His sweating had progressed from mildly uncomfortable to downright disconcerting. A gust of wind carrying the smell of rain ruffled his dark, unruly hair. Because that was just what he needed: a sheet of rain pelting him while he worked.

  He dragged a heavy, rectangular package from the auto’s backseat and hoisted it onto his shoulder. The steam auto was a black, five-seater hunk of metal with wheels as wide as sewer manholes. The fabric of the roof was damaged, causing minor flooding when it rained too hard, and the paint was chipped and peeling. Still, he touched the side door for luck. The auto had been his father’s, and Danny hoped to feel his presence somehow.

  “Do you need assistance?” the mayor called, still wringing his hands. There was something in the man’s eyes Danny didn’t like, a familiar question: Why did London send a seventeen-year-old boy instead of a real mechanic?

  Danny tried to smile, but only achieved a grimace. “No thank you, sir. I’m sure the apprentice is waiting for me inside.”

  He turned to the tower. The closer he drew, the harder the pressure grew in his chest, and he wondered if this was what Atlas would have felt had the world rested on his sternum rather than his shoulder. Opening the tower door, Danny’s foot nearly collided with the first step in a long flight of wooden stairs. The rest of the bottom floor was only shadowed corners and cobwebs.

  Danny looked up the stairs. The memory of the last clock tower sat heavy on his mind, tightening the cords of his neck. He had ascended those stairs without a care, even swinging his key ring around one finger as he climbed. He grasped at that effortlessness now, desperate to mimic its stride. But it fell away like fog
through his fingers.

  He had fixed clock towers before, he told himself. He could do it again.

  Danny climbed toward the belfry, each creaking step raising small clouds of dust. The tower smelled of moths and age, the scent of a forgotten memory. He counted fifty stairs until he reached the bells. The jack, a mechanical manikin, stood motionless with a hammer poised to strike the bells at the next hour. It had already mistakenly announced the hour of three.

  Farther up, Danny reached the churning clockwork, the bronze wheels and gears that turned the hands around the face. Below his feet swung the pendulum that swayed diligently side to side, beating every two seconds.

  As he watched the clockwork turn, the pressure returned and constricted his throat. His breaths came too fast and his vision darkened at the edges. This wasn’t just the tower’s effect on him. This was—it was panic. He was panicking. Again. He couldn’t, not now, not when he had so much at stake.

  He wanted to run. He wanted to cover his ears and block the echoes of screeching metal, stop breathing in the ghost of smoke that followed him everywhere he went. It was worse inside the towers, this urge to fall to his knees and throw his arms over his head in defense.

  One of the reasons he had volunteered for this assignment: to get over this reaction.

  The room dipped beneath him as he took a quick step back. He closed his eyes and pushed the panic ruthlessly down, down, down. Tried to convince himself it didn’t exist. He was Danny Hart, and he was a clock mechanic.

  A clock mechanic who was now afraid of clocks.

  It won’t be like last time, he thought, touching the scar on his chin. It can’t be.

  His pounding heart was not convinced.

  But this wasn’t just about him. The tower was hurt in a way he could feel in his bones. A sharp twinge in his side, like a cracked rib. They were both in pain.

  Danny hugged the parcel to his body and repeated what the doctors had told him to say over and over again: I was in an accident. I got out. I’m safe now.

  Whirs and clanks and ticks echoed throughout the tower, a symphony both familiar and new. The sounds vibrated through the wooden floorboards, traveled through the soles of his boots, up his legs, to his heart. Strangely, they calmed him. They loosened his throat and slowed his breaths.

  Each tower sounded different to him, like a voice. This one was curious, bright, unassuming. He listened to it speak, gathering his courage until his arms screamed a reminder that the package they held was rather heavy.

  Danny climbed higher on unsteady legs and finally reached the clock room. It was cluttered with dusty boxes, better lit than the rest of the tower thanks to the windows cut into the side walls. Out of breath, he put the package down and studied the near side of the clock face. The hands made long shadows through the glass. One rested horizontally, the other diagonal on its journey around the circle.

  He wondered who in their right mind would steal an hour from a clock tower. The twinge inside him was a physical warning, like the missing two o’clock demanded an hour of his life in compensation.

  As his father used to say: anything was possible.

  He looked around again and nearly jumped out of his skin. Someone sat on a box near the clock face. Danny could have sworn no one had been there a minute before.

  “Oh,” he breathed as shock faded to annoyance. “You must be Brandon.” The Lead Mechanic had mentioned his new apprentice would be Brandon Summers, a name Danny had never heard before. That was fine with him; his apprentices never lasted very long anyway.

  The apprentice turned from his examination of the clock face and examined Danny instead.

  Danny tried to mask his surprise. He had expected a fourteen-year-old brat, not someone his own age. Brandon’s blond hair made a halo around his face, his skin a soft shade of bronze. Danny wondered if he came from one of the colonies. Australia, maybe. A break in the rain clouds resulted in a brief flare of sunlight that gilded the room around them, giving the apprentice a preternatural glow. The eye Danny could see was light brown, like amber. The other was shut tight.

  They stared at each other. Danny wanted to stay annoyed, but couldn’t stop his own eyes from traveling over the apprentice’s face. The shape of his eyes, the slanted slope from his cheekbone to his jaw. The width of his shoulders and the straight line of his back.

  Danny had never seen this apprentice at the office before. Then again, he’d been away for a while.

  “Hello,” Danny said when the silence stretched on. His nerves hadn’t settled, and his face grew hot.

  It might have been the way the apprentice looked at him, somber and curious, like Danny had spoken a foreign language.

  “Is there something in your eye?” Danny asked.

  Brandon nodded.

  “Must be all the dust.”

  Brandon remained silent.

  Danny tensed, wondering if he was about to contend with yet another apprentice who resented being assigned to a mechanic barely older than himself. Danny couldn’t count all the times he’d been tripped, had his tools stolen, or been laughed at behind his back—and all that within months of becoming a full mechanic, the youngest mechanic on record.

  But he’d never had an apprentice so utterly silent before. Brandon could have at least mustered up a “Yes, sir.” Or better yet, not been here at all.

  Danny stripped off his gloves and rubbed sweaty hands against his waistcoat. He couldn’t let this silence unnerve him. “My name’s Danny. You are Brandon, correct?” That should have gotten a response, but the other boy only nodded after a slight hesitation.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Danny gestured toward the parcel. “Help me with this. Please.”

  He knelt before the package to unwrap it, and Brandon came to his side. The apprentice wore tight brown trousers and a baggy white shirt, which he hadn’t bothered to tuck in. Danny tried not to look too long at the way the collar of his shirt drooped low enough to reveal the sharp corner of his collarbone. Mechanics and apprentices were required to wear proper trousers, shirts, and waistcoats, along with sturdy boots and gloves. Not … this.

  Brandon hadn’t come prepared. The blatant disregard heated Danny’s blood. This assignment was a test, and the new apprentice was going to make him fail.

  Just focus on the clock, he thought. Focus on Enfield.

  They unwrapped the package, which the Lead Mechanic had given Danny that morning. A large black iron Roman numeral II lay within the wrappings.

  Shuddering, Danny said, “We’ll have to use the scaffolding.”

  In the clock room, the scaffolding—a wooden slat with metal rails that suspended mechanics in front of clock faces—was stored on a platform above the face, which could be reached by stairs. Danny found even this small height problematic.

  He opened a latch above the face and asked Brandon to lower the scaffolding down. Danny looked out and tried not to groan. He could see almost all of Enfield from up here, including the village green near St. Andrew’s church. He could also see the dirt road where his skull would crack, should he fall.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said, more to himself than to the apprentice. “I’ll … er … you go first, and I’ll bring the number down.”

  The apprentice’s fair, nearly nonexistent eyebrows rose, but he did as he was instructed, tying a line to the belt sitting beside the equipment. Danny tugged the rope to make sure it was secure, and without waiting for approval, Brandon climbed out onto the face like he’d been a squirrel in a past life.

  “Hey!” Danny called down. Brandon paused, his left eye still shut tight. “Keep both eyes open.” The apprentice waved and continued to lower himself until his feet rested on the scaffolding. The cables creaked, but there was no sudden snap or scream.

  His own line secure, Danny grabbed the Roman numeral and slung his tool bag over his shoulder. He hesitated long enough to raise sweat on his brow before he followed the apprentice down.

  Danny’s father used to say the mo
st interesting sights in the world were right before your eyes. That was just his way to keep Danny from looking down, but Danny always did anyway. He snapped his eyes back to the rope and swallowed a small gasp. You didn’t see it. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re not dangling helplessly in the air.

  The boards groaned. He worried the structure might not bear their weight, but by some miracle, the scaffolding held. The wind tugged at their clothing, pressing Brandon’s shirt against his slim torso.

  “One thing down,” Danny said, trying to sound hopeful. “Hold this, will you?” Danny passed him the Roman numeral and laid out his tools. The scaffolding was positioned directly under where two o’clock should have been. He put a hand against the empty patch and flinched as the pull in his belly turned into a hollow, aching emptiness. He closed his eyes to better focus on the image that his normal vision couldn’t conjure.

  It was as if someone had burned a hole in a woven tapestry. The fibers of time were all attached to one another, the golden threads weaving in and out in the natural flow of time that only the clock tower could produce. It spider-webbed across all of Enfield like a blanket. But there, in the corner, was a hole. The fibers were broken, and without that connection, time distorted around them.

  Memories crept in. Smoke, blood, a gaping void in time.

  Danny’s eyes shot open and he snatched his hand back. He was breathing fast again, and Brandon eyed him warily.

  “H-hand me the micrometer, please,” Danny said, but his voice cracked on the last word.

  Brandon shuffled on his feet and looked at the tools. At first Danny thought he was dawdling on purpose, but the pained look on the apprentice’s face revealed the truth.

  “You don’t know what a micrometer is,” Danny said flatly. The memories, the missing hour, the height, the incompetent apprentice at his side—it all rose like an ocean swell within him, crashing up his throat, and the words poured out before he could stop them. “Great. Bloody brilliant. You don’t know a thing about clock repair, do you? You don’t dress properly, you don’t talk, and now you don’t know what a micrometer is. What the hell kind of apprentice are you?”