Frances and the Monster by Refe Tuma

Author:Refe Tuma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

A Clock Strikes Midnight at 7:15 in the Evening

When her father described the accident—usually to visiting colleagues late at night while Frances spied from the landing—he always said the same thing: it happened in a moment. Or it was over in a flash. This always struck Frances as strange, for it was nothing like what she remembered.

She remembered the world slowing to a halt, as if the car was filled with invisible gelatin. Broken glass hung in the air all around her, held in place except for a barely perceptible motion, the way stars appear fixed against the night sky. She could have reached out and plucked them if she hadn’t also been at the mercy of that frozen moment: flung into the air like a rag doll, her body limp, unable to scream. She didn’t even feel the cut that severed her ear—she learned of it later, when she woke with her head bandaged like a fisherman’s cap.

It had happened in a moment, maybe, but it was the longest moment of her life.

Now, dangling from a birdcage, speeding high above the cobblestones, everything was happening too fast. The rooftop fell away; the wind whipped her hair. And the clock tower—it was approaching much too quickly.

Even in those few seconds, she could see that the Zytglogge was beautiful. Its face was black and gold, with a gilded sun and moon mounted on either end of the hour hand, each orbiting a starburst in the center. Below it hung an astronomical clock inlaid with the signs of the zodiac. Rotating dials told the month and year, with a series of rings showing the position of the planets in the solar system. Beside that was the bellworks, an elaborate mechanical display featuring the city’s founder, Duke Berthold V, and several well-dressed bears on a track below him. Atop the tower, just below the spire, hung a massive bell, with the bell ringer’s golden hammer ready to strike on the hour.

The birdcage jumped the cable on impact, slipping through Frances’s fingers. As she began to fall, she grabbed on to the only thing she could reach: the gilded moon at the end of the hour hand.

Luca grabbed onto the only thing he could reach: Frances. With his weight on her ankle, it took all her strength to cling to the moon.

Hobbes swung helplessly inside his birdcage, Luca’s fingers still threaded through the wires.

The hour hand creaked into motion under the unexpected load, its gears grinding within the tower. It began slowly, but as Frances ticked passed the three, then the four, they picked up speed. When the moon reached six, the bottom of the clock, it stopped. Luca kept swinging, taking Frances’s ankle with him, until he swung back in the other direction.

All at once, the hour hand’s sudden change of position triggered the bellworks and the clock tower sprung to life.

GONG. GONG. GONG.

The bell tolled, and the mechanical bears began to spin along their track, circling the Duke’s throne.

GONG. GONG. GONG.

Frances’s felt the moon slip from her fingers.

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