But today he didn’t use his senses at all. He didn’t do anything, except sit and stare in the direction of London.
He hadn’t been this prone to moodiness before he met Danny. Now his thoughts, once so fluid and immaterial, were rapid and thorny. He couldn’t stop the onslaught of emotions that compromised his mind. They were all so sharp, so painful, so maddening that he wondered—as he often did lately—if humans felt this, too.
Danny thought his clock spirit senses were frightening. But feeling what a human felt was terrifying.
Colton drew the photograph from his pocket. This strange, thick paper had somehow captured Danny’s image, but it wasn’t the Danny he knew. It wasn’t vivid, alive, with bright eyes that changed in sunlight and a smile like slow-thawing spring. How could this image be so like his Danny, and yet so different?
Still, he would take it over no Danny at all.
“Where are you now?” he asked it.
Colton leaned against the window and pressed the image to the pane, as if Danny could somehow see through the paper and into Enfield, the place where he belonged. The place he was needed.
Something tugged at his consciousness, and he turned and made an aggravated sound. The hands of the clock were rotating faster. Time had sensed his desire to speed up, and had done precisely that.
“Stop,” he commanded. The hands slowed, waited until they made up the difference, and then resumed at their normal speed.
He knew he was being ridiculous. He couldn’t mope the whole time Danny was gone, like Chessie the dog did when Thom went to work at the factory. Colton sometimes looked in on that poor dog, whining and watching the door, and wished he could do something to help. But seeing Thom return every night was its own reward. He, like Chessie, just had to be patient.
Colton sat on the floor and dragged over one of the books he’d taken from Danny’s cottage, the one full of Greek myths. He’d decided he wouldn’t read any new ones before Danny got back, so he browsed the ones they had already shared: Perseus, Troy, the labyrinth.
He flipped to the back, to the list of the Titans. Hyperion, Atlas, Rhea … Prometheus.
“I know I’ve heard this story before,” he said, before looking up and realizing he was speaking to himself. He’d never been guilty of that human habit before. It made him irrationally angry—yet another new peculiarity.
Colton’s memory was excellent, and he knew almost all these tales by heart, and even where he and Danny had been sitting while they read them. Yet there was no memory of reading this one.
Something rumbled in the distance, similar to the sound of an oncoming summer storm. Colton ignored it as he read and reread the story. In the illustration, the eagle flew in from the corner, coming to devour Prometheus’s liver while the Titan was chained to his rock. Over and over again, an unending cycle, and all because—
The tower trembled.
Startled, Colton vanished from his spot on the floor and reappeared at the window. Townspeople had begun to wander outside, disturbed by the noise. The sky was still bright and clear. No storm?
Then a cloud blocked out the sun, casting Enfield in darkness.
Colton looked up and his eyes widened. Not a cloud.
An airship.
He winked out and appeared on the roof, staring as the aircraft drifted above his tower like it was the eagle about to peck out his liver, if he had one to give. It glided in a smooth circle above the town, trailing a ring of smoke, until something detached from the ship. A piece of metal?
No. Something else.
Something bad.
Colton winked himself back inside the tower just as the object smacked the building’s side. It went off like a thousand peals of thunder, rocking the tower so hard that Colton fell. He screamed at the pain that lanced up his side.
He’d seen Danny hurt. He’d seen humans bleed. Colton did not bleed, but he felt the pain coiled deep inside him, sparking along on the surface, everywhere. The tower groaned, or maybe that was him. The windows were smashed, jagged remnants of glass scattered across the floor.
Time and He winced with each jab, hours slipping out of the loop even as they tried desperately to keep pressing forward. Colton grabbed at them, but it was too late. One second—four—negative ten
Colton struggled to his knees and swayed. Holding his side, he rushed for the stairs, almost stopping to retrieve Danny’s books. He used one of Danny’s favorite swears—“Shit on a toast point”—for being foolish and kept moving. When he reached the stairs he lost his footing, falling down each step until he crumpled at the landing. He tried to disappear, but found he was too weak. Groaning, he crawled down the next flight. He had to get to the clockwork.
The tower began to crack, then crumble. Metal heaved and moaned. The structure would start falling soon. There was only one way he could prevent it.
Colton grabbed his central cog and steeled himself. Closing his eyes tight, he pulled it away from the rest of the cogs and gears with a grunt of pain.
Time rippled and stiffened. All at once, a wave of gray nothingness washed over Enfield, and the injured time ceased pounding away on his body.
In fact, it ceased altogether.
The tower was quiet. Now, the sound of time was completely gone.
He held his chest, the ache there now a twin misery to the one in his side, sickly and poisonous. The tower stood frozen, its tumbling stones awkwardly defying gravity until the central cog, the heart of the clock, was replaced.
But he couldn’t replace it now. There was no telling what would happen to Enfield if the tower fell.
If he fell.
Using the last of his strength, he stood and hugged the cog to his chest as he tripped down the stairs. He could barely feel the wood beneath his feet.
Colton heard the crowd before he staggered outside—screaming, shouting, crying. He looked where they pointed. Against the gray dome, the clock tower was dull and lifeless. The face was ruined, Roman numerals scattered at the base of the tower. The structure could hardly even be called a tower, halfway to crashing to earth. The right side was exposed, metal and brick blasted away to reveal the broken pendulum within.
Colton stood unobserved for a moment. When Jane saw him, her mouth fell open.
“Colton!”
That quickly drew everyone’s attention. Soon they were shouting for answers, lunging forward like a wave. Colton shrank back, hiding behind his cog, a feeble shield against their fear.
“Everyone, stop this! Stop!” Mayor Aldridge broke through their circle and came to Colton’s side. “Yes, we’ve just been attacked. I don’t know by whom, or why. No one does—especially not this boy, who’s our only link to time. Let’s focus on taking care of him until a mechanic comes.”
“But no one can get inside!” a voice called out.
“Danny can,” Harland said above the mutterings. “He did last time, didn’t he?”
Only because he had me, Colton thought.
The mayor sighed. “Perhaps. For now, Colton, please come with me.”
Colton wanted to follow. But there was so much pain. Taking a step, his legs gave out, and he, like his tower, began to fall.