The Time Keeper Part 3

"Stay with me."

But Dor moved to the rocks. He poured water into a small bowl, then placed a larger one beneath it. He removed a piece of clay plugged inside a hole in the upper bowl-the one Nim had mocked-and the water began to drip through, one silent splash after another.

"Dor?" Alli whispered.

He did not look up.

"Dor?"

She pulled her arms around her knees. What would become of them? she thought. Where would they go? She lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

If one were recording history, one might write that at the moment man invented the world's first clock, his wife was alone, softly crying, while he was consumed by the count.

Dor and Alli stayed on the hillside that night.

She slept. But he fought his weariness to be awake when the sun rose. He watched the sky change from night black to deep purple to a melting blue. Then a burst of rays seemed to whiten everything, as the dome of the sun poked over the horizon, like the golden pupil of an opening eye.

Had he been wiser, he might have marveled at the beauty of the sunrise and given thanks for being able to witness it. But Dor was not focusing on the miracle of the day, only on measuring its length. As the sun appeared, he slid the lower bowl away from the upper bowl's dripping, took a sharp stone, and notched the waterline.

This, he concluded-this much water-was the measure between darkness and light. From now on, no one needed to pray for the sun G.o.d to return. They could use this water clock, see the level rising, and know dawn was coming. Nim was wrong. There was no divine battle between day and night. Dor had captured them both in a bowl.

He dumped the water.

G.o.d saw this, too.

10.

Sarah is anxious.

She hurries down the steps in her still-warm black jeans. She feels a flush of panic. She remembers a night two years ago, one of the few times she's gone out with a boy. A Winter Formal dance. A kid from her math cla.s.s. His hands were clammy. His breath smelled like pretzels. He left with his friends. She had to call her mother to pick her up.

This is different, she tells herself. That was a weird boy; this is a young man. He is eighteen. He is popular. Any girl at school would want him. Look at his photo! And he's meeting her!

"What time will you be back?" Lorraine asks, looking up from the couch. Her winegla.s.s is nearly empty.

"It's Friday, Mom."

"It's just a question."

"I don't know, OK?"

Lorraine rubs her temples. "I'm not the enemy, honey."

"Didn't say you were."

She checks her phone. She cannot be late.

Eight-thirty! Eight-thirty!

She yanks her coat from the closet.

Victor is anxious.

He taps his fingers on the desk, waiting for Research. Grace's voice comes over the intercom.

"Honey? Are you hungry?"

"Maybe a little."

"How about some soup?"

He stares out the window. This New York penthouse is one of five homes they own. The other four are in California, Hawaii, the Hamptons, and central London. Since his cancer diagnosis, he hasn't been to any of them.

"Soup is fine."

"I'll bring it in."

"Thanks."

She has been kinder since his illness, sweeter and more patient. They have been married forty-four years. The last ten they've been more like roommates.

Victor picks up the phone to see how Research is coming. But when Grace enters with the soup, he hangs up.

11.

Dor and Alli loaded their meager possessions on a donkey and went to live in the high plains.

Their children, it was decided, would be safer with Dor's parents. Alli was heartbroken. Twice she made Dor turn back, just so she could hug them again. When their oldest daughter asked, "Am I the mother now?" Alli collapsed, sobbing.

Their new abode was small, made of bundled reeds. It was weak against the wind and rain. Alone, without family, the couple relied solely on each other. They grew what they could, herded sheep and a single goat, and rationed water from long trips to the great river.

Dor continued his measuring, using bones, sticks, the sun, moon, and stars. It was the only thing that made him feel productive. Alli grew withdrawn. One night Dor saw her hugging their son's swaddling blanket and staring at the floor.

From time to time, Dor's father would bring them food-at his wife's insistence-and each visit, he spoke about Nim's tower, how high it had grown, how the bricks were made with fir, how the clay mortar came from the fountains of Shinar.

Already, Nim had climbed near the top, shot an arrow into the sky, and claimed it had landed with blood on its tip. The people bowed to him, believing he had wounded the G.o.ds. Soon he and his best warriors would reach the clouds, defeat whatever waited for them, and rule from above.

"He is a great and powerful king," Dor's father said.

Dor looked down. Nim was the reason they were living in exile. The reason he could not hold his children each morning. He thought about his life as a child, he and Nim and Alli running up the hills. Nim was just another man to him, really still a boy, always wanting to be the strongest.

"Thank you for the food, Father," Dor said.

12.

"Dor. Visitors."

Alli rose to her feet. An elderly couple was approaching on foot. Many moons had now pa.s.sed since Dor's banishment-on our calendar, more than three years-and Alli was grateful for any company at all. She greeted the man and woman and offered them food and water, even though there was precious little to spare.

Dor was proud of his wife's kindness. But he worried about the visitors, who did not look well. Their eyes were red and watery and their skin had dark blotches. When he was alone with Alli, he warned her, "Do not touch them. I fear they are diseased."

"They are alone and poor," she protested. "They have no one else. Show them the mercy we would want in return."

Alli served the visitors barley cakes and barley paste and the little goat's milk they had. She listened as they told their tale. They, too, had been cast out from their village, the people fearful that the dark blotches meant they had been cursed. They lived now as nomads, in a tent made of goat skins. They moved in search of sustenance and waited for the day they would die.

The old woman cried when she said this. Alli cried with her. She knew what it felt like to lose your place in the world. She held the small cup so the old woman could sip.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Drink," Alli said.

"Your kindness ..."

She reached out to embrace Alli, her wrinkled hands trembling. Alli leaned in and nuzzled her cheek. She could feel the old woman's tears mixing with hers.

"Be at peace," Alli said.

As they left, Alli slipped the woman a skin filled with the last of their barley cakes. Dor checked his water clock bowl and saw a fingernail's length until the sun disappeared.

13.

Before you measure the years, you measure the days.

And before the days, you measure the moon. Dor had done this in exile, charting its stages-full moon, half moon, quarter moon, moonless. Unlike the sun, which looked the same every day, the changing moon gave Dor something to count, and he gouged holes on clay tablets until he noticed a pattern. The pattern was what the Greeks would later call "months."

He a.s.signed a stone to every full moon. He notched tablets for moons in between. He created the first calendar.

And now all his days were numbered.

On the fifth notch of the third stone, he heard Alli cough.

Soon her cough grew harsher, a low explosion that threw her head forward.

At first she tried to continue as usual, tending to daily tasks inside the reed house. But she grew so weak that she fell one day while preparing a meal, and Dor insisted she lie on a blanket. Perspiration beaded on her temples. Her eyes were red and teary. Dor noticed a blotch on her neck.

Inside, he was angry. He had warned her not to touch the visitors, and now they had pa.s.sed on their curse. He wished they had never come.

"What should we do?" Alli asked.

Dor dabbed her forehead with the blanket. He knew they should seek out an Asu, a medicine man, who could give Alli roots or cream to make this disease go away. But the city was too far. How could he leave her? They were alone on these high plains, cut off from options.

"Sleep," Dor whispered. "You will be better soon."

Alli nodded and closed her eyes. She did not see Dor blink away his tears.

14.

Sarah speaks to time. "Go slower," she says.

She slips out the door and heads up the street. She imagines the boy with the coffee-colored hair. She imagines him greeting her with a sudden, sweeping kiss.

She looks back and sees a light go on in her mother's bedroom. She quickens her pace. It is not beyond her mother to open the window and yell down the block. Like many teenage girls, Sarah finds her mother a huge embarra.s.sment. She talks too much. She wears too much makeup. She is constantly correcting Sarah-Don't slouch, Fix your hair-when she's not complaining to friends about Sarah's father, who doesn't even live in the state anymore. Tom did this. Tom forgot that. Tom is late on the check again. They used to be closer, but lately mother and daughter share a mutual incomprehension; each seems baffled by the other. Sarah does not discuss boys with Lorraine; not that there has been much to discuss until now.

Eight-thirty, eight-thirty!

She hears a beep. Her cell phone.

She grabs it from her coat pocket.