He drove through Lambeth and reached home just after dark. The street was draped in shadow, relieved only by the soft glow from the row house windows, including his own. That meant his mother was home. She tended to work later hours now, something she would have never done when he was younger. When his father was still around.
The last few meters were the toughest for the auto, but it made it all the way to the curb before sputtering to a halt. Smoke billowed from the bonnet, like ghostly visitors had hitched a ride and this was their stop.
Danny unlocked the front door and threw his things on the floor. The house stood tall and narrow, with a treacherously steep flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms above. Green wallpaper ran from floor to ceiling, a color long since faded from emerald to celadon. The kitchen on the right was separated from the hall by a push-through door that tended to stick. He had to shoulder his way inside.
His mother sat at the kitchen table reading a newspaper in the dim glow of a lantern. The light caught her mane of curly brown hair, unmanageable even in the best of weather. She held a half-burnt cigarette between two fingers yellowed by years of addiction.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “How was it?”
Danny answered with a shrug and walked by a pile of dirty dishes to check the pantry. His mother drew his attention to a sausage roll on the table. He tore into it at once.
“Thought you’d be out later than this,” Leila said, resting a pointed chin on one hand as she blew smoke from her slightly puckered mouth. His father had often joked she had sucked too hard on a lemon as a child.
“Thought so too, what with that rubbish auto I’ve got.”
Leila’s eyes flashed. They were dark brown and lined with crow’s feet. Danny was more an image of his father, from his green eyes to his gangly limbs.
“You best be taking good care of it.”
“It’s not me making it break down, it’s the bloody engine.” He wanted a new auto, and was secretly saving his money, but his mother refused to be rid of this one. His father had worked hard to afford it, and it was a miracle they had one at all. Families like theirs, in the lowest rung of the middle class ladder, usually couldn’t boast such a luxury. “I’ll have Cassie take a look tomorrow.”
Leila dropped her eyes to the paper spread out before her on the table. He spied a report on recent events in India. Beside that were job adverts.
Nothing about towers.
“Mum,” Danny said carefully, “the Lead told me there’s no news. About Maldon.”
Leila paused, then took another drag from her cigarette. She let it out as a smokey sigh.
Just as easily as Danny could sense the fibers of time, so too could he sense the strain between them. He never understood what his mother needed, especially now, when they were two boats drifting into separate currents. Danny could fix clocks, but he didn’t know if he could fix this. Not on his own.
He inhaled as if to speak, but remained silent. Eventually Leila lifted her head.
“I’m off to bed. Douse the light, will you?”
He flattened the rest of the roll between his fingers, leaving imprints in the thick dough. “Mum? Don’t work so hard. The job today was worth at least five pounds.”
Leila paused again as she stood up, one hand resting on the tabletop as she studied her son across the seemingly immeasurable distance.
“It’s all right, Danny,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me.”
He listened to the clack of her high-heeled boots on the stairs and the muffled closing of her bedroom door. Sighing, he stuffed the last of the thick bread in his mouth and turned to the pile of dirty dishes. His jittery hands scrubbed and soaked until he found some minor relief in the chore, his mind filled only with suds. One less thing for his mother to worry about.
He stared at the empty counter for a few minutes, then doused the lamp.
The clock tower hummed all around him. His hands were on the clockwork, admiring the design of the cogs, the punctuality of it all. Every second tripped onward, one after the other, each tick a breath of air. It filled his lungs, his chest. Seeped through muscle and bone until it fused with the beating core of him.
He was connected to time. It was the greatest feeling in the world.
But something was wrong. A shift in the air, a crook of misfortune’s finger. As he reached for the nearest gear, it exploded outward, cutting his hand. He scrambled back, but not before the rest of the clockwork blasted away from the wall—all the metal, the smoke and splinters, rushing at him like a tidal wave.
He was smothered in gray. He choked on blood. Copper filled his mouth, chipped his teeth, gouged his eyes, seared his skin. A gash on his chin seeped crimson onto his white shirt. He couldn’t hold it in, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t reach for time any longer. It danced out of his grasp, wild, unobtainable. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t—