It was nearly midnight and Colton sat in the middle of his bed, unable to sleep. Ever since the trip to the coast, Hancock’s words had been rolling around his head like marbles. There was something he had to try.
He looked to his right, to the sheet dividing his bed from his parents’. His father’s snores sawed through the air and his mother’s lighter snores whistled in harmony. On his left, past the other sheet, Abigail was quiet as usual.
Colton took a deep breath and slipped out of bed, trying not to make a sound. He bypassed the creaky step near the bottom of the stairs and lit a lantern, which he placed on the table. He sat within the lantern’s buttery glow and opened his hands to reveal the timepiece he’d been clutching.
It was his father’s, and it was very old. The silver exterior was carved with a scalloped design, almost like a seashell. It was the most expensive thing they owned.
Colton laid his tools out before him on the table’s surface. Carefully, quietly, he pried the timepiece apart to get to the gears within.
When he laid eyes on the smoothly turning mechanism, his heart started to beat faster. The parts were so tiny, so beautiful, so mysterious, that he couldn’t help but stare.
Colton grabbed the pocketknife his father had given him on his tenth birthday. He pricked his thumb, watching as a small bead of blood rose to the surface. Swallowing, Colton wondered if he should abandon his plan, put the timepiece back together, and forget what he had heard on the wagon.
But he had to know.
He pressed the bead of cooling blood to the gears. Something sharp ran through his chest and he had to slap a hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying out.
Time writhed around him. He felt it intimately on his skin, the way Castor’s fingers felt when they traced the lines of his body. He shuddered, his hands hot as they clutched the faintly glowing timepiece.
He replaced the face. Focusing on the awareness that raised the hairs along his arms, he silently commanded the timepiece to stop. The hands slowed, the ticking ceased, and the small bubble of time around him froze.
He couldn’t breathe.
Start. Start.
The hands resumed their journey, and the faint ticks of the second hand came back to life. He inhaled.
“Hancock was right,” Colton whispered. “We can control time.”
A rustle made him jump. He looked at the front door, then the window beside it. It could have been his nerves, but he thought he saw the flash of a pale face before it disappeared into the folds of night.
Colton was about to run to the door when he heard Abigail whimper upstairs. He hesitated before he put the timepiece down and hurried to her instead. She was tossing under her sheets, frantic and perspiring.
“Abigail.” He cradled her face with his hands, smearing blood on her cheek. “Abi, wake up. It’s just a dream.”
Her eyes moved under her lids, then opened slowly. Although her forehead was coated with sweat, she shivered.
“Colton,” she whispered hoarsely, her fingernails driving into his skin. “Colton, you’re here.”
“Of course I am. I’m always here.”
“You were gone. I couldn’t find you.”
He gently swept her hair back. “I’ll never leave you, Abi. I promise you’ll always be able to find me.”
When she was calm again, he wiped the blood from her cheek and gave her some water. He thought about the timepiece downstairs, and how he had to dismantle it to clean the gears before their father woke up. But Abigail couldn’t find sleep again, so he held her, wondering what he should say to Instructor Beele.
This discovery was going to change everything.
When Castor came over the next day, Colton led him out back to the garden. As they tilled the soil in preparation for the spring planting, Colton told him about his experiment the other night.
Castor listened intently as he worked, but when Colton reached the part about his father’s timepiece, he stopped and leaned against the hoe, eyes wide. “Colton, how could you do something so reckless?”
“I had to try. Hancock said it himself: time is changing. The way we sense it will change, too, if Aetas stays unreachable. Maybe he is doing it for a reason.”
“We can’t control time!”
Colton shushed Castor and looked around to see if anyone had heard. He saw no one, but felt a prickle of apprehension, as if someone were watching. He still wasn’t certain if he’d imagined the face in the window the night before. “We’re time servants. We work directly for Aetas. Who’s to say that we can’t do what he can?”
Castor shook his head. “That’s misusing our power. If we can control time with our blood, we’d all be at war within a second. Don’t you see that?”
“Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean—” The air shifted, and Colton turned his head. For a moment, he thought he could smell the sea. “Castor?”
“I feel it, too,” Castor said. “What—?”
Everything
The world spun upside down, the sun and moon collided, and Colton fell to the ground. Pain ripped through his body and he screamed. He felt like he was being flayed alive, like thousands of thorns tore into his flesh, burying into his bones.
Castor screamed beside him. The ocean roared. The earth trembled.
Then the pain ebbed like the tide, and Colton looked up to see the sky shrouded by an ominous gray barrier. Within a blink it was gone, replaced with watery sunshine. Another blink, and the barrier returned.
“What’s happening?” Castor yelled.
Colton struggled to his hands and knees, retching. He was being turned inside out. His guts writhed like snakes.
When he looked up, he gasped. The tilled earth sprouted crops not yet planted, carrots and beans and potato flowers. They grew at an impossible rate. Then, just as quickly, they shriveled and died.
“What is this?” he croaked. “Castor?” But another wave of pain hit, and he dropped to the ground. He curled into a ball and sobbed. Time and snapped and .
“Colton! Colton, get a hold of yourself. We have to find Beele.”
He looked up at Castor, his face pale and frightened, his brown eyes round, his hair in disarray.
And then he was looking at someone else, someone he didn’t know. Another boy, his face sharper and his hair darker, his eyes not brown but bright popping green. There was a slanted scar on his chin.
“Colton, what’s wrong?” the boy demanded in an entirely different voice. “Colton!”
“Who are you?” he rasped. “Where did you come from?”
But the boy had changed back into Castor, and helped Colton to his feet. Colton swayed and leaned into him, but he managed to stay upright. They hobbled around to the front of the house and froze.
The roads were lined with more houses than had been there this morning, crowding the countryside. Huge, clunking beasts of metal trundled down the streets on wheels.
“What are they?” Castor asked. A second passed, and then they were looking at their own Enfield again. Another second, and it was nothing but a grassy plain extending toward a forest.
Everything was spinning and
Colton turned and nearly ran into the side of his reappearing house. A scream tore through the air above their heads.