Thief of Time

It had been a little present from Vincent's parents.

She stared at the box.

Every day she had to go through this. It was ridiculous. It wasn't even as if Higgs & Meakins did good chocolates. They were just butter and sugar and—

She scrabbled amongst the sad little scraps of brown paper inside the box and pulled out a chocolate. No one could be expected not to have just one chocolate, after all.

She put it in her mouth.

Damndamndamndamn! It was nougat inside! Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!

Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted.9 She was entitled to another—

The teacher part of her, which had eyes in the back of its head, caught the blur of movement. She spun round.

“No running with scythes!”

The Death of Rats stopped jogging along the Nature Table and gave her a guilty look.

SQUEAK?

“And no going into the Stationery Cupboard, either,” said Susan, automatically. She slammed the desk lid shut.

SQUEAK!

“Yes, you were. I could hear you thinking about it.” It was possible to deal with the Death of Rats provided you thought of him as a very small Jason.

The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan's intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official “best at everything” and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible.

Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you've mastered at least half of teaching.

She signed the register, watered the sad plants on the windowsill, went and fetched some fresh privet from the hedge for the stick insects that were the successor to Henry the Hamster (chosen on the basis that it was quite hard to tell when they were dead), tidied a few errant crayons away and looked around the classroom at all those little chairs. It sometimes worried her that nearly everyone she knew well was three feet high.

She was never certain that she trusted her grandfather at times like this. It was all to do with the Rules. He couldn't interfere, but he knew her weaknesses and he could wind her up and send her out into the world…

Someone like me. Yes, he'd known how to engage her interest.

Someone like me. Suddenly there's some dangerous clock somewhere in the world, and suddenly I'm told that there's someone like me.

Someone like me. Except not like me. At least I knew my parents. And she'd listened to Death's account of the tall dark woman wandering from room to room in the endless castle of glass, weeping for the child she'd given birth to and could see every day but could never touch…

Where do I even begin?

Tick

Lobsang learned a lot. He learned that every room has at least four corners. He learned that the sweepers started work when the sky was light enough to see the dust, and continued until sunset.

As a master, Lu-Tze was kind enough. He would always point out those bits that Lobsang had not done properly.

After the initial anger, and the taunting of his former classmates, Lobsang found that the work had a certain charm. Days drifted past under his broom…

…until, almost with an audible click in his brain, he decided that enough was enough. He finished his section of passageway, and found Lu-Tze dreamily pushing his brush along a terrace. “Sweeper?”

“Yes, lad?”

“What is it you are trying to tell me?”

“I'm sorry?”

“I didn't expect to become a… a sweeper! You're Lu-Tze! I expected to be apprentice to… well, to the hero!”

“You did?” Lu-Tze scratched his beard. “Oh, dear. Damn. Yes, I can see the problem. You should've said. Why didn't you say? I don't really do that sort of thing any more.”

“You don't?”

“All that playing with history, running about, unsettling people… No, not really. I was never quite certain we should be doing it, to be honest. No, sweeping is good enough for me. There's something… real about a nice clean floor.”

“This is a test, isn't it?” said Lobsang coldly.

“Oh, yes.”

“I mean, I understand how it works. The master makes the pupil do all the menial jobs, and then it turns out that really the pupil is learning things of great value… and I don't think I'm learning anything, really, except that people are pretty messy and inconsiderate.”

“Not a bad lesson, all the same,” said Lu-Tze. “Is it not written, ‘Hard work never did anybody any harm’?”

“Where is this written, Lu-Tze?” said Lobsang, thoroughly exasperated.

The sweeper brightened up. “Ah,” he said. “Perhaps the pupil is ready to learn. Is it that you don't wish to know the Way of the Sweeper, you wish to learn instead the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite?”

“Who?”

“We have swept well. Let's go to the gardens. For is it not written, ‘It does you good to get out in the fresh air’?”

“Is it?” said Lobsang, still bewildered.

Lu-Tze pulled a small tattered notebook out of his pocket.

“In here, it is,” he said. “I should know.”

Tick

Lu-Tze patiently adjusted a tiny mirror to redirect sunlight more favourably on one of the bonsai mountains. He hummed tunelessly under his breath.

Lobsang, sitting cross-legged on the stones, carefully turned the yellowing pages of the ancient notebook