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THREE HUMANOIDS materialized in front of me.
They crouched forward, likely bracing for the impact of their arrival. I grounded myself as well.
It wasn’t until I felt the burning of guilt and pain, a lighter shade of the Uproar’s presence, that I realized what they were.
Not again. While searching for Calla, I’d almost forgotten about them. I’d become distracted. After leaving Edgar and gathering momentum for travel, I’d focused on the elements for my search so I might find the Clock Tower; but my subconscious mind sought to travel to a slice in time that would show me the Daily Reminder I’d destroyed. Since I feared going back to the White Tower, I considered going back to the TSTA hearing where Calla was tried. That would have been a tricky venture, however, given all the witnesses present. Unfortunately, the weight of these thoughts had run through my mind on my way to the Clock Tower.
I’d lost awareness of the spirals inside the white light, leaving room for the beings who invaded my travel path. Other peoples in other worlds referred to them as Cleaners, but I knew these manlike creatures as The Chars.
The ground below us quaked and trembled, trailing fissures and crumbling pockets of rock to dust.
Through my glasses, I caught glimpses of grins. Were they mocking me? I chuckled. Why let The Chars have all the fun?
With a swipe of my hand, I scooped up soil and threw it at them. Char One, the being closest to me, dodged. But the one situated next to him took a face full of dirt. Char Two growled.
Fortunately for me, they weren’t wearing travel glasses. From the sound of it, the dirt shower had stung its unprotected eyes. I squinted. The Chars’ unofficial objects, assuming they had any, were hidden; I still didn’t know how they traveled. They didn’t seem the type of beings that complied with TSTA regulations.
If only the Uproar was after them instead of Calla. Then perhaps I could convince it that I deeply loved The Chars. Who knows what travel talents the Uproar could suck from their blood, if they had blood.
I sucked in a breath and bolted. They were still grounded and crouched, waiting for the impact to subside.
I caught them by surprise, landed in the middle of all three and sent them sprawling.
As the world stilled, they sprang at me. I kicked out a leg and spun. My foot met the stomach of Char One, sending him backward. The other two were on me before I could blink. A fist caught my jaw. I grunted, and then returned the favor while Char Three twisted my left arm behind my back. I snapped a back kick, right between Char Three’s legs. He fell.
I dodged Char Two before landing two more punches to its face. The second punch met with a crack. Two down. Char One to go. Granted, I could have run earlier and escaped with the travel glasses. But, unlike Plaka and Calla, I wasn’t about running away.
I caught my breath, then scanned the area where I stood. It was dark, but across the horizon I could see a faint glow. The glow deepened, spreading across the sky. I lowered my travel glasses and peered over them. The light was dazzling, a fiery violet. As the light dispersed, I could see a structure bending and twisting in the distance.
I glanced back to see whether The Chars were still down. They lay side by side, and were already starting to fade. It wouldn’t be long before they disappeared completely. One would think the TSTA would spend more if its time dealing with them instead of prosecuting time travelers. Then again, there was Plaka’s theory about the TSTA’s control over the Uproar. Perhaps the TSTA also controlled The Chars.
Drawn to the purple sky, my feet pressed forward. The structure, a mangled tower, rose high above the heavens. I wasn’t sure where the tower ended and the sky began. I stepped closer.
Edgar was correct. The clock tower was not a tower with a single clock. Conversely, it was a tower built of clocks.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear why Edgar had said the tower captured all the times in the worlds, including the expansion of the Everywhere and Everywhen. Clocks of all shapes and sizes jutted out from an indeterminate structure. Different types of clocks—some I’d seen on Earth in different places and times, such as mantle clocks, digital clocks and cuckoo clocks. There were Aborealian hourglasses and calendars. Gears, electrical wires and lightbulbs peppered the mangled mess of clockwork. Large watch hands projected outward at odd angles, some bending and twisting like vines around sprockets that hung from the tower, six feet from the ground.
At its center was a compass. Round like a crystal bowling ball, I’d never seen its equal. Inside the glass were symbols for North, South, East and West; but as I walked around the clock tower, the directions changed, as did its hands. The compass changed with each degree, capturing every direction, ways I’d never heard of or seen. It was as if dimensions beyond the third were captured in the fourth, and dimensions beyond the fourth were captured in the fifth; yet, somehow all were captured and represented there in the third dimension of space.
Carefully, I climbed the clock, placing my feet on the times of other worlds, in order to see more along the top. Fragile materials supported my weight as if I weighed nothing—were nothing—but a breath of air in time and space. I climbed on, grabbing timepieces with my hands and pulling myself upward along the tower.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled when I reached the topmost third of the tower. An hourglass sat perched on the tower’s tapered tip, like a golden star crowning one of Earth’s Christmas trees. The top half of the glass was mostly full. Both halves rested on a crescent moon-shaped base. The hourglass hung balanced, lightly swinging back and forth, ready to flip over when empty.
I made my way back down the tower, wondering whether time ever ends, whether it could be eternal—how a system of worlds with World Builders could possibly have an end. My brain ached as I tried to make sense of it all, wondering where to begin searching for Calla.
My attention turned to something bright and painful: a miniature White Tower, representing the world my parents created, the timeline of which reset when I was born.
The White Tower replica had no clock hands. There were no digital measures of time, no sand trickling from the top of a glass. But I knew how the time was recorded and what time it was at the tower, based on the brightness of its glow. Like the sky which backlit the clock tower, the White Tower was a dazzling white. From what I’d learned as a child, the more brightly it glowed, the later its time and the closer to its end.
I tightened my grip and groaned. “Why does every search lead back to the White Tower? Have I traveled here to the Clock Tower only to be faced with it again?” I descended a few more steps toward the base of the tower. “Is there no way to escape the past—to leave it behind me?”
“You don’t appear to be biding time, friend.”
I nearly fell from the tower. I glanced beneath me to see who’d spoken.
The man who looked up at me was thin, with a nose as straight and long as his gangly limbs. He regarded me with eyes of purple ice. His hair, white like snow, was bound in a loose tail. Friend indeed.
I exhaled, relieved. Everything about him radiated Aborealian descent.
I jumped the last few feet from the Clock Tower and signaled to him, the way I would have greeted anyone in my mother’s home country, Aboreal.
His amethyst eyes met mine as he drew his lip into a thin line. He signaled back, and then frowned. “I disclaimed Aboreal long ago, but I respect the gesture.”
“You’re from my mother’s homeland,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure.”
The former Aborealian nodded and held out his hand.
“Valcas Hall,” I said, clasping it.
He grinned. “You can call me Nick.”
I squinted. Aborealians had no last names, so I hadn’t expected one. Aborealian citizens were simply individuals of Aboreal. But the man’s first name didn’t fit the metric. Nick didn’t have the same significance to it as Ivory and Sable, shades of white and black. He should have had a name that reflected his wintry hair. Nick meant nothing in Aborealian.
I opened my mouth to say something.
“I’ve renamed,” he said. “When I denounced Aboreal, I changed my first name and adopted a surname of sorts.”
“Which is?”
“Time,” he said. “I’m now Nick, no longer of Aboreal, but of Time.”
Nick of Time. Was this guy serious? If he noticed my cringe at the horrible pun, he didn’t show it.
“What brings you to this part of the worlds, friend?”
“A search.” I looked around, disturbed. “How did you get here?”
“I’m the keeper of the Clock Tower. Welcome to my home.”