Free The Time of the Clockmaker by Anna Caltabiano

neither had the ring that Henley had given me.
    In the struggle with the intruder, one of us must have hit the clock and accidentally turned it, causing me to travel in time. That was the reason the hotel room had felt so different after the scuffle. I cursed myself for not having realized earlier. Had Henley come with me? When was this, anyway?
    â€œHenley?” I tried. “Henley?”
    Are you hurt?
    His voice was so loaded with concern. I remembered he couldn’t quite see me; he only saw an outline of me and therefore didn’t know if I was hurt.
    â€œNo, I’m fine.” I stretched and cringed.
    I think you have a different definition of fine.
    Though Henley couldn’t see me per se, that didn’t mean he didn’t pay close attention to the outline of my body and its movements. But on the bright side, he couldn’t see that I was naked either.
    I threw on the shift and began to earnestly rummage through the clothes. I wanted to take what I thought I would need and leave the house before anyone found me, but I also wanted clues as to where—or rather when —I was.
    I put on what looked like a petticoat and a reddish-brown gown that laced up in the front. There were other clothes that I didn’t know how to wear, but I figured this was fine for my purposes . . . whatever my purposes were.
    â€œThankfully the clock has to be somewhere . . .”
    I was talking mostly to myself, but Henley replied, Does it always come with you?
    It was easy to forget that even Henley didn’t know all the workings of time travel that I had learned through Miss Hatfield.
    â€œThat’s just how it works. The clock has always come with me. It normally stays in Miss Hatfield’s house, but there’s no reason it should be different this time.”
    It goes where you go?
    â€œRather, the clock’s just so old that going back or forth in time doesn’t change it. It’s always been the same. . . . You know, the intruder must have taken it.”
    Taken it with him?
    â€œThat’s why it’s not here. It wouldn’t just disappear.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Can’t you just . . . see?”
    You mean look for a small clock in all of space and time?
    It did sound absurd when he put it that way. “Is that a no?”
    Rebecca. It’s like looking into a dollhouse for a miniature clock. That’s hard enough as it is. Now multiply that dollhouse by a few million to account for the entire world, and then a few million more to account for all the houses that have ever existed or will exist in time. Now do you know how absurd and impossible this is?
    â€œBut you found me.”
    And it took a while. And a gap in time is slightly—only slightly—easier to find than this needle in a haystack. Besides, that was you. You have this . . . draw. It’s hard to explain.
    I was glad Henley found his way back to me, but I couldn’t help but wish he could have been a little more helpful. It looked like it was going to be up to me to find the clock.
    I tried to put the contents of the chest back the way I had found them, but I knew the owner would probably realize that a few pieces were missing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did know that I had to leave before the house’s inhabitants came back.
    â€œLook, I have to get it back.”
    I opened the door, and a gust of cold wind flew up into my face. In the coarse, homespun dress, I hesitated in the doorway.
    For once, Henley didn’t say I was being hasty or foolish. He didn’t say anything.
    The planes were gone, no longer screaming through the sky. The asphalt was gone. The smell of wet concrete was gone as well. What was left behind was a startling green that made the wide sky seem brighter.
    So I walked.
    Heathrow really was a heath in whatever time this was. Everything in the landscape was rough, from the coarse grass to the