Adi woke up where she had fallen, in the tall grass next to the front gate. She’d been dreaming about . . . something. She couldn’t remember now. She opened her eyes. There were larks circling in the sky high above her. The gray clouds were just beginning to blush crimson.
She sat bolt upright.
“Xander. Xavier!” She looked around her.
The man was gone.
So was the house.
In its place were a few charred timbers on a dark square. A slab of the foundation protruded from the ground; the air was stale with the stench of damp cinders.
She caught sight of her nightgown, hanging upon her, torn and filthy. She remembered the finger in the box.
Adi cried hard, heaving and sobbing, until the gold pocket watch in her hand reminded her that she had no time to be frightened or amazed.
She fumbled the thing open—but it was cold and still.
“But what if I wind it?”
She did. It made no difference. The thing sat in her hand like a stone.
She looked up again at the sky, trying to gauge the hour. If it had been an Indian sky she would have been able to tell to the minute what time it was, but this European light was still strange to her. “Don’t think it’s much after five, though.”
Rubbing her arms against the morning chill, she tried to think what to do.
Riddles.
“He said there were riddles!”
Four clicks on the stem opened up the panel behind the portrait. There were the two thin disks.
Holding it close in the pale light, she could make out lines of tiny engraved letters. She read the first riddle out loud:
“Men with no fingers have no time to linger,
when the devil with four knees,
to be free of its own fleas,
must like a witch with no broom,
fall to its doom.”
“What in the world?” muttered Adi. She glanced at the other three riddles. Madness. With every line they grew more incomprehensible.
Below the last one, she saw one single line of very small type. It read:
“Clues you can’t ignore, you may find the fifth if you plot the four.”
“Oh, well,” she said. “That makes it all clear.”
Much of what she remembered the man saying had to do with how much time she would have to search for the boys. She closed the portrait and remembered how to hold the stem in and turn the clock face around.
Beneath the little crystal squares, there was now a row of numbers—137980800. Like the watch face, the numbers weren’t moving either.
“What did he say? That it would . . . count down to the last second. So if these are seconds, how many days does that add up to?” She blew out her cheeks. “I may be good at language. I can’t say the same for numbers.”
She took up a burned twig from the ground, dropped to her knees, and began doing figures on a paving stone.
She did the whole thing twice. She began to do it again, but stopped herself. She stared at the numbers. Unless she was mistaken, the watch was telling her she had four years, four months, and thirteen days.
She clicked the disks back in place and shut the lid.
“At six, I’m not allowed to speak. That’s what he said.” She put her head in her hands. “Oh, God! Please let that not be one of their fingers.” She felt awful for saying it, though. It was someone’s finger in that box. A child’s, from the look of it. “But how could he expect me not to speak? Or write? It’s mad!” she said, louder, as if to protest the dictate.
She looked around at the wreckage of Tillie’s house. “It’s not the only mad thing that’s happened.” She kicked at the ashes.
“Oh, Tillie. I’m so sorry.” She looped the watch chain over her head and hung the infernal thing around her neck.
She looked out toward the road. To the right, maybe a quarter-mile distant, she could make out the dark silhouette of the city of Saint Clouet. She had no idea what was in the other direction.
“Where else to start, if not in town?”
There was a crow standing on what remained of the garden fence. He cawed loudly and flew across the road to the roof of an abandoned house. Right beside the gate, Adi saw, there was the birdcage. The little yellow bird began chirping inside.
If that was not confusing enough, neatly folded over the fence was the dress she’d been embroidering. She held it up by the arms and let it unfold. There were no buttons on the sleeves, but other than a few unfinished blossoms, it was presentable.
“Better than what I have,” she said, looking down at the disaster that was her nightgown.
With the last bit of water in the trough around back, Adi bathed herself as quick as she could.
She put on the dress, thankful to have some clothes. Though, truly, this was as baffling as anything that had happened to her. This man, Coal. He kidnaps the boys, and burns down the house.
“And then he leaves me a dress.”
Back at the front gate, Adi opened the birdcage. The little yellow bird just sat on his perch looking out.
“I know, sweetie. But I think we have to.”
Lifting up the hem of her dress, Adi looked down at her bare feet. “Too bad you didn’t leave me shoes, monsieur.”
The bird hopped to the ledge, tweeted once, and flew away.
Closing the gate behind her, Adi ran.
• • •
Under the very same sky, to the east of the city, someone else was waking up.
George was lying in a field on his back, his ash brown locks laureled with thistle. He was still wearing the fine linen suit he’d had on in the restaurant the day before, but it was soiled with grass and covered in morning dew. The yellow liqueur was still staining the front of his shirt. An empty bottle of it was close at hand.
A few feet away, a cow mooed and swished its tail. The huge tulip-shaped bell around its neck clonked as it turned away.
“Yes, you too,” George mumbled as he slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position. He groaned and removed his glasses, rubbing his face with his hands, waiting for the spinning to stop.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and climbed unsteadily to his feet.
He patted his pockets.
“Oh, wonderful.” His wallet was missing. He didn’t seem any more surprised by that than by waking up next to cows.
Across the field, the town was visible through the morning fog. He started walking.
• • •
There was a time, when she was young, that Adi’s feet were so tough she could have walked on broken glass.
In Uttar Pradesh in northeast India, where her mother’s people lived, paved roads were rare as hens’ teeth, as was the wearing of shoes by children. She would spend from spring until well after the monsoon without ever putting on a pair.
After her mother died, however, and she began attending the British Raj school in Lucknow, shoes became mandatory.
She shuddered to think what her mother would say if she could see her running barefoot into a European city.
• • •
Adi dashed up the boulevard toward the center of town, trying to get a clear look at the clock tower. People had begun to appear, opening up shops, heading to work. The motorcars were making their way through the horse manure. As she rushed into the town square, the trolly stopped and discharged more people.
But what good would it do to approach them? What would she say?
Though there might be some sense in asking about twin boys. But who to ask? What had this man done with the boys? Where would he hide them? He said they were safe. God only knows what that meant. But it wasn’t likely they would be getting off the trolly.
She could finally see the clock tower, the crown of it, catching the morning light. It was only minutes before six.
She spun around, scanning the square, with only a vague notion of what might be in this part of town.
“The restaurant is, I think—up that way?”
On a side street she spotted a round green sign with white letters: Police.
Charging through the traffic of carriages and autos, she dashed up the block, ran up the steps, and banged through the doors into a quaint station house.
“Is there anyone here! Hello!”
No one was at the desk. She slammed the bell.
“What is it?” said a voice from the back. Adi heard the creaking of a chair.
A plump, sleepy officer pushed through the door from a back room, trying not to spill his coffee. “How can anyone be in such a hurry, so early in the—”
“Please . . . help me? I—”
Trying to catch her breath, Adi thought, How can I put this? That won’t make me sound mad?
“Monsieur, a man came into our house . . . he took my . . . he set the house on fire and—”
“What?” said the officer. “What are you saying?”
But the only thing Adi could hear was Coal, whispering, “Wherever you are. In a boat in the middle of the ocean. Standing alone in a field. I will hear.” Her head filled with images of fingers in boxes and terrible dark things writhing in jars.
The bell in the tower started to toll. “No, no! Not yet!” A sound behind her—Adi looked over her shoulder.
When she turned back, the officer was leaning over the counter staring at her feet.
“What is it? What are you on about, girl?”
She opened her mouth to speak; she tried, but she couldn’t get a word out. It was as if her tongue had turned to wood.
The bell sounded: four, five, six.
The officer stared at the dark-skinned girl with no shoes and no voice. “Get out of here, girl. Before I put you in a cell for vagrancy.”