Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(23)

It was something he wanted to avoid. All apprentices were trained to recognize the signs of Stopping: being enclosed by a solid gray barrier, or time skipping repeatedly. One had to move fast to reverse the effects. A retired mechanic who’d once been trapped in a Stopped town had explained to Danny’s class that people could still move and speak to one another, but were unable to do much else. Items that were picked up returned to their original positions. A woman had run out her door thirteen times in a row, caught in a loop.

All that training had gone out the window for Danny when the Shere clock blew up. Adrenaline, and what Matthias called his intuition, had prevented disaster then. That, and the strange other power he’d felt so briefly.

“Look at all this dust,” Danny muttered, giving the gears a preliminary wipe with a cloth. “How do they expect you to keep running under these conditions?”

“I think they forget,” Colton said, leaning down to inspect what Danny was doing.

“Forget! How could they?”

Colton shrugged.

“More like take you for granted. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands now.”

The spirit smiled. It was slow and full. “I don’t doubt it, Danny.”

The sound of his name set his heart off like a firework. He turned his head and realized how close their faces were. Trying not to blush, Danny quickly turned back to the clockwork.

A clock spirit. A clock spirit. He had tried to get his head around the fact, but spent the night tossing and turning—not out of fear, but fascination. They really did exist. They weren’t just a myth.

Which meant that Matthias’s story might be true. He had always humored Matthias, pretending to believe him, but now Danny couldn’t help but look at him differently. Understand him differently.

He could imagine the scene now, in a way he couldn’t before. Matthias standing before the Lead. Being told that his relationship with the Maldon clock was forbidden, disastrous, unacceptable. Stripped of his title and his pride.

Knowing no one else would believe him.

Danny removed the first small cog and used the brush to carefully clean its spokes. The weight of the spirit’s eyes was still on him; he was certain Colton was just as fascinated with him as he was with Colton. Danny looked over his shoulder.

“You don’t have to wait around on my account. Look in that bag, there.” Colton crouched and lifted the flap of the satchel with a thin finger. He dragged out a large book with a green cover. “Fairy tales. Figured you might like to read them while I do this.”

Colton smiled wider and sat on the floor, the book opened to a random page on his lap. Danny returned to the clockwork.

The pages turned at a quicker rate than he expected, so he glanced over to find the spirit examining the illustrations.

“The pictures are nice, but the stories are good, too.”

“I can’t read.”

“You can’t—? Well, of course you can’t, you’re a bloody clock. Here.” He leaned over and flipped to the story of Rapunzel. “Look at those pictures. They’re from the story I told you.”

Colton did as he was told. Since he seemed to be enjoying himself, Danny resumed his work.

It proved to be a long, labor-intensive process, and he was sweating by the time he cleaned the larger cogs. Time would occasionally slow around them, and he felt as if he dragged his limbs through air turned to jam, but when he replaced the parts he cleaned, it returned to normal.

He stopped to eat lunch and told Colton more stories. He read about Cinderella—the spirit enjoyed the part about the clock striking midnight—and Sleeping Beauty. During the latter, Colton kept asking about the time dimensions used to make everyone in the kingdom sleep for a hundred years.

As Danny finished the last bit of his sandwich, he looked up and started. A brown mouse was perched on Colton’s shoulder.

“Uh …”

Colton looked at where Danny was staring. “Hallo. You’re probably hungry.” The mouse’s ears trembled.

“Is this normal?” Danny asked, watching the mouse. Its whiskers twitched, nose sniffing the air. “You being friends with the tower mice?”

“No one else to talk to.”

Danny winced. Keeping his eyes on the mouse, he broke off a piece of bread and leaned forward. The mouse grabbed it with tiny paws and began nibbling at once, spilling crumbs down Colton’s shirt.

Danny laughed. “I feel like I’m in my own fairy tale.”

Colton smiled.

The larger gears couldn’t be handled without assistance from at least two other people, so Danny reluctantly used the ladder to reach the higher ones and wiped them off as they moved. He attacked between the spokes with his brush and dust and grit flew off, making him sneeze.

Finally, Danny turned to the main structure of the clockwork. He watched the central cog turn for some time until he knelt to wipe it with an alcohol-soaked cloth. Streaks of grime peeled away, revealing a bright copper surface underneath.

As he dusted off the spokes, he sensed Colton standing at his back. He was silent, but Danny felt his tension like a pulled bowstring. He would be rather nervous himself if someone were laying their hands upon his heart.

“No one’s treated me this gently in a long time,” the spirit said.

Danny looked up at him. Colton’s face was grave, the fairy tales now reduced to nothing but a childish distraction.