She waited to hear what he had to say, but he had no words to offer, no defense to build around himself. He knew the consequences; knew them better than she did. He thought of the way time altered when Colton felt too much—felt because of him. If Harris worried about being selfish with Partha, he didn’t want to know what the captain would think of this.
It reminded him unpleasantly of what his father had said before he left: his warning that Danny putting Colton before all else would only lead to disaster. That the barrier between want and need was hard and unforgiving.
Danny lowered his eyes to the floor, where they caught a glimpse of black. He blinked, but the spindly leg he saw peeking from under the chair disappeared with a faint whir.
Meena sighed and put the picture on the table. “We should focus on one problem at a time. First, this spirit. Then you can worry about your own.”
She didn’t realize that he never stopped worrying.
They visited Aditi several more times in the next week. Every day, Danny grew more and more convinced that something wasn’t right in Meerut. Each night ended with uncertainty and each morning dawned with anxiety. He was missing something, he was sure of it.
And he had heard that whirring, clicking sound again. He’d searched all over his room, even told Captain Harris about it, but not even the soldiers could find the source of the sound.
He remembered the mechanical spider he’d seen at the Taj and shuddered.
Danny and Meena’s visits to the clock tower provided only more frustrating clues. The scaffolding Danny originally thought was missing actually lay broken at the bottom of the tower. They asked what had happened to it as they performed routine maintenance on the clock.
“She doesn’t know,” Meena translated. “There are blank spots in her memory, as she sometimes focuses on other places in Meerut besides her tower. One day, the scaffolding was beside the clock face, and the next, it was broken. The ghadi wallahs made a fuss, saying someone needed to pay for the repairs, but no one came forward.”
Danny combed the tower for clues, but there was nothing to suggest a stranger had been there. Aditi was of little help; she liked to gossip with Meena while Danny prowled around. Their laughter was grating, and once Aditi even pinched his cheek. Meena insisted it was an act of fondness.
“She says you are too thin. You need to eat more.”
“I eat plenty.” He sat cross-legged in front of the clockwork. Sunlight shone through the clock face and turned the platform a bright emerald.
Aditi said something, and Meena called down, “She would like to know where the small cog in your pocket comes from.”
He hesitated. “Tell her another of her kind gave it to me. As a gift.”
Meena’s eyebrows rose. Blushing, Danny turned back to the clockwork. He thought of his father and how much Christopher would have loved to be in this tower with him, comparing Indian and English designs.
As the other two prattled on, Danny carefully reached for the time fibers around him. Bright and steady, as they had been every day so far. Once in a while, he caught a tiny tremor. He followed the anomaly to the central cog, to the spot his blood had touched.
He so vividly remembered that day at Enfield, using his blood to control time, how the pattern had shifted just for him. In some way, that was what had happened in Khurja, too. Time had unraveled and then reformed into a new, more complicated pattern. Something abnormal, and yet … familiar.
“Danny,” Meena said, “Aditi has been having dreams, and wonders if this other spirit you know has them as well.”
He turned around and edged out of the green-tinted sunlight. “Dreams?” He thought of his past conversations with Colton. “No, I don’t think they’re capable of having dreams. They don’t even sleep. Can she explain them?”
Aditi unleashed a long stream of Hindi. “Let me see if I can translate all of this,” Meena said. “She says that in the dreams, she’s like you and me. She walks around the city, but it’s not how it is today. It’s older, with fewer buildings and people. In one dream, she’s buying a goat. In another, she’s in a hut preparing milk for butter. She rides in a cart, and she knows she’s traveling south, toward the sea.
“But the strangest one she’s had so far is of men screaming in the street, yelling about finding a solution to something. She can’t tell what they’re talking about, and because she’s scared, she tries to run and find a man—” Aditi interrupted, and Meena nodded. “She tries to find a man she calls her husband to ask him what’s happening. And then the dream ends.”
Danny tried to imagine the dreams as Meena described them. “I might know what it is.”
Meena looked surprised. “You do?”
“Colton—rather, spirits in general—have different senses. They can see and hear things all over their towns and cities. They get to see thousands, if not millions, of people during the years. It could be that she’s remembering others’ lives.”
Though Colton had never had visions like these, so far as Danny knew. Now he suddenly burned to ask him more.
Meena’s brows gently furrowed, framing the red bindi between them. “I’m not sure, Danny. This doesn’t sound the same.”
The door to the tower opened below. Danny looked up, but Meena was now alone on the upper platform.
A ghadi wallah climbed the stone steps and gave them a cool stare when he reached the top. He said something to Meena. She replied in a tone even frostier than his. It wasn’t unusual to be sent away if the ghadi wallahs thought they were taking too much time in the tower. Danny figured they had a right to be suspicious.
But the quiet, to him, was even more troubling.
Too anxious to be on his own one afternoon, Danny decided to ask Meena if she fancied a walk. They had made it a habit to discuss theories as they wandered the city. Once, they had found a snake charmer near the temple. Danny’s eyes had followed the swaying head of the cobra, hypnotized by the charmer’s music.
Danny felt very much like that snake, ensnared by a force he couldn’t understand.
He knocked on her door and heard her faint “Come in!” He pulled up short when he saw the small handgun she’d used on the train lying on the bed’s counterpane, sunlight glinting innocently against its steel casing.
“Does it frighten you?” she asked, noticing where his eyes had landed.
“No.” He closed the door halfway behind him. “Maybe a little.”
“It scares me, too. But Akash makes me carry it.”
“Why? Does he have one, too?”
“I think he does, although he’s never shown me. As for why …” She touched the gun. “He worries.”
Danny knew better than to ask questions. “I suppose it did come in handy.”
Meena stored her handgun away in its secret pocket in her salwar. He wondered if she ever worried about accidentally shooting herself in the backside. “Let’s walk.”