Danny’s schoolbooks had always painted India as a savage place, one in dire need of help, as the people barely knew how to run themselves. He doubted that was true. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to suddenly have your entire country snatched away from you, to have foreigners pressing their ideals on you in the hope you could change to be something you weren’t.
His thoughts briefly flitted to Daphne and her exchange program. He wondered what Daphne thought of those schoolbooks, or if her father had drawn distrustful looks. If she thought her pale skin was a blessing or a curse.
“And there are clocks there, too?” Colton asked, setting the jeweled elephant down.
“Of course. I’m sure there must be hundreds of towers controlling Indian time. I’ve always wanted …” It sounded stupid, even in his own head, but Colton’s look urged him on. “I’ve always wanted to travel abroad. To see clock towers elsewhere. I’m fond of London, but I’d like to see other things.”
Danny turned back a few pages and tapped his finger on France. “My family was supposed to go here on holiday. Mum was so excited. She even tried to teach me French, but I’m no good with languages. We would practice with a man she knows from work. Once I tried to say ‘the green chair,’ but it sounded exactly like the word for worm, so I ended up saying ‘the chair worm.’” Colton laughed softly, the sound like chiming glass.
“But then my father left.” Danny’s finger slipped off the page. “And that was that.”
France and Spain blended into one country as Danny’s vision blurred. He huffed at himself and closed the atlas.
“Never mind, that’s depressing stuff. You don’t want to hear about that.” He grabbed the book of mythology again. “Have you heard of the Labors of Heracles?”
Colton touched the back of Danny’s wrist.
“If it hurts,” the spirit said, “then why not talk about it?”
Danny shrugged. “It hurts more, talking about it.”
“Are you sure?”
Danny thought of his mother sitting by the window when she thought she was alone, her eyes faded, her face aging. The pity from his superiors and his peers alike, the way they tiptoed around him. The Lead telling him that there was still no way to fix Maldon.
“Sometimes, I … I don’t know if I can save him.” He opened the book to the picture of Perseus about to slay the Gorgon. “At this point it might take the gods themselves.”
The touch on the back of his wrist traveled down until Colton pulled Danny’s hands away from the book. Colton stared at Danny’s palms, rough and dry. His fingers skimmed the life and heart lines, the map of pale blue veins on Danny’s wrist. Like he wanted to put away every detail, the same way Danny took inventory of his clockwork, the pieces and gears that held him together.
Danny had never been so aware of anyone else in his life. Everything shrank from a universe to a pinpoint, every turn of the earth dependent on his next breath, each touch lingering until those eyes found his.
Colton pressed a hand to Danny’s chest and laid his mouth gently against his. Danny wasn’t prepared for it—the reminder that Colton was not like him, that his palms were smooth and free of flaws, that his wrist showed no veins, that his mouth tasted of copper and of sweet clean air.
He was a boy of air and dust and sunlight. Everything that had gone into the making of the world.
Danny sat at his desk, scribbling on a piece of parchment paper that had once been a grocery list. He propped his head on one hand and stared at the lines without seeing them, occasionally stopping to gaze out the window at the bland view of the next house over. The soft patter of the rain was soothing, and he left his window slightly ajar for fresh air to come through.
The breeze blew up a corner of the paper and he smoothed it down again. The paper was riddled with drawings, the mechanism sketches he’d learned to do as an apprentice, and the full-face clock sketches he did on his own. At the top of one of these he had drawn a small figure reclining on the minute hand, gazing down at another figure at the foot of the tower. He started to add Rapunzel-like hair to the figure at the top, then snorted and crossed it out with a few swipes of his pencil.
He had gone to Enfield again, this time bringing a storybook in the hopes of teaching Colton how to read. He’d caught on quickly, sounding out words until he had them memorized and could recognize them throughout the book. Danny was pondering which book to bring next when the telephone rang.
He leapt down the stairs, hoping it was Cassie, even though she’d pestered him the other day about his secret love affair in Enfield. She begged for the boy’s name, but he refused to tell her, so they continued to call him “the blond bloke.”
“Hullo,” he sang into the receiver.
“Daniel?”
The Lead. Danny swallowed his usual crude greeting to Cassie—What’s up yer bum?—and endeavored to find a professional tone. “Oh, sir. Good morning.”
“I’ll need you to come into the office today. Is that all right?”
His chest fluttered. “Perfectly all right, sir. Is it another Enfield assignment?”
He had said it lightheartedly, almost jokingly, but the Lead’s unnerving silence wiped the smile from his face.