Tor.com Short Fiction January – February 2022 by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors [Various Authors]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Tom Doherty Associates Book
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTH QUARTER

It was a hot, moonlit morning of no known season when he finally arrived, and things were suddenly almost as they had been before, with the dogs panting and the cocks crowing and fresh pollen drifting with the fallen leaves and drizzles of snow across the greyed and emptied fields. Children came shouting and running, and I rushed to join them, for yes, yes, he was here, he had come, and my father stumbled and hurried, his shirt as ever mis-buttoned and askew, to greet the Chronologist in the main square.

“You are…” He panted as shadows shrivelled and bloomed around us. “… most, most welcome. Indeed, may I venture, it would have been good if you had arrived before.”

“I arrive when I can,” the Chronologist replied with a brisk tap of his metal staff. Then his gaze—knowing yet somehow deeply lost—swept across us townsfolk like a withering wind until it settled on me.

“You, lad”—he pointed—“shall accompany me up the tower.”

“But—but,” my father protested, “… he’s only a child! Surely if anyone comes with you, it should be me. After all, I am mayor of this town and whatever has happened is my responsibility.”

But the Chronologist shook his head, and I, of course, was in no position to refuse. After all, wasn’t this exactly what I wanted—for the Chronologist to arrive from wherever he came from, so that I might follow him and escape?

The tower’s interior went up and up through the levels, almost as before. But the dusty gloom stirred with whisperings, and that patient tock was irregular. It came and went, now close as my own agitated heartbeat, now distant as the spinning stars, and the levels and ladders seemed to expand and contract. Briefly, there was no sign of the Chronologist climbing ahead of me—no, there were two of him, then three, then again just one—but I knew that I had to keep climbing in his wake.

One foot and then the other. Rung after rung. One hand gripping above. The other below. I tried counting each upward step as I would once have counted the tedious hours, days, and seconds at school, but the numbers were torn from me, and the tower was twisting like a corkscrew, and I felt very cold. But I was still clinging, I was still climbing, even as the walls, ladders, and levels tunnelled ahead and behind me, and the weights swung wildly on their chains. Soon there was no up or down, or now or then, or before or after, but just this endless tower and the pouring, emptied air.

I was climbing through a time-storm, drenched in sweat despite the chill, and shivering and aching beyond exhaustion, and with no sense left of where, or when, I was. But then I glimpsed something familiar, and it seemed it was deep below me rather than high above, and I started laughing. Somehow, I had reached some unknown level of the tower that soared far beyond the turret clock’s mundane mechanism, face, and bell.

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