The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 62

Which was odd. Time had never seen her fall shy.

"As for your lady love," said Tink, changing the subject, "I know what to do. Come with me."

She led him to shelves stacked with clocks of sand, and candle wax, and other things. (Time frequently sprawled here, like a cat in sunlight.) She stopped at a grandfather clock carved in the guise of a fig tree. Tink set it to one minute before midnight.

"Hold out your hand," Tink said. She gave the clock a nod of encouragement, and it began to tock-tick-tock its way toward midnight. Valentine watched with fascination. But, of course, he had never seen a working clock.

A miniscule hatch opened above the twelve and a seed plinked plinked into Valentine's hand. Tink repeated the process. into Valentine's hand. Tink repeated the process.

"What are these?" he asked.

"Intercalary seeds. At the Festival, put one under your tongue. Have your lady do the same. The seeds will release one minute that belongs solely to the pair of you."

Valentine tucked the seeds into the ta.s.seled sash at his waist. He took her hand. His touch, she noticed with a shudder, was warm and gentle. With his other hand he removed his mask, saying, "I am in your debt."

He winked and kissed her hand. Now, Tink was prepared for this, forValentine was nothing if not notorious for his charms. But when she saw the laugh lines around his eyes, and felt his breath tickle the back of her hand, and felt his soft lips brush against her skin, her metronome heart- . . .diners in a sidewalk cafe marveled at a turtledove hanging motionless overhead, just for an instant. . .

-skipped- . . .the candles in a Cistercian chapel, all 419 of them, stopped flickering, just for an instant. . .

-a- . . .all the noises of life and love and revelry and sorrow, the voice of Nycthemeron, fell silent, just for an instant. . .

-beat.

Tink did not sleep that night. Lying on a downy mattress just wide enough for one-she had never needed anything more,having never known loneliness-she replayed those few minutes with Valentine in her head, again and again. She smelled the back of her hand, imagined it was his breath tickling her skin.

Tink could win his heart. All she needed was time.

She awoke with a plan.

In order to win Valentine's heart, she had to know him, and he had to know her. In order to know him, she had to be near him. To be near him, she had to get into the Palazzo. She could get into the Palazzo if she brought a birthday gift for Queen Perjumbellatrix.

Of course, birthdays held no meaning in a place exiled from the calendar. But the eternal queen was fond of gifts, and so she held masques and received tributes once per year (measured, as always, by the ticking of Tink's heart). And Valentine, her consort, attended each. Even so, Tink would be fortunate to get more than a few moments with him.

Thus, after the Festival, Tink went to work on a special series of clocks. Each was designed to delight the revelers in Her Majesty's grand ballroom.

And each was designed to steal one minute from Her Majesty.Each clock would swaddle Tink and Valentine in sixty purloined seconds. Nor was that all.

For Valentine-pretty, perfect Valentine-minutes held no meaning. One was much the same as another. Thus, it would be nothing odd for him to experience a conversation strung across the decades, one minute per year.

But Tink-mortal, metronome Tink-had to live live her way from one stolen minute to the next. So she designed the clocks to string those moments together like pearls on a necklace, forming one continuous a.s.signation with Valentine. her way from one stolen minute to the next. So she designed the clocks to string those moments together like pearls on a necklace, forming one continuous a.s.signation with Valentine.

The first clock was a simple thing: a wind-up circus. But Her Majesty disappointed courtiers throughout the Palazzo when she declared it her favorite tribute.

Tink curtsied, feeling like a dandelion in a rose garden. The braids in her silvery hair had unraveled, and her gown-the finest from the secondhand shop in the Briardowns-was not fine at all in this company.

She retreated to a corner of the ballroom. Tink had never learned to dance.

Valentine danced with every lady in the hall, always returning to Perjumbellatrix in the interim. He hadn't changed one tock from the way he'd appeared at Tink's shop. The ribbons on his sleeves traced spirals in the air when he twirled his partners so, the feathers of his cormorant mask fluttered when he tipped his ladies thus. Tink fidgeted with her embroidery, waiting until the clockwork elephants on the queen's gift trumpeted midnight.

Everything stopped. The ballroom became a sculpture garden, an expressionist swirl of skin and feathers and jewels and silks. Beads of wine from a tipped goblet sparkled like rubies suspended in midair; plucked harp strings hung poised to fling notes like arrows.

"Well done, Timesmith." Tink turned. Valentine bowed at her. "It is a wonder," he said, marveling at the motionless dancers. "But I think your wonderment has missed its mark, no?" He pointed: Tink's clock had made a statue of the statuesque monarch.

Tink swallowed, twice. She found her voice: "The clock is for her. But this," she said, "is for you." And me And me.

Valentine smiled. "I've never seen its equal." He took her hand. Her skin tingled beneath his fingertips. "Thank you." Her metronome heart skipped another beat when he touched his lips to the back of her hand. But the world had stopped, so n.o.body noticed.

He asked, "How long will they stay like this?"

"That's complicated," said Tink. "But they're safe."

The room blurred about them. Merrymakers blinked into new positions around the ballroom. The eternally tipping wine goblet became an ice sculpture of the queen. And her gift, the clockwork circus, became an orrery.

A year had pa.s.sed.

"I see! I see, I see!" Valentine clapped. He understood, for every moment was the same to him.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"It's marvelous,"he said."Now let me me show show you you something you've never known. Dance with me." something you've never known. Dance with me."

She wanted to waltz with him, but feared to try. She had impressed him. But could that be undone by a single awkward step? Valentine was a graceful creature, accustomed to graceful partners.

"I don't, that is, I've never-"

"Trust me," he said.

Valentine pulled her to the center of the ballroom. His hand warmed the small of her back. He smelled like clean salt, like the distant sea. Dancing, she discovered, came naturally. It was, after all, a form of rhythm. And what was rhythm but a means of marking time?

The room blurred around them. The orrery became an hourgla.s.s. They wove and whirled amongst the motionless dancers. Tink laughed. It was working.

"Look," said Valentine. "Look at their eyes."

Masks hid their faces, but not their eyes. She looked upon a man who wore the burgundy c.u.mmerbund of a baronet. His eyes glistened with hidden tears. They pirouetted past a countess with a diadem on her brow, b.u.t.terfly wings affixed to her cheeks, and soul-deep weariness in her eyes.

Valentine asked, "What do you see?"

"Sorrow," said Tink.

"They've lost something. We all have."

"Three things," said Tink. For suddenly she knew what Valentine wanted and needed. He didn't know it himself.

Yet still they danced. It was wonderful; it was magical. But his eyes returned again and again to Perjumbellatrix. He danced with Tink-and what a dancer he was-but his heart and mind were elsewhere.

The final timepiece expended its stolen minute.The bubble of intimacy popped under the a.s.sault of music, laughter, and voices raised in tribute to the queen.

"Truly marvelous," said Valentine. "Thank you for this dance, Timesmith." With a wink, a bow, and a kiss, he returned to his place beside the queen.

Tink's feet ached. Her lungs pumped like bellows. Her skin wasn't quite as smooth as it had been when their dance began. She had aged twenty years in twenty minutes. But it was a small price for the key to somebody's heart.

She returned to her shop, deep in thought. And so she did not notice how the hands of every clock bowed low to her, like a bashful admirer requesting a dance. Time had seen how she had laughed with joy in Valentine's arms. It yearned, desperately, to dance with her.

Tink spent months (measured, as always, by the thumping of her heart) holed up in her shop. She labored continuously, pausing only for food and rest. And, on several occasions, to climb a staircase of carved peridot and dip a chalice in the waters atop the aqueduct.

Far above the city, craftsmen and courtiers built an effigy clock atop the Spire. Valentine, Tink knew, was there. She wondered if he ever gazed from that aerie upon the Briardowns, wondered if his thoughts ever turned from queen to clockmaker.

When the Festival of the Leaping Second returned to Nycthemeron, and a crowd again milled outside Tink's shop, they found it locked and the storefront dark. Her neighbors, the algebraist and the cartographer, told of her forays along the aqueduct and of strange sounds from her workshop: splas.h.i.+ng, gurgling, the creak of wooden gears.

By now, of course, the queen had grown quite fond of Tink's wonderments. And when she heard that the clockmaker had arrived, promising something particularly special for the Festival, she ordered a new riser built for Tink's work.

There, Tink built a miniature Nycthemeron: nine feet tall at the Spire, six feet wide, encircled by a flowing replica of the river Gnomon, complete with aqueducts, waterwheels, sluices, gates, and even a tiny clockmaker's shop in a tiny Briardowns. There, a model clockmaker gazed lovelorn at the Spire, where a model Valentine gazed down.

When the revelry culminated in the advance of the effigy, Tink filled the copper reservoir on her water clock. And everybody, including the queen and lovely Valentine at her side, marveled at Tink's work.

The water flowed backward. It sprang from the waterwheels to leap upon the aqueducts and gush uphill, where special pumps pulled it down to begin again.

It was a wonder, they said. An amazement. A delight.

Only time, and time alone, understood what she had done. Tink had given the people of Nycthemeron something they had lost.

She had given them their past.

Tink went home feeling pleased. Just a few more clocks, just a few more stolen moments, and Valentine would express adoration. But she couldn't work as many hours at a stretch as she had in her youth. She had to unlock his heart before time rendered her an unlovable crone.

But there were interruptions. People peppered her with strange requests: vague notions they couldn't express and that Tink couldn't deliver. The fellow in the scarlet cravat returned, seeking a means of visiting "that place."

"What place?" Tink asked.

"That-"he waved his hands in frustration, indicating some vague and distant land "-place." He shrugged. "I see it in my head. I've been there, but I don't know how to return. It's here, and yet it's not here, too."

Tink could not help him. Nor could she help the baroness who requested a clockwork key that would open a door to "that other Nycthemeron." At first they came in a slow trickle, these odd requests. But the trickle became a torrent. Tink closed her shop so that she could finish the next sequence of birthday clocks for Queen Perjumbellatrix.

Valentine invited Tink for another spin around a ballroom filled with motionless revelers. He was, of course, as handsome as ever. But when he doffed his mask, Tink saw the crease of a frown perched between his cerulean eyes. Her metronome heart did a little jig of concern.

"You look troubled," she said as he took her hand.

Valentine said, "Troubled? I suppose I am."

"Perhaps I can help,"said Tink."After all, my skills are not inconsiderable."She added what she hoped was a coquettish lilt to these words.

Valentine wrapped his arm around Tink's waist. They waltzed past a d.u.c.h.ess and her lissome lover. "I find my thoughts drifting to a new place. A different Nycthemeron."

Tink faltered. The dancers blurred into a new configuration. Another precious year had pa.s.sed.

Valentine danced mechanically. His movements were flawless, but devoid of the grace that had made Tink swoon when first they had danced together. And for her part, her whirring mind couldn't concentrate on one thing or the other; she stepped awkwardly, without poise or balance.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Her gift was meant to impress Valentine, not confuse and distract him. But she had her pilfered minutes and intended to use them.

She rested her head on his shoulder, enjoying his scent and the fluid play of muscles in his arm. "What sort of place?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "It's a place I've been, someplace close, even, but I don't know how to get there."

The revelers snapped into new arrangements; another year lost. Valentine led her in a swooping two-step around the ballroom. There was, it seemed, more room to move.

"Is it here in Nycthemeron? A forgotten courtyard? A secluded cloister?"

"I can't say. I feel like it may be. . . everywhere. Strange, isn't it?" He shook his head and smiled. "No matter. Once again you have done a magnificent thing."

But Tink barely heard his praise. She had given the people of Nycthemeron their past. But what did that mean to timeless people in a timeless city? Nothing. They were afflicted with strange thoughts they couldn't comprehend: memories of times past. To them, the past was a foreign place they couldn't visit.

They waltzed. Tink's feet ached, twinges of betrayal from her aging body. Blur. They danced a sarabande. Her back ached. Blur. Her lungs burned. Blur.

Tink saw saw the thinning of the ballroom crowd. the thinning of the ballroom crowd.

"Valentine, have you noticed there are fewer people in this ballroom every year?"

"Yes."

"Where are they going?"

"They're trying to leave Nycthemeron," he said.

"Oh, no," she said, and crashed to the floor.

"Timesmith!" Valentine leapt to her side, cradled her head in his hands."Please forgive me. Are you hurt?"

The ballroom floor was hard and her body less resilient than it had been minutes and years ago. But she disregarded her bruises, because Valentine was sopping wet. His slippery hands had lost their grip on her. He smelled of river gra.s.s and mud.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The queen sent me to stop her half-brother from trying to swim his way out of Nycthemeron. That's where they're going. To the river."

But, of course, n.o.body could leave Nycthemeron. Not even Tink. The luminous fog was chaos, its touch deadly.

In a tiny voice, she asked, "Did you save him?"