An Instrument of Time

AN INSTRUMENT OF TIME by Holly Lorincz

He watched through the large bay window as she closed the book, placed it on the table, and, finally, approached the front door.

A hissing gust passed his lips, jolting a brown leaf to life with the force of his relief. He’d waited in the dying laurel hedge for two days. His heart beat had thickened with each passing minute. The world grew grayer. Four times she had approached the door, four times she’d been distracted and moved back into the depths of the house. Each return to the kitchen or the constantly burning fireplace brought him a tiny bit nearer to death.

She’d come so close that morning. His heart had stopped as the dead bolts were thrown and the doorknob, squealing, protested her twist. But then the sound paused. He saw her head drop, her unkempt hair cascade across her face. She was still for a moment, but then backed up, muttering to herself. Staring out the window, confronted with the dead grass, the cracked sidewalk, the empty street beyond the hedge, she’d re-bolted the door.

He sagged with the blow. And berated himself: he had frozen in the anticipation. He couldn’t do that. He had to be ready. He would never make it through the door in time. He consciously practiced deep breathing techniques, all the while flexing his muscular fingers, in, out, pinch, fist, squeeze.

Throughout the day, he flexed and breathed. As she washed her laundry in the kitchen sink and sang, unironically, "It’s the End of the World As We Know It," he flexed and breathed. As she boiled coffee in the fireplace, the smell wafting through cracks and crevices, he flexed and breathed. As she pulled a paperback from the bookcase and let her thin body drop sideways into an oversized armchair, legs dangling, he flexed and breathed.

Finally, she dog-eared the page.

It was time. The only thing she’d eaten since he’d taken up watch in the laurel was a can of what appeared to be creamed corn, and the battery-operated camping lantern she had next to her dead television had flickered out last night. She had no choice but to go out scavenging. Slipping a knife into a sheaf on her thigh and a sturdy backpack onto her shoulders, she grasped the doorknob, grimacing. He didn’t blame her. The world was an ugly and dangerous place.

He was ready. As the wooden slab lurched inward, sticking briefly on the seal, he used the burst of air to propel himself inside. Looking down, he yearned to touch the crown of her head, her warmth, her humanness, but kept his hands tucked to his side, avoiding connection.

His wings were stiff, aching with misuse and sickness. He pumped the green-filigreed gossamer once, twice, three times, risking a glance backward. The woman moved briskly into the failing world, unaware of him or his mission, shivering and kicking dead leaves as she walked down her front steps. Flying gracelessly into the room, he refocused. He’d been trying to find a way into the house for days, but he knew exactly where he was going. And there it was. The clock, resting on the mantle of the stone fireplace.

The timepiece had stopped. The tinker, his bones grinding with broken shards and dust, the glory leaking from his pores, landed with a thump on the clock. The darkened grains of wood were silky beneath his feet. Then he dropped to the stone shelf, wincing at the twinges in his ankle joints.

He ignored the pain, squeezing through the slot in the back of the clock from which protruded the large silver wind-up key. Inside, black dust hung like smoke in a twilight. He maneuvered around the mechanical parts and moved directly to the darkest portion of the interior, where the aura of black dust pulsed.

There, he found what he was looking for. Attached to the wall was a rectangular box made from the wood of the first tree. Breathing shallowly, he tugged a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, slipped them on his nose, and used a small tool to unlock the latches and remove the pins. Soon, the front panel swung away. There was one lever inside, a simple thing made of iron, but the almost-fossilized wood at the base had splintered and warped, pushing the lever out of place. With weary arms, he used his tool to hack at the offending wood, though it hurt him to strike something so old and sacred. Only when the lever finally clicked back into place did he allow himself hope.

Maybe he wasn’t too late.

The clock’s internal pinyons and cogs and metal arms hulking around him sat silent, unmoving.

The black dust swirled, swishing. Was it laughing? He closed the box, struggling to slide the pins and locks back into place on the front panel, and then limped toward the fading light coming through the key slot. Climbing out, he stepped around to face the key, the pocked metal taller and wider than himself. The tinker fell to his knees, no more energy left to stand, black dust swirling up around him.

A flaccid succulent called to him from the corner of the room, gasping for air.

Fatigue and deep boneache were overwhelming. Grimly, he pried open the heart-shaped locket that hung from his neck, and let the motes of glory float free and attach themselves to him. He stood, straightened, his dry husk of a body growing plump. But it wouldn’t last for long. His fingers, which he’d worked to keep limber, grasped and pulled at the curlicued metal on the head of the clock’s key.

The key did not budge, time did not re-start.

He used his weight as leverage. Tears spurt from his eyes, squeezed shut with the supernatural effort, and he was rewarded with a tremor of movement.

“Help me,” he pleaded, knowing he was alone. Pulling and pushing, his limbs withering, losing strength, the glory burning out. With a grunt, he turned the silver mechanism with everything he had left in him.

Tick. His heartbeat cleared, the sludge in his veins thinned. Tock. The ropy muscles in his forearms sprang back into place, filled out. Tick. His thoughts were less fuzzy, color returned to the plant. Tock. Suddenly, a weak beam of sunlight wavered on the window pane.

The tinker heaved a sigh, and then another, this one robust, leaving the air tinged with the energy the humans called magic. There was much to repair.