The spirit tipped his head so that some of his bright hair fell forward. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” When the spirit only shrugged, Danny rose and began to pace around the room. “You show yourself to me, help me repair you, but you don’t show yourself to anyone else. You speak to me, and yet you … Hang on.” Danny stopped, his excitement tripled. “Why do you keep falling apart? Who’s doing this to you? If anyone knows, it’s you!”
Colton looked away. Danny knelt before him, but the spirit wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“It’s all right, you can tell me. I’m a mechanic, it’s my job to know if someone’s tampering with your tower. I mean, it’s not as if you’re the one doing it.”
No response.
Danny stared at him, heartbeat quickening. “Did you do this to yourself?” When Colton still didn’t answer, Danny’s frustration boiled into anger. “What’s the matter with you? Why would you do that?”
The spirit disappeared. Just vanished. Danny gasped and fell on his backside.
Colton winked back into existence a few feet away. “No one comes here,” he said, eyes blazing. “No one cares about this place. The cleaners come and faff about, and leave me dirtier than before. I haven’t had a real mechanic set foot here in a year.”
Danny ran a hand over the front of his waistcoat, speechless. Eventually he murmured, “You shouldn’t do that to yourself. It harms you, and the town.”
Colton lowered his gaze. “The numeral was rusting, and the minute hand was slowing. I had to do something.”
They stayed like that, motionless, for a full minute. Then Danny stood up carefully, worried that the spirit would disappear again at any moment. Something had changed between them, and it made his frantic mind slow down. He should have been angry; he should have told Colton what a mess he’d made.
But he couldn’t. Because he understood.
Coming nearer, Danny raised his hand.
“Can I … Would it be all right to touch you?”
Colton didn’t move at first. Then he took a step forward and held out a thin, bronze-colored hand. Danny cupped it with his bigger, paler hand, his fingers first skimming the inside of Colton’s palm before their hands clasped.
Danny held back another gasp. A peculiar ripple traveled up his spine, and the hairs on his body stood on end. It was much like touching the time fibers, brushing a finger across them to feel the yawning of time open and swallow him whole. He was scattered across the cosmos and deep within the earth, within himself and outside of himself. A miniscule star in the infinite sky. A tiny speck of life in the flow of time.
He came back to himself a few seconds—hours?—later, breathless. Their hands were still clasped, a seam of gold and silver. How could something with such a gentle touch melt an iron numeral or bend a minute hand? The spirit was much stronger than he appeared. A dangerous thrill shot through Danny’s body.
He tried to imagine being stuck in this tower for years without end. To have no other option than to pretend he was falling apart to get attention.
Danny tugged the spirit forward. “Come with me.”
They walked down a level to the clockwork. Danny heard the swinging of the pendulum below, the heavy weight like a beating heart under their feet. Danny tried to feel for Colton’s pulse, but the hand within his own was still.
The pendulum was not the heart of the clock. The lungs, perhaps, every swing a breath propelling life forward. But the heart was something else.
The lines made by his fingers were still on the central cog, creating channels in the dust. Danny touched it.
“These gears need cleaning. You can’t trust a maintenance crew to do that. Why don’t I come back and do it myself?”
Colton narrowed his eyes. “You would do that?”
“I won’t be paid for it, but I’d like to. I can tell it’s been a while, and if the dust keeps gathering, it’ll muck everything up.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
A mechanic was never supposed to accept a job if it didn’t come from the Lead himself. But in this instance, what could Danny say? He couldn’t tell the Lead the real reason why the clock was falling to pieces. He’d look mad.
“No, I won’t get in trouble.”
Colton’s face brightened, shining like the clock face above them. He followed the trail Danny’s eyes had made across the clockwork a moment earlier. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m off by about four minutes.”
Danny blinked, then smiled. Colton sounded like a boy who had just admitted to trampling his mother’s prized flowers.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fix that, too.”