Once more, I stopped. Strained my ears, my eyes to make sure that this was real, not just a figment of my imagination.
Master Talik moved. Reached for a box of tools on the other side of the table. Sighed deeply like a man who was beyond exhaustion would.
Real.
I stepped inside the workshop and closed the door behind me.
The metal benches and tables were against the wall again. There were things all over the wooden floor, scattered, like someone had thrown them without looking—which made me wonder about what Master Talik did here after we were gone. During lectures, the floor was clean, and there were all kinds of devices everywhere in the room, but not scattered like this.
I slammed my feet a little as I went closer to the main table, just to make sure he’d heard me, that he knew I was there.
“Good morning, Master Talik,” I said for good measure before I stopped a couple feet to his side.
He turned his head to look at me then, and I sucked in a deep breath, fear locking my limbs for a split second. His eye behind the loupe looked enormous, and his gray hair was all over the place, and he looked terrifyingly pale, too.
“It’s not tomorrow yet, is it?” Master Talik said.
“No, no, I just…” I justwhat?! How exactly was I going to ask him something when I didn’t knowwhatto ask him at all?
“Make yourself useful then and bring me that box over there.” He waved his pliers toward the left side of the workshop, toward the metal boxes full of tools and parts on the racks.
A little stunned that he wasn’t kicking me out, I went for them without even thinking. They all looked identical. Six boxes, exactly the same size.
“Which one?” I asked because he could have been looking at any of them.
But Master Talik didn’t answer. Didn’t look up at me at all.
I grabbed the box in the middle of the top shelf and took it to him, expecting him to tell me it was the wrong one. He didn’t. He only pulled it closer and went through the parts to find a wheel the size of my hand to put inside the large clock he was working on.
The clock’s hands were moving, ticking, except they went four seconds forward and two seconds back.
For a while there, I watched him work. He didn’t have music on this time, but the ticking of those seconds, and the sounds he made while working, followed by his grunts and his sighs, became its own melody. I didn’t interrupt him at all—it was kind of calming to watch his hands move the way they did, with such precision.
“Lend me your ear, young one,” he said all of a sudden. “Do you hear the ticking underneath?”
I was actually surprised again to find his eyes on me—the way he worked, you’d think he believed he was all alone.
“Oh.” I stepped closer. “The-the clock?” I pointed at the clock he was working on, just to make sure.
“Yes,” he said. “The clock. Go ahead. Give it your ear.” And he tapped the glass over the clock face with his fingertips, blackened with oil.
I leaned closer, holding my hair back, and pressed my ear to the cold glass.
“Yes.” My eyes closed and I focused. “It’s…it’s coming from the inside.” I straightened up again, cleared my throat. “There’s definitely another ticking underneath.”
“Hmpf.” He scratched the gray stubble that covered his chin, then got to work again, opening another compartment on the side of the square clock.
“Master Talik,” I said slowly, licking my dry lips. My head hurt a little, and my eyes felt swollen from all the crying—must have cried more than I’d realized at first—but my voice worked. “Remember last time I was here, you told me to reach in the dark, first and always?” He didn’t raise his head, didn’t answer, just continued to work. “Well, I did. And I found…” I reached for the pocket of my tunic for Silas’s portrait. If the paper hadn’t been so thick, I’d have torn it by now. I kept needing it close to me, so I was always stuffing it in my pocket when I left my room.
“I foundthis.” I unfolded the piece of paper, and Master Talik did not look up once.
A second ticked by, and when he didn’t react still, I put the drawing right over the glass of the clock face.
Not sure why I held my breath as I watched his eyes and waited and waited…and they finally moved from the gears and to the drawing.
Master Talik stopped. His hands froze, each holding tools, hovering over the open parts of the clock. He didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, either, as he looked at the drawing of Silas’s face, and for a good moment, the entire room seemed to have frozen in time.
Then the Timekeeper simply continued to work.
