Danny didn’t know if Tom was gone for the day or if he’d be back any moment, so he quickly began opening drawers and riffling through their contents. It was the usual sort of nonsense: pens, clips, reams of paper, loose screws and springs. Danny looked under the desk and pulled a few books from the shelves. Nothing. Not even a sign of the Maldon tower blueprints.
Then something caught his eye beside the bookshelf. He knelt and found a canvas bag that clanked when he touched it. Frowning, Danny opened the top and found pieces of metal inside. He took one out.
“A pipe?” He examined it from every angle, even looking at the desk through the hole as if it were a spyglass. It told him absolutely nothing.
Frustrated, Danny kicked the bag back into place and slipped out the door. He was listening for the click of the latch when a familiar voice asked, “What are you doing?”
Danny whirled around. Daphne stood with one hand on her hip, looking down her nose at him. She held a file in the crook of her arm.
“I … that’s … a good question.” Danny resisted the urge to wipe his damp palms on his trousers. “What are you doing?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m on the foreign exchange committee for the new India program,” she replied easily. “I’m turning in some research. But what I’m most curious about is why you’re not answering my question.”
“Tom was—that is, he—wanted me to drop off something. So I’ve dropped it off.” He inclined his head. “Good day.”
Danny edged past her and headed for the stairs, but she followed.
“What were you dropping off?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Was it for an assignment?”
“That’s not—”
“Or were you hoping for a glimpse of those blueprints?”
Flushing, Danny grabbed the top of the banister and spun around, coming within inches of Daphne’s self-assured face.
“It’s none of your business, Miss Richards,” he ground out. “We’re both too busy for this stupid game. Good day.”
He hurried down the stairs and felt her eyes on him the entire way down.
Danny and his mother hardly used the sitting room anymore, the banged-up couch and armchair sagging with dust and neglect. Danny was currently raiding it.
He grabbed trinkets off the mantle, gifted to them by friends and family: a jeweled elephant sent over from a cousin who had gone to India, a miniature flag of Australia, and a ceramic figurine of a dancing German, complete with lederhosen and a mug of beer in one pink hand.
He stuffed whatever he could into his bag, careful not to break anything. He ran his eyes over the bookshelves and grabbed a couple of titles he thought would be interesting. Then he ran out of the house, right past his mother, who asked him how her interview dress looked.
“Good, fine, very professional,” he called over his shoulder.
“Where are you going with all you’ve nicked?” she demanded before the door closed behind him.
In Colton’s tower, they sat cross-legged in the clock room as Danny removed everything from the bag, including a book of Greek mythology that still had a layer of dust on its cover. He blew the dust off and handed it to Colton, who held the book as if he’d been given the most valuable artifact in human history.
“It’s all right, have a look.”
Colton examined the cover, which featured a drawing of Pegasus flying toward Mount Olympus. Danny watched as Colton ran his long, nimble fingers over the golden lettering before he opened the cover and began flipping through the pictures. Danny explained the stories when he could remember them.
“The Greeks loved the idea of fate. In a completely morbid way, of course. Most of the stories are about people trying to change or avoid their fate, but everything they do just brings them that much closer to it.” Danny tapped a picture of three women holding a long thread between them. “The Fates spin out the thread of your destiny, whatever it is—killed by stampeding rhinoceroses, let’s say—and you think, right, well, I’m never going near a rhinoceros ever again.
“But it’s not really your choice anymore. The Fates assign your destiny, and even though you have no desire to see a rhinoceros, all of a sudden you’re whisked away to Africa because you’re now governor of a colony. And when you’re there, you will most certainly be trampled by rhinoceroses. The thread is cut.” He imitated the motion of scissors with his first two fingers. “And that’s that.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“Me? Not at all. I can change my fate whenever I want. Or maybe that’s what the Fates want me to think.”
Colton laughed, and it lit up the room. Sitting so close to him, feeling this tenuous thing between them, Danny realized now that something had been stripped away from him in the last three years. He’d been eroding. Losing the things close to him. Sanded down to a pale, exposed nerve.
And here …
Well, he was more. It was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t shedding weight, but rather putting it back on, padding himself against the elements and the world. He wasn’t the ghost of a boy who once was happy. He was happy.
Happy.
It was an odd concept.
But Colton’s smile seemed to creep across his own mouth, pushing up the corners of his lips. Here, he was the opposite of eroding.
He was living.