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MY HEART hammered. “I didn’t see you when I arrived. Have you been watching me climb the tower?”
“No.” He smoothed out his coat, which hung below his knees. “I recently returned from an errand.”
Good. He likely missed my incident with The Chars.
“It’s rare for me to receive visitors.” Nick shot me a sly grin. “Did you arrive through one of the portals?”
“I—no.” One of the portals? What was this place? “I traveled by using an unofficial object.” I pointed to my glasses.
He nodded and clasped his hands behind his back. “Is there some way I can help you, friend?” His smile was a challenge, but it was neither threatening nor unfriendly; he must have thought me stupid.
“I’m searching for someone who I fear may be lost. My uncle suggested that I continue my search at the Clock Tower. He said the tower would show me the way.”
Nick looked up at the tower. “Without more to go on, that could take some time. The Everywhen expands at an alarming rate.” He pointed to an object on the tower about the size of a pearl. “See this? A new timepiece, representing a tiny world just starting out.”
“What purpose does the Clock Tower serve other than to keep an ornamental record of all the worlds?”
“It’s more than pretty, friend. The Clock Tower can transport you to any of the worlds; but you have to have some idea of where you’re going.”
“How’s that?”
Nick smiled. “The tower is an interactive map of sorts.” He brushed his hand across a silver pocket watch—gargantuan in size—that stuck out of the lower side of the Clock Tower. The watch glowed with his touch, then faded when he turned back to me. “Each timepiece is a portal to the world represented.”
Shame filled me as realization set in. I’d climbed the tower, held symbols of the worlds in my hands and stepped on them with my feet. Some of the worlds I may have built myself. If Nick told the truth, I could have been transported anywhere. Yet there I stood at the foot of the tower, surrounded by purple haze. Then again, nothing I’d touched had glowed.
Either way I felt I’d violated Nick’s property. “I apologize. Had I known, I wouldn’t have touched the timepieces, not without your guidance.”
“No harm done, friend. Like any door, the portals need to be opened before one can travel through them.”
“You mean unlocked, with a key?”
“Yes. When the last Time Keeper moved on, I became the official keeper.” He bowed. “I am the key.”
How strange. In all my travels I hadn’t met anyone like him. If the worlds were as vast and numerous as they seemed to be, I supposed it made sense. “How are you able to unlock the portals?”
“It’s an inherited travel talent, one that Aboreal doesn’t look upon kindly.” He sniffed. “They equate the ability with witchery or sorcery—”
“Like World Builders,” I said, pointing to myself. The significance of how the two talents worked together hadn’t escaped me.
He nodded and rubbed his lip. “If only we’d been born Chauffeurs—”
“Or Detail Technicians—”
“Loop Blockers, perhaps.”
“Or Remnant Transporters,” I whispered, thinking of Calla.
Nick’s eyes widened. “You’ve met one?”
“Two. My friend and his daughter. They’re of Chascadian descent.”
He chewed on my words for a moment. “Are they the ones you seek to find?”
“I’m sure Plaka’s fine wherever he is without me. I’m looking for his daughter, Calla.”
The muscles along Nick’s jaw twitched. “The girl—she means something to you.”
I nodded. “I don’t know where she is. I’ve tried time traveling to her. Even if she’s lost, she must be somewhere.” My hands involuntarily balled into fists. “I’ll search through every portal if I have to.”
“For that, you’ll need a key.”
“Will you help me, Time Keeper?”
“I’m happy to show you how I read the portals and travel through. I can accompany you, but visiting every world is impossible, even if we were to travel backward in time. There are too many places to search.”
I gulped, feeling a flash of pain behind my eyes. “So you’re saying there’s no hope of finding her?”
Nick grabbed my shoulders. “Pull it together, friend. All I’m saying is that you need to focus your search. For that, we’ll need a place to start, a beginning of sorts.”
***
NICK SHOWED ME A DOOR, not a portal, but an actual door that led inside the Clock Tower. Wonders never cease.
We climbed a staircase that wound up along the interior wall of the tower, until we reached his home. It resembled an apartment loft with a bunk bed and scattered floor pillows. A countertop that doubled as a dining table sat off to the side, opposite a desk and a black-and-white trunk crafted in a style I’d seen in Aboreal.
I brought Nick up to speed on everything that had happened—Plaka’s role as my friend and healer, his order that I protect his family, the Uproar’s involvement, the history of the travel glasses, Calla’s infraction and sentencing and our search for Plaka. Where necessary, I highlighted details from my upbringing at the White Tower and Calla’s visits to past versions of me.
Nick listened with interest. He did not appear to pass judgment. If anything, his countenance remained calm and kind, his demeanor breaking only when I raised two subjects that seemingly troubled him.
The first of these topics was the TSTA. Had Plaka been present at our chat inside the Clock Tower, he would have found a follower in Nick. Both shared the same disdain for the TSTA. This I found strange given that, unlike me, neither Nick nor Plaka had been formally charged with an infraction or ordered to carry out a sentence.
The second demeanor-breaking moment occurred when I mentioned Ivory as having been sentenced to join our team. Nick seemed particularly interested in the details of her hearing and conviction of a contributory infraction. “She, too, is Aborealian,” I’d said. If he had further interest in Ivory after his initial surprise at the mention of her name, he didn’t show it. His face remained stoic, the chill of winter highlighting his hair and eyes.