Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(100)
The hairs on the back of Danny’s neck stood on end, and the scab on his palm itched. Somewhere, someone was interested in him. Interested in what he knew.
We’ll be watching.
“Danny?”
He crumpled the letter in his hand. “Nothing. Just some rubbish.”
It was amazing, the difference between the old auto and this one. Danny wished he could have spent his first real drive in a better mood, but as it was, he muttered to himself most of the way.
“Can’t believe—of all the bloody nerve—when I explicitly said—”
He steered easily away from the bump in the road. The old auto had been cleared away by now, and good riddance. Danny didn’t need more reminders of that frantic drive.
When he reached Enfield and parked the auto, he grabbed his bag and slid out. The air smelled fresh and bright. Despite his mood, he stopped to inhale a lungful.
As Danny walked through the green, people saw him and cheered. He waved shyly. Somehow, he had become Enfield’s hero. Although a little pleased with the title, he made sure not to let it go to his head.
Harland gave him a wink as he passed.
All right, not too much to his head.
His smile faded when he thought back to the anonymous letter. We’ll be watching. As he often did now, Danny looked around, but all the faces he saw were familiar. No strangers watching him too closely.
Pulling his scarf tighter around his throat, he banished the thought. There were other things he had to take care of.
First, he stopped by the dilapidated statue. The faceless figure of Aetas stared back at him. Danny took out the small cog and held it to his lips, remembering the power that had ignited his blood. The thrill of time tangled within his veins.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Maybe one day he would understand. For now, this was between him and an absent god.
He turned away from the hedge. Within a minute he was standing before the clock tower. Looking up, he spotted the problem that had been reported just this morning after a lazy breakfast with his parents. A small chip of glass was missing from the clock face.
Danny’s mutters began again as he climbed the stairs. He was supposed to have drinks with Brandon today, but upon accepting the job, his apprentice had most unexpectedly called in sick, even giving him a monotone cough through the telephone receiver. Danny had heard better acting from a puppet.
Reaching the clock room, he sighed and set down his bag and coat. When he turned, Colton was sitting on a nearby box. The sight of him made Danny ache.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Danny said, rolling up his sleeves. He gestured at the missing sliver of the clock face. There was a mirroring scar on Colton’s jaw. “The whole town’s shaking their heads at you again. What have I told you about this? You said you’d never do it again.”
“You were gone a long time. I was worried.”
Danny bent down to take out his tools. “Even if I’m gone for a while, you still can’t do this. It’s not healthy for the town, or you.”
Colton shifted. “I didn’t know,” he murmured, “if they would send another mechanic or not.”
“They almost did. I wouldn’t blame them, either.” Danny stood back up, screwdriver in hand. He pointed it at Colton. “But they seem to have had the same thought I did. Since you’ve been such a bother, the Lead’s decided that a mechanic should stay here in town. Permanently.”
The look of alarm on Colton’s face almost made Danny smile, but he kept his face stern.
“Permanently?” Colton repeated. “Who?”
Danny flipped the screwdriver so that it now pointed at himself. “Me, of course.”
There was a stunned silence. Colton’s lips curled upward.
“So excuse me for taking so long, but it’s a bit of a mess reuniting with one’s father, learning to drive a new auto, and packing all in one go.” He glared at the spirit, though his own lips were twitching. “Well? What do you have to say?”
Colton’s grin burst like a firework across his face. Suddenly he was sweeping Danny up in his arms, and they spun dizzily across the floor. Their laughter lit the tower from the inside out, burning into a new star.
It wouldn’t be easy. Being with Colton came with a price, but one that Danny was willing, even glad, to pay. They would be careful. They would be together. They would make it work.
Anything was possible.
A Note on Timekeeper’s London
In Timekeeper’s timeline, the construction of highly mechanized clock towers hundreds of years before the 1870s spurred the Industrial Revolution to happen a great deal sooner than it did in our own timeline. As a result, the England I portray benefits from technological advances that weren’t invented or widespread by 1875. These advances are quite useful for the clock mechanics of London, as they need to relay information and travel quickly.
Below, I’ve listed what liberties I took in portraying this technologically advanced England:
Telephones
In 1861, Johann Philipp Reis developed an electromagnetic device that captured and transmitted sound, including musical notes and spoken phrases. Over the next several years, inventors experimented with audio telegraphs, some of which were achieved using the tones of tuning forks. Inspired by these attempts, Alexander Graham Bell began to tinker with harmonic telegraphs in 1873, which led to an 1875 experiment with his assistant, Thomas Watson, using the first functional telephonic device in recorded history.