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Delia woke to the gentle clicking of a clock somewhere in the distance.
She lay there, eyes closed, for a long time, the steady tick-tick-tick leading her consciousness slowly out of the depths, giving her a sense of space and calm.
Delia was only eight, and she was not brave. She remembered, bit by bit, how the King had come to her, smiling, and how the soldiers had grabbed her and forced her to drink, pouring vile liquid down her throat….
She sat bolt upright. She knew it had happened, that she had been the one chosen.
She was not in a field, exactly, but a large roofless room. It was hard to make out the walls because trees grew all around her, and the white stone was covered in vine. The bright sun and green grass settled her some
There was no wind, no movement, no sound, except far off the clock ticked. She looked up. The moon waited white and round and dead in the empty sky.
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
She closed her eyes and opened them. It seemed everything should dissipate like an illusion, that only the metronomic beat anchored it.
“You must see him,” she told herself.
They had told her she must, that they depended on her. She did not want anyone to depend on her.
Eventually, she stood. She had decided the way she must go. Slowly, like one going to the headmaster’s office, she began to walk. She passed out of one open-sky room into the next, realms of grass and flowers, trees and shrubs, gardens, orchards, mounds of mushrooms. She smelled deep roots and bright splashes of color. It made her happy, gave her a modicum of courage as she hesitated and listened and turned right or left. The rooms were connected by large archways leading through white walls.
Tick-tick-tick-tick–relentless, insistent, neither impatient nor lax–tick-tick-tick-tick–slower than footsteps, faster than decision–tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
It was louder now, but still subtle, still a whisper. If there had been any other sound, she might have missed it.
Delia passed under another arch, lower than the others. It led into a long, narrow area filled with grass higher than her head and a mound of earth at its far side. She pushed through the grass. The mound was covered in flowering vines, like a pumpkin patch, and sitting on a natural seat was a thin, pale man. Vines wrapped his wrists and ankles, waist and neck, so he could not move, and from his chest came the steady, endless beat.
Delia stood before him, motionless, wanting to run. He was man-like but not a man. His eyes were black holes, his face a mass of ash. He might have been formed of metal or bone rather than flesh.
“Are you the Man from the Moon?” she asked.
Do not look into his eyes, they said. Never. No matter what he says.
He could not lift his head to look at her. “Yes. You are the one they sent?”
“What do you want?”
“Look upon my world.” She could not resist. She looked to the white orb of the moon. “It is lifeless, a pristine, orderly thing.” Tick-tick-tick-tick. “This prison will not last. So they send you to try.”
“To bind you.”
“To placate me.”
“How?”
He said nothing, and she sat.
“When I am free, I shall remake this world,” he said. “Where I step, order. Away with this writhing, twisting stuff. Purity. Simplicity.” He spoke with bored malice. “They sent you here to die.”
Delia lay down and closed her eyes. She wanted to escape.
“Look into my eyes. You will, eventually. To save the world. It will satisfy me for a time, all that young life snuffed out in a moment.”
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
Delia concentrated on that sound, let everything else fade away.
“This verdant prison will not hold. They will not find the vessel before I walk again. Time is running out. You are a snack, a few hours, nothing more. Time is running out for all of you.”
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
After some time, Delia opened her eyes again. The sun had not moved. The scene remained the same.
“What are you doing?” the Man from the Moon asked.
She did not answer, but closed her eyes again.
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
The space between the clicks seemed to expand as she listened. Sixty seconds equalled a minute. Sixty minutes an hour. Three thousand six hundred. She had never counted that high. But if she did, she could escape for a time–for an hour.
A minute, two minutes, seemed an hour, knowing that he watched her, knowing that she could not escape, knowing that he hungered after her.
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
“What are you doing?” He had been asking it over and over.
“Waiting.”
The clicking slowed more. She was sure of it. Why, when she was scared, when she wanted time to pass, did it slow? Nothing to do, nowhere to go, but wait for the inevitable. Eternity in a moment.
Tick–tick–tick.
“I will kill you,” the Man from the Moon snarled. “Come here.”
She trembled, breathing hard, and she listened, clinging to the steady beat.
Tick—tick—tick——
And when they came for her, what seemed days and days later, the sun had not yet set. A man in armor led the men, who dragged what looked like a coffin. The knight knelt beside her and touched her hand. “Child, are you all right?”
“I want to leave.”
“I will take you home.”
She stood unsteadily. The others were stuffing the Man from the Moon into the strange capsule. “How?”
“You bought us time, dear girl. I do not know how long it has been here, but it has been months beyond the walls. But that creature is not used to this world, and adjusts himself to the sense of time of those near him. Enough. Let us go.”
He lifted her up. As he carried her out she heard a great blast and saw the capsule shoot into the darkening sky and disappear.