City of Time

“Owen! Owen!” It was Cati’s voice. Owen came to and found himself on the floor of the Starry. He sat up and shook his head, feeling groggy and disoriented. Cati’s face swam into focus. She looked both anxious and relieved.

“What happened?” he asked. “I was calling Dr Diamond …”

“And I heard you,” a voice said.

Owen looked up. Dr Diamond was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at him. There was a half-smile on his face.

“Then that was you …?” Owen said.

“Who came and joined my mind to yours? Yes, indeed. I don’t think either of us could have awoken on our own.”

“We’d better get out of here,” Cati said, her eyes heavy. “Before the Starry sends us all to sleep.”

“Yes,” agreed the doctor, stretching. “It gets very musty in here after a year or so.”

More than musty this time, Owen thought. He watched Dr Diamond looking carefully around the Starry, as though there was something wrong that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was definitely worried.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the sofa in the Den with Dr Diamond examining the camping stove. “Ingenious,” he said. “Now, Cati, tell me everything that has happened in the past year.”

Cati went quiet. How could she explain how it had felt, autumn stretching into winter. Standing under the trees as they changed, then lying awake at night listening to the wind howling through the Workhouse battlements. How could she tell him about the time it had snowed, and how in the stillness she could hear the voices of children playing? How there was no one to talk to when she was worried or scared?

“Nothing much happened,” she said finally. “It was just … a little bit lonely sometimes.” Owen reached out and touched her hand.

They both know what loneliness is, Dr Diamond thought. That is why their friendship will endure.

“And what happened then?” he said eventually, his eyes shrewd and penetrating. “What happened that you reached out of the shadows to contact Owen? Is time under threat?”

“I was watching on the battlements,” Cati said. “There was a flight of geese that turned to skeletons and then to dust.” She looked defiantly at Dr Diamond as though he might disbelieve her.

“I saw something the same,” Owen said. He told Dr Diamond about the girl in school who had changed in front of his eyes.

“I tried to wake the Resisters, but when I touched them it was as if my fingers were hurting them,” Cati continued. “I didn’t know what to do, so I called Owen.”

Dr Diamond looked grave. “You did the right thing,” he said. “Something or someone is interfering with time. That is why you saw what you did and why the sleepers could not be woken.”

The scientist looked at Owen and Cati over the top of his glasses. “I don’t know what is happening yet, but I do know one thing, my two young friends. There is a mystery here. And where there is mystery there is an adventure. Now, where is my pencil?”

“I think it’s behind your ear,” Cati said, exchanging a smile with Owen. Dr Diamond produced a notebook from his overalls, licked the tip of the pencil, then started to write at lightning speed. This action had a strangely soothing effect and Owen and Cati both felt their eyelids grow heavy. Within minutes they had both fallen asleep, as Dr Diamond had intended they should.

The doctor got up, lifted their feet on to the sofa and covered them with sleeping bags. Then he sat down with his notebook again.

“Night good,” he said, speaking backwards as he tended to do when distracted. He bent his head to his notebook and began to write.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_42300961-bc70-58fd-8544-556d80e7df08)

Dr Diamond woke Owen at seven o’clock. There was no sign of Cati.

“Cati has gone to check on the world. Her ‘morning round’ she calls it,” Dr Diamond said. “You had better get home before your mother misses you.”

“But—” Owen began.

“It’s better if you carry on as normal. Go to school and come back here this evening before dark. We have much to plan.” Owen jumped up. At least he would see his friends again that evening.

He ducked out of the Den into the chill morning air and ran along the riverbank. As he crossed the river on the old tree trunk, he heard someone calling. Cati was standing on top of the ruins of the Workhouse. He waved at her and she waved back, then disappeared from view.

After school, Owen came straight back to the Workhouse without returning home first. Approaching the gaunt ruin, it was hard to believe the building had ever come alive when time was threatened, and that it teemed with people. If you looked closely you could see the outline of the defences along the river, and some of the scars left by exploding ice lances during the battle with Johnston and the Harsh. But otherwise the building was sunk into decay and dereliction.

The wind funnelling down the river valley towards Owen was cold, but it was the kind of cold he didn’t mind, where you pulled your scarf around your neck and looked forward to sitting at a warm fire. Not the terrible cold that the Harsh had used as a weapon, the chill that froze your heart as well as your limbs.

He couldn’t see any sign of Cati or Dr Diamond so he followed the riverbank to the Den. He pulled aside the bushes at the entrance and paused. There was something strange in the air, something different. Not danger, definitely not danger. He moved cautiously forward.

The first thing Owen saw was Cati. She was fast asleep on the battered sofa. He went over to wake her, but before he could do so he spotted something lying on the table. At first he thought it was a cornflower. The Resisters used them as tokens of remembrance and Cati had left one in exactly the same place for him when she had faded back into the shadows of time. But then he realised that it was in fact a cornflower brooch, very old and beautifully made from silver and enamel. He turned it over in his hand.

“Where did you get that?”

Owen turned. Cati was sitting bolt upright, her eyes unnaturally bright. “It was on the table,” he said.

“Give it to me!” She sprang up and snatched it from his hand.

“Take it easy,” Owen said. She was staring down at the brooch and Owen saw tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just saw it lying there. I didn’t mean any harm. Where did it come from anyway?” She didn’t answer. Her hands were trembling.

“Cati?” he said softly.

“I don’t know how it got on the table,” she said, her voice shaking, “but I know where it comes from.”

“Where?”

“My father,” she said. “He was here, Owen! It belonged to my mother. He carried it on a chain around his neck.”

Owen looked at her. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought she could hear it. He had seen what happened to her father, the Sub-Commandant, how he’d been sucked into the Puissance, the maelstrom that had been draining time from the world. He could never have survived.

“He wasn’t killed,” Cati said, as though reading his thoughts. “Just lost in time.”

“For ever,” Owen said. “Remember what he said. He was saying goodbye to you for ever, Cati. You know that.”

“Stop it!” Cati cried. “He left the brooch! He’s not gone. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“I do,” Owen said quietly. “I do know, Cati.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Cati said.

“Don’t be,” said Owen. “I’m glad he is out there somewhere. But we have to think what this means, Cati. Your father wouldn’t have done this for no reason.”

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Cati said. “It was for me.”

“Yes, Cati. But… you know what type of man he was.”

“Kind and loving and…”