The Keepers paused, as if having to think hard on an answer. In the end, they answered with a question. “What is a home?”
It only took a moment to see the difficulty in answering, because a home was less one singular thing than it was a collection of nouns. Home could be the house you lived in, but not all houses were homes. It could mean people—your family, a lover—but these, too, could change or leave or cast you aside. Home could be the city you lived in, or the country, but on such a grand scale, how could we narrow it down to find the wraith’s true home?
From his expression, Kessian had drawn the same frustrating conclusion. He said, “How are we supposed to help the wraith go back home if we don’t even know who or what it is?”
“That, too, is what you must discover.”
As the Keeper spoke, our boat rounded another bend in the river. An all-too-familiar house loomed out of the willows.
37 Culpepper Avenue had always felt like a house with history. It had once been a place fragrant with the smells of Sunday roasts and itching with the ticking of clocks. Over the years the place had sagged under the weight of Grandad’s obsession.
In the ethereal reflections of the timestream, the house had taken on all its different aspects. Like the Keepers, its face seemed both welcoming and forbidding.
Our boat sidled up to the bank, bending reeds until we’d nearly run aground in the shallow muck. The Keepers waved their hand, and a gangway composed of the same blueish spectral material as the Keepers themselves appeared.
I crossed it, turning to help Kessian out. “How’s your leg?”
“I sort of hoped, since our bodies are floating off in the strid somewhere, that I’d be free of the aches and pains, but no.” He took my hand and stepped out with me. “At least the … Bloodstream had the decency to magic my cane here along with me.”
The Keepers said, “From here, you will find many paths to different times, different trials. You must pass them all if you are to find your own way home.”
The Keepers placed a pocket watch in Kessian’s hands. It was identical to the one Amelia had found for us in Grandad’s study, except that its image flickered between polished silver and tarnished rust. Kessian flicked it open to reveal the time set to midnight, the second hand ticking forward and back without making any progress.
The Keepers said, “This is a place fit only for spirits and dreamers. While your bodies soak in the strid’s blood, your spirits sail this stream, where time flows both ways. You must complete your task before the hour hand reaches midnight, or time will flow against you, and both your bodies will perish in the deep. Just as those who’ve come before you.”
We both looked at the pocket watch, the second hand frozen, tapping the twelve over and over. My heart kept time with it.
The Keepers disembarked on their boat and said, “Farewell, and good luck.”
The second hand ticked forward. One, two, three.
We had twelve hours.
Chapter 31
The door to 37 Culpepper Avenue squealed inward as we stepped inside.
I didn’t know what to expect—the horrific variation where wraiths crawled out of grandfather clocks or the warm memories of times long past.
It was neither. The clocks populating the living room and hall were not so numerous as they’d been in the present day, nor was anything quite so dusty, but it looked … normal. I had to remind myself we were still in the strid.
“It would have been nice if the Keepers had given us detailed instructions,” Kessian whispered.
I didn’t think the Keepers had much more information than we did.
Muffled, agitated voices drifted to us through the ceiling. Exchanging a glance, we both made for the stairs. On the landing, the door to Grandad’s study was ajar. Grandad himself sat behind a cluttered desk heaped with notes and books, observed by countless clocks on the wall. Including the three on a shelf Amelia had told us about, labeled with mine, Dad’s, and Laurelie’s names. In front of the desk, Mum chewed her nails while Marlowe paced.
“I only need to borrow five thousand this time.”
Grandad had his head bowed in his hands, elbows propped on his desk. “I told you, I don’t have it.”
“You’ve always got a little something squirrelled away, and I can pay it back in a few months. After the growing season, I’ll make it back from the cider farm.”
“Come on, Dad,” Mum said. “It’ll be his in less than a year if you don’t slow down, anyway. You’re killing yourself.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t bail you out this time,” Edwin said. “I don’t have the money.”
“But the summer brought in more tourists this year than we’ve seen in a decade. Surely you haven’t spent it all on these damned antique clocks,” said Mum.
