Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(96)

Danny stood to one side of the man, considering his options. He patted the cricket bat against the sole of his boot, dislodging clods of dirt. When he felt ready, he turned his attention to the time fibers around him and let them drop.

Matthias had only just finished taking his step when Danny swung the bat with all his strength and landed a juicy thunk on the man’s skull.

Matthias fell hard. The cogs spilled from his arms, dirt billowing where they skidded along the ground. Before Matthias could recover, Danny pulled in the fibers and everything stopped again.

Danny walked to the cogs. The dust hovered above them in immovable clouds. He tried to dig his fingers under Colton’s cog to lift it, but it seemed permanently attached to the earth. Danny glanced over his shoulder at Matthias. He could start time and grab the cog, just as he had done with the cricket bat, but that would leave Matthias free to escape once the central cog was installed.

Colton was fading even faster.

Danny ran off again. He peeked inside houses, front doors still open after their owners had run out at 11:14. He finally found what he was looking for: on a table beside a box of tools rested a coil of rope. Danny allowed just enough time to pass for him to grab it.

When he returned, he slowly circled Matthias’s prone body. This decision required more courage than the last one. Taking a deep breath, Danny started time.

Matthias lay dazed on the ground, but was soon squirming in agony. Danny had only precious seconds, and he quickly grabbed the man’s thick wrists, pulling his arms up until they stuck out behind him. Just as Matthias made to jerk them away, time froze.

Heart hammering, he wrapped the rope around Matthias’s wrists, leaving just enough slack so that when he restarted time, he was able to cinch the knot tightly.

Danny pocketed the tiny cog and stepped back to examine his handiwork. Matthias writhed against the ground, rolling onto his side, testing the rope at his wrists.

“What did you do?” he demanded, more stunned than angry. “Danny?”

Danny ignored him and walked to the fallen cogs. He picked them up and brushed them off, then handed Evaline hers. She accepted it with both hands, her lips parted.

“Danny, no!” Matthias yelled. “What did you do? Danny!”

He made to walk to the tower, Colton’s central cog under his arm, but Matthias’s cries snagged on the last shred of pity he had left. He stopped, sighed, and knelt a safe distance away. Matthias’s hair was coming undone from its queue. His gaze was wild.

“I’m not sorry,” Danny told him. “You could have made this right three years ago. It was already too late for you.”

Too late for Matthias to have a happy ending.

Matthias kept blinking, his eyes gleaming. “I didn’t mean for it to come to this. My fate was to be an old, lonely man with regrets. So I changed that. I had to.”

He had certainly achieved that goal. But in changing his fate, he had created for himself something even worse.

“You don’t understand,” Matthias whispered. “Wouldn’t you do anything for the one you love?”

“Yes, I would. And so I am.”

Matthias stared at him, defeated, but still proud. Danny thought of all those promises they had made to each other over the years, their pinky fingers twining in their own secret pacts. All the times Matthias had said he would be there for him no matter what.

He considered breaking the man’s pinky fingers.

“I’ve never told you how like your father you are,” Matthias said.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Danny stood and limped blindly to the tower. He followed the sound of Colton’s voice, the thread between them bright and taut, urging Danny to find him. To be healed.

Brandon and Daphne were by the clockwork. Colton lay unconscious between them, transparent enough for Danny to see the floor beneath him. They turned at the sound of feet on the stairs, and Brandon raised his fists threateningly. When they saw Danny’s rumpled appearance they relaxed, then cried out when they saw what he carried.

“Tools,” he croaked to Brandon. The apprentice ran to fetch them.

It took barely any time. Danny’s body still hummed with hyper-awareness from the fibers, and the thread between him and Colton grew stronger, brighter. He slipped the central cog back into its proper place and nodded to Brandon, who ran to the pendulum room below. The clock was wound—he and Daphne heard the chattering turn of gears—and Danny placed his hand on the central cog.

Calling in the fibers, time compressed all around them. A gear turned, and then another, until the cogs and gears rolled back into one large, functioning unit.

Time was released like the first gasp of life.

Colton’s eyes flew open. He shuddered and sat up, his edges filled in, the golden glow returning to his body. He looked down at himself in amazement. Then he looked straight at Danny with a smile so bright it flooded the tower.

“You did it!”

Danny fell to his knees beside him. He grabbed Colton and they both toppled over onto the dusty floor.

“We did it.” He took the cog from his pocket and pressed it to Colton’s chest.



THE BOY AND THE TOWER


There was once a golden boy who lived in a golden tower.

The tower was wrapped with threads of time, so meshed and measured that the boy had to care for them lest they become tangled. The boy stayed in his golden tower as time ticked around him, as he felt the days end and the nights stretch on forever, the earth tremble and fall silent, baked by sun and blanketed by snow.