TARDIS and sunrise on a forearm

The door wasn't locked. Inside was a round room full of brass rails and a console humming like an old fridge, and a thin man in a crumpled tweed coat was hopping about on one foot, pulling on a boot. "Ah. Good. You're the one who keeps the sunrise," he said, as if that were a job. "I keep a barge," I said. "Same thing, from up here." He nudged a lever and the glass ceiling flooded orange, and through it I saw the sun the way the box must, lifting over the water in one clean sweep.

He offered me a trip. Any morning I liked, he said, including Dad's last one, the morning before the flood took the yard. I thought about it long enough to feel the cold brass under my palm. "Not today," I said. "I've got eighty tonnes of coal to shift and a mother who'll want it on time." He grinned as though I'd passed something, and the door sighed shut behind him.

When I came out the towpath was empty, the grass ringed dark where the box had stood. Only a small brass disc lay by my boot, warm as a teacup, stamped with a spiral of marks I couldn't read. The sun was up over the reeds now. I slipped the disc into my pocket and went to find the coal.