Turning back to his auto, which sat dusty and exhausted beside the village green, he bit the inside of his cheek. His sweating had progressed from mildly uncomfortable to downright disconcerting. A gust of wind carrying the smell of rain ruffled his dark, unruly hair. Because that was just what he needed: a sheet of rain pelting him while he worked.
He dragged a heavy, rectangular package from the auto’s backseat and hoisted it onto his shoulder. The steam auto was a black, five-seater hunk of metal with wheels as wide as sewer manholes. The fabric of the roof was damaged, causing minor flooding when it rained too hard, and the paint was chipped and peeling. Still, he touched the side door for luck. The auto had been his father’s, and Danny hoped to feel his presence somehow.
“Do you need assistance?” the mayor called, still wringing his hands. There was something in the man’s eyes Danny didn’t like, a familiar question: Why did London send a seventeen-year-old boy instead of a real mechanic?
Danny tried to smile, but only achieved a grimace. “No thank you, sir. I’m sure the apprentice is waiting for me inside.”
He turned to the tower. The closer he drew, the harder the pressure grew in his chest, and he wondered if this was what Atlas would have felt had the world rested on his sternum rather than his shoulder. Opening the tower door, Danny’s foot nearly collided with the first step in a long flight of wooden stairs. The rest of the bottom floor was only shadowed corners and cobwebs.
Danny looked up the stairs. The memory of the last clock tower sat heavy on his mind, tightening the cords of his neck. He had ascended those stairs without a care, even swinging his key ring around one finger as he climbed. He grasped at that effortlessness now, desperate to mimic its stride. But it fell away like fog through his fingers.
He had fixed clock towers before, he told himself. He could do it again.
Danny climbed toward the belfry, each creaking step raising small clouds of dust. The tower smelled of moths and age, the scent of a forgotten memory. He counted fifty stairs until he reached the bells. The jack, a mechanical manikin, stood motionless with a hammer poised to strike the bells at the next hour. It had already mistakenly announced the hour of three.
Farther up, Danny reached the churning clockwork, the bronze wheels and gears that turned the hands around the face. Below his feet swung the pendulum that swayed diligently side to side, beating every two seconds.
As he watched the clockwork turn, the pressure returned and constricted his throat. His breaths came too fast and his vision darkened at the edges. This wasn’t just the tower’s effect on him. This was—it was panic. He was panicking. Again. He couldn’t, not now, not when he had so much at stake.
He wanted to run. He wanted to cover his ears and block the echoes of screeching metal, stop breathing in the ghost of smoke that followed him everywhere he went. It was worse inside the towers, this urge to fall to his knees and throw his arms over his head in defense.
One of the reasons he had volunteered for this assignment: to get over this reaction.
The room dipped beneath him as he took a quick step back. He closed his eyes and pushed the panic ruthlessly down, down, down. Tried to convince himself it didn’t exist. He was Danny Hart, and he was a clock mechanic.
A clock mechanic who was now afraid of clocks.
It won’t be like last time, he thought, touching the scar on his chin. It can’t be.
His pounding heart was not convinced.
But this wasn’t just about him. The tower was hurt in a way he could feel in his bones. A sharp twinge in his side, like a cracked rib. They were both in pain.
Danny hugged the parcel to his body and repeated what the doctors had told him to say over and over again: I was in an accident. I got out. I’m safe now.
Whirs and clanks and ticks echoed throughout the tower, a symphony both familiar and new. The sounds vibrated through the wooden floorboards, traveled through the soles of his boots, up his legs, to his heart. Strangely, they calmed him. They loosened his throat and slowed his breaths.
Each tower sounded different to him, like a voice. This one was curious, bright, unassuming. He listened to it speak, gathering his courage until his arms screamed a reminder that the package they held was rather heavy.
Danny climbed higher on unsteady legs and finally reached the clock room. It was cluttered with dusty boxes, better lit than the rest of the tower thanks to the windows cut into the side walls. Out of breath, he put the package down and studied the near side of the clock face. The hands made long shadows through the glass. One rested horizontally, the other diagonal on its journey around the circle.
He wondered who in their right mind would steal an hour from a clock tower. The twinge inside him was a physical warning, like the missing two o’clock demanded an hour of his life in compensation.
As his father used to say: anything was possible.