It was a strange request, but Danny racked his brain anyway, tiptoeing away from the cruder stories that Cassie knew by heart. Riffling through his childhood memories, he recalled the fairy tales his mother would read him from a green leather-bound book they still kept somewhere in the house. He snatched the first one that came to mind.
“Have you heard the story of Rapunzel?” Brandon shook his head. “I won’t tell it very well, just to warn you.” He cleared his throat. “There was once a witch who lived in a tower …”
As they scaled down the clock face, Danny told the story of Dame Gothel, who kept the girl Rapunzel in a tower until her hair had grown amazingly long. Then a prince heard her singing, and saw the way Rapunzel pulled the witch up with her hair. Thinking to try the same, he called for Rapunzel to lower her hair.
“And when she pulled him up and they met, they fell in love, and he came again and again to see her. He asked her to marry him, and they escaped the tower and were married in his kingdom.”
Brandon listened quietly the whole time. Danny realized they were already on the scaffolding, the minute hand resting heavily at their feet.
“What about the witch?” Brandon asked.
Danny had asked the same question when he was young, as his mother closed the book. She had paused to think for a moment.
“The witch never bothered them again,” she’d said, brushing back his hair to kiss his forehead. “Rapunzel and the prince were careful. And they were together. From there on out, the world was theirs.”
But Danny had gone back to read the ending for himself. Remembering it now, he took a deep breath.
“Rapunzel accidentally mentioned the prince, and the witch was furious, so she cut off all of Rapunzel’s hair and cast her away. When the prince came, the witch used Rapunzel’s hair to hoist him up. Then she dropped him onto a bed of thorns, blinding him.”
The apprentice barely blinked, so Danny continued. “The prince wandered for days until he heard Rapunzel singing. He followed the sound, and when they were reunited she was so happy that she wept, and her tears healed his blindness. How that happened, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a fairy tale. All sorts of strange things happen in fairy tales.”
“I see.” Brandon gazed solemnly at the clock face where the new Roman numeral II had been installed. “I’m glad they were together, at least. Although I feel bad for the witch.”
“What? Why?”
“She must have acted that way for a reason. She didn’t hate Rapunzel, or else she would have done something worse to her. Maybe she loved her. Maybe she felt betrayed. Rapunzel and the prince had a happy ending, but she didn’t.”
“She’s the villain. She’s not supposed to have a happy ending.”
“I know.” Brandon’s eyes were unfocused. “It just makes me wonder. If she’d done something different, she could have had a happy ending, too.”
Danny stared at him until a blast of wind slapped him back into the present. Shivering, he reached for the minute hand. “Can you hold onto this end, here?”
Together they aligned the end of the hand to the cannon pinion, Danny being careful to take most of the weight. He screwed in the industrial bolts, checking the ease of movement. All the while he explained what he was doing and why. Brandon listened as raptly as he had listened to the story.
When Danny fastened the hand, he closed his eyes and tried to grasp the time fibers that flowed around the clock. They weren’t frayed as they had been when the numeral was missing, but they were scattered. He gathered as many as he could, pulling them in tight. His fingers twitched as if he were knitting.
Finally, with the twelve main fibers drawn together, Danny screwed in the last bolt. Stepping back, they watched as the longer minute hand slowly traveled around the clock’s face until it stopped close to the six position. Just about 12:30. The pain in Danny’s chest vanished.
People from the market had come over to watch, and just as they had the last time, they cheered. The corners of Danny’s lips turned up.
There was still the matter of the old minute hand, which had been taken back to the office for analysis. He had half a mind to snoop around the town some more, perhaps take a look at the ironworker’s forge.
Maybe he really did read too many detective novels.
But he couldn’t deny that the incident was suspicious. And after what had happened in Shere, he felt justified in his caution.
“Do you have a theory?” he asked Brandon. “About the missing tower parts.”
The apprentice hesitated. Danny took his silence as a no.
“This isn’t normal. There has to be some reason why it’s happening.” At least now, with a second assignment under his belt, he would hopefully be closer to getting the Assignment.
As Danny gathered his tools, Brandon studied the clock face, an unreadable expression on his own. “You mentioned your father last time,” Brandon said. “What happened to him?”
Danny couldn’t tell what to be more surprised by: that the apprentice didn’t already know, or that he’d asked. Everyone knew what had happened to Christopher Hart. But there was something annoyingly sincere about Brandon’s gaze as he took in Danny’s reaction.
“That’s not the sort of story you want to hear,” he said. “It’s a sad one.”