Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(44)

“Thanks,” she said thickly. He nodded. “Listen, Danny … if it’s so important to you, then why don’t you just find out who the new mechanic is and ask to switch?”

He leaned back on his heels. “What?”

“Find out who’s going to replace you and convince them to let you go instead. Whatever assignments you get, they can have, and their Enfield assignments can be yours.” She took a deep breath. “Right,” she said to the auto, closing the bonnet and kissing the top. “That’s a fix for you, then. And you?” She looked at Danny. “Is that a good enough fix for you?”

He thought about it, then nodded. “Cass, you’re brilliant.”

“Don’t tell me what I already know.”



He had been wrong about his mother not caring. When she got the call about Danny’s behavior at the social, she ordered him to sit at the kitchen table. She lit a cigarette. The smoke wafted his way and he coughed.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, Leila said, “Why?”

“He was being an arse.”

“Danny, please.”

“What do you want me to say, Mum? He was being rude to Cass. How could I let him get away with that?”

“Hitting him was not the solution. You should have reported him to a chaperone.”

Danny almost laughed at that, thinking back to Rotherfield and how the constable had been willing to accept Lucas’s word over his own.

“Oh, now it’s all so clear! Let me just pull apart time and go back to that moment—”

“Danny!” Her voice cracked, and he winced.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

She took a long pull off her cigarette, then snuffed it out on a copper ashtray. “What did he say to you?”

He watched her expression as he told her, but it didn’t change.

“Don’t waste your thoughts on him, Danny. He isn’t important.”

“You agree with them, don’t you? You think it’s strange, me being this way. You think I do it just to make your life harder.”

“I never said that.”

“You think it.”

She took out another cigarette.

You lost your temper, the gesture said.

She lit a match.

You told him to go, the flame whispered.

She took a long, slow drag.

He’s gone because of you, the smoke sighed.

He stood up from the table. “I’m heading to bed.”

“Danny …” They stared at each other, but Leila eventually looked away. The unspoken whispers followed him out the kitchen, up the stairs, orbiting above his bed like twin desolate planets.

Your fault.



AETAS AND THE SKY GOD


Aetas had never stood on a cloud before. The desire coursed through him with a sensation humans might have likened to hunger, so he emerged from the ocean and called for his brother.

Caelum descended from the sky. He soared on wings that branched from his arms in feathers of deep topaz streaked with veins of silver, like the halo of a storm cloud when the sun sits behind it. His skin was the deep blue of the night sky, freckled with white star-like diamonds. They winked and shone as he turned toward his golden brother.

“Will you take me up into the sky, Caelum?” Aetas asked. “I have never been, and I would like to explore your domain. I have seen Oceana’s world, and Terra’s, but now I would like to explore yours.”

“It would be an honor, Brother.”

So Caelum held Aetas and beat his powerful wings to launch them higher, away from the water and earth that Aetas loved and up into a colder world, thin of air and thick with moisture. They landed upon the ridge of a cloud, and the gods’ feet settled on swirling iridescent fog.

They were sailing on an insubstantial ship, and the world below was their sea. Lights shuttered and blinked beneath them, and the cold darkness above swallowed sound. Aetas could see into the heart of that darkness, into the galaxies of paintbrush colors and the swirling trembling masses of stars dying and being born. Somewhere beyond rested Chronos. He’d grown weary and had long ago left his four creations to care for the world in his stead.

“What do you think of my domain, Brother?” Caelum asked. His eyes were clear and silver, refracting light like shards of glass. They reflected the fires and the lights below, the people small as weevils, their tiny homes and their structured lives.

“It is a good place,” said Aetas, “if a bit solemn.”

“I enjoy the quiet,” Caelum said. “The restless energy of the world and the restless energy of the galaxies meet here in this sliver that is mine.”

Aetas thought it was a noble place to stay. But even as he thought this, Caelum pointed down to earth.

“Something is wrong,” he said. “Aetas, where is the morning?”

Aetas had been standing here for so long, he didn’t know how much time had fled from his body. Panicked, he reached for the time threads that connected him to earth. They were stretched too far, too thin. Their light turned pale like wheat bleached from the sun.

“I must return,” he said.

Caelum nodded and took him from the cloud, and together they flew back to earth. Aetas wound the threads around himself as they went, pulling in the night, bringing in the morning. Time shuddered and seized, stubborn at first, then giving in with a sigh.