Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(13)
But Chronos couldn’t keep an eye on everything, so he cut four fingers from his hand. From his fingers grew the Gaian gods, each one chosen to oversee an element. Terra, earth. Caelum, sky. Oceana, sea.
Aetas, time.
“Aetas was called the Timekeeper,” his father had said, one hand resting on Danny’s shoulder. He remembered the familiar weight of it, the strength of those fingers gently squeezing his shoulder, the calluses on his father’s palm. “He made sure the pattern of time never became unbalanced, never got too tangled. He made sure our pasts, presents, and futures never collided.”
While the Gaian gods maintained the earth’s elements and humanity advanced, Chronos grew hateful. He saw lives of greed, lives of gluttony, lives of pride and blood and sin. Weary of this corrupt world, he retreated into slumber.
Aetas also grew weary, and mad with the power of time, which was too enormous for him to bear alone. His sister, Oceana, begged him to return his domain to Chronos. When he tried, Chronos turned him away and told him to forget the burden. The world could burn. He no longer cared.
But Aetas cared.
Desperate, he gifted some of his power to humans so that they might help him control the wild beast that was time.
“Chronos found out, and oof, was he mad.” Christopher smacked the side of his leg for emphasis. “He woke and confronted Aetas. Said that humans should never have been given such power.”
Chronos descended to where Aetas lived within the ocean. The water parted for their battle, roiling walls of gray and blue, the crash of lightning and waves above. They fought among dry coral reefs and seashells that broke beneath their feet, the sea a raging storm for three days and three nights, until Aetas grew weak enough for Chronos to land the final blow.
Danny had looked up, his eyes wide. “Chronos killed Aetas?”
“Yes. And when he did, time shattered. No one could control it. And so we built the towers.” Christopher had gestured to Big Ben. “The towers are conductors of Aetas’s leftover power. Through them, we can control time—or give ourselves the illusion we can. The burden is ours now. We are the Timekeepers.”
There were no Gaian gods to help anymore. The other three had receded, choosing to fade to little more than myth. The demand for technology grew in their absence, a demand for humans to control what was once out of their grasp. People held fast to their Bibles and their churches, to the belief that perhaps a benevolent creator looked on, and did nothing.
Everyone leaves, in the end.
It took an hour to reach Enfield. As he got closer, Danny nearly hit a bump in the road and swerved to avoid it. He cursed as his heart jumped into his throat. This bloody town would kill him.
The town was holding its weekly market, and people were clogging the path. He parked on the outskirts and lifted the thin, long parcel containing the new minute hand from the back of the auto.
Immediately he sensed the cracks in time, the empty pockets of missing seconds and moments. It made the air heavy and the sky appear frozen, as if the town were being forced to slow down until the next hour. Time wanted to move in leaps, just as the Lead had said.
Why on earth were they holding the market now? He peered at their faces and noticed tight mouths, narrowed eyes. They were putting up a brave front.
Danny walked across the village green and caught glimpses of wares for sale: timepieces, crockery, flower-pulp paper—even a large, clunky photograph-taker. The black camera box sat on its three-legged stand like a raven perched on a fence. Danny longed to have one of his own to play with. The lightness of his pockets kept him away.
He examined the timepieces for sale. They hadn’t stopped, exactly, but the minute hands were stuck at eleven, the time when the minute hand had been detached from the tower. At least the hour hands were all correct.
“How do you know what time it is?” he asked a woman passing by.
“We guess,” was her terse answer.
Fair enough.
Someone touched Danny’s shoulder and he turned, coming face-to-face with Mayor Aldridge. The mayor’s mouth was creased from a lifetime of frowning.
“Mr. Hart, thank you for coming back so soon. I’m sorry for the trouble.”
“That’s all right. I’ve brought a new minute hand.”
“Brilliant,” Aldridge said distantly, glancing at the parcel under his arm. “The sooner we return to normal, the better. We’ve tried to keep things as routine as possible, setting up the market and all. Don’t want them to think too much about becoming another Maldon.” The mayor mustered up a nervous laugh, and Danny’s cheek twitched. “The, ah … police will be here again, won’t they?”
The Lead had mentioned there would be an investigation, and Danny said as much to the mayor. Aldridge sighed. “Nothing for it, then. Such a disturbance …”
Danny nodded in a vaguely sympathetic way and excused himself. He walked past the church to the tower beyond the green, eyes on the missing pivotal line of the minute hand. Walking through the town was like walking through a bog. Time dragged him down, willing him to stop where he stood until the next hour rang. He gritted his teeth and pressed on.
The tower sent a hollow ache through his chest when he crossed the threshold. Danny grunted and braced himself against the wall, wondering if this was how it felt to lose a limb. He climbed the stairs, taking a break in the belfry to wipe his forehead and examine the four bells more closely. None of them were named. That ceremony was reserved for the largest of the towers, like Big Ben.