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clock. The city of Boston had clocks on every corner, and every citizen of New Occident carried a lifewatch. Moreover, every citizen carried an inner clock, reliably marking the hours of the twenty-hour day, in his or her mind—every citizen other than Sophia. Her inner clock was broken. It had caused her endless inconvenience and considerable shame to lose track of time so easily, but the previous summer she had made her peace with it. She had realized that a wayward innerclock could be useful. If she concentrated on a single thought, poring over its every detail, a whole hour could feel like a second. And if she concentrated on the passing moment, imagining its hidden depths, a second could feel like an hour.
    But the sadness that had crept in with the cold of winter, first in a trickle and then in an engulfing wave, had made it impossible to concentrate. She could no longer expand and contract the time around her, bending it to her will. Once again, she found herself at the mercy of those boundless hours and seconds, helpless in their limitlessness.
    Now she felt her powers of concentration returning. They filled her with a contented thrum, a sense of steady and accomplished intention. Her first day at the Nihilismian Archive, Sophia had scanned as many of the indexes as she could until Remorse shooed her from room 45 so the archive could close. Sophia collected her membership card from the front desk and rushed home to be back by dusk.
    Minna did not appear.
    Buoyed by her new sense of purpose, Sophia was not deterred. She had decided to tell Shadrack about the Nihilismian Archive. Settling into the chair at her desk, where she had a clear view of East Ending Street, she waited.
    To make the time pass quickly, she concentrated on her last sighting of Minna, bringing forth all its detail as if immersing herself in a memory map: the dimming light, the scent of lilacs that tumbled over the gate, the distant rumble of the trolleys. And she imagined Minna herself, dark hair braided and coiled around her head, clad in a colorless traveling dressthat reached the ground. A long row of buttons trailed down the front and along each sleeve. Her voice was gentle and muted, as if she spoke from behind a curtain:
“Missing but not lost, absent but not gone, unseen but not unheard. Find us while we still draw breath.”
When she reached out toward Sophia, her face bore a mixture of tenderness and regret. Her dress hung on her loosely, as if she had grown thin, and the hem was stained with water and mud.
    Sophia frowned. Her thoughts had taken an unexpected turn. She shook her head, trying to recall the elation that had coursed through her at the sight of her mother, but it was gone.
    Sophia opened her eyes, hearing a rapid step on the cobblestones. As she watched her uncle walk up to the side door, she felt a sudden wave of sadness. She floundered. Was it seeing Shadrack, or was it the marred memory of Minna that had overturned the smooth vessel in which she had sailed through the day? She took a deep breath to steady herself, considering the sadness critically so that she would not be engulfed by it.
    It was not sadness about one particular thing, but about many things all at once. She regretted that Shadrack was arriving so late from the ministry and that he would probably have to work more at home. It saddened her to see him tired all the time. And it saddened her that there would be no time, once again, to study cartology. The thought of all the untouched maps in the underground map room filled her with frustration. She felt bad for begrudging Shadrack his time, since everything he did for the ministry was so important. Most of all, she felt wretched about how things seemed so different betweenthem. She could not tell if it was Shadrack’s exhaustion or her own resentment that had brought about the sense of distance, but it was there. In the past, Sophia thought unhappily, she would have run down the steps to meet him.