“I promise I won’t smash it.”
Enrique narrowed his gaze and then nodded in the direction of the bone clock. Gingerly, Séverin lifted the glass covering. He considered the bone clock beneath, the silver foil clinging to the exquisite statues.
And then he shoved it over, where it toppled to one side.
Hypnos squealed. Enrique leapt out of his chair.
“What did you do?”he demanded.
“I did what I wanted. It’s my clock.”
“But youpromised!” wailed Enrique.
“True, but my fingers were crossed.”
Hypnos faked a gasp. “Oh no! His fingers were crossed!”
Enrique shot Hypnos a scathing glare. “Séverin, you could have damaged a symbol, some critical piece of information, and now we’ll never find Tristan—”
“I gave you nearly four hours,” said Séverin. “You’re brilliant. If there was anything to find, you would have sniffed it out by now. That you didn’t is proof enough to me that, in the clock’s current state, there is nothing worth finding.”
“I…” Enrique hesitated.
Truthfully, he was both flattered and insulted. But looking at the place where the bone clock had toppled over, mounting horror replaced all that. Silver dust now spangled the air, a consequence of the delicate foil that had covered the symbols on the clock. Evening light glanced off it, creating sharp and slender shadows on the face of the machinery.
“Now you’ve done it,” said Hypnos. “He’s lost the ability to speak!”
“Oh, shut up, Hypnos—” started Séverin.
Enrique tuned out both of them. He crept forward slowly, his heart hammering. There was a new pattern on the body of the bone clock, like ink sluicing between grooved wood. Words hewn out of light and silver and shadow. Where the silver had peeled away, a flat paleness revealed itself. Off-white. Like… like…
Hypnos scuttled backward on his hands. “Dear God, is that clockactuallymade of bone?”
At the same time, Séverin squinted. “There’s writing on that clock.”
It hadn’t been clear until now. The hand that had cleverly disguised the words on the clock was cramped and narrow, the words barely legible Latin that Enrique quickly translated:
I have been with you all your life
Though I appear only in strife
My quantity will let you see
All this world was meant to be
Enrique moved closer to the clock, his fingers hovering over the words that now appeared.
When Enrique looked up at him, there was a renewed light in Séverin’s eyes. Something that hadn’t been there until now. The three of them sat once more on the ground. Hypnos with his knees pulled to his chest. Séverin, legs crossed, arms crossed. And then Enrique, who was now happily sprawled out, a pen and notebook beside eitherhand as he began to transcribe the riddle’s words. This was the first breakthrough they’d had in hours, and he could feel the strength of it like an unaccounted for burst of sunshine in the veins.
“My quantity,” mused Séverin aloud. “That suggests the answer is twofold. Both the answer to the riddle and how it relates to the clock. Perhaps the quantity has something to do with the numbers on the clock face?”
“Yes, but the clock only goes to twelve,” said Hypnos. “What’s in your body that there’s only twelve of that shows up in times of strife?”
And thus began the most excruciating hour of Enrique’s life. At first, there was talk of teeth which Séverin instantly dismissed. “Who only has twelve teeth?”
Together, they combed through different riddled answers but nothing fit. The minutes stretched by. Not one of them had disturbed the bone clock where it lay. Hypnos had gotten up and started to wander in circles, moaning for wine. While Séverin had turned inward once more, his fingers worrying the tassels on Tristan’s cushion.
“Stupid clock that may or not be made of bone.”
