It had been months since he’d been to the hospital, and he remembered the smell immediately: chemicals and urine. It made his nose itch and his stomach hurt.
His stay here had almost been worse than the explosion itself. The way his mother and Matthias treated him like a china doll, the sympathy in everyone’s eyes, the way the doctor approached his side as if he were unstable.
Then again, Danny’s nightmares had tended to wake the entire ward. And he’d tried to escape. Twice.
“May I help you?” a nurse asked at the front desk. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize her.
“Yes. I was looking for my, er, uncle. Tom Hawthorne?”
She checked the files and directed Danny to a room on the second story. He walked up the stairs, his heart pounding. The floors creaked under his boots, and he felt as if just by looking at him people would know what he was up to. But he went largely ignored, the staff far too busy with their own concerns.
When he reached the right room, he braced himself before entering. It was worse than he thought. Legs and arms were splinted, George’s head bandaged and bloody, Tom’s face bruised. At the sight of Danny, they tensed.
“What are you doing here?” Tom growled. Even his voice sounded bruised.
Danny tried to swallow past his dry tongue. “I know what’s going on.”
The two men exchanged a look.
“About the clock towers,” Danny clarified.
“Then would you do us a favor and tell us?” George said.
“You two are in on it. Together.”
Tom managed to croak out a laugh. “Lad, the hospital fumes must have gotten to you.”
“He’s always been like this,” George muttered.
Danny came closer, trying to make himself taller. “You were at Shere before I was. You had access to the tower blueprints. There were pipes in your office, and pipe bombs destroyed the new Maldon tower. I bet Lucas saw something while he was in Rotherfield, and you two killed him at Maldon to keep him quiet. I don’t know why you’re doing this, if maybe you sympathize with the protesters, but it stops now.”
“Danny,” George said slowly, “you’re not making sense.”
“After Rotherfield, you said that something needed to be done.”
“I was talking about finishing the Maldon tower. Tom was upset. His sister lives in Rotherfield, and when the bomb went off, he was terrified of the town being Stopped. And as for the pipes,” George said, glancing at Tom, who was pale under his bruises, “Tom was re-plumbing his house.”
Danny hesitated, his limbs buzzing with warning, with the need to do something. George could easily be lying.
“Those are convenient excuses,” he said at last. “I don’t know why you two are doing this, but I’m going to tell the Lead. I’ll tell the police if I have to.”
“You’re out of your mind.” Tom called for the nurse, who came to the doorway. “This young man is bothering us. Please escort him out.”
“No!” Danny started forward. “I know you have something to do with it!”
The nurse yelled for help. George was yelling, too, but Danny couldn’t hear the words above the roaring of his blood.
“Stop lying to me!” Danny screamed. “Just tell me that you did it!”
“Danny!” Tom shouted over him. “Let it go. The Maldon tower is gone.” His face shuttered with grief, with regret. “I’m sorry.”
Someone dragged him from the room, hauled him down the stairs, and shoved him into the street. A stocky man with a beard warned him not to come back.
Danny ran down the street and around the corner. He kept running until he smacked into a brick wall. Danny pressed his forehead to the gritty surface and pushed down a scream. He punched the wall over and over until his knuckles split and bled. Until he could convince himself the tears on his face were from pain.
AETAS AND THE SEA GODDESS
The sea churned and frothed the more Oceana paced before her brother. Her hair rose and floated like seaweed, waving slowly through the water and then touching the broad slope of her gray shoulders. Her dress of kelp and cockles rustled when she moved, and occasionally a small cardinal fish swam from one of the many folds.
“You must consult with Chronos first,” Oceana told her brother. He had just admitted to how poor his grasp on time had become.
It had begun the day he journeyed to the sky with Caelum. Since then, time kept thinning, unraveling, until Aetas struggled daily to rein the threads in. Mornings flickered and nights wavered. Humans found themselves in the same spots they had inhabited twelve minutes before. Animals went missing. Crops grew too fast and withered prematurely.
“I have a plan to help control time,” said Aetas. For he was learning more and more that it was a wild thing without cause or patience. Of all the elements he and his brother and sisters maintained, time, it seemed, was the most unruly.
“But it will anger Chronos. You know this. Speak with him instead. Perhaps he will end his long rest to assist you.”
“No. I must do this myself.”