Eoin McNamee - City of Time

No. It had happened and there was no one he could tell. If only Cati were here.

When he got back home, his mother was in the kitchen. She looked careworn, but she smiled to herself from time to time as though she remembered something funny. It was an improvement on the way she had been. She had put out tea for him. Well , Owen thought, she has tried. There was a rubbery fried egg, which looked as if his fork would bounce off it, a bowl of porridge which had set like cement, and the tea came out as hot water because she had forgotten the teabag.

Owen didn’t mind though. After his father had been lost when his car crashed into the sea, his mother had been sunk in terrible depression, barely recognising even Owen. But when he had broken the hold that the Harsh had on time, his mother had recovered a little, although Owen didn’t understand how. She was vague and sometimes hardly seemed to be there, but she was happier.

He put the egg between two slices of toast and gulped it down, then grabbed his schoolbag from the corner, kissed his mother gently on the cheek and went upstairs.

Owen spread his homework out on the bed, but he couldn’t concentrate. When it got dark he climbed up on to the chest underneath his window and stared out at black trees whipped by the wind. Then he examined the chest, as he did almost every night. It was a plain black chest with brass corners and what looked like an ordinary brass lock, and yet he dared not open it. The terrifying whirlwind which had turned time backwards and had threatened to destroy the world was trapped inside. The tarnished brass lock, the Mortmain, could look dull and ordinary as it did now, but Owen knew it was ornate and complicated. Not made just to be a lock on a chest , he thought. No matter how important the chest is.

He pulled off his trainers and lay on the bed. He shut his eyes, but Freya’s old-woman face was the first image that came into his head. Then he saw the moon, with Freya’s wizened face on it. He drifted into a troubled sleep in which images of the chest and the Mortmain drifted and merged into each other.

Owen wasn’t the only one thinking about the chest. At the far side of the garden there was an ash tree and in its branches a heavy figure was perched, holding a brass telescope in one hand. The man had a broad, red face, large sideburns and a sly look. His name was Johnston and he was a sworn enemy of the Resisters. He was a scrap dealer, but the previous year he had stood shoulder to shoulder with the Harsh, the cold enemy who had tried to crush Owen and his friends.

He peered through the telescope into Owen’s room. Reflected in the dressing-table mirror he could see the chest and the dull gleam of the Mortmain. It had taken Johnston all year to work out that the chest contained the Puissance. The Harsh were eager to get it back. He lowered the telescope. This time Owen would not stand in his way.

Cati also lay awake. For a long year she had been the Watcher. There was always a Watcher – one member of the Resisters who stayed awake while the others slept.

She lived in the Workhouse on the river below Owen’s house, taking food from the cavernous storerooms and cooking it in the vast empty kitchens. Every day she walked the crumbling battlements of the Workhouse, the Resister headquarters, which just looked like an old ruin to human eyes. She could see traffic moving up and down the road, but the drivers could not see her. She wondered what they would think if they knew that there was an army sleeping in the old building.

Watching other people going up and down the road was lonely enough, but worst of all was seeing Owen going to and from school or walking to his Den, his brown hair blowing in the wind from the harbour. She loved it when he waved and said hello even though he couldn’t see her. She longed to call to him and walk along the river, to laugh and talk the way they had before.

Cati sighed. Her father had been the Watcher before her, but he hadn’t said much about what it was like to be awake when everyone else slept. He had never mentioned the loneliness. He’d merely told her that it was a bit like being a nightwatchman. She sat up in bed. She knew that she’d never sleep that night so, pulling on her clothes and boots, she made her way towards the stone staircase that led to the top of the Workhouse. If I’m the Watcher , she thought, then I might as well go and watch.

It was a crisp, clear night, with a full moon that seemed to fill the sky over the harbour. Cati shivered and pulled her collar tight around her neck. She listened to the gentle murmur of the river far below. Then she heard the sound of wings. A vast skein of wild geese was flying low and hard towards the harbour. They were flying in a V formation from north to south and Cati could hear them honking. She watched them cross the face of the moon until they were framed in its circle. They are free and I am not , she thought sadly.

Then she froze to the spot. A second before, there had been birds on the wing. Now they were skeletons, all flesh and feathers gone! For a moment they hung in the sky, a great silent flock of the dead, their bone wings fixed in flight, their beaks agape but noiseless. Then they turned to dust which fell earthwards in a great plume until it was swallowed by the darkness below.

Cati wondered if her heart had stopped. For a long moment she stood staring at the moon, wondering if she had hallucinated the whole thing. But the geese had been there; nothing could have been more real than their wild honking high in the sky. She forced herself to think. No weapon could have reduced the geese to dust. No storm or wind or lightning strike. Only one thing could have happened. Somehow, time had changed them and they had aged many years in a single second.

Her job was to watch for a threat to the fabric of time and to wake the other Resisters if they were needed to defend. Was this one of those times? Her heart told her that it was. She turned and plunged down the stairs.

In two minutes she stood at the doors which led to the Starry, the great chamber where the Resisters slept. As she fumbled at the lock, doubt began to creep into her mind. What if she was wrong? She thought about Samual, one of the Resister leaders. The warrior was a brave fighter, but his tongue was acid and he had not approved of Cati’s friendship with Owen. She could almost hear his sarcastic words. Geese turning to dust? You woke us because you had a silly dream?

But it wasn’t a dream , she told herself. It wasn’t. Cati turned the slender key in the lock and the stone doors opened.

Before her in semi-darkness were hundreds of wooden beds, and in each bed lay a Resister. What light there was came from the ceiling which was domed and covered with tiny lights like a night sky. The air was warm and still and she could hear gentle breathing sweep the room like a great sigh. She looked at the sleeping faces, recognising every one – young and old, friend and opponent.

She checked on the Starry once every three or four days. It was part of her job, although no one had ever told her so. Her visits were brief; a glance to make sure all was well and no more. To see so many familiar faces only made her loneliness worse.

She had seen her father wake the sleepers before. He had simply touched each person’s forehead and after a moment the Resister would wake, looking around, a little bewildered until they realised where they were. Who would she wake first to tell about the geese? Contessa , she thought. Contessa, who ran the great kitchens in the Workhouse, who was gentle and wise, a mother to them all. She would know what to do.

Cati walked between the rows until she found her. Contessa was tall, elegantly dressed in a wool gown. Her hands were folded on her breast and even in sleep there was a calm authority to her face. Hesitantly, Cati reached out and touched her forehead. She stood for a moment, feeling the warm skin, waiting for her eyes to open.